Richard Bidlack and Saint Petersburg's Central Naval Museum date the start of the siege of Leningrad to 8 September 1941. In their account, that day German troops of Army Group North took Shlisselburg on Lake Ladoga, cutting the city's last land link with the rest of the Soviet Union; Prit Buttar dates the capture a day earlier. Finnish forces closed the ring in the north. The same day, Bidlack writes, Germany launched its first massive air attack on the city. Hitler chose not to storm Leningrad but to blockade, bombard and starve it, with about 2.5 million people inside. The siege ended in January 1944; estimates of the dead in the city range from 700,000 to about one million.
The Siege of Leningrad
8 September 1941 · 85 years ago
German forces cut the last land routes to Leningrad, starting a blockade of the Soviet Union's second city in World War II. The city never fell, but about 1.5 million people died, many of hunger, while supplies came across Lake Ladoga, in winter over the ice road.
Read the full story of The Siege of Leningrad ›The Battle of Orsha, 1514: Ostrogski routs the army of Muscovy
8 September 1514 · 512 years ago
The Polish-Lithuanian army of Grand Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski won the Battle of Orsha on 8 September 1514, defeating a larger Muscovite army on the Dnieper near Orsha in modern Belarus.
Read the full story of The Battle of Orsha, 1514: Ostrogski routs the army of Muscovy ›Also on this day
1855: at Sevastopol, French columns left their trenches at noon and took the Malakoff, while the British stormed the Redan but could not hold it after nearly an hour of fighting, according to General James Simpson's despatch of 9 September. Taylor Stults also dates the Allied break-in to 8 September. The Russians then destroyed their military stores and withdrew to the north, and the city fell to the Allies, ending the siege of Sevastopol.1
