This date in history

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1770 British Captain James Cook, aboard HMS Endeavour, first lands in Australia at Botany Bay.

1789 Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific.

1939 Adolf Hitler claims German-Polish non-attack treaty still in effect.

1940 SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Rudolf Höss (not Hess, different Nazi) becomes commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.

1942 Nightly "dim-out" begins along US East Coast.

1944 Exercise "Tiger" ends with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, Devon.

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Commander of NATO

1969 Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.

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1916 Irish republicans abandon the post office in Dublin and surrender unconditionally, marking the end of the Easter Rising.

1940 Norwegian King Haakon & government flee to Britain.

1945 Conscientious objector Desmond Doss saves 75 wounded soldiers in the Battle of Okinawa at Hacksaw Ridge. Later depicted in the Oscar-winning film "Hacksaw Ridge".

1945 US Army liberates 31,601 people from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Germany.

1946 28 former Japanese leaders indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.

1975 Vietnam War: US begins to evacuate its citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind in response to advancing North Vietnamese forces, bringing an end to US involvement in the war.

1990 Wrecking cranes begin tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.

1997 Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 comes into force; agreement outlaws production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons among its signatories.

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1789 George Washington is inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America at Federal Hall in NYC

1916 Germany ratifies bill bringing in Daylight Saving Time - first country in the world.

1920 The British Government ends military conscription.

1940 Air New Zealand then known as TEAL makes its inaugural flight with a flight from Auckland to Sydney. Later becomes 1st airline in the world to boil hot water in-flight to offer customers hot tea and coffee.

1942 1st submarine built on Great Lakes launched, (Peto), Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

1943 Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp for Jews forms.

1945 Adolf Hitler commits suicide along with his new wife Eva Braun in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin as the Red Army captures the city.

1945 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) calls for crusade against the Bolsheviks.

1945 Record 48 U-boats sunk by the Allies this month.

1945 Red Army opens attack on German Reichstag building in Berlin.

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1707 Acts of Union comes into force, uniting England and Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

1840 "Penny Black", the world's first adhesive postage stamp issued by Great Britain.

1915 British liner Lusitania leaves NY for Liverpool on its last fateful journey.

1919 British naval officer David Beatty is promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.

1923 Adolf Hitler and Ernst Rohm attempt to break up socialist May Day demonstrations, inviting Nazis from as far away as Nuremberg to take part in the violence.

1924 German automobile manufacturers Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie begin their first joint venture (later merge into Mercedes-Benz)

1931 Empire State Building opens in New York City - world's tallest building until the World Trade Center in 1970

1943 German plane sinks the British ship SS Erinpura in the Mediterranean with the loss of 799 lives.

1944 Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, 1st jet bomber, makes 1st flight.

1945 About 1,000 citizens of Demmin in Germany, commit suicide provoked by occupation by Soviet Red Army.

1945 Admiral Karl Doenitz forms German government.

1946 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery appointed British supreme commander.

1960 Russia shoots down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk.

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1933 In Germany, Adolf Hitler bans trade unions.

1945 Battle of Berlin ends as the Soviet army storms the capital, forcing German commander of the city general Helmuth Weidling to surrender.

1945 More than 1,000,000 German soldiers officially surrender to the Western Allies in Italy and Austria.

1982 Falklands War: Argentine cruiser General Belgrano is sunk by British submarine HMS Conqueror, killing more than 350 men.

2011 Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man is killed by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

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1915 Canadian poet and physician John McCrae writes the poem "In Flanders Fields" at Ypres on the Western Front.

1916 Irish Nationalists Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke are executed by firing squad following their involvement in the Easter Rising.

1921 Northern Ireland is created under the UK Government of Ireland Act partitioning off six north eastern counties with a Protestant majority.

1945 German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona, laden with prisoners is sunk by the Royal Air Force in the western Baltic Sea, killing 5,800. One of the largest maritime losses of life in World War II.

1947 Japan's post-war constitution goes into effect, granting universal suffrage, stripping Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power and outlawing Japan's right to make war.

2001 The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.