On this day...

(Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)
1835 – European settlers landing on the north banks of the Yar in Southeastern Australia founded the city of Melbourne.
1862 – American Civil War: James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson led their Confederate troops to a decisive victory against John Pope's Union Army at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Prince William County, Virginia.
1918 – Fanny Kaplan shot and wounded Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, helping to spark the Red Terror in the future Soviet Union, a repression against Socialist-Revolutionary Party members and other political opponents.
1992 – German race car driver Michael Schumacher won his first Formula One race at the Belgian Grand Prix.
1995 – Bosnian War: NATO began its bombing campaign against the Army of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All moments of profound historical importance. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if even one of those events had not happened? How would the world be different today? Just a single moment in history that could change the entire course of the Earth. Makes you wonder...

Allied fighter-bombers

Allied fighter-bombers continued to attack not only front-line positions, but also any supply trucks coming up behind with food, ammunition and fuel. The almost total absence of the Luftwaffe to contest the enemy's air supremacy continued to provoke anger among German troops, although they often resorted to black humour. 'If you can see silver aircraft, they are American,' went one joke. 'If you can see khaki planes, they are British, and if you can't see any planes, then they're German.' The other version of this went, 'If British planes appear, we duck. If American planes come over, everyone ducks. And if the Luftwaffe appears, nobody ducks.'

D-Day, by Antony Beevor

Cherbourg

"As the Americans closed in on Cherbourg they encountered a greater density of pillboxes and weapon pits, as well as major forts. Each position had to be dealt with individually. Colonel Bernard B. MacMahon's 315th Infantry was faced with what seemed to be a major defence work at Les Ingoufs, with a garrison of several hundred. A Polish deserter led MacMahon and a reconnaissance party close to it. It looked as if the guns had been destroyed, either by air attack or by the Germans themselves. MacMahon ordered a newly arrived loudspeaker truck to be brought up. He then ordered forward some artillery and announced over the loudpseakers in German that a full divisional assault was about to be launched. They had ten minutes to surrender, then 'any part of the garrison not surrending would be blasted out of existence'. He kept repeating the message, 'feeling rather foolish because his talking seemed to have produced no results'. Suddenly, he heard yells: 'Here they come!' Large numbers of German soldiers could be seen advancing, some with white flags and the rest with their arms raised. But they represented only a portion of the garrison.
A group of five German officers appeared next, as delegates sent by the garrison commander. They asked MacMahon to have his guns fire one phosphorus shell at the position so that their commander could feel he 'had satisfied his obligation to the Fuhrer and surrender'. MacMahon had to admit that he had no phosphorus shells. Would 'German honor be satisfied' if five phosphorus grenaders were thrown? After discussion of this counter-proposal, the senior German officer agreed with more saluting. But only four grenades could be found in the whole company. There was more haggling, then these four grenades were thrown into a cornfield. The German officers inspected the results and agreed that they were indeed phosphorus, and returned to inform their commander that he could surrender the rest of the garrison and the field hospital attached.
MacMahon found that they had taken 2,000 prisoners."

From D-Day, by Antony Beevor.