On September 5

On this day in ...
... 1793 (215 years ago today), Maximilien Robespierre (right) launched the period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror when he "declare[d] Terror 'the order of the day.'" The declaration touched off nearly 2 years in which political enemies -- an estimated 18,500-40,000 persons -- were killed. Robespierre himself would perish beneath the guillotine days after the end of La Terreur. (image credit)
... 1978 (30 years ago today), Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter began what would be nearly 2 weeks of negotiations on framework for Middle East peace at the U.S. President's Maryland retreat, Camp David. The Camp David Accords were released at the conclusion of the meeting, on September 17. A collection of historial materials related to the negotiations may be found here. (credit for photo of Begin playing chess with U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski during Camp David negotiations)

On July 3

On this day in ...
... 1844, on a small island near Iceland, for reasons that are unclear, 3 fishermen strangled to death the last pair of Great Auks and smashed the egg the couple was incubating. Although a single adult was sighted in Newfoundland a few years afterward, by the end of the mid-18th C. the once-prevalent Great Auk (left), a flightless, 30-some-inch-tall, 11-pound bird that resembled a penguin, was extinct.
... 1979, U.S. President Jimmy "Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul," Afghanistan (map below), as described in an interview by Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Soviet Union would send its troops to invade the country in December of the same year.