Scott Allsop's Blog, page 97

6th September 1972: Israeli Olympic athletes killed in the Munich massacre by Palestinian terrorists from the Black September group

The terrorists and their hostages were shuttled to a nearby airfield, but the captors later turned on the Israeli athletes and killed them with machine guns and a ...

5th September 1698: Peter the Great of Russia imposes a tax on beards

Peter the Great's decision to ban beards was unpopular, not only because it was a significant challenge to tradition but also because shaving a beard was interpreted by some Orthodox Christians as being ...

4th September 1882: Thomas Edison opens the world’s first power plant on Pearl Street in New York

Thomas Edison began operating the first permanent commercial electrical power plant in New ...

3rd September 1939: Second World War officially begins when France and the United Kingdom declare war on Germany alongside Australia and New Zealand

German Nazi forces had invaded Poland two days earlier, claiming to be acting in self-defence following a ‘false flag’ ...

2nd September 1666: The Great Fire of London begins at a bakery in Pudding Lane

Beginning at a bakery in Pudding Lane, the catastrophic Great Fire of London blazed for more than three days and destroyed over 13,000 houses, churches and government ...

1st September 1604: The Sikh Adi Granth first installed at the Golden Temple

The Adi Granth, the original holy scripture of Sikhism now known as Guru Granth Sahib, was first installed at the Harmandir Sahib Golden ...

31st August 1907: The Anglo-Russian Entente is signed, forming the Triple Entente

Britain and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Entente, which led to the formation of the Triple ...

30th August 1918: Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, survives an assassination attempt

The assassination of Lenin was attempted by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the anti-Bolshevik faction of the Socialist Revolutionary ...

29th August 1842: The First Opium War ends when Britain and China sign the Treaty of Nanking

The First Opium War formally ended when Britain and China signed the Treaty of Nanking, the first of the ‘unequal ...

28th August 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

Taking place on the centenary of President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he declared the freedom of slaves, ‘I Have a Dream’ was the sixteenth of eighteen speeches given by different orators that day and is regularly described as one of the best speeches of the 20th ...