U.S. sailors landed at Bluefield, Nicaragua to protect U.S. citizens in the wake of revived fighting in a civil war.
French aircraft bombed Rif positions in Morocco as the Rif War resumed.
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The Eastern Orthodox Church granted autocephaly to the Polish Orthodox Church. The church has approximately 500,000 members today, of which 156,000 live in Poland.
The Escadrille Cherifienne, a French Foreign Legion unit composed of Americans, bombarded the city of Chefchaouen, considered a holy shrine of the Jebala people.
Syrian rebels attack Al-Musayfirah. The attack was at first successful but deployment of the French Air Force caused the rebels to withdraw.
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The first amphibious landing of armor occured at Alhucemas Bay in Morocco. This Spanish landing was successful.
The Rif War would soon end.
Washington D. C. building heights were discussed.
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France sent aircraft over the Ruhr in preparation for entering it.
Czechoslovak Finance Minister Alois Rašín was shot by an anarchist.
A white mob destroyed Rosewood, Florida. We reported on the start of these events a few days ago.
In Sofia, Bulgaria, an explosion of surplus artillery shells sold to a junk dealer by the Interallied Disarmament Commission killed twelve.
On this day in 1941, Commonwealth forces and Free French forces invaded French Syria.
The campaign is remarkable for a variety of reasons, including the use of cavalry by both sides. The action was made necessary by legitimate British fears that Vichy would allow the Germans to occupy Syria, a threat made credible, if only from the Allied prospective, by the airborne invasion of Crete which had just occurred and by Vichy allowing the Luftwaffe airport rights in Syria. Indeed, the action had been proceeded by Royal Air Force strikes on French airfields and retaliatory French raids on British ones in Transjordan.
The campaign was short, but it was marked by notable French resistance to the Commonwealth invasion and a decline of an offer of German Luftwaffe assistance. The action overall is one of several that cast some legitimate doubt on the common concept of all Frenchmen being pro Ally at the time.
Surprisingly, the action did not result in a Vichy declaration of war against the United Kingdom and in fact Vichy's forces in Syria fairly rapidly fell in spite of their stout resistance. The British had battlefield superiority, but this required diversion of Commonwealth forces from Libya, where their loss was keenly felt. The action also, however, saw the deployment of Free French forces in what might be regarded as a near civil war being fought, and really for the first time, in a French colony.
The Free French were given military administration of Syria and Lebanon following the Allied victory, something that more or less made it clear that the British at least were recognizing a rival claim to the governance of France. That administration, in keeping with the spirt of the age, recognized the independence of Lebanon and Syria, with Lebanon achieving a real measure of independence that Syria did not. Lebanon declared war on the Axis powers in 1943.
DeGaulle, who was effectively the head of the Free French state by the war's end, was not sympathetic to Syrian independence and as with Algeria, the end of the war brought on demands for immediate statehood. Demonstrations in Damascus turned violent in May, 1945 which resulted in French troops being deployed inside of Syria to quite the demonstrations. This didn't work and the British intervened with their troops having authorization to fire on the French if necessary, which it did not turn out to be, one of two instances of the British intervening in favor of a post war independence movement against a European colonial power (the other being in the Dutch East Indies). This ended with the French leaving and the British briefly staying, until they were able to withdraw.
Casper, whose first buildings had been built in 1888, became a First Class City under Wyoming law, meaning that its population exceeded 4,000 residents.
Adolphe Pégoud, France's first ace, was killed in combat. He had six combat victories.
Jimmy Laender pitched a no hitter for the Chicago Cubs.
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The victims included Armenian leaders Paramaz, Aram Achekbashian, and Kegham Vanigian.
The party still exists.
British and Canadian forces captured the front line northwest of La Bassée, France but were then pushed back by German grenades and a shortage of ammunition.
French aircraft raided Baden and Karlsruhe, Germany.
Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia died at age 56 of ill health, his condition having worsened due to World War One due to the stress of having close family members in the army. After his death his diaries revealed that he had been a tormented homosexual.
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French fighter pilot Lieutenant Roland Garros scored the first areal kill by firing a machine gun through a tractor propeller.
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The French First Army advanced on German forces near Sarrebourg, Lorraine, France.
Albanian rebels attacked Durrës, the capital of Albania, but were driven back by Romanian volunteer forces, showing how confusing the Great War already was.
The first real bomber, the the French Voisin III, made its first combat run. An attack on German airship hangars at Metz-Frescaty Air Base in Germany.
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