March 23 – Some Important Events on this day
1490 👉🏼 1st dated edition of Maimonides “Mishneh Torah”, a code of Jewish religious law is published
1775 👉🏼 Patrick Henry proclaims “Give me liberty or give me death” in speech in favour of Virginian troops joining US Revolutionary war 🇺🇸
1808 👉🏼 Napoleon’s brother Joseph takes the throne of Spain 🇪🇸
1857 👉🏼 Elisha Otis installs his 1st elevator at 488 Broadway in New York City. Founder of the Otis Elevator Company, he invented a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails.
1919 👉🏼 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party re-establishes a five-member Politburo which becomes the center of political power in the Soviet Union. Original members Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky 🇷🇺
1919 👉🏼 Benito Mussolini forms Fascist movement in Milan Italy 🇮🇹
1931 👉🏼 Indian Independence fighter Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev embrace the gallows during the Indian struggle for independence. Their request to be shot by a firing squad is refused. 🇮🇳
1933 👉🏼 Enabling Act: German Reichstag grants Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers
1936 👉🏼 Physician Joseph G. Hamilton injects a leukemia patient with a sodium radioisotope, first intravenous injection of a human with a radioisotope 💉
1945 👉🏼 Battle of Okinawa: US Navy ships bomb the Japanese island of Okinawa in preparation for the Allied invasion. It would become the largest battle of the Pacific War in World War II.
The island of Okinawa was strategically important to the Allies as they intended to use the airfields for the impending invasion of mainland Japan, Operation Downfall.
The US naval task force assembled for the battle began bombing Okinawa on this day, ahead of the amphibious invasion on April 1, 1945, which was the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War.
Okinawa was devastated by the battle. The fighting was extremely fierce on both sides, and Japan used numerous kamikaze attacks to try and sink Allied naval vessels, which assembled in the hundreds for the battle. Okinawa’s pre-battle population was about 300,000; nearly 150,000 were killed, committed suicide or went missing.
The Americans eventually captured the island, losing between 14-20,000 soldiers, while Japan lost between 77-110,000 dead. Okinawa would remain occupied by the United States until 1972, and the continued presence of an American military base on the island is a center of controversy in Japan.
1957 👉🏼 US army sells last homing pigeons 📩
2019 👉🏼 Syrian Democratic Forces announce that the last Islamic State territory has been retaken raising flags in Baghuz, Syria and ending the five-year Islamic State “caliphate” 🇸🇾