1453French guns win the last battle of the Hundred Years’ War
By 1451 the French had driven the English out of Normandy and taken Gascony, which English kings had held for three centuries. But the wine merchants of Bordeaux had long traded with England, and many resented their new rulers. In October 1452 they opened the city to an English army under John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, a famous veteran then well into his sixties.
The next summer the French came back, and laid siege to Castillon on the Dordogne. Their gunners, led by Jean Bureau, dug a fortified camp packed with cannon. On 17 July 1453 Talbot, told that the French were pulling out, rushed ahead with his horsemen before his infantry had come up and attacked the camp. The guns tore his ranks apart, Talbot was killed, and his army broke. Bordeaux surrendered in October, and England was left with only Calais on the French mainland. No peace treaty was signed, but the Hundred Years’ War was over.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Castillon ↗
1918The last tsar and his family are killed at Yekaterinburg
Nicholas II gave up the Russian throne in March 1917, and after the Bolsheviks took power that autumn the former tsar, his wife Alexandra and their five children were moved further and further from the capital. In the spring of 1918 they were taken to Yekaterinburg in the Urals and shut up in a merchant’s house, the Ipatiev House, under heavy guard.
By July the civil war was going badly for the Bolsheviks, and anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Czechoslovak Legion, were closing on the town. The local Bolsheviks feared the family would be rescued. In the early hours of 17 July 1918 the Romanovs and four of their servants were woken, told they were being moved, and led down to a cellar room, where a squad shot and bayoneted all eleven. The bodies were hidden in the forest. Their remains were identified only after the fall of the Soviet Union, and most were buried in St Petersburg on 17 July 1998.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Nicholas II, abdication and death ↗
1975Apollo and Soyuz dock, and two rival crews shake hands in orbit
For almost two decades the United States and the Soviet Union had raced each other in space. In the easing of tension of the early 1970s the two governments agreed to try something new: a joint mission in which an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz would meet and link up in orbit. Engineers from both sides spent years designing a docking module that would let crews pass between craft with different air pressures.
Soyuz 19 and the last Apollo were launched on 15 July 1975. On 17 July, as they flew above the Atlantic, Thomas Stafford eased Apollo into contact with Soyuz. A few hours later the hatches were opened, and Stafford and the cosmonaut Alexei Leonov shook hands at the entrance to the Soviet craft. For the next two days the five men visited each other, shared meals and ran experiments together. It was the last Apollo flight, and a forerunner of the shuttle visits to Mir and the International Space Station.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA: 45 years ago, historic handshake in space ↗
1976African nations walk out of the Montreal Olympics
South Africa had been expelled from the Olympic movement in 1970 because of apartheid, and the United Nations urged countries to cut sporting ties with it. In 1976, only weeks before the Olympic Games in Montreal, New Zealand’s All Blacks set off on a long rugby tour of South Africa. African countries demanded that the International Olympic Committee bar New Zealand from the Games. The IOC refused, arguing that rugby was not an Olympic sport and that it had no power over it.
On the eve of the opening ceremony on 17 July 1976 more than twenty African countries withdrew, and others followed in the days after; accounts of the final number differ. Many athletes were packed off home without competing, among them Tanzania’s Filbert Bayi, the 1500 metres world record holder. The walkout helped push Commonwealth leaders to agree the following year to discourage sporting contact with South Africa.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Olympics.com: Montreal 1976, diplomatic controversies ↗
1979Somoza resigns and flees Nicaragua
The Somoza family had ruled Nicaragua since the 1930s, through the presidency and their command of the National Guard, and had grown immensely rich. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last of the line, faced mounting anger after the Managua earthquake of 1972, when aid money went missing, and after the murder of the opposition newspaper editor Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in January 1978. Towns rose in revolt, and the guerrillas of the Sandinista National Liberation Front gathered wide support.
By mid-1979 the Sandinistas had launched a final offensive, and the United States, once the family’s firm ally, pressed Somoza to go. On 17 July 1979 he resigned and flew to Miami. Two days later the Sandinistas entered Managua in triumph, and they went on to govern Nicaragua through the 1980s. Somoza moved on to Paraguay, where he was killed in an ambush in 1980.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Anastasio Somoza Debayle ↗
