The Casper paper termed the situation on the border "serious".
The retreating British Indian Army arrived at Kut, Iraq.
The British reinforced Matruh, Egypt, to guard against the Senussis.
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Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
The Casper paper termed the situation on the border "serious".
The British reinforced Matruh, Egypt, to guard against the Senussis.
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Both sides withdrew in the Battle of Ctesiphon.
Pristina fell to the Bulgarians.
William Joseph Simmons, inspired Birth of a Nation, founded the second variant of the Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The event included the burning of a cross, something the original Klan did not do, but which the film had depicted.
Simmons would run the organization until 1922, at which point he'd be removed from power The organization reached its peak membership in 1925, and declined thereafter due to scandal.
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The "War of the Golden Stool" ended in Ghana when British troops brought in 31 captured kings and chiefs as prisoners of war. This would end the Anglo-Ashanti Wars.
Confederate veteran Reuben J. Chappell was shot while on duty as night watchman for the Pierce City, Missouri, Police Department. He was attempting to affect an arrest of a man who had fired a firearm in public. The event was one of the items that would lead to expulsions of African Americans the following year, under the belief that an African American gang had done the killing.
The small city's population has declined every year since 1890.
It was a Saturday.
British forces failed to break through Ottoman lines at Ctesiphon.
Sikh troops were deployed by the British to Matruah in response to Senussi attacks.
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The Indian Expeditionary Force D, mostly made up of Indian units and under the command of Gen. Sir John Nixon, attacked a more powerful force of Ottoman troops under the command of Nureddin Pasha near the site of the ancient city of Ctesiphon, located on the Tigris southeast of Baghdad.
Both sides took high casualty rates, but the battle arrested British progress in Mesopotamia and forced a British withdrawal.
The French evacuated the Vardar region of Macedonia in light of the defeat of the Serbian Army.
While the fighting in Europe had much of the front news attention in the US, in Texas it was Villa's plight south of the border, and how that might spill into the US.
The circus/carnival train owned by Con T. Kennedy was hit head on by the engine of a Central of Georgia passenger train east of Columbus, Georgia. The resulting crash resulted in at least 15 deaths of circus workers and perhaps up to 25, who were buried in a common grave.
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Putting up a post that was made, and then lost;
Villa was in retreat again:
Supreme Leader of the Senussi in North Africa Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi ordered his forces to cross the Egyptian frontier to execute a military coastal campaign against the Allies.
An outpost southeast of Sollum, Egypt was attacked
The Endurance broke up and sank. The Aurora drifted across the Antartic Circle as ice trapping her began to melt.
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Charles de Gaulle made a broadcast to the people of France announcing that he rejecting the position of president of FRance due to the "excessive demands regarding ministerial posts." He further announced that he would continue serving but would refuse to appoint any Communist to "any post related to foreign affairs."
Communist had done extremely well in the recent election and were a major component of the coalition government, taking more votes that any other party. The French Section of the Workers International, a French Socialist Party, had done very well also, coming in third. Coming in just behind the Communists, however, was the Catholic Popular Republican Movement. All three parties were in coalition that dates back to the election, with the coalition having De Gaulle's support at the time.
France was, quite frankly, on the very verge of becoming a Communist state, given the strong left wing turnout in the election. If it had, it would have been a disaster of epic proportions for the West. Most people looking at it objectively would have supposed that France would fall to the Communist.
This helps put in context, to a certain extent, the degree to which French military and political figures were proactive in trying to reestablish French colonialism, which was cast, with some credibility, as a war between Western ideals and Communism, although only imperfectly so. That France didn't go into a civil war is in no small part due to DeGaulle. DeGaulle would whether the leftist Third Republic, after which France would pull back from the brink. Still, having said that, why France fought it out in Indochina, and Algeria, makes a lot more sense if that history is grasped.
Josef Kramer, Irma Grese, Dr. Fritz Klein and eight others were sentenced to death by a British military court as Nazi war criminals for their roles in the concentration camps.
Kramer had come up in the concentration camp system, having been in the SS prior to World War Two.He was the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen.
Grese was 22 years old making her the youngest person to die under British law in the 20th Century. She'd joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel in 1937 at age 13, causing a rift with her father who did not approve of the Nazi Party. She left home at age 14 and entered the SS at age 18, having already worked for Karl Gelbardt by that time. In the camps she gained responsibility and became incredibly sadistic as well as extremely perverted perverted sadistic bisexual who had affairs with imprisoned Jewish women, and who is rumored to have a had one with Josef Kramer, until he learned of that. She was a sadist, and clearly an extremely tortured soul mentally.
Regarding her, inmate Auschwitz Romanian Jewish gynecologist Gisella Perl stated:
She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet, Irma Greze was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative sexual pervert I ever came across.
Perl relocated to Israel after the war with her daughter, whom she hid from the Naizs, and died there on December 16, 1988, at the age of 81
This would be subject to copyright, but we run it here under the fair use exception to note how common hunting themes were at the time.
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British commander in Indonesia E. C. Mansergh ordered Indonesians to surrender their arms by 18:00 or face "all the naval, army and air forces under my command". Sukarno appealed to President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee to intervene.
Former Hungarian Prime Minister László Bárdossy was sentenced to death.
August von Mackensen, age 95, famous German Field Marshal, died, which seems somehow fitting, not only because of his advanced old age, but also because the Germanys he served had effectively died as well.
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Kim Il Sung arrived at Port Wonsan and began to organize the Communist Party of Korea.
Kim was born into a Presbyterian family. He fled to Manchuria in 1920 after being involved in anti Japanese activities. He was in his mid teens at the time and then attended military schools. It was while he was in China that he became interested in Communism. He was a figure in the Chinese Communist Army during the pre World War Two Chinese Civil War and then again during World War Two, crossing into the Soviet Union in 1940. He then joined the Red Army. The Soviets chose Kim in order to have a Communist figure to introduce into Korea even though he was poorly educated and by 1940 his Korean was very poor. His early life is not very well known.
British and French troops complete the suppression of the Việt Minh in Saigon.
New Zealand ratified the UN Charter.
William Joyce was sentenced to death.
The British announced that Indian would shortly be granted home rule.
Shirley temple married Sgt. John Agar, a fellow actor. She was 17 years old. Agar was 25.
The marriage wouldn't last.
Agar had a real drinking problem, although he amazingly lived to age 81. Apparently he's associated with B science fiction movies, but I always associate him with John Ford westerns. He also appeared in The Sands of Iwo Jima. He met Shirley Temple in 1943 when he escorted her to a Hollywood party. She would only have been 15 years old at the time.
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Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek met for talks to avert civil war, which was already going on, between the Communists and the Nationalists in China. The Xinghua Campaign began on the same day.
Japanese troops in Southeast Asia, numbering around 740,000 surrendered to the British.
The Royal Navy arrived to reestablish British control of Hong Kong.
The USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay.
US military investigations on the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor were released. They contained criticism of former Secretary of State Hull, General Marshall and Admiral Stark Truman objected to the findings on Marshall and Hull.
The musical State Fair was released.
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Paul Tibbets briefed his crew on the upcoming bombing mission to Hiroshima, telling the crew that the bombs would be immensely powerful and "something new in the history of warfare". No specifics were provided.
Tibbets had entered the Army in 1937 in order to become a pilot after dropping out of medical school. He died in 2007 at age 92.
The U.S. Army Air Force continued to drop leaflets over Japan warning of the destruction of cities.
British troops in Lower Sittang cleared the Japanese from the Pegu-Martaban railay at Abya.
Japanese troops executed seven captured American airmen in Singapore.
The Soviet Union gifted the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow with a bugged plaque.
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe by Johnny Mercer was number one on the music charts.
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The USS Indianapolis was sunk by the submarine I-58. Secrecy due to its role in delivering the atomic bomb to Tinian would keep its sinking secrete for several days, leading to the greatest mass shark attack in history.
The 509th Composite Group of the United States Air Force received the order that would lead to the dropping of the first atomic bomb.
Melvin Mayfield performed the actions that resulted in his winning the Medal of Honor.
He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while fighting in the Cordillera Mountains of Luzon, Philippine Islands. When 2 Filipino companies were pinned down under a torrent of enemy fire that converged on them from a circular ridge commanding their position, Cpl. Mayfield, in a gallant single-handed effort to aid them, rushed from shell hole to shell hole until he reached 4 enemy caves atop the barren fire-swept hill. With grenades and his carbine, he assaulted each of the caves while enemy fire pounded about him. However, before he annihilated the last hostile redoubt, a machinegun bullet destroyed his weapon and slashed his left hand. Disregarding his wound, he secured more grenades and dauntlessly charged again into the face of pointblank fire to help destroy a hostile observation post. By his gallant determination and heroic leadership, Cpl. Mayfield inspired the men to eliminate all remaining pockets of resistance in the area and to press the advance against the enemy.
You'll note that this occurred on Luzon, which the US had declared to be secured.
He survived the war and died in 1990 at age 71.
His action was the last action of the war to result in a Medal of Honor.
Henry Ford issued a statement declaring:
the nation and the world are on the threshold of a prosperity and standard of living that never before were considered possible.
I'm not a fan of Ford's, but he was correct, perhaps beyond his wildest imagination.
The British 8th Army, the Desert Rats, was disbanded.
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The name is nearly blasphemous. The device itself was called the "Gadget".
Nuclear power, sadly, arrived in the form of a weapon. It had not, however, yet been used that way.
British soldiers were taking advantage of the relaxation of the fraternization rules by chatting with German women. We often hear of the calorie deprivation of the Second World War, but, while not seeking to be vulgar, the young woman on the far right clearly hadn't been too calorie deprived in the late stages of the war.
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