This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1579 English navigator Francis Drake lands on the coast of California at Drakes Bay, names it "New Albion"

1631 Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, then spends more than 20 years building her tomb, the Taj Mahal.

1885 Statue of Liberty arrives in NYC aboard French ship `Isere'

1940 France asks Germany for terms of surrender in WW II

1940 General De Gaulle departs Bordeaux for London.

1940 Sinking of the RMS Lancastria by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France.

1965 First bombing by B-52 (50 km north of Saigon).

[Jimbuna]

1812 War of 1812 begins as US declares war against Britain.

1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon and France defeated by British forces under Wellington and Prussian troops under Blucher.

1940 General Charles de Gaulle on BBC tells French to defy Nazi occupiers.

1940 Winston Churchill's "this was their finest hour" speech urging perseverance during Battle of Britain delivered to British House of Commons.

1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster, charged with treason in England.

[Jimbuna]

1829 Sir Robert Peel introduces the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 into Parliament to establish a unified police force for London.

1917 The British Royal Family, which has had strong German ties since George I, renounces its German names and titles and adopts the name of Windsor.

1941 Soviet anthropologist Michael Gerasimov opens tomb of Timurid Empire founder Timur and allegedly finds the inscription that whoever opens the tomb shall "unleash an invader more terrible than I." Three days later Germany invades Russia.

1991 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar surrenders to police.

[Jimbuna]

1837 Queen Victoria at 18 ascends British throne following death of uncle King William IV. She rules for 63 years till 1901

1840 Samuel Morse patents his telegraph.

1919 Treaty of Versailles: Germany ends incorporation of Austria.

1941 German U-203 fails on torpedo attack on US battleship Texas.

1944 Nazis begin mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.

1967 Mohammed Ali [Cassius Clay] sentenced to 5 years by jury after 21 minutes of deliberation for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces during the Vietnam War.

1991 The Bundestag (German parliament) decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

2019 Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years.

[Jimbuna]

1854 First Victoria Cross won during bombardment of Bomarsund in the Aland Islands (Crimean War)

1919 The German Navy, feeling betrayed by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, scuttles most of its ships interned at Great Britain's Scapa Flow Naval base in the Orkney Islands.

1948 Lord Mountbatten resigns as Governor General of India (formerly the last Viceroy)

1978 The British Army shoots dead 3 Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers and a passing Ulster Volunteer Force member at a postal depot on Ballysillan Road, Belfast; it is claimed that the PIRA volunteers were about to launch a bomb attack.

1982 John Hinckley found not guilty of 1981 attempted assassination of President Reagan by reason of insanity.

[Jimbuna]

1633 Galileo Galilei forced to recant his Copernican views that the Earth orbits the Sun by the Pope (Vatican only admits it was wrong on Oct 31, 1992!)

1675 Royal Greenwich Observatory established in England by Charles II

1865 The CSS Shenandoah fires the last shot of the American Civil War in the Bering Strait to indicate surrender.

1939 Princess and future Queen Elizabeth meets future husband Prince Philip of Greece (Midshipman Mountbatten, RN)

1940 France surrenders to Nazi Germany, with the northern half of the country occupied and the south established as the Nazi client state Vichy France.

1941 Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany and its allies invade the Soviet Union during WWII, the largest military operation in history.

1943 617 Squadron (Dambusters) attends investiture at Buckingham Palace, Commanding Officer Guy Gibson awarded the Victoria Cross.

1972 The Irish Republican Army announce that it would call a ceasefire from 26 June 1972 provided that there is a "reciprocal response" from the security forces.

1975 Ulster Volunteer Force try to derail a train by planting a bomb on the railway line near County Kildare, Ireland; a civilian who tries to stop them is stabbed-to-death (his actions delay the explosion to let the train pass safely)

1981 Mark David Chapman pleads guilty to killing John Lennon.

[Jimbuna]

1940 After conquering France, Adolf Hitler visits Paris and views the Eiffel Tower and the grave of Napoleon Bonaparte.

1942 Germany's latest fighter, a Focke-Wulf FW190 is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1943 RAF discovers Wernher von Braun's V1/V2-base in Peenemunde.

1945 Last organized Japanese defiance broken (Tarakan)

2016 Brexit referendum: United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union.

[Jimbuna]

1497 John Cabot claims Eastern Canada for England (believes he has found Asia in Nova Scotia)

1812 Napoleon Bonaparte's Grand Armée numbering half a million begin their invasion of Russia by crossing the Nieman River.

1917 Russian Black Sea fleet mutinies at Sebastopol.

1922 Adolf Hitler begins a month long prison sentence for paramilitary operations; he rails against the 'Jewish sell-out' of Germany to the Bolsheviks.

1942 Village of Ležáky, Czechoslovakia destroyed by Nazis after Gestapo finds a radio transmitter believed to have been involved coordinating the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, 33 adults were executed by firing squad on site, and children were sent to concentration camp gas chambers, and the village was burned down and plowed under.

1948 Soviet Union begins the West Berlin Blockade by stopping access by road, rail and water.

1982 US Supreme Court rules president can't be sued for actions in office.

[Jimbuna]

1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn: US 7th Cavalry under Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in what has become famously known as "Custer's Last Stand"

1942 British RAF stages a 1,000 bomb raid on Bremen, Germany.

1947 First version of Anne Frank's diary "Het Achterhuis" published in The Netherlands.

1950 North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War.

[Jimbuna]

1857 The first 62 recipients are awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in the Crimean war by Queen Victoria.

1911 Nieuport sets an aircraft speed record of 83 mph (133 kph)

1915 Germany suppresses "Vorwarts" newspaper after it called for peace.

1917 First US troops arrive in France during World War I

1918 The Australian steamer Wimmera is sunk by a mine laid north of Cape Maria van Diemen in 1917 by the German raider Wolf; 26 of its 151 passengers and crew were killed.

1948 US begin airlift “Operation Vittles” to West Berlin.

1963 US President John F. Kennedy gives his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" (intended to mean "I am a Berliner", but may actually mean "I am a doughnut") speech in West Berlin.

1968 Iwo Jima & Bonin Islands returned to Japan by US

1977 Elvis Presley sings in Indianapolis, the last performance of his career.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1963 US President John F. Kennedy gives his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" (intended to mean "I am a Berliner", but may actually mean "I am a doughnut") speech in West Berlin.

Well my German translator says it means: "I am a Berliner!"

[Jimbuna]

1743 War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: in Bavaria, King George II of Britain personally leads troops into battle. The last time a British monarch commanded troops in the field.

1746 Flora MacDonald helps Bonnie Prince Charlie, disguised as Betty Burke an Irish maid, evade capture by landing him on the Isle of Skye.

1778 Liberty Bell returns home to Philadelphia after the British departure.

1923 Capt. Lowell H. Smith and Lt. John P. Richter perform the first ever aerial refueling in a DH-4B biplane.

1929 President Paul von Hindenburg refuses to pay German debt of WWI

1942 FBI captures 8 German saboteurs from a submarine off NY's Long Island.
1942 PQ-17 convoy leaves Iceland for Archangelsk

1950 North Korean troops reach Seoul, UN asks members to aid South Korea, Harry Truman orders US Air Force & Navy into Korean conflict.

[Red Devil]

Originally Posted by Madox58

1958. privateer is born.

and???

[Jimbuna]

1776 Final draft of Declaration of Independence submitted to Continental Congress.

1838 Coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey, London.

1880 Australian bushranger Ned Kelly captured at Glenrowan.

1904 SS Norge runs aground and sinks off Rockall, North Atlantic, more than 635 die, largest maritime loss of life until Titanic.

1919 Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI and establishing the League of Nations, is signed in France.

1922 The Irish Civil War starts when Irish Free State forces attack anti-treaty republicans in Dublin.

1934 Hitler flies to Essen (for Night of Long Knives)

1948 British begin airlift “Operation Plainfare” to West Berlin.

1950 North Korean forces capture Seoul, South Korea in opening phase of the Korean War.

1970 Around 500 Catholic workers at the Harland and Wolff shipyard are forced to leave their work by Protestant employees as serious rioting continues in Belfast.

2020 Global death toll from COVID-19 passes 500,000, doubling in less than two months (Johns Hopkins)

[Red Devil]

thanks Jim