The history thread...

[steve25805 121,453]

Round number anniversaries....

This year marks the centenary of the terrible Battle of Verdun, in which nearly one and a half million Frenchmen and Germans died. It is also the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme which took place that same year, in which the British suffered 60,000 casualties - a third of them deaths - on the first day alone. This compares, for example, to 4000 Allied casualties on D-Day. It is also the centenary of the Battle of Jutland, the only large scale naval fleet action of World War 1, where the British took heavier losses but won a strategic victory.

This year also sees the 60th anniversay of both the Suez Crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

The year also marks the 30th anniverasy of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

And it is the 90th anniversary year of the British General Strike.

Further back, the year marks the 170th anniverasy of the start of the Mexican-American War, the 240th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, and the 950th anniversary of the Norman conquest of England.