Person report

★17 Sep 1859
Disgruntled with the legal and political structures of the United States, Joshua Norton distributed letters to various newspapers in San Francisco, proclaiming himself Emperor Norton.

★15 Nov 1864
American Civil War: Union Army General William T. Sherman began his "March to the Sea", inflicting significant damage to property and infrastructure on his way from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia.

★10 Sep 1897
A sheriff's posse fired upon a peaceful labor demonstration made up of mostly Polish and Slovak anthracite coal miners in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, U.S., killing 19 people and wounding many others.

★15 Feb 1900
Second Boer War: British cavalry under Major-General John French defeated Boer forces to end a 124-day siege of Kimberley, present-day South Africa.

★12 Feb 1909
New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century took place when 75 people died after the ferry SS Penguin struck a rock in Wellington Harbour and sank.

★15 Apr 1912
The passenger liner RMS Titanic sank about two hours and forty minutes after colliding with an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people.

★22 Feb 1921
After White Russian forces under Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg drove the Chinese out of Mongolia, the Bogd Khan was reinstalled as emperor.

★28 Oct 1925
The funerary mask of Tutankhamun, possibly made for Queen Nefertiti, was uncovered for the first time in 3,250 years.

★19 Aug 1934
A German referendum supported the recent merging of the posts of Chancellor and President, consolidating Adolf Hitler's assumption of supreme power.

★31 Aug 1939
Nazi forces, posing as Poles, staged an attack against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany, creating an excuse to invade Poland the next day.

Historical data by Wikipedia Contributors CC BY-SA 3.0.