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Wars, campaigns, and incidents

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Battle off Samar

Battle off Samar, 25 October 1944: Taffy 3 (Task Unit 77.4.3), six escort carriers with destroyers under C. A. F. Sprague, repelled Kurita's Center Force of four battleships including Yamato during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, losing Hoel, Johnston, Samuel B. Roberts, Gambier Bay, and St. Lo.

Battle on the Ice

Battle on the Ice: 5 April 1242 defeat of the Livonian Order and Bishopric of Dorpat by Alexander Nevsky's Novgorod forces on frozen Lake Peipus; sources diverge on scale, and the famous ice-breaking image comes from Eisenstein's 1938 film, not medieval chronicles.

Battle on the Marchfeld

The Battle on the Marchfeld, fought on 26 August 1278 near Dürnkrut, Austria, saw Rudolf I of Habsburg and Ladislaus IV of Hungary defeat and kill King Ottokar II of Bohemia.

Battles of antiquity: overview and timelines

An overview and timeline guide to battles of antiquity, covering Kadesh, Salamis, and Cannae, and explaining how thin and uneven the ancient record is, with same-named battles distinguished.

Battles of Khalkhin Gol

Battles of Khalkhin Gol, also called the Nomonhan Incident (ノモンハン事件), an undeclared 1939 Soviet-Japanese-Mongolian border war on Mongolia's frontier, ending in a Soviet victory under Zhukov that pushed Japan toward the Pacific war.

Battles of Lexington and Concord

Battles of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, first armed engagements of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts; about 700 British regulars under Gage's orders marched to Concord, fought militia at Lexington Green and North Bridge, and retreated with 273 casualties.

Battles of Narvik

Battles of Narvik (Slaget om Narvik), April–June 1940: naval and land fighting after Germany's 9 April invasion of Norway. Ten German destroyers were destroyed in Ofotfjord on 10 and 13 April; Allied and Norwegian forces retook Narvik on 28 May before withdrawing.

Battles of Rzhev

Battles of Rzhev (Ржевская битва): series of Red Army offensives against the Wehrmacht's Rzhev salient, 8 January 1942 to 31 March 1943, including Operation Mars; called the Rzhev Meat Grinder for Soviet losses of roughly 1.16 to 2.3 million.

Battles of Saratoga

Battles of Saratoga (Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights), two Revolutionary War engagements of September 19 and October 7, 1777, where Gates's American army defeated Burgoyne, whose surrender on October 17 brought France into the war.

Battles of the Isonzo

Battles of the Isonzo (Soča Front): twelve World War I battles between Italy and Austria-Hungary along the Isonzo River, 23 June 1915 to 10 November 1917, ending with the German-Austrian breakthrough at Caporetto.

Battleship Row

Battleship Row: line of Ford Island mooring quays at Pearl Harbor where seven US battleships berthed on 7 December 1941 and bore the attack's heaviest losses; Arizona and Oklahoma never returned to service.

Batu Lintang camp

Batu Lintang camp, also called Lintang Barracks or Kuching POW camp, was a Japanese-run POW and civilian internment camp at Kuching, Sarawak, in Borneo, 1942 to 1945.

Bau uprising

The Bau uprising was an 1857 attack by Hakka Chinese gold miners of Bau, Sarawak, led by Liu Shan Bang, against the government of Rajah James Brooke in Kuching.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion, also known as Operation Zapata, was a failed 1961 military operation where CIA-trained Cuban exiles attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro's government in Cuba.

Bayezid I's Balkan campaigns

Bayezid I's Balkan campaigns were the Ottoman military operations between 1389 and 1402 by which Sultan Bayezid I conquered Bulgaria, defeated the crusade at Nicopolis in 1396, and blockaded Constantinople.

Bear River Massacre

The Bear River Massacre was the killing of Northwestern Shoshone men, women, and children by US Army troops under Colonel Patrick Connor on January 29, 1863, near Preston, Idaho.

Belarusian Central Rada

The Belarusian Central Rada, or Belarusian Central Council, was a collaborationist administrative body established by Nazi Germany in occupied Belarus in December 1943, led by Radaslaŭ Astroŭski.

Belarusian partisan movement

The Belarusian partisan movement was the Soviet-led armed resistance against the German occupation of the Belarusian SSR, 1941 to 1944, growing to about 374,000 fighters.

Belgrade Offensive

The Belgrade Offensive (Београдска операција) was a joint operation of Yugoslav Partisans and the Red Army that liberated Belgrade from German occupation in October 1944.

Belzec extermination camp

Belzec (Bełżec) was a Nazi German extermination camp in occupied Poland, the first of three Operation Reinhard killing centers, where roughly 434,500 Jews were murdered between March and December 1942.

Ben Barka affair

The Ben Barka affair was the forced disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka from Paris on October 29, 1965, an event that poisoned French public life and Franco-Moroccan relations.

Bengal War

Bengal War, or Anglo-Bengali Wars (1756–1765): East India Company conflict with the Nawabs of Bengal, decided at Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764), ending with the 1765 Diwani grant over Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.

Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery

Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, near Reviers, Normandy, is a CWGC cemetery holding about 2,048 burials, mostly 3rd Canadian Division soldiers killed on D-Day at Juno Beach and in the advance toward Caen.

Berbice slave uprising

The Berbice slave uprising was a 1763 slave rebellion in the Dutch colony of Berbice, in present-day Guyana, led by the freed slave Coffy and held for over a year.

Berke–Hulagu war

The Berke–Hulagu war was an armed conflict between the Golden Horde under Berke Khan and the Ilkhanate under Hulagu Khan, fought mainly in the Caucasus from 1262 to 1266.

Beslan school siege

Beslan school siege (1–3 September 2004): Shamil Basayev's militants seized School No. 1 in North Ossetia, took over 1,100 hostages, and demanded Russian withdrawal from Chechnya; 334 people, mostly children, died in the chaotic ending.

Bethnal Green trio

The Bethnal Green trio: Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, three London schoolgirls who flew to Istanbul on 17 February 2015, crossed into Syria, and married Islamic State fighters; only Begum is thought to survive.

Betty Ong

Betty Ann Ong (1956–2001), American Airlines flight attendant aboard hijacked Flight 11 on 9/11, made the first call reporting the hijacking, a 23-minute call to AA reservations in Cary, North Carolina.

Biafra

Biafra, also the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state declared from Nigeria's Eastern Region by Ojukwu on 30 May 1967; its 1967–1970 war with Nigeria, blockade, and famine killed up to two million people before its January 1970 surrender.

Bicesse Accords

The Bicesse Accords, formally the Peace Accords for Angola, were a peace agreement signed in Portugal on 31 May 1991 between Angola's government and UNITA to end the first phase of the Angolan Civil War.