This date in history

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1867 Alaska Purchase: US buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 ($109 million in 2018), roughly 2 cents an acre.

...otherwise known as 'Sewards Folly'. Poor Secretary of State, Seward, seriously wounded in his home during the Lincoln assassination plot night, never got an even break! Now Russia, embroiled in the present fiasco in Ukraine, has stated it would like to reclaim Alaska as well... 1959: A narrowly divided US Supreme Court, in Barkus v. Illinois, ruled that a conviction in state court following an acquittal in federal court did not constitute 'double jeopardy'!!?

[Jimbuna]

1939 Britain & France agree to support Poland if invaded by Germany.

1951 US tanks exceed 38° of latitude in Korea.

1954 USSR offers to join NATO

1958 USSR suspends nuclear weapons tests, & urges US & Britain to do same.

1972 Final day of the rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy.

1979 The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1939 Britain & France agree to support Poland if invaded by Germany. [...]

.. which is why both declared war to Germany after the german invasion. Conveniently ignoring the russian invasion of Poland of the same time. I always wondered what would had happened if the Soviet Union had attacked Poland alone, without the Molotov treaty and all that. Probably nothing apart from Poland joining the soviet block by force in the following events.. which happened anyway after WW2.
I read Niall Ferguson's book about WW1 and i would really like to read something like that by him, about WW2.
There is an (imagined) german general in Herman Wouk's "The winds of war" who now and then expresses his view of things – i really liked that.

[Jimbuna]

^ I've put the Herman Wouk's book on my 'to find' list.

[Jimbuna]

1918 United Kingdom: the Royal Air Force is created from the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps.

1924 Adolf Hitler sentenced to 5 years labor for "Beer Hall Putsch" but General Ludendorff acquitted.

1924 The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed.

1933 Heinrich Himmler becomes Police Commander of Germany.

1941 The Blockade Runner Badge for German Kriegsmarine is instituted.

1945 The Ruhr Pocket of German forces are encircled by the US Ninth Army and US First Army, eventually leading to the capture of 317,000 German troops.

1969 The Hawker Siddeley Harrier (vertical take-off fighter) enters service with the RAF.

1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs found Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs' parents house in Cupertino, California.

1986 US submarine Nathaniel Green runs aground in Irish Sea.

1992 Battleship USS Missouri, on which the Japanese surrender took place, decommissioned.

2001 Former president of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.

[Jimbuna]

1882 American outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by fellow gang member Robert Ford at home in St. Joseph, Missouri.

1922 Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by an ailing Vladimir Lenin.

1929 RMS Queen Mary is ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.

1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warns Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that a German invasion is imminent.

1944 British dive bombers attack German battleship Tirpitz at Kåfjorden, Norway.

1948 US President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Western Europe after World War II, granting an initial $5 billion in aid to 16 European countries.

[Red Devil]

1944 British dive bombers attack German battleship Tirpitz at Kåfjorden, Norway.

Wrong. WE had no dive bombers. The Blackburn Skua was so bad it was obselete by 1941 and never used again. It was only the Lancaster that had the range. No 9 Sqn and 617 Sqn (Dam Busters) took part in the raid, dropping 12000lb 'tallboy' bombs from height. 12 November 1944.

[Aktungbby]

Wrong. WE had no dive bombers.

AHEM!...on April 3, 1944 a force of 80 aircraft including 40 Barracuda dive bombers attacked and inflicted damage on Tirptz. 3 Barracudas were lost along with a Hellcat-9 killed. Tirpitz suffered 15 bomb hits with 122 killed; 316 wounded...

As the only British naval aircraft in service stressed for dive bombing following the retirement of the Blackburn Skua[16] the Barracuda participated in Operation Tungsten, an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz while it was moored in Kåfjord, Alta, Norway. On 3 April 1944, Strike Leader Roy Sydney Baker-Falkner, led two Naval Air Wings with a total of 42 aircraft dispatched from British carriers HMS Victorious and Furious scored 14 direct hits on Tirpitz using a combination of 1,600 lb (730 kg) and 500 lb (230 kg) bombs for the loss of one bomber.This attack damaged Tirpitz, killing 122 of her crew and injuring 316, as well as disabling the ship for over two months during the critical period leading up to the Normandy invasion. However, the slow speed of the Barracudas contributed to the failure of the subsequent Operation Mascot and Operation Goodwood attacks on Tirpitz during July and August of that year, but were effective as diversionary tactics whilst the Normandy landings in Operation Overlord were underway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Barracuda

[Red Devil]

I think some of these so called experts need to go back to school. According to more than one source, we had none, as they has been scrapped in 1941. I checked your facts and they are accurate, according to wikipedia. Although I dont entirely trust Wiki as its comments are based, in many cases, on opinion, by members of the public. I am a wiki editor and have had to delete some comments as slanderous and 100% untrue.

The Tirpitz proved to be one awkward target to hit, and failures were in double figure. I also based my comment on the fact that Tirpitz was moved to Tromso Fjord, forgetting the fact it was originally hundreds of mile south at first.

1-0 to you Sir.

[Jimbuna]

1581 Francis Drake knighted by Queen Elizabeth I aboard his galleon "Golden Hind" at Deptford, England.

1915 Germany protests vigorously to the US, claiming it must insist that Britain lifts its blockade and assert American neutrality.

1917 US Senate agrees (82-6) to participate in WWI

1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty signed in Washington, D.C.

1958 The CND Peace Symbol displayed in public for the first time in London.

1965 The first model of the new Saab Viggen fighter aircraft plane is unveiled.

1975 Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty signed in Washington, D.C.

Lucky Ukraine!!...74 years later and with Finland just added...will it get us through WWIII??!! Premier Xi wonders too as he contemplates a similar 'land grab' in Taiwan to solidify his South China Sea hegemony. The 1959 takeover in Tibet wasn't enough it seems...

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Red Devil

1-0 to you Sir.

Concession accepted. It only caught my eye as Jimbuna is generally accurate on British naval facts, particularly in this thread-ie: if he said 'dive' bombers he meant dive bombers, so I looked into it. On a non-WIKI site with all the raids on Tirpitz throughout the war; 5 at least were with Barracudas. The Barracuda was afflicted with difficulties. Aside from an under-powered R.R. Merlin vs a MkV's R.R. Griffin engine issues; the hydraulic fluid containing ether could leak: often at the pilot's instrument guage( G stresses from dives?)...directly into the 3 man tandem crew compartment rendering the personnel unconscious; masks were not worn below 10,000 feet...this killed a number of crews.

[Red Devil]

I was under the impression that Jim cut and pasted the info. As he is such a nice guy, I could not see him referring in date as the PIRA as an 'army' as I know, as I wuz der! Allies should have copied the Stuka, as they had enough wrecks covering the S of England.

[Jimbuna]

1847 Birkenhead Park, the first civic public park, opens in Birkenhead, England, designed by Joseph Paxton.

1939 Membership of Hitler Youth becomes obligatory.

1943 Chinese steward Poon Lim is found off the coast of Brazil by a Brazilian fisherman family after being adrift 133 days, after British ship SS Benlomond torpedoed by german U-boat.

1943 Mortsel, Belgium: Allies target Minerva car factory, used for repairing Luftwaffe planes for bombing raid; collateral damage from missed targets kills 936 civilians, Belgium's greatest loss of WWII

1951 Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, atomic spies, sentenced to death.

1971 US Lt William Calley sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre.

1982 British Royal Navy aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes, with escort vessels, depart Portsmouth, England for the Falkland Islands in response to the Argentine invasion.

1982 Lord Carrington, British Foreign Secretary resigns for his failure to foresee the invasion of the Falkland Islands.

1999 Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 are handed over for eventual trial in the Netherlands.

[Red Devil]

1847 Birkenhead Park, the first civic public park, opens in Birkenhead, England, designed by Joseph Paxton.

Me again. The park in NY city was copied from this park.