1806: American explorers Lewis and Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east

1815: USS Hornet captured HMS Penguin in battle lasting 20 minutes

1865: Parliament voted £50,000 for Canadian defence after the Union ship Kearsarge sanks Confederate ship Alabama which had been built in Great Britain

1918: Three Victoria Crosses were won on the Western Front. Lieutenant Colonel Bushell led a battalion of the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment in a counter-attack near the St Quentin Canal. He suffered a severe head wound, but continued to lead his men from the front, walking through heavy machine-gun fire to encourage his troops and establish their positions, before eventually collapsing and being taken to the rear for treatment.

Captain Gribble of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and his men mounted a last-ditch defence against a German assault. Surrounded, they were eventually overrun. Gribble fell badly wounded and, taken prisoner, died of his injuries shortly afterwards.

Elsewhere, the Germans secured a river crossing, but Second Lieutenant Herring of the Royal Army Service Corps organised a counter-attack with a few men, and managed to capture no less than six machine-guns and their crews. He and his men then held the position throughout the night against further heavy German attacks.

The 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade was rushed to the front to help resist a major German offensive east of Arras.

1933: The German Reichstag passed the Enabling act of 1933, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany.

1940: The Royal Navy formed the "Malaya Force" to shadow 17 German merchant ships trapped in Netherlands East Indies ports

1942: Japanese forces occupied the Andaman Islands

1945: Carriers begin pre-assault strikes on Okinawa. Desperate kamikaze attacks followed

Australian forces capture the Waitavolo and Tol plantations in New Britain. In 1942 they were the scene of the massacre of some 150 Australians PoWs . Their capture in 1945 enabled the Australian 5th Division to establish a line across the Gazelle Peninsula from which they were able to conduct patrols against Japanese positions in the North of New Britain.

In Europe Operation Plunder the Crossing of the Rhine started.

Commencing on the night of 23 March the operation saw German defences assaulted at Rees, Wesel, and south of the Lippe River by the British Second Army, under Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey (Operations Turnscrew, Widgeon, and Torchlight), and the U.S. Ninth Army (Operation Flashlight), under Lieutenant General William Simpson. XVIII U.S. Airborne Corps, consisting of British 6th Airborne Division and US 17th Airborne Division, conducted Operation Varsity, parachute landings on the east bank in support of the operation. All of these formations were part of the 21st Army Group under the command of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery.

1949: Royal Assent given to the North America Bill, passed by the Parliament for the union of Canada and Newfoundland

1956: Pakistan became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth

1971: Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, proclaimed independence

1987: Thirty-one people were injured after an IRA car bomb exploded at a British army base in West Germany. The device, believed to contain 300lbs of explosive, went off close to the officers' mess at Rheindahlen, 50 miles from the West German capital Bonn.

2003: In Nasiriyah, Iraq, 11 US soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company as well as 18 U.S. Marines were killed in the first major engagement during Operation Iraqi Freedom.