Historical Events & Dates II

1. Johnstown Massacre - The Peoples Temple, an American religious movement under the leadership of Jim Jones commit mass suicide in Guyana leading to some 900 deaths.

2. Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest offensive of WW1 - a costly and largely unsuccessful Allied offensive on the Western Front, resulting in over a million casualties on both sides. July - November

3. Start of Battle of Stalingrad - July

4. End of Battle of Stalingrad, estimated 2 million casualties - February

5. The Romans officially withdrew from Britain.

6. ISIS takes Mosul in Northern Iraq - June

7. Kazakhstan becomes first country to gain independence from USSR - 16th December

8. Profumo affair proves to be a major scandal in Britain. John Profumo, the 46-year-old Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with the 19-year-old model Christine Keeler.

9. The Dreyfus affair is resolution. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent, was wrongfully convicted of treason for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris in 1894. He is final exonerated in

10. Mao Zedong dies in Beijing China at the age of 82 from a heart attack - 9 September

11. Josef Stalin dies in Moscow at the age of 74 from a stroke - 5 March

12. Saddam Hussein dies in Baghdad at the age of 69, he is executed by hanging - 30 December

13. Hitler dies in a bunker in Berlin at the age of 56 from a gunshot to the head - 30th April

14. Katyn massacre in Poland, the Soviets kill nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war.

15. The Nakba in Palestine, some 750,000 Palestinians are ethnically cleansed from their land. Some 16,000 die.

16. Soviet invasion of Finland, also called the Winter War.

17. The East Timor genocide begins waged by the Indonesian New Order government during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. Between 60,000 to 308,000 people die.

18. Kwame Nkrumah leads Ghana to gain independence from Britain.

19. Beginning of the French Revolution - Louis XVI & his wife Marie Antoinette are overthrown.

20. End of French Revolution - Napoleon Bonaparte stages a coup d'état abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France's 'first consul'. 9th November

21. First free votes in South Africa, some 19.7 million people vote, as widely expected, the African National Congress (ANC) led by Nelson Mandela wins the election.

22. Political Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan is captured in Kenya in a join operation between Mossad & Turkey.

23. Netanyahu becomes PM of Israel for the first time.

24. The Yom Kippur War - a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria attack Israel from 6 to 25 October 1973.

25. The Lebanese Civil War ends - the fifteen year long conflict in Lebanon finally came to an end. Some 150,000 people have died.