This Day In History

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 27

1703 - Russian Czar Peter I founds the city of St. Petersburg (Leningrad) as the new Russian capital.

1941 - The British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000.

1999 - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 3

1965 - Major Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun, White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes.

1989 - The Chinese government authorizes its soldiers and tanks to reclaim Beijing’s Tiananmen Square at all costs. By nightfall on June 4, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared the square, killing hundreds and arresting thousands of demonstrators and suspected dissidents

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 8

632 - Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aisha, his third and favorite wife.

1967 - Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty in international waters off Egypt’s Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War. The intelligence ship, well-marked as an American vessel and only lightly armed, was attacked first by Israeli aircraft that fired napalm and rockets at the ship. In all, 34 Americans were killed and 171 were wounded in the two-hour attack.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 10

1190 - Frederick I (Barbarossa), Holy Roman Emperor, drowns while crossing the Saleph River (modern Turkey) leading an army to Jerusalem during the Third Crusade.

1692 - Bridget Bishop, the first colonist to be tried in the Salem witch trials, is hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft. Thirteen more women and five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing.

1752 - Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects ambient electrical charge in a Leyden jar, enabling him to demonstrate the connection between lightning and electricity.

1845 - President Andrew Jackson's African Grey parrot "Poll" is removed from his funeral for swearing. Funeral attendee William Menefee Norment recorded: "Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house”.

1898 - The first US ground forces (U.S. Marines) land in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay on the eastern side of the island during Spanish–American War.

1942 - Nazis kill all inhabitants of Lidice, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Czech Republic) which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi controller of Bohemia and Moravia, to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility”; over 170 adult men were executed by firing squad on site, women and children were sent to concentration camp gas chambers, and the village was burned down and plowed under.

1977 - James Earl Ray, convicted of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and six other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. They were recaptured on June 13.

 

[Lord NSIC]

June 10th, 1983 - A young man awoke in the trunk of his car after a long night of drinking (in celebration of his High School Graduation the previous day) as it sped pell mell down a rough country road toward the local greasy spoon diner. While he found the center hole of the spare tire an excellent spot to keep his beer from spilling, once securely seated, he discovered it was impossible to retrieve said can of beer because the trunk lid was in the way. Once stopped and trunk lid opened; freeing him and his still nearly full can of beer, he sat upright, and retrieved it from its resting place. He squinted painfully into the now rising sun as he slowly drained the beer. Tipping the can even higher, he began to realize that he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life. No plan A, much less a plan B; nothing. "I'll start with coffee first, and the rest will fall into place, but coffee first."

 

[tankerjohn]

246 years ago today, in 1775, the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution creating the Continental Army and authorized Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland to raise ten companies of riflemen to join the New England and New York regiments already fighting in Boston. The following day, the Congress appointed General George Washington to command the new Army.

Two years to the day later, in 1777, the same Congress passed the following resolution: "Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." The same month, the new flag was first hoisted by the Continental Army at the Middlebrook encampment in New Jersey and first flown in battle on August 3rd at the Siege of Fort Schuyler in New York. After hearing of the Flag Resolution, the soldiers at the fort made their standard by cutting up their white shirts, a blue officer's coat, and red petticoats from their wives.

Happy Birthday to the United States Army and Old Glory!

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 15

1215 - English King John met his barons at Runnymede on the Thames and set his seal to the Articles of the Barons, which after minor revision was formally issued as Magna Carta. The document, essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteed that the king would respect feudal rights and privileges, uphold the freedom of the church, and maintain the nation’s laws.

1667 - The first fully documented human blood transfusion, a xenotransfusion, is performed by the French physician Jean-Baptiste Denys.

1846 - Representatives of Great Britain and the United States sign the Oregon Treaty, which settles a long-standing dispute with Britain over who controlled the Oregon territory. The treaty established the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Georgia as the boundary between the United States and British Canada.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 21

68 - Roman General Vespasian conquers Jericho during the Great Jewish Revolt

1788 - New Hampshire becomes the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, thereby making the document the law of the land.

1942 - General Erwin Rommel turns his assault on the British-Allied garrison at Tobruk, Libya, into victory, as his panzer division occupies the North African port.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 25

841 - The three-year Carolingian Civil War culminates in the decisive Battle of Fontenoy. The war was fought to decide the territorial inheritances of Charlemagne's grandsons — the division of the Carolingian Empire among the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious. The battle has been described as a major defeat for the allied forces of Lothair I of Italy and Pepin II of Aquitaine, and a victory for Charles the Bald and Louis the German.

1876 - US 7th Cavalry under Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in what has become famously known as "Custer's Last Stand".

1950 - Armed forces from communist North Korea smash into South Korea, setting off the Korean War. The United States, acting under the auspices of the United Nations, quickly sprang to the defense of South Korea and fought a bloody and frustrating war for the next three years.

1991 - The provinces of Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence from Yugoslavia. Slovenia breaks off without violence (it has no border with Serbia). However, within two days the Yugoslav army, representing Serbia, attacks Croatia and a long war between the two countries begins.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 28

1119 - Roger of Salerno's Crusader army of the Principality of Antioch was annihilated by the army of Ilghazi of Mardin, the Artuqid ruler of Aleppo during the Battle of Ager Sanguinis. The battle proved that the Muslims could defeat a Crusader army without the help of the Seljuks.

1762 - Sofia Frederika Augusta (later Yekaterina Alexeyevna) seizes the Russian throne from her husband Peter III becoming Tsarina Catherine the Great.

1914 - Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August. On June 28, 1919, five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand’s death, Germany and the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, officially marking the end of World War I.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 30

1520 - Spanish conquistadors are expelled from Tenochtitlan following an Aztec revolt against their rule under Hernán Cortés during "La Noche Triste" (the Night of Sadness). Many soldiers drown in the escape, and Aztec emperor Moctezuma II dies in the struggle.

1908 - A giant fireball, most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet flattens 80 million trees near the Stony Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, in the largest impact event in recorded history.

1934 - Known as the Night of the Long Knives, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler orders a bloody purge of his own political party, assassinating hundreds of Nazis whom he believed had the potential to become political enemies in the future. The leadership of the Nazi Storm Troopers (SA), whose four million members had helped bring Hitler to power in the early 1930s, was especially targeted.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 1

1690 - The Battle of the Boyne takes place between the forces of the deposed King James II of England and Ireland, VII of Scotland, versus those of King William III who, with his wife Queen Mary II (his cousin and James's daughter), had acceded to the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1689. The battle took place across the River Boyne close to the town of Drogheda in the Kingdom of Ireland, modern-day Republic of Ireland, and resulted in a victory for William. This turned the tide in James's failed attempt to regain the British crown and ultimately aided in ensuring the continued Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.

1863 - Union and Confederate forces collide at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The epic battle lasted three days and resulted in a retreat to Virginia by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

1867 - The autonomous Dominion of Canada, a confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, is officially recognized by Great Britain with the passage of the British North America Act. Two years later, Canada acquired the vast possessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and within a decade the provinces of Manitoba and Prince Edward Island had joined the Canadian federation. In 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, making mass settlement across the vast territory of Canada possible.

1898 - As part of their campaign to capture Spanish-held Santiago de Cuba on the southern coast of Cuba, the U.S. Army Fifth Corps engages Spanish forces at El Caney and San Juan Hill. U.S. General William Shafter hoped to capture El Caney before besieging the fortified heights of San Juan Hill, but the 500 Spanish defenders of the village put up a fierce resistance and held off 10 times their number for most of the day. Although El Caney was not secure, some 8,000 Americans pressed forward toward San Juan Hill. Included among the U.S. ground troops were the Theodore Roosevelt-led “Rough Riders,” a collection of Western cowboys and Eastern blue bloods officially known as the First U.S. Voluntary Cavalry.

1916 - At 7:30 a.m., the British launch a massive offensive against German forces in the Somme River region of France. During the preceding week, 250,000 Allied shells had pounded German positions near the Somme, and 100,000 British soldiers poured out of their trenches and into no-man’s-land on July 1, expecting to find the way cleared for them. However, scores of heavy German machine guns had survived the artillery onslaught, and the infantry were massacred. By the end of the day, 20,000 British soldiers were dead and 40,000 wounded. It was the single heaviest day of casualties in British military history. The disastrous Battle of the Somme stretched on for more than four months, with the Allies advancing a total of just five miles.

1942 - Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is brought to a standstill in the battle for control of North Africa. The First Battle of El Alamein begins—a definite turning point in the war in North Africa.

 

[Bakker1964]

July 1st, 1949 - Newfoundland and Labrador join Canada as the last Province.

1916 - The first battle of the Somme in WW1 is fought, when the Newfoundland Regiment went of the top attacking Beaumont-Hamel. The Blue Puttees suffered catastrophic casualties to over 80% of the Regiment on that first day.

 

[enrywivanh]

1916 - The first battle of the Somme in WW1 is fought, when the Newfoundland Regiment went of the top attacking Beaumont-Hamel. The Blue Puttees suffered catastrophic casualties to over 80% of the Regiment on that first day.
[/QUOTE]

A soldier described the Somme as ‘Like walking into Hell’
Several Battalions, 10th West Yorkshire, 4th Tyneside Scottish, 1st Tyneside Irish, among others, were virtually wiped out.
The Tyneside Scottish and Irish Brigades lost around 70% of their infantry and the combined Yorkshire Battalions suffered
9000 casualties.

A popular song at the time was:
There is a sausage gun
Over the way
Fired by a bloody Hun
Three times a day
You should see the Tommies run
When they hear that sausage gun
Fired by the bloody Hun
Three times a day.

Some different views on the day were:
War Correspondent - ‘All in all it was a Perfect Day’
General who had lost 6000 men - ‘I am proud of my splendid fighting troops’
Lieutenant - ‘ Somebody ought to be hung for this show’

 

[Bakker1964]

There is a beautiful monument to the fallen Newfoundlanders . . . a giant bronze caribou, mounted on a promontory.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 9

1401 - After a forty day siege, the army of Tamerlane brutally sacks the city of Baghdad killing all its inhabitants and destroying all fortifications and public buildings (excluding mosques, hostels and universities).

1553 - Near the village of Sievershausen (today part of Lehrte in present-day Germany), the forces of the Hohenzollern margrave Albert Alcibiades of Brandenburg-Kulmbach are defeated by the united troops of Elector Maurice of Saxony and Duke Henry V of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. With 4,000 men killed, including the Saxon elector and two of Henry's sons, it was one of the bloodiest battles on Lower Saxon territory.

1795 - Financier James Swan pays off the $2,024,899 US national debt that had been accrued during the American Revolution. During the war, a cash-strapped Continental Congress accepted loans from France. Paying off these and other debts proved to be one of the major challenges of the post-independence period. A proponent of American independence, he participated in the Boston Tea Party, and was twice wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Like many businessmen of the day, Swan’s fortunes rose high and fell quite low. As a consequence, he spent about 22 years in debtors prison in Paris, where reportedly he died in 1830.

1846 - American naval captain John B. Montgomery occupies the small settlement of Yerba Buena, a site that will later be renamed San Francisco. When the Mexicans formally ceded California to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe, San Francisco was still a small town with perhaps 900 occupants. That same year, however, gold was discovered at the nearby Sutter’s Fort. San Francisco became the gateway for a massive gold rush, and by 1852, the town was home to more than 36,000.

1917 - The St Vincent-class dreadnought battleship HMS Vanguard, anchored in the northern part of Scapa Flow, suffers a series of magazine explosions caused by faulty cordite stored on board. She sank almost instantly, killing 843 of the 845 men aboard.

1971 - Henry Kissinger become the first US official to visit the People’s Republic of China since its founding in 1949. His meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai confirmed the intentions of the two nations to begin a new chapter and President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China which came in February of 1972. Kissinger also accompanied President Gerald Ford, along with his wife and daughter, to meet Mao in 1975.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 16

622 - The Prophet Muhammad’s begins his migration from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina) upon invitation in order to escape persecution. After arriving, Muhammad negotiated the Constitution of Medina with the local clans, thereby establishing the Muslim community as a sociopolitical entity for the first time.

1212 - The Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile were joined by the armies of his rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre and Peter II of Aragon, in battle against the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (Battle of Al-Uqab) was an important turning point in the Reconquista and in the medieval history of Spain.

1769 - Father Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan missionary, founds the first Catholic mission in California on the site of present-day San Diego. After Serra blessed his new outpost of Christianity in a high mass, the royal standard of Spain was unfurled over the mission, which he named San Diego de Alcala.

1790 - The young American Congress declares that a swampy, humid, muddy and mosquito-infested site on the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia will be the nation’s permanent capital. “Washington,” in the newly designated federal “District of Columbia,” was named after the leader of the American Revolution and the country’s first president: George Washington.

1918 - In Yekaterinburg, Russia, Czar Nicholas II and his family are executed by the Bolsheviks, bringing an end to the three-century-old Romanov dynasty. The remains of Nicholas, Alexandra and three of their children were excavated in a forest near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and positively identified two years later using DNA fingerprinting. The Crown Prince Alexei and one Romanov daughter were not accounted for, fueling the persistent legend that Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter, had survived the execution of her family.

1945 - The Manhattan Project yields explosive results as the first atom bomb is successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1969 - Apollo 11, the first U.S. lunar landing mission, is launched on a historic journey to the surface of the moon. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 19

1553 - After only nine days as the monarch of England, Lady Jane Grey is deposed in favor of her cousin Mary. Jane was held prisoner in the Tower and was convicted of high treason in November 1553, which carried a sentence of death — though Mary initially spared her life. However, Jane soon became viewed as a threat to the Crown when her father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, became involved with Wyatt's rebellion against Queen Mary's intention to marry Philip II of Spain. Both Jane and her husband were executed on 12 February 1554.

1799 - During Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles east of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.

1843 - The steamship SS Great Britain is launched. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it is the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull and screw propeller and the largest vessel afloat in the world at that time. She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which she did in 1845, in the time of 14 days.

1910 - Cy Young wins the 500th game of his Baseball HOF career as the Cleveland Naps beat Washington Senators, 5 - 2, in 11 innings. He is the only pitcher in MLB history to reach that milestone.

1947 - Bogyoke Aung San and six of his cabinet and two non-cabinet members assassinated by armed paramilitaries. Aung San is the founder of the Myanmar Armed Forces, and is considered the Father of the nation of modern-day Myanmar. He was instrumental in Burma's independence from British rule.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 20

1881 - Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers. Sitting Bull had been a major leader in the 1876 Sioux uprising that resulted in the death of George Custer and 264 of his men at Little Bighorn. Pursued by the U.S. Army after the victory, he escaped to Canada with his followers.

1944 - Adolph Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. More than 7,000 Germans would be arrested (including evangelical pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and up to 5,000 would wind up dead—either executed or as suicides.

1969 - American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

 

[FarmerTan]

July 20

1881 - Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers. Sitting Bull had been a major leader in the 1876 Sioux uprising that resulted in the death of George Custer and 264 of his men at Little Bighorn. Pursued by the U.S. Army after the victory, he escaped to Canada with his followers.

1944 - Adolph Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. More than 7,000 Germans would be arrested (including evangelical pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and up to 5,000 would wind up dead—either executed or as suicides.

1969 - American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

You know what I learned from this post?

I want my future grandbabies to call me, "HunkPapa!"

Thanks for the idea!