On the 7th October 1949 the German Democratic Republic, otherwise known as East Germany, was founded in the Soviet occupied zone of Germany.
14th December 1287: St Lucia’s Flood kills over 50,000 people around the North Sea
14th December 2017
On the 1st October 1928, the Soviet Union introduced Joseph Stalin’s first five-year plan.
Shortly after midnight in Moscow, the Soviets became the first to successfully send a human-made object to the Moon.
The Siege of Leningrad, one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, began.
On the 1st September 1939, German forces invaded Poland in a move that was to trigger the Second World War.
On the 30th August 1918, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – better known as Lenin – was the victim of a failed assassination plot.
On the 29th August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon codenamed RDS-1 and nicknamed First Lightning.
On 23rd August 1939, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop – the Soviet foreign minister and the German foreign minister – signed the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, otherwise known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
At around 11pm on the 20th August 1968, troops from the USSR, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary entered Czechoslovakia in an invasion that brought the Prague Spring to an end.
On the 19th August 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev, the President of the Soviet Union, was placed under house arrest in what is known as the August Coup.
HistoryPod Extra: The Myth of Gavrilo Princip’s Sandwich
28th June 2015
22nd September 1888: First edition of National Geographic Magazine published
22nd September 2018
16th October 1846: First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia
16th October 2018
15th October 1923: Rentenmark introduced in Weimar Germany
15th October 2018
14th October 1962: U-2 spy plane captures images of Cuban missile sites
14th October 2018
13th October 54: Emperor Claudius dies in mysterious circumstances
13th October 2018
11th November 1918: WW1 Armistice of Compiègne is signed
11th November 2017
9th November 1989: East Germany opens the Berlin Wall
9th November 2017