Today in History

[Turnip]

1797: The last invasion of Great Britain takes place near Fishguard in Wales during the First Coalition War. 1,400 French soldiers, who arrived on four warships, feast on captured alcohol and become unable to fight as a result.

1845: The British East India Company acquires all Danish holdings in India, including Tranquebar, for 1,125,000 thalers.

1943: The siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst from the resistance group Weisse Rose are sentenced to death by the People's Court under Roland Freisler and executed in Munich-Stadelheim prison.

1979: The Caribbean island of St. Lucia becomes independent from Great Britain as part of the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

[Turnip]

1903: Cuba leases the area around Guantánamo Bay to the United States for 99 years.

1947: ISO, the International Organization for Standardization based in Geneva, begins operations.

1961: The public employers and the ÖTV trade union sign the Federal Employees' Collective Agreement (BAT) in Bad Nauheim to regulate employment conditions and pay in the public sector.

 

[Turnip]

1635: In the Treaty of Paris between France and the United Netherlands, an attack and defense pact against Spain is concluded, which provides for the division of the Spanish Netherlands if they are conquered.

1643: During the Pavonia massacre, Dutch soldiers from the Nieuw Nederland colony in North America attacked an Indian village during the Wappinger War, killing and beheading all the residents. They then use the heads of the decapitated for ball games.

1856: The Congress in Paris to end the Crimean War begins, led by French Foreign Minister Alexandre Colonna-Walewski. Representatives of the Ottoman Empire, Austria, Great Britain, France and Russia will negotiate peace terms until March 30.

1921: The Red Army occupies Tbilisi, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. The short phase of Georgian independence ended with the proclamation of the Georgian SSR.

1947: The Allied Control Council of the victorious powers of the Second World War finally dissolved the state of Prussia with Control Council Law No. 46.

1956: In his secret speech about the personality cult and its consequences on the XX. Party congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev settles accounts with Stalinism in the context of de-Stalinization, the thaw begins.

 

[Turnip]

1617: The Stolbowo peace treaty between Russia's Tsar Michael I and the Swedish general Jakob De la Gardie ended the Ingermanland War and established Sweden's position as a major power in the Baltic region. Russia relinquishes all claims in Estonia and Livonia, Sweden receives the fortress of Schlussselburg and other fortresses in Ingermanland.

1900: The Labor Representation Committee, from 1906 Labor Party, is founded in London.

1939: Francisco Franco's Francoist regime is recognized by Britain and France as the government of Spain, although government forces still hold Madrid and other cities in the Spanish Civil War.

1973: Members of the American Indian Movement, a Native American resistance organization, occupy the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, and proclaim an independent Oglala Nation to protest US administration human rights violations on the reservation. The occupation is violently ended after 71 days.

 

[Turnip]

1813: With the Treaty of Kalisch with Russia, Prussia joins the coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte.

1857: After 72 years of service, Austrian Field Marshal Josef Wenzel Radetzky von Radetz is retired at the age of 90.

1933: One day after the Reichstag fire, the German President Paul von Hindenburg issues the Presidential Decree for the Protection of People and State. This forms the basis for the later conformity of the German Reich.

1947: A dispute the previous day over a cigarette seller in Taipei sparks a nationwide uprising against the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan, which claims more than 10,000 lives by mid-March.

1986: Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme is shot dead in the street in Stockholm; the circumstances remain unclear.

 

[Turnip]

1932: As a result of the Manchuria crisis, Japan establishes the puppet state of Manchukuo, with former Chinese Emperor Puyi as head of state.

1953: After a dinner with Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, Josef Stalin suffers a stroke from which he dies four days later.

1954: Miscalculations when the US detonated the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll caused radioactive fallout on the inhabited island of Rongelap. 236 residents are exposed to radiation, as is the crew of a Japanese fishing boat more than 100 kilometers away.

1956: The Supreme Court rules that the University of Alabama must admit its first black student, Autherine Lucy. A few hours later, the university expelled her from her studies for defamation.

 

[Bugguy]

100th anniversary "Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror".

Nice BBC article that contrasts today's Dracula from 1922's Count Orlok. (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220303-nosferatu-the-monster-who-still-terrifies-100-years-on?)

 

[Turnip]

1933: In the Reichstag election, the NSDAP achieved the most votes with a share of 43.9 percent. It is the last Reichstag election in a multi-party system.

1940: Josef Stalin and other members of the CPSU Politburo sign an order to execute "nationalists and counter-revolutionary activists" in Soviet-occupied Poland. In the Katyn massacre that followed, around 20,000 Polish intellectuals and civil servants were murdered.

1946: In a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill uses the expression Iron Curtain behind which the Soviet sphere of influence exists in Europe.

 

[Turnip]

1788: A part of the First Fleet with British prisoners reaches the Australian Norfolk Island and establishes a settlement there.

1820: US President James Monroe signs the Missouri Compromise, allowing the slave state of Missouri to enter the Union by accepting Maine, ceded from Massachusetts, as a slave-free state and maintaining equality in the Senate.

1857: In the decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the US Supreme Court finds that blacks, whether slaves or not, can never be citizens of the United States and declares the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.

1957: The British-West African crown colony of the Gold Coast and the protectorate of British Togoland are merged into Ghana and become the first country in the African tropics to become independent from Great Britain. At the same time, Ghana receives its national flag and becomes the first African country to become a full member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

1999: Ta Mok, the last high-ranking Khmer Rouge, is arrested in Cambodia.

 

[Turnip]

1925: The Tennessee Butler Act made it illegal to teach Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in state or state-sponsored schools if the teaching related to man's descent from "lower" living beings.

1940: Revolutionary Sikh Udham Singh shoots dead in London Sir Michael O'Dwyer, former governor of Punjab and responsible for the April 13, 1919 Amritsar massacre by the British military.

1954: The Soviet foreign secret service KGB is officially established.

1991: Margot and Erich Honecker are flown to Moscow from the Soviet military hospital in Beelitz-Heilstätten.

 

[Fifty150]

Today, we lost one of the greats.

 

[Turnip]

1661: The English East India Company receives civil jurisdiction and military power in India from King Charles II and is allowed to wage wars against "infidels" there or to agree on peace agreements.

1811: In the Battle of Sabugal, English and Portuguese troops prevail against the French army and finally force the Napoleonic invaders to leave Portugal.

1922: Joseph Stalin is elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.

1940: On an order from the CPSU Politburo, units of the Soviet Interior Ministry (NKWD) begin murdering thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals after the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland. The massacre in Katyn and other cities lasts until May 22nd.

1948: An uprising breaks out on the South Korean island of Jeju, which is put down by the police and army. Up to May 1949 up to 30,000 people die in this conflict.

 

[Turnip]

1866: Against President Andrew Johnson's veto, the United States Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, granting civil rights to all those born in the United States, regardless of skin color. The aim is to protect the former slaves during the Reconstruction period. The Indians, who do not pay taxes, are exempt from the regulation.

1912: The United States Children's Bureau is formed, the world's first national government agency dedicated solely to the welfare of children and their mothers.

1945: In the final phase of the Second World War, the resistance fighters Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wilhelm Canaris, Ludwig Gehre, Hans Oster, Karl Sack and Theodor Strünck were executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. On the same day, Georg Elser was executed in the Dachau concentration camp and Hans von Dohnanyi in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

 

[basbol13]

Launched this day in 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the American Revolution was an effort by 13 British colonies in North America (with help from France, Spain, and the Netherlands) to win their independence.

 

[Harp]

Belated recognition 15 April 1960
12th Special Forces Group; 1st Special Forces reconstituted US Army.

 

[GHT]

April 23rd. It's the date of the patron saint of England, St. George. King Edward III made St. George the Patron Saint of England, when he formed the Order of the Garter in St. George’s name in 1350, and the cult of the Saint was further advanced by King Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt in Northern France.

Shakespeare made sure that nobody would forget St. George, and has King Henry V finishing his pre-battle speech with the famous phrase, ‘Cry God for Harry, England and St. George!’ (Harry being the affectionate term for Henry.)

Coincidentally, Shakespeare also has ties to April 23rd. The records show that he was baptised on, 26th April 1564 and died on 23rd April 1616. But it is now known that Shakespeare was born on the 23rd of April 1564. Back then, infant mortality was so common that babies were baptised on the day of their birth. It was a common Christian belief in those days, that only baptised souls were admitted to heaven. What prevented the young Shakespeare from baptism on the day of his birth is still open to speculation, but it's true that his birthday and the day of his death, share the the same day and month.

 

[tonyb]

Had Richard Nixon not been impeached, the killing fields might not have run red.
The liberals smug inside their sanctimonious selves never understood, nor yet
grasp the truth inherent this historical occurence.

Katyn and the rest of the butcher bill writ by Stalin.
A professor from college days had been a Hungarian Army officer imprisoned
by the Red Army and he kept his sanity by recalling poetry read in youth.
He advised me not to read Mein Kampf for my paper but I failed to listen.

Nixon was never impeached.

As to smugness and sanctimony, I suggest you take a look in a mirror.

Rarely have I encountered a person so lacking in self-awareness.

 

[tonyb]

1933, Willie Nelson born in Abbott, Texas.

 

[Turnip]

1945: Eva and Adolf Hitler commit suicide in the bunker. On the same day, the Red Army hoists the Soviet flag on the Reichstag building in Berlin. The US Army takes over Munich, the former "capital of the movement".

1945: A few days before the surrender of the German Reich in World War II, the last number of the Völkischer Beobachter is printed, but is no longer distributed.

 

[Turnip]

1945: Karl Dönitz, designated Reich President of the German Reich in Hitler's will, declares in a radio speech broadcast over the Reichssender Hamburg the continuation of the military fight against "the advancing Bolshevik enemy". In Berlin, Joseph Goebbels, destined to be Chancellor in his will, and his wife Magda take their own lives after murdering their children.