A Timeline of Modern World History (History 11051)

A Brief History

This article presents a timeline of Modern World History for History 11051 at Kent State University at Stark. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event.

Digging Deeper

I. Introduction

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus, the Italian adventurer sailing into the unknown in the name of the Spanish Crown, landed in the Bahamas, the landing that became known as the “discovery” of America (or, “The New World” if you prefer).
On January 3, 1521, Roman Catholic (Augustinian) priest and reformer Martin Luther was ex-communicated from the church by Pope Leo X.
Religious reformer Martin Luther refused to recant during his trial for heresy on April 18, 1521, but what might you not know about him?

II. The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century

On January 21, 1535, in the aftermath of “The Affair of the Placards,” French Protestants were burned at the stake in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
On August 31, 1535, King Henry VIII of England was kicked out of the Catholic Church by Pope Paul III, although a more official excommunication would come three years later.
On July 29, 1565, Mary, Queen of Scots, married her first cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. In her case, the only thing advantageous about this marriage, was that it ensured that the Scottish throne stay under the control of the House of Stuart by keeping it in the family so to say.
On October 10, 1580, after a three-day siege, an English army beheaded over 600 Papal soldiers and civilians in Ireland.
On July 22, 1587, a detachment of English settlers landed at Roanoke Island, in what is now North Carolina, with the intention of establishing a colony.
On August 18, 1587, Virginia Dare was born in the Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina.
On July 19, 1588, during the Anglo-Spanish War’s Battle of Gravelines, the ultimately doomed Spanish Armada was sighted in the English Channel.
On July 25, 1593, Henry IV, King of France, converted from Calvanist Protestant back to the Catholicism of his birth.
On July 25, 1609, the excellently named British ship, Sea Venture, encountered serious storms while crossing the Atlantic Ocean en route to Virginia, and was purposely run ashore to prevent loss of the ship and passengers.
On November 6, 1632 at the Battle of Lützen during the Thirty Years’ War, the Swedes won, but their King, Gustavus Adolphus, died in the battle.
On September 23, 1641, off the coast of Cornwall, England, a British merchant ship named the Merchant Royal sank with her cargo of Spanish treasure.
On May 20, 1645, the forces of Prince Dodo (we do not make this stuff up!) of the Qing Dynasty conquered the city of Yangzhou, China, from the forces of the Southern Ming of the Hongguang Emperor.
On June 28, 1651, and lasting through June 30, 1651, the Battle of Berestechko was fought in the area between what is now modern Poland, modern Belarus and the modern Ukraine, between the army of Poland and the upstart Ukrainian Cossacks and Tatars.
On October 12, 1654, the Dutch city of Delft was the scene of a spectacular tragedy when a large gunpowder storehouse exploded, destroying much of the city and killing over 100 people.
On March 2, 1657, the city of Tokyo, Japan, then known as Edo, suffered a catastrophic fire that lasted 3 days and killed 100,000 Japanese people, a death toll greater than either of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
On April 20, 1657, a fleet of 23 British Royal Navy warships sailed boldly into the defended harbor at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, to attack a Spanish treasure fleet anchored there.
On August 12, 1676, John Alderman, known as a “Praying Indian” because he was a Native American converted to Christianity, shot and killed Chief Metacomet of the Wampanoag people, thus ending the conflict known as King Phillip’s War.

III. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

St. Albertus Magnus died on November 15, 1280, after having reportedly built an android and discovered the philosopher’s stone, but according to the faithful his body did not deteriorate and according to Mary Shelley, his writings influenced mad scientist Victor Frankenstein!
On June 17, 1462, Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad III The Impaler, or simply Dracula, conducted a night raid against his Turkish enemy, Mehmed II who had invaded Vlad’s land of Wallachia (Romania).
Ok, so we know Abraham Lincoln created the Thanksgiving holiday on this date in 1863, but what do Wallachians have to be thankful for?
On October 27, 1553, a Spanish scientist versed in many disciplines, Michael Servetus, was burned at the stake for heresy.
On February 17, 1600, Italian polymath and philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in the Papal States of Rome for the crime of heresy.
On February 13, 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to stand trial before the Catholic Inquisition for heresy.
In 1638, the Great Council of Venice established the first known European gambling house, the Ridotto, which was not called a casino although it meets the modern definition.
On September 17, 1683, Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek presented a paper to the Royal Society (The President, Council and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge) containing a description of the first scientific recognition of microbes/protozoa, a living thing he referred to as “animalcules” (single celled organisms).
On May 21, 1703, English writer Daniel Defoe was arrested and jailed for the crime of “seditious libel,” his offense being the writing of a pamphlet critical of rich and powerful English authorities.
The 22nd of November is indelibly etched in the public’s mind with the death of a revered hero!
On December 27, 1771, French engineer, Henri Pitot, died at the age of 76.
On April 14, 1775, Benjamin Franklin along with Benjamin Rush founded the first abolitionist society in the US, The Society For the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
On May 1, 1776, an organization known as The Order of the Illuminati was established in Ingolstadt, Upper Bavaria, founded by German philosopher Johann Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830).
On July 12, 1776, famous explorer English Captain James Cook set sail from Plymouth on what was to be his final voyage.
On February 14, 1779, Captain James Cook, navigator, map maker, and explorer, was killed by native Hawaiians at the island of Hawaii near what is now Kealakekua.
On December 4, 1791, the first edition of The Observer, the world’s first Sunday newspaper, was published.
The Scientific Revolution: The World Will Never Be Seen the Same Again!

IV. Constitutionalism versus Absolutism

On January 16, 1547, Ivan Vasilyevich IV was crowned Czar of All The Russias.
On January 11, 1569, the first documented example of a lottery in England took place.
On April 5, 1614, a milestone in European and Native American relations was reached when John Rolfe, English colonist, married Pocahontas, Native American princess!
On December 4, 1619, 38 British settlers landed from the ship, Margaret (out of Bristol, England) along the North shore of the James River in Virginia in order to found a new town in the Virginia Colony called Berkeley Hundred.
On August 1, 1620, the British ship, Speedwell, sailed from Delfshaven along with the Mayflower to bring separatists known as Pilgrims to the New World.
On August 5, 1620, 2 small English sailing ships left Southampton Water in England on a trip to the New World, carrying a group of Puritans seeking a land where they could practice their brand of religion without interference.
On November 11, 1620, while anchored in Provincetown Harbor (off Cape Cod), the male passengers of the Mayflower wrote and signed a document known as The Mayflower Compact.
On March 16, 1621, only about 4 months after landing at Plymouth Rock and setting up their new colony in what was then called Plymouth Colony (Now Massachusetts and Maine) the Pilgrims that had traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower had their first friendly contact with a Native person, and that contact came as quite a shock!
On March 22, 1621, the European (basically British) colonists of Plymouth Colony, a “Pilgrim” venture for displaced religious zealots to find a place to practice their religion in peace, signed a peace treaty with Chief (or “Sachem”) Massasoit of the Wampanoag Native American coalition of tribes that had occupied what is now Massachusetts.
On January 30, 1661, Oliver Cromwell, former Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was removed from his grave and “executed” 2 years after his death!
On April 25, 1644, the last of the Ming Dynasty Emperors, Zhu Youjian, known as The Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide when his armies were unable to contain a peasant rebellion of the Manchus.
On May 7, 1664, King Louis XIV of France began construction on the Palace of Versailles, one of the most iconic structures in the world and the symbol of the throne of France.
On September 2, 1666, one of history’s most memorable fires occurred in the English capital of London.
On August 7, 1679, a small ship named Le Griffon (The Griffon) that had been built under the direction of famous explorer of the New World René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was towed to a point on the Niagara River from which it became the first European sailing vessel worthy of the designation “ship” to ever sail the Great Lakes.
On July 27, 1689, the Battle of Killiecrankie was fought between Scots and Irish Jacobites against the forces of the Williamite Government of Scotland.
On September 5, 1698, Czar Peter I of Russia (Peter the Great) enacted a tax on beards.
On November 19, 1703, one of History’s most celebrated prisoners died while still in prison, an unidentified man known to us as “The Man in the Iron Mask.”
On May 11, 1713, Finnish residents of Helsinki burned their own capital city to the ground rather than allow the Russian invaders to possess their city during the Great Northern War.
On August 1, 1714, the British people dug deep, really deep, in order to select their next King when Queen Anne died.
On September 29, 1714, Cossacks from the Russian Empire slaughtered 800 Finns on the island of Hailuoto during the Russian invasion of Finland, then part of the Swedish Empire, known as The Great Wrath.
On May 7, 1718, the city of New Orleans in what is now the State of Louisiana was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the French Governor of Louisiana in what was then New France, the French colonial enterprise in North America.
On November 30, 1718, while manning a front line trench in a battle in Norway, the King of Sweden, Charles XII, was killed by either a musket ball or a grape shop ball right through his head.
On July 20, 1779, Tekle Giyorgis I (meaning “The Plant of Saint George”) became Emperor of Ethiopia, a member of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia.

V. The Atlantic Revolutions

On December 31, 1695, a tax on windows went into effect in England, which resulted in many people boarding up or bricking up their windows so that they would not be subject to the tax.
On July 31, 1715, one of those events that leads to dreams occurred, when a storm off the coast of Florida sank all 11 Spanish treasure ships heading to Spain from Cuba.
On July 25, 1722, a war started in Maine later referred to as “Dummer’s War,” among other names.
On August 29, 1728, the city of Nuuk, Greenland, was founded.
On November 29, 1729, the Native American Natchez people who had been living peacefully with their French colonist neighbors in the area of what is now Natchez, Mississippi rose up and attacked the French, killing 138 men, 56 children and 35 women at the French Fort Rosalie.
On February 12, 1733, James Oglethorpe founded the English Province of Georgia, later to become the Colony of Georgia in 1752, the Southernmost and last of the 13 Colonies that would later become the United States of America.
On May 29, 1733, the colonial government of New France located in Quebec City reaffirmed the right of Canadians (meaning European Canadians, citizens of New France) to own and keep slaves.
On January 1, 1735, Paul Revere, silversmith and patriot, was born, starting a long line of famous Americans born on the first of the year.
On October 23, 1739, the War of Jenkins’ Ear began when British Prime Minister Robert Walpole declared war on Spain following the exhibition in Parliament of the severed ear of a British captain allegedly maimed by Spaniards.
On October 9, 1740, Dutch colonial overlords on the Island of Java (now a main island in Indonesia) in the port city of Batavia (now Jakarta, capital of Indonesia) went on a mad killing spree of ethnic cleansing and murdered about 10,000 ethnic Chinese.
On August 24, 1743, the army of Sweden surrendered to the Russians at Helsinki, effectively ending The War of the Hats.
On February 22, 1744, the British Royal Navy began an engagement with Spanish and French naval ships in a sea battle off the coast of Toulon, France in the Mediterranean Sea, a battle that was a defeat for the British and one of the most humiliating fiascos in Royal Navy history, The Battle of Toulon.
On September 21, 1745, the Battle of Prestonpans was fought in the East Lothian council area of Scotland between a British army under the command of Sir John Cope and an upstart rebel army of Jacobites under the command of Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of King James II and VII of Scotland and England.
On May 7, 1763, the Indian versus Colonist conflict known as Pontiac’s War in a nod to the Native American chief that had put together a confederation of Native people in an attempt to oust British colonists from the Great Lakes region, including Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois.
On October 7, 1763, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III of Great Britain and Ireland, forbidding American settlers from moving into Native American lands West of the Appalachian Mountains, part of the settlement of the French and Indian War that was in turn part of the larger Seven Years’ War.
On December 1, 1768, the Danish ship Fredensborg sank in a storm off the coast of Norway on her return trip from a death filled delivery of slaves to St. Croix in the Caribbean.
On May 16, 1770, the 14 year old Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna of the House Habsburg-Lorraine married Louis-Auguste, Dauphin (heir to the throne) of France, House of Bourbon.
On June 12, 1775, British General Thomas Gage declared martial law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
On October 13, 1775, an order of the Continental Congress established the Continental Navy, later better known as the United States Navy, the greatest maritime fighting force the world has ever seen.
On December 3, 1775, the Alfred, a merchant ship purchased by the Continental Congress was commissioned under Captain Dudley Saltonstall and became the first to fly what would become the American Flag.
On March 3, 1776, the Continental Navy and Continental Marines, the forces that would become the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps, conducted the first amphibious operation in US military history when a raid on Nassau in the Bahamas was conducted, known as The Raid on Nassau or sometimes called The Battle of Nassau.
On June 28, 1776, an incident that may have escaped your elementary school education occurred when one of General George Washington’s elite bodyguards was hanged for “mutiny, sedition, and treachery.”
On July 2, 1776, The Thirteen British Colonies voted to declare themselves independent from the crown.
On July 4, 1776, The United States Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress.
On September 27, 1777, the Continental Congress, precursor to the United States Congress, fled the American capital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (our first capital city) as British troops closed in.
On October 11, 1779, Polish cavalry officer and American Brigadier General, Casimir Pulaski, died of wounds incurred during the Battle of Savannah (Georgia) during the American Revolutionary War.
On June 2, 1780, a week of violent rioting began in London, England, the worst in the city’s history, by protestors against recent legislation to reduce official discrimination against Catholics.
On August 29, 1786, disgruntled Massachusetts farmers disgusted by high taxes, economic hardships and civil rights violations formed an organized force of protesters and shut down the county court at Northampton, the beginning of an insurrection known as Shays’s Rebellion, 4000 rebels under the leadership of Daniel Shays with the goal of overthrowing the government.
On June 20, 1787, Connecticut attorney and a Founding Father of the United States, Oliver Ellsworth, made a motion at the Federal Convention to call the government of our new country, the United States of America.
On July 27, 1789, the Department of Foreign Affairs was created, becoming the first of many US Federal departments and agencies.
On October 2, 1789, President George Washington sent to the States for ratification a list of Amendments to the Constitution, a list we now refer to as “The Bill of Rights.”
On January 2, 1791, Lenape and Wyandot Native Americans massacred 12 to 14 White settlers near what is now Stockport, Morgan County, Ohio.
On July 14, 1791, a buddy of Benjamin Franklin triggered a series of riots in England eponymously named “The Priestly Riots.”
On August 21, 1791, a voodoo, or alternately “vodou,” ceremony at Bois Caïman, Haiti was the scene of the first major assembly of African slaves in Haiti, an event that led to the slave rebellion known as the Haitian Revolution.
On April 25, 1792, a major step in the history of execution devices was made when a “highwayman” (robber) became the first victim of the guillotine.
On September 11, 1792, in the midst of the confusion of the French Revolution, the crown jewels, which included the fabulous Hope Diamond (Le Bleu de France), were stolen.
On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI of France was convicted of treason and taken to the guillotine where he was promptly beheaded, just one of the many instances of famous beheadings in a long history of human violence, both intentional and accidental, both by the state as an execution or by criminal action, and even by our animal “friends.”
On October 5, 1793, Christian Europe was rocked by the Revolutionary Government of France declaring the disestablishment (or dechristianization) of France, a move specifically intended to remove the influence of the Catholic Church upon France and the French people.
On November 10, 1793, the government of revolutionary France celebrated the “Festival of Reason”as it rejected traditional religion (mostly Catholicism in France) and inserted a philosophy known as the “Cult of Reason” as the national “religion.”
On June 26, 1794, the army of the First Republic of France (the result of the French Revolution) made the first use of balloons in combat at the Battle of Fleurus against the forces of the First Coalition.
On July 27, 1794, Maximilien Robespierre, a leader of the French Revolution was arrested, later to be denounced and executed by a Revolutionary Tribunal.

VI. Napoleon

On August 30, 1792, Napoleon Bonaparte was appointed a captain in the French Army, a major stepping stone on the path that eventually resulted in his becoming Emperor of the French.
On October 5, 1795, the man that would be the subject of more books than any other human being in history (except Jesus Christ), Napoleon Bonaparte, made his entrance on the French political stage and into prominence when he put down a rebellion against the National Convention in Paris with what he called “a whiff of grapeshot.”
On March 9, 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte, said to have more books written about him than any mortal man, married the love of his life, Joséphine de Beauharnais.
On January 7, 1797, the first use of the Red White and Green tricolor Italian flag was seen in use by the Cisalpine Republic (formerly Milan) after Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquering of that region in 1796.
On August 2, 1798, during the French Revolutionary Wars, the French fleet supporting then General Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt was defeated soundly by the British at the Battle of the Nile.
On March 7, 1799, French General Napoleon Bonaparte successfully captured the city of Jaffa in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
On July 15, 1799, French soldiers in Egypt discovered The Rosetta Stone, which is inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
On December 24, 1800, The “Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise”, also known as the “Machine Infernale Plot, ” failed to kill Napoleon Bonaparte, then the First Consul of France, the de facto dictator of the French Republic.
On March 21, 1801, French forces fought the British outside of Alexandria, Egypt in one of the many epic battles that have taken place at Alexandria over the centuries.
On April 21, 1802, a band of Wahhabis from Najd in central Saudi Arabia attacked the central Iraqi city of Karbala, with the purpose of punishing those Iraqi Muslims for failing to follow the ultra-conservative religious teachings of Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), a Sunni Muslim scholar who had taught a “renewal” of the Islamic faith apparently at odds with the brand of Islam practiced in Karbala, which was of the Shia variety.
On April 26, 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte signed a general amnesty for those members of the émigrés of the French Revolution, those royalists and others opposed to the French Revolution that had fled France.
On May 28, 1802, 400 former slaves revolting against the reinstatement of slavery by the French under Napoleon Bonaparte in the Caribbean department of Guadalupe blew themselves up rather than surrender to the French.
Contrary to Pat Robertson’s beliefs, on November 18, 1803, Haitians won their independence, not with the Devil’s assistance, but with their victory at The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution.
On February 16, 1804, the U.S. Navy conducted a stunningly audacious raid to deny the enemy the use of an American warship by concocting a ruse that allowed American sailors into the jaws of the enemy harbor to sink a captured American frigate.
On March 21, 1804, the Code Napoleonbecame the law of France, and went on to influence legal reforms in many other countries.
On July 18, 1806, a powder magazine exploded accidentally at Birgu, Malta, creating massive damage to the military and civilian infrastructure nearby and killing at least 200 people.
On September 2, 1807, the British Royal Navy and Army bombarded the port city of Copenhagen, Denmark, using fire bombs and phosphorus incendiary rockets in order to prevent neutral Denmark from deciding to align with Napoleonic France and turn over the use of its war fleet to the French and their allies.
On July 5, 1809, the forces of the French Empire (and her allies) fought the forces of the Austrian Empire (and her allies) at Wagram, Austria, an enormous battle that cost both sides a combined 80,000 casualties and was fought between over 300,000 soldiers fielding over 1000 pieces of artillery, making it perhaps the largest battle in European history up to its time and also the bloodiest military engagement of the entire Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars thus far.
On January 10, 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, divorced Josephine, Empress of France, the only woman Napoleon ever really loved.
On June 16, 1811, the remaining crew of an American armed fur trading ship purposely blew the ship up after it had been overrun by Native Americans near Vancouver Island.
On May 11, 1812, the lobby of the British House of Commons was the scene of an unprecedented and as yet not repeated historical event, the assassination of a British Prime Minister.
On September 18, 1812, the conquering French Grande Armée was appalled to see that the giant fire set by retreating Russians had destroyed almost all of the city of Moscow.
On October 23, 1812, the mad General Malet seized control of the police of Paris and attempted a coup d’état against Napoleon‘s Empire.
On June 22, 1813, an intrepid Canadian woman, Laura Secord, made a harrowing 20 mile trek through American occupied territory in Ontario, Canada, to warn British troops of an impending American attack.
From August 29-30, 1813, The Battle of Kulm was fought near the town Kulm (Chlumec) and the village Přestanov in northern Bohemia, during the War of the Sixth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars.
On December 30, 1813, during the War of 1812, arson-happy British troops set the small city of Buffalo, New York ablaze as a means of punishing the upstart Americans.
On July 13, 1814, the national police force of Italy, the Arma dei Carabinieri, was founded, an organization still in existence.
On February 26, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, aka Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, escaped from his forced exile on the island of Elba and made his way back to France, seeking to regain his throne.

VII. An Age of Industry

On June 4, 1784, Élisabeth Thible became the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon, soaring for a 4 kilometer trip that took 45 minutes and reached perhaps 5000 feet above the ground, making her the world’s first female aviatrix.
On March 14, 1794, American inventor Eli Whitney patented his greatest invention.
On May 14, 1816, romantically linked English authors Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley arrived at Geneva, Switzerland.
On July 2, 1816, a French sailing ship, the Méduse, struck bottom off the coast of Mauritania, dooming the vessel.
On December 24, 1818, the day Christians celebrate as “Christmas Eve,” the first ever performance of the carol, “Silent Night,” was presented in Oberndorf, Austria at the church of St. Nikolaus.
On February 6, 1820, The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America (better known as the American Colonization Society) sent the first 86 African Americans back to Africa to form a new country of freed slaves and free born African Americans, Liberia.
On October 20, 1827, an international coalition of British, French, and Russian ships fought against a fleet of Turkish Ottoman and Egyptian ships in the Battle of Navarino, the last major naval battle fought by wooden sailing ships.
On May 23, 1829, Austrian maker of keyboard instruments, Cyrill Demian, a man of Armenian descent, was granted a patent for his new musical instrument, the Accordion.
On March 6, 1836, the most celebrated defeat in American history ended in a massacre!
On August 19, 1839, the government of France announced that the “Daguerreotype process,” an invention of Louis Daguerre as an early form of photography, would be available for free to the entire world.
On January 29, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, the Baltimore writer of such classics as “The Telltale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Goldbug,” published his famous poem, “The Raven,” certainly one of if not the most renowned poem in American literature, and ranks among the most famous of poems.
On May 1, 1851, Queen Victoria opened The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, a sort of World’s Fair, in Hyde Park, London, England at a spectacular edifice known as The Crystal Palace.
On February 5, 1852, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was opened to the public.
On July 28, 1854, the USS Constellation was commissioned, a sloop-of-war, the last sail-only warship for the US Navy.
On October 25, 1854, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire, and the French Empire fought against Russia in the Battle of Balaclava, which included the famous (and disastrous) “Charge of the Light Brigade”.
On March 30, 1855, pro-slavery raiders called “Border Ruffians” poured into Kansas from Missouri to sway elections in Kansas to pro-slavery.
On November 16, 1857, during the battle known as the Second Relief of Lucknow, British soldiers earned 24 Victoria Cross medals in a single day, the most in British history.
On June 15, 1858, Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli called the Thames River in London, England, a “Stygian pool, reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors.”
On August 16, 1858, a date earlier than you may have thought, the advent of instant electronic communications between Europe and North America was inaugurated by President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria of the UK via the “Transatlantic Cable.”
On August 20, 1858, naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, the change of organisms over time through mutation and natural selection, in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London.
On January 9, 1861, the State of Mississippi seceded from the United States of America, the second of the slave holding states to do so.
On February 6, 1862, Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant led American Union forces to victory in the Battle of Fort Henry in Tennessee, the first battle of significance won by the Union Army in the US Civil War.
On February 10, 1862, during the American Civil War, the Union fleet won the battle of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, by sinking the Confederate “Mosquito Fleet.”
On May 5, 1862, the Mexican Army defeated the French Army at the Battle of the Puebla (Puebla City) during the Second French Intervention in Mexico, a marvelous victory for the Mexicans over a superior French force, a victory celebrated each year on May 5th, or in Español, Cinco de Mayo.
On June 1, 1862, the Battle of Seven Pines, also known as the Battle of Fair Oaks, was fought during the American Civil War.
On October 15, 1863, The H. L. Hunley, a Confederate (the South!) submarine, sank during a test, killing its inventor and namesake, Horace L. Hunley.
On December 16, 1863, after bungling the defense of Chattanooga, Confederate Army General Braxton Bragg was replaced as Commander of the Army of Tennessee by General Johnston.
On February 17, 1864, the CSS H.L. Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, even though it had itself sunk twice before!
On November 10, 1865, the long sad saga of the Camp Sumter prisoner of war camp located in Andersonville, Georgia finally came to a conclusion of sorts when the Camp Commandant, Confederate Major Henry Wirz was hanged for the crimes of conspiracy and murder for his terrible treatment of Union soldiers held captive at the camp popularly known as “Andersonville.”
On July 28, 1866, Helen Beatrix Potter was born in London, England, to a moderately well to do family of Unitarians.
On November 17, 1869, the Suez Canal in Egypt was inaugurated, providing passage to and from the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
On February 25, 1870, history was made when Hiram Rhodes Revels, an African American man from Mississippi, was sworn in as a US Senator, the first African American member of the US Congress.
On August 2, 1870, the Tower Subway opened for passenger traffic in London, England, the first ever underground tube type railway commonly called a “subway” in the US and “the tube” in the UK.
On November 10, 1871, Welsh-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley finally met the man he had come so far to see, the missionary Rev. David Livingstone, prompting Stanley to blandly state, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
On December 26, 1871, the famous opera writing duo of Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on Thespis, the first of many operas the much beloved pair worked together on.
On March 5, 1872, George Westinghouse patented the air brake, a system for use with railroad trains.
On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his invention he called the “telephone.”
On November 25, 1876, the US Army took revenge for the Little Bighorn massacre of George Custer and his 7^th Cavalry, by sacking a peaceful Cheyenne village led by Chief Dull Knife, a translation of his Lakota Sioux name.
On January 23, 1879, the British Army in South Africa ended its second major battle in as many days against Zulu warriors known as Impis in the British war to seize Zululand.
On June 1, 1879, the so-called “Napoleon IV” died in the unlikely service of the British Army fighting Zulu warriors in what is now South Africa.
On January 27, 1880, Thomas Edison patented the incandescent light bulb, the first truly commercially viable electric light bulb, but certainly not the first light bulb!
On January 25, 1881, 2 of the great names in the annals of inventions teamed up to form the Oriental Telephone Company.
On April 28, 1881, the notorious outlaw and gunman known as Billy the Kid escaped from his jail cell where he was being held after he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
On July 4, 1881, Tuskegee Institute opened, beginning a glorious history of educating mostly African American students.
On September 4, 1882, the Pearl Street Station opened for business in New York City, the first commercial provider of electric power to customers.
On December 6, 1884, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. was completed.
On January 29, 1886, Karl Benz, a German engineer, became the first person to patent a successful gasoline powered automobile.
On November 19, 1887, Emma Lazarus, the author of “The New Colossus,” a sonnet that appears on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, died in New York city at the age of 38, possibly of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
On March 8, 1889, the anniversary date of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the clash of ironclad warships USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, the inventor of the Monitor died.
On January 7, 1894, Ohio born uber-inventor Thomas Edison made and demonstrated a kinetoscope, a sort of device using multiple photos or drawings to show the illusion of movement, in this case of a man sneezing.
On November 5, 1895, an unlikely candidate from Rochester, New York, became the first American to patent an automobile.
On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court of the US ruled that “separate but equal” was a legal doctrine for segregating Caucasian Americans from Americans of sub-Saharan African descent, especially regarding school children.
On August 21, 1897, Ransom Eli Olds founded the car company that bore his name, Oldsmobile.
On February 15, 1898, at 9:40 p.m., the US Navy had one of its darkest and yet most memorable days when the armored cruiser USS Maine ACR-1 blew up and sank while docked in Havana Harbor, Cuba.
On November 6, 1900, William McKinley was re-elected President of the US with Teddy Roosevelt as his running mate.
On February 1, 1901, Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, and would go on to movie greatness earning the nickname, “The King of Hollywood.”
On February 26, 1903, Michael Joseph Owens was granted a patent for a glass blowing machine, one of five inventions he patented for the mass production of glass objects such as light bulbs and bottles.
On February 20, 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states have the authority to require mandatory vaccinations against disease, well over a century before the controversy over the Covid vaccine in 2020 and 2021.
On July 25, 1909, French pilot Louis Bleriot made the first ever heavier than air powered flight across the English Channel in his Type XI monoplane, beating out several rival aviators that were competing for their place in history and also a nice prize of £1000 offered by The Daily Mail, a British newspaper.
On March 28, 1910, aviation history was made when French aviator, Henri Fabre, made the first take off by an airplane from water in a seaplane of his own design.
On September 20, 1911, the RMS Olympic, the first of three enormous British luxury liners of the Olympic-class, collided with the British cruiser HMS Hawke.
On January 25, 1915, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call spanning the continental United States, placing a call from New York to his assistant, Thomas Watson in San Francisco.

VIII. World War I

On August 22, 1864, the first of 4 treaties governing the conduct of war was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, a pact called “The First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.”
On July 8, 1874, about 300 newly recruited troopers of the North-West Mounted Police began the trek Westward to the vast prairie areas of Canada, what is now Manitoba and Alberta to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
On September 24, 1884, Hugo Schmeisser was born in Jena, in what was then the German Empire.
On July 6, 1887, the King of Hawaii, David Kalākaua, was forced to sign off on The 1887 Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, thus ceding his monarchical powers to the legislature, effectively giving power to American and European wealthy traders along with the Hawaiian upper crust.
On November 1, 1893, a small force of British soldiers defeated a much larger force of African warriors at the Battle of Bembezi in the South of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the First Matabele War.
On November 28, 1893, the women of New Zealand became the first women in the world to vote in a national election.
On August 23, 1898, a new age of exploration began when the Southern Cross Expedition set sail for Antarctica in the aptly named ship, Southern Cross.
On February 4, 1899, a war broke out between the First Philippine Republic and the US, called the Tagalog Insurgency, the Filipino-American War, and other names, that lasted until July of 1902, and continued as the Moro Rebellion until 1913.
On February 23, 1903, Cuba made a deal with the United States to lease 45 square miles of land and sea for a period of time with no expiration, virtually forever!
On February 9, 1907, the city of London was the scene of an epic civil rights march, colloquially known as “The Mud March.”
On November 14, 1910, self-taught aviator Eugene Ely took off from the deck of the USS Birmingham, near Norfolk, Virginia.
On October 23, 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, history saw the first use of airplanes for warfare purposes when an Italian airplane flew over Turkish positions as the first aerial reconnaissance mission in history.
On September 23, 1913, future fighter pilot combat hero Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros of France made an aviation historic first by becoming the first pilot to fly all the way across the Mediterranean Sea, flying from St. Raphael, France, to Bizerte, Tunisia.
On August 12, 1914, World War I was merely 2 weeks old and apparently the German and Belgian armies did not yet realize the futility of using mounted cavalry in an age of rapid firing repeating rifles and automatic machine guns.
On August 17, 1914, the World War I Battle of Stallupönen was fought between the Imperial German army and the Imperial Russian army near Nesterov, Russia.
On August 25, 1914, during the opening stages of World War I German soldiers burned the Library of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, destroying a treasure of ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance works.
On December 24, 1914, exactly 100 years ago today, British and German soldiers facing each other across No Man’s Land in the trenches of World War I confounded their superiors by leaving their trenches and walking out to meet and greet their enemies in the spirit of Christmas brotherhood.
On January 24, 1915, the British Royal Navy Grand Fleet fought a sizable naval engagement against elements of the German Imperial High Seas Fleet in the North Sea at an area called Dogger Bank.
On January 31, 1915, the German Army, in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases, launched 18,000 artillery shells containing xylyl bromide tear gas against Russian positions, the first truly large scale use of poison gas in combat.
On March 18, 1915, the Allied naval operation at the Dardanelles, the straits that provide entry to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean, ended in one of the worst defeats of the British Royal Navy when 3 battleships were lost and another 4 capital ships were seriously damaged.
On April 22, 1915, the Imperial German Army used chlorine gas in large quantities for the first time at Ypres, in Belgium, targeting French colonial troops.
On July 25, 1915, the somewhat appropriately named Lanoe Hawker became the first British aviator to shoot down 3 enemy planes in 1 day, earning himself the Victoria Cross.
August 12, 1915 marks the date of a story – which is not actually just a simple story – which tells of the vanishing of a group of British soldiers during the now infamous Gallipoli campaign, World War One.
On August 29, 1915, US Navy salvage crews raised the submarine, F-4, from the seabed off Honolulu where she had sunk with all hands on March 25, 1915, the first USN sub lost and another in a long list of Naval “Oops Moments.”
On September 30, 1915, the aviation world achieved a milestone of sorts when the first incident of a combat airplane being shot down by ground fire took place over Serbia.
On July 1, 1916, the five month Battle of the Somme began with horrific results for the British Army, leaving 19,240 men dead on the battlefield and another 36, 230 wounded on lonely the first day!
On October 16, 1916, Margaret Sanger (nee Higgins), nurse, writer, and sexual educator opened the first family planning (birth control) clinic in the United States.
On November 21, 1916, the new and improved version of the Titanic became the largest ship sunk during World War I!
On September 23, 1917, Imperial Germany lost one of its greatest flying aces when Leutnant Werner Voss was shot down and killed over West Flanders, outnumbered 8 to 1 and refusing to run!
On October 26, 1917, a force of only 100 German Army soldiers led by Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant in American talk) Erwin Rommel took Mt. Matajur from an Italian defensive force of 7000 men, a key part of the German/Austro-Hungarian victory at the Battle of Caporetto (aka The 12^th Battle of the Isonzo).
On October 31, 1917, during World War I, the war that brought the mass use of machine guns, armored vehicles, airplanes and poison gas into warfare, a singular battle stands out as an anachronism when the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force sent infantry and cavalry units against the Yildirim Army Group (Ottoman Turks and Germans) defending the town of Beersheba in the Negev region of what is now Israel.
On January 9, 1918, in Southern Arizona near the border with Mexico at a place called Bear Valley, one of the last battles of the American Indian Wars (1540-1924) was fought.
On January 31, 1918, Britain’s Royal Navy “fought” a battle with itself in the Scottish Firth of Forth near the Isle of May, a series of naval accidents in the dark and the mist that led to the loss of 104 British sailors killed.
On April 20, 1918, Baron Manfred von Richtofen shot down the last enemy airplanes of his short but spectacular career.
On April 24, 1918, at the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux in Northern France, 3 British tanks met 3 German tanks in the first known instance of tank vs. tank combat in military history.
On June 22, 1918, a passenger train carrying US military troops plowed into the rear end of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train that had stopped on the tracks for repairs.
On October 8, 1918, United States Corporal Alvin C. York killed 28 German soldiers and captured 132 in France’s Argonne Forest during World War I making York one of America’s most decorated soldiers of the war.
On October 8, 1918, 2^nd Lt. Ralph Talbot of Massachusetts earned the coveted Medal of Honor, the highest American military honor.
On November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France, officially ending fighting at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day in the eleventh month, but fighting did not actually end at that exact time and nor did the war!
On November 13, 1922, the United States Supreme Court decision called Zucht v. King, upheld the discretion that allowed a Texas school board to require mandatory vaccination of school children against smallpox.
On August 27, 1982, far away from Anatolia, Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide killed Turkish diplomat Atilla Altıkat in Ottawa, Ontario, as vengeance for the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

IX. The Fall of the Russian Empire and the Rise of the Soviet Union

On February 21, 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, a book that has become the antithesis of capitalists everywhere and to many, synonymous with all that is wrong with the communist sympathizers of the world.
On May 11, 1891, while paying a State visit to Lake Biwa, Otsu, Japan, heir to the throne of the Russian Empire Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich (the future Czar Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia) was attacked with a sword by one of the Japanese policemen escorting him, wounding the Tsesarevich.
On February 8, 1904, the Japanese Navy started the Russo-Japanese War by conducting a sneak attack against the Russian naval fleet at anchor at Port Arthur, Manchuria, a key strategic Pacific port then under the administration of Imperial Russia.
On July 20, 1906, Finland ratified a law guaranteeing equal rights to women to vote in political elections, the first European country to do so.
On April 17, 1912, Russian Imperial soldiers fired on a crowd of protesting goldfield workers in Siberia that were upset about the arrest of their strike committee.
On December 29, 1916, the Russian known as “Rasputin,” or “The Mad Monk,” was murdered by a group of Russian noblemen, finally dying the next day after surviving being poisoned with cyanide and shot three times, and ultimately having to be drowned.
On December 28, 1918, Constance Markievicz, while an inmate in Holloway prison, London, England, made history as the first woman elected to British House of Commons as a Member of Parliament (MP).
On June 21, 1919, the reactionary establishment of the city of Winnipeg, the province of Manitoba, and the federal government of Canada overreacted to a peaceful labor strike and attacked striking workers (largely war veterans) with the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
On October 2, 1919, First Lady of the United States, Edith Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson, unofficially ran the U.S. government following her husband’s (then President Woodrow Wilson’s) life-changing stroke.
On August 25, 1920, the Polish army prevailed over the Russian-Soviet army at The Battle of Warsaw, actually a series of battles that the Poles would later call their victory “a miracle.”
On January 2, 1921, Czech playwright Karel Čapek premiered his classic play, R.U.R. in Hradec Králové, in what was then the First Czechoslovak Republic.
On August 28, 1921, the Red Army disbanded the Ukrainian Makhnovshchina, an anarchist free Ukrainian territory in the Ukraine.
“Winter Dreams” is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that first appeared in Metropolitan Magazine in December 1922, and was collected in All the Sad Young Men in 1926.
On June 18, 1923, an American legend was born when the first Checker Taxi Cab hit the street in Chicago, the product of a Russian American Jewish immigrant named Morris Markin.
On October 25, 1924, the Daily Mail, a London based British newspaper, published a fake letter called “the Zinoviev letter,” a letter said to be from Grigory Zinoviev, a Moscow based leader of the Communist International.
On April 19, 1927, vaudevillian and stage actress Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in jail for “corrupting the morals of youth!”
On September 5, 1927, long before he became famous for his feature film cartoons and amusement parks, Walt Disney’s production of Trolley Troubles, an animated cartoon featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was released by Universal Pictures.
On August 23, 2007, the bodies of the remaining Romanov family members were found near Yekaterinburg, Russia, the remains being mere skeletons.
On April 30, 2008, Russian scientists confirmed that the skeletal remains found near the city of Yekaterinburg, formerly known as Sverdlovsk, in the Ural District of Russia, were indeed the remains of Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the son and daughter of the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas II and his wife, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

X. Fascism and Nazism

On May 31, 1921, one of the saddest examples of racial hatred in American history occurred when White Oklahomans attacked a wealthy Black neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma known as the Greenwood District, or just “The Black Wall Street.”
On November 23, 1921, Warren Harding signed a law to prohibit doctors from prescribing alcoholic beverages to patients, closing a loophole in the 18^th Amendment, which since 1920 had outlawed alcoholic beverages in the US.
On November 8, 1923, a World War I decorated disaffected and discontent German veteran led his Nazi Party followers in an unsuccessful coup against the German Wiemar government, an event known to history as The Munich Beer Hall Putsch.
On January 25, 1924, Chamonix in the Southeastern part of France hosted the first iteration of the modern Olympic Winter Games.
On January 10, 1927, Fritz Lang’s classic film Metropolis was released in Germany.
On October 24, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange suffered the catastrophic day of losses known as Black Thursday, the day that for all intents and purposes started the Great Depression.
On February 25, 1932, Adolf Hitler applied for German citizenship.
On February 25, 1933, the USS Ranger was launched at Newport News, Virginia, as the first American aircraft carrier built for the purpose of carrying aircraft.
On March 5, 1933, Germany’s Reichstag elections were won by Adolf Hitler and his band of “national socialists” with only 43.9% of the vote, enough to allow Hitler, already appointed Chancellor, to become virtual dictator of Germany and lead the world to a path of ruin.
On February 26, 1935, British scientist Dr. Robert Watson-Watt performed a demonstration that was to lead directly to the development of radar by the British, a concept long anticipated by previous scientists and first demonstrated by German inventor Christian Hülsmeyer in 1904.
On April 8, 1935, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 went into effect, and as a byproduct created the Works Progress Administration (later renamed the Work Projects Administration).
On July 24, 1935, the heat wave aspect of the Great Dust Bowl hit its high point, with temperatures soaring in the Midwest and on the Plains, cities such as Chicago reaching 109 °F and Milwaukee hitting 104 °F.
On December 27, 1935, Regina Jonas was ordained as the first female Rabbi in the Jewish faith.
On November 30, 1936, the Crystal Palace in London, England was destroyed by a fire.
On January 20, 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first US president to be sworn in on January 20^th, a date changed from the previous inauguration day of March 4^th by the 20^th Amendment of 1933.

XI. World War II and the Holocaust

On August 3, 1936, James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens won the 100-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics and blazed into the record books.
On December 21, 1936, the German concept of a “schnellbomber” that could outrun most fighter planes took to the air when the prototype Junkers Ju-88 made its first flight, achieving a speed of 360 mph.
On May 7, 1937, while Europe watched the prelude to World War II develop during the Spanish Civil War, the German “volunteer” Condor Legion was deployed with the Heinkel He-51 biplane fighter, an anachronism already obsolete when it was built.
On August 14, 1937, the Japanese invasion of China that started July 7, 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, saw the first air to air combat of the 2^nd Sino-Japanese War and arguably the first air to air combat of World War II (presuming you consider the start of the war between Japan and China as the start of World War II).
On December 12, 1937, the USS Panay, a gunboat afloat on the Yangtze River near the city of Nanking (now called Nanjing) was attacked by Japanese military aircraft and sunk, with the loss of three American lives.
On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria and the absorption of Austria into Germany became a fact.
On June 7, 1938, the government of Nationalist China, at war with the Japanese invaders in the Second Sino-Japanese War, destroyed the embankments of the Yellow River, creating a massive flood in order to halt the advance of the Japanese Army.
On March 1, 1939, the land version of an “Oops moment” happened at Hirakata, Osaka, when a Japanese Army ammunition dump exploded, killing 94 workers and soldiers.
On August 25, 1939, in a move meant to dissuade Germany from attacking Poland, the United Kingdom (Britain) signed a military alliance treaty with Poland which promised that if either were attacked, the other would come to their assistance.
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland under false pretenses, staging a phony border “incident” that gave them a claim of legitimacy.
On June 17, 1940, the British passenger liner converted to wartime duty, the RMS Lancastria, was sunk off the coast of France by German Junkers Ju 88 bombers as she headed to England with military and civilian evacuees from mainland Europe.
On August 16, 1940, Flight Lieutenant Nicolson of the British Royal Air Force flew his Hawker Hurricane fighter into history during combat over England against the German Luftwaffe when he continued to fight an aerial battle despite his plane being on fire from 4 cannon shells and multiple machine gun bullets striking it from an enemy Me-110.
On August 18, 1940, an air battle was fought between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe, the largest air battle in history to that point as part of the Battle of Britain, July 10 through October 31, 1940.
On August 19, 1940, the B-25 Mitchell was flown for the first time.
On August 20, 1940, Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the war-torn United Kingdom, delivered one of his most stirring wartime speeches, one that hailed the efforts of the Royal Air Force (RAF), known from then on and forever after as “The Few.”
On November 5, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his third term as US President, and would win yet another presidential election in 1944, ending up serving a record 12+ years as US President.
On November 24, 1940, The First Slovak Republic signed up to become part of the Axis Powers during World War II, just one of many nations and states to join Germany, Italy, and Japan in their fight against the democratic world.
On September 11, 1941, aviator Charles Lindbergh delivered a speech for the America First Committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he claimed the US was being coerced into World War II, alleging, “…pressing this country toward war; the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration.”
On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) delivered perhaps his greatest speech, known as the “Four Freedoms Speech.”
On May 9, 1941, German submarine U-110 was forced to the surface by a British corvette and a destroyer that were escorting a convoy attacked by the sub.
From October 2, 1941 to January 7, 1942, the Battle of Moscow was fought on the Eastern Front of World War II (WWII).
On November 14, 1941, British Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sunk after being torpedoed by a German U-boat (submarine) the day before.
Most Americans know that on December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a massive aerial surprise attack against U.S. military forces on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, mainly at Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941, a date that US President Franklin Roosevelt said “would live in infamy,” the Japanese navy attacked the naval and air bases on Oahu, Hawaii, most notably at Pearl Harbor, in a surprise attack (sneak attack in the vernacular of the time) that devastated the American Pacific Fleet.
On December 10, 1941, Colin Purdie Kelly, Jr. became the first in a long line of American heroes that flew the great Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, a pairing of the greatest bomber of World War II and the greatest bomber pilots.
On December 20, 1941, the American Volunteer Group, better known by its nickname, the Flying Tigers, engaged in its first air-to-air combat when its fighters encountered 10 Japanese “Sally” bombers.
On February 18, 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army began a carefully planned massacre of ethnic Chinese men in the conquered territories of Singapore and Malaya, an effort to eliminate what the Japanese perceived to be “hostile elements.”
On April 26, 1942, the Benxihu Colliery an iron and coal mine in Liaoning, China, was the scene of a horrific accident resulting in the deaths of 1,549 miners, the highest death toll of any mining disaster ever.
On May 12, 1942, the German Kriegsmarine submarine, U-507, a Type IXC boat, sank an American tanker, the SS Virginia, with one of its deadly torpedoes while the tanker was in the mouth of the Mississippi River, an affront to the United States bringing deadly danger to shipping right to America’s doorstep.
On May 31, 1942, the Japanese Imperial Navy commenced an attack on the harbor (harbour for you British types) at Sydney, Australia, using 3 Ko-hyoteki-class midget submarines.
On June 4, 1942, the Battle of Midway began with Admiral Nagumo of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordering an airstrike on the US held island of Midway in the Central Pacific.
On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands chain, initiating the first US ground offensive of World War II.
On September 9, 1942, the mainland of the United States was bombed by a Japanese military aircraft when a float plane dropped incendiary bombs on Oregon near Brookings.
On November 26, 1942, the classic movie, Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered in New York City.
On January 14, 1943, the Japanese Navy successfully evacuated the remaining Japanese land forces from the Island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands of the Pacific Ocean.
On January 15, 1943, the largest “office” building in the world was dedicated in Arlington County, Virginia, the Pentagon, a building that would become the symbol of the American military.
On February 19, 1943, the Battle of Kasserine Pass started, the first major American engagement of ground forces with the Axis forces in the Western Theater of World War II.
On March 6, 1943, the Battle of Fardykambos was fought between the Greek Resistance and the invading Italian Army.
On May 14, 1943, the Australian hospital ship AHS Centaur was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese Imperial Navy submarine I-177.
On May 16, 1943, modified British Lancaster bombers undertook Operation Chastise, a bombing raid against dams in the industrial heartland of Germany.
On August 2, 1943, the US Navy patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands.
On September 3, 1943, the Allies (mainly the United States and the United Kingdom) invaded mainland Europe, thus living up to the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin to invade mainland Europe in 1943.
On October 14, 1943, the United States Army Air Force conducted one of the most catastrophic bombing raids in history, catastrophic for the bombers, that is!
On October 19, 1943, a French cargo ship that had been seized by Germany in 1942, was sunk by USAAF North American B-25 Mitchell and RAF Bristol Beaufighter bombers near Crete, taking 2,098 Italian soldiers being held as POWs to a watery grave.
On October 26, 1943, the aptly named Dornier Do 335 Pfeil, or Arrow, made its first flight.
On January 3, 1944, America’s leading fighter Ace of that time, Marine Major Pappy Boyington, was shot down and taken captive by the Japanese.
On April 22, 1944, the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II (CBI) was the scene of the first ever use of a helicopter in a combat zone.
On April 22, 1944, an Allied “sledge patrol” attacked a German Bassgeiger weather station in Greenland, as part of the ongoing and important, although often overlooked, North Atlantic Weather War during World War II.
On May 18, 1944, Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered the deportation of the Tatar population of the Crimea to far away Uzbekistan.
On September 4, 1944, the British 11th Armoured Division, part of the larger armies on the European continent commanded by Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, liberated the Belgian city of Antwerp, one more city liberated of the German oppressors by the victorious Allies, many of whom were ably led by the dashing Monty.
On October 20, 1944, Army and Naval forces of the United States landed on the Philippine island of Leyte in an amphibious assault to reclaim the islands from the Japanese who had taken the Philippines from the US and Philippine forces led by General Douglas MacArthur in 1942.
On October 21, 1944, Japan began their notorious kamikaze attacks during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, first striking HMAS Australia.
On February 13, 1945, bombers from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the American Air Force (USAAF)struck the eastern German city of Dresden, a city so beautiful it was once known as the “Florence on the Elbe,” incinerating tens of thousands of people.
On February 19, 1945, the most cracked battle in history of the United States Marine Corp (USMC) began with 30,000 Marines hitting a beach.
On February 19, 1945, 30,000 US Marines landed on the Japanese held island of Iwo Jima, part of the Volcano Islands chain.
On February 21, 1945, while supporting the US invasion of Iwo Jima in the Pacific, the US aircraft carrier USS Saratoga CV-3 was struck by 3 Japanese suicide planes known as Kamikaze.
On February 23, 1945, with World War II in Europe rapidly approaching its end, the RAF targeted the German town of Pforzheim in a massive bombing raid that killed almost a third of the residents and destroyed 83% of its buildings, including virtually its entire city center.
On March 16, 1945, the battle for the island of Iwo Jima supposedly was won by the US, although fighting would continue for another two weeks.
On March 17, 1945, the Ludendorf Bridge over the Rhine River fell 10 days after the US Army seized the span allowing them to cross the Rhine into Germany.
On March 19, 1945, the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Franklin while on station off the coast of Japan, was struck by a Japanese dive bomber flying virtually suicidal mission through intense defenses, causing massive damage, but not sinking the ship.
On April 8, 1945, in the waning weeks of World War II, a German train transporting about 4,000 concentration camp inmates, including Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Dutch, and French nationals, was accidentally bombed by an Allied air raid targeting German military rail traffic.
On April 27, 1945, Finnish soldiers were photographed proudly raising the Finnish war flag on top of a concrete cairn where the borders of Finland, Norway, and Sweden meet.
On April 29, 1945, deep below the streets of Berlin in his “Führerbunker,” German Führer Adolf Hitler, beleaguered and possibly the most despised man in the world, married his long time mistress Eva Braun and designated Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor to lead the Third Reich, what Germany had labeled its current government.
On May 5, 1945, a rare circumstance arose when German SS troops fought alongside US Army troops against an attack by the German 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division.
On May 29, 1945, the Consolidated B-32 Dominator, an American heavy bomber, made its first combat flight.
On August 9, 1945, a Boeing B-29 bomber named “Bockscar” dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, incinerating 39,000 people within seconds.

XII. Consequences of World War II

On December 13, 1937, Japanese blood-lust reached unprecedented proportions when they massacred over 250,000 Chinese in Nanking!
On March 22, 1943, a battalion of military police fighting for Germany was attacked by Byelorussian partisans near the village of Khatyn.
On April 10, 1944, 2 Jewish inmates of the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland, escaped.
On August 12, 1944, German Nazi troops finished off a massacre of between 40,000 and 50,000 Poles, many of them Jewish.
On October 21, 1944, the Soviet Red Army was steamrolling the German army on the Eastern Front, reaching the town of Nemmersdorf, where the heartless Soviets massacred at least 74 ethnic Germans, and for good measure slaughtered another 50 French and Belgians being held by the Germans as POW’s.
On May 23, 1945, notorious head of the dreaded German SS (Schutzstaffel), Heinrich Himmler, committed suicide by taking poison rather than face execution by hanging.
On February 1, 1946, Norway’s Trygve Lie was selected as the first ever Secretary General of the United Nations, beginning a long line of names to head the UN that are tricky to pronounce in English.
On March 5, 1946, while speaking at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, uttered the term “Iron Curtain” in reference to the divide between the Soviet led Communist Bloc and the democratic/capitalist Western group of nations led by the United States.
On May 10, 1946, at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico the US Army made the first successful launch of a German designed V-2 rocket, the same sort of weapon the Germans had used to terrorize England and Holland during World War II.
On this date, December 9, 1946, the “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials” began with the “Doctors’ Trial”, prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
On July 6, 1947, the Avtomat Kalashnikova went into production by the Soviet Union, hence the name AK-47.
On December 17, 1947, the Boeing B-47 Stratojet made its first flight.
On January 7, 1948, a Kentucky National Guard pilot, a World War II veteran, attempted to intercept a UFO along with 3 other US F-51 Mustang fighters.
On April 3, 1948, President Harry S Truman (there is no period after the “S” because it was just an initial, not standing for a name!) signed legislation authorizing $5 billion for the Marshall Plan, a foreign aid bill championed by former five star general George C. Marshall who was Secretary of State at the time.
On April 9, 1948, events in Palestine brought to the forefront the adage that “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.”
On September 15, 1948, a North American F-86 Sabre flew at a world record 671 miles per hour.
On September 22, 1948, USAF pilot Lt. Gail Halvorsen began dropping candy via parachute to the children of Berlin.
On March 8, 1949, the long and convoluted journey of Mildred Gillars temporarily came to an end.
On August 29, 1949, nuclear scientists in the Soviet Union (USSR) successfully tested their first atomic bomb, an implosion type device they called “First Lightning.”
On June 25, 1950, over 75,000 North Korean soldiers flooded into the Republic of Korea, on the southern end of the Korean peninsula.
On August 24, 1950, Edith Spurlock Sampson, an attorney of African American heritage, became the first African American of either gender to become a United States delegate to the United Nations.
On November 8, 1950, early in the Korean War, a U.S. Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter, flown by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Russell Brown, shot down a Soviet-built MiG-15 piloted by a North Korean pilot, in the first air-to-air combat between jet planes in aviation history.
On November 1, 1951, the US Army conducted nuclear tests in the Nevada desert that included a diabolical exercise in which 6500 US Army troops were exposed to the effects of a nearby nuclear detonation and its associated radiation.
On October 3, 1952, (October 2 local date), the British became the third country to boast the possession of atomic weapons when Operation Hurricane resulted in a successful nuclear blast in the Monte Bello Islands of Western Australia.
On February 19, 1954, the Soviet Politburo, the highest policy making organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ordered the Crimean Oblast to the Ukrainian SSR.
On September 30, 1954, the American submarine, USS Nautilus, was commissioned for service as the first ever nuclear powered warship.
On December 2, 1954, the United States and the Republic of China, known to us today more familiarly as “Taiwan,” signed a mutual defense treaty that was really just the US promising to ensure the integrity of the island of Taiwan which claimed to be the “legitimate” government of China against any invasion or aggression from mainland/Communist China or perhaps the USSR.
On May 14, 1955, 8 communist nations in the orbit of the Soviet Union (USSR) signed a mutual defense pact military alliance, known as The Warsaw Pact.
On October 29, 1955, the Soviet Navy of the USSR suffered yet another in a long line of what we call “Naval Oops Moments” when the battleship Novorossiysk struck a World War II era naval mine and sank.
On February 20, 1959, the government of Canada cancelled the Avro Arrow supersonic jet fighter program, creating conjecture and controversy that continues to this day.
On February 28, 1959, a Thor-Agena A rocket was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying a spy satellite designated Discoverer 1, the first in a spy satellite program of the American military and intelligence network.
On May 19, 1959, the North Vietnamese Army formed Group 559 and gave the group the job of establishing a reliable supply route for NVA and Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam.
On June 8, 1959, the US Navy teamed up with the United States Post Office Department to attempt to resurrect the concept of sending mail via rocket or missile.
On January 27, 1961, the Soviet Navy proved how dangerous the lives of submariners can be, when the Whiskey class submarine S-80 managed to sink with all hands without any outside help, what we call an “Oops moment.”
On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut (their version of astronaut) was sent into orbit around the Earth aboard Vostok 1, becoming the first human being to “slip the surly bonds of Earth” and voyage where no man had gone before, Outer Space.
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a bold announcement to Congress that the US “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
On August 10, 1961, the US began Operation Ranch Hand, a ten year program of using chemical herbicides against the flora of Vietnam and surrounding countries to both deprive the Viet Cong of food crops and of foliage for cover.
On August 13, 1961, the Soviet occupiers of East Berlin tired of unhappy citizens of the communist “workers’ paradise” defecting to the West via West Berlin and erected a barbed wire fence that would become infamous as “The Berlin Wall.”
On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the North of Russia; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise by humankind!
On October 30, 1961, former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin suffered the indignity of having his body removed from a place of honor in Lenin’s Tomb and parked in a regular grave with a plain granite marker.
On November 29, 1961, the US space agency, NASA, launched Mercury Atlas 5, the first mission to send an American into orbit around the Earth in space.
On May 24, 1962, an American Atlas LV-3B rocket blasted off, carrying astronaut Scott Carpenter in his Project Mercury space capsule he had named Aurora 7, the 6^th manned space flight in history.
On May 31, 1962, the nation of Israel hanged Nazi Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann, one of history’s most evil people, for war crimes.
On June 7, 1962, a right wing French Nationalist terror group, the Organisation Armée Secrète, usually referred to as the OAS, set fire to and burned the library at the University of Algiers in Algeria, destroying half a million books.
On June 14, 1962, the European Space Research Organisation was founded in Paris, later to become the European Space Agency, now with 22 member countries.
On July 22, 1962, the US space agency, NASA, launched Mariner 1, the first in a series of probes designed to visit other planets in our solar system.
On August 22, 1962, the French ultra-nationalist terror group known as the OAS (Organisation armée secrete, which means “Secret Army Organization”) made a famous attempt on the life of Charles de Gaulle, president of France.
On October 5, 1962, movie goers were introduced to the suave and debonair, handsome, worldly yet deadly spy character, James Bond.
On October 27, 1962, US Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down and killed while flying his U-2 spy plane over Cuba.
On November 4, 1962, the US conducted the last event of Operation Fishbowl, a series of nuclear blasts conducted at high altitude.
On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed Germans in Berlin and made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
On May 2, 1964, before even the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that heralded major US involvement in the Vietnam War, a Viet Cong or North Vietnamese frogman placed an explosive charge against the hull of the USS Card (USNS Card at the time of sinking), blowing a hole in the ship and sinking 48 feet as she lay berthed at the dock at Saigon.
On May 12, 1965, the Soviet space craft, Luna 5, an unmanned spaceship designed to become the first ever Earth launched craft to make a controlled landing on the surface of the Moon, instead crashed when its retro-rockets failed to ignite.
On August 9, 1965, the city/state of Singapore was evicted from the country of Malaysia and became the only country that became independent against their own will.
On September 22, 1965, the Indo-Pakistani War over the disputed region of Kashmir came to an end.
On November 8, 1965, a North Vietnamese force of 1,200 soldiers ambushed 400 of the US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade West of the Dong Nai River and paid dearly for their disregard of American military prowess.
On September 30, 1966, Bechuanaland in Southern Africa declared its independence from the United Kingdom, and became the Republic of Botswana.
On August 25, 1967, US Navy World War II pilot, George Lincoln Rockwell, was shot and killed by a former member of his hateful group.
On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong guerillas launched surprise attacks all over South Vietnam during a supposed “cease fire” period to celebrate the Asian Lunar New Year, known as Tet.
On May 20, 1969, the Battle of Hamburger Hill came to an end.
The summer of July 1969 was unlike any other summer.
On July 20, 1969, the promise by President John F. Kennedy that the USA would put men on the Moon came true when Apollo 11’s Lunar Module, the Eagle, landed on the surface of the Moon, with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
On March 17, 1970, the US Army charged 14 officers with suppressing information about the My Lai Massacre that took place in South Vietnam in 1968, a horrible atrocity in which between 347 and 504 Vietnamese civilians, including women, children and babies, were slaughtered by C Company, 1st Bn 20th Regt of the 11th Brigade of the 23rd Infantry Division of the US Army.
On June 29, 1971, the first human space travelers to die while in space perished when their Soyuz 11 space capsule depressurized after leaving the Soviet space station, Salyut 1.
On August 26, 1972, the XX Olympiad, Summer Games portion, opened in Munich, West Germany.
On December 28, 1972, the last day for inductees to be sworn in to the US armed forces due to the draft, most induction centers were closed due to President Nixon declaring the day a National Day of Mourning due to the death of former President Truman.
On November 16, 1974, a radio signal was sent from Earth to the star cluster known as M13 in an attempt to communicate with whatever intelligent life forms may exist in that area of the Universe.
On July 15, 1975, the United States and the USSR simultaneously launched manned spacecraft, an American Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz capsule, bound for a rendezvous in space, the first ever international space effort.
On December 22, 1975, President Gerald Ford ordered a national stockpile of oil, or petroleum if you prefer, be created in underground storage located in Texas and Louisiana.
On September 3, 1976, an American Viking 2 spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars.
On August 1, 1977, former USAF and CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers, died when his news helicopter crashed in Encino, California.
On March 2, 1978, space exploration history was made when Vladimír Remek, a pilot, politician, and diplomat from Czechoslovakia became the first person in space that was not Russian or American.
On July 11, 1979, America’s first space station, Skylab, reentered Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
On July 12, 1979, the island nation of Kiribati came into being as the Republic of Kiribati, a group of islands in the Gilbert Island chain of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean.
On October 26, 1979, Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the South Korean CIA, assassinated the country’s president, Park Chung Hee.
On June 6, 1985, authorities in Embu, Brazil opened the grave of a person purported to be “Wolfgang Gerhard,” in order to determine the true identity of the person buried under that name.

XIII. The Culture of Protest

On July 26, 1948, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which ordered the desegregation of the US military, a move many Americans thought was long overdue.
On December 25, 1951, Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. S. Moore were killed by a bomb explosion at their home in Sanford, Florida.
On March 21, 1952, disc jockey Alan Freed (inventor of the term “rock and roll”) and record store owner Leo Mintz staged the first rock concert in Cleveland, Ohio!
On March 8, 1957, both houses of Georgia’s state legislature passed and Governor Marvin Griffin approved a shameful resolution known as the Georgia Memorial to Congress.
On May 9, 1960, the Searle manufactured drug, Enovid, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States as a birth control measure, making Enovid the first oral contraceptive pill approved for use by any nation.
On September 10, 1960, Abebe Bikila, representing Ethiopia, became the first ever Sub-Saharan Black African to win an Olympic Gold Medal by taking first place in the ultimate event of the Summer Olympics, the Marathon race.
On September 27, 1962, the book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson was published.
On June 11, 1963, on the same day that Alabama Governor George Wallace tried to block two Black students from entering the University of Alabama, President John F. Kennedy made a speech telling the country about his plan for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law that would end segregation and provide equal access to all aspects of American life for people of any race.
On February 1, 1964, the British sensational band, The Beatles, hit the top of the American charts for the first time with their smash hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
On February 9, 1964, Beatlemania hit the US when the Fab Four made their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, snagging 73 million American viewers.
On March 14, 1964, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby was convicted of killing the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.
On April 4, 1964, the Beatles, also known as “the Fab Four” or “the Mop Tops,” dominated the Billboard Hot 100 chart with songs in each of the top 5 positions!
On August 28, 1964, the City of Philadelphia erupted into a race riot when the predominantly African American neighborhoods of North Philadelphia in the Columbia Avenue area broke out into a full blown riot between the police and African American residents that had long complained of police brutality.
On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam officer and African American nationalist, Malcom X, was gunned down prior to making a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.
On February 10, 1967, the United States adopted the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution, a new national law that deals with the succession to the Presidency of the United States, and a topic of recent debate during the Trump Administration.
On February 12, 1967, British police raided the home of Rolling Stones member Keith Richards at Redlands, confiscating illegal drugs, a pistol, and a shotgun along with ammunition.
On April 29, 1967, heavyweight boxing champ, Muhammad Ali, was stripped of his crown when he refused induction into the US military.
On February 11, 1968, African-American garbage collection and sewer workers in Memphis, Tennessee went on strike, prompted by the horrible death of two garbage men crushed in the back of a garbage truck.
On February 25, 1968, South Korean Marines fighting against the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army alongside Americans and the South Vietnamese committed a terrible atrocity in the town of Hà My in South Vietnam.
On April 20, 1968, Conservative Member of Parliament Enoch Powell delivered his famous “Rivers of Blood Speech” against the continued immigration of non-European colonials into Britain.
On August 28, 1968, the profession of policing in the United States reached one of its lowest points when the Chicago Police Department under the direction of dictatorial Mayor Richard Daley moved to violently put down protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention (August 26-29, 1968), resulting in what has been described as a “police riot.”
On October 16, 1968, the island country of Jamaica, a majority Black African heritage nation (92%+ African heritage population) experienced riots because a Black Guyanese professor, Dr. Walter Anthony Rodney, was banned from returning to Jamaica to teach at the University of the West Indies.
On January 30, 1969, the Fab Four, sometimes referred to as “The Beatles,” conducted their last public concert when they played for 42 minutes from the roof of Apple Corps headquarters on Savile Row, London, England (no connection to Apple the computer company, but perhaps better known as Apple Records).
On March 25, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came up with a unique way to celebrate their honeymoon, by inviting friends and reporters to spend the day in their hotel bedroom each day for a week!
On May 8, 1970, the Fab Four, the Mop Tops, or simply, The Beatles, released what would be their final album, Let it Be.
On February 9, 1971, baseball pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first player from the Negro Leagues so honored.
On December 13, 1971, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard arguments in a lawsuit by Norma McCorvey (known as “Jane Roe” for the purposes of the lawsuit) against the Dallas County (Texas) Attorney, Henry Wade in the landmark American court case about the subject of a woman’s right to seek an abortion, ending an unwanted pregnancy.
On March 22, 1972, the US Supreme Court decided that unmarried Americans were allowed to have sex!
On May 30, 1972, a British far left terrorist group went on trial for conducting 25 bombings over the previous two years.
On October 11, 1972, a race riot took place not in a city, but at sea!
On January 27, 1973, about 11 hours before the cease fire marking the official end of American involvement in the Vietnam War, Colonel William Nolde, US Army, age 43, was killed by artillery fire at An Loc, South Vietnam.
On June 21, 1973, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in Miller v. California, establishing a way to determine if something is “free speech” guaranteed by the 1^st Amendment or if it is obscene.
On August 28, 1973, Stockholm, Sweden police arrested two bank robbers after a five day standoff in which the robbers held four people as hostages.
On October 31, 1973, three Provisional Irish Republican Army members held prisoner in Dublin, Ireland were busted out of prison in a manner befitting an action movie!
On August 30, 1974, the third World Population Conference was held in Bucharest, Romania.
On March 6, 1975, entranced Americans were glued to their television sets to watch the first mass public showing of the infamous “Zapruder Film” that depicted the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
On September 10, 1977, Tunisian French landscaper and pimp, Hamida Djandoubi, became the last person executed by guillotine in France, and the last person executed for a crime in Western Europe.
On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter recognized the toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently into a residential area canal as a federal emergency.
On September 16, 1979, the Rap music trio The Sugarhill Gang was formed, and they released their hit, “Rapper’s Delight,” the first Rap song to land in the Billboard Top 40 as a mainstream hit song.
On June 27, 1981, the Chinese Communist Party issued its report on the “Cultural Revolution” that took place in China from 1966 until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
On September 21, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed by the Senate as the first ever female Justice of the Supreme Court.
On September 17, 1983, Syracuse University student Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America, the first African American woman to win the coveted title.
On November 7, 1983, the United States Capitol building was bombed by a female left wing group calling themselves the Armed Resistance Unit.
On July 25, 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya exited her Salyut 7 space capsule while in orbit, thus becoming the first woman to ever engage in an EVA, or “extravehicular activity” in space.
On March 3, 1991, the combination of George Holliday and his home video camera and selective use of portions of that video by the news media shocked the country and profoundly affected American History!
On April 29, 1992, the lower income areas of Los Angeles erupted with violence, pent up anger released after the acquittal of 4 white police officers accused of beating Rodney King, one of history’s most evil people, after a high speed pursuit.
On July 7, 1992, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest state court in New York, ruled that women in that state have every bit as much a right to go bare breasted as men do.
On May 22, 2002, Bobby Frank Cherry, former member of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted of the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.
On May 24, 2002, emissaries of the United States and Russia signed a treaty to reduce each country’s nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.
On August 9, 2012, Shannon Eastin became the first woman to referee an NFL football game.
On August 8, 2017, country and pop music superstar Glen Campbell passed away.

XIV. The End of the Cold War

On December 15, 1978, US President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would no longer recognize the government of the Republic of China (based on the island of Taiwan) as the legitimate government of China, and instead would recognize the Red Chinese government, The Peoples Republic of China.
On February 17, 1979, two Communist nations that had collaborated in the Vietnam War against the United States went to war with each other, as China sought to punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia.
On September 16, 1979, eight people yearning to be free of oppressive communism in East Germany made a flight to freedom in a hot air balloon to West Germany.
On June 3, 1980, the long history of the Statue of Liberty was threatened by a bomb that exploded at the base of the statue, although luckily no one was killed and damage was minimal.
On February 7, 1981, a Soviet airliner carrying 6 crewmen and 44 passengers crashed immediately after takeoff from Pushkin Airport near Leningrad, killing all 50 people aboard the jetliner.
On September 26, 1983, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and their allies versus the United States and their allies nearly erupted into full blown nuclear Armageddon when the early warning system employed by the Soviet military falsely reported the launch of United States Air Force Minuteman ICBM’s.
On October 30, 1985, the American Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off on its 9^th mission, a successful flight that lasted over 7 days and was notable for having taken the first Dutch astronaut into space.
On November 29, 1987, Korean Air Lines Flight 858 exploded over the Andaman Sea, downing the jet liner and killing all 115 people aboard the plane, mostly people from South Korea.
On October 27, 1988, President Ronald Reagan made one of his most shocking Cold War related announcements while President when he decided to have the newly completed US Embassy in Moscow mostly destroyed and started over again!
On December 21, 1988, the giant Soviet cargo jet, the Antonov An-225 Mriya, made its maiden flight.
On June 4, 1989, an estimated tens of thousands Chinese military troops opened fire on perhaps a million Chinese protestors at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the capital of China.
On November 20, 1990, serial killer Andrei Chikatilo was arrested in Rostov Oblast of the Soviet Union by undercover detectives that had been tailing him.
On August 19, 1991, leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under arrest while on vacation in Foros, Ukraine.
On September 9, 1991, the Tajik SSR received its independence from the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Reputlics) as part of the disintegration of the USSR and became the sovereign nation of Tajikistan.
On December 8, 1991, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed a treaty called the Belovezha Accords, an agreement that dissolved the USSR and put in its place the Commonwealth of Independent States.
On December 25, 1991, on the day that Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s referendum was completed, meaning Ukraine was no longer part of the USSR.
On December 14, 1992, the War in Abkhazia took a sickening turn when a helicopter carrying refuges was shot down, killing 52 people, about half of which were innocent children.
On October 4, 1993, Russian Army tanks bombarded the Russian parliament, incredibly in the capital of the second most powerful country on Earth.
On November 9, 1993, the Mostar Bridge, also known as the Stari Most, collapsed due to bombing by Croatian forces in the Croat–Bosniak War of 1992 to 1994.
On May 27, 1996, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia met with Chechen rebels to negotiate a cease fire in what is known as The First Chechen War.
On June 13, 1996, after a tense 81 day standoff with the FBI, a group of Americans in the area of Jordan, Montana that had declared themselves “sovereign citizens” not subject to the laws of the United States, finally surrendered.
On December 10, 1997, Ukrainian paralympic World Record holder and Gold medalist swimmer, Viktoriia Savtsova, was born, taking her place among the many distinguished Ukrainians throughout history.
On June 12, 1999, the next day after the end of the Kosovo War, some 250 Russian peacekeeping troops occupied the Pristina International Airport ahead of the arrival of NATO troops and were to secure the arrival of reinforcements over the air.
On August 9, 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired not only his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, but also his entire cabinet.
On August 12, 2000, during the first major Russian naval exercise since the break-up of the USSR, the Russian Oscar II class cruise missile sub, the Kursk, blew up and sank in the Barents Sea, taking all 118 men aboard to their deaths.
On September 1, 2004, terrorists seeking the independence of Chechnya from Russia invaded School Number One in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia, taking 1,100 hostages, of which well over 700 were school children.
On August 13, 2008, the military forces of Russia took over the Georgian city of Gori following a Russian war of aggression against its smaller neighbor and former Soviet Socialist Republic, during the Russo-Georgian War between August 1 and August 12 of 2008.
On February 27, 2015, Russian physicist Boris Nemtsov found out personally why publicly taking issue with Vladimir Putin is dangerous to his health.
On February 24, 2022, Russia declared the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to be “independent states” and commenced an invasion of Ukraine with the aim of taking over the country in a matter of days.

XV. Conclusion

On February 26, 1909, the Palace Theatre in London, England, boasted the first public showing of color motion picture film, a product called Kinemacolor invented by English hypnotist and magician, George Albert Smith in 1906.
On January 30, 1925, Douglas Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon.
On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off on his non-stop, solo trans-Atlantic flight, a flight into aviation history.
On December 2, 1927, Henry Ford revealed the successor to his iconic Model T, the Ford Model A.
On June 9, 1928, Australian Charles E. K. Smith completed the first flight across the Pacific Ocean, an enormous aviation first that is often overlooked.
On September 8, 1930, 3M, the better known name of what was the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, began selling their Scotch brand of household and office pressure sensitive tape, the transparent stuff no self-respecting school kid, office worker, or housewife would do without!
On January 11, 1935, American aviatrix Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, one of her many aviation firsts.
On September 3, 1935, Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah was the scene of an historic automobile event, the first ever car to achieve a documented speed of over 300 mph.
On January 5, 1943, African American agricultural scientist George Washington Carver died at the age of 79 after a fall.
On June 10, 1943, Hungarian-Jewish inventors Laszlo and György Biro were granted a patent in Britain for the successful modern ballpoint pen.
On October 19, 1943, the antibiotic drug, Streptomycin, was isolated by researchers at the esteemed Rutgers University.
On July 5, 1946, the bikini swimsuit went on sale after being debuted at the Molitor Pool of Paris, France.
On June 24, 1949, NBC premiered the first Western themed TV show, an adaptation of a character created by Clarence E. Mulford in 1904, Hopalong Cassidy.
On May 26, 1951, Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, California.
On May 3, 1952, the Kentucky Derby, probably the most famous and prestigious horse racing event in the United States, was first broadcast on television.
On February 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation of children against the Polio virus took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
On April 12, 1955, the Polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk was declared safe and effective for use in the United States, ending the epidemic that killed or crippled mass numbers of children in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries.
On April 15, 1955, McDonald’s hamburger and fast-food chain claims their founding by Ray Kroc in Illinois when he opened a franchise restaurant of the hamburger stand brand founded by Richard and Maurice McDonald in California.
On August 5, 1957, the iconic pop music show American Bandstand made its debut, starting a 37-season run of 3002 episodes and making host Dick Clark a national icon.
On February 6, 1959, an engineer at Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby, filed for the first patent for the “integrated circuit,” a small piece of silicon with many circuits called MOSFETs integrated on it, a device we know as the “microchip.”
On April 25, 1960, the nuclear powered US Navy submarine, Triton, completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth while underwater.
On September 17, 1961, downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was the site of the first retractable roof arena in the world, although its purpose may surprise you!
On September 25, 1961, the State of Wisconsin first required any new automobile made starting in 1962 to be equipped with front seat safety belts.
On September 2, 1963, CBS Evening News made TV history by becoming the first major nightly news show to be 30 minutes long instead of only 15 minutes.
On September 7, 1963, the Pro Football Hall of Fame opened to the public in Canton, Ohio, the birthplace of American professional football.
On November 28, 1967, British astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discovered PSR B1919+21 in the constellation of Vulpecula, the first report of a Pulsar, a magnetized neutron star that emits “electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles.”
On November 15, 1968, the Cleveland Transit System of Cleveland, Ohio linked downtown with the metro airport, becoming the first city in the western hemisphere to link its downtown and its main airport by rapid transit.
On April 4, 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley performed surgery to implant the first artificial (temporary) heart in history!
On January 5, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon announced the Space Shuttle program, an American space exploration system that would go on to make 135 trips to space over 3 decades, carrying astronauts from 16 different countries.
On September 9, 1972, an exploration team mapping the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky discovered that the Mammoth Cave system was linked to the Flint Ridge cave network, making it the longest cave passageway in the world.
On March 18, 1974, a concrete sculpture of a nude female called Güzel İstanbul in Karaköy Square, Istanbul, Turkey, was attacked by persons unknown and toppled after much public criticism for its allegedly “obscene” nature.
On November 22, 1975, in the wake of the death of dictator Francisco Franco, Juan Carlos I was declared King of Spain.
On July 19, 1977, the first ever Global Positioning System, GPS, signal was received in Cedar Rapids, Iowa courtesy of Navigation Technology Satellite 2, ushering in an era that prevents fumbling around with intricately folded maps while trying to drive a car.
On September 13, 1977, American automotive giant General Motors made one of the epic blunders of its long business history when it introduced the Oldsmobile Diesel engine, a lame attempt to quickly gain an advantage in the race to improve the miles per gallon performance of its cars in order to compete with more fuel-efficient foreign cars.
On October 26, 1977, Ali Maow Maalin, the last natural case of smallpox, developed a rash in Somalia.
On February 19, 1978, Egyptian commandos raided Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus in an attempt to rescue hostages taken in the hijacking of a Cyprus Airways Douglas DC-8.
On May 1, 1978, Japanese adventurer Naomi Uemura made history as the first person to reach the North Pole all alone.
On August 17, 1978, Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman made ballooning history by becoming the first to pilot a manned balloon across the Atlantic Ocean, flying from Maine to France in the Double Eagle II, a Helium balloon.
On July 7, 1980, the Islamic government of Iran imposed the idea of Islamic supremacy on the people of Iran, with the enacting of Sharia Law on the country, effectively making the country an Islamic State governed by the precepts of their religion.
On September 5, 1980, the Gotthard Road Tunnel from Uri Canton to Airolo in Switzerland opened for travel, at the time the longest highway tunnel in the world at 10.5 miles long.
On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded their neighbor, Iran, seeking to take advantage of the disruption caused by the Iranian revolution.
On April 3, 1981, the Osborne Computer Corporation unveiled it latest creation, the Osborne 1, the first portable computer to be commercially viable.
On June 12, 1981, movie goers were treated to a film of action, adventure, romance, supernatural, and comedy, when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released, the first of the Indiana Jones movie franchise that now includes four complete films and the upcoming The Dial of Destiny, due for release in the US on June 30, 2023.
On October 1, 1982, Disney’s latest and greatest attraction opened at their Orlando, Florida Walt Disney World location, EPCOT Center, now known as EPCOT.
On November 1, 1982, Honda Motor Company of Japan started making cars in the United States.
On February 28, 1983, the 11-season journey of TV viewers finally came to an end with the airing of the final episode of M*A*S*H.
On February 7, 1984, two astronauts from the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-41-B made space exploration history by taking the first untethered space walk outside of their space ship.
On September 14, 1984, retired USAF Colonel Joseph Kittinger made aviation history by becoming the first person to pilot a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic.
On December 1, 1984, a joint operation between NASA and the FAA conducted a “Controlled Impact Demonstration,’ a fancy way of saying purposely crashing an unoccupied jetliner.
On December 22, 1984, the tables got turned on criminals when their victim shot them!
On July 10, 1985, the Rainbow Warrior, a ship owned and operated by Greenpeace, an environmental activist organization, was sunk by bombs placed by French government operatives while in Auckland, New Zealand harbor, resulting in a single death.
On November 3, 1986, a Lebanese magazine reported that the US had been selling weapons to Iran as part of a negotiation to get seven Americans released in Lebanon.
On March 9, 1987, Chrysler Corporation, then maker of Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth cars and trucks, announced the absorption of American Motors under the Chrysler banner.
On June 28, 1987, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Air Force became the first military force in history to purposely target civilians with chemical weapons when they attacked the town of Sardasht, Iran with “mustard” gas.
On September 13, 1987, two thieves took advantage of a guard being absent from an abandoned Brazilian hospital site to help themselves to whatever they could scavenge.
On August 4, 1987, the Federal Communications Commission officially removed any obligation of television and radio media to present controversial issues in an even and “fair” manner when they rescinded the Fairness Doctrine.
On April 18, 1988, the US Navy retaliated against the Navy of Iran in response to the USS Samuel Roberts being damaged by a mine.
On January 4, 1989, two Libyan pilots made the massive blunder of attempting to engage a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters over the Gulf of Sidra off the Libyan coast, with the entirely predictable result of both MiG-23 “Flogger” fighters being promptly shot down.
On July 2, 1990, 1,426 faithful Muslims attending the annual pilgrimage to Mecca called the “Hajj,” were trampled and suffocated to death in a tunnel.
On August 2, 1990, led by dictator Saddam Hussein, the military forces of Iraq invaded and annexed their smaller neighbor, the oil rich constitutional monarchy of Kuwait.
On September 18, 1990, the tiny European Principality of Liechtenstein was admitted to the United Nations.
On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a professor with ties to the University of Oxford and MIT, announced his invention, plans for what he called the “World Wide Web.”
On January 22, 1992, NASA launched mission STS-42, the space shuttle Discovery, into space with a crew that included Ukrainian Canadian Dr. Roberta Bondar, a neurologist.
On February 7, 1992, signatories from the 12 member states of the European Economic Community signed the Maastricht Treaty, so named after the city in which it was signed, Maastricht, The Netherlands, which more or less created a modern United States of Europe, though it is actually called The European Union.
On September 12, 1992, NASA launched mission STS-47, an historic flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.
On September 25, 1992, NASA launched a probe known as the Mars Observer, alternately known as Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter, an unmanned spacecraft sent to study the surface, atmosphere, climate, and magnetic field on Mars.
On February 26, 1993, New Yorkers were shaken during their lunch break by the explosion of a giant bomb!
On November 18, 1993, the US House of Representatives passes the North American Free Trade Agreement that had been negotiated by President George HW Bush in 1992.
On May 17, 1995, San Diego, California was the scene of one of the oddest and perhaps the scariest police chase of a stolen vehicle in the annals of motor vehicle theft.
On March 22, 1995, Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov made it back to Earth after spending a record 437 days and 18 hours in space.
On August 20, 1995, a horrific rail accident occurred on India’s Northern Railway..
On February 15, 1996, the Chinese space program took a tragic turn when a Long March 3B rocket malfunctioned and crashed into a Chinese village, killing between 6 and 100 people on the ground.
On February 17, 1996, Chess champion Garry Kasparov bested the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer in an historic chess game between man and machine.
On March 25, 1996, the European Union banned the import of beef and beef byproducts from Britain due to an outbreak of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as “Mad Cow Disease.”
On July 5, 1996, a sheep named Dolly was born, the product of a cloning experiment making her the first ever mammal to be cloned.
On November 18, 1996, the Channel Tunnel, or more familiarly, the Chunnel, was the scene of a terrifying event as a train carrying semi-tractor trailers, or “Heavy Goods Vehicles” as they are known in Europe, along with their drivers, caught on fire, probably due to arson.
On June 25, 1997, an unmanned Russian spacecraft called Progress-M blundered into the Russian manned Mir space station.
On June 26, 1997, the first of the Harry Potter series of novels by JK Rowling was published in Britain.
On July 20, 1997, the famous American warship, the USS Constitution, better known as “Old Ironsides,” celebrated 200 years of service by embarking on a cruise under her own sails for the first time in 116 years!
On September 6, 1997, two to two and a half billion people worldwide were glued to their TV sets watching the funeral of Princess Diana, a similar number of TV viewers that watched the 2009 funeral of pop rocker Michael Jackson.
On March 1, 1998, the movie industry reached a new milestone when the James Cameron epic film Titanic passed the magical $1 billion mark, the first movie to do so.
On July 17, 1998, a conference of international delegates under the auspices of the United Nations adopted The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a treaty to provide a permanent international venue to prosecute war crimes and related crimes.
On August 24, 1998, science fiction and conspiracy theory met science fact when the first successful human implant of a radio tracker was tested in the UK.
On September 4, 1998, a pair of Stanford University students founded what has become the premier internet search engine, Google, although Google is also heavily involved in other areas, such as software, AI, electronics, advertising, and cloud computing.
On February 14, 2000, the American spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker orbited asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft from Earth to orbit an asteroid.
On August 8, 2000, the remains of Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley were raised to the surface 136 years after this pioneering vessel was sunk, probably by itself during the US Civil War.
On September 23, 2000, journalist, author, government official, and gun control advocate, Carl Rowan, died at the age of 75.
On February 11, 2001, the “Anna Kournikova Virus” was set loose by a Dutch computer troll, infecting the email of millions of users with a joke image of the eponymous tennis player along with a not so funny virus infecting their computers.
On May 6, 2001, Pope John Paul II of the Roman Catholic Church became the first pope to ever set foot in a mosque when he entered the Great Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, during a visit to that predominantly Muslim country.
On May 15, 2001, a 47-car freight train in Walbridge, Ohio took off away from the train station sans engineer who had dismounted to set a switch.
On May 25, 2001, American mountain climber, adventurer, author, and speaker, Erik Weihenmayer, became the first blind person to reach the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal.
On September 11, 2001, the fanatical Islamist terror group, al-Qaeda, carried out coordinated attacks against the United States, resulting in the crashing of a fully occupied jetliner into the Pentagon, the hijacking and subsequent crash of another jetliner, and the crashing yet another 2 jetliners into the World Trade Center, taking down 2 of the tallest buildings in the world.
On September 20, 2001, US President George W. Bush addressed congress and the American people and declared a “War on Terror.”
On October 11, 2001, Polaroid Corporation filed for bankruptcy and a year later went out of business.
On October 28, 2001, the indie movie, Donnie Darko, was released.
On December 15, 2001, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was finished with an 11 year project that cost $27 million to make sure it kept leaning, a fix that did not fix the original problem!
On January 3, 2002, an Israeli operation called “Noah’s Ark” resulted in the seizure of a ship load of munitions bound for Gaza to arm Palestinian militants.
On January 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped in downtown Karachi, Pakistan by Islamist militants.
On January 29, 2002, US President George W. Bush coined a new phrase in his State of the Union Address to Congress, labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the “Axis of Evil.”
On June 6, 2002, high above the Mediterranean Sea, an asteroid estimated at about 10 meters in diameter exploded in the upper atmosphere with a similar effect to a 26 kiloton nuclear bomb, a larger blast than either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
On June 11, 2002, the House of Representatives of the United States Congress officially recognized Italian American inventor Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.
On November 28, 2002, Islamic terrorists struck at Israeli targets in Mombasa, a port city on the East coast of Africa in the country of Kenya.
On May 31, 2003, Air France retired their Concorde supersonic jet airliners after a career that started in 1976.
On July 30, 2003, the last of the “old style” Volkswagen Beetles rolled off the assembly line in Puebla, Mexico, ending the longest and most prolific manufacturing streak of any car platform ever made.
Because the Northeast blackout of August 14–16, 2003 came only two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first thought in the minds of many people was that a terrorist attack had occurred.
On May 7, 2004, American inventor and businessman Nicholas Berg, only 26 years old, was beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq.
On July 14, 2004, Robert Novak of the Washington Post exercised irresponsible journalistic ethics by publishing an article outing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.
On August 8, 2004, Chicago’s Little Lady, a tour boat carrying 120 passengers, was bombed by a tour bus belonging to the Dave Matthews Band.
On January 12, 2005, the American space exploration agency known as NASA launched a mission called Deep Impact, a probe designed to violently impact the comet Tempel 1.
On January 18, 2005, Airbus, the European maker of jetliners, unveiled its flagship jetliner, the A380, the largest passenger plane ever built.
On March 3, 2005, the “other” country down under became the first modern nation with an all-female leadership cadre when New Zealand elected Margaret Wilson as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives.
On May 21, 2005, Six Flags Great Adventure became home to the tallest roller coaster in the world.
On July 26, 2005, Mumbai, India, received an incredible 39.17 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. Mumbai is the most populous city in what is now the most populous country in the world, with 12.5 million inhabitants.
On January 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as the President of Liberia, the first female to be elected head of state of any African country.
On February 22, 2006, a gang of 7 or more pulled off a heist of a Securitas AB depot in Tonbridge, England, absconding with a haul of £53 million in cash.
On August 22, 2006, Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal for creating the proof of the “Poincaré conjecture,” but then he refused the award, explaining, “I’m not interested in money or fame; I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.”
On August 31, 2006, the Norwegian police announced the recovery of Edvard Munch’s famous painting, The Scream, which had been stolen in 2004.
On January 19, 2007, 3 intrepid Britons and their equally intrepid Canadian comrade made an incredible journey across Antarctica, using only leg power driving skis and the assistance of kites, to reach a point known as the Antarctic pole of inaccessibility.
On February 24, 2007, Japan launched a spy satellite into orbit, presumably to help keep track of threats to Japan from their neighbors China and North Korea.
On July 10, 2007, Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç, almost 46 years old at the time, set off on what may be the greatest feat of human endurance and physical performance in history, the solo, only human powered circumnavigation of the Earth.
On October 6, 2007, Jason Lewis, otherwise an English author, completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth under his own muscular power!
On March 19, 2008, an astronomical event occurred that resulted in the farthest ever known object able to be seen with the naked human eye.
On August 16, 2008, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, Illinois, topped out, and immediately became the tallest residence above ground level of any building in the world.
On August 17, 2008, 6 foot 4 inch tall American swimmer Michael Phelps broke the previous record held by American swimmer Mark Spitz by winning his 8^th Olympic Gold Medal at a single Olympic Games.
On September 28, 2008, the history of space exploration reached a new milestone when SpaceX, a private company, launched their Falcon 1 unmanned spacecraft, the first private spacecraft launched into orbit.
On September 28, 2008, the first Formula One night race was held, the Singapore Grand Prix.
On October 16, 2008, Ohio handyman Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher was all the rage among supporters of Senator John McCain’s bid for the presidency.
On January 21, 2009, Israel pulled its military forces out of the Gaza strip after a three-week war with Palestinian Islamic extremist group Hamas.
On January 22, 2009, only a couple days after being sworn in, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected terrorists were being held.
On January 26, 2009, a single California woman gave birth to 8 babies at one time, becoming the first mother of octuplets that survived infancy.
On June 12, 2009, incumbent Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was announced the winner of the national election over three challengers, a result hotly disputed by millions of Iranians and protested in many countries around the world.
On December 11, 2009, Rovio Entertainment from Finland released Angry Birds, a video game that took the world by storm.
On December 25, 2009, one of the most bizarre terrorist plots to destroy an airliner and its passengers failed when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was unable to get his bomb hidden in his underwear to explode.
On January 4, 2010, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai opened in the United Arab Emirates, taking top honors as the World’s Tallest Building, an honor it still holds.
On May 15, 2010, Australian 16 year old Jessica Watson completed a non-stop and solo unassisted sail voyage around the world, the youngest person to achieve this feat.
On June 4, 2010, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster made its first flight, and since then has been used as the launch booster for well over 200 launches, only one of which was a failure and one other a partial failure.
On March 12, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan was devastated by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, causing a reactor to explode and release radiation into the environment.
On May 2, 2011, American military Special Forces carried out a surprise raid on the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound where Al Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden, had been hiding.
On July 9, 2011, South Sudan seceded from Sudan and became the latest new African country.
On July 30 and 31, 2012, Northern and Eastern India suffered massive electrical blackouts leaving 400 million people without electricity on July 30^th and an even more incredible 620 million people without juice, but luckily only for about a day.
On July 31, 2012, Ukrainian gymnast, Larisa Latynina, was passed as the most prolific Olympic Medal winner, when American swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19^th Olympic medal.
On October 9, 2012, just 8 years ago, 15 year old Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Muslim girl, was shot in the face by Taliban Islamic extremist terrorists for the “crime” of being a girl that wanted to go to school to learn to read and write.
On October 22, 2012, cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles due to allegations of illegally using performance enhancing drugs.
On February 10, 2013, yet another tragic disaster related to a religious event took place when 42 faithful Hindus were killed and another 45 injured at the train station taking people to the 2013 Prayag Kumbh Mela Festival in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
On September 6, 2013, ivory poachers in Africa poisoned and killed 41 elephants at the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.
On September 12, 2013, the American space agency, NASA, reported that its spacecraft, Voyager 1, had become the first ever man-made object to leave our solar system.
On December 23, 2013, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Soviet designer of the AK-47 assault rifle and its entire family of spin-off products, died at the age of 94 in Izhevsk, Russia.
On April 17, 2014, the Kepler space telescope operated by NASA confirmed the existence of Kepler-186f, the first discovery of a planet of equivalent size to Earth within the “habitable zone” of another solar system.
On May 6, 2014, Canadian author Farley Mowat died only a week before turning 93 years old.
On August 15, 2015, North Korea changed its time to a self-appointed “Pyongyang Time,” moving clocks backward a half hour to flout international time, known as UTC.
On September 11, 2015, the city of Mecca, the holiest city within the religion of Islam, was the scene of a horrific accident when a crane collapsed at the Masjid al-Haram, also known as The Great Mosque, killing 111 and injuring another 394 people.
On September 24, 2015, yet another religious related tragedy occurred when as many as 2,000 faithful Muslims in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj were stampeded and suffocated when a large crowd met another large crowd at a road intersection and chaos resulted.
On October 29, 2015, China announced the end of its “one child” policy that had been in effect since 1979, limiting couples to one child in an effort to curb population growth.
On September 8, 2016, NASA launched its OSIRIS-Rex mission to near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu with the goal of returning to Earth with a sample of the asteroid.
On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs broke the “Curse of the Billy Goat,” a championship drought of 108 years, by beating the Cleveland Indians in the 2016 World Series.
On April 6, 2017, President Trump ordered an attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria.
On April 9, 2017, Dr. David Dao, age 69, found out how bad flying on commercial airlines can be when he was forcibly dragged off of a United Express jet to make room for United employees.
On May 22, 2017, an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in Manchester, England, was rocked at the end by a horrific terrorist attack by a man of Libyan descent in the name of ISIS.
On May 28, 2017, Japanese race car driver, Takuma Sato, won the Indianapolis 500 motor race, making history as the first Asian, and the first Japanese driver to take the big prize.
On June 27, 2017, a massive cyber attack began on Europe, the USA, and Australia, with Ukraine being the main target.
On October 24, 2017, rock and roll and New Orleans jazz pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino died.
On October 31, 2017, an Uzbek immigrant to the United States deliberately drove a rented truck into a New York City bicycle and jogging path, killing 8 people and injuring another 11 in a terrorist mass killing that proves bad people do not need guns to commit terrible crimes.
On December 14, 2017, the Walt Disney Company continued a trend of corporate mergers and acquisitions that are killing competition in many markets when they announced the deal to acquire the 20th Century Fox movie studio for over $52 billion.
On March 3, 2018, the track and field world lost one of its greatest runners when Roger Bannister died, the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
On March 6, 2018, founder and former boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, was named by Forbes as the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $112 billion.
On June 13, 2018, Volkswagen was fined a whopping billion Euros by the EU in conjunction with an emissions tricking scheme hatched by VW to beat clean air requirements in Europe and the US.
On May 4, 2019, the W Series conducted their first and inaugural motor race at Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg, Germany, an all-Female auto racing event.
On May 8, 2019, a British teenager became the first patient to receive bacteriophage therapy to treat an antibiotic resistant infection.
On June 16, 2019, over 2 million people in Hong Kong protested the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, an extradition law enacted by the Chinese communist government of Hong Kong as well as alleged police brutality.
On August 18, 2019, about 100 environmentally concerned citizens, including government officials and activists, held a funeral for the Okjökull glacier in Iceland.
On November 21, 2019, cutting edge technology and electric vehicle producer, Tesla, proudly demonstrated their latest gem, the Cybertruck, and its alleged unbreakable windows.
On December 20, 2019, the United States Space Force became a branch of the US Military, a military that far exceeds any current competitor.
On January 31, 2020, European Union member the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will no longer be a member of what amounted to a “United States of Europe.”
On February 29, 2020, the American Trump administration and the Afghan Islamist group known as The Taliban, met in Doha, Qatar, and signed an agreement by which the US would pull out military forces and bring an end to the longest war in US history.
On March 4, 2020, Nik Wallenda of the famous acrobat and daredevil family, became the first person to walk on a wire above the crater of the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.
On May 9, 2020, the unemployment rate in the United States hit the staggering number of 14.9%, the worst employment number since the Great Depression in 1939.
On May 30, 2020, the Crew Dragon Demo-2 spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida courtesy of a Falcon 9 booster rocket from the private firm of SpaceX.
On November 27, 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist and purported head of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, was assassinated in Absard, Iran.
On December 7, 2020, fighter ace and aviation record breaker, Chuck Yeager, Brigadier General US Air Force, died at the age of 97.
On March 7, 2021, the military of Equatorial Guinea experienced one of those “oops moments” leading to disaster when a military base near the port city of Bata suffered a series of massive explosions of stored munitions that devastated the city and left over 100 people dead.
On April 19, 2021, the aptly named Ingenuity became the first man-made aircraft to fly on any planet other than Earth.
On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed the law that made “Juneteenth,” the 19^th day of June each year, a National Holiday, the first designated as such since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 1983.
On July 29, 2021, the International Space Station suffered an engine malfunction in its Russian Nauka module, inadvertently firing its thrusters, causing the giant man-made satellite to spin out of control!
On August 30, 2021, the United States of America suffered one of its all-time worst humiliations when the last of the American forces were flown out of Afghanistan, a country the US had invaded in 2001 and was the scene of the longest armed conflict in American history.
On November 5, 2021, the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas, a rap fest, went horribly wrong when a crowd fueled by drugs and alcohol overwhelmed insufficient concert security and created a “crowd crush” that cost eight lives and injured over 300 people.
On January 2, 2022, the Omicron variant of the Covid virus was on the rise, but that was minor news compared to the top stories of 2022.
On January 13, 2022, the National Shooting Sports Foundation warned American firearms enthusiasts of an online scam targeting those looking to buy a new firearm.
On June 15, 2022, Microsoft retired its iconic internet browser, Internet Explorer, in favor of its new system, Microsoft Edge.
On August 2, 2022, US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was on a trip to Asian countries, including Taiwan, an island that officially considers itself to be the true and legitimate government of China.
On August 26, 2022, we all celebrate National Dog Day, a day invented by Colleen Paige in 2004.
NASA’s planned launch of a new gigantic rocket called Artemis scheduled for August 29, 2022 has been scrubbed due to a problem with an engine, with a new launch date scheduled for September 2, 2022.
On September 6, 2022, we celebrate National Read a Book Day, one of the truly worthwhile “days” of the year, when we are all reminded that there is more to life than television and the internet.
On September 8, 2022, the longest reigning monarch in British history, and the second longest reigning European monarch, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom has died at the age of 96.
On September 9, 2022, King Charles III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gave his first speech as king.
On September 19, 2022, the United Kingdom and all of the Commonwealth will pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II by conducting her Royal funeral.
On October 23, 2022, the Air Force of Myanmar conducted a bombing raid with a few fighter-bombers against a music concert!
On January 18, 2023, Americans celebrate another National Thesaurus Day, a day to be thankful for that reference book that helps us find other ways to say the same thing.
On January 24, 2023, Americans celebrate National Peanut Butter Day, a day when we can savor the flavor of our favorite bread spread that lends itself to making cookies, pies, candies, and other foodstuffs.
On January 24, 2023, the nominations for the Academy Awards, better known as the “Oscars,” had been released!
On January 24, 2023, the dreaded Doomsday Clock that charts the danger of nuclear war was moved to within 90 seconds of “Midnight,” the ominous harbinger of nuclear disaster.
February 1^st, 2023 is the anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
On February 2, 2023, while the US celebrated Groundhog Day, more serious Americans were celebrating a much more important “national day,” namely National Heavenly Hash Day!
On February 3, 2023, we asked some questions about notable news stories from this first week of February 2023.
On February 5, 2023, Americans were flooded with a variety of opinions about the Chinese “spy” balloon that had crossed much of the US and was shot down by a US fighter plane off the coast of South Carolina the previous day.
On February 5, 2023, America was abuzz with partisan bickering over the way President Biden handled the alleged Chinese spy balloon shot down on February 4^th.
An article, published on February 5, 2023, presents a compilation of our three recent videos that in some way mention the 2023 China balloon incident.
On February 7, 2023, US President Joe Biden gave his second State of the Union Address.
On February 18, 2023, the USA celebrated another National Battery Day!
On March 5, 2023, Americans celebrated yet another of those strange “National Days” that you may not be aware of, this time, honoring that fabled alcoholic beverage, Absinthe, known as “The Green Fairey.”
On March 8, 2023, Dr. Zar, wished all of his family, friends, colleagues, students, and subscribers who are women a Happy International Women’s Day!
On March 11, 2023, Americans celebrate another National Worship of Tools Day, a day in which professional craftsmen and do it yourselfers alike can glory in the inventions of their favorite tools.
On March 20, 2023, whether we celebrated it or not, the Vernal Equinox marked the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
On April 4, 2023, Finland became the 31^st member of the NATO alliance, a pact originally meant to counter the threat from the USSR, consisting of 12 European and North American nations.
On April 4, 2023, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was arraigned in New York City on charges of falsifying records.
On April 14, 2023, the European Space Agency launched a spacecraft to explore the Moons of Jupiter, aptly naming the craft JUICE, an acronym for “Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer.”
On May 13, 2023, Americans can celebrate the annual National Train Day, a day invented by Amtrak back in 2008, but cancelled for 2016 due to budget cuts!
On May 16, 2023, Americans celebrate National Barbecue Day, something that means different things in different parts of the country.
On May 21, 2023, movie fans lost a beloved macho British actor when George Raymond Stevenson died at the too early age of 58.
On May 29, 2023, Americans celebrated National Paperclip Day, possibly the single most useful implement ever devised.
On June 3, 2023, the world celebrates Chimborazo Day, a day to admire and adore the highest mountain on Earth.
On June 3, 2023, Dr. Matt Zar thanked the first 30,000 subscribers to our YouTube channel (a milestone reached on June 1, 2023) and also shared with you that two of our favorite history themed YouTube channels also happen to be run by authors named Matt.
On June 16, 2023, Warner Brothers and DC Studios released yet another big budget superhero movie, in this case, The Flash.
On June 18, 2023, we celebrated National Turkey Lovers’ Day, and yes, we too love Turkey!
On June 18, 2023, the deep-sea submarine Titan imploded 3,500 meters beneath the surface of the Atlantic, killing the crewman and the four tourists aboard.
On June 23, 2023, Americans celebrated National Detroit Style Pizza Day, a day to honor perhaps America’s favorite food in a unique style.
On July 6, 2023, we sadly and gladly watched the final Harrison Ford version of Indiana Jones, this time in the blockbuster film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth film in the exciting action series.
On August 3, 2023, as with every First Thursday in August, Americans celebrated National IPA Day.
As September 23, 2023 marked the ten-year anniversary of the debut of our website in September of 2013, we presented our YouTube channel’s ten most popular adaptations of our articles in their historical chronological order.
On October 2, 2023, Americans celebrated National Name Your Car Day.
On October 9, 2023, the second Monday in October, we once again celebrated National Kick Butt Day, a day not for kicking other people but for kicking yourself into gear to accomplish some personal or professional achievement.
On October 11, 2023, in the Middle East and around the world, many felt a sense of anxiety over what would happen next in the war between Israel and Hamas.
On November 29, 2023, we celebrated National Package Protection Day, an annual event since 2016, founded by Ring.com, a company known for doorbell cameras.
On February 16, 2024, we celebrated another National Do a Grouch a Favor Day.
On March 7, 2024, the 46th president of the United States of America, 81-year-old Joe Biden, a Democrat currently running for reelection, gave the 2024 State of the Union Address in the House Chamber at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
On March 22, 2024, the Princess of Wales, Catherine Middleton Windsor, the wife of the future King of the UK, William, Prince of Wales, announced that she is being treated for an unspecified cancer discovered during her recent abdominal surgery.
On April 3, 2024, Americans celebrated National Walking Day, a day celebrated only since 2007 in spite of being an activity people have been doing since proto-humans came down from the trees.
On April 8, 2024, Dr. Zar, along with his miniature dachshund, watched the solar eclipse from within the zone of totality that included his home in Ashland, Ohio.
On September 29, 2024, we celebrated another National Coffee Day, reveling in our appreciation for that “Cup of Joe,” “Shot of Caffeine,” “Java,” “Go Juice,” or whatever you want to call it.

Questions for students: What was the most interesting event in Modern World History and why? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

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Historical Evidence

For more information, please see…

Markham, J. David and Matthew Zarzeczny. Simply Napoleon. Simply Charly, 2017.

Zarzeczny, Matthew D. Meteors That Enlighten the Earth: Napoleon and the Cult of Great Men. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

The featured image in this article, a detail from the oil painting (1806–7) titled Sacre de l’empereur Napoléon Ier et couronnement de l’impératrice Joséphine dans la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, le 2 décembre 1804 (Coronation of Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine in Notre-Dame de Paris, December 2, 1804) by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) and Georges Rouget (1783–1869) of Joséphine kneeling before Napoleon during his coronation at Notre Dame, is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or less. The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

A Timeline of Modern World History (History 11051)

A Brief History

Digging Deeper

I. Introduction

II. The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century

III. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

IV. Constitutionalism versus Absolutism

V. The Atlantic Revolutions

VI. Napoleon

VII. An Age of Industry

VIII. World War I

IX. The Fall of the Russian Empire and the Rise of the Soviet Union

X. Fascism and Nazism

XI. World War II and the Holocaust

XII. Consequences of World War II

XIII. The Culture of Protest

XIV. The End of the Cold War

XV. Conclusion

Historical Evidence

A Timeline of European History Since 1648

A Timeline of European History to 1648

A Video Timeline/Playlist of Women’s History

Animated Map of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine (through November 17th, 2024)

Book Review: The Other Ancient Civilisations

November 6, 2024: Your Chance to Preview Red One

History Short: Crime Fighting Technology Firsts

Movie Review: The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D

A Timeline of Modern World History (History 11051)

A Brief History

Digging Deeper

I. Introduction

II. The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century

III. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

IV. Constitutionalism versus Absolutism

V. The Atlantic Revolutions

VI. Napoleon

VII. An Age of Industry

VIII. World War I

IX. The Fall of the Russian Empire and the Rise of the Soviet Union

X. Fascism and Nazism

XI. World War II and the Holocaust

XII. Consequences of World War II

XIII. The Culture of Protest

XIV. The End of the Cold War

XV. Conclusion

Historical Evidence

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