Scott Allsop's Blog, page 241
August 29, 2017
30th August 1918: Lenin shot in a failed assassination attempt
On the 30th August 1918, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – better known as Lenin – was the victim of a failed assassination plot. Fanya Kaplan, a member of the anti-Bolshevik faction of the Socialist...
August 28, 2017
29th August 1949: USSR conducts its first atomic bomb test
On the 29th August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon codenamed RDS-1 and nicknamed First Lightning. The explosion had the power of 22 kilotons of TNT, and was 50% more destructive...
August 27, 2017
28th August 1963: Martin Luther King Jr declares ‘I Have a Dream’
On the 28th August 1963, American Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The sixteenth of...
August 26, 2017
27th August 1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed
On the 27th August 1928, Germany, France and the United States signed the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy – otherwise known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. A total of...
August 25, 2017
26th August 1346: The longbow helps Edward III win the Battle of Crécy
On the 26th August 1346, one of the most decisive battles in the Hundred Years War was won by the army of the English king Edward III. The Battle of Crécy was fought against the...
August 24, 2017
25th August 1944: Paris liberated from Nazi control
On the 25th August 1944, the Nazi German garrison in Paris surrendered the city to the Allies. Having been rules by the Nazis for over four years, the liberation of the capital was not a...
August 23, 2017
24th August AD 79: Mount Vesuvius destroys Pompeii & Herculaneum
The 24th August AD 79 is traditionally believed to have been the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that wiped out numerous Roman settlements including Pompeii and Herculaneum. Eyewitness accounts of the eruption have survived in the...
August 22, 2017
23rd August 1939: Nazi-Soviet Pact signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop
On 23rd August 1939, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop – the Soviet foreign minister and the German foreign minister – signed the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,...
August 21, 2017
22nd August 1485: Richard III killed at the Battle of Bosworth
On the 22nd August 1485, King Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth and the forces of Henry Tudor brought the Plantagenet dynasty to an end. Henry secured his reign soon afterwards by...
August 20, 2017
21st August 1911: The Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre on the 21st August 1911. Described by some as the greatest art theft of the 20th century, the museum itself didn’t even realise that the...
