Scott Allsop's Blog, page 5

2nd September 1192: Treaty of Jaffa signed between Richard I of England and Saladin, ending the Third Crusade

The Treaty of Jaffa established a three-year truce and confirmed that Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, although Christian pilgrims would be allowed access to the city’s holy ...

1st September 1939: Nazi Germany invades Poland, triggering the Second World War

On the 1st September 1939, German forces invaded Poland in a move that was to trigger the Second World ...

31st August 1854: Cholera outbreak in London’s Broad Street leads to John Snow’s investigation into germ-contaminated water

Physician John Snow investigated the outbreak by mapping cholera cases in the area, which showed a clear concentration of cases around the public water pump on Broad ...

29th August 1831: Michael Faraday performs his first experiment leading to the discovery of electromagnetic induction

Faraday constructed an apparatus consisting of two coils of wire wound around opposite sides of an iron ring, and when he connected one coil to a battery a galvanometer detected a brief current induced in the second ...

27th August 1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact to renounce war signed by 15 nations including Germany, France and the United States

At the time it was optimistically hoped that the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact would stop any future wars, but the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s led nations such as Japan and Italy to launch invasions of Manchuria and Abyssinia ...

26th August 1914: Battle of Tannenberg begins in the early weeks of the First World War between Russian and German forces

Exploiting intercepted Russian radio messages, which had not been encrypted, the Germans were able to anticipate the Russians’ movements and concentrate their forces effectively. By 30 August,  Russian resistance ...

25th August 1835: The Great Moon Hoax begins to appear in The New York Sun newspaper as a series of articles

The articles that formed the “Great Moon Hoax” stated that famed astronomer John Herschel had observed animals resembling bison, goats, and even humanoid bat-like creatures on the Moon alongside forests, oceans, pyramids, and ...

23rd August 1942: Battle of Stalingrad enters its most intense phase with a bombing campaign by the German Luftwaffe

While the broader Battle of Stalingrad began on 17 July, it wasn’t until 23 August that the city itself was attacked. Over 1,000 German aircraft dropped bombs in one of the Eastern Front’s most intense aerial ...

20th August 1975: NASA launches Viking 1, the first spacecraft to land on Mars and transmit images of the surface back to Earth

Viking 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 20 August 1975 and took nearly 11 months to reach ...

19th August 1934: The first All-American Soap Box Derby held in Dayton, Ohio

Held in Dayton, Ohio, on a track measuring 1,980 feet, the first All-American Soap Box Derby attracted 362 participants and more than 40,000 ...