On November 19th in world history: 1095 - The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, began. 1493 - Christopher Columbus went ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He named it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico). 1600 King Charles I of England was born (d. 1649). 1794 - The United States and Great Britain signed Jay’s Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War. 1805 - Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and Suez Canal engineer, was born (d. 1894). 1816 - Warsaw University was established. 1824 - A flood on the Neva River in Russia claimed an estimated 10,000 lives. Winter came early to Russia in 1824. The very cold weather caused blocks of ice to form on the Neva River, near the city of St. Petersburg. Enough ice developed that the rivers flow was nearly stopped for several weeks. Water backed up behind the ice, but did not freeze. As a result, when the weather briefly warmed, the ice jam broke apart and the water overwhelmed the citys dam. The flood of icy cold water was the worst in the citys history. Hundreds of carriages and horses were swept away suddenly. Four hundred soldiers stationed in barracks climbed to the roofs to escape the flood, but were all killed. The waters freezing temperatures made staying alive in it for any length of time impossible. At the Kronshtadt port, hundreds of sailors were killed. The surge of water was so powerful that several ships were thrown into the citys marketplace. Much of the citys rich cultural history was lost in the flood. Valuable and irreplaceable books and art were damaged beyond repair. Even Czar Alexander Is royal palace suffered extensive damage, as water rose above the first floor of most of the citys buildings. Although exact numbers are impossible to determine, it is generally believed that as many as 10,000 people were killed. 1881 - A meteorite landed near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine. ---------- 1915 - In one of the most exciting episodes of the air war during World War I, British airman Richard Bell Davies performed a daring rescue on November 19, 1915, swooping down in his plane to whisk a downed fellow pilot from behind the Turkish lines at Ferrijik Junction. A squadron commander in the Royal Naval Air Service, Davies was flying alongside Flight Sub-Lieutenant Gilbert F. Smylie on a bombing mission. Their target was the railway junction at Ferrijik, located near the Aegean Sea and the border between Bulgaria and Ottoman-controlled Europe. When the Turks hit Smylies plane with anti-aircraft fire, he was forced to land. As he made his way to the ground, Smylie was able to release all his bombs but one before making a safe landing behind enemy lines. Smylie was then unable to restart his plane and immediately set fire to the aircraft in order to disable it. Meanwhile, Davies saw his comrades distress from the air and quickly moved to land his own plane nearby. Seeing Davies coming to his rescue and fearing the remaining bomb on his plane would explode, injuring or killing them both, Smylie quickly took aim at his machine with his revolver and fired, exploding the bomb safely just before Davies came within its reach. Davies then rushed to grab hold of Smylie, hauling him on board his aircraft just as a group of Turkish soldiers approached. Before the Turks could reach them, Davies took off, flying himself and Smylie to safety behind British lines. Calling Davies act a feat of airmanship that can seldom have been equaled for skill and gallantry, the British government awarded him the Victoria Cross on January 1, 1916. The quick-thinking Smylie was rewarded as well; he received the Distinguished Service Cross. ---------- 1917 - Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India was born (d. 1984). 1940 - Adolf Hitler instructed Spanish Foreign Minister Serano Suner to make good on an agreement for Spain to attack Gibraltar, a British-controlled region, which would seal off the Mediterranean and trap British troops in North Africa. 1941 - In the World War II battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran, two ships sank each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen. ---------- 1942 - The Soviet Red Army under General Georgi Zhukov launched Operation Uranus, the great Soviet counteroffensive that turned the tide in the Battle of Stalingrad. On June 22, 1941, despite the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, Nazi Germany launched a massive invasion against the USSR. Aided by its greatly superior air force, the German army raced across the Russian plains, inflicting terrible casualties on the Red Army and the Soviet population. With the assistance of troops from their Axis allies, the Germans conquered vast territory, and by mid October the great Russian cities of Leningrad and Moscow were under siege. However, the Soviets held on, and the coming of winter forced the German offensive to pause. For the 1942 summer offensive, Adolf Hitler ordered the Sixth Army, under General Friedrich von Paulus, to take Stalingrad in the south, an industrial center and obstacle to Nazi control of the precious Caucasus oil wells. In August, the German Sixth Army made advances across the Volga River while the German Fourth Air Fleet reduced Stalingrad to burning rubble, killing more than 40,000 civilians. In early September, General Paulus ordered the first offensives into Stalingrad, estimating that it would take his army about 10 days to capture the city. Thus began one of the most horrific battles of World War II and arguably the most important because it was the turning point in the war between Germany and the USSR. In their attempt to take Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army faced General Vasily Zhukov leading a bitter Red Army employing the ruined city to their advantage, transforming destroyed buildings and rubble into natural defensive fortifications. In a method of fighting the Germans began to call the Rattenkrieg, or Rats War, the opposing forces broke into squads eight or 10 strong and fought each other for every house and yard of territory. The battle saw rapid advances in street-fighting technology, such as a German machine gun that shot around corners and a light Russian plane that glided silently over German positions at night, dropping bombs without warning. However, both sides lacked necessary food, water, or medical supplies, and tens of thousands perished every week. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was determined to liberate the city named after him, and in November he ordered massive reinforcements to the area. On November 19, General Zhukov launched a great Soviet counteroffensive out of the rubble of Stalingrad. German command underestimated the scale of the counterattack, and the Sixth Army was quickly overwhelmed by the offensive, which involved 500,000 Soviet troops, 900 tanks, and 1,400 aircraft. Within three days, the entire German force of more than 200,000 men was encircled. Italian and Romanian troops at Stalingrad surrendered, but the Germans hung on, receiving limited supplies by air and waiting for reinforcements. Hitler ordered Von Paulus to remain in place and promoted him to field marshal, as no Nazi field marshal had ever surrendered. Starvation and the bitter Russian winter took as many lives as the merciless Soviet troops, and on January 21, 1943, the last of the airports held by the Germans fell to the Soviets, completely cutting off the Germans from supplies. On January 31, Von Paulus surrendered German forces in the southern sector, and on February 2 the remaining German troops surrendered. Only 90,000 German soldiers were still alive, and of these only 5,000 troops would survive the Soviet prisoner-of-war camps and make it back to Germany. The Battle of Stalingrad turned the tide in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. General Zhukov, who had played such an important role in the victory, later led the Soviet drive on Berlin. On May 1, 1945, he personally accepted the German surrender of Berlin. Von Paulus, meanwhile, agitated against Adolf Hitler among the German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and in 1946 provided testimony at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. After his release by the Soviets in 1953, he settled in East Germany. ---------- 1943 - The Nazis liquidated the Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt. 1954 - Télé Monte Carlo, Europe’s oldest private television channel, was launched by Prince Rainier III. 1967 - TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong, was established. 1969 - Football player Pelé scored his 1,000th goal. 1971 - Cambodians appealed to Saigon for help as communist forces move closer to Phnom Penh. Saigon officials revealed that in the previous week, an eight-person Cambodian delegation flew to the South Vietnamese capital to officially request South Vietnamese artillery and engineer support for beleaguered Cambodian government troops. Cambodian Premier Lon Nol and his troops were involved in a life or death struggle with the communist Khmer Rouge force and their North Vietnamese allies for control of the country. ---------- 1977 - In an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat traveled to Jerusalem to seek a permanent peace settlement with Israel after decades of conflict. Sadats visit, in which he met with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and spoke before the Knesset (Parliament), was met with outrage in most of the Arab world. Despite criticism from Egypts regional allies, Sadat continued to pursue peace with Begin, and in 1978 the two leaders met again in the United States, where they negotiated a historic agreement with President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland. The Camp David Accords, signed in September 1978, laid the groundwork for a permanent peace agreement between Egypt and Israel after three decades of hostilities. The final peace agreement--the first between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors--was signed in March 1979. The treaty ended the state of war between the two countries and provided for the establishment of full diplomatic and commercial relations. Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. However, Sadats peace efforts were not so highly acclaimed in the Arab world, and he was assassinated on October 6, 1981, by Muslim extremists in Cairo. Despite Sadats death, the peace process continued under Egypts new president, Hosni Mubarak. In 1982, Israel fulfilled the 1979 peace treaty by returning the last segment of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Egyptian-Israeli peace continues today. ---------- 1977 - Transportes Aéreos Portugueses Boeing 727 crashed in Madeira Islands, killing 130. 1979 - Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran. 1984 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City started a major fire and killed about 500 people. 1988 - Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic publicly declared that Serbia was under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovoas well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia. 1996 - Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrived in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire. 1999 - China launched its first Shenzhou spacecraft. 2010 - An explosion in New Zealands Pike River coal mine killed 29 and injured two. [Sources include History]
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:56:08 +0000
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