On this day in history: France reorganised into 83 départements, 1790

Prior to the revolution, the administration of France involved a confused overlapping patchwork of local authorities. In order to rationalise the administration of the country and to reduce regional loyalties based on aristocratic ownership of the land, in September 1789 Jacques-Guillaume Thouret presented a report by the Constitution Committee to the Constituent Assembly that proposed the division of France into smaller administrative regions. Three months later the Assembly adopted a plan to create 83 roughly rectangular départements of similar size, each named after geographical and other natural features.

On 4th March 1790 the new administrative structure came into effect. The electorate of each département would vote for 36 council members and a procureur-général-syndic, a legal officer, each serving for two years with half the council facing re-election each year. The council elected eight of their number to to deal with all aspects of local administration.

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Meeting of the French Estates-General: 5th May 1789
Feudalism abolished in France: 4th August 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: 26th August 1789
Paris celebrates la Fête de la Fédération: 14th July 1790

On this day in history: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918

Following the seizure of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917, the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies passed The Decree on Peace proposing the immediate withdrawal of Russia from war against Germany and her allies. In December the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Central Powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire - signed an armistice and started peace negotiations. Months passed before the Russians delegation, led by Leon Trotsky in his role as People's Commissar for Foreign Relations, withdrew from the talks because they could not accept the German's demands for the secession of territory.

The Germans responded by repudiating the ceasefire, seized much of the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States before threatening the Russian capital, Petrograd. The Russians had little choice but to return to the negotiating table. On 3rd March 1918 the representatives of the belligerents signed a treaty at Brest-Litovsk in modern day Belarus.

The terms of the treaty were even more unfavourable to the Russians than those they had previously rejected. The fourteen articles of the treaty included provisions for the Central Powers to take effective control of the Baltic states, Finland, Belarus and the Ukraine. The Russians were also to return those lands captured from the Ottoman Empire. In return the Ottoman's accepted the creation of the Democratic Republic of Armenia.

The treaty did not last long: the Ottomans invaded Armenia just two months after the signing of the treaty; then the Germans renounced it in November 1918 as a response to Bolshevik attempts to provoke revolution in Germany. Russia itself annulled the treaty after the Allied victory over Germany and her allies. Over the next three years the Soviet Union reclaimed some of its lost territory in a series of military campaigns.

The text of The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is available on the World War I Document Archive site.

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Treaty of Paris signed: 10th February 1763
Signing of the Armistice ended the Great War: 11th November 1918
Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. military action in Vietnam: 27th January 1973

On this day in history: First non-stop flight around the world, 1949

At 10:22 on the morning of 2nd March 1949, a B-50 Superfortress of the the United States Air Force called Lucky Lady II flew past the control tower at Carswell Air Force Base at Forth Worth, Texas, marking the completion of the first non-stop flight around the world. The aircraft had lifted off from the same airbase a little over eighty-four hours earlier. The fourteen strong crew, commanded by Captain James Gallagher, worked in rotation to achieve their secret objective.

To complete the 23,452 miles (37,742 km) easterly circumnavigation, Lucky Lady II had been adapted with an added fuel tank in the fuel bay. Even with the extra fuel capacity, the aircraft required refuelling at various points along the route. Four B-29 Superfortresses, adapted to serve as tankers, refuelled the B-50 over Lajes Air Force Base in the Azores, Dhahran Airfield in Saudi Arabia, Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

The record breaking flight had a sinister significance. It demonstrated that the United States could deliver a nuclear bomb anywhere in the world. Thankfully, Lucky Lady II was never called upon to fulfil this function, and it's fuselage is now on display at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California.

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First successful powered aeroplane flight: 17th December 1903
First flight around the World: 28th September 1924
Charles Lindbergh arrived in Paris: 21st May 1927