On this day in history.

1955 Eighty three people were killed and at least 100 were injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collided at the 24 Hours Le Mans race. The race was continued, officially in order to prevent departing spectators from crowding the roads and slowing down ambulances.
Mike Hawthorn and Yvor Bueb driving for the Jaguar team won the race.
Funeral services for the dead were held the next day at the cathedral in the town of Le Mans.
 
1381 Wat Tyler led the peasants of Southern England in a march to London.
 
1184 BC Troy is sacked and burned on this day according to calculations by Eratosthenes
 
1776 Continental Congress creates committee to draft a Declaration of Independence
 
1986 All attacks on Argentinian position around Port Stanley have succeeded, by sunrise Argentinian forces have surrendered or retreated. HMS Glamorgan supporting the attacks with gunfire is struck by land-based Exocet missile
Final 'Black Buck' raid by Vulcan bombers flying out of Ascension is conducted against radar installations and airport at Stanley.
 
1770 Patent for the 'Spinning Jenny', the first multiple spinning machine that revolutionizes cotton spinning, is granted to English weaver James Hargreaves.

More successful than the rival 'Rolling Rosalind' and the 'Going-up-and-down-a-bit-and-then-moving-along Gertrude'.
 
1931 Al Capone is indicted on 5,000 counts of prohibition violations and perjury
 
1864 Battle of Trevilian Station, the bloodiest and largest all-cavalry battle of the American Civil War.
 
As often happens, I forgot to push the "post reply" button yesterday, so this one is out of date! I meant to post this on the 11th:

On this day in 1963 Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, protesting the brutally repressive policies of the Catholic minority president Diem, with a couple of other monks, got out of his car in a busy Saigon intersection and lit himself on fire. It changed history. It's said his heart did not burn, but evidence is not forthcoming. The car, though, remains a relic in Hue.

Immolation Austin.jpg
 
Andy_Ross said:
What did it change?
Click to expand...
The photo became iconic, led to the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and the added intervention of the United States, and in a considerable degree to the course of the war in Vietnam.

It was a pretty big deal back then, as up until that paper hit the front pages of the newspapers, Americans had little awareness of Vietnam at all.
 
1982 2 Para attack Wireless Ridge, Scots Guards attack Mount Tumbledown, 1/7 Gurkhas occupy Mount William.
 
1373 Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of Perpetual Alliance is signed in London between King Edward III of England and King Ferdinand I of Portugal
 
1917 The deadliest German air raid on London of World War I was carried out by Gotha bombers and resulted in 162 deaths
 
1944 First German V1 flying bomb landed killing three people in a house in Southampton.
 
1982 Overnight assaults on Argentinian defence around Stanley are all successful.
By early morning all objectives are taken and large numbers of prisoners taken. Argentine commander surrenders.

We gave fire support along with the other gun armed ships for the attacks through the night.

255 Britons and 652 Argentines died
 
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1919 Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Whitten-Brown took off from Newfoundland on the first non-stop transatlantic flight.
 
1645 The Battle of Naseby Royalist forces of King Charles I were beaten by a Parliamentarian army commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.
 
1381 Richard II met leaders of Wat Tyler's Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath
 
I remember seeing the state of the Argentine soldiers they were ragged and hungry. No organisation in their barracks areas, no food, kit thrown everywhere at random, no field kitchens or hospital, no bathing areas. They had to more or less fend for themselves.
They just collapsed in the face of the British troops, throwing down weapons and running away. They knew defeat was inevitable as soon as the Task Force arrived.
Officers abandoned the front line and left their men to it. There were pictures of dead Argentinian soldiers laid in a Stanley street, a local said an officer shot them point blank with a pistol for following him from the front line and refusing to salute him when he tried to stop them.
 
1982 First full stand down from call to action stations at dawn. Ship reverts to standard cruising routine.
 
1860 Nightingale opened the first school for nurses at St Thomas's Hospital in London.
 
1910 Captain Robert Scott set sail on his expedition to reach the South Pole
 
1996 An IRA bomb, the biggest ever to go off on the British mainland, devastated the centre of Manchester
 
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