This Week in History
HISTORY, 18 Sep 2023
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service
18-24 September 2023
Quote of the Week:
“It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
— Dag Hammarskjöld
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18 September
1454 Thirteen Years’ War: In the Battle of Chojnice, the Polish army is defeated by the Teutonic knights.
1739 The Treaty of Belgrade is signed, whereby Austria cedes lands south of the Sava and Danube rivers to the Ottoman Empire
1837 Tiffany & Co. (first named Tiffany & Young) is founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany and Teddy Young in New York City. The store is called a “stationery and fancy goods emporium”.
1922 The Kingdom of Hungary is admitted to the League of Nations.
1931 Imperial Japan instigates the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade and occupy Manchuria.
1934 The Soviet Union is admitted to the League of Nations.
1939 World War II: The radio show Germany Calling begins transmitting Nazi propaganda.
1943 World War II: Adolf Hitler orders the deportation of Danish Jews.
1945 General Douglas MacArthur moves his general headquarters from Manila to Tokyo.
1948 Operation Polo is terminated after the Indian Army accepts the surrender of the army of Hyderabad.
1960 Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations.
– Fidel Castro’s First Speech at UN, Hours that Made History | FIDEL Soldier of Ideas
1961 U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
– Death of Dag Hammarskjöld | Archives and Records Management Section | New York (un.org
– UN Leader Dag Hammarskjold Died in Mysterious Circumstances in 1961. What Really Happened? | HISTORY
– Dag Hammarskjold’s Plane Crash: What Really Happened to the U.N. Chief (foreignpolicy.com)
– 1961 Ndola Transair Sweden DC-6 crash – Wikipedia
– RAF veteran ‘admitted 1961 killing of UN secretary general’ | Dag Hammarskjöld | The Guardian
– Markings of Maturity (spectrummagazine.org)
1962 Burundi, Jamaica, Rwanda and Trinidad and Tobago are admitted to the United Nations.
1962 Burundi, Jamaica, Rwanda and Trinidad and Tobago are admitted to the United Nations.
1973 The Bahamas, East Germany and West Germany are admitted to the United Nations.
1988 The 8888 Uprising in Myanmar comes to an end.
1988 General Henri Namphy, president of Haiti, is ousted from power in a coup d’état led by General Prosper Avril
1990 Liechtenstein becomes a member of the United Nations.
1997 United States media magnate Ted Turner donates US$1 billion to the United Nations.
1997 The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention is adopted.
– History and Text | Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (apminebanconvention.org)
– International Campaign to Ban Landmines – Wikipedia
– Background Briefing on Landmine Use in Ukraine | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)
2001 First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
2007 Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution.
2014 Scotland votes against independence from the United Kingdom, by 55% to 45%.
2016 The 2016 Uri attack in Jammu and Kashmir, India by terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed results in the deaths of nineteen Indian Army soldiers and all four attackers
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19 September
1410 End of the Siege of Marienburg: The State of the Teutonic Order repulses the joint Polish—Lithuanian forces.
1870 Franco-Prussian War: The siege of Paris begins. The city held out for over four months before surrendering.
1916 World War I: During the East African Campaign, colonial forces of the Belgian Congo (Force Publique) under the command of Charles Tombeur capture the town of Tabora after heavy fighting.
1940 World War II: Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp to gather and smuggle out information for the resistance movement
1944 World War II: The Moscow Armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union is signed, which officially ended the Continuation War
1946 The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich.
1950 Korean War: An attack by North Korean forces was repelled at the Battle of Nam River.
– Korean War | Combatants, Summary, Years, Map, Casualties, & Facts | Britannica
1978 The Solomon Islands join the United Nations.
2006 The Thai army stages a coup. The Constitution is revoked and martial law is declared.
2019 A drone strike by the United States kills 30 civilian farmers in Afghanistan.
– Afghan Civilians | Costs of War (brown.edu)
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20 September
1058 Agnes of Poitou and Andrew I of Hungary meet to negotiate about the border territory of Burgenland.
1187 Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem.
1260 The Great Prussian Uprising among the old Prussians begins against the Teutonic Knights.
1602 The Spanish-held Dutch town of Grave capitulates to a besieging Dutch and English army under the command of Maurice of Orange
1697 he Treaty of Ryswick is signed by France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic, ending the Nine Years’ War.
1835 The decade-long Ragamuffin War starts when rebels capture Porto Alegre in Brazil.
1854 Crimean War: British and French troops defeat Russians at the Battle of Alma.
– The Crimean War: A Timeline Of Key Moments | HistoryExtra
– Crimean War – Summary, Facts & Causes (history.com)
– 8 Facts About the Crimean War | HISTORY
1893 Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
1920 Irish War of Independence: British police known as “Black and Tans” burn the town of Balbriggan and kill two local men in revenge for an IRA assassination.
– Timeline of the Irish War of Independence – Wikipedia
– Irish War of Independence | Summary, Guerrilla War, Death Toll, & Anglo-Irish Treaty | Britannica
1941 The Holocaust in Lithuania: Lithuanian Nazis and local police begin a mass execution of 403 Jews in Nemenčinė.
– Timeline of Jewish history in Lithuania and Belarus – Wikipedia
– The Holocaust in Lithuania | Facing History & Ourselves
– Lithuania – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools
1946 The first Cannes Film Festival is held, having been delayed for seven years due to World War II.
1946 Six days after a referendum, King Christian X of Denmark annuls the declaration of independence of the Faroe Islands.
1955 The Treaty on Relations between the USSR and the GDR is signed.
1962 James Meredith, an African American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
1965 Following the Battle of Burki, the Indian Army captures Dograi in during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
– Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 – Wikiwand
1977 Vietnam is admitted to the United Nations.
1979 A French-supported coup d’état in the Central African Empire overthrows Emperor Bokassa I.
– Jean-Bédel Bokassa | Central African Dictator, Emperor & Military Leader | Britannica
– Colonialism in the Central African Republic – Wikipedia
1990 South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia
2011 The United States military ends its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.
2019 Roughly four million people, mostly students, demonstrate across the world to address climate change. Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden leads the demonstration in New York City.
– Climate movement – Wikipedia
– Youth for climate action | UNICEF
– Timeline: The Politics of Climate Change | FRONTLINE (pbs.org)
– Climate change: How do we know it is happening and caused by humans? – BBC News
– 12 Important Moments in the History of Climate Action: In Photos (globalcitizen.org)
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21 September
1860 Second Opium War: An Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Palikao.
– Opium | Drug, Physiological Actions, & History | Britannica
– Opium Wars | Timeline | Britannica
– The 1st and 2nd Opium Wars: Britain Versus China (thoughtco.com)
– Milestones: 1830–1860 – Office of the Historian (state.gov)
1896 Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan: British forces under the command of Horatio Kitchener take Dongola.
1898 Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days’ Reform in China.
1942 The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis send over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaitsi to Bełżec extermination camp.
– Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany – Wikipedia
– Ukraine — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org)
1942 The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews.
1942 The Holocaust in Poland: At the end of Yom Kippur, Germans order Jews to permanently move from Konstantynów to Biała Podlaska.
1942 The Boeing B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight.
1953 Lieutenant No Kum-sok, a North Korean pilot, defects to South Korea with his jet fighter.
1964 Malta gains independence from the United Kingdom, but remains in the Commonwealth.
1964 The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s fastest bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
1965 The Gambia, Maldives and Singapore are admitted as members of the United Nations.
1971 Bahrain, Bhutan and Qatar join the United Nations.
1972 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos begins authoritarian rule by declaring martial law.
1976 Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C because had been a member of the former Chilean Marxist government.
1976 Seychelles joins the United Nations.
1981 Belize is granted full independence from the United Kingdom.
1981 Sandra Day O’Connor is unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice.
1984 Brunei joins the United Nations.
1991 Armenia gains independence from the Soviet Union.
1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin triggers a constitutional crisis when he suspends parliament and scraps the constitution.
1993 A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-134 is shot down by a missile in the Black Sea near Sukhumi, Georgia
2003 The Galileo spacecraft is terminated by sending it into Jupiter’s atmosphere.
2012 Three Egyptian militants open fire on a group of Israeli soldiers in a southern Israel cross-border attack.
2013 Al-Shabaab Islamic militants attack the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya, killing at least 67 people.
2018 Killing of Zak Kostopoulos, LGBT rights activist beaten to death on a busy street in Athens
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22 September
1499 The Treaty of Basel concludes the Swabian War.
1586 The Battle of Zutphen is a Spanish victory over the English and Dutch.
1692 The last hanging of those convicted of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials; others are all eventually released.
1866 The Battle of Curupayty is Paraguay’s only significant victory in the Paraguayan War.
1891 The first hydropower plant of Finland was commissioned along the Tammerkoski rapids in Tampere, Pirkanmaa.
1939 World War II: A joint German–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk is held to celebrate the successful invasion of Poland.
1941 The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murders 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
– Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany – Wikipedia
– Ukraine — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org)
– Ukraine – Nazi Occupation, Soviet, Genocide | Britannica
1948 Israeli-Palestine conflict: The All-Palestine Government is established by the Arab League.
– Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict – Wikipedia
– Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | Global Conflict Tracker (cfr.org)
– Historical Timeline: 1900-Present – Israeli-Palestinian – ProCon.org
1960 The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
1965 The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 between India and Pakistan over Kashmir ends after the United Nations calls for a ceasefire.
– Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts – Wikipedia
– Conflict Between India and Pakistan | Global Conflict Tracker (cfr.org)
– What were the reasons behind India-Pakistan War and its effects? (jagranjosh.com)
1979 A bright flash, resembling the detonation of a nuclear weapon, is observed near the Prince Edward Islands. Its cause is never determined.
– Blast From the Past – Foreign Policy
– The Vela Incident (nuclearweaponarchive.org)
– “New Declassified Records Deepen the Debate on the 22 September 1979 Event – Including Whether Israel and South Africa Were Involved.”
1980 Iraq invades Iran, sparking the nearly eight year Iran–Iraq War.
– Iran Iraq War Timeline | Timetoast timelines
– Iran-Iraq War summary | Britannica
– 1 Million Dead: Why the Iran-Iraq War Was So Brutal – 19FortyFive
1991 The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time.
2013 At least 75 people are killed in a suicide bombing at a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan
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23 September
1409 The Battle of Kherlen is the second significant victory over Ming dynasty China by the Mongols since 1368.
1803 Second Anglo-Maratha War: The Battle of Assaye is fought between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India
1905 Norway and Sweden sign the Karlstad Treaty, peacefully dissolving the Union between the two countries.
1942 World War II: The Matanikau action on Guadalcanal begins: U.S. Marines attack Japanese units along the Matanikau River.
1950 Korean War: The Battle of Hill 282 is the first US friendly-fire incident on British military personnel since World War II.
– Korean War – Causes, Timeline & Veterans | HISTORY
– Korean War Timeline | Britannica
1973 Argentine general election: Juan Perón returns to power in Argentina.
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24 September
787 Second Council of Nicaea: The council assembles at the church of Hagia Sophia.
– Second Council of Nicaea | Description, History, Significance, & Facts | Britannica
1674 Second Tantrik Coronation of Shivaji.
1890 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially renounces polygamy.
– Current state of polygamy in the Latter Day Saint movement – Wikipedia
– What do Latter-day Saints Believe? (churchofjesuschrist.org)
1906 Racial tensions exacerbated by rumors lead to the Atlanta Race Riot, further increasing racial segregation.
1946 Cathay Pacific Airways is founded in Hong Kong.
1946 The top-secret Clifford-Elsey Report on the Soviet Union is delivered to President Truman.
– The Elsey Report (researchgate.net)
– NSC 68: America’s Cold War Blueprint (americainclass.org)
– History 393 10.30.14 Flashcards | Quizlet
1948 The Honda Motor Company is founded.
1973 Guinea-Bissau declares its independence from Portugal.
1975 Southwest Face expedition members become the first persons to reach the summit of Mount Everest by any of its faces, instead of using a ridge route.
1993 The Cambodian monarchy is restored, with Norodom Sihanouk as king.
1996 Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.
– Full Text: COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR-TEST-BAN TREATY
– SUMMARY OF THE COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR-TEST-BAN TREATY (CTBT)
2007 Between 30,000 and 100,000 people take part in anti-government protests in Yangon, Burma, the largest in 20 years.
2008 Thabo Mbeki resigns as president of South Africa.
2009 The G20 summit begins in Pittsburgh with 30 global leaders in attendance.
2014 The Mars Orbiter Mission makes India the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit, and the first nation in the world to do so in its first attempt.
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Satoshi Ashikaga is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Having worked as researcher, development program/project officer, legal protection/humanitarian assistance officer, human rights monitor-negotiator, managing-editor, and more, he prefers a peaceful and prudent life. His previous work experiences, including those in war zones and war-torn zones, constantly remind him of the invaluableness of peace.
Tags: History
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 18 Sep 2023.
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