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52 BCE

The Gallic Wars have raged for eight years, with Julius Caesar leading much of the Roman Republic’s charge against the tribes of Gaul in Western Europe. An inability to band together against their common enemy dooms the Gallic tribes, and the struggle ends at the Battle of Alesia.

1895

Stephen Crane’s novel ‘The Red Badge of Courage‘ is released in book form for the first time. Not yet born when the Civil War ended, the young author weaves a narrative of America’s great cataclysm, now 30 years gone, with such verisimilitude that critics will call him a master of Realism

1942

A new Nazi ‘Wunderwaffen,’ or ‘weapon of wonder,’ is fired in a test flight, and the missile’s top 52.5-mile altitude is so high it becomes the first manmade object to enter outer space. In less than two years Germany will begin launching thousands of V-2 rockets, mainly against Belgium and the UK.

1990

In what will later be celebrated as ‘Unity Day,’ a country torn in two after the Second World War is reunited as the once Soviet-controlled East Germany is dissolved and its territory and citizens merged with the Federal Republic of Germany, formerly known as West Germany.