27th January 1945: Soviet soldiers liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp

The advancing Soviet troops met some resistance from remaining Nazi troops in the Polish city of Oświęcim, but by 3pm on 27 January 1945 they had captured the Main Camp and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

20th January 1942: Senior Nazis meet at the Wannsee Conference to discuss what was referred to as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich called the meeting in the Berlin suburb, in which he outlined the deportation of European Jews to extermination camps in Poland where they would be systematically murdered.

28th August 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

Taking place on the centenary of President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he declared the freedom of slaves, ‘I Have a Dream’ was the sixteenth of eighteen speeches given by different orators that day and is regularly described as one of the best speeches of the 20th Century.