Today in History

[Fifty150]

2021

William Shatner was launched in the Jeff Bezos space rocket. I watched. Like it was a race of cars going around an oval track for hours. Bored out of my mind. But I was glued to the screen in case there was a crash. Then at the end, I was wondering if an ambulance would race out through the desert, and Shatner would be carried out on a stretcher.

 

[Turnip]

1813: The Battle of the Nations near Leipzig, the decisive battle of the Wars of Liberation between the French under Napoleon Bonaparte and the allied Austrians, Russians, Prussians and Swedes, begins.

1934: The Chinese Communists, led by Mao Zedong, begin their Long March.

1946: The ten defendants sentenced to death from the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals are hanged.

 

[tonyb]

1919 — Anita O’Day is born.

 

[Fifty150]

Today, we lost Colin Powell

 

[Turnip]

1914: The race to the sea in the First World War ends without a decision, with which the Schlieffen Plan has finally failed and the war of movement becomes a war of positions.

 

[Harp]

...the Schlieffen Plan ....

Overly aggressive, continuous fowrard thrust, flank attack, enfilade.
Sound infantry squad tactics but set against strategic policy and counter to Clausewitz and Moltke.
Radical strategist thinker however.

 

[Turnip]

1648: The Peace of Westphalia to end the Thirty Years' War, negotiated in the town hall of Münster and in the town hall of Osnabrück, is signed.

1918: The German Admiralty gives the fleet order to prepare the departure of the deep-sea fleet for a decisive battle with the British Grand Fleet in the English Channel. This led to isolated mutinies, five days later to the Kiel sailors' uprising and then to the November Revolution.

1944: 1,792 American prisoners of war die when the Japanese prisoner-of-war transporter Arisan Maru is sunk by an American submarine.

1945: Norwegian Nazi leader Vidkun Quisling is executed by shooting in Akershus Fortress.

1973: The Yom Kippur War ends with the armistice between Israel and Egypt.

 

[Turnip]

1917: October 22 according to the Russian calendar In the run-up to the October Revolution, the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet under the leadership of Leon Trotsky takes over command of the garrisons in the Russian capital.

1921: The "NSDAP Assembly Protection" founded by Ernst Röhm receives the official name Sturmabteilung (SA).

1942: Since the pressure of the Allies in the second battle of El Alamein becomes too great, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel withdraws from El Alamein. In doing so, he is defying an express order from Adolf Hitler.

1952: The US National Security Agency is officially established.

1979: The 444-day hostage-taking of Tehran begins with the storming of the US embassy by Iranian students as part of a demonstration.

 

[Harp]

1979: The 444-day hostage-taking of Tehran begins with the storming of the US embassy by Iranian students as part of a demonstration.

In 1979 I remember the Iranian exchange students at the University of Illinois-Chicago held an on-campus
protest demonstration of anger against the Yankee Imperialist dog aka the United States of America.
Set fire to the American flag, spat upon it...some other exhibitionist immature foolishness.

Trouble was they did the barbecue and bitch immediately adjacent to a building where the Veterans Club
had just concluded a meeting.

 

[Turnip]

1956: British and French paratroopers land at Gamil Airport in Egypt and establish an air support base for the invasion of Egypt during the Suez Crisis.

1987: Govan Mbeki, leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and one of the founders of the African National Congress, is released from prison on Robben Island after 23 years.

1996: Birgit Hogefeld, member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) arrested in 1993 during the GSG-9 mission in Bad Kleinen, is sentenced to life imprisonment, from which she was released on parole in June 2011.

2006: Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging in the first instance.

2009: In the United States, 13 people are killed and 30 others injured in the Fort Hood rampage.

 

[Turnip]

1329: In the Holy Roman Empire, a labor dispute is documented in a document for the first time in Breslau. The journeyman belts are on strike there for a year. The masters agree not to employ any of the strikers at home, if so it will be fined.

1520: The Danish King Christian II, who had been crowned King of Sweden four days earlier, breaks his promise of an amnesty and has numerous Swedish nobles executed in the Stockholm carnage in order to weaken the supporters of Sten Stures the Younger and to enforce the Kalmar Union.

1685: In the Edict of Potsdam, the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm grants the French Huguenots privileges and a secure home in Brandenburg.

1939: Georg Elser's assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and the leadership of the NSDAP in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller kill eight people. However, Hitler himself left the bar 13 minutes earlier.

1942: During the Second World War, British and US Americans land in North Africa as part of Operation Torch, thus starting a two-front war in the African campaign.

 

[Turnip]

1916: The Battle of the Somme, the battle with the greatest losses in World War I, ends in a draw.

1919: Paul von Hindenburg gives new nourishment to the stab in the back with his testimony before the National Assembly's committee of inquiry, which met in public, into the causes of the defeat in the First World War.

1974: 5,000 people come to the funeral of RAF member Holger Meins in Hamburg-Stellingen.

1988: In the GDR, the delivery of the Soviet magazine Sputnik is stopped. As part of the Soviet glasnost and perestroika policy, the GDR leadership disseminated undesirable information in the magazine.

 

[Woodtroll]

80 years ago today, on a peaceful Sunday morning, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war, killing more than 2,400 Americans.

 

[Fifty150]

Following that, Executive Order 9066.

Ultimately, war always leads to suffering.

 

[Woodtroll]

Following that, Executive Order 9066.

Ultimately, war always leads to suffering.

Indeed it does. Utmost respect to the folks who have served or are serving in our Armed Forces, but civilians are never unscathed by war either.

 

[Turnip]

1941: The murder of European Jews begins in the Kulmhof extermination camp as part of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

 

[Turnip]

1941: Japanese aviation units attack Force Z in the Pacific War and sink the two British capital ships in the Pacific, the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse.

 

[Turnip]

1941: Germany and Italy declare war on the USA.

 

[Turnip]

1911: The British King George V is proclaimed Emperor of India at the Durbar (Court Day) in Delhi; it is the only imperial proclamation in India in the presence of the monarch during British colonial rule. As part of the coronation celebrations, he announced the relocation of the capital of British India from Calcutta to the old Mogul capital Delhi, or the newly created government district New Delhi.

1942: Operation Wintergewitter, the attempt by the German Wehrmacht to relieve the 6th Army trapped in the Stalingrad pocket during the Russian campaign of World War II, begins. The attack lasted until December 23rd.

1963: The crown colony of Kenya becomes independent from Great Britain. Jomo Kenyatta becomes the East African state's first Prime Minister.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Dec 12, 1830 Gen Joseph Orville "JO" Shelby is born.