Sunday, September 17, 1944. Operation Market Garden commences.

According to the Wyoming State History calendar, a cat saved a LaGrange girl from a coiled rattlesnake.

Cat's reaction time is so incredibly quick they can out react snakes pretty readily, whereas humans cannot.

This is not actually a unique event.  In 2017, for instance, a girl in Florida was saved from a rattlesnake by her grandmother's cat.

Pieced together in a remarkably quick time, the gigantic Montgomery planned airborne invasion of the Netherlands, Operation Market Garden, commenced on this day in 1944.  Planned as a series of airborne drops to secure major bridges followed by anground advance, it put the ground forces on a single, often elevated, road.  A field problem in the Dutch military prior to the war had posed the same strategic problem with this solution being the failing solution.

Airborne forces from the US, UK, Canada, and Poland would participate in the offensive.  Ground troops from the US and UK provided the ground spearhead. The operation was a British one in terms of command.

Dutch railway workers went on strike, heading a call made by Gen. Eisenhower.

The Canadian Army launched Operation Wellhit to take Boulogne, France.

The Battle of San Marino began in the tiny independant Italian enclave, which had declared itself to be neutral.  German forces entered it for refuge anyway, and the battle was on.

The Soviets launched the Tallinn Offensive.

A bomb dropped by the RAF disabled the Tirpitz.

The UK relaxed blackout restrictions in London.

The Battle of Angaur began on Palau.

The carrier Un'yō was torpedoed and sunk in the South China Sea by the American submarine Barb.

Last edition:

Saturday, September 16, 1944. "Wacht am Rhein" approved.

Labels: "Wacht am Rhein", Adolf Hitler, Battle of the Bulge, Belgium, Bulgaria, Clothing, Denmark, German Weimar Republic, Operation Market Garden, Red Army, Second Quebec Conference, World War Two