** WWII – Operation Varsity: Two airborne divisions capture bridges across the Rhine River to aid the Allied advance.

The 5th Mechanized Infantry Division of the Third Army crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim on the night of March 22, 1945, thirty-six hours ahead of Montgomery's Rhine crossing, Operation Varsity.

Later large scale drops, such as those on the Rhine under Operation Varsity, were successful, but less ambitious in their intent to seize ground.

* Operation Varsity

Operation Varsity was a daylight assault conducted by two airborne divisions, the British 6th Airborne Division and the American 17th Airborne Division, both of which were part of the US XVIII Airborne Corps.

The British historian Max Hastings has labelled the operation both costly and unnecessary, writing that " Operation Varsity was a folly for which more than a thousand men paid for with their lives ..."

* Hagerman, Bart, Operation Varsity: Allied Airborne Assault Over the Rhine River World War II History Magazine, ( 1998 ), pp. 1 – 5

The regiment was so badly depleted that during Operation Varsity RAF pilots were used to fly many of the gliders.

XVIII Airborne Corps planned and executed Operation Varsity, the crossing of the Rhine river into Germany.

Glider pilots trained at South Plains flew these craft in combat during the Normandy Invasion, Operation Market-Garden, and also Operation Varsity, the airborne invasion of Germany.

In October 1944 however, the remaining Tetrarchs of the regiment were replaced by Locusts and eight were used during Operation Varsity in March 1945.

In March 1945, the 6th Airborne Division was informed that it would be participating in Operation Varsity, an airborne operation in support of 21st Army Group crossing the River Rhine during Operation Plunder.

Operation Varsity was the only time the Locust would see action with the 6th Airborne Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment or the British Army as a whole.

The airborne assault over the Rhine ( Operation Varsity ), was the largest single airborne operation in the history of airborne warfare.

In March 1945, he led his troops into Germany during Operation Varsity, and was wounded in the shoulder by German grenade fragments on March 24, 1945.

He saw combat in Operation Varsity, the airborne crossing of the Rhine River in March 1945, earning a Bronze Star, and remained on active duty until June 20, 1946.

Archway was initially intended to support Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity, the crossings of the River Rhine at Rees, Wesel, and south of the Lippe River in North Rhine-Westphalia by the British Second Army, under Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey.

Operation Archway was planned to support the XVIII Airborne Corps Operation Varsity parachute landings across the Rhine river.

The division was selected to participate in Operation Varsity, the airborne operation to support 21st Army Group crossing the River Rhine, but was removed from the operation due to there being insufficient transport aircraft to carry the division into combat.

Several other operations were planned for the division after the end of Operation Varsity, but these operations were cancelled when their objectives were captured by the rapid advance of Allied ground forces and they became superfluous.

To ensure that the operation was a success, Montgomery insisted that an airborne component was inserted into the plans for the operation to support the amphibious assaults that would take place, which was code-named Operation Varsity.

Reinhard Heydrich was killed after an attack by British trained Czechoslovak soldiers on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in exile in Operation Anthropoid, and knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the U. S. to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was travelling by plane.

Adolf Hitler, meanwhile, was almost killed by his own officers, and survived various attempts by other persons and organizations ( such as Operation Foxley, though this plan was never put into practice ).

In 1986, U. S. President Ronald Reagan ( who survived an assassination attempt himself ) ordered the Operation El Dorado Canyon air raid on Libya in which one of the primary targets was the home residence of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

It was soon used in combat — in March 1986 against a Libyan SA-5 site in the Gulf of Sidra, and then Operation Eldorado Canyon in April.

HARM was used extensively by the United States Navy and the United States Air Force for Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War of 1991.

The occupation of these facilities in October 1943 was codenamed Operation Alacrity by the British.

The most recent overseas operation of the Navy was along the coast of Libya as part of Operation Unified Protector.

He was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord from the initial landings until after the Battle of Normandy.

After Gott was killed flying back to Cairo Churchill was persuaded by Brooke, who by this time was Chief of the Imperial General Staff to appoint Montgomery, who had only just been nominated to replace Alexander as commander of the British ground forces for Operation Torch.

The conquest of Libya was essential for airfields to support Malta and to threaten the rear of Axis forces opposing Operation Torch.

The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, was fought between the United States and the Empire of Japan in the Pacific Theater of World War II, from September – November 1944 on the island of Peleliu, present-day Palau.

In 2002, it was a primary combat zone in Operation Defensive Shield, a major military offensive by the Israeli Defense Forces ( IDF ).

After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served as a temporary President from November to December 20, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was chosen at the Bonn International Conference on Afghanistan.

For the next five years he and the Northern Alliance were busy fighting the Taliban until the 2001 US-led Operation Enduring Freedom in which the Taliban government was toppled.

Indeed, the final German blitzkrieg operation in the west, Operation Wacht am Rhein, was planned to take place during poor weather which grounded Allied aircraft.

By the summer of 1944 the reversal of fortune was complete and Operation Bagration saw Soviet forces inflict crushing defeats on Germany through the aggressive use of armour, infantry and air power in combined strategic assault, known as deep operations.

Germany's last offensive on its Western front, Operation Wacht am Rhein, was an offensive launched towards the vital port of Antwerp in December 1944.

Many historians now hold the position that blitzkrieg was not a military theory, and the campaigns conducted by the German military in 1939 to circa, 1942 ( with the exception of Operation Barbarossa ) were improvised invasions put together and modified at the last moment and therefore was not a proper military strategy.

It was only after the Battle of France German thinking reverted to the possibility of a blitzkrieg method for the Balkan Campaign and Operation Barbarossa.

In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany, including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive in Belorussia against the German Army Group Centre.

* 1993 – Israel launches a massive attack against Lebanon in what the Israelis call Operation Accountability, and the Lebanese call Seven-Day War.

In October 2001, the United States armed forces and British Armed Forces provided massive air support to United Front ( Northern Alliance ) ground forces during Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Allies, led by the United States coordinated a massive build-up of troops and supplies to support a large-scale invasion of Normandy in the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 under the code name Operation Overlord.

< imagemap > File: 1990s decade montage. png | From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990 ; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War ; The signing of the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993 ; The World Wide Web gains a public face during the start of decade and as a result gains massive popularity worldwide ; Boris Yeltsin and followers stand on a tank in defiance to the August Coup, which leads to the Soviet Union's dissolution on 26 December 1991 ; Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell ; The funeral procession of Diana, Princess of Wales, who dies in 1997 from a car crash in Paris, and is mourned by millions ; Hundreds of thousands are killed in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 .| 420px | thumb

* April 11 – The Israeli government launches Operation Grapes of Wrath, consisting of massive attacks on Lebanon, in retaliation for prior terrorist attacks, and sparking off a violent series of retaliations.

* 1948-Berlin Blockade imposed on June 24 by the Soviet Union, blocking traffic into western sectors of Berlin, followed by Operation Vittles, America airlifted massive amounts of food, fuel and supplies into city.

In April 2002, he was at the head of an activist group arriving in the West Bank to protest the massive Israeli Army operation conducted at that time that caused many civilian Palestinian casualties (" Operation Defensive Shield " in official Israeli terminology ).

The system played a major part in the massive campaign of deception which preceded the D-Day landings, designed to give the Germans a false impression of the location and timings of the landings ( see Operation Fortitude ).

In 1988, Queensrÿche released Operation: Mindcrime, a narrative concept album that proved a massive critical and commercial success.

Indonesian forces launched a massive air and sea invasion, known as Operasi Seroja, or ' Operation Komodo ', almost entirely using US-supplied equipment even if Kissinger feared this would be revealed to the public.

* A day afer a deadline was passed set in Resolution 678, Coalition forces launch Operation Desert Storm with a massive air campaign against targets in Iraq and Kuwait.

Most British forces had been withdrawing to base to prepare for Operation Olympic, the first part of the massive invasion of Japan.

* In 1989 during Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama, there was massive systematic looting including office towers organized by the Dignity Battalions.

In November 1942, when the Soviet Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive, code named Operation Uranus, Paulus found himself surrounded by an entire Soviet Army Group.

He was reassigned to the Ministry of Electricity and Water in 1996, a period which saw massive power projects in Baddawi and Zahrani, Zouk and Baalbeck, and massive electrical grid installation and distribution throughout Lebanon, including the outlying areas still in turmoil with Israeli Forces in the south, hence the progress was too slow compared to the massive increase in the Megawatts needed, since little electricity projects were accomplished over 18 years of civil unrest, mainly because of the Israeli Operation Grapes of Wrath.

Conversely, Operation Wacht am Rhein ( Watch on the Rhine ) was deliberately named to suggest the opposite of its purpose-a defensive " watch " as opposed to a massive blitzkrieg operation, just as was Operation Weserübung ( Weser-exercise ), which signified the plans to invade Norway and Denmark in April 1940.

In Operation Uranus, the Soviets easily defeated these minor Axis forces as they performed a massive encirclement operation.

The massive airlift known as Operation Moses began to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel on November 18, 1985 and ended on January 5, 1986.

These and other scandals led to a massive internal investigation by the Dorset Constabulary into the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police, codenamed Operation Countryman.

In March 2002, the Uganda People's Defence Force ( UPDF ) launched a massive military offensive, named " Operation Iron Fist ", against the LRA bases in southern Sudan, with agreement from the National Islamic Front.

On December 9, 2010 the servers of MasterCard underwent a massive attack as part of a Operation Avenge Assange for closing down payments of whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks.