1497: John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland on the Matthew with his sons, after a 35 day voyage. He named the region St. John's Isle which is where the current city’s name originates from.

1762: The Marquis of Granby caught a French army at Wilhelmstahl. The French withdrew, covered by a rearguard that paid a heavy price, being cut to pieces by Granby's forces.

1850: Horatio Kitchener, later Lord Kitchener was born. During his military career, he conquered the Sudan, commanded Empire forces during the Boer War and was Minister of War during the early stages of World War I. He was killed when HMS Hampshire, on which he was sailing to Russia, hit a German mine near the Orkney Islands in 1916.

1900: A few days after the start of the Boxer Rebellion in China, a mob attacked the British Legation in Peking, managing to seize some of the buildings. Captain Halliday of the Royal Marine Light Infantry led a counter-attack with just six men, and despite suffering severe wounds, overcame the rebels in a vicious close-quarter action He was awarded the Victoria Cross.

1917: A night raid by British troops across No Man's Land had to painstakingly cut its way through thick barbed wire, coming under heavy fire as it did so. Second Lieutenant Dunville, of the 1st Royal Dragoons, shielded with his own body a Royal Engineer busy cutting through the wire. The raid proved a success, but Dunville died of wounds sustained whilst covering the sapper. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

1927: The Menin Gate Memorial was opened at Ypres. On it are the names of 56,000 British & Commonwealth servicemen killed in the fighting for the Ypres Salient whose bodies were never found.

Every evening without exception, at 20:00, the Gate is closed to traffic while buglers from the local volunteer fire brigade play Last Post. It was first sounded on 1 July 1928 and a daily ceremony was carried on for about four months. The ceremony was reinstated in the spring of 1929 and the Last Post Committee was established. Four silver bugles were donated to the Last Post Committee by the Brussels and Antwerp Branches of the Royal British Legion.

Since 11 November, 1929 Last Post has been sounded at the Gate every night and in all weathers. The only exception to this was during the four years of the German occupation of Ypres from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944. The daily ceremony was instead continued in England at the Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey. On the very evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate, in spite of the heavy fighting still going on in other parts of the town.

1942: Rommel’s Afrika Korps attack on Egypt opened, forcing the 8th Army back to El Alamein, where one of the pivotal battles of the war was fought later in the year.

1944: During an anti-submarine patrol near the Faroe Islands, a Canadian Canso aircraft piloted by Flight Lieutenant Hornell sighted a U-boat and attacked. The U-boat, well-armed with anti-aircraft weapons, fought back and crippled the Canso. Nevertheless, Hornell and his crew pressed home their attack and sank the U-boat.

The Canso then crashed, and only one dinghy aboard proved useable. Since it was too small to hold all the aircrew, they took it in turns to await rescue in the water They were eventually found 21 hours later. The exposure proved too much for Hornell, who died very shortly after being picked up. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Over France, Bomber Command returned to a major V-weapon target which they had been trying to destroy for several days: a huge underground depot in a quarry at Wizernes

Cloud had previously prevented the precision bombing needed against such a target. However, on 24 June, the Lancasters of 617 Squadron were able to score several direct hits with their specialised 12,000lb Tallboy deep penetration bombs, designed by Barnes Wallis.

The site was devastated. Three Tallboy bomb exploded in the tunnels, one burst under the edge of the dome, and one hit in the mouth of V2 launch rail tunnel. The entire hillside collapsed, effectively destroying the facility although the dome remained intact. The whole area around the site was churned up so that it was unapproachable, and the bunker was jeopardised from underneath, with landslides making further work impossible.

In the Pacific, carrier-based aircraft of the USN's Task Group 58.1, the aircraft carriers USS Hornet and USS Yorktown and light carriers USS Bataan & Belleau Wood attacked Japanese airfields, fuel supplies and barracks on Iwo Jima. Over 140 Japanese aircraft rose to the challenge but US Navy Hellcat pilots claimed 116 enemy aircraft destroyed

1948: The Russian blockade of West Berlin started. With all land and river access ways closed, the United States and Great Britain used transport aircraft to mount the Berlin Airlift