Caro wrote:

4th September 1939: Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand (and Canada?) declare war on Germany.  For NZ it was actually still the 3rd September, but officially considered to have been declared at the same time as Britain.  For the first time NZ formally declared war on its own behalf, not joining automatically as part of being Britain.

Was September 4th 1939 (a Monday) the date for the official declaration to be handed to the German embassy? Chamberlain broadcast his  "... and that consequently this country is at war with Germany", speech at a bit after 11:00 on Sunday 3rd:




George VI also broadcast to the nation and empire on the 3rd:




PS .... I got your joke Nielsen

Oops, it was the 3rd September.  Here is what the NZ history says -  all these times and varying declarations are very confusing: 

In contrast to its entry into the First World War, New Zealand acted in its own right by formally declaring war on Germany on 3 September (unlike Australia, which held that the King’s declaration, as in 1914, automatically extended to all his Dominions).
Officially, New Zealand’s declaration of war was simultaneous with Britain’s, as it was held to occur at the expiry of the British government’s ultimatum to Germany to withdraw from Poland (9.30 p.m. New Zealand Standard Time, 11 a.m. British Summer Time). In fact, ministers and senior officials waited for formal advice of the expiry of the ultimatum, and Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, before taking action. It was not until 11.30 p.m. that the acting Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, issued a statement confirming that New Zealand was at war:

Quote :

This is not an occasion for many words; it is a dark day in the history of the world … It is with deep regret and sadness that I make this announcement on behalf of the Government, and the people will receive it with similar feelings. That will not, however, affect the determination of both Government and people to play their part.

At 1.55 a.m. on 4 September the Governor-General, Viscount Galway, cabled the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in London to advise that ‘the existence of a state of war with Germany has accordingly been proclaimed in New Zealand’. The proclamation, and Fraser’s statement, were widely reported in newspapers later that day.

The 14th September 1963, 50 years ago today, was also a Saturday. At Old Trafford the manager Matt Busby contemplated how best to counter West Bromwich Albion despite losing several key players so early in the season to injury. A 17 year old who had excelled in the youth side was given the nod and made his senior debut that day. The rest, as they say ....

Deleted!

Oops ... I was a day in advance so you'll all just have to wait

Don' worry, MM, I'm usually a day behind - at least.

Meanwhile on 14th September 1741 Georg Frederick Handel finally puts his pen down having completed his 'Messiah - an Oratoria' after just 24 days of furiously rapid composition, and he must have thought, "Hallelujah, 'tis done!":

And on the right day this time ..... I see that today 15 September is the anniversary of the opening of the world's first commercial passenger-carrying railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in 1830.




It is also (as I'm sure any UK pub quiz afficionardo could answer) the anniversary of the first fatal railway accident, when William Hutchinson, MP for Liverpool, got out of his carriage and crossed the tracks to speak to the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, whose carriage was briefly stopped on an adjacent line. Poor Hutchinson was run down by Stephenson's 'Rocket' locomotive and died of injuries later that night.

The Duke of Wellington thought the L&M Railway's gala opening should have been cancelled forthwith, but the organisers carried on with the inaugural run to Manchester. And so the first commercial intercity train in the world eventually arrived back at Liverpool 6 1/2 hours behind schedule .... and having been pelted with stones thrown by drunken yobs along the route.

Plus ça change!

Terrorists targeting the financial district in downtown Manhattan is not something that began with Al-Qaeda. On September 16th 1920 the perpetrators were Italian - namely the Galleanists, followers of the anarchist Luigi Galleani who, the year before, had been deported to his native Italy after a string of bombings and shootings. These could not be linked to him in person but there was no mistaking that the anarchist had certainly become a notorious and willing focal point for just about any sadistic psychopath in a post-war USA beset by social unrest and labour disputes.

38 people died in the Wall Street bombing, almost 150 people injured. No one was ever convicted for the crime either - the worst atrocity committed on US soil at the time in terms of deaths (surpassed only by the Bath School bombing in 1927 - the children alone accounted for 38 of that bomb's toll).

22 September 1792 - or Primidi Vendémiare An 1, according to the French Revolutionary Calender, and the official date for the start of the French First Republic. The Republic only lasted 12 years until in 1804 Napoleon declared himself emperor and the state officially became the First French Empire.

So much then for that great republican experiment.

25 September 1939 – The First World War finally ends.

In August 1914 when France declared war on Imperial Germany, neighbouring Andorra did the same, despite being a tiny land-locked country with no navy and only a part-time ceremonial army of a dozen or so soldiers. Needless to say Andorra’s troops never left their country and saw no action at all. So not surprisingly, in 1918 Andorra was not invited to the peace negotiations and was not included in the Treaty of Versailles. Since no peace treaty was enacted, Andorra remained in a state of war with Germany, and it wasn’t until September 1939 when all the legal implications of France’s recent declaration of war on Germany were being reviewed, that the oversight was discovered.

So on 25 September 1939, just as WW2 was starting, Andorra signed a reparation-free treaty, finally ending its state of war against Germany and formally ending its involvement in World War 1.

In World War 2 Andorra remained neutral. This was no doubt in part because, of its two joint heads of state (Andorra is a co-principality) one, the Spanish Bishop of Urgell died in 1940 and due to the turmoil following the Spanish Civil War was not replaced until 1943, and the other, the "Ruler of France" was firstly President Daladier, who certainly had other things on his mind, and then Marshall Pétain, who as president of Vichy France was effectively a puppet of Nazi Germany, until he too was replaced as co-prince by de Gaulle when France was finally liberated.

1st October 1975 - The Thrilla in Manila



With the Philippines into a third year of martial rule President Marcos attempts to deflect attention from the growing unrest against his regime by hosting the third encounter between Ali and Frazier to decide the World Heavyweight Championship.

10 October 1971, after it's move and reconstruction in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, London Bridge is reopened to the public;

11 October 1899, the start of the Second South African War, often referred to as the Boer war (the First one usually gets forgotten about)

Goodbye Dolly Gray, became the song identified with this war, although it was originally written for the Spanish-American War.

At last it was a living boy. The future Edward VI was born around 2.00am on 12th October, 1537. His father, Henry VIII, wept for joy.

Edward's mother, Jane Seymour, had struggled in labour for three days and two nights. At first it seemed that she had recovered from her terrible ordeal, but she was to die twelve days later on 24th October.

According to the German radio station WDR 4, today is the "Internationaler Tag des Zweifels" - International Day of Doubt - just about the only faith in which I may be said to be a firm believer.

Nielsen wrote:

just about the only faith in which I may be said to be a firm believer.

I doubt that.

According to my opinions, that is your right!

14 October 1939; U-47 under the command of Gunther Prien, penetrates the defences at Scapa Flow and torpedoes & sinks the battleship Royal Oak.

http://www.hmsroyaloak.co.uk

15 October 1917, exotic dancer Mata Hari is executed by the French for espionage;

16 October 1906, unemployed shoemaker and general ne'er do well, Wilhelm Voigt, dresses up in a second hand Army Captain's uniform. commandeers some soldiers and proceeds to the small town of Kopenick near Berlin where he arrests the local officials on charges of corruption. Helping himself to the municipal cashbox and it's 4,000 marks, Voigt changed back into civilian clothes and disappeared. He was arrested on the 26th October and sentenced to four years imprisonment, though he was pardoned by the Kaiser in August 1908. The Kaiser himself found the whole incident somewhat amusing and Voigt had become a popular figure. For the rest of Europe, the entire incident confirmed the stereotype of Germans as jack booted automatons. The "Captain of Kopenick" is today regarded as one of the classic hoaxes

Voigt in his uniform;

Triceratops wrote:

... . He was arrested on the 26th October and sentenced to four years imprisonment, though he was pardoned by the Kaiser in August 1908. The Kaiser himself found the whole incident somewhat amusing and Voigt had become a popular figure. For the rest of Europe, the entire incident confirmed the stereotype of Germans as jack booted automatons. The "Captain of Kopenick" is today regarded as one of the classic hoaxes

Trike,
According to what I 've understood from German television part of reason for the Kaiser's pardon supposedly is that the people apparently "respected the 'officer's' uniform so much that they obeyed orders", this he accepted as a kind of homage towards his Prussian state.

Hi Nielsen, that would not surprise me.

The British military became victims of another hoax shortly afterwards (well February 1910), when Horace de Vere Cole and what became known as the Bloomsbury Set, organised a state visit by the "Emperor of Abyssinia" to HMS Dreadnought in Portsmouth Harbour.



Virginia Woolf, complete with make up and beard, on the far left, with other members of the "Abyssinian" entourage

21 October 1966, 116 children and 28 adults are killed when a slag tip collapses and floods the village of Aberfan;



and in 1971, 22 are killed when a gas explosion tears through a shopping precinct in Clarkston;

22 October 1877, 207 coal miners are killed in a gas explosion at Blantyre;

http://scottishmining.co.uk/55.html

a bit late but I was expecting someone else to remind us of this day

On 21 October 1805, the Royal Navy clashed with the Combined French and Spanish fleet at Cape Trafalgar... we won.

normanhurst wrote:

a bit late but I was expecting someone else to remind us of this day

On 21 October 1805, the Royal Navy clashed with the Combined French and Spanish fleet at Cape Trafalgar... we won.

It did come up last year, Norman.
...................................................
23 October 1944, the start of the biggest naval battle in history at Leyte Gulf.

My son texted us yesterday to ask what year the Battle of Trafalgar was.  He said it came up in his workplace quiz.  (He is an architect in a Nottingham architectural firm at the moment.)  He put 1810 and was the closest by a long shot.  He said others put dates like 1415, so they presumably have some idea of battle-dates in their minds.  He said while they are quite good at modern questions, their knowledge of English historical events and kings and queens is quite poor.

Caro wrote:

My son texted us yesterday to ask what year the Battle of Trafalgar was... He put 1810 and was the closest by a long shot.  He said others put dates like 1415, so they presumably have some idea of battle-dates in their minds.  He said while they are quite good at modern questions, their knowledge of English historical events and kings and queens is quite poor.

1415? Unbelievable - people seem to think Henry V won every battle the English ever fought.

I thought everyone knew Richard III won the Battle of Trafalgar in 1485; we beat Germany 4-2.

24 October 1857, Sheffield FC, the world's oldest association football club is formed;

http://www.sheffieldfc.com

On this day in history - International? UN Day - [some of the] people who've been on a UN peacekeeping mission tend to celebrate those days of their past with food and drinks.

Remembering the words, 'as memories grow weaker the stories grow better'.

I may be present later today and tomorrow, but my condition won't be 'clean, bright, and slightly oiled'.

25 October – Feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian*, and so it’s the anniversary of:

1415 – The Battle of Agincourt.



"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. "

Shakespeare, Henry V

(* poor St Crispinian shared the same martyrdom as his slightly snappier-named twin brother, but rarely gets mentioned).


And also:

1854 – The Battle of Balaklava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.



"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death,
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

Tennyson

..... or more prosaically:

"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre …. C’est de la folie!" .

Pierre Bosquet (French Marshal)

26th October 899.

Death of Alfred the Great.

27 October 312, the eve of the battle of the Milvian Bridge, and the day Constantine got his celestial vision of God’s support by way of a miraculous sign in the sky.

"He [Constantine] said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, Conquer by this. At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle". (Eusebius - Life of Constantine Book XXIX).

The resulting victory at the Milvian Bridge is generally taken to mark the beginning of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and his establishment of Christianity throughout the western half of the Roman Empire, and hence ultimately throughout Europe. However it should be noted that one of his first acts on entering Rome after the battle was to offer the usual animal sacrifice in gratitude for his victory at the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline.
.
Interestingly, in 2003 Italian geologists dated a meteorite impact crater, the Sirente Crater in the central Apennines, to the 4th century AD. The meteorite was estimated to have struck with an explosive force of about 1 kiloton TNT, and after the blinding flash would have thrown up a glowing mushroom cloud clearly visible from the site of Constantine’s camp just 95km away, if the two events were indeed contemporaneous. So was this meteorite strike God’s sign to Constantine? If so, one does have to ask, since God was clearly so keen for Constantine to win the forthcoming battle, and that the meteor had the power of a small nuclear bomb, might it not have been simpler just to just smite the enemy directly? God does work in mysterious ways.  



The Vision of Constantine – Bernini’s sculpture in the Vatican

29 October 1929, Black Tuesday as the New York Stock Exchange crashes, losing $14 billion on this day to add to the $16 billion lost the day before.



Crowd outside the NYSE.

The Great Depression begins, and soon spreads worldwide

Tonight, I'm gonna party like it's fifteen hundred and one:

30 October 1501, the reputed Banquet of Chestnuts  takes place in Rome;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banquet_of_Chestnuts

In Germany today is 'Reformationstag' or 'Day of the Reformation.

From Wikipedia,


On 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which came to be known as The Ninety-Five Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire." Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also attested as 'into heaven'] springs."
He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

On the eve of All Saint's Day, October 31, 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenburg, according to university custom.


Edit: In order to read what I copied above, please highlight by placing your curser over text.
Edit 2: A correction of my misunderstanding of a German expression.

Yes, I was always taught at school that Luther "nailed" his ninety-five theses to the Wittenburg church door as a protest. But actually it seems that Luther, who was a teacher of theology at the University of Wittenburg, was actually following the university custom for initiating a scholarly debate by publically pinning his proposition, written in Latin of course, to the church door. On the same day he'd sent copies of his theses to the Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, as well as to his immediate boss the Bishop of Brandenburg. To both gentlemen his accompanying letter was respectful and mindful of what he was suggesting.

I'm not doubting Luther's zeal and ernest belief in what he saw was morally and theologically wrong, but I do think he got rather overtaken by events that I doubt he could have foreseen. Aided by the new printing presses the debate, which he initiated as an academic one, spread rapidly both geographically and culturally. Within two weeks copies of the theses had been distributed throughout Germany and within two months throughout Europe. And once translated into German, four months later, they were being read by all and sundry.

Luther had not been alone in voicing objections to some of the church's practices - such discontent had been rumbling for some years - but he does seem to have been in the right place and the right time for his ideas to get a wider audience and much wider acceptance. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

31 October 1941, a full five weeks prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US destroyer Reuben James is torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-552, in the North Atlantic. There are 44 survivors from a crew of 159. Eleven US Navy personnel had been killed a fortnight earlier when another destroyer, USS Kearny, was hit by a torpedo from U-568.

1 November 1963, the Arecibo Observatory begins operations;

4 November 1791, the Battle of the Wabash.

The worst ever US Army defeat at the hands of Native Americans was not at the Little Big Horn, but in the practically forgotten battle on the Wabash River in present day Ohio.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair's_Defeat

Can't say I remember this at all;

7 November 1940 - the Tacoma Narrows Bridge across Puget Sound in Washington State collapses.

The bridge had been opened just 4 months earlier but was already nicknamed "Galloping Gertie" because the deck tended to bounce and pitch in even a moderate wind. Traffic had been crossing just minutes earlier but the only fatality was a cocker spaniel that had been abandoned in a car as the owners fled to safely on foot:

8 November 1923, based in the Burgerbraukeller, the Nazi Party attempt to overthrow the civil authorities in Munich. The Police open fire and end the putsch.



16 years to the day later, the beer hall is blown up in failed attempt to assassinate Hitler by Georg Elser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Elser

11 November 1918, the Armistice between the Allied Powers and Germany is signed and comes into effect at 11am.



Allied representatives at the Foret de Compiegne

12 November 1933, Hugh Gray takes this photograph at Loch Ness, purportedly the first photo of the monster;

12th November 1988 -

today therefore being the 25th anniversary of the first ever ...

Having watched this I can't but recall what I once overheard at a festival, some young men, perhaps slightly inebriated, talking of perhaps doing a bungee jump at the site, when one of them said, that 'he was reliably informed that the reason he was on this Earth was because of a broken rubber, and now he had no intention of leaving it prematurely because of another'.

13 November 1974, six members of the De Feo family are murdered by Ronald De Feo Jr at 112 Ocean Drive, Amityville. Long Island. 
In December 1975, the house is occupied by the Lutz family, for a grand total of 28 days, before they leave, citing paranormal activity as the cause of their rapid departure.
The case gains world wide publicity as "The Amityville Horror"

On the 14th November 1952 Percy Dickins, a journalist working for the New Musical Express, rang up 52 record shops in the UK and asked them to submit the ten top selling records that week. He added up the results and published the aggregate as Britain's first "official" charts.

Making this Britain's first "official" number one song ...

A thousand years of English history ended on this day, November 17th, 1558.

The last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, grandson of George Plantagenet, great-nephew of Edward IV and Richard III, died.

His mistress, Mary Tudor, that tragic woman who had once described herself, with reason, as "the unhappiest lady in Christendom", had died just a few ours earlier, also on the 17th November. Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, and Pole's mother, the Countess of Salisbury (the one butchered by Henry VIII), had hoped their children would marry. But that was not to be.

The future of course belonged to Elizabeth: this day, November 17th, her Accession Day, was celebrated for years with great joy - annual rejoicing and thanks which continued even after her death.

18 November, 1477: William Caxton produced the first printed book in the English language (though wikipedia says it is not necessarily so, but the first dated book), The Dictes and Sayengis of the Phylosophers. 

1874: The Cospatrick, an immigrant ship bound for Auckland with 473 passengers caught fire off the Cape of Good Hope, and all aboard died except for three crew members, who were discovered a week later adrift.  I have been interested in this for quite a few years, so I was upset to find that on our travels in the Cotswolds when we stayed at Hook Norton we were within about three miles of Shipton-upon-Wychwood where there is a memorial to 17 people. I knew I had written down a couple of places to visit if we were nearby, but hadn't checked it before this trip, and only realised when we were back in Sheffield.