Military History
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Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began
On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. World War I began as declarations of war by other European nations quickly followed. The ‘Great War’, which began on 28 July 1914 with Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war with Serbia, was the first truly global war. It began in Europe but quickly spread throughout the world. Many countries became embroiled within the war’s first month; others joined in the ensuing four years, with Honduras announcing hostilities with Germany as late as 19 July 1918 (with the record going to Romania, who entered the war – albeit for the second time – one day before it finished, on 10 November 1918). Detailed below…
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Jun 18, 1940: Hitler and Mussolini meet in Munich
On this day in 1940, Benito Mussolini arrives in Munich with his foreign minister, Count Ciano, to discuss immediate plans with the Fuhrer, and doesn’t like what he hears. Embarrassed over the late entry of Italy in the war against the Allies, and its rather tepid performance since, Mussolini met with Hitler determined to convince his Axis partner to exploit the advantage he had in France by demanding total surrender and occupying the southern portion still free. The Italian dictator clearly wanted “in” on the spoils, and this was a way of reaping rewards with a minimum of risk. But Hitler, too, was in no mood to risk, and was…
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D-Day: June 6, 1944
D-Day. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 7:57, June 6, 2011, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/d-day. [American Troops Landing on D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy Coast], 1944 Robert Capa (American, born Hungary, 1913–1954) Gelatin silver print Source:Robert Capa: [American Troops Landing on D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy Coast] (1987.1100.501) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Although the term D-Day is used routinely as military lingo for the day an operation or event will take place, for many it is also synonymous with June 6, 1944, the day the Allied powers crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control…
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In Honor of Those Who Suffered in Stalin’s Gulag
source: http://www.artukraine.com/paintings/getman.htm THE GULAG COLLECTION: PAINTINGS OF THE SOVIET PENAL SYSTEM BY FORMER PRISONER NIKOLAI GETMAN “I was born on December 23, 1917 in the town of Kharkov, Ukraine” Nikolai Getman Book: “The Gulag Collection: Paintings of the Soviet Penal System by Former Prisoner Nikolai Getman” Published by The Jamestown Foundation Washington, D.C.; Year 2001 1. ESSAY NUMBER ONE FROM THE BOOK————————— In 1946 an artist named Nikolai Getman was imprisoned in the Soviet Union’s GULAG. During the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed a system of extreme repression and terror that inflicted forced famines, purges, executions, and arrests on the people of the Soviet Union. Under Josef Stalin, forced-labor camps…
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May 22, 1455:The War of the Roses
In the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years. Both families, closely related, claimed the throne through descent from the sons of Edward III, the king of England from 1327 to 1377. The first Lancastrian…