Thursday, September 1, 2011

This Day In History



Sep 1 1923
A 7.9 magnitude earthquake strikes the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama at noon. Almost 142,000 people are killed by falling building or in the resulting fires. Yokohama suffers 88 separate blazes, which rage unabated for two days. In all, 694,000 homes are destroyed, leaving 1.5 million survivors homeless.




Sep 1 1939
Hitler reluctantly invades Poland, but only after being provoked by warmongering Poles. The previous night, a Polish commando team shot their way into a German radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz, and broadcasted a radical call to arms against the peaceloving people of Germany. Except that it was all an elaborate sham engineered by Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich, dubbed c.


Sep 1 1941
The Third Reich passes a law requiring Jews to wear a prominent yellow star in public.


Sep 1 1983
Korean Air flight 007 strays off-course, approaching the Kamchatka peninsula. The Soviet Union scrambles fighter jets to intercept the Boeing 747, and gives the order to shoot down the passenger plane five minutes after it crosses the border. Two surface-to-air missiles later, and there are 269 corpses floating in the sea.

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