1911: The Royal Australian Navy was formed, the first of the Dominion and Commonwealth navies. Australia had previously maintained an assortment of minor warships for local maritime defence since the 1850s.

1940: The Battle of Britain is generally regarded to have begun on 10 July, as the Luftwaffe stepped up its attacks on coastal shipping in the Channel.

1941: In one of the closing actions against the Vichy forces in the Lebanon and Syria, Private Gordon of the 2/31st Australian Battalion stalked a French machine-gun that had pinned down fellow troops, and wiped out its crew. He received the Victoria Cross.

1943: As dawn broke over Sicily, British and Commonwealth troops from Eighth Army landed in the east of the island, whilst Patton's Seventh US Army landed in the west. While the US troops faced a dangerous armoured counter-attack, Montgomery's forces quickly established themselves ashore, taking the port of Syracuse on the first day.

1944: During an attack on German positions in Italy, a section led by Naik Yeshwant Ghadge, 5th Mahratta Light Infantry, came under sudden heavy machine-gun fire, which killed or wounded every man in the unit except the Naik himself. He immediately charged the machine-gun, and knocked it out with a grenade. He then proceeded to eliminate the crew in a vicious close-quarter fight - when his magazine ran out, he clubbed the two remaining defenders to death with his rifle butt. Having taken the position, he was spotted by an enemy sniper and shot dead. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.