This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1581 Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich dies after being attacked by his father Ivan the Terrible three days earlier.

1620 The Mayflower reaches Cape Cod and explores the coast.

1863 US President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg address beginning; "Four score and seven years ago..."

1919 US Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 55 to 39; Congress two years later approves resolution ending hostilities with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

1942 Operation Uranus: Soviet offensive begins during Battle of Stalingrad, 1 million Soviet soldiers encircle the German Sixth Army.

1943 U-536 sinks in Atlantic Ocean.

1950 US General Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe.

1969 Apollo 12's Charles Conrad and Alan Bean become the 3rd and 4th humans on the Moon.

[Jimbuna]

1815 Second Treaty of Paris: France and her allies agree France will pay indemnities after Battle of Waterloo, ending the Napoleonic Wars.

1820 Whaling ship Essex attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific, only eight of the 20 crew men eventually survive (through cannibalism). Inspiration for the novel "Moby-Dick"

1917 1st successful tank use in battle, at the Battle of Cambrai in World War I as Britain uses the new technology to break through German lines.

1917 Ukrainian Republic declared.

1941 Adm Nomura & Kurusu hands over Japanese last diplomatic note.

1941 German "auxiliary cruiser" (armed merchant raider) Kormoran sinks near Australia.

1943 U-538 sinks in Atlantic Ocean.

1945 The Nuremberg war trials begin as 24 Nazi leaders are put on trial before judges representing the victorious Allied powers.

1990 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fails to defeat Michael Heseltine's bid for leadership of the Conservative Party.

1995 Diana, Princess of Wales, admits she cheated on Prince Charles in a TV interview.

1998 Court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

[Jimbuna]

1806 The Continental System declared in the Decree of Berlin: Emperor Napoleon I bans all trade with Britain.

1818 Russia's Tsar Alexander I petitions for a Jewish state in Palestine.

1916 HMHS Britannic sinks in the Aegean Sea after a mine explodes, killing 30 people.

1918 The German High Seas Fleet of 5 battlecruisers, 9 battleships, 7 cruisers and 49 destroyers surrendered to the British Grand Fleet and were shepherded into the Firth of Forth.

1942 Adolf Hitler names field marshal Erich von Manstein commander of the newly-created Army Group Don (Heeresgruppe Don)

1963 US President John F. Kennedy flies to Texas (assassinated the next day)

1967 Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."

2002 NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.

[Dargo]

Ukraine marks 10-year anniversary of Maidan ‘Revolution of Dignity’ Ukraine’s pro-democracy, pro-Europe demonstrations in Maidan square a decade ago marked the “first victory” in its war with Russia Nearly 100 civilians died in violent clashes with security forces when Ukrainians took to the streets of the capital in 2013, demanding to move Ukraine out of the orbit of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and “join” the family of European democracies to which it “historically belongs”.

[Jimbuna]

1941 British cruiser Devonshire sinks German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis.

1942 Adolf Hitler orders Rommel's Africa Korps to fight to the last man.

1963 US President John F. Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in an open-topped motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

2005 Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany.

[Rockstar]

On this day in 1922 a great American and legendary firearms designer, Eugene Stoner, was born in Gosport Indiana.

[Jimbuna]

1942 Chinese steward Poon Lim begins 133 days adrift after British ship SS Benlomond is torpedoed by a German U-boat, leaving him as the sole survivor.

1942 German 4th & 6th Army surrounded at Stalingrad.

1945 Most US wartime rationing of foods, including meat & butter, ends.

1963 Following the protocol after Abraham Lincoln's death, JFK's body lies in repose in the East Room of the White House and viewed by officials and heads of state.

1963 LBJ proclaims Nov 25 a day of national mourning after the assassination of JFK

[Jimbuna]

1914 Benito Mussolini leaves Italy's Socialist Party.

1922 Italian parliament gives Benito Mussolini dictatorial powers "for 1 year"

1940 The Blitz: Luftwaffe bombs Bristol city centre, killing 200 people in the first German raid on the city.

1944 US bombers based on Saipan begin 1st attack on Tokyo.

1954 Air Force One, 1st US Presidential airplane, christened.

1971 A British Army bomb-disposal specialist is killed by a bomb in Lurgan, County Armagh.

1971 A woman is killed after members of the Irish Republican Army carry out an attack on British soldiers in Strabane, County Tyrone.

1979 Senate report proves US troops in Vietnam were exposed to the toxic chemical defoliant Agent Orange.

1983 PLO exchanges 6 Israeli prisoners for 4,500 Palestinians & Lebanese.

1993 11 year old Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are convicted of the murder of English 2 year old James Bulger.

[Jimbuna]

1783 Britain evacuates New York city, its last military position in the United States.

1913 The Irish Volunteers founded in Dublin to "secure the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland"

1922 Crown Prince Hirohito of Japan becomes Regent of Japan in his ailing father's stead.

1940 First flights of the de Havilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.

1943 U-600 sinks in Atlantic Ocean.

1944 World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's store in Deptford, United Kingdom, killing 160 shoppers.

1948 16-inch coastal guns removed from Fort Funston, San Francisco.

1957 US President Dwight Eisenhower suffers a mild stroke, impairing his speech.

1963 JFK laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

1974 Irish Republican Army is outlawed in Britain following deaths of 21

1975 A loyalist gang nicknamed the "Shankill Butchers" undertakes its first "cut-throat killing"; the gang was named for its late-night kidnapping, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians in Belfast.

[Jimbuna]

1778 British explorer Captain James Cook is the first European to visit Maui in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii)

1789 1st national Thanksgiving in America.

1914 Battleship HMS Bulwark explodes at Sheerness Harbour, England, 788 die.

1922 English archaeologist Howard Carter opens Tutankhamun's virtually intact tomb in Egypt.

1941 Japanese naval carrier force left its base & moves east toward Pearl Harbour.

1944 Heinrich Himmler orders destruction of Auschwitz & Birkenau crematoria.

1950 China enters Korean conflict, sends troops across Yalu River.

1983 World's greatest robbery; 26 million pounds (sterling) worth of gold, diamonds and cash stolen from Brink's-Mat warehouse at Heathrow Airport, England.

[Jimbuna]

1807 Portuguese Royal Family and its court of nearly 15,000 people leave Lisbon for their colony of Brazil to escape invading Napoleonic troops.

1895 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel's will establishes the Nobel Prize.

1942 French navy at Toulon scuttles ships & subs so Nazis cannot seize them.

1944 4,000 shells detonate in RAF arms depot at Fauld, near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire; village of Hanbury destroyed, at least 70 people killed.

1945 Trial against Dutch Fascist NSB leader Anton Mussert begins (later convicted and executed by firing squad)

1967 French President Charles de Gaulle said 'Non!' to British entry to the European Common Market for the second time.

1971 Two Customs officials are shot by an Irish Republican Army sniper firing upon a British Army patrol investigating a bomb attack on a Customs Post near Newry, County Armagh.

1975 The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.

[Jimbuna]

1893 Women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election.

1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia & Germany abdicates.

1919 American-born Lady Nancy Astor elected as the 1st female member of the British House of Commons.

1934 Winston Churchill tells British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin not to under estimate German air power.

1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin meet at the Tehran Conference in Iran to map out strategy.

1946 Dutch Nazi Anton Mussert sentenced to death.

1972 2 members of the IRA are killed in a premature bomb explosion in the Bogside area of Derry.

1994 Norway votes against joining European Union.

[Jimbuna]

1951 1st underground atomic explosion at Frenchman Flat in Nevada.

1812 Napoleon's Grand Army crosses Berezina River in retreat from Russia.

1900 General Horatio Kitchener assumes command of the British forces in South Africa from General Lord Roberts.

1917 A Supreme Allied War Council meets at Versailles to define war aims.

1941 Passenger ship Lurline sends radio signal of sighting Japanese war fleet.

1943 U-86 sinks in Atlantic Ocean.

1943 US aircraft carrier Hornet launched.

1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo erupt after UN votes to partition Palestine, with cost of 75 lives and the disappearance of medieval manuscript the Aleppo Codex.

1947 UN General Assembly vote to allow the partition of Palestine between Arabs & Jews.

1962 Great Britain & France decide to jointly build the Concorde supersonic airliner.

[Jimbuna]

1900 A German engineer patents front-wheel drive for automobiles.

1922 1st speed test of 1st genuine Japanese aircraft carrier Hosho.

1922 Adolf Hitler speaks to 50,000 national-socialists in Munich, Germany.

1924 French and Belgium troops withdrawn from their occupation of the Ruhr.

1939 Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim appointed Commander-in-Chief of all Finnish armed services as Soviet forces invade.

1941 Japanese Emperor Hirohito consults with admirals Shimada and Nagano.

1942 German supply vessel Uckermark (formerly called the Altmark) explodes & sinks off Yokohama.

1942 U-boats sink and damage 142 allied ships this month (877,774 tons)

1944 Biggest & last British battleship HMS Vanguard launched.

1958 1st US guided missile destroyer launched - the Dewey at Bath Iron Works, Maine.

1967 British troops leave Aden and the rest of the Federation of South Arabia (FSA) ending British colonial rule; National Liberation Front (NLF) assumes power and renames the state as the People's Republic of South Yemen.

1982 US submarine Thomas Edison collides with US Navy destroyer in South China Sea.

[Dargo]

On 30 November 1939 Soviet Union attacked Finland (Winter War), three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. Journalist Martha Gallhorn covered the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland for the American media. According to her reports, nothing has changed in the Russians' propaganda and warfare in 84 years.

• "Moscow radio told them that the Finns were brothers, and that it was not the real Finnish people who were fighting against the USSR, but only a bunch of conspirators who had organized a diabolical fraud. The entire city of Helsinki laughed at these statements. Less than one percent of Finns are illiterate, and people have access to information, they believe Russian bombs, not Russian propaganda."
• "Here, as everywhere else, I heard the same story about the Russian infantry: the Russians went on the offensive all together, in a column, and the Finns, who were hidden and dispersed, slaughtered them with machine-gun fire. And here, as elsewhere, I heard soldiers and officers regretting that other men should die so stupidly and uselessly, like animals in a slaughterhouse. ."
• "The captives answered questions trembling and repeated what everyone else was saying. They were told that Finland had attacked them and so they were fighting to save Russia."