On this day

1901 - British inventor Hubert Cecil Booth patented the vacuum cleaner.

1909 – Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.

1918 – Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.

1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking 9 of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.

1848 - Accurate and scientific ' state of the weather' reports were first published by Charles Dickens's newspaper, The Daily News.

1888 - The body of Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of Jack the Ripper, was found mutilated in Buck's Row, London. The unidentified serial killer's attacks involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.

1897 – Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector.

1939 – Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day, thus starting World War II in Europe.

1957 – The Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia) gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

1997 - Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed and their driver were killed in a car crash in the Place de l'Alma underpass in Paris, France.

1998 – North Korea reportedly launches Kwangmyŏngsŏng-1, its first satellite.

2006 – Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream, stolen on August 22, 2004, is recovered in a raid by Norwegian police.

1532 – Lady Anne Boleyn is made Marquess of Pembroke by her fiancé, King Henry VIII of England.

1715 – King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years – the longest of any major European monarch.

1804 – Juno, one of the largest main belt asteroids, is discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.

1878 – Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.

1902 – A Trip to the Moon, considered one of the first science fiction films, is released in France.

1914 – St. Petersburg, Russia, changes its name to Petrograd.

1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany and Slovakia invade Poland, beginning the European phase of World War II.

1951 – The United States, Australia and New Zealand sign a mutual defense pact, called the ANZUS Treaty.

1958 – Iceland expands its fishing zone, putting it into conflict with the United Kingdom, beginning the Cod Wars.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).

1985 – A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

1991 - Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union.

2004 – The Beslan school hostage crisis commences when armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia.

31 B.C.E. - The Battle of Actium: Roman leader Octavian defeated the alliance of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt in a naval battle in the Ionian Sea. This put the Roman world under Octavian's control and he became the first Roman emperor as Augustus Caesar.

1666 - The Great Fire of London began in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane, and rapidly spread throughout the city, destroying most of London's buildings and houses. Although 10,000 buildings were destroyed in the four-day blaze only six people died.

1752 – Great Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.

1939 - Under the National Service Bill, men aged 19 - 41 were conscripted in Britain.

1945 - World War II officially ended when Japanese officials, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, surrendered on behalf of their country.

1945 - Just hours after the Japanese surrender in World War II, Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader, proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

1994 - Entertainer and television presenter Roy Castle died from lung cancer at his Buckinghamshire home, just two days after his sixty second birthday. He was a lifelong non-smoker and blamed his illness on years of playing the trumpet in smoky jazz clubs.

301 – San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, is founded by Saint Marinus.

1189 – Richard I of England (Richard the Lionheart) is crowned at Westminster.

1783 - The Treaty of Paris officially ended the Revolutionary War between the United States and Great Britain. It was signed by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain, and France, and the United States became a free and independent nation.

1803 – English scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.

1935 – Sir Malcolm Campbell reaches a speed of 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph

1939 - British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in a radio broadcast, announced that Britain and France had declared war on Germany. He formed an all-party War Cabinet with Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty.

1945 – Three-day celebration was held in China, following the Victory over Japan Day on September 2.

1967 – Dagen H in Sweden: traffic changes from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight.

1976 – Viking program: The American Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars.

2004 – Beslan school hostage crisis – day 3: the Beslan hostage crisis ends with the deaths of over 300 people, more than half of which are children.

476 – Romulus Augustulus, last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself "King of Italy", thus ending the Western Roman Empire.

1666 – In London, England, the most destructive damage from the Great Fire occurs.

1886 – American Indian Wars: after almost 30 years of fighting, Apache leader Geronimo, with his remaining warriors, surrenders to General Nelson Miles in Arizona.

1888 – George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak and receives a patent for his camera that uses roll film.

1893 - Beatrix Potter introduced Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail in an illustrated note to her governess’s five-year-old son, Noel Moore.

1939 – World War II: a Bristol Blenheim is the first British aircraft to cross the German coast following the declaration of war and German ships are bombed.

1941 – World War II: a German submarine makes the first attack against a United States ship, the USS Greer.

1944 – World War II: the British 11th Armoured Division liberates the Belgian city of Antwerp.

1964 - Queen Elizabeth II opened the Forth Road Bridge across the Firth of Forth in Scotland.

1972 – Mark Spitz becomes the first competitor to win seven medals at a single Olympic Games.

1998 – Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University.

1666 – The Great Fire of London ends: 10,000 buildings including St. Paul's Cathedral are destroyed, but only 6 people are known to have died.

1793 – French Revolution: The French National Convention initiates the Reign of Terror.

1798 – Conscription is made mandatory in France by the Jourdan law.

1836 – Sam Houston is elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas.

1877 – American Indian Wars: Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is bayoneted by a United States soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska.

1945 – Cold War: Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Union embassy clerk, defects to Canada, exposing Soviet espionage in North America, signalling the beginning of the Cold War.

1969 - The British commercial television channel, ITV, began broadcasting in colour.

1972 – Munich Massacre: A Palestinian terrorist group called Black September attack and take hostage 11 Israel athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. 2 die in the attack and 9 die the following day.

1980 – The St. Gotthard Tunnel opens in Switzerland as the world's longest highway tunnel at 10.14 miles (16.224 km) stretching from Göschenen to Airolo.

(05-09-2012 12:05 )skully Wrote:  1972 – Munich Massacre: A Palestinian terrorist group called Black September attack and take hostage 11 Israel athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. 2 die in the attack and 9 die the following day.

The horror of the Munich massacre was to cast a depressing shadow over what had so far been a roaring success for both the Olympic movement in previous events and German authorities in organising a games that all could enjoy. As a result of the incident, even further heightened security measures have been a major factor in subsequent Olympic Games and international terrorism has unfortunately been a factor in general life.

Members of the Black September group kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes from the Munich Olympic Village appartments. Two of the athletes were murdered during the raid on the athlete's rooms, with the remaining nine taken hostage inside the village. Disaster occurred when German police, neither properly equipped, informed nor trained for counter-terrorism operations, attempted a rescue of the athletes. The rescue attempt was a massive failure resulting in the deaths of all nine hostages, one policeman and only five of the eight kidnappers. The incident further damaged international relations between Israel and Germany, relations which were already fragile after the horrors of the Holocaust during the Second World War.

In response, the West German government were determined to create a specialist police unit, an equivalent to the S.W.A.T. unit of the United States, which would be trained and equipped to deal specifically with terrorist incidents and extreme emergencies. The newly created police unit was to be known as GSG-9 (full name Grenzschutzgruppe 9) and were established on April 17th, 1973 as part of the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guard Service). Israeli agent Sayeret Matkal worked closely with the German police and his expertise proved invaluable in to putting the new unit in to practice.

GSG-9 were to be needed for a major incident just four years later in October of 1977. Another Palestinian terrorist cell had hijacked German airline Lufthansa's Landshut Flight 181 en route from Palma, Mallorca to Frankfurt. They demanded the release of imprisoned members of the Red Army Faction terrorist group in exhchange for passengers and crew. Following four days in which the plane was flown to several locations within the Middle East and during which the plane's captain Jurgen Schumann was murdered by the terrorist leader, German authorities directed them to Mogadishu, Somalia on the false pretense that Red Army Faction members would be released. On arrival, members of GSG-9 and two British SAS operatives stormed the plane, aided by Somalian ranger units creating a distraction outside the aircraft. The incident was over in just seven minutes, a massive success with all 86 passengers and crew members rescued, three of the terrorists killed and the fourth captured by authorities.

GSG-9 were widely applauded by the international counter-terrorism community for the professional handling of the operation. Hijacked planes are considered to be the most dangerous situation a hostage rescue force is likely to encounter. To support the operation, the British SAS had provided newly developed 'Flash Bang Grenades'. These were used outside the aircraft at the critical time to storm the plane. At the time of the 1977 Mogadishu mission, the commander of the Israeli Border Police, Tzvi War, described GSG 9 as "the best anti-terrorist group in the world."

Today, GSG-9 operate under the authority of the German Federal Police Force and have specialist jurisdiction in counter terrorism, special weapons operations and protection of internationally protected persons and organisations.

The Wikipedia link is below, containing information about the unit's most high profile operations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSG9

1492 – Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic for the first time.

1522 – The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.

1620 – The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America.

1651 - Charles II famously spent the night hidden in an oak tree at Boscobel after his defeat by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester.

1861 – American Civil War: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, which gives the Union control of the mouth of the Tennessee River.

1907 - The Lusitania set sail from Liverpool for New York on her maiden voyage. She set a record, crossing the Atlantic in five days at an average speed of 23 knots.

1939 - World War II: In an episode known as The Battle of Barking Creek, a friendly fire incident near Ipswich resulted in the first war death of a British fighter pilot (Pilot Officer Montague Hulton-Harrop). The incident exposed the inadequacies of RAF radar and identification procedures, leading to them being greatly improved by the crucial period of the Battle of Britain.

1949 – Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.

1952 - At the Farnborough Airshow, a prototype de Havilland jet fighter exploded, and the debris fell onto the crowd. 26 people died.

1952 – Canada's first television station, CBFT-TV, opens in Montreal.

1960 - Ten skeletons were found in 3800 year old graves at Stonehenge.

1962 – Archaeologist Peter Marsden discovers the first of the Blackfriars Ships dating back to the 2nd century AD in the Blackfriars area of the banks of the River Thames in London.

1991 – The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.

1997 – Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales takes place in London. Over a million people lined the streets and 2.5 billion watched around the world on television.

(06-09-2012 13:36 )skully Wrote:  1939 - World War II: In an episode known as The Battle of Barking Creek, a friendly fire incident near Ipswich resulted in the first war death of a British fighter pilot (Pilot Officer Montague Hulton-Harrop). The incident exposed the inadequacies of RAF radar and identification procedures, leading to them being greatly improved by the crucial period of the Battle of Britain.

At 6.15am a false alarm caused a fighter defence wing to be scrambled. With the war only three days old, none of the Royal Air Force pilots had seen combat, very few had ever seen a German plane. Communications between planes and command centres were poor. There was no identifying procedure for pilots to distinguish between enemy and friendly aircraft.

With everyone in the air expecting to see enemy aircraft, and no experience of having done so, the conditions readily lent themselves to misunderstanding. 'A' Flight of 74 Squadron saw what they believed were enemy planes and their commanding officer, Sailor Malan, gave a clear and definite order to engage. Two of the three, Flying Officer Vincent 'Paddy' Byrne and Pilot Officer John Freeborn, opened fire on what were, in fact, reserve aircraft from their own base which had been sent up a few minutes later.

Malan later claimed to have given a last minute call of 'friendly aircraft - break away!' but, whether this actually happened or not, it is certain that no such call was heard by the attacking pilots.

The incident was hushed-up and even now many of the papers relating to both the inquiry and courts martial of the pilots have not been released. However, it is known that there was considerable bitterness and animosity between Freeborn and his commanding Officer, Sailor Malan, who he felt tried to evade responsibility for the attack. Malan testified for the prosecution against his own pilots, stating that Freeborn had been irresponsible, impetuous, and had not taken proper heed of vital communications. During the trial, Freeborn's counsel, Sir Patrick Hastings, called Malan a bare-faced liar.

Both pilots were exonerated of any blame. Malan and Freeborn went on to have exemplary war records, both being awarded the DFC. Paddy Byrne was shot down and captured, and eventually got sent to the infamous Stalag Luft III. By an astonishing coincidence, the junior defence counsel at Byrne's court martial was Roger Bushell, and the two of them found themselves in captivity together and planning "The Great Escape".

Byrne did not take part in the escape but got out by feigning madness and was repatriated on compassionate grounds. Upon his return to England he rejoined he RAF but was given a desk job as it was felt that allowing him to return to combat duty could threaten the prospects of release for any genuinely sick POWs in the future.