7/7/- 7/9/37, Marco Polo Bridge incident, beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

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80 years ago this month, the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident", a bloody skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops near the Marco Polo Bridge (Chinese: Lugouqiao) outside Peiping (now Beijing), ignited initially by reports of a missing Japanese soldier that was later found, over the next month escalated into the Battle of Shanghai (8/13/-11/26/37) that developed into the warfare between the two countries that was the prelude to World War II in the Pacific.

If you have any historic, authentic U.S. Asiatic Fleet artifacts that were actually on ship or shore at Shanghai, China, 7/37- 12/37, post them in their appropriate sub-forum. Seaman Freddie John Falgout of Louisiana, killed by shrapnel aboard the cruiser USS Augusta anchored off the famous Shanghai "Bund" on the evening of August 20, 1937 is regarded by some as the first combat casualty of WW2, four months prior to the attack on the "new six" gunboat Panay, and four years before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The explosion on Augusta, flag of ADM Harry Yarnell, CinCAF, and the only Asiatic US cruiser, injured 17 others (none seriously) when an anti-aircraft shell landed on deck while the men were watching the evening movie. Front page stories in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and other papers the next day reported that Augusta did not return fire since the ship's officers were unsure if the explosive was from a Chinese aircraft or Japanese anti-aircraft batteries. It was later determined to be from a Japanese anti-aircraft gun, though the US regarded it as an "accident".

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=13860859

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident

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BTT for the 85th Anniversary of the Battle (or Seige) of Shanghai, often regarded as the first battle of World War II.