ON THIS DAY

01 November 1966: Viet Cong bombs Saigon. At least eight people have been killed and several wounded after Viet Cong artillery shelled the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. Altogether about 30 shells were fired into the city centre. The first round came as troops and spectators were getting ready to watch a parade to mark National Day, the third anniversary of the overthrow and assassination of former Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. Many found their way blocked by American and South Vietnamese armoured vehicles coming from the opposite direction. One shell hit the Chapel of Saint Anthony of Padua in the cathedral. And another exploded just outside the cathedral killing an American officer. Five other Americans were wounded and at least two Vietnamese killed when a shell hit the crowded central market. The Viet Cong were firing from bases at the edge of the jungle some three and half miles away from Saigon and amazed military observers with their accuracy.They also sank an American minesweeper in the Saigon River with a mine later in the day, killing several crew members. So far US armed helicopters and South Vietnamese ground forces have failed to track down any Viet Cong bases. Yesterday, former US President General Dwight D Eisenhower called for more troops to be sent to Vietnam to bring about a swift end to the conflict. He told the US News and World Report that the war had been “going on too long” and said America should be “putting in the kind of military strength we need to win” as soon as possible. (Source: BBC)

04 November 1942: Rommel goes on the run at El Alamein. The German army in North Africa is in full retreat, after suffering a comprehensive defeat in Egypt at the hands of the 8th Army under General Bernard Montgomery. News of the victory came in a special joint war report from British Headquarters in Cairo this evening. It described the retreating columns of German soldiers as “disordered” and said they were being “relentlessly attacked by our land forces, and by the Allied air force, by day and night.” It went on to say that Allied troops have captured more than 9,000 prisoners of war, including the commander of Germany’s Afrika Korps, General Ritter von Thoma. Casualties among the German troops are known to have been high. The King sent a message of congratulations to the Allied Commander in Egypt, General Harold Alexander, saying “The 8th Army… has dealt the Axis a blow of which the importance cannot be exaggerated.” It has taken 12 days and nights of fierce fighting around the desert village of El Alamein to drive back the massed forces of the German commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The village is at a bottleneck in the corridor formed by the Mediterranean coast on one side, and the impassable salt marshes of the Qattara Depression to the south. The 8th Army has been dug in there, holding back Rommel’s advance towards Cairo, ever since the first Battle of El Alamein in July. The second Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October with a heavy bombardment of the Germans’ five-mile-deep minefields to drive a way through for Allied troops. Since then progress has been grindingly slow as the German army put up a hard-fought defence. But inch by inch, the Allied soldiers made their way forward. The first indications that victory was imminent came yesterday, when the Germans abandoned a whole series of important positions without a shot being fired. Then long columns of enemy transports began to build up along the coast road as the retreat began. The triumph is already being described as the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler in North Africa. After months of defeat, retreat and stalemate, it is exactly the change in fortunes the Allies need to drive him out of Africa altogether. (Source: BBC)

04 November 1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary. The Soviet air force has bombed part of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Russian troops have poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive. At