• Wednesday, 25 December 2024
Today in history
14 August 2022 (MIA) 29 BC – Octavian holds the second of three consecutive triumphs in Rome to celebrate the victory over the Dalmatian tribes. 1040 – King Duncan I is killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth. The latter succeeds him as King of Scotland. 1183 – Taira no Munemori and the Taira clan take the young Emperor Antoku and the three sacred treasures and flee to western Japan to escape pursuit by the Minamoto clan (traditional Japanese date: Twenty-fifth Day of the Seventh Month of the Second Year of Juei). 1288 – Count Adolf VIII of Berg grants town privileges to Düsseldorf, the village on the banks of the Düssel. 1352 – War of the Breton Succession: Anglo-Bretons defeat the French in the Battle of Mauron. 1370 – Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, grants city privileges to Carlsbad which is subsequently named after him. 1385 – Portuguese Crisis of 1383–85: Battle of Aljubarrota: Portuguese forces commanded by King John I and his general Nuno Álvares Pereira defeat the Castilian army of King John I. 1480 – Battle of Otranto: Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam; they are later honored in the Church. 1598 – Nine Years’ War: Battle of the Yellow Ford: Irish forces under Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, defeat an English expeditionary force under Henry Bagenal. 1720 – The Spanish military Villasur expedition is wiped out by Pawnee and Otoe warriors near present-day Columbus, Nebraska. 1816 – The United Kingdom formally annexed the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, administering them from the Cape Colony in South Africa. 1842 – American Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ends, with the Seminoles forced from Florida to Oklahoma. 1848 – Oregon Territory is organized by act of Congress. 1880 – Construction of Cologne Cathedral, the most famous landmark in Cologne, Germany, is completed. 1885 – Japan’s first patent is issued to the inventor of a rust-proof paint. 1888 – An audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord”, one of the first recordings of music ever made, is played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison’s phonograph in London, England. 1893 – France becomes the first country to introduce motor vehicle registration. 1897 – Franco-Hova Wars: The town of Anosimena is captured by French troops from Menabe defenders in Madagascar. 1900 – The Eight-Nation Alliance occupies Beijing, China, in a campaign to end the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China. 1901 – The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21. 1909 – In Thessaloniki, the group of Hristo Matov carried out a second unsuccessful attempt to murder Macedonian revolutionary Jane Sandanski and his friends Stojko Hadziev, Anastas Mitrev and Ivan Manolev. Jane Sandanski was just wounded. 1911 – United States Senate leaders agree to rotate the office of President pro tempore of the Senate among leading candidates to fill the vacancy left by William P. Frye’s death. 1912 – U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua to support the U.S.-backed government installed there after Jose Santos Zelaya had resigned three years earlier. 1914 – World War I: Start of the Battle of Lorraine, an unsuccessful French offensive designed to recover the lost province of Moselle from Germany. 1915 – Macedonian hero and politician Vidoe Smilevski-Bato was born in Nikiforovo near Gostivar. He died on 8 September 1979. 1916 – Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary, joining the Entente in World War I. 1919 – Macedonian hero Rade Jovcevski Korcagin was born in Skopje. He died in Skopje on 20 February 1943, in a clash with Bulgarian agents and police. 1921 – Tannu Uriankhai, later Tuvan People’s Republic is established as a completely independent country (which is supported by Soviet Russia). 1933 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn. It is extinguished on September 5, after destroying 240,000 acres (970 km2). 1935 – Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, creating a government pension system for the retired. 1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States. 1937 – The beginning of air-to-air combat of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in general, when six Japanese bombers are shot down by Chinese fighters while raiding Chinese air bases. 1941 – World War II: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims. 1945 – Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan Standard Time). 1945 – The Viet Minh launches August Revolution amid the political confusion and power vacuum engulfing Vietnam. 1947 – Pakistan gains Independence from the British Empire and joins the Commonwealth of Nations. 1959 – Founding and first official meeting of the American Football League. 1962 – Two gunmen hijacked a mail truck in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and made off with $1.5 million. 1967 – UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. 1969 – Operation Banner: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland. 1971 – Bahrain declares independence as the State of Bahrain. 1972 – An Ilyushin Il-62 airliner crashes near Königs Wusterhausen, East Germany, due to an in-flight fire, killing 156. 1973 – The Pakistan Constitution of 1973 comes into effect. 1975 – The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running release in film history, opens in London. 1980 – Lech Walesa leads strikes at the Gdansk, Poland shipyards. 1987 – All the children held at Kia Lama, a rural property on Lake Eildon, Australia, run by the Santiniketan Park Association, are released after a police raid. 1994 – Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as “Carlos the Jackal”, is captured. 1996 – Greek Cypriot refugee Solomos Solomou is murdered by Turkish forces while trying to climb a flagpole in order to remove a Turkish flag from its mast in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus. 2003 – A widescale power blackout affects the northeast United States and Canada. 2005 – Helios Airways Flight 522, en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Prague, Czech Republic via Athens, crashes in the hills near Grammatiko, Greece, killing 121 passengers and crew. 2006 – Chencholai bombing: Sixty-one Sri Lankan Tamils are killed in a Sri Lankan Air force bombing. 2007 – The Kahtaniya bombings kills at least 334 people. 2010 – The first-ever Youth Olympic Games are held in Singapore. 2013 – Egypt declares a state of emergency as security forces kill hundreds of demonstrators supporting former president Mohamed Morsi. 2015 – The US Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off.