Published 06/11/2014
Bridgeman Footage holds a wealth of clips of, and relating to, many of 2015's major anniversaries. Click through to discover history in motion...
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January
On January 4 1865 the New York Stock Exchange opened its first permanent headquarters at 10-12 Broad near Wall Street in New York City.
The Dutch famine of 1944 took place in German-occupied Netherlands, particularly in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944–1945. |
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Release of Animal Farm - 60 years Britain's first ever animated feature film, Animal Farm was created by the pioneering Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio. Based on the influencial George Orwell novel of the same name, the film was released on the 7th of January 1955. The CIA paid for the filming as part of the US cultural offensive during the Cold War, and influenced how Orwell's ideas were to be presented. The CIA initially funded Louis de Rochemont to begin work on a film version of Orwell's masterpiece, who then hired Halas & Batchelor to produce propaganda films for the British government. |
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World War II: Britain introduces food rationing - 75 years On 8 January 1940, bacon, butter and sugar were rationed. This was followed by successive ration schemes for meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk and canned and dried fruit. It was one of the principal strategies of the Germans to attack shipping bound for Britain, restricting British industry and potentially starving the nation into submission.
Martin Luther King Day is a United States holiday marking the birthdate of the famous leader. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of King's birthday, January 15. In 2015 it will be on the 19 January. |
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Death of Jean-Francois Millet - 140 years On January 20 1875, the French Realist Painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France died. A childhood memory inspired his famous Angelus. In 1865, Millet said: "The idea for The Angelus came to me because I remembered that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed" |
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Birth of Buzz Aldrin, members of Apollo 11 spaceflight - 85 years On 20 January 1930 Buzz Aldrin was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Fulfilling a common boyhood dream, he grew up to not only be a NASA astronaut, but became the co-pilot of the first successful moon-landing. Find footage covering the Apollo 11 spaceflight and other NASA spaceflight programs in our collection.
Death of Sir Winston Churchill - 50 Years On 24 January 1965, Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th Century, Honorary Citizen of the United States and Winner of the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature dies at his London home, age 90. |
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Death of Amedeo Modigliani – 95 years Amedeo Clemente Modigliani, Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures. He died in Paris on January 24, 1920. The clip on the right, Dialectics No.3 Male/Female is part of a series of studies based on a very essential curatorial concept: one artist, two artworks and the “dialogue” between them. |
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WWI: Germany's first large-scale use of poison gas as a weapon - 100 years Poison gas was first used as a weapon on 31 January 1915, when Germany fired 18,000 artillery shells containing liquid XYLYL bromide tear gas on Russian positions on the Rawka River, west of Warsaw during the Battle of Bolimov.
WWII: Liberation of the German concentration camp Auschwitz - 70 years On 27th of January 1945 the Red Army has liberated the Nazis' biggest concentration camp at Auschwitz in south-western Poland. |
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February
Black History Month, also known as African-American History Month in America, is an annual observance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom for remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated annually in the United States and Canada in February and the United Kingdom in October. |
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WWII Battle of Iwo Jima - 70 years The Battle of Iwo Jima began on the 19 February and ended on the 26th of March 1945. Also called Operation Detachment, it was a major WWII battle fought by the United States Armed Forces who captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Empire. This five-week battle comprised some of the bloodiest fighting in the Pacific War of World War II. |
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EastEnders 30th anniversary EastEnders will launch its 'live week' on Monday, February 16 2015. Watch real-life "East-enders" in our archival footage of London East End markets and HD aerial views of the Thames. Cue theme tune... |
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World War I: Dardanelles Campaign - 100 years Anniversary On 19 February 1915 British and French forces launched an ill-fated naval attack on Turkish forces in the Dardanelles in northwestern Turkey, hoping to take control of the strait separating Europe from Asia. The failure of the campaign at the Dardanelles, along with the campaign that followed later that year in Gallipoli, resulted in heavy casualties and was a serious blow to the reputation of the Allied war command, including that of Winston Churchill, the British first lord of the admiralty, who had long been a proponent of an aggressive naval assault against Turkey at the Dardanelles. |
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March 8 March - International Women's Day Annually, on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.
Birth of Anselm Kiefer - 70 years On 8 March 1945 artist Anselm Kiefer was born. Celebrate in style by watching Anslem Kiefer: An Introduction to his work by Gerhard Kaul / Whitechapel Gallery or an educational, high-definition study of Anslem Kiefer's 'Masterworks.' |
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WWII: Last day of V-1 attacks on England - 70 years The first V-1 Flying Bomb - or Buzz Bomb as they were informally referred to - was launched on London on 13 June 1944, one week after the successful Allied landing in Europe. The attacks stopped when the last launch site was overrun on 29th of March 1945. |
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Selma Montgomery Marches - 50 years In March 1965, Martin Luther King made Selma, Alabama, the focus of his efforts to register black voters in the South. Protesters attempting to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were met with violent resistance by state and local authorities. The first march took place on March 7, the second on March 9, and the third march started on March 21. Protected by the U.S. Army, Alabama National Guard, FBI agents and Federal Marshals, the marchers walked along U.S. Route 80, known in Alabama as the "Jefferson Davis Highway". The marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 24 and at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. The civil rights marches, and King’s participation in them, greatly helped raise awareness of the difficulty faced by black voters in the South, and the need for a Voting Rights Act, which was passed later that year. |
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April Birth of Bismarck - 200 years Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890.
End of American Civil War - 150 years The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between the Confederacy (the South) and the Union (the North). One of history's bloodiest wars, it lasted four years, ending on the 9th of April 1865, resulting in the abolition of slavery. |
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Death Josephine Baker - 40 years Josephine Baker, American-born French dancer, singer, and actress who came to be known as the "Black Pearl," "Bronze Venus" and even the "Creole Goddess", died in Paris on April 12 1975.
Franklin D. Roosevelt dies - 70 years Franklin D. Roosevelt was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States. A Democrat, he was elected four times and served from March 1933 to his death on 12 April 1945. |
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Apollo 13 spaceflight - 45 years On 11 April 1970 Apollo 13 was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17. |
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WWII: Bergen-Belsen liberation - 70 years The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945. When troops finally entered, they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and around 60,000 inmates, most of whom were acutely sick and starving. The scenes that greeted British troops are described by Mike Lewis, a cameraman who filmed inside the Belsen Concentration Camp soon after the liberation. WWI: Gallipoli Campaign - 100 years This infamous battle took place between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916. Russia, Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula with the aim of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. Both failed after 8 months of terrible fighting. The Gallipoli Campaign is often considered as marking the birth of national consciousness in Australia and New Zealand and the date of the landing, 25 April, is known as "Anzac Day". It remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in those two countries. |
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WWII: Death of Benito Mussolini - 70 years On 28 April 1945, Mussolini was captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Italian partisans.
Vietnam war: Operation Frequent Wind - 40 years Operation Frequent Wind, carried out on 29–30 April 1975, was the final phase in the evacuation of American civilians and "at-risk" Vietnamese from Saigon, South Vietnam prior to the takeover of the city by the North Vietnamese Army (PAVN) in the Fall of Saigon. |
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Death of Alfred Hitchcock - 35 years Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director and producer. Often nicknamed "The Master of Suspense", he pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. Hitchcock died, aged 80, of renal failure at 9:17 am on 29 April 1980, in his home in Bel Air.
WWII: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide - 70 years Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva Braun, whose home movies can be found in our archive, committed suicide alongside him by ingesting cyanide. |
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End of Vietnam War - 40 years The war in Vietnam ended on 30 April 1975 as the government in Saigon announced its unconditional surrender to the Vietcong and American troops withdrew. |
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May Expo 2015 - Universal Exposition Milan, 1 May, 31 Oct Expo 2015 is the next scheduled Universal Exposition after Expo 2012, and will be hosted by Milan, Italy, between 1 May and 31 October 2015. This will be the second time Milan hosts the exposition, the first being the Milan International of 1906. Expo 2015 will be held under the theme Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.
WWII: Germany signs unconditional surrender - 70 years At 02:41 on the morning of 7 May 1945, at SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies. |
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WWI: Sinking of the RMS Lusitania - 100 years On 7 May 1915 the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by the Imperial German Navy U-boat U-20 off the south-west coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 civilians en route from New York to Liverpool. This attack led to America's involvement in the Great War.
V-E Day - 70 years Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 (7 May in Commonwealth realms) to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces. |
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Churchill becomes PM for the first time - 75 years On 10 May 1940, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, was elected Prime Minister for the first time. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, an artist and the first Honorary citizen of the United States.
Warsaw Pact - 60 years The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. It was signed on the 14 May 1955 and It was primarily motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe; in turn (according to The Warsaw Pact's preamble) meant to maintain peace in Europe, guided by the objective points and principles of the Charter of the United Nations (1945). |
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Death Of Malevich - 80 years The Russian painter and art theoretician Kazimir Severinovich Malevich dies on 15 May 1935. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde, Suprematist movement |
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June WWII: Churchill speech "We shall never surrender" - 75 Years 4 June 1940, House of Commons. After the Dunkirk evacuation, Churchill calms the nation’s euphoria and stiffens its resolve: “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” |
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Birth of Egon Schiele - 125 years Protégé of Gustav Klimt, and one of the major figurative painters of the early 20th century, Egon Schiele was born in Tulln an der Donau, Austria, on 12 June 1890. The twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterise Schiele's paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. |
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Korean War begins - 65 years The war between South Korea and North Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, also assisted by the Soviet Union, began on the 25 June 1950. |
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New York premiere of Hitchcock's Psycho - 55 years Psycho is a 1960 American horror-thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Janet Leigh. The screenplay is by Joseph Stefano, based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. It was first shown in New York on 16 June 1960. |
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July The Salvation Army is founded - 150 years On 2 July 1865, The Christian Mission, later renamed the Salvation Army, is founded in Whitechapel, London by William and Catherine Booth. |
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WWII: Battle of Britain - 75 years The Second World War air campaign waged by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940 started on the 10th of July. |
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Death of Vincent Van Gogh - 125 years On 29 July 2015 it will be exactly 125 years since Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) died. The Van Gogh Europe Foundation, a collaboration of around 30 organisations is seizing this opportunity to honour the Dutch artist under the theme ‘125 years of inspiration’. The stimulus for this is that the artist inspires many people to this very day and that he is still very much ‘alive’, even 125 years after his death. Activities will be organised throughout the year in various towns in Holland, Belgium, France and England that featured in the life and work of the artist. Never before has there been cooperation on this scale between the organisations (museums and heritage sites) which are actively engaged in preserving and promoting Van Gogh’s heritage. |
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August Birth of Neil Armstrong, Captain of Apollo 11 spaceflight - 85 years On 5th of August 1930 Neil Armstrong is born in Auglaize County, near Wapakoneta, Ohio. 39 Years later he became the first man to step foot on the Moon. Upon setting his left boot upon the moon's surface, he then spoke the famous words, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." |
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Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 70 years On the 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb is dropped by a United States aircraft on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. |
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Korean War: British troops arrive in Korea - 65 years On 29 August 1950, British forces of about 4,000 infantry arrived in Korea from Hong Kong. |
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September WWII: Surrender of Japan - 70 years On 2nd of September 1945 in the presence of 50 Allied generals and other officials, the Japanese envoys boarded the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay to sign the surrender document. |
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WWII: The Blitz - 75 years Starting on 7 September 1940, London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, almost half of them in London. |
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Britain's first Woman doctor qualified - 150 years Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, LSA, MD (9 June 1836 – 17 December 1917), was an English physician and feminist, the first Englishwoman to qualify as a physician and surgeon in Britain on the 28 September 1865. She was also the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first dean of a British medical school, the first female doctor of medicine in France, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain. |
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October R101 Airship Crash - 85 years R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Ministry-appointed team and was effectively in competition with the government-funded but privately designed and built R100. When built it was the world's largest flying craft at 731 ft (223 m) in length, and it was not surpassed until the Hindenburg flew seven years later. |
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Birth of Michael Collins, member of Apollo 11 spaceflight - 85 years On 31 October 1930 Michael Collins was born in Rome, Italy. As Command Module pilot for the NASA Apollo 11 moon-landing mission, he became the only crew member to not walk upon the surface of the moon. |
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Birth of Hokusai - 255 years Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was born on the 31 October 1760. His most famous painting is The Great Wave of Kanagawa. |
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November John F. Kennedy wins the 1960 Presidential Election - 55 years On 9 November 1960 John F. Kennedy becomes the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. He became the 35th President of the United States on 20 January 1961. |
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1,000 Quakers stage two-day anti nuclear vigil - 55 years There were many anti-nuclear protests in the United States which captured national public attention during the 1960s and 1970s. On 12 and 13 November 1960 1000 Quakers held a two-day vigil outside the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Marching with banners, and standing silently outside the Pentagon, they are protesting against the nuclear conflict of the Cold War. |
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Nuremberg trials - 70 years The Nuremberg trials, held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. |
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December Death of Paolo Uccello - 540 years Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and a mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. He was born in 1397 and he died the 10 December 1475, Florence, Italy. One if his most famous artwork is the series: The Battle of San Romano. |
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The 1 millionth Ford car is produced - 100 years On December 10 1915 the 1 millionth Ford car rolls off the assembly line at the River Rouge Plant in Detroit. |
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Dayton Agreement ends the Bosnian war - 20 years The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, in November 1995, and formally signed in Paris on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the 3 1⁄2-year-long Bosnian War, one of the armed conflicts in the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. |
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Death of Jacques-Louis David - 190 years
Looking for ideas? Bridgeman has selected important historical anniversaries for which we can provide archive footage and images. For more information about researching or licensing, please contact us |