1817: Richard Rush for the United States and Charles Bagot for Great Britain sign the Rush-Bagot Agreement limiting the number of warships the two countries can maintain on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain - 2 ships each under 100 tons on upper Great Lakes, 1 each on Lake Champlain.

1864: 1,700 British troops and sailors from a Naval Brigade launched an assault on the Gate pa, a formidable Maori fortification in Tauranga. Although only 300 Maoris held the pa, they inflicted a severe reverse on the attackers, who were driven off. Commander Hay, leading men from HMS Harrier, was mortally wounded. His Coxswain, Mitchell, came to his aid and, ignoring Hays orders to leave him, carried the dying man back to the British lines. Assistant-Surgeon Manley did what he could for Hay, then went back into the breach in the pa to bring out more wounded men. Mitchell and Manley both received the Victoria Cross. Despite their victory, the Maoris evacuated the pa during the night.

1916: British troops under Major-General Townshend surrendered to the Ottoman forces besieging them at Kut after all efforts to relieve them had failed. The surrender marked the nadir of British fortunes during the Mesopotamian campaign.

1917: Lance-Corporal Welch commanded a machine-gun section of The Royal Berkshire Regiment. During an advance, he managed to enter a German trench, armed only with a revolver: he killed one opponent, then pursued four enemy across open ground, eventually inducing all to surrender. Having established his machine-guns in a firing position, he repeatedly ventured into No Man's Land to search for additional ammunition and spare parts for the weapons, his efforts keeping them in action for several hours under very difficult circumstances. Welch was eventually wounded, but received the Victoria Cross, as did Second Lieutenant Pollard of the Honourable Artillery Company. British troops were falling back in considerable confusion after a German attack; Pollard formed a bombing team of just four men armed with grenades, and counter-attacked. Despite appalling odds, he and his men broke the German attack and stabilised the situation.

1940: The sea phase of the evacuation of Sickleforce begins in Norway. First a sloop took off 340 men. After darkness fell that evening more than 1,800 British troops, exhausted and hungry, stumbled aboard blacked-out warships and transports

1945: As the war in Europe drew to a close, parts of Holland remained under German occupation with the population facing starvation. The Allies negotiated a ceasefire with the German commander on humanitarian grounds, and RAF Bomber Command commenced Operation Manna; the air-drop of over 6,600 tons of food in just nine days.

Meanwhile in besieged Berlin, Adolf Hitler designated Admiral Karl Doenitz his successor

1965: Australian Prime Minister Menzies announced the commitment of a full infantry battalion to the war in Vietnam.

1975: Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation from South Vietnam begins

1982: The hospital ship, SS Uganda, leaves Ascension Island for the South Atlantic to join the growing Task Force