This date in history

[Aktungbby]

1939: the foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Joschim con Ribbentrop and Galeazzo Ciano, signed a "Pact of Steel" committing the two nations to a military alliance. Ciano was executed by firing squad in 1944; and Von Ribbentrop was hung at Nuremburg in 1946... certainly giving the lie to any concept of "diplomatic immunity''

[Jimbuna]

1849 Abraham Lincoln receives a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions.

1906 A British garrison leaves Esquimalt, on the Pacific coast, after a military occupation that began in 1858: the last British soldiers stationed in Canada.

1939 Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini sign the "Pact of Steel" formalizing the 1936 alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1945 NSB-Fuhrer Rost van Tonningen makes failed suicide attempt.

1947 1st US ballistic missile fired.

1972 Over 400 women in Derry attack the offices of Official Sinn Féin in Derry, North Ireland, following the shooting of William Best by the Official Irish Republican Army.

[Jimbuna]

1873 Canada's North West Mounted Police Force forms (it didn't get the "Royal" until 1904)

1934 American outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow - Bonnie and Clyde, are killed by police in an ambush near Sailes, Louisiana.

1939 Adolf Hitler proclaims he wants to move into Poland.

1939 Submarine USS Squalus sinks in the Gulf of Maine, drowning 26, 33 remaining crew rescued from a depth of 243 ft (74 m) by divers using newly developed heliox air systems (divers later awarded the Medal of Honor)

1940 1st great dogfight between Spitfires and Luftwaffe.

1945 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) arrested at Danish boundary.

1945 The Allies arrest the members of the Nazi Flensburg government, including Admiral Karl Dönitz, formally dissolving Nazi Germany.

1949 Federal Republic of [West] Germany created out of the American, British and French occupation zones.

1981 Peter Sutcliffe is convicted for the "Yorkshsire Ripper" murders of 13 women at the Old Bailey in London and sentenced to life sentences for each.

1998 The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with 75% voting yes.

[Jimbuna]

1844 Samuel Morse taps out "What hath God wrought" in the world's first telegraph message.

1930 Amy Johnson becomes the 1st woman to fly solo from England to Australia.

1941 German battleship Bismarck sinks the British battle cruiser HMS Hood; 1,416 die, 3 survive.

1943 Admiral Donitz stops U-boat in Atlantic Ocean.

1943 U-441 shoots Sunderland seaplane down over Gulf of Biskay.

1944 Icelandic voters severe all ties with Denmark.

[Aktungbby]

2006: "An Inconvenient Truth", a documentary about Vice President Al Gore's campaign against global warming, went into release...throwing in horrific fires across the globe(within 8,000 feet of my house!??), the imminent return of El Niño heat, 100⁰F-114⁰F(here in Napa) temps, massive super-hurricanes(presently smiting U.S. Guam)...the truth has become exponentially more inconvenient! I may opt for interement in the local cemetery in lieu of cremation...just to help cut down on global warming!

[Jimbuna]

1915 Second Battle of Ypres on the Western Front ends with 105,000 casualties.

1948 Polish war hero Witold Pilecki is executed by communist police after a show trial in Warsaw.

1961 JFK announces US goal of putting a man on the Moon before the end of decade.

1971 The Provisional Irish Republican Army throw a time bomb into Springfield Road British Army base in Belfast, killing British Army Sergeant Michael Willetts and wounding seven officers.

[Jimbuna]

1805 Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned King of Italy.

1919 The Supreme Council of Allies, meeting at Versailles, decides to recognize two White Russian leaders, Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin, and support them against the Bolsheviks.

1922 Vladimir Lenin suffers a stroke.

1940 1st successful helicopter flight in US: Vought-Sikorsky US-300 designed by Igor Sikorsky.

1941 Aircraft from HMS Ark Royal sights German battleship Bismarck.

1972 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) plant a bomb in Oxford Street, Belfast, killing a 64 year old woman.

1981 Marine jet crashes on flight deck of USS Nimitz, killing 14

1982 British ship Atlantic Conveyor carrying Chinook helicopters and destroyer HMS Coventry hit in Falkland war: 39 crew members die.

2004 The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1981 Marine jet crashes on flight deck of USS Nimitz, killing 14

1954: explosion rocked the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors. The initial blast was blamed on leaking catapult fluid ignited by jet flames. Considering my first post-college ambition to be a naval aviator, and my less than stellar Cessna 152 landings in the '70's around California...perhaps best I didn't pass the physical!

[Jimbuna]

1679 Habeas Corpus Act passes in England, strengthening a person's right to challenge unlawful arrest and imprisonment.

1905 Japanese fleet destroys the Russian East Sea fleet in the Battle of Tsushima, the only decisive clash between modern steel battleships in history.

1940 British and Allied forces begin the evacuation of Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo) during WWII

1940 In the Le Paradis massacre, 97 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops.

1941 FDR declares state of emergency after a German U-boat sinks the American flagged SS Robin Moor.

1941 German battleship Bismarck sunk by British naval force.

1942 Dorie Miller awarded navy cross for deeds at Pearl Harbor.

1942 Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich is mortally wounded by a grenade thrown by Czech rebels in Prague during Operation Anthropoid; he would die a week later.

[Jimbuna]

1431 Joan of Arc is accused of relapsing into heresy by donning male clothing again, providing justification for her execution.

1588 King Philip II dispatches the Spanish Armada under the Duke of Medina-Sidonia from Lisbon, Portugal to invade England.

1972 White House "plumbers" first break in at the Democratic National Headquarters and install listening devices at Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.

1940 Belgium surrenders to Germany, King Leopold III gives himself up.

1940 British-French troops capture Narvik, Norway.

1942 1,800 Czechs murdered by Nazis during attack on Heydrich.

2002 NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance.

[Rockstar]

28th May, 1935. The prototype Messerschmitt Bf 109V1 flew for the first time. Ironically, it was fitted with an imported Rolls Royce Kestrel engine as its intended Junkers Jumo poweplant wasn’t yet available. Test pilots complained about its cramped cockpit and narrow track undercarriage, but its potential performance in the air was evident. Over 34,000 Bf 109s would be produced, far more than any other fighter aircraft in history.

[Rockstar]

28 May 585, BC. What is known as the Battle of the Eclipse occurs. Medes and the Lydians call off their battle after both armies are frightened by an eclipse of the Sun. Peace terms were agreed to shortly thereafter, ending the six-year war.

[Aktungbby]

/\ no such break occurred for the 1200 red coated British at Isandhlwana as 20,000 Zulus warriors overwelmed their encampment and slaughtered nearly the entire regiment. A total eclipse occurred during the battle?!! 1987: German youth, 18 yearold Marhias Rust, a self-described 'oddball' flies his Cessna 172 Skyhawk to Russia and lands in Moscow's Red Square at the height of the cold war, mortifying Russian air defenses that had spotted him several times but assumed he was friendly. He said he did it to lessen tension between East and West??!! His subsequent 4 year sentence for "hooliganism" is reduced to one year and the plane resides in a German museum to this day! He is one of my heros; just for effrontery alone! The Soviet Minister of Defense and the head or the Soviet airforce were dismissed in one of the biggest purges since Stalin. And these daze, a mere 36 years later, we could certainly do with less tension 'twixt East and West.

[Rockstar]

1453 A.D. The Byzantine Empire comes to an end as the Ottomans, under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih, capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege. The empire began on May 11, 330 A.D.

[Rockstar]

In 1736 American Revolutionary hero Patrick Henry is born in Studley, Virginia. He is likely most famous for his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech.