** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:12 pm
August 21st ~

1680 – Pueblo Indians took possession of Santa Fe, N.M., after driving out the Spanish. They destroyed almost all of the Spanish churches in Taos and Santa Fe.

1800 – U.S. Marine Corps Band gave its first concert in Washington, D.C.

1814 – Marines defended Washington, DC, at Bladensburg, Maryland, against the British.

1831 – Believing himself chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery, Nat Turner launches a bloody slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, a slave and educated minister, planned to capture the county armory at Jerusalem, Virginia, and then march 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where his rebels would be able to elude their pursuers. With seven followers, he slaughtered Joseph Travis, his slave owner, and Travis’ family, and then set off across the countryside, hoping to rally hundreds of slaves to his insurrection en route to Jerusalem. During the next two days and nights, Turner and 75 followers rampaged through Southampton County, killing about 60 whites. Local whites resisted the rebels, and then the state militia–consisting of some 3,000 men–crushed the rebellion. Only a few miles from Jerusalem, Turner and all his followers were dispersed, captured, or killed.

In the aftermath of the rebellion, scores of African Americans were lynched, though many of them were non-participants in the revolt. Turner himself was not captured until the end of October, and after confessing without regret to his role in the bloodshed, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. On November 11, he was hanged in Jerusalem.

1862 – As the economy took a beating from the Civil War, the Treasury Department sprung into action by releasing fractional currency, alternately known as postage currency. The new 5, 10, 25, and 50-cent notes hit the streets on this day.

1863 – The vicious guerilla war in Missouri spills over into Kansas and precipitates one of the most appalling acts of violence during the war when 150 men in the abolitionist town of Lawrence are murdered in a raid by Southern partisans. The Civil War took a very different form in Kansas and Missouri than it did throughout the rest of the nation. There were few regular armies operating there; instead, partisan bands attacked civilians and each other. The roots of conflict in the region dated back to 1854, when the Kansas-Missouri border became ground zero for tension over slavery. While residents of Kansas Territory were trying to decide the issue of slavery, bands from Missouri, a slave state, began attacking abolitionist settlements in the territory. Abolitionists reacted with equal vigor. When the war began, the long heritage of hatred between partisans created unparalleled violence in the area.

1883 – The first installation of electric lights in a US Navy warship took place during the summer.

1867 – After the Civil War settlers rushed to claim lands in the Great Plains. By the mid-1867 the native peoples in Kansas began resisting by attacking settlements, railroad workers and travelers heading west. To help meet this emergency the War Department authorized placing volunteer units on active duty to patrol and protect the settlements. They were soon joined by elements of the U.S. 10th Cavalry. This unit was one of four Regular Army African American regiments composed of all-black enlisted men but almost entirely commanded by white officers. These men are often referred to as the “Buffalo Soldiers”, a nick name given them by the Native American because their hair resembles that of the buffalo.

1920 – Radio station built by U.S. Navy and French Government transmits first wireless message heard around the world. At time it was the most powerful radio station in the world.

1944 – Representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China meet in the Dumbarton Oaks estate at Georgetown, Washington, D.C., to formulate the formal principles of an organization that will provide collective security on a worldwide basis-an organization that will become the United Nations.

1945 – Japan appeals to Kamikaze pilots to cease operations. A joint statement by the Japanese Imperial headquarters and the government instructs the general public in Japan to go about its business calmly and, according to the official news agency, authorities have forbidden fraternization saying “there will be no direct contact between the general public and the Allied landing forces.”

1945 – Haroutune (Harry) Krikor Daghlian, Jr. (May 4, 1921 – September 15, 1945), an Armenian American physicist with the Manhattan Project, accidentally irradiated himself during a critical mass experiment at the remote Omega Site facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, resulting in his death 25 days later. Daghlian was irradiated as a result of a criticality accident that occurred when he accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a 6.2 kg delta phase plutonium bomb core. This core, available at the close of World War II and later nicknamed the “Demon core”, also resulted in the death of Louis Slotin in a similar accident, and was used in the Able detonation, during the Crossroads series of nuclear weapon testing.

1951 – First contract for nuclear-powered submarine awarded.

1959 – The modern United States receives its crowning star when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the Union as the 50th state. The president also issued an order for an American flag featuring 50 stars arranged in staggered rows: five six-star rows and four five-star rows. The new flag became official July 4, 1960.

1965 – Launch of Gemini 5, piloted by LCDR Charles Conrad Jr., USN, who completed 120 orbits in almost 8 days at an altitude of 349.8 km. Recovery was by helicopter from USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39).

1965 – It is revealed by MACV headquarters (Headquarters Military Assistance Command Vietnam) in Saigon that U.S. pilots have received approval to destroy any Soviet-made missiles they see while raiding North Vietnam. This was a major change from previous orders that restricted them to bombing only previously approved targets.

1968 – William Dana reached 80 km. in the last high-altitude X-15 flight.

1968 – After 5 years Russia once again jammed Voice of America radio.

1968 – Soviet forces invaded Czechoslovakia because of the country’s experiments with a more liberal government.

1968 – James Anderson, Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1972 – US orbiting astronomy observatory Copernicus was launched.

1972 – Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon with Boeing Lunar Rover #2.

1987 – Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the first Marine ever court-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB after becoming romantically involved with a Soviet woman while serving as a U.S. Embassy guard in Moscow. Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison, and was released in February 1996.

1989 – The U.S. space probe Voyager 2 fired its thrusters to bring it closer to Neptune’s mysterious moon Triton.

1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein delivered a speech in which he defended the detaining of foreigners in his country, and promised “a major catastrophe” should fighting break out in the Persian Gulf.

1991 – Just three days after it began, the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev collapses. Despite his success in avoiding removal from office, Gorbachev’s days in power were numbered. The Soviet Union would soon cease to exist as a nation and as a Cold War threat to the United States.

1993 – In a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft on a $980 million mission. Its fate remains unknown.

2001 – The CIA placed Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi under suspicion as part of the investigation in the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen. The 2 were among the hijackers who commandeered the jet that hit the Pentagon on Sept 11th.

2002 – A new Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket launched a 4-ton French communications satellite into orbit.

2003 – The US military reported that Ali Hassan al-Majid (“Chemical Ali”), No. 5 on the list of most-wanted Iraqis, had been captured.
PostPosted: Sat Aug 22, 2015 9:02 am
August 22nd ~

1775 – England’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies in a state of open rebellion.

1777 – With the approach of General Benedict Arnold’s army, British Colonel Barry St. Ledger abandoned Fort Stanwix and returns to Canada.

1816 – The Revenue Cutter Active, under the command of Revenue Captain Steven White and acting under orders of the Collector at Baltimore, took possession of the Spanish brig Servia, recently departed from Baltimore, which was anchored in the Patuxent River. The Servia had been captured by an American privateer and Active was ordered to arrest the Servia and return it to Baltimore for examination.

1846 – The United States annexed New Mexico.

1864 – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention, the first codified international treaty that covered the sick and wounded soldiers in the battlefield.

1902 – President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile in Hartford, Conn.

1911 – President William Taft vetoed a joint resolution of Congress granting statehood to Arizona. Taft vetoed the resolution because he believed a provision in the state constitution authorizing the recall of judges was a blow at the independence of the judiciary. The offending clause was removed an Arizona was admitted to statehood on February 14, 1912. Afterward, the state restored the article in its constitution.

1912 – Birthday of the Navy’s Dental Corps.

1934 – H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War (1991), was born in Trenton, NJ.

1942 – The 4th Marine Air Wing was commissioned at Ewa, Hawaii, as the 4th Marine Base Defense Air Wing.

1943 – US forces occupy islands of the Ellice group, including Nukufetau and Namumea. There is no Japanese opposition. Work begins on constructing airfields.

1944 – The Liberty ship SS Alexander V. Frazer, named for the “first” commandant of the Revenue Cutter Service, was launched.

1945 – Conflict in Vietnam began when a group of Free French parachute into southern Indochina, in response to a successful coup by communist guerilla Ho Chi Minh.

1945 – The Japanese garrison on Mili Atoll capitulated in a ceremony on an American destroyer escort; USS Levy. This is the first time a Japanese force surrenders en masse.

1950 – During the fighting at the “Bowling Alley” near Tabudong, North Korean Lieutenant Colonel Chong Pong UK, commander of the artillery regiment supporting the North Korean 13th Division, surrendered to the ROK 1st Division. Chong, the highest-ranking communist prisoner to date, gave precise information on the location of his artillery. Eighth Army immediately launched air and artillery strikes on the enemy guns. Chong had defected in protest against what he felt was an unfair reprimand by the 13th Division commander.

1962 – Savannah, world’s 1st nuclear powered ship, completed here maiden voyage from Yorktown, Va., to Savannah, Ga.

1963 – American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km (66 mi).

1968 – For the first time in two months, Viet Cong forces launch a rocket attack on Saigon, killing 18 and wounding 59. Administration officials denounced the attack as a direct repudiation of President Johnson’s speech of August 19, in which he appealed to the North Vietnamese to respond favorably to his limitation of the air campaign north of the DMZ.

1990 – President Bush signed an order calling up reservists to bolster the US military buildup in the Persian Gulf.

1993 – NASA engineers continued trying, without success, to re-establish contact with the Mars Observer, a day after losing contact.

1993 – In Somalia, six US soldiers are WIA when their truck is blown up.

1994 – The Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea and the CCCS Louis S. Ste Laurent became the first “North American surface ships” to reach the North Pole. An HH-65A from Aviation Training Center Mobile, detached to the Polar Sea, became the first U.S. (and also Coast Guard) helicopter to reach the pole as well.

1996 – The US Army began operating an incinerator in Utah to destroy a 14,000 ton stockpile of chemical weapons over 7 years.

1997 – A $64.8 million 890- lb. Lewis satellite was launched by NASA on a hoped-for 5-year mission. It went into an uncontrolled spin on Aug 22 and was expected to fall and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere in Sept.

1998 – President Clinton, in his Saturday radio address, announced he had signed an executive order putting Osama bin Laden’s Islamic Army on a list of terrorist groups.

2001 – The space shuttle Discovery returned and brought home 3 crew members, Yuri Usachev, Susan Helms, and Jim Voss, who had spent nearly 6 months on the Int’l. Space Station.

2001 – NATO members gave formal approval for alliance soldiers to collect weapons from Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia.

2002 – The US and Russia took away 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging nuclear reactor in Belgrade to Russia for re-processing.

2002 – Two US helicopter pilots were reported lost in South Korea. Their bodies were found the next day 13 miles south of Camp Page.

2004 – U.S. warplanes bombed Najaf’s Old City and gunfire rattled amid fears a plan to end the standoff with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr could. A car bomb exploded north of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring four others, including a deputy provincial governor.

2007 – The Storm botnet, a botnet created by the Storm Worm, sends out a record 57 million e-mails in one day.
PostPosted: Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:48 pm
August 23rd ~

1775 – American Revolutionary War: King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St. James’s stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.

1784 – Eastern Tennessee settlers declared their area an independent state and named it Franklin; a year later the Continental Congress rejected it.

1819 – Oliver Hazard Perry, naval hero, died on his 34th birthday.

1820 – The Revenue Cutter Louisiana captured four pirate vessels.

1861 – Allen Pinkerton, head of the new secret service agency of the Federal government, places Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow under house arrest in Washington, D.C. Greenhow was a wealthy widow living in Washington at the outbreak of the war. She was well connected in the capital and was especially close with Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson. The Maryland native was openly committed to the Southern cause, and she soon formed a substantial spy network. Greenhow’s operation quickly paid dividends for the Confederacy. One of her operatives provided key information to Confederate General Pierre G. T. Beauregard concerning the deployment of Union General Irwin McDowell’s troops before the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. Beauregard later testified that this dispatch, along with further information provided by Greenhow herself, was instrumental in Beauregard’s decision to request additional troops. The move led to a decisive victory by the Rebels.

It did not take the Federals long to track down the leaks in Washington. Pinkerton placed Greenhow under house arrest, and he soon confined other suspected women in her home. However, Greenhow was undeterred. She was allowed visitors, including Senator Wilson, and was able to continue funneling information to the Confederates. Frustrated, Pinkerton finally confined Greenhow and her daughter to the Old Capitol Prison for five months in early 1862. In June 1862, she and her daughter, “Little Rose,” were released and exiled to the South. Greenhow traveled to England and France to drum up support for the Southern cause, and she penned her memoirs while abroad. She returned to the Confederacy in September 1864, but a Yankee war vessel ran her ship aground in North Carolina. Weighted down by a substantial amount of gold, Greenhow’s lifeboat overturned and she drowned.

1863 – A ruthless band of guerillas attacks the town of Lawrence, Kansas, killing every man and boy in sight. Led by William Quantrill and William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, the guerillas were said to have carried out the brutal attack on behalf of the Confederacy. Included in their group was Jesse James’ brother Frank and Cole Younger, who would also play a large role in the James gang later on. Bloody Bill Anderson got his name for his love of shooting unarmed and defenseless people. Reportedly, he carried as many as eight handguns, in addition to a saber and a hatchet. His horse was also outfitted with several rifles and backup pistols. Although he claimed to have political motives for his terrorism, Anderson more likely used the Civil War as an opportunity to kill without repercussion. Jesse James, only 17 at the time, teamed up with Bloody Bill after he split from Quantrill’s band of killers.

On September 24, 1864, their small splinter group terrorized and destroyed most of the town of Centralia, Missouri. They also ambushed a small troop of Union soldiers whose train happened to stop at Centralia. Twenty-five Northern soldiers were stripped and lined up while Anderson and Arch Clement proceeded to shoot each of them down in cold blood, sparing only the sergeant. A month later, Anderson paid for his crimes: He was caught by a full contingent of Union army troops in Missouri and killed in the ensuing battle. Jesse James was never brought to justice by the North for his war crimes and went on to become the 19th century’s most infamous criminal.

1864 – The Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field is adopted by 12 nations meeting in Geneva. The agreement, advocated by Swiss humanitarian Jean-Henri Dunant, called for nonpartisan care to the sick and wounded in times of war and provided for the neutrality of medical personnel. It also proposed the use of an international emblem to mark medical personnel and supplies. In honor of Dunant’s nationality, a red cross on a white background–the Swiss flag in reverse–was chosen. In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize. In 1881, American humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons founded the American National Red Cross, an organization designed to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.

1889 – The 1st ship-to-shore wireless message was received in US in SF.

1923 – Captain Lowell Smith and Lieutenant John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.

1939 – Lloyd’s of London advanced war-risk rates as the Nazis threatened to invade Poland and Europe braced itself for war. The Dow responded to the news with a 3.25 drop to close the day at 131.82.

1939 – Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies. But the dictators were, despite appearances, both playing to their own political needs. After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, Britain had to decide to what extent it would intervene should Hitler continue German expansion. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, at first indifferent to Hitler’s capture of the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, suddenly snapped to life when Poland became threatened. He made it plain that Britain would be obliged to come to the aid of Poland in the event of German invasion.

Both sides were extremely suspicious of the other, trying to discern ulterior motives. But Hitler was in a hurry; he knew if he was to invade Poland it had to be done quickly, before the West could create a unified front. Agreeing basically to carve up parts of Eastern Europe-and leave each other alone in the process-Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow and signed the non-aggression pact with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov (which is why the pact is often referred to as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). Supporters of bolshevism around the world had their heretofore romantic view of “international socialism” ruined; they were outraged that Stalin would enter into any kind of league with the fascist dictator. But once Poland was German-occupied territory, the alliance would not last for long.

1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster; A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people.

1945 – Clarence V. Bertucci is granted a discharge from the Army and sent to a mental institution for further tests and evaluation. He is responsible for the massacre of German POWs at Camp Salina, Utah on July 8th.

1950 – Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps were called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.

1951 – The Navy recommissioned the battleship USS Iowa under the command of Captain William R. Smedberg, III.

1954 - First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built originally by Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin. Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally designed as a troop, medical evacuation, and cargo transport aircraft. The versatile airframe has found uses in a variety of other roles, including as a gunship (AC-130), for airborne assault, search and rescue, scientific research support, weather reconnaissance, aerial refueling, maritime patrol, and aerial firefighting. It is now the main tactical airlifter for many military forces worldwide. Over 40 models and variants of the Hercules serve with more than 60 nations. The C-130 entered service with U.S., followed by Australia and others. During its years of service, the Hercules family has participated in numerous military, civilian and humanitarian aid operations.

The family has the longest continuous production run of any military aircraft in history. In 2007, the C-130 became the fifth aircraft—after the English Electric Canberra, Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Tupolev Tu-95, and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, all designs with various forms of aviation gas turbine power plants—to mark 50 years of continuous use with its original primary customer, in this case, the United States Air Force. The C-130 is one of the only military aircraft to remain in continuous production for over 50 years with its original customer, as the updated C-130J Super Hercules.

1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

1973 – Secretary of Defense Melvin R Laird announces the adoption of the “Total Force Policy” as the new doctrine of American military preparedness. The war in Vietnam has just ended. One of the major conclusions drawn from that experience was that the American people had not supported the war because it was fought without a stated declaration and the Johnson Administration failed to mobilize and use large numbers of Reserve Component (RC) forces, including the National Guard. By conscripting (drafting) individual men for service there is little notice by the larger community. However, when an RC unit is mobilized, often taking dozens to hundreds of personnel at one time, attracting big local headlines and impacting whole communities in numerous ways. Only by having a supportive populous, one backing the effort, can American military objectives be met.

1979 – The keel of the first of the new 270-foot class medium endurance cutters, the CGC Bear, was laid.

1989 – The markets took a nosedive and the Dow lost a hefty 76.73 points just a month after it nearly broke the 3,000 point barrier. The culprit for the decline? Wall Street’s increasing fears about the Persian Gulf crisis, which began in early August when the Iraqi army rolled into the oil-rich territory of its neighbor, Kuwait. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein openly declared his intention of annexing Kuwait, prompting President George Bush to deride the invasion as an act of “naked aggression.” As Bush and Hussein faced off, oil prices marched upward, in turn triggering the sell-off on Wall Street. Indeed, fears of war and escalating prices were written all over the markets: during the week of the 23rd, the Dow lost 6 percent of its total value.

1990 – US began to call up of 46,000 reservists to the Persian Gulf.

1990 – East and West Germany announced that they would unite Oct 3.

1990 – Iraqi state television showed President Saddam Hussein meeting with a group of about 20 Western detainees, telling the group—whom he described as “guests”—that they were being held “to prevent the scourge of war.”

1991 – Internaut’s day; Tim Berners-Lee opens the WWW, World Wide Web to new users.

1991 – In the wake of a failed coup by hard-liners in the Soviet Union, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin acted to strip the Communist Party of its power and take control of the army and the KGB.

1993 – The Galileo spacecraft discovers a moon, later named Dactyl, around 243 Ida, the first known asteroid moon.

1994 – A new Coast Guard record for people rescued was set on 23 August 1994 when 3,253 Cubans were rescued from dangerously overloaded craft during Operation Able Vigil.

1994 – Eugene Bullard, one of only two black pilots, and the only black American pilot, in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.’

2000 – Boeing made the first successful launch of its Delta III rocket.

2001 – Brian Regan (38), retired US Air Force master sergeant and cryptanalyst, was arrested by the FBI at Dulles Int’l. Airport on charges of spying. In 2002 Regan was accused of trying to spy for Iraq, Libya and China.

2011 – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the 2011 Libyan civil war.
PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 10:30 am
August 24th ~

1682 – Duke James of York gave Delaware to William Penn.

1781 – A small force of Pennsylvania militia is ambushed and overwhelmed by an American Indian group, which forces George Rogers Clark to abandon his attempt to attack Detroit.

1814 – British forces under General Robert Ross overwhelm American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and march unopposed into Washington, D.C. Most congressmen and officials fled the nation’s capital as soon as word came of the American defeat, but President James Madison and his wife, Dolley, escaped just before the invaders arrived. Earlier in the day, President Madison had been present at the Battle of Bladensburg and had at one point actually taken command of one of the few remaining American batteries, thus becoming the first and only president to exercise in actual battle his authority as commander in chief.
The British army entered Washington in the late afternoon, and General Ross and British officers dined that night at the deserted White House. Meanwhile, the British troops, ecstatic that they had captured their enemy’s capital, began setting the city aflame in revenge for the burning of Canadian government buildings by U.S. troops earlier in the war. The White House, a number of federal buildings, and several private homes were destroyed. The still uncompleted Capitol building was also set on fire, and the House of Representatives and the Library of Congress were gutted before a torrential downpour doused the flames. The next day, President Madison returned to a smoking and charred Washington and vowed to rebuild the city. James Hoban, the original architect of the White House, completed reconstruction of the executive mansion in 1817.

1862 – The C.S.S. Alabama was commissioned at sea off Portugal’s Azore Islands, beginning a career that would see over 60 Union merchant vessels sunk or destroyed by the Confederate raider. The ship was built in secret in the in Liverpool shipyards, and a diplomatic crisis between the US government and Britain ensued when the Union uncovered the ship’s birth place.

1863 – General Dabney H. Maury, CSA, reported: “The submarine boat sent to Charleston found that there was not enough water under the Ironsides for her to pass below her keel; therefore they have decided to affix a spike to the bow of the boat, to drive the spike into the Ironsides, then to back out, and by a string to explode the torpedo which was to be attached to the spike.” N. F. Hunley had originally been provided with a floating copper cylinder torpedo with flaring triggers which she could tow some 200 feet astern. The submarine would dive beneath the target ship, surface on the other side, and continue on course until the torpedo struck the ship and exploded. When the method proved unworkable, a spare torpedo containing 90 pounds of powder was affixed to the bow.

1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.

1894 – Congress passed the first graduated income tax law, which was declared unconstitutional the next year. It imposed a 2% tax on incomes over $4000.

1909 – Workers started pouring concrete for Panama Canal.

1912 – US passed an anti-gag law giving federal employees the right to petition government.

1912 – By an act of Congress, Alaska was given a territorial legislature of two houses.

1912 – Launching of USS Jupiter, first electrically propelled Navy ship. This collier will later be converted in to the first US Aircraft Carrier, the USS Langly.

1942 – U.S. forces continue to deliver crushing blows to the Japanese, sinking the aircraft carrier Ryuho in the Battle of the East Solomon Islands. Key to the Americans’ success in this battle was the work of coastwatchers, a group of volunteers whose job it is to report on Japanese ship and aircraft movement. The Marines had landed on Guadalcanal, on the Solomon Islands, on August 7. This was the first American offensive maneuver of the war and would deliver the first real defeat to the Japanese.
On August 23, coastwatchers, comprised mostly of Australian and New Zealander volunteers, hidden throughout the Solomon and Bismarck islands and protected by anti-Japanese natives, spotted heavy Japanese reinforcements headed for Guadalcanal. The coastwatchers alerted three U.S. carriers that were within 100 miles of Guadalcanal, which then raced to the scene to intercept the Japanese. By the time the Battle of the Eastern Solomons was over, the Japanese lost a light carrier, a destroyer, and a submarine and the Ryuho. The Americans suffered damage to the USS Enterprise, the most decorated carrier of the war; the Enterprise would see action again, though, in the American landings on Okinawa in 1945.

1945 – The last Cadillac-built M-24 tank was produced on this day, ending the company’s World War II effort. Civilian auto production virtually ceased after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the U.S. automotive industry turned to war production. Between 1940 and 1945, automotive firms made almost $29 billion worth of military materials, including jeeps, trucks, machine guns, carbines, tanks, helmets, and aerial bombs.

1949 – The North Atlantic Treaty went into effect.

1959 – Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. Senator... while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. Representative.

1960 – USS Bexar (APA-237) deploys to Pangahan Province in response to emergency request for aid from the Province’s governor.

1968 – France became the world’s fifth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.

1969 – Peru nationalized US oil interests.

1970 – U.S. B-52s carry out heavy bombing raids along the DMZ. In the United States, a radical protest group calling themselves the New Year’s Gang, a cover for or faction of the Weather Underground, blew up in the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Army Mathematics Research Center in Madison. A graduate student who was working late was killed in the blast. The center, which reportedly was involved in war research, had been a focus for protest in the past, but previously protests had all been nonviolent.

1987 – A military jury in Quantico, Va., sentenced Marine Sgt. Clayton Lonetree to 30 years in prison for disclosing U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. The sentence was later reduced; with additional time off for good behavior, Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison.

1989 – Voyager II passed within three thousand miles of Neptune sending back striking photographs.

1990 – Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.

1990 – Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sent a message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warning the Persian Gulf situation was “extremely dangerous.”

1993 – NASA’s Mars Observer, which was supposed to map the surface of Mars, was declared lost.

1995 – Harry Wu, Chinese human rights activist and writer, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by Chinese law and then expelled from China. China expelled Harry Wu, hours after convicting him of spying.

1996 – Four women began two days of academic orientation at The Citadel; they were the first female cadets admitted to the South Carolina military school since Shannon Faulkner.

1998 – The United States and Britain agreed to allow two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 to be tried by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands.

1998 – In Egypt Abu Nidal was captured after crossing the border from Libya. He had split from the PLO in 1974 and was responsible for terrorist bombings in 1985 at the Rome and Vienna airports and a 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 as well as a number of assassinations of PLO figures. Egypt denied the report of Nidal’s capture.

2000 – Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz says “Iraq will not cooperate”with UNMOVIC, the body created by the United Nations to replace the former UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM). UNMOVIC is headed by Hans Blix ,a Swedish diplomat and arms control expert. Under the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1284 creating UNMOVIC, U.N. economic sanctions could be lifted if Iraq fulfills various conditions, including cooperation with UNMOVIC.

2001 – The United States decides to support a modified British proposal to tighten procedures for pricing Iraqi crude oil. According to reports, Iraq is attempting to price its oil at artificially low levels, and favouring buyers willing to pay surcharges to secret accounts, thereby circumventing United Nations control over Iraqi oil revenue. Britain had proposed that the U.N. and Iraq set prices every 10 days, instead of the current 30days, to make it more difficult for Iraq to exploit fluctuations in the market.

2002 – In the Canary Islands over a dozen beaked whales beached themselves following NATO exercises that involved a cluster of warships and submarines. 9 of the whales washed ashore dead and showed lesions in the brain and hearing system, consistent with acoustic impact...from sonar.

2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term “planet” such that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.

2104 – The British Ambassador to the US apologizes after a British Embassy tweet: “Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the burning of the White house. Only sparkers this time!” The Twitter message was complete with a photo of a Whitehouse cake with the mentioned sparklers surrounding it.
PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 4:33 pm
August 25th ~

1540 – Explorer Hernando de Alarcon traveled up the Colorado River.

1718 – Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans.

1765 – In protest over the stamp tax, American colonists sacked and burned the home of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson.

1814 – British forces destroyed the Library of Congress, containing some 3,000 books.

1829 – Pres. Jackson made an offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refused.

1843 – Steam frigate Missouri arrives at Gibralter completing first Trans-Atlantic crossing by U.S. steam powered ship.

1861 – John La Mountain began balloon reconnaissance ascensions at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

1862 – Union and Confederate troops skirmished at Waterloo Bridge, Virginia, during the Second Bull Run Campaign.

1864 – Confederate troops secure a vital supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, when they halt destruction of the Weldon and Petersburg Railroad by Union troops. The railroad, which ran from Weldon, North Carolina, was a major supply line for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

1883 – The signing of a Treaty of Protectorate formally ends Vietnam’s independence. The name ‘Vietnam’ is officially eliminated, and the French divide Vietnam into northern and southern protectorates (Tonkin and Annam, respectively), both tightly under French control, although Annam retains its imperial Vietnamese administration. Southern Vietnam (Cochin China) has been a French colony since 1867. A general uprising in 1885 fails. In the Red River Valley of the north the French begin a period of twelve years of slaughter known as the ‘pacification’ of Tonkin.

1901 – Clara Maass (25), army nurse, sacrificed her life to prove that the mosquito carries yellow fever. Clara Louise Maass lost her life during scientific studies to determine the cause of yellow fever. A graduate of Newark German Hospital Training School for Nurses, she worked as an Army nurse in Florida, Cuba, and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1900, Maass returned to Cuba at the request of Maj. William Gorgas, chief sanitation officer. There she became embroiled in a controversy over the cause of yellow fever. To determine whether the tropical fever was caused by city filth or the bite of a mosquito, seven volunteers, including Maass, were bitten by the mosquitoes. Two men died, but she survived. Several months later she again volunteered to be bitten, this time suffering severe pain and fever. Maass died of yellow fever at the age of 25. In her memory, Newark German Hospital was renamed Clara Maass Memorial Hospital and in 1952, Cuba issued a national postage stamp in her name. In 1976, the U.S. Postal Service honored Clara Louise Maass with a commemorative stamp.

1921 – The Battle of Blair Mountain, one of the largest civil uprisings in United States history and the largest armed rebellion since the American Civil War, begins. For five days in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders, who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired, and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.

1921 – The United States, which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally signed a peace treaty with Germany.

1944 – After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris’ landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation. Choltitz signed a formal surrender that afternoon, and on August 26, Free French General Charles de Gaulle led a joyous liberation march down the Champs d’Elysees.

1945 – Captain John Birch of the US Army is shot dead in a scuffle with Chinese Communist soldiers. The liberation of China is becoming a race between the rival Nationalist and Communist forces. In the 1950s, Robert Welch would create a right-wing, anticommunist organization called the John Birch Society. For Welch, Birch was “the first casualty in the Third World War between Communists and the ever-shrinking Free World.”

1947 – Marion Carl, US Navy test pilot, set a world speed record of 651 mph in a D-558-I at Muroc Field (later Edwards AFB), Ca. He was shot to death in Oregon by a house robber in 1998 at age 82.

1950 – President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike. The railroads were returned to their owners 2 years later.

1950 – Major General William F. Dean, 24th Infantry Division commander, was taken prisoner by the North Koreans after evading capture for 46 days after the fall of Taejon.

1951 – 23 Navy Banshee and Panther fighters from USS Essex (CV-9) escort Air Force heavy bombers attacking Najin, Korea since the target, the rail marshaling yards at Rashin located on the extreme northeast Korean border, was beyond range of land-based fighters.

1971 – The Secretary of Transportation announced the awarding of a contract to the Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company of Seattle, Washington, “to build the world’s most powerful icebreaker for the US Coast Guard,” Polar Star, the first of the Polar-Class of icebreakers.

1981 – The U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet.

1985 – STS 51-I was scrubbed at T –9 min because of an onboard computer problem.

1988 – NASA launched space vehicle S-214.

1989 – NASA scientists received stunning photographs of Neptune and its moons from Voyager 2.

1990 – The United Nations gave the world’s navies the right to use force to stop vessels trading with Iraq.

1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.

1997 – NASA sent a Delta rocket aloft with the Ace solar observatory, Advanced Composition Explorer. The 5-year $110 million project will go into orbit at a point 1 million miles from Earth and 92 million miles from the Sun where the gravity of Earth and Sun balance.

2003 – NASA launched the largest-diameter infrared telescope ever in space. NASA showed the 1st images from the $670 million Spitzer Space Telescope on Dec 18.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina made landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura, Florida, as a Category 1 hurricane. Four days later it came ashore again near Empire, Buras and Boothville, Louisiana. The rescue and response effort was one of the largest in Coast Guard history, with 24,135 lives saved and 9,409 evacuations.

2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space becoming the first man-made object to do so.
PostPosted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:07 am
August 26th ~

1775 – Rhode Island Resolve: Rhode Island delegates to Continental Congress press for creation of Continental Navy to protect the colonies.

1791 – John Fitch is granted a United States patent for the steamboat.

1804 – Following the death of Sergeant Charles Floyd, Lewis and Clark promote Patrick Gass as his replacement. Barely three months into their journey to the Pacific, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark lost the only man to die on the journey. On August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died from a disease Lewis diagnosed as “Biliose Chorlick,” or bilious colic. Based on the symptoms described, Floyd’s appendix had probably ruptured and he died of peritonitis. After burying Floyd on a high bluff above the Missouri River, the expedition moved on toward the Pacific Ocean. Two days later, the captains held an election among the men to determine Floyd’s replacement. Private Patrick Gass received a majority of the votes. A native of Pennsylvania, Gass had joined the U.S. Army in 1799 at the age of 28. He proved to be a reliable soldier and soon won promotion to sergeant. When a call for volunteers to join Lewis and Clark’s journey of exploration to the Pacific was released, Gass jumped at the chance. Lewis overrode the commander’s objections to giving up his best noncommissioned officer, and Gass joined the Corps of Discovery as a private.

1839 – The slave ship Amistad was captured off Long Island. The U.S.S. Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad York, and escorted it to New London, Connecticut.

1847 – Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic. Freed American slaves founded Liberia. They modeled their constitution after that of the US, copied the US flag, and named their capital Monrovia, after James Monroe, who financed early settlers.

1861 – Union amphibious force lands near Hatteras, NC

1862 – The stage is set for the Second Battle of Bull Run on this day when Confederate cavalry under General Fitzhugh Lee enter Manassas Junction and capture the rail center. Union General John Pope’s Army of Virginia was soon on its way, and the two armies would clash on August 29.

1865 – Civil War ends with Naval strength over 58,500 men and 600 ships.

1873 – Lee De Forest (d.1961), inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, was born in Council bluffs, Iowa. He is considered the father of radio.

1945 – Japanese diplomats boarded the USS Missouri to receive instructions on Japan’s surrender at the end of WW II.

1957 – The Soviet Union announces that it has successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of being fired “into any part of the world.” The announcement caused great concern in the United States, and started a national debate over the “missile gap” between America and Russia. For years after World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union had been trying to perfect a long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Building on the successes of Nazi Germany in developing the V-1 and V-2 rockets that pummeled Great Britain during the last months of World War II, both American and Russian scientists raced to improve the range and accuracy of such missiles. (Both nations relied heavily on captured German scientists in their efforts.) In July 1957, the United States seemed to win the race when the Atlas, an ICBM with a speed of up to 20,000 miles an hour and an effective range of 5,000 miles, was ready for testing. The test, however, was a disaster. The missile rose only about 5,000 feet into the air, tumbled, and plunged to earth. Just a month later, the Soviets claimed success by announcing that their own ICBM had been tested, had “covered a huge distance in a brief time,” and “landed in the target area.” No details were given in the Russian announcement and some commentators in the United States doubted that the ICBM test had been as successful as claimed. Nevertheless, the Soviet possession of this “ultimate weapon,” coupled with recent successful test by the Russians of atomic and hydrogen bombs, raised concerns in America. If the Soviets did indeed perfect their ICBM, no part of the United States would be completely safe from possible atomic attack.

Less than two months later, the Soviets sent the satellite Sputnik into space. Concern quickly turned to fear in the United States, as it appeared that the Russians were gaining the upper hand in the arms and space races. The American government accelerated its own missile and space programs. The Soviet successes–and American failures–became an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy charged that the outgoing Eisenhower administration had allowed a dangerous “missile gap” to develop between the United States and the Soviet Union. Following his victory in 1960, Kennedy made missile development and the space program priorities for his presidency.

1969 – New Hampshire’s 3rd Battalion, 197th Artillery suffers its highest loss of life when a truck carrying seven soldiers is blown up by a landmine less than two weeks before the unit was scheduled to return home from Viet Nam. Five men, all Guardsmen from Manchester’s Battery A, are immediately killed. The shock wave to hit the city was devastating. These deaths brought to six the total number of Guard members from the battalion killed in action. A bronze plaque now stands in front of the Manchester Armory to their memory.

1981 – Voyager 2 took photo’s of Saturn’s moon Titan.

1987 – In an attempt to eliminate a superpower stumbling block, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said his country would destroy its 72 Pershing 1A rockets if Washington and Moscow scrapped all their intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

1990 – Fifty-five Americans, who had been evacuated from the US Embassy in Kuwait, left Baghdad by car and headed for the Turkish border.

1991 – In an address to the Supreme Soviet, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised national elections in a last-ditch effort to preserve his government, but leaders of Soviet republics told him the hour of central power had passed.

1993 – Manhunt begins. 3rd Battalion. 75th Ranger Regiment and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment (DELTA) deploy to Somalia to capture warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid.

1996 – A Cuban court convicted fugitive U.S. financier Robert Vesco of economic crimes. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for economic crimes against the state.

1997 – Two defectors and their families from North Korea were accepted by the US. One was Chang Sung Gil, the ambassador to Egypt, the other was his brother Chang Sung Ho, a commercial councilor at the North Korean mission in Paris. High level arms talks were immediately terminated.

1998 – U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigns, saying the Security Council and the United States have failed to take a tougher stand against Iraq.

1998 – A $225 million rocket and communication satellite exploded after take-off at Cape Canaveral.

1998 – Libya indicated that it would accept an American and British proposal that 2 suspects of the infamous 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet be tried in the Netherlands by Scottish judges.

2001 – IBM computer scientists reported that they had constructed a working logic circuit within a single molecule of carbon fiber known as a carbon nanotube.

2003 – Investigators concluded that NASA’s overconfident management and inattention to safety doomed the space shuttle Columbia as much as did damage to the craft.
PostPosted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 7:12 am
August 27th ~

1776 – The Americans were defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island, New York. The American forces, composed of Continental Line and militia regiments from several states, attempted to hold back a well coordinated attack by the British Army. While most state units gave a poor showing, often running away upon the enemy approach, this was not always the case. American General Lord Sterling commanding a brigade of Maryland and Delaware regiments blunted their advance long enough for other troops to safely withdraw.

1780 – Marines guarding workmen cutting masts for the Navy pursued Indians near Reading, Pennsylvania.

1832 – Blackhawk, leader of Sauk-Indians, gave himself up, ending the Blackhawk War.

1859 – Edwin Drake struck oil at 69 feet near Titusville, Pennsylvania–the world’s first successful oil well. This source of crude oil, or petroleum, opened up a new inexpensive source of power and quickly replaced whale oil in lamps. Within a few decades of Drake’s discovery, oil drilling was widespread in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the East Indies. However, it was the development of the automobile that catapulted petroleum into a position of paramount importance, for petroleum is the primary source of gasoline. Asphalt, also derived from petroleum, is used to surface roads and highways.

1861 – Union ships sail into North Carolina’s Hatteras Inlet, beginning a two-day operation that secures the area for the Federals and denies the Confederates an important outlet to the Atlantic. The Outer Banks is a series of long, narrow islands that separate Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic, with Hatteras Inlet as the only deep-water passage connecting the two. In the first few months of the war, the Outer Banks were a haven for Confederate blockade runners and raiders.

1862 – As the Second Battle of Bull Run raged, Confederate soldiers attacked Loudoun County, Virginia.

1864 – U.S.S. Niphon, Acting Lieutenant Joseph B. Breck, and U.S.S. Monticello, Acting Master Henry A. Phelon, conducted an expedition up Masonboro Inlet, North Carolina, to silence a Confederate battery which was reported to have been erected in the vicinity. The two screw steamers shelled the shoreline and a number of buildings at Masonboro; landing parties went ashore and captured a quantity of rifles, ammunition, foodstuffs.

1901 – In Havana, Cuba, U.S. Army physician James Carroll allowed an infected mosquito to feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of yellow fever. Days later, Carroll developed a severe case of yellow fever, helping his colleague, Army Walter Reed, prove that mosquitoes can transmit the sometimes deadly disease.

1918 – The Battle of Ambos Nogales ( “The Battle of Both Nogales” ), or as it is known in Mexico La batalla del 27 de agosto ( “The Battle of 27 August” ), was an engagement fought between Mexican forces and elements of United States Army soldiers of the 35th Infantry Regiment, who were reinforced by the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, and commanded by Lt. Col. Frederick J. Herman. The American soldiers and militia forces were stationed in Nogales, Arizona and the Mexican soldiers and armed Mexican militia were in Nogales, Sonora.

This battle was notable for being a significant confrontation between U.S. and Mexican forces during the Border War which took place in the context of the Mexican Revolution and the First World War. This occurred after the Zimmermann Telegram during World War I when the international border between the two Nogales was a wide open boulevard named International Street. There had been several previous fatal incidents in this area which helped increase international tensions and leading to armed conflict. This included the claim of German military advisors as agitators with Mexican Villa rebels, claims of racism and border politics. As a result of this battle, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to divide the two border communities with a chain-link border fence, the first of many permanent incarnations of the U.S.–Mexico border wall between the two countries.

1928 – Fifteen nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, outlawing war and calling for the settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven other countries eventually sign the pact. The pact was developed by French foreign minister Aristide Briand and U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg. The document did not stipulate any sanctions and allowed for so many exceptions—including wars of ‘self-defense‘ and obligations under the League Covenant and Monroe Doctrine—that the pact was quite ineffective.

1942 – CGC Mojave rescues 293 men from the torpedoed transport, Chatham in the Strait of Belle Isle.

1942 – The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese submarine I-26 damages the USS Saratoga. It will remain out of action until October. The USS Wasp is now the only operational US carrier in the Pacific.

1944 – USS Stingray (SS-186) lands men and supplies on Luzon, Philippines to support guerilla operations against the Japanese.

1945 – B-29 Superfortress bombers began to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in China.

1945 – The Allied fleets anchor in Sagami (Tokyo) Bay within sight of Mount Fujiyama. Admiral Halsey, commander of the US 3rd Fleet, is present for what is probably the greatest display of naval might in history. The armada includes 23 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 26 cruisers, 116 destroyers and escorts, 12 submarines and 185 other vessels. In addition to the American and British ships, there are ships from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Netherlands represented.

1945 – President Truman says that the situation in the Pacific continues to have many elements of danger and urges Congress to continue conscription for a further two years.

1950 – Fifth Air Force established a Rescue Liaison Office in the Joint Operations Center at Nagoya Air Base, Japan.

1952 – As the presidential election of 1952 begins to heat up, so do accusations and counteraccusations concerning communism in America. The “Red Scare”–the widespread belief that international communism was operating in the United States–came to dominate much of the debate between Democrats and Republicans in 1952. On August 27, 1952, the New York Times front page contained three stories suggesting the impact of the Red Scare on the upcoming election.

1959 – Off Cape Canaveral, FL, USS Observation Island (EAG-154) makes first shipboard launching of a Polaris missile.

1962 – The United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe with an Atlas D booster. On December 14, 1962, Mariner 2 passed within just over 20,000 miles of Venus, reporting an 800F surface temperature, high surface pressures, a predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere, continuous cloud cover, and no detectable magnetic field.

1972 – In the heaviest bombing in four years, U.S. aircraft flatten North Vietnamese barracks near Hanoi and Haiphong as part of ongoing Operation Linebacker I, part of President Nixon’s response to the NVA Easter Offensive. Planes also hit bridges on the northeast railroad line to China. In an associated action, four U.S. ships raided the Haiphong port area after dark, shelling to within two miles of the city limits. As the U.S. ships withdrew from the area, the cruiser USS Newport News sank one of two North Vietnamese patrol boats in pursuit, and destroyer USS Rowan set the other on fire.

1984 – President Reagan announced the Teacher in Space project.

1989 – The first U.S. commercial satellite rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., a Delta booster carrying a British communications satellite.

1989 – Chuck Berry performed his tune Johnny B. Goode for NASA staff in celebration of Voyager II’s encounter with the planet Neptune.

1990 – Fifty-two Americans reached freedom in Turkey after they were allowed to leave Iraq; three young men originally in the group, however, were detained by the Iraqis. In Washington, the State Department ordered the expulsion of 36 Iraqi diplomats.

1992 – President Bush ordered federal troops to Florida for emergency relief in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.

1993 – Operation “Eyes Over Mogadishu” steps up helicopter flights over the capitol.

1997 – There was a report on the US nuclear arsenal broken down to the number of nuclear weapons in each state. New Mexico was 1st with 2,850, Georgia 2nd with 2,000, and Washington State 3rd with 1,600. The total stockpile was totaled at 12,500 warheads, of which 8,750 were described as “operational.”

1998 – Two suspects in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya were sent to the United States to face charges.

1999 – A boarding team from the CGC Munro discover 172 illegal Chinese migrants aboard the fishing vessel Chih Yung off the coast of Mexico.

2001 – An unmanned US reconnaissance aircraft, Predator, was reported shot down over southern Iraq near Basra. In northern Iraq US planes attacked a missile and Iraq claimed 1 civilian was killed.

2001 – Intel unveiled a 2-GHz Pentium 4 chip.

2001 – In Macedonia NATO troops began collecting rebel weapons and one British soldier was killed when a suspected block of concrete was thrown at his vehicle by Macedonian youths.

2002 – Pres. Bush met with Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who said war with Iraq was not acceptable and that Saudi Arabia would not cooperate. Bush told the Saudi diplomat he had not yet decided whether to attack Iraq.

2003 – American and Afghan forces killed about a dozen insurgents and recaptured a mountain pass in southeastern Afghanistan.

2004 – Al-Sadr’s followers handed over the keys to the Imam Ali Shrine to religious authorities loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Militants, who had been holed up in the site, left it after Iraq’s top Shiite cleric brokered a peace deal to end three weeks of fighting. Iraqi police discovered about 10 bodies in a maverick religious court run by rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s followers.

2004 – In Iraq saboteurs hit a pipeline that runs within the West Qurna oilfields, 90 miles north of the southern city of Basra.

2004 – Riot police used water cannons to disperse protesters demanding that the Philippines lift its ban on allowing its citizens to go to war-ravaged Iraq for jobs.

2008 – CGC Dallas, while deployed as part of the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet, delivered 76,000 pounds of humanitarian relief supplies to the port of Bat’umi, Georgia after that country was attacked by Russia as part of “Operation Assured Delivery.” She was the second U.S. military vessel to deliver relief supplies to Georgia.
PostPosted: Fri Aug 28, 2015 10:59 am
August 28th ~

1565 – St Augustine Florida, oldest city in the US, was established.

1609 – Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.

1640 – The Indian War in New England ended with the surrender of the Indians.

1676 – Indian chief King Philip, also known as Metacom, was killed by English soldiers, ending the war between Indians and colonists.

1814 – The War of 1812 was still going strong, as the British continued their ransacking of America. By August 28, they had captured a large portion of the East Coast, including Washington, D.C., prompting New York banks to halt specie payments.

1861 – Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, falls to Union troops after a two-day operation, closing an important outlet from Pamlico Sound for Confederate blockade runners.

1862 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee, by splitting his smaller army and using flanking maneuvers, succeeds in routing the Union Army under the command of General John Pope from field. Fought over much of the same area as the Battle of First Manassas a year earlier, the losses on both sides were much higher. Lee attempts to capitalize on this victory by marching into Maryland to take the war north. He was stopped at Antietam Creek in September.

1862 – The Battle of Thoroughfare Gap, VA.

1862 – Confederate spy Belle Boyd was released from Old Capital Prison in Washington, DC.

1867 – Captain William Reynolds of Lackawanna raises U.S. flag over Midway Island and took formal possession of these islands for the U.S.

1883 – John Montgomery (d.1911 in a glider crash) made the first manned, controlled flight in the US in his “Gull” glider, whose design was inspired by watching birds.

1898 – Marines defended American interests in Valparaiso, Chile.

1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signed Executive Order 3160 which returned the Coast Guard to the administrative control of the Treasury Department from the Navy after World War I.

1933 – The government took steps to safeguard the nation’s gold supplies as the Depression rolled on. On this day, an executive order was handed down that prohibited “hoarding” gold and placed limits on exports of precious metal.

1941 – With the nation on the verge of entering World War II and prices threatening to skyrocket, the government chose to take action against inflation. On this day, President Franklin Roosevelt handed down an executive order establishing the Office of Price Administration (OPA). Charged with controlling consumer prices in the face of war, the OPA wheeled into action, imposing rent controls and a rationing program which initially targeted auto tires.
Soon, the agency was churning out coupon books for sugar, coffee, meat, fats, oils, and numerous other items. Though goods were in tight supply, Americans were urged to stick to the system of rationing. Some even took the Homefront Pledge, a declaration of their commitment to avoiding the black market in favor of buying the OPA way.

1942 – 1st and 2nd Bn 7th Marines leave Pago Pago for combat.

1942 – 120 women, commissioned directly as ENS or LTJG, reported to “USS Northampton,” Smith College for training.

1942 – At Guadalcanal, the Japanese received more reinforcements brought in by Admiral Tanaka’s 2nd Destroyer Flotilla, nicknamed the “Tokyo Express.”

1943 – Captured Benito Mussolini was transferred from La Maddalena Sardinia to Gran Sasso.

1944 – Elements of US 1st Army cross the Marne River at Meaux. The US 3rd Army is approaching Reims.

1944 – The German garrisons in Toulon and Marseilles surrender. In the Rhone valley, some elements of the German 19th Army have been cut off, to the south of Montelimar, by forces of the US 7th Army. Among those elements is the German 11th Panzer Division, which launches an attack northward and succeeds in breaking through the line with heavy losses from Allied artillery and ground attack aircraft.

1945 – Goring, Ribbentrop, and 22 others former Nazi government officials are indicted as war criminals. Hermann Goring heads the list of 24. Rudolf Hess, formerly deputy to Hitler, who has been a prisoner in Britain since May 1941, is next on the list, followed by Martin Bormann, the secretary of the NSDAP, who disappeared from the Berlin bunker. Others include Konstantin von Neurath, the first foreign minister to Hitler; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, the industrialist; Franz von Papen, the vice-chancellor in 1933-34; and, Hjalmar Schacht, who served as the minister of finance in the Nazi government until falling out of favor with Hitler.

1945 – Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung arrived in Chunking to confer with Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in a futile effort to avert civil war.

1952 – Units on USS Boxer (CV-21) launch explosive-filled drone which explodes against railroad bridge near Hungnam, Korea. First guided missile launched from ship during Korean Conflict.

1963 – As soon as two U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft became reported as overdue at their destination, Homestead Air Force Base, Florida, the U.S. Coast Guard Eastern Area Commander initiated an intensive air search. It lasted through 2 September with as many as 25 U.S. Coast Guard, Air Force, and Navy planes participating. None of the 11 occupants of the two KC-135’s were ever found, only wreckage, indicating that there had been a midair collision.

1965 – Navy CDR Scott Carpenter and 9 aquanauts enter SeaLab II, 205 ft. below Southern California’s waters to conduct underwater living and working tests.

1965 – The Viet Cong were routed in the Mekong Delta by U.S. forces, with more than 50 killed.

1966 – It is reported in three Soviet newspapers that North Vietnamese pilots are undergoing training in a secret Soviet air base to fly supersonic interceptors against U.S. aircraft. This only confirms earlier reports that the Soviets had initiated close relations with North Vietnam after a visit by Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin to Hanoi in February 1965.

1972 – The U.S. Air Force gets its first ace (a designation traditionally awarded for five enemy aircraft confirmed shot down) since the Korean War. Captain Richard S. Ritchie, flying with his “backseater” (radar intercept officer), Captain Charles B. DeBellevue, in an F-4 out of Udorn Air Base in Thailand, shoots down his fifth MiG near Hanoi. Two weeks later, Captain DeBellvue, flying with Captain John A. Madden, Jr., shot down his fifth and sixth MiGs. The U.S. Navy already had two aces, Lieutenants Randall Cunningham and Bill Driscoll. By this time in the war, there was only one U.S. fighter-bomber base left in South Vietnam at Bien Hoa. The rest of the air support was provided by aircraft flying from aircraft carriers or U.S. bases in Thailand. Also on this day: Back in the United States, President Nixon announces that the military draft will end by July 1973.

1973 – Judge John Sirica ordered President Nixon to turn over secret Watergate tapes. Nixon refused and appealed the order.

1986 – US Navy officer Jerry A. Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years for spying.

1990 – German spy Juergen Mohamed Gietler was arrested for passing military information to Iraq. He provided Iraq with intelligence reports on US military plans that included what the West knew of Iraqi Scud-B missile sites. He was convicted in a secret trial in 1991, sentenced to 5 years in prison and released in 1994 after which he moved to Egypt.

1990 – Iraq declared occupied Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq, renamed Kuwait City Kadhima, and created a new district named after President Saddam Hussein.

1995 – A request from the commander in chief of naval forces Europe led to the deployment of the CGC Dallas to the Mediterranean. She departed Governors Island on 29 May 1995 and visited ports throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea, including Istanbul and Samsun in Turkey; Durres, Albania; Varna, Bulgaria; Constanta, Romania; Koper, Slovenia; Taranto, Italy; and Bizerte, Tunisia. The crew trained with naval and coast guard forces in each country. She deployed for a few days with the Sixth Fleet and served as a plane guard for the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The crew was also able to coordinate schedules with six NATO and non-NATO nations to conduct boardings. She returned to the U.S. in August and arrived at Governors Island on 28 August.

2002 – Federal grand juries charged six men in Detroit with conspiring to support al-Qaeda’s terrorism as members of a sleeper cell.

2004 – Shiite militants and U.S. forces battled in the Baghdad’s Sadr City slum. U.S. warplanes carried out airstrikes for the second straight day in the city of Fallujah.

2004 – A Yemen court convicted 15 militants on terror charges including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and plotting to kill the U.S. ambassador.
PostPosted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:22 pm
August 29th ~

1708 – Haverhill, Mass., was destroyed by French & Indians.

1758 – The first American Indian Reservation is established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey.

1776 – General George Washington retreated during the night from Long Island to New York City withdrawing from Manhattan to Westchester.

1778 – The Battle of Rhode Island, also known as the Battle of Quaker Hill and the Siege of Newport, took place. Continental Army and militia forces under the command of General John Sullivan were withdrawing to the northern part of Aquidneck Island after abandoning their siege of Newport, Rhode Island, when the British forces in Newport sortied, supported by recently arrived Royal Navy ships, and attacked the retreating Americans. The battle ended inconclusively, but the Continental forces afterward withdrew to the mainland, leaving Aquidneck Island in British hands. The battle took place in the aftermath of the first attempt at cooperation between French and American forces following France’s entry into the war as an American ally. The operations against Newport were to have been made in conjunction with a French fleet and troops; these were frustrated in part by difficult relations between the commanders, and a storm that damaged both French and British fleets shortly before joint operations were to begin. The battle was also notable for the participation of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, a locally recruited segregated regiment of African Americans. It was the only major military action to include a racially segregated unit on the American side in the war.

1786 – Shay’s Rebellion began in Springfield, Mass. Daniel Shay led a rebellion in Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt. Shay was a Revolutionary War veteran who led a short-lived insurrection in western Massachusetts to protest a tax increase that had to be paid in cash, a hardship for veteran farmers who relied on barter and didn‘t own enough land to vote. The taxes were to pay off the debts from the Revolutionary War, and those who couldn‘t pay were evicted or sent to prison.

1861 – U.S.S. Yankee, Commander T. T. Craven, and U.S.S. Reliance, Lieutenant Mygatt, engaged Confederate battery at Marlborough Point, Virginia.

1861 – United States Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.

1861 – Four U.S. steamers engaged Confederate battery at Aquia Creek, Virginia, for three hours.

1862 – Union General John Pope’s army was defeated by a smaller Confederate force at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1863 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, Lieutenant Payne, sank in Charleston harbor for the first time. After making several practice dives in the harbor, the submarine was moored by lines fastened to steamer Etiwan at the dock at Fort Johnson. When the steamer moved away from the dock unexpectedly, H. L. Hunley was drawn onto her side. She filled with water and rapidly sank, carrying with her five gallant seamen. Payne and two others escaped. H. L. Hunley was subsequently raised and refitted, as, undaunted by the “unfortunate accident,” another crew volunteered to man her.

1864 – While removing Confederate obstructions from the channel leading into Mobile Bay, five sailors were killed and nine others injured when a torpedo exploded. Farragut regretted the unfortunate loss, but resolutely pressed on with the work: ”As it is absolutely necessary to free the channel of these torpedoes, I shall continue to remove them, but as every precaution will be used, I do not apprehend any further accident.” Like the loss of Tecumseh, this event demonstrated that although some torpedoes had been made inactive by long immersion, many were very much alive when Farragut made the instant decision, “Damn the torpedoes" .

1909 – World’s 1st air race was held in Rheims France. American Glenn Curtiss won.

1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California. Ishi (c. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the last member of the Yahi, a group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Widely acclaimed in his time as the “last wild Indian” in America, Ishi lived most of his life completely outside modern culture. At about 49 years of age he emerged from “the wild” near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak, known to Ishi as Wa ganu p’a.

Ishi means “man” in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man because it was rude to ask someone’s name in the Yahi culture. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me,” meaning that no Yahi had ever spoken his name. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.

1915 – Navy salvage divers raise F-4, first U.S. submarine sunk in an accident.

1916 – Congress passes act for expansion of Navy but most ships not completed until after World War I.

1916 – Congress created the US Naval Reserve.

1916 – The Marine Corps Reserve was founded.

1916 – Congress authorized Treasury to establish ten Coast Guard air stations but appropriated only $7000 for an instructor and assistant. Appropriation for their construction and for planes was not made until 1924.

1922 – The first radio advertisement is broadcast on WEAF-AM in New York City for the Queensboro Corporation, advertising an apartment complex.

1942 – The American Red Cross announced that Japan had refused to allow safe conduct for the passage of ships with supplies for American prisoners of war.

1944 – Pennsylvania’s 28th Infantry Division leads the American contingent in the “Liberation Day” parade down the Champs Elysees as Paris explodes with joy after the Germans withdraw from the city. The Allies, who had landed in Normandy on June 6th, had spent more than six weeks fighting through the Norman hedgerows before finally breaking out on the French Plain and headed for Paris. The 28th was one of four Guard infantry divisions to see combat in Normandy.

1945 – The American battleship USS Missouri anchors in Tokyo Bay.

1945 – Gen MacArthur was named the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan.

1945 – Secret Army and Navy reports of official enquiries into the raid on Pearl Harbor are made public. The blame is placed on a lack of preparedness, confusion and a breakdown of inter-service coordination. Former Secretary of State Hull, General Marshall and Admiral Stark are criticized. President Truman objects to the findings on Hull and Marshall.

1946 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is decommissioned. She was the second United States Navy ship to be named after the 36th state, was the lead ship of the two Nevada-class battleships; her sister ship was Oklahoma. Launched in 1914, the Nevada was a leap forward in dreadnought technology; four of her new features would be included on almost every subsequent US battleship: triple gun turrets, oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the “all or nothing” armor principle. These features made Nevada the first US Navy “super-dreadnought”. Nevada served in both World Wars: during the last few months of World War I, Nevada was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to protect the supply convoys that were sailing to and from Great Britain. In World War II, she was one of the battleships trapped when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She was the only battleship to get underway during the attack, making the ship “the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning” for the United States. Still, she was hit by one torpedo and at least six bombs while steaming away from Battleship Row, forcing her to be beached. Subsequently salvaged and modernized at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Nevada served as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in four amphibious assaults: the Normandy Landings and the invasions of Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
At the end of World War II, the Navy decided that Nevada was too old to be retained, so they assigned her to be a target ship in the atomic experiments that were going to be conducted at Bikini Atoll in July 1946 (Operation Crossroads). After being hit by the blast from the first atomic bomb, Able, she was still afloat but heavily damaged and radioactive. She was decommissioned on 29 August 1946 and sunk during naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948.

1949 – The USSR successfully detonated its first atomic bomb at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. It was a copy of the Fat Man bomb and had a yield of 21 kilotons known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1952 – In the largest bombing raid of the Korean War, 1,403 planes of the Far East Air Force bombed Pyongyang, North Korea.

1958 – Air Force Academy opened in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1962 – A US U-2 flight saw SAM launch pads in Cuba.

1965 – Gemini 5, carrying astronauts Gordon Cooper and Charles (“Pete”) Conrad, splashed down in the Atlantic after eight days in space.

1990 – A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared in a television interview that America could not defeat Iraq, saying, “I do not beg before anyone.”

2005 – Hurricane Katrina made a second landfall near Empire, Buras and Boothville, Louisiana after first previously striking Southeast Florida on 25 August. The rescue and response effort was one of the largest in Coast Guard history, involving units from every district, saving 24,135 lives and conducting 9,409 evacuations.

2007 – United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.
PostPosted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 4:50 pm
August 30th ~

1645 – Dutch & Indians signed peace treaty in New Amsterdam (New York).

1682 – William Penn left England to sail to New World. He took along an insurance policy.

1780 – General Benedict Arnold betrayed the US when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. Arnold whose name has become synonymous with traitor fled to England after the botched conspiracy. His co-conspirator, British spy Major John Andre, was hanged.

1781 – The French fleet of 24 ships under Comte de Grasse arrived in the Chesapeake Bay to aid the American Revolution. The fleet defeated British under Admiral Graves at battle of Chesapeake Capes.

1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.

1813 – Marines aboard the USS President helped capture the HMS brig Shannon.

1813 – Creek Indians massacred over 500 whites at Fort Mims Alabama.

1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen

1861 – Union General John Fremont declared martial law throughout Missouri and made his own emancipation proclamation to free slaves in the state. President Lincoln overruled the general.

1862 – Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va. Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell fought at the Second Battle of Manassas, which was also a Union defeat (the Union army in this case was commanded by Maj. Gen. John Pope). McDowell was then relieved of his command until he was sent to command the Department of the Pacific in 1864, where he finished the war.

1862 – U.S.S. Passaic launched at Greenpoint, New York. A newspaper reporter observed: “A fleet of monsters has been created, volcanoes in a nutshell, breathing under water, fighting under shelter, steered with mirrors, driven by vapor, running anywhere, retreating from nothing. These floating carriages bear immense ordnance, perfected by new processes, and easily worked by new and simple devices.

1879 – John Bell Hood, confederate general (lost Atlanta, along with arm and leg), died at 48 of Yellow Fever in a New Orleans epidemic.

1880 – Diablo, a chief of the Cibecue Apache, is killed during a battle with a competing band of Indians.

1913 – Navy tests Sperry gyroscopic stabilizer (automatic pilot).

1918 – The First Army of General John Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force moves into position around the German-held St. Mihiel salient to the southeast of Verdun along the Meuse River. Together with the French II Colonial Corps, the First Army will launch an attack on the position in mid-September.

1929 – Near New London, CT, 26 officers and men test Momsen lung to exit submerged USS S-4.

1945 – American and British forces land in the Tokyo area. The US 11th Airborne Division flies in to Atsugi airfield, while the US 4th Marine Regiment of the US 6th Marine Division lands in the naval base at Yokosuka. Meanwhile, the American cruiser USS San Juan starts to evacuate Allied prisoners of war detained in the Japanese home islands.

1945 – Gen. Douglas MacArthur lands in Japan to oversee the formal surrender ceremony and to organize the postwar Japanese government.

1945 – A proclamation to the German people is signed today formally announcing the establishment of the Allied Control Council and its assumption of supreme authority in Germany.

1945 – A pale green Super Six coupe rolled off the Hudson Company’s assembly line, the first post-World War II car to be produced by the auto manufacturer. Like all other U.S. auto manufacturers, Hudson had halted production of civilian cars in order to produce armaments during the war. The Super Six boasted the first modern, high-compression L-head motor, though it garnered its name from the original Hudson-manufactured engine produced in 1916. The name stayed, though the engines became more sophisticated.

1950 – The USAF organized Detachment F of the 3rd Rescue Squadron in Korea and equipped it with Sikorsky H-5 helicopters.

1952 – Captain Leonard W. Lilley of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing scored his first aerial victory. He went on to become an F-86 Sabre ace.

1961 – Two Cuban frigates fire on a Naval Reserve aircraft on a training mission over international waters.

1963 – Two months after signing an agreement to establish a 24-hour-a-day “hot line” between Moscow and Washington, the system goes into effect. The hot line was supposed to help speed communication between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union and help prevent the possibility of an accidental war. In June 1963, American and Russian representatives agreed to establish a so-called “hot line” between Moscow and Washington.
The agreement came just months after the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, in which the United States and Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict. It was hoped that speedier and more secure communications between the two nuclear superpowers would forestall such crises in the future. In August 1963, the system was ready to be tested. American teletype machines had been installed in the Kremlin to receive messages from Washington; Soviet teletypes were installed in the Pentagon. (Contrary to popular belief, the hot line in the United States is in the Pentagon, not the White House.)

1968 – In what a later official government report would call a “police riot” the four-day Democratic National Convention and all of it’s accompanying violence and mayhem comes to close as 668 people are arrested and 111 are injured mostly by police overreaction. It’s 1968 and the war in Vietnam is going so badly that President Lyndon Johnson announced in March he would not run again for office. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, seen by many as supporting Johnson’s policies, is the Democratic nominee for the general election.

1983 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission. It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m. The Challenger spent six days in space, during which time Bluford and his four fellow crew members launched a communications satellite for the government of India, made contact with an errant communications satellite, conducted scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s robotic arm.

1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

1987 – A redesigned space shuttle booster, created in the wake of the Challenger disaster, roared into life in its first full-scale test-firing near Brigham City, Utah.

1993 – 50 Rangers stage a raid in search of Mohammad Farrah Aidid, Warlord in Somalia.

1994 – Lockheed and Martin Marietta inked the paperwork on a merger that created one of the world’s largest aerospace/defense companies. The newly formed Lockheed Martin Corporation had a taste for mergers, and continued to acquire other companies, including Loral and Unisys Defense.

1996 – The United States presents evidence to the U.N. Sanctions Committee that Iran is complicit in the smuggling of petroleum products from Iraq through the Persian Gulf. According to U.S. allegations, Iran uses barges and small ships to carry oil products from southern Iraq into Iranian territorial waters. Shipping documents then are forged to show that the cargo is of Iranian origin.

2001 – U.S. warplanes launch strikes against Iraqi “military targets” after Iraq claims that it has shot down a U.S. spy plane. The U.S. strike also comes at a time when Iraq appears to be improving its air defence system, including longer-range surface to air missiles.

2003 – In Operation Mountain Viper, the United States Army and the Afghan National Army (nearly 1000 in number) worked together into early September, 2003, to uncover hundreds of suspected Taliban rebels dug into the mountains of Daychopan district, Zabul province, Afghanistan. The Operation killed an estimated 124 militants. Five Afghan Army personnel were killed and seven were injured. One U.S. soldier died in an accidental fall.
PostPosted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 3:15 pm
August 31st ~

1756 – The British at Fort William Henry, New England, surrendered to Louis Montcalm of France.

1777 – Samuel Mason, a captain in command of Fort Henry on the Ohio frontier, survives a devastating Indian attack only to become one of the young nation’s first western desperados. Mason recovered from his wounds and continued to command Fort Henry for several years. Following the end of the war, though, he seems to have fallen on hard times. Repeatedly accused of being a thief, he moved farther west into the lawless frontier of the young American nation. By 1797, he had become a pirate on the Mississippi River, preying on boatmen who moved valuable goods up and down the river. He also reportedly took to robbing travelers along the Natchez Trace (or trail) in Tennessee, often with the assistance of his four sons and several other vicious men.

1778 – British killed 17 Stockbridge Indians in Bronx during Revolution.

1803 – Captain Meriwether Lewis left Pittsburgh to meet up with Captain William Clark and begin their trek to the Pacific Ocean.

1819 – The cutters Alabama and Louisiana captured the privateer Bravo in the Gulf of Mexico. The master, Jean Le Farges — a lieutenant of Jean Lafitte — was later hanged from the Louisiana’s yardarm on the Mississippi River. The cutters then sailed for Patterson’s Town on Breton Island to destroy the notorious pirates’ den there.

1835 – Angry mob in Charleston, South Carolina, seized U-S mail containing abolitionist literature and burned it in public.

1842 – US Naval Observatory was authorized by an act of Congress.

1864 – At the Democratic convention in Chicago, General George B. McClellan was nominated for president. McClellan ran on a Copperhead platform climing the war had been a failure and was hopelessly lost. Only a peace with honor allowing the Southern states their independence could save the North from ruin. This was a scant 8 months before the end of the war.

1864 – General William T. Sherman launches the attack that finally secures Atlanta, Georgia, for the Union, and seals the fate of Confederate General John Bell Hood’s army, which is forced to evacuate the area. The Battle of Jonesboro was the culmination of a four-month campaign by Sherman to capture Atlanta. He had spent the summer driving his army down the 100-mile corridor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, against a Confederate force led by General Joseph Johnston. General Hood, who replaced Johnston in July on the outskirts of Atlanta, proceeded to attack Sherman in an attempt to drive him northward. However, these attacks failed, and by August 1 the armies had settled into a siege. In late August, Sherman swung his army south of Atlanta to cut the main rail line supplying the Rebel army. Confederate General William Hardee’s corps moved to block Sherman at Jonesboro, and attacked the Union troops on August 31, but the Rebels were thrown back with staggering losses. The entrenched Yankees lost just 178 men, while the Confederates lost nearly 2,000. On September 1, Sherman attacked Hardee. Though the Confederates held, Sherman successfully cut the rail line and effectively trapped the Rebels. Hardee had to abandon his position, and Hood had no choice but to withdraw from Atlanta. The fall of Atlanta was instrumental in securing the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in the fall.

1865 – The US Federal government estimated the American Civil War had cost about eight-billion dollars. Human costs have been estimated at more than one-million killed or wounded.

1920 – The first radio news program is broadcast by 8MK (WWJ today) in Detroit, Michigan. It was primary election day, and it was announced that the returns — local, state and congressional — would be sent to the public that night by means of the radio.

1935 – President Roosevelt signed the first Neutrality Act, an act prohibiting the export of U.S. arms to belligerents.

1939 – At noon, despite threats of British and French intervention, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs an order to attack Poland, and German forces move to the frontier. That evening, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead German prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of the alleged Polish attack, which Nazi propagandists publicized as an unforgivable act of aggression. At dawn the next morning, 58 German army divisions invaded Poland all across the 1,750-mile frontier. Hitler expected appeasement from Britain and France–the same nations that had given Czechoslovakia away to German conquest in 1938 with their signing of the Munich Pact. However, neither country would allow Hitler’s new violation of Europe’s borders, and Germany was presented with an ultimatum: Withdraw by September 3 or face war with the Western democracies. At 11:15 a.m. on September 3, a few minutes after the expiration of the British ultimatum, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared on national radio to announce solemnly that Britain was at war with Germany. Australia, New Zealand, and India immediately followed suit. Later that afternoon, the French ultimatum expired, and at 5:00 p.m. France declared war on Germany. The European phase of World War II began.

1940 – US National Guard assembled. They will be mobilized for 1 year, extended to 2, to train and assist in war games to test new tactics.

1940 – 56 U-boats were sunk during this month (268,000 ton).

1942 – The Battle of Guadalcanal. Japanese General Kawaguchi lands 1200 troops on the island.

1942 – 3rd Marines leave San Diego bound for American Samoa.

1943 – American carrier based aircraft strike Marcus island. The Independence, Essex and Yorktown are involved. These ships are part of the newly formed Fast Carrier Task Force.

1943 – Commissioning of USS Harmon (DE-678), first Navy ship named for an African American Sailor.

1944 – A US B-24-J bomber crashed into Maoer Mountain in China after having completed its bombing mission over the port of Takao in Taiwan. All 10 men onboard were killed. The wreckage was not discovered until Oct, 1996.

1945 – General MacArthur establishes the supreme allied command at the main port of Tokyo, as the first foreigner to take charge of Japan in 1000 years.

1945 – The remaining Japanese troops in the Philippines formally surrender.

1945 – The Japanese garrison on Marcus Island surrenders to the American Admiral Whiting.

1945 – Field Marshal Brauchitsch and Field Marshal von Manstein are arrested by Allied authorities. Meanwhile, the civilian population is in flux. Germans who fled the bombing of their cities are going home to stake their claim on whatever remains of their property. One in five persons in the western zone of Germay is a refugee. There are also Germans driven out of Poland and Silesia as well as other parts of eastern Europe.

1949 – Six of the 16 surviving Union veterans of the Civil War attended the last-ever encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1950 – Far East Air Force B-29s completed air strikes on the docks and railway yards at Songjin and the industrial factory at Chinnampo. From Aug. 28-31, aircraft dropped 326 tons of bombs on Songjin and 284 tons on Chinnampo.

1951 – The former enemies of the world war reconvened in San Francisco to finalize negotiations on the peace treaty to formally end WW II. Japan agreed to pay the Int’l. Red Cross about $15 per POW while the allies agreed not to bring charges against it.

1951 – The last United Nations Command offensive of the war occurred when the 1st Marine Division began its assault against the Punchbowl and from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. The 2nd Infantry Division seized Bloody Ridge at a cost of 2,700 casualties.

1954 – Under terms of the Geneva Agreement, a flow of almost one million refugees from North to South Vietnam begins.

1961 – A concrete wall replaced the barbed wire fence that separated East and West Germany, it would be called the "Berlin Wall".

1962 – Last flight of Navy airship made at NAS Lakehurst, NJ.

1965 – President Johnson signs into law a bill making it illegal to destroy or mutilate a U.S. draft card, with penalties of up to five years and a $10,000 fine.

1990 – East & West Germany signed a treaty to join legal & political.

1995 – NATO planes and UN artillery blasted Serb targets in Bosnia for a 2nd day in response to the market attack in Serajevo.

1996 – More than 100 members of the Iraqi National Congress in Irbil were captured by Iraqi secret police and apparently executed.

2002 – Kuwait will buy 16 attack helicopters from Boeing in a deal worth $886 million. Defense Minister Sheik Jaber Mubarak Al Hamad and U.S. Ambassador Richard Jones signed the deal.

2004 – A video purporting to show the methodical, grisly killings of 12 Nepalese construction workers kidnapped in Iraq was posted on a Web site linked to a militant group operating in Iraq.

2010 – Gen. Ray Odierno was replaced by Gen. Lloyd Austin as Commander of US forces in Iraq.
PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:38 pm
September 1st ~

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon led an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon’s Rebellion came in response to the governor’s repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.

1752 – The Liberty Bell arrived in Philadelphia.

1772 – Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa formed in California. Father Junipero Serra held the 1st Mass at San Luis Obispo. He left Father Jose Cavalier the task of building the state’s 5th mission.

1774 – The Powder Alarm was a major popular reaction to the removal of gunpowder from a magazine by British soldiers under orders from General Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In response to this action, amid rumors that blood had been shed, alarm spread through the countryside as far as Connecticut and beyond, and American Patriots sprang into action, fearing that war was at hand. Thousands of militiamen began streaming toward Boston and Cambridge, and mob action forced Loyalists and some government officials to flee to the protection of the British Army. Although it proved to be a false alarm, the Powder Alarm caused political and military leaders to proceed more carefully in the days ahead, and essentially provided a “dress rehearsal” for the Battles of Lexington and Concord seven and a half months later. Furthermore, actions on both sides to control weaponry, gunpowder, and other military supplies became more contentious, as the British sought to bring military stores more directly under their control, and the Patriot colonists sought to acquire them for their own use.

1781 – French fleet traps British fleet at Yorktown, VA.

1807 – Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He was acquitted on the grounds that, though he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of the law governing treason. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe.

1821 – William Becknell led a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.

1849 – California Constitutional Convention was held in Monterey.

1858 – The 1st transatlantic cable failed after less than 1 month.

1861 – Ulysses Grant assumed command of Federal forces at Cape Girardeau, MI.

1861 – Lincoln received news late at night from Secretary of the Navy Welles of Flag Officer Stringham’s victory at Hatteras Inlet, in the initial Army- Navy expedition of the war. Coming shortly after the defeat at Bull Run, it electrified the North and greatly raised morale.

1862 – A federal tax was levied on tobacco, especially that grown in Confederate states.

1862 – Following his brilliant victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run two days earlier, Confederate General Robert E. Lee strikes retreating Union forces at Chantilly, Virginia, and drives them away in the middle of an intense thunderstorm. Although his army routed the Yankee forces of General John Pope at Bull Run, Lee was not satisfied. By attacking the retreating Federals, Lee hoped to push them back into Washington, D.C., and achieve a decisive victory by destroying the Union army. The Bull Run battlefield lay 25 miles east of the capital, allowing Lee room to send General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s corps on a quick march to cut off part of the Union retreat before reaching the defenses of the capital.

1864 – With Union General William T. Sherman threatening to cut his only escape route, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuates Atlanta, Georgia, at the climax of a four-month campaign by Sherman to capture the vital Rebel supply center.

1918 – US troops landed in Vladivostok, Siberia, and stayed until 1920.

1925 – Navy CDR John Rodgers and crew of 4 in PN-9 run out of fuel on first San Francisco to Hawaii flight. Landing at sea, they rigged a sail and set sail for Hawaii.

1939 – At 0445 hours German forces invade Poland without a declaration of war. The operation is code named Fall Weiss (Plan White). The Germans allot 52 divisions for the invasion (some 1.5 million men), including the 6 armored divisions and all their motorized units. Of the divisions left to defend against an Anglo-French front, only about 10 are regarded by the Germans as being fit for any kind of action. General Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, is in command of the campaign. Bock leads Army Group North, consisting of the 4th Army (Kuchler) and 3rd Army (Kluge); Rundstedt leads Army Group South, consisting of 8th Army (Balskowitz), 10th Army (Reichenau) and 14th Army (List). Air support comes from two Air Fleets, commanded by Kesselring and Lohr, which have around 1,600 aircraft. Army Group South, advancing from Silesia, is to provide the main German attacks. The 8th Army on the left is to move toward Poznan, the principal thrust is to be delivered by 10th Army which is to advance in the center to the Vistula River between Warsaw and Sandomierz, while 14th Army on the right moves toward Krakow and the Carpathian flank. The 4th Army from East Prussia is to move south toward Warsaw and the line to the Bug River to the east; 3rd Army is to cross the Polish Corridor and join 4th Army in moving south. The Poles have 23 regular infantry divisions prepared with 7 more assembling, 1 weak armored division and an inadequate supply of artillery. They also have a considerable force of cavalry. The reserve units were only called up on August 30th and are not ready for combat. In the air, almost all the 500 Polish planes are obsolete and prove unable to blunt the impact of the German attack. During the day, the Luftwaffe launches air strikes on Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow.

1940 – Gen. George C. Marshall was sworn in as chief of staff of US Army.

1942 – First Seabee unit to serve in a combat area, the 6th Naval Construction Battalion, arrives on Guadalcanal.

1942 – A federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans as well as Japanese nationals.

1942 – Joseph C. Jenkins was given a temporary promotion to warrant officer (Boatswain); becoming the first African-American warrant officer in the Coast Guard.

1942 – The Coast Guard transferred responsibility for running the merchant marine training programs to the War Shipping Administration.

1944 – General Eisenhower establishes his headquarters in France as Commander in Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Forces.

1944 – CGC Northland captured the crew of a scuttled Nazi supply trawler off Greenland. They had been attempting to establish a weather station on the coast of Greenland.

1945 – Americans received word of Japan’s formal surrender that ended World War II. Because of the time difference, it was Sept. 2 in Tokyo Bay, where the ceremony took place.

1945 – USS Benevolence (AH-13) evacuates civilian internees from 2 internment camps near Tokyo, Japan.

1950 – US Company C, 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, was almost completely annihilated as North Korean divisions opened an assault on UN lines on the Naktong River. Only Company C and other elements of the 2nd Infantry Division stood in the path.

1950 – US Air Force Captain Iven C. Kincheloe, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, claimed his fifth air-to-air victory in his F-86 Sabre “Ivan” to become the 10th ace of the Korean War. Kincheloe accounted for four MiGs in six days.

1961 – The Soviet Union ended a moratorium on atomic testing with an above-ground nuclear explosion in central Asia.

1966 – In a speech before 100,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, President Charles de Gaulle of France denounces U.S. policy in Vietnam and urges the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia.

1969 – A coup in Libya overthrew the monarchy of King Idris and brought Moammar Gadhafi to power. Gadhafi emerged as leader of the revolutionary government and ordered the closure of a U.S. Air Force base.

1969 – The 1st Marine Regiment was presented the Presidential Unit Citation for Operation Hue City (Vietnam).

1970 – The U.S. Senate rejects the McGovern-Hatfield amendment by a vote of 55-39. This legislation, proposed by Senators George McGovern of South Dakota and Mark Hatfield of Oregon, would have set a deadline of December 31, 1971, for complete withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).

1976 – NASA launched its space vehicle S-197.

1977 – The 1st TRS-80 Model I computer was sold.

1977 – Bobby C. Wilks became the first African American in the Coast Guard to reach the rank of captain.

1979 – Pioneer 11 made the 1st fly-by of Saturn and discovered new moon rings. Ring F of Saturn was discovered by Lonny Baker at NASA’s Ames Research Center from data sent by Pioneer 11.

1982 – The United States Air Force Space Command is established. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) is a major command of the United States Air Force, with its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.

1983 – Soviet jet fighters intercept a Korean Airlines passenger flight in Russian airspace and shoot the plane down, killing all on board. The incident dramatically increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines (KAL) flight 007 was on the last leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul, with a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. As it approached its final destination, the plane began to veer far off its normal course. In just a short time, the plane flew into Russian airspace and crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula, where some top-secret Soviet military installations were known to be located. The Soviets sent two fighters to intercept the plane. According to tapes of the conversations between the fighter pilots and Soviet ground control, the fighters quickly located the KAL flight and tried to make contact with the passenger jet. Failing to receive a response, one of the fighters fired a heat-seeking missile. KAL 007 was hit and plummeted into the Sea of Japan. All 269 people on board were killed.

2000 – Pres. Clinton put the anti-missile national defense system on hold and passed the decision for moving the project forward to his successor.

2004 – Accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins said he will surrender to the US to face charges that have dogged him since he vanished from his unit in South Korea nearly 40 years.

2004 – The U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Iran has announced plans to turn tons of uranium into a substance that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

2008 – CGC Dallas visited the port of Sevastopol, Ukraine during a historic voyage through the Black Sea that included delivering relief supplies to Georgia.

2008 – The U.S. military hands control of Al Anbar Governorate over to the Iraqi government.

2010 – The name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is replaced by “Operation New Dawn”.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 02, 2015 8:55 am
September 2nd ~

1776 – The Hurricane of Independence makes landfall. Between this day and 9 September it will kill exactly 4,170 people from North Carolina to Nova Scotia.

1789 – Although the United States Treasury Department was founded on September 2, 1789, its roots can be traced back to the American Revolution. Back in 1775, the Revolutionary leaders were groping with ways to fund the war. Their solution–issuing cash that doubled as redeemable “bills of credit”–raised enough capital to fuel the Revolution. However, the war notes also led to the country’s first debt. The Continental Congress attempted to reign in the economy, even forming a pre-Constitutional version of the Treasury. Neither this move, nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which enabled the U.S. to seek loans from foreign countries, proved effective. The debt kept mounting, while war notes rapidly deflated in value. With the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the Government established a permanent Treasury Department in hopes of quelling the debt. President Washington named his former “aide-de-camp,” Alexander Hamilton, to head the new office. The former New York lawyer and staunch Federalist stepped in as Secretary of the Treasury on September 11. Hamilton soon outlined a practical plan for reviving the nation’s ailing economy: the Government would pay back its $75 million war debt and thus repair its badly damaged public credit.

1859 – A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service.

1862 – President Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope’s disaster at Second Bull Run on August 29 and 30. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his army transferred to Pope’s Army of Virginia after his failure to capture Richmond during the Seven Days’ Battles in June 1862. Pope, who had one chance to prove his leadership at Second Bull Run against Confederate General Robert E. Lee, failed miserably and retreated to Washington. He had not received any help from McClellan, who sat nearby in Alexandria and refused to go to Pope’s aid.

1864 – The forces of Union General William T. Sherman march into Atlanta, Georgia—one day after the Confederates evacuate the city.

1864 – Small, 8-gun paddle-wheeler U.S.S. Naiad, Acting Master Keene, engaged Confederate battery near Rowe’s Landing, Louisiana, and, after a brisk exchange, silenced it.

1885 – 150 white miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, brutally attack their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town. The miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had been struggling to unionize and strike for better working conditions for years.

1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.

1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred is awarded the first Eagle Scout award of the Boy Scouts of America.

1918 – Navy ships and crews assist earthquake victims of Yokohama and Tokyo, Japan.

1944 – Navy pilot George Herbert Walker Bush was shot down by Japanese forces as he completed a bombing run over the Bonin Islands. Bush was rescued by the crew of the U.S. submarine Finback; his two crew members, however, died.

1945 – Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic” and set for November 1945. The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties.

1945 – Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!” and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho’s dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality.

1948 – Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian passenger on a space mission, was born in Boston, Mass. During that 1986 mission, she and the six other crew members on the space shuttle Challenger perished in an explosion shortly after launch.

1951 – The 2nd Infantry Division attacked enemy positions on Bloody Ridge.

1951 – Twenty-two F-86 Sabre jets clashed with 40 MiG-15s in a 30-minute dogfight over the skies between Sinuiju and Pyongyang. The air battle resulted in the destruction of four MiGs.

1956 – Tennessee National Guardsmen halted rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-Americans to schools in Clinton.

1958 – United States Air Force C-130A-II is shot down by fighters over Yerevan in Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a SIGINT mission. All crew members are killed.

1969 – President Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam dies of a heart attack in Hanoi.

1970 – NASA announces the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19.

1972 – Phuc Yen, 10 miles north of Hanoi, and one of the largest air bases in North Vietnam, is smashed by U.S. fighter-bombers. During the attack, a MiG was shot down, bringing the total to 47 enemy aircraft shot down since the beginning of the North Vietnamese offensive. At this point in the war, 18 U.S. planes had been shot down by MiGs.

1993 – The United States and Russia formally ended decades of competition in space by agreeing to a joint venture to build a space station.

1996 – The US launched cruise missiles at selected air defense targets in Iraq to discourage Sadam Hussein’s military moves against a Kurd faction.

1997 – The US demanded exemptions to a proposed global ban on land mines at an int’l meeting in Oslo, Norway. The exemptions were for mines on the Korean peninsula and for certain types of mines.

1999 – NATO and UN officials agreed to the formation of a civilian emergency force in Kosovo from the remnants of the KLA.

2002 – Hans Blix rejects the Iraqi request that he travel to Baghdad for technical talks, saying he would not do so until Saddam Hussein approved the return of weapons inspectors.

2004 – Kidnappers handed over two French journalists in Iraq to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group. A militant group in Iraq said it had killed three Turkish captives. Gunmen ambushed an Associated Press driver, riddling his car with bullets and killing him near his home in Baghdad.

2004 – The UN Security Council narrowly approved a U.S.-backed resolution aimed at pressuring Lebanon to reject a second term for its pro-Syrian president and calling for an immediate withdrawal of all foreign forces.

2005 – The NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission robotic Spirit rover sends back a partial panoramic view from the top of “Husband Hill” at Gusev Crater on Mars.

2012 – U.S. special operations personnel temporarily halt the training of all Afghan army and police recruits while a full background check of 27,000 people is ongoing. 45 NATO troops have been killed this year in so-called green-on-blue attacks.

2014 – ISIS releases an Internet video showing the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff.

2014 – The United States sends an additional 250 US troops to protect American personnel.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 02, 2015 10:06 pm
September 3rd ~

1609 – Henry Hudson discovered the island of Manhattan.

1709 – The 1st major group of Swiss and German colonists reached the Carolinas.

1752 – The Gregorian Adjustment to the calendar was put into effect in Great Britain and the American colonies followed. At this point in time 11 days needed to be accounted for and Sept. 2 was selected to be followed by Sept. 14. People rioted thinking the government stole 11 days of their lives.

1777 – The American flag is flown in battle for the first time, during a Revolutionary War skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge, Maryland. Patriot General William Maxwell ordered the stars and strips banner raised as a detachment of his infantry and cavalry met an advance guard of British and Hessian troops. The rebels were defeated and forced to retreat to General George Washington’s main force near Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania. Three months before, on June 14, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” The national flag, which became known as the “Stars and Stripes,” was based on the “Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white stripes.

On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes. As instructed by Congress, the U.S. flag was flown from all public buildings across the country. In the years after the first Flag Day, several states continued to observe the anniversary, and in 1949 Congress officially designated June 14 as Flag Day, a national day of observance.

1782 – As a token of gratitude for French aid during American Revolution, the U.S. gives America (first ship-of-the-line built by U.S.) to France to replace a French ship lost in Boston.

1783 – The Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain officially ended the Revolutionary War. The Treaty of 1783, which formally ended the American Revolution, is also known as the Definitive Treaty of Peace, the Peace of Paris and the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States. The treaty bears the signatures of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay.

1783 – Mackinac Island, Michigan, passed into US hands following the Paris Peace Treaty.

1812 – A war party of Native Americans (mostly Shawnee, but including some Delaware and Potawatomis) made a surprise attack on the village of Pigeon Roost, Indiana, coordinated with attacks on Fort Harrison (near Terre Haute, Indiana) and Fort Wayne the same month. Twenty-four settlers, including fifteen children, were massacred. Two children were kidnapped. Only four of the Indian attackers were killed.

1826 – USS Vincennes left NY to become 1st warship to circumnavigate globe.

1838 – Future abolitionist Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery.

1855 – General William Harney and 700 soldiers take revenge for the Grattan Massacre with a brutal attack on a Sioux village in Nebraska that left 100 men, women, and children dead. The path to Harney’s bloody revenge began a year before near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, when a brash young lieutenant named John Grattan and 30 of his men were killed while attempting to arrest a Teton Sioux brave accused of shooting a white man’s cow.

1861 – Confederate General Leonidas Polk commits a major political blunder by marching his troops into Columbus, Kentucky—negating Kentucky’s avowed neutrality and causing the Unionist legislature to invite the U.S. government to drive the invaders away. Kentucky was heavily divided prior to the war. Although slavery was prevalent in the state, nationalism was strong and Unionists prevented the calling of a convention to consider secession after the firing on Fort Sumter in April.

1885 – First classes at U.S. Naval War College begin.

1908 – Orville Wright began two weeks of flight trials that impressed onlookers with his complete control of his new Type A Military Flyer. In addition to setting an altitude record of 310 feet and an endurance record of more than one hour, he had carried aloft the first military observer, Lieutenant Frank Lahm.

1918 – The United States recognized the nation of Czechoslovakia.

1918 – Five soldiers were hanged for alleged participation in the Houston riot of 1917.

1925 – The dirigible “Shenandoah” crashed near Caldwell Ohio, 13 die. The 682-foot Shenandoah, built by the U.S. Navy in 1923, broke apart in mid-air, killing 14 persons aboard.

1926 – Marines served at Shanghai, China, and aboard ship during the Yangtze Service Campaign, from September 3rd, 1926 to October 21st, 1927.

1939 – In response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany. The first casualty of that declaration was not German-but the British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30 submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent. There were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom lost their lives. Of those, 28 were Americans, but President Roosevelt was unfazed by the tragedy, declaring that no one was to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields.” The United States would remain neutral. As for Britain’s response, it was initially no more than the dropping of anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets-13 tons of them-over Germany. They would begin bombing German ships on September 4, suffering significant losses. They were also working under orders not to harm German civilians. The German military, of course, had no such restrictions. At this time, 39 of the German fleet of 58 U-boats are at sea. Doenitz, the submarine chief, had hoped for a fleet of 300 before contemplating war with Britain.

1941 – The Japanese are informed that a meeting between Prince Konoye and President Roosevelt cannot take place.

1943 – Italy surrendered. The Allied invasion of Italy begins on the same day that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio sign the Armistice of Cassibile aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Nelson off Malta.

1944 – First combat employment of a missile guided by radio and television takes place when Navy drone Liberator, controlled by Ensign James M. Simpson in a PV, flew to attack German submarine pens on Helgoland Island.

1945 – Japanese surrender Wake Island in ceremony on board USS Levy (DE-162).

1950 – A U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) of 35 men arrives in Saigon to screen French requests for American military aid, assist in the training of South Vietnamese troops, and advise on strategy. President Harry Truman had approved National Security Council (NSC) Memorandum 64 in March 1950, proclaiming that French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) was a key area that could not be allowed to fall to the communists and that the United States would provide support against communist aggression in the area.

1954 – The German U-boat U-505 begins its move from a specially constructed dock to its final site at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

1954 – The US Espionage & Sabotage Act of 1954 signed.

1956 – Tanks were deployed against racist demonstrators in Clinton, Tennessee.

1971 – The Watergate team broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.

1976 – The unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface.

1989 – The United States began shipping a $65 million package of military aircraft and weapons to help Colombia’s war against drug lords.

1995 – Testing Serb will, the United Nations reopened a route to Sarajevo and threatened more air attacks if the rebel stranglehold of the Bosnian capital didn’t end.

1996 – The United States launched 27 cruise missiles at “selected air defense targets” in Iraq as punishment for Iraq’s invasion of Kurdish safe havens.

1999 – NASA temporarily grounded its space shuttle fleet after inspections had uncovered damaged wires that could endanger a mission.

2002 – The US Senate opened debate on legislation creating a new Homeland Security Department.

2002 – Iraq said it was ready to discuss a return of U.N. weapons inspectors, but only in a broader context of ending sanctions and restoring Iraqi sovereignty over all its territory.

2004 – Libya signed an agreement to pay a total of $35 million US in compensation for 168 non-U.S. victims of a 1986 Berlin disco bombing.

2005 – Over 40,000 military personnel will be deployed along the Gulf Coast in the coming week: President George W. Bush orders 7,023 additional active duty forces to the Gulf Coast to add to the 4,000 active duty personnel and 21,000 National Guard troops already in the area. The Pentagon announced an additional 10,000 troop deployment from the National Guard.

2007 – U.S. President George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Iraq and addresses military leaders and the troops, saying that with success, a U.S. Iraq troop cut is possible.

2012 – A car bomb explodes near the U.S. consulate in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least three people and wounding up to 19 others.
PostPosted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:33 pm
September 4th ~

1781 – Mexican Provincial Governor, Felipe de Neve, founded Los Angeles. He founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (Valley of Smokes), originally named Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, who had noticed the beautiful area as they traveled north from San Diego in 1769. 44 Spanish settlers named a tiny village near San Gabriel, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, first an Indian village Yangma, was founded by Spanish decree. 26 of the settlers were of African ancestry.

1807 – Robert Fulton began operating his steamboat.

1862 – Robert E. Lee’s Confederate 50,000-man army invaded Maryland, starting the Antietam Campaign. New York Tribune reporter George Smalley scooped the world with his vivid account of the Battle of Antietam.

1864 – Bread riots took place in Mobile, Alabama.

1864 – An amazing career ends when feared Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan is killed during a Union cavalry raid on the town of Greenville, Tennessee.

1882 – Thomas Edison displayed the first practical electrical lighting system. He successfully turned on the lights in a one square mile area of New York City with the world’s 1st electricity generating plant.

1886 – For almost 30 years he had fought the whites who invaded his homeland, but Geronimo, the wiliest and most dangerous Apache warrior of his time, finally surrenders in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. Known to the Apache as Goyalkla, or “One Who Yawns,” most non-Indians knew him by his Spanish nickname, Geronimo.

1888 – George Eastman received patent #388,850 for his roll-film camera and registered his trademark: “Kodak.” George Eastman introduced the box camera.

1915 – The U.S. military placed Haiti under martial law to quell a rebellion in its capital Port-au-Prince.

1917 – The American expeditionary force in France suffered its first fatalities in World War I.

1923 – Maiden flight of the first U.S. airship, the USS Shenandoah.

1940 – The United States warns the Japanese government against making aggressive moves in Indochina.

1940 – American destroyer Greer becomes the first U.S. vessel fired on in the war when a German sub aims a few torpedoes at it, sparking heightened tensions between Germany and the United States. It was a case of mistaken identity. As the Greer made its way through the North Atlantic, a British patrol bomber spotted a German sub, the U-652. The British bomber alerted the Greer, which responded by tracking the sub. As the American destroyer approached Iceland, the area in which the sub had been spotted, a British aircraft dropped a depth charge into the water, rocking the sub. The U-652, believing the Greer responsible for the charge, fired its torpedoes. They missed. The Greer made it safely to Iceland.

1942 – At Guadalcanal, the Japanese receive additional reinforcements. Off the coast, two older American destroyers utilized as transports are sunk by Japanese destroyers.

1945 – 2,200 Japanese soldiers finally lay down their arms-days after their government had already formally capitulated. Wake Island was one of the islands bombed as part of a wider bombing raid that coincided with the attack on Pearl Harbor. In December of 1941, the Japanese invaded in force, taking the island from American hands, losing 820 men, while the United States lost 120. The United States decided not to retake the island but to cut off the Japanese occupiers from reinforcement, which would mean they would eventually starve.

1945 – The Coast Guard Cutter USCG 83434 became the first and only cutter to host an official surrender ceremony when Imperial Japanese Army Second Lieutenant Kinichi Yamada surrendered the garrison of Aguijan Island on board this Coast Guard 83-footer. Rear Admiral Marshall R. Greer, USN, accepted the surrender for the United States.

1950 – The Mort Walker Beetle Bailey cartoon appeared for the 1st time in syndication.

1950 – The 1st helicopter rescue of American pilot behind enemy lines.

1951 – President Truman addressed the nation from the Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco in the first live, coast-to-coast television broadcast. The broadcast was carried by 94 stations.

1954 – Icebreakers, USS Burton Island (AGB-1) and USCG Northwind, complete first transit of Northwest passage through McClure Strait.

1969 – Radio Hanoi announces the death of Ho Chi Minh, proclaiming that the National Liberation Front will halt military operations in the South for three days, September 8-11, in mourning for Ho.

1989 – The US Air Force launched its last Titan 3 rocket, which reportedly carried a reconnaissance satellite. Since 1964, the Titan 3 had sent more than 200 satellites into space.

1996 – Anti-aircraft fire lit up the skies of Baghdad, hours after the United States fired a new round of cruise missiles into southern Iraq and destroyed an Iraqi radar site. The US again launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi air defense sites. The 2nd launch was deemed a success after the first launch failed to destroy intended targets. The Tomahawks were made by Hughes Aircraft Co. and cost about $1 mil apiece. Kurdish leader Barzani wrote a latter to Sec. of State Christopher Warren and asked that the US mediate. 44 cruise missiles were launched over 2 days plus a rocket from an F-16 fighter.

1998 – In Nevada two Air Force helicopters crashed during training and all 12 people aboard were killed.

2002 – President Bush promised to seek Congress’ approval for “whatever is necessary” to oust Saddam Hussein including using military force.

2002 – In Puerto Rico US Navy security officers fired tear gas at protesters who hurled rocks over a fence during bombing exercises on the island of Vieques.

2004 – Insurgents clashed with American and Iraqi troops in northern Iraq. A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a police academy in the northern city of Kirkuk as hundreds of trainees and civilians were leaving for the day, killing 17 people and wounding 36. Saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline in southern Iraq.

2007 – A bomb plot in Germany was discovered following an extensive nine-month investigation, involving some 300 people, three men were arrested while leaving a rented cottage in the Oberschledorn district of Medebach, Germany where they had stored 700 kg (1,500 lb) of a hydrogen peroxide-based mixture and 26 military-grade detonators and were attempting to build car bombs intended for use against “a disco filled with American sluts”, as well as Ramstein Air Base and the Frankfurt airport. They were convicted and sentenced to jail sentences of 11-12 years.

2009 – The United States eases more restrictions on Cuba, allowing unlimited family visits and telephone exchanges.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 10:42 am
September 5th ~

1664 – After days of negotiation, the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam surrendered to the British, who would rename it New York. The citizens of New Amsterdam petitioned Peter Stuyvesant to surrender to the English.

1774 –
In response to the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convenes at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates. The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the argument of “no taxation without representation,” colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament’s enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the “Boston Tea Party,” which saw British tea valued at some ý18,000 dumped into Boston Harbor. Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

1776 – Adoption of first uniforms for Navy officers.

1778 – Gideon Olmstead and 3 fellow Americans took over the British sloop Active and sailed it toward the New Jersey coast, where it was intercepted by the American brig Convention, owned by the state of Pennsylvania. A state court ruled the sloop a prize of the state. An appeals committee overturned the Philadelphia court. Olmstead spent the next 30 years fighting for his claim and won in 1808.

1781 – The Battle of the Chesapeake; a British fleet arrived off the Virginia Capes and found 26 French warships in three straggling lines. Rear Adm. Thomas Graves waited for the French to form their battle lines and then fought for 5 days. Outgunned and unnerved he withdrew to New York. The French had some 37 ships and 29,000 soldiers and sailors at Yorktown while Washington had some 11,000 men engaged. French warships defeated British fleet, trapping Cornwallis in Yorktown.

1804 – In a daring night raid, American sailors under Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, boarded the captured USS Philadelphia and burned the ship to keep it out of the hands of the Barbary pirates who captured her.

1813 – USS Enterprise captures HM brig Boxer off Portland, ME.

1836 – Sam Houston was elected president of the Republic of Texas.

1862 – General Robert E. Lee crossed the Potomac & entered Maryland at White’s Ford.

1863 – United States Foreign Minister to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, sends an angry letter to the British government warning that war between the two nations may erupt if it allows two powerful ironclad ships, designed to help the Confederates break the Union naval blockade, to set sail.

1877 – Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. The battle, in which 265 members of the Seventh Cavalry, including Custer, were killed, was the worst defeat of the U.S. Army in its long history of warfare with the Native Americans.

1905 – The Russo-Japanese War comes to an end as representatives of the two nations sign the Treaty of Portsmouth in New Hampshire.

1918 – USS Mount Vernon torpedoed by German submarine off France.

1918 – U.S. Marines paraded with the Royal Marines in Rosyth, Scotland.

1923 – U.S. Asiatic Fleet arrives at Yokohama, Japan, to provide medical assistance and supplies after Kondo Plain earthquake.

1939 – The United States proclaimed its neutrality in World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders Navy and Coast Guard to form a Neutrality Patrol to report the presence of foreign warships within 300 miles of eastern United States.

1944 – Germany launched its first V-2 missile at Paris, France.

1945 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose,” was arrested in Yokohama. D’Aquino served six years in prison.

1953 – The 1st privately operated atomic reactor opened in Raleigh NC.

1958 – The 1st color video recording on magnetic tape was presented in Charlotte, NC.

1961 – President Kennedy signed a law against hijacking. It called for the death penalty for convicted hijackers.

1969 – Lt. William Calley is charged with six specifications of premeditated murder in the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in March 1968. Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade (Light) of the 23rd (Americal) Division had led his men in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets that made up Son My village in Son Tinh District in Quang Ngai Province in the coastal lowlands of I Corps Tactical Zone on March 16, 1968.

1975 – In Sacramento, California, an assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford is foiled when a Secret Service agent wrests a semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol from Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson. Fromme was pointing the loaded gun at the president when the Secret Service agent grabbed it. Seventeen days later, Ford escaped injury in another assassination attempt when 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at him.

1977 – The United States launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft two weeks after launching its twin, Voyager 2.

1978 – US Pres. Carter, Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt met at Camp David, Md.

1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.

1986 – Pan Am Flight 73, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 747-121, was hijacked while on the ground at Karachi, Pakistan, by four armed Palestinian men of the Abu Nidal Organization. The aircraft, with 360 passengers on board, had just arrived from Sahar International Airport in Mumbai, India, and was preparing to depart Jinnah International Airport in Karachi for Frankfurt Airport in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, ultimately continuing on to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, United States. The motivation for the hijacking was to attack the Israeli defense ministry, using the aircraft as a missile, but the crew escaped while the hijackers were seizing the aircraft, making that impossible.

1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein urged Arabs to rise up in a Holy War against the West and former allies who had turned against him.

1990 – USS Acadia (AD-42) departs San Diego for first war-time deployment of male-female crew on combat vessel.

1991 – Jury selection began in Miami in the drug and racketeering trial of former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega.

2002 – Afghan President Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar. The attack, by a man dressed in military uniform, occurred shortly after a powerful car bomb in the capital killed at least 26 people and wounded 150.

2004 – A Turkish company said it was withdrawing from Iraq a day after Iraqi militants threatened to behead its employee unless it ceased operations there.

2008 – Condoleezza Rice becomes the first United States Secretary of State to visit Libya since 1953.

2014 – Iranian air traffic control requires a plane chartered by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan to land over issues with the flight plan. The flight later resumes without further incident.
PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2015 11:30 am
September 6th ~

1492 – Columbus’ fleet sailed from Gomera, Canary islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

1620 – The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America.

1628 – Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1776 – The Turtle, the 1st submarine invented by David Bushnell, attempted to secure a cask of gunpowder to the HMS Eagle, flagship of the British fleet, in the Bay of NY but got entangled with the Eagle’s rudder bar, lost ballast and surfaced before the charge was planted.

1776 – Continental Congress prescribed first Marine uniform.

1781 – The Battle of Groton Heights (also known as the Battle of Fort Griswold, and occasionally called the Fort Griswold massacre) was a battle of the American Revolutionary War between a small Connecticut militia force led by Lieutenant Colonel William Ledyard and the more numerous British forces led by Brigadier General Benedict Arnold and Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Eyre. In an unsuccessful attempt to divert General George Washington from marching against Lord Cornwallis’s army in Virginia, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton ordered General Arnold to raid the Connecticut port of New London. Although the raid was a success, the Connecticut militia stubbornly resisted British attempts to capture Fort Griswold, across the Thames River in Groton. Several leaders of the attacking British force were killed or seriously wounded, and much of the defending garrison was either killed, mortally wounded, or captured when the fort was stormed. High British casualties led to criticism of General Arnold by some of his superiors. The battle was the last major military encounter of the war in the northern United States, preceding the decisive American victory at Yorktown, Virginia, by about six weeks.

1844 – Western explorer John C. Fremont arrives at the shores of the Great Salt Lake, one of the many areas he will map for the lasting benefit of a westward-moving nation. When Fremont reached the strange saltwater inland lake (a remnant of the much larger prehistoric Lake Bonneville), he was not the first Euro-American to view its shores. As early as the 1820s, fur trappers had returned to the East with tales of a bizarre salt lake where no fish swam, and the French explorer Benjamin Bonneville was the first to map the lake’s outlines in 1837. But for the far-ranging John C. Fremont, the Great Salt Lake was only one small part of a much wider journey of discovery and mapping.

1861 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces capture Paducah, Kentucky, in a bloodless takeover—allowing the Federals to control the mouth of the Tennessee River, and greatly assisting in the Union campaign in Tennessee in 1862.

1862 – Stonewall Jackson occupied Frederick, Maryland.

1862 – U.S.S. Louisiana, Acting Lieutenant Richard T. Renshaw, joined with Union troops in repelling the Confederate attack on Washington, North Carolina. Major General John G. Foster reported that Louisiana rendered most efficient aid, throwing her shells with great precision, and clearing the streets, through which her guns had range.” U.S. Army gunboat Picket was destroyed by an accidental magazine explosion during engagement.

1863 – After months of campaigning against Battery Wagner on Morris Island in a protracted Yankee effort to capture nearby Charleston, South Carolina, a Confederate garrison finally flees the island.

1901 – President William McKinley is shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley was greeting the crowd in the Temple of Music when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, stepped forward and shot the president twice at point-blank range. McKinley lived for another week before finally succumbing to a gangrene infection on September 14. At the time of the shooting, President McKinley was very popular and America was in the midst of a period of peace and prosperity.
(NOTE: President Obama just renamed Mount McKinley...the highest peak on the American continent...as a gesture to Native Alaskans.)

1915 – The first tank prototype was completed and given its first test drive on this day, developed by William Foster & Company for the British army. Several European nations had been working on the development of a shielded, tracked vehicle that could cross the uneven terrain of World War I trenches, but Great Britain was the first to succeed. Lightly armed with machine guns, the tanks made their first authoritative appearance at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, when 474 British tanks managed to break through the German lines. The Allies began using the vehicles in increasing numbers throughout the rest of the war. After World War I, European nations on all sides continued to build tanks at a frantic pace, arming them with even heavier artillery and plating. This competitive stockpiling came to a lethal head on the battlefields of World War II.

1918 – Sailors fire first of the 5 railroad batteries at Tergnier, a German rail head in the Comeigne Forest. These 14″-50 caliber guns were originally designed for battleships.

1943 – The United States asked the Chinese Nationals to join with the Communists to present a common front to the Japanese.

1944 – USS Independence (CVL-22) begins use of specially trained air group for night work. First time that a fully equipped night carrier operates with fast carrier task force.

1944 – All four carrier groups of US Task Force 38 (Admiral Mitscher), 16 aircraft carriers, begin air strikes on Japanese positions on the islands. The commander of the US 3rd Fleet, Admiral Halsey, is present on board the battleship USS New Jersey.

1945 – George Weller (d.2002), a Chicago Daily News journalist, wrote his 1st story on the bombing of Nagasaki. Posing as a US Army colonel Weller had slipped into Nagasaki in early September. His stories infuriated MacArthur so much he personally ordered that they be quashed, and the originals were never returned. Carbon copies of his stories, running to about 25,000 words on 75 typed pages, along with more than two dozen photos, were discovered by his son, Anthony, in 2004 at Weller’s apartment in Rome, Italy. In 2005 the national Mainichi newspaper began serializing the stories and photographs for the first time since they were rejected by U.S. military censors.

1945 – U.S. troops begin returning to U.S. when Task Force 11 left Tokyo Bay for U.S.

1945 – General Eisenhower lifts press censorship. Meanwhile, British field security troops, acting on orders of the Allied Control Commission, arrest 44 prominent Ruhr industrialists.

1953 – The last American and Korean prisoners were exchanged in Operation Big Switch, the last official act of the Korean War.

1954 – A United States plane was shot down above Siberia.

1966 – The Coast Guard’s GM1 Lester K. Gates was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with a combat “V” device for “meritorious service and action against the enemy” while serving on board CGC Point White (WPB-82308) in Vietnam. The Point White attacked and captured a Viet Cong junk while patrolling the Soi Rap River. GM1 Gates was the first enlisted Coast Guardsman to be awarded the Bronze Star since World War II.

1967 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announces plans to build an electronic anti-infiltration barrier to block communist flow of arms and troops into South Vietnam from the north at the eastern end of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The “McNamra Line,” as it became known, would employ state-of-the-art, high-tech listening devices to alert U.S. forces when North Vietnamese troops and supplies were moving south so that air and artillery strikes could be brought to bear on them.

1970 – In the Dawson’s Field hijackings four jet aircraft bound for New York City and one for London were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and instead landed at the PFLP’s “Revolutionary Airport”.

1976 – A Soviet Air Force pilot lands his MIG fighter jet in Japan and asks for asylum in the United States. The incident was a serious embarrassment for the Soviets, and also provided a bit of a surprise for U.S. officials. When the Soviets first put the MIG-25 (known as the Foxbat) into production in the 1960s, U.S. officials became nearly hysterical. The new plane, they claimed, was the fastest, most advanced, and most destructive interceptor jet ever built. Its debut, they argued, meant that the United States was falling dangerously behind in the race to control the skies. On September 6, 1976, those officials got a close-up look at the aircraft. Soviet Air Force Lt. Viktor Belenko took his MIG-25 out of Soviet airspace and landed it at a Japanese airfield at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. Japanese police took the pilot into custody, where he immediately asked for asylum in the United States.

1983 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down KAL (Korean Air Lines) Flight 007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.

1997 – The USS Hopper, the 354th ship in the modern naval fleet, was commissioned. The high-tech destroyer is the 2nd warship to be named after a woman. Grace Hooper (d.1992) was a computer programmer for the Navy until she retired in 1986 at age 79. She coined the term “debugging” when she pulled a moth from her computer.

2002 – Meeting outside Washington D.C., for only the second time since 1800, Congress convened in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of Sept. 11, 2001.

2006 – The United States government announces that fourteen suspected terrorists are to be transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp and admits that these suspects have been held in CIA black sites. These people include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, believed to be the No. 3 al-Qaida leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003; Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker; and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was also captured in Pakistan in March 2002.

2014 – The United States says that it will not coordinate with Iran in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2015 9:31 am
September 7th ~

1630 – The Massachusetts town of Trimontaine (Shawmut), was renamed Boston, and became the state capital. It was named after a town of the same name in Lincolnshire, England.

1776 – During the Revolutionary War, the American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe’s flagship Eagle in New York Harbor. It was the first use of a submarine in warfare. Submarines were first built by Dutch inventor Cornelius van Drebel in the early 17th century, but it was 150 years later before they were first used in naval combat.

1778 – Shawnee Indians attacked and laid siege to Boonesborough, Kentucky.

1813 – The earliest known printed reference to the United States by the nickname “Uncle Sam” occurred in the Troy Post.

1814 – USS Wasp captures HMS Avon.

1825 – The Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution, bade farewell to President John Quincy Adams at the White House.

1864 – In preparation for his march to the sea, Union General William T. Sherman orders residents of Atlanta, Georgia, to evacuate the city.

1864 – Union General Phil Sheridan’s troops skirmished with the Confederates under Jubal Early outside Winchester, Virginia.

1864 – USS Wachusett captures commerce raider, CSS Florida at Bahia, Brazil.

1867 – President Andrew Johnson extended amnesty to all but a few of the leaders of the Confederacy.

1876 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James–Younger Gang attempt to rob the town’s bank but are driven off by armed citizens.

1901 – The Peace of Peking (Beijing) ended the Boxer Rebellion in China.

1903 – Marines from the USS Brooklyn landed at Beirut to protect American lives.

1927 – American television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, 21, succeeded in transmitting an image through purely electronic means by using a device called an image dissector.

1940 – Nazi Germany began its initial blitz on London during the World War II Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe blitzed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights. Nazi Germany launched the aerial bombing of London that Adolf Hitler believed would soften Britain for an invasion. “Operation Sea Lion” never materialized. The Luftwaffe lost 41 bombers over England. The blitz only strengthened Britain’s resistance. The defense of London was for the Royal Air Force what Churchill called “their finest hour.”

1942 – First air evacuation of casualties to hospital ships off shore occurs at Guadalcanal.

1942 – First flight of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator. The B-32 (Consolidated Model 34) was a heavy bomber made for United States Army Air Forces during World War II, and had the distinction of being the last Allied aircraft to be engaged in combat during World War II. It was developed in parallel with the Boeing B-29 Superfortress as a fallback design should the Superfortress prove unsuccessful. It only reached units in the Pacific during mid-1945, and subsequently only saw limited combat operations against Japanese targets before the end of the war. Most of the extant orders of the B-32 were cancelled shortly thereafter and only 118 B-32s of all types were built.

1951 – The US signs an agreement with Saigon for direct aid to South Vietnam.

1977 – In Washington, President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos sign a treaty agreeing to transfer control of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama at the end of the 20th century.

1986 – Off the Coast of Florida — An F-106 “Delta Dart” of the 125th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron encounters a Soviet Air Force Tu-95 “Bear” bomber flying parallel to the twelve-mile limit of U.S. airspace as it makes its way from Russia to Cuba.

1990 – The 13th MEU embarked and arrived in the Gulf of Oman, joining U.N. forces.

1991 – Iraq blocks UNSCOM’s use of helicopters to conduct inspections.

1993 – Two Rangers are WIA during a two-hour assault against an Aidid compound.

1994 – U.S. Marines began training on a Puerto Rican island amid talk in Washington of a U.S.-led intervention in Haiti.

1995 – The space shuttle “Endeavour” thundered into orbit with five astronauts on a mission to release and recapture a pair of science satellites.

1997 – The US F-22 Raptor Advanced Tactical Fighter took its first flight from Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta, Ga. The plane was estimated to cost $100 million.

1999 – In NY twelve Puerto Rican prisoners agreed to accept Pres. Clinton’s offer of conditional amnesty. The House of Rep. Later condemned the offer in a symbolic vote of 311-41.

1999 – In Vietnam Madeleine Albright commissioned the new US consulate in Ho Chi Minh City... ( formally Saigon ).

2001 – The US State Dept. issued a memo that warned Americans “may be the target of a terrorist threat.”

2002 – U.S. Navy fighter jets dropped dummy bombs and inert missiles on Vieques in military exercises that have divided this outlying Puerto Rican island for years.

2003 – The top American commander in Afghanistan said Taliban fighters, paid and trained by al-Qaida, were pouring into Afghanistan from Pakistan.

2007 – United States District Court judge Royce Lamberth orders Iran to pay $2.6 billion to victims and families in the 1983 Hezbollah bombing of a United States Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon that claimed 241 American lives.

2010 – United States Army General David Petraeus, the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, condemns plans by a small Florida church to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks as inflammatory.

2012 – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notifies Congress of her intent to include the Haqqani network on the government’s terror list. An attaché at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington dismisses the decision as an “internal matter” of the United States and reaffirms Pakistan’s commitment to “combating extremism and terrorism.” Haqqani senior commanders say the decision will not help in bringing peace to Afghanistan.

2014 – The United States launches new airstrikes on ISIS in western Iraq, in an effort to protect the Haditha Dam.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 08, 2015 7:23 am
September 8th ~

1565– A Spanish expedition under Pedro Menendez de Aviles established the first permanent European colony in the present day St. Augustine, Florida. Aviles founded St. Augustine on the site of the Timucuan Indian village of Seloy, 42 years before the English settled at Jamestown and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest permanent European settlement in the US. Castillo de San Marco fortress was built by the Spanish to defend St. Augustine.

1628 – John Endecott arrived with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he would become the governor.

1664 – Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, to an English naval squadron under Colonel Richard Nicolls. Stuyvesant had hoped to resist the English, but he was an unpopular ruler, and his Dutch subjects refused to rally around him. Following its capture, New Amsterdam’s name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission.

1740 – Eight hundred volunteers drawn from the militia of several colonies board transports to sail as part of the joint British/American colonial expedition to capture the Spanish colony of Cartagena (today the nation of Columbia). In all, troops from eleven colonies take part in this endeavor, which ends in failure, due more to disease than enemy actions. Perhaps the most memorable aspect was Captain Lawrence Washington’s service with the expedition’s commander, Admiral Edward Vernon. When Washington returned home he renamed his house overlooking the Potomac River in northern Virginia as “Mount Vernon” in honor of his former commander.

1755 – The Battle of Lake George was fought in the north of the Province of New York. The battle was part of a campaign by the British to expel the French from North America in the French and Indian War.

1756 – The Kittanning Expedition, also known as the Armstrong Expedition or the Battle of Kittanning, was a raid during the French and Indian War that led to the destruction of the American Indian village of Kittanning, which had served as a staging point for attacks by Delaware (Lenape) warriors against colonists in the British Province of Pennsylvania. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Armstrong, this raid deep into hostile territory was the only major expedition carried out by Pennsylvania militia during a brutal backcountry war. Early on this morning they launched a surprise attack on the Indian village.

1760 – The French surrendered the city of Montreal to British Gen. Jeffrey Amherst.

1771 – Mission San Gabriel Archangel formed in California.

1847 – The US under Gen. Scott defeated Mexicans at Battle of Molino del Rey.

1883 – The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was completed in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana. Former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final “golden spike” in an event attended by rail and political luminaries.

1892 – An early version of “The Pledge of Allegiance” appeared in “The Youth’s Companion,” published in Boston and edited by Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist, and cousin of writer Edward Bellamy.

1923 – The Honda Point Disaster was the largest peacetime loss of U.S. Navy ships. In the evening, as a result of navigation error, an earthquake in japan creating unexpected tidal effects, and poor weather, seven of fourteen Clemson class destroyers of DESRON 11, all less than 5 years old, while traveling at 20 knots (37 km/h), ran aground at Honda Point, a few miles from the northern side of the Santa Barbara Channel off Point Arguello on the coast in Santa Barbara County, California. Two other ships grounded, but were able to maneuver free of the rocks. Twenty-three sailors died in the disaster.

1939 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims limited national emergency and increases enlisted strength in the Navy and Marine Corps; also authorizes the recall to active duty of officer, men and nurses on the retired lists of the Navy and Marine Corps.

1943 – General Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies.

1945 – Hideki Tojo, Japanese PM during most of WW II, failed in his attempted suicide rather than face war crimes tribunal attempt. He was later hanged.

1945 – U.S. troops land in Korea to begin their postwar occupation of the southern part of that nation, almost exactly one month after Soviet troops had entered northern Korea to begin their own occupation. Although the U.S. and Soviet occupations were supposed to be temporary, the division of Korea quickly became permanent. Korea had been a Japanese possession since the early 20th century.

1945 – The US 1st Cavalry Division enters Tokyo.

1951 – A formal Treaty of Peace was signed by 48 nations of the United Nations and Japan at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. On the same day the US and Japan signed a Joint Security Pact at the Presidio. The Soviet delegation refused to sign and said the deal provided for the exclusive existence of American military bases in Japan.

1952 – Major Frederick C. Blesse, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, earned his sixth and seventh aerial kills after downing a pair of MiG-15 jet fighters.

1954 – Having been directed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to put together an alliance to contain any communist aggression in the free territories of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, or Southeast Asia in general, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles forges an agreement establishing a military alliance that becomes the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

1958 – LT R. H. Tabor, wearing a Navy developed pressure suit, completes 72-hour simulated flight at altitudes as high a 139,000 feet. It was another step in the development of the Navy spacesuit, which NASA accepted in 1959 for use by Mercury astronauts.

1960 – NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1974 – In a controversial executive action, President Gerald Ford pardons his disgraced predecessor Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while in office.

1990 – President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrived in Helsinki, Finland, for a one-day summit sparked by the Persian Gulf crisis.

1994 – The last US, British & French troops left West-Berlin.

2000 – The space shuttle Atlantis blasted into orbit to deliver supplies to the new int’l. space station. LCDR Daniel C. Burbank became the second Coast Guard astronaut to fly on a shuttle mission.

2002 – The Guardian reports that the United States has begun a massive military build-up required for a war against Iraq, ordering the movement of tens of thousands of men and tons of material to the Gulf region.

2003 – NASA presented a “return to flight” plan for the shuttle fleet.

2004 – NASA’s $260 million Genesis space capsule crashed in the Utah desert after its parachute failed to open. It carried a cargo of solar wind particles.

2005 – Two Russian EMERCOM Il-76 aircraft carrying aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina land at a disaster aid staging area at Little Rock Air Force Base; the first time Russia has flown such a mission to North America.

2010– The U.S. Army announced the arrival in Iraq of the first specifically-designated Advise and Assist Brigade, the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment. It was announced that the unit would assume responsibilities in five southern provinces.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 11:28 am
September 9th ~

1675 – New England colonial authorities officially declared war on the Wampanoag Indians. War soon spread to include the Abenaki, Norwottock, Pocumtuck and Agawam warriors.

1739 – A slave revolt in Stono, SC, led by an Angolan slave named Jemmy, killed 20-25 whites. Three slave uprisings occurred in South Carolina in 1739. Whites soon passed black codes to regulate every aspect of slave life.

1753 – The 1st steam engine arrived in US colonies.

1776 – The term “United States” was adopted by the second Continental Congress to be used instead of the “United Colonies.”

1786 – George Washington called for the abolition of slavery.

1791 – Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington.

1825 – USS Brandywine sails for France to carry the Marquis de Lafayette home after his year long visit to America.

1841 – First iron ship authorized by Congress.

1850 – Though it had only been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union (without ever even having been a territory) on this day in 1850. Mexico had reluctantly ceded California and much of its northern territory to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,. When the Mexican diplomats signed the treaty, they pictured California as a region of sleepy mission towns with a tiny population of about 7,300-not a devastating loss to the Mexican empire.

1850 – Territories of New Mexico and Utah were created.

1850 – The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas’s claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas’s pre-annexation debt.

1861 – Sally Louisa Tompkins (b.1833) was commissioned as a Confederate captain of cavalry. Born into a wealthy and altruistic family in coastal Mathews County, Virginia, Tompkins was destined for a life of philanthropy. After moving to Richmond, she spent much of her time and a considerable portion of her fortune assisting causes she considered worthy. With the onset of civil war, she labored on the behalf of the South’s wounded soldiers, and for this she became the first and only woman to receive an officer’s commission in the Confederate army.

1862 – General Robert E. Lee split his army and sent General Stonewall Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry.

1863 – Union General William Rosecrans completes a brilliant campaign against the army of Confederate General Braxton Bragg when his forces capture Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1919 – The infamous Boston Police Strike of 1919 begins, causing an uproar around the nation and confirming the growing influence of unions on American life. Using the situation to their advantage, criminals took the opportunity to loot the city. As society changed in the 20th century, police were expected to act more professionally. Some of their previous practices were no longer countenanced. Explanations such as that given by the Dallas chief of police in defense of their unorthodox tactics-“Illegality is necessary to preserve legality”-was no longer acceptable to the public. Police forces were brought within the civil service framework and even received training for the first time. Soon, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) began to create local police unions.

1940 – A new $5,500,000,000 appropriations bill becomes law in the United States. Contracts are placed for 210 vessels for the navy, including seven battleships and 12 carriers.

1940 – The first of the 50 old destroyers given to Britain is taken over by a Royal Navy crew.

1940 – George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer.

1942 – USS Muskeget (Coast Guard-manned) was sunk without trace while on weather patrol. Her entire crew of 9 officers and 111 enlisted men were lost. It was learned after the war that she had been torpedoed by the U-755.

1942 – A Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on an Oregon state forest-the first and only attack on the U.S. mainland in the war. Launching from the Japanese sub I-25, Nobuo Fujita piloted his light aircraft over the state of Oregon and firebombed Mount Emily, alighting a state forest–and ensuring his place in the history books as the only man to ever bomb the continental United States. The president immediately called for a news blackout for the sake of morale. No long-term damage was done, and Fujita eventually went home to train navy pilots for the rest of the war.

1945 – American servicemen begin to returning to the United States (Operation Magic Carpet).

1947 – A “computer bug” is first identified and named by LT Grace Murray Hopper while she was on Navy active duty in 1945. It was found in the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator at Harvard University. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, where it still resides, with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found.” They “debugged” the computer, first introducing the term.

1950 – Captain Leslie E. Brown became the first Marine Corps aviator to a fly a jet in combat.

1951 – Fourth Fighter-Interceptor Wing Captains Richard S. Becker and Ralph D. Gibson became the second and third aces of the Korean War, with five kills each. On this day, they each shot down a MiG-15 in an air battle that pitted 28 Sabres against 70 MiGs.

1970 – U.S. Marines launched Operation Dubois Square, a 10-day search for North Vietnamese troops near DaNang. Marine pilots in their diminutive Douglas A-4 Skyhawks provided vital close air support for ground forces in Vietnam.

1971 – The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, which eventually results in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers and New York National Guard retaking the prison.

1972 – U.S. Air Force Capt. Charles B. DeBellevue (Weapons Systems Officer) flying with his pilot, Capt. John A. Madden, in a McDonnell Douglas F-4D, shoots down two MiG-19s near Hanoi. These were Captain DeBellevue’s fifth and sixth victories, which made him the leading American ace (an unofficial designation awarded for having downed at least five enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat) of the war. All of his victories came in a four-month period. Captain Madden would record a third MiG kill two months later.

1976 – Mao Zedong, who led the Chinese people through a long revolution and then ruled the nation’s communist government from its establishment in 1949, dies. Along with V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Mao was one of the most significant communist figures of the Cold War.

1990 – President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev held a one-day summit in Helsinki, Finland, after which they joined in condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

1994 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off on an 11-day mission.

1998 – The Tripartite Gold Commission closed. It was set up in 1946 by Britain, France and the United States to oversee the return of some $4 billion in gold plundered by the Nazis from European treasuries.

2002 – Iraq challenged the United States to produce “one piece of evidence” that it was producing weapons of mass destruction. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the Security Council must be allowed to have its say on a possible attack against Iraq.

2004 – It was reported that a munitions plant in Oklahoma had suspended production of “bunker buster” bombs after workers there developed anemia.

2004 – Ayman al-Zawahri said in an al Qaeda videotape that the US will be ultimately defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2004 – US jets pounded the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, and American and Iraqi forces entered the central city of Samarra for the first time in months to try to reseat the city council and regain control.

2005 – United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff appoints Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen, chief of staff of the United States Coast Guard, to direct Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in New Orleans, in place of Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown, who returns to Washington to direct planning for future disaster relief.

2006 – Space Shuttle Atlantis lifts off from John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin STS-115. mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis. It was the first assembly mission to the ISS after the Columbia disaster, following the two successful Return to Flight missions, STS-114 and STS-121. The mission delivered the second port-side truss segment (ITS P3/P4), a pair of solar arrays (2A and 4A), and batteries. A total of three spacewalks were performed, during which the crew connected the systems on the installed trusses, prepared them for deployment, and did other maintenance work on the station.

2010 – United States Marines board and seize control of a German-owned vessel, Magellan Star, previously captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 8:29 am
September 10th ~

1608 – English adventurer John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia–the first permanent English settlement in North America.

1776 – George Washington asked for a spy volunteer and Nathan Hale volunteered.

1813 – In the first unqualified defeat of a British naval squadron in history, U.S. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry leads a fleet of nine American ships to victory over a squadron of six British warships at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.

1897 – The Lattimer Massacre was the violent deaths of 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff’s posse. Scores more workers were wounded. This initial incident did not result in military activity, but 2500 troops of the Third Brigade of the Pennsylvania National Guard were deployed to restore order to the resulting mob rule and prevented a reprisal by mine workers on the 20th. The artillery units were withdrawn on the 24th and all troops were returned home by the 29th.

1919 – New York City welcomed home Gen. John J. Pershing and 25,000 soldiers who had served in the U.S. First Division during World War I.

1925 – Submarine R-4 rescues crew of PN-9 10 miles from their destination of Hawaii.

1939 – The government of Canada declares war on Germany. The Canadians are the last of the great Dominions to declare war, however, the few days of hesitation permits the accelerated delivery from the US of large amounts of war goods which are now barred under American neutrality laws.

1942 – Following the example of several European nations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandated gasoline rationing in the U.S. as part of the country’s wartime efforts. Gasoline rationing was just one of the many measures taken during these years, as the entire nation was transformed into a unified war machine: women took to the factories, households tried to conserve energy, and American automobile manufacturers began producing tanks and planes. The gasoline ration was lifted in 1945, at the end of World War II.

1945 – At a meeting of the Allied Control Commission (Zhukov, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Koenig), it is decided to transmit to all neutral states a request for the return to Germany of “all German officials and obnoxious Germans” now in those countries. The states affected are Afghanistan, Eire (Ireland), Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland as well as Vatican City and the Tangier Zone.

1945 – General MacArthur order the dissolution of the Imperial general headquarters and imposes censorship of the printed press and radio.

1948 – Mildred Gillars, accused of being Nazi wartime radio broadcaster “Axis Sally,” was indicted in Washington, D.C., on treason charges. She was later convicted, and served 12 years in prison.

1963 – 20 black students entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Ala., following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace. President John F. Kennedy federalized Alabama’s National Guard to prevent Governor George C. Wallace from using guardsmen to stop public-school desegregation.

1964 – Following the Tonkin Gulf incidents, in which North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers, and the subsequent passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution empowering him to react to armed attacks, President Lyndon Johnson authorizes a series of measures “to assist morale in South Vietnam and show the Communists [in North Vietnam] we still mean business.”

2000 – The US federal government agreed to drop its case against Wen Ho Lee, a former Los Alamos scientist, in exchange for a single guilty plea for downloading classified material to an insecure computer. Lee was released 3 days later.

2000 – The space shuttle Atlantis docked with the international space station.

2001 – Iraq said it shot down a 2nd US spy plane. The US reported an unmanned plane missing.

2002 – The Bush administration raised the nationwide terror alert to yellow, its second-highest level, closed nine U.S. embassies overseas and heightened security at federal buildings and landmarks in America on the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary.

2006 – A lengthy statement from al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks calls on Muslims to step up their resistance against the United States.

2007 – In a speech made to Congress, General Petraeus “envisioned the withdrawal of roughly 30,000 U.S. troops by next summer, beginning with a Marine contingent [in September].” He warns against a too rapid withdrawal.

2013 – Barack Obama gives a televised address to the nation, saying that he has asked the United States Congress to postpone a vote on the use of force in Syria while he pursues a diplomatic solution.

2014 – Barack Obama authorizes $25 million for “immediate military assistance” to the Iraqi government and Kurdistan Regional Government. He also outlines plans to expand US operations against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant to Syria in a televised address to the nation.
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:31 am
September 11th ~

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there.

1775 – Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec leaves Cambridge, Massachusetts. Colonel Benedict Arnold led a force of 1,100 Continental Army troops on an expedition from Cambridge, Massachusetts to the gates of Quebec City. Part of a two-pronged invasion of the British Province of Quebec, his expedition passed through the wilderness of what is now Maine. By the time Arnold reached the French settlements above the Saint Lawrence River in November, his force was reduced to 600 starving men. The plan turned into nothing but failure, but Arnold was rewarded for his effort in leading the expedition with a promotion to brigadier general.

1776 – British–American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop the American War of Independence. The conference took place at Billop Manor, the residence of Colonel Christopher Billop, on Staten Island, New York. The participants were the British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, and members of the Second Continental Congress John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge. Since Lord Howe’s authority was, by design, extremely limited, the Congressional delegation was pessimistic about the meeting’s outcome. The conference, held in the days after the British capture of Long Island, lasted just three hours and was a failure. The Americans insisted on recognition of their recently declared independence, and Howe’s limited authority was inadequate to deal with that development. After the conference, the British continued their military campaign for control of New York City.

1777 – General George Washington and his troops were defeated by the British under General Sir William Howe at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania between the American army of General George Washington and the British army of General Sir William Howe. The British defeated the Americans and forced them to withdraw toward the American capital of Philadelphia. The engagement occurred near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania during Howe’s campaign to take Philadelphia, part of the American Revolutionary War. Howe’s army sailed from New York City and landed near Elkton, Maryland in northern Chesapeake Bay. Marching north, the British Army brushed aside American light forces in a few skirmishes. Washington offered battle with his army posted behind Brandywine Creek. While part of his army demonstrated in front of Chadds Ford, Howe took the bulk of his troops on a long march that crossed the Brandywine beyond Washington’s right flank. Due to poor scouting, the Americans did not detect Howe’s column until it reached a position in rear of their right flank. Belatedly, three divisions were shifted to block the British flanking force near a Quaker meeting house. After a stiff fight, Howe’s wing broke through the newly formed American right wing which was deployed on several hills. At this point Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen attacked Chadds Ford and crumpled the American left wing. As Washington’s army streamed away in retreat, he brought up elements of Nathanael Greene’s division which held off Howe’s column long enough for his army to escape to the northeast. The defeat and subsequent maneuvers left Philadelphia vulnerable. The British captured Philadelphia on September 26, beginning an occupation that would last until June 1778.

1783 – Benjamin Franklin drafted the Treaty of Paris.

1786 – The US Convention of Annapolis opened with the aim of revising the Articles of Confederation.

1813 – British troops arrive in Mount Vernon and prepare to march to and invade Washington, D.C..

1814 – During the Battle of Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, a newly built U.S. fleet under Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough destroys a British squadron, forcing the British to abandon their siege of the U.S. fort at Plattsburg and retreat to Canada on foot.

1857 – Mormon guerillas, stoked by religious zeal and a deep resentment of decades of public abuse and federal interference, murder 120 emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Utah. Although historical accounts differ, the conflict with the wagon train of emigrants from Missouri and Arkansas apparently began when the Mormons refused to sell the train any supplies. Some of the emigrants then began to commit minor depredations against Mormon fields, abuse the local Paiute Indians, and taunt the Mormons with reminders of how the Missourians had attacked and chased them out of that state during the 1830s. Angered by the emigrants’ abuse and fired by a zealous passion against the growing tide of invading gentiles, a group of Mormons guerillas from around Cedar City decided to take revenge. Cooperating with a group of Paiute Indians who had already attacked the train on their own initiative, the Mormon guerillas initially pretended to be protectors. The guerillas persuaded the emigrants that they had convinced the Paitues to let them go if they would surrender their arms and allow the Mormons to escort the wagon train through the territory. But as the train again moved forward under the Mormon escort, a guerilla leader gave a pre-arranged signal. The Mormons opened fire on the unarmed male emigrants, while the Paiutes reportedly murdered the women. Later accounts suggested that some Mormons had only fired in the air while others killed as few of the emigrants as they could. But when the shooting stopped in Mountain Meadows, 120 men and women were dead. Only 18 small children were spared. As a direct result of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the U.S. government demanded a new settlement from Brigham Young. In 1858, the Mormons agreed to accept a continued presence of federal troops and a Gentile governor for Utah Territory. No further significant Mormon-Gentile violence occurred, and the Latter Day Saints were thereafter largely left to govern themselves. But the era of complete Mormon domination of Utah ended as a result of the tragedy that day in Mountain Meadows.

1861 – Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee move into position against a Union stronghold on Cheat Mountain in western Virginia, only to retreat three days later without firing a shot.

1864 – A 10-day truce was declared between generals Sherman and Hood so civilians could leave Atlanta, Georgia.

1904 – The battleship Connecticut, launched in New York, introduced a new era in naval construction.

1918 – US troops landed in Russia to fight the Bolsheviks.

1918 – Often called the “war of the machines,” World War I marked the beginning of a new kind of warfare, fought with steel and shrapnel. Automotive manufacturers led the way in this new technology of war, producing engines for planes, building tanks, and manufacturing military vehicles. Packard was at the forefront of these efforts, being among the first American companies to completely cease civilian car production. Packard had already been the largest producer of trucks for the Allies, but the company began devoting all of its facilities to war production on this day, just a few months before the end of the war. Even after Packard resumed production of civilian vehicles, its wartime engines appeared in a number of vehicles, from racing cars and boats to British tanks in the next world war.

1919 – US Marines invaded Honduras (again).

1939 – Churchill begins correspondence with Roosevelt which he signs as “A Naval Person”.

1941 – As a result of public outrage over the Greer incident, the president announces that American warships will be able to “shoot on sight” to ensure the protection of waters “necessary for American defense.” This formalizes a situation which has been commonly occurring.

1941 – Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon.

1942 – Wheeler Bryson Lipes (1921-2005), a US Navy pharmacist’s mate, saved the life of sailor Darrell Dean Rector (19) by operating, following a medical manual, in the officer’s mess aboard the Sea Dragon below the surface of the South China Sea. George Weller (d.2002), war correspondent, won the Pulitzer in 1943 for his account of the operation.

1952 – Six Marine Corps F9F-4s from VMF-115 crashed into a mountain during an instrument letdown in the vicinity of airfield K-2, Korea. All pilots were killed instantly.

1965 – 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) begins to arrive in South Vietnam at Qui Nhon, bringing U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam to more than 125,000. The unit, which had a long and storied history, was the first full U.S. Army division deployed to Vietnam.

1969 – Heavy bombing of Vietnam resumed under orders from President Nixon.

1990 – President Bush addressed Congress on the Persian Gulf crisis, vowing that “Saddam Hussein will fail” in his takeover of Kuwait.

1992 – President Bush announced he was approving the sale of 72 F-15 jet fighters to Saudi Arabia.

1997 – NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:32 am
SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001 ~

At 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. As the evacuation of the tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcasted live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident.

Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767–United Airlines Flight 175–appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center, and sliced into the south tower at about the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack.

The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the U.S. in the months before September 11 and acted as the “muscle” in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming the ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles. As millions watched in horror the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to a structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.

Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 mph and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 4,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and 23 policemen who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 other people were treated for injuries, many severe.

Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane–United Flight 93–was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger–Todd Beamer–was heard saying “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll” over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.” The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.

At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House. At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network based there, began on October 7th.
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:36 am
September 11th ~

2002 – The “Don’t Tread on Me” First Navy Jack is flown by Navy ships marking the first anniversary of the terrorists attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

2005 – An eleven minute video tape purporting to be from Al Qaeda is delivered to American network ABC in Pakistan and shown on Good Morning America, warns of future attacks on Los Angeles, California and Melbourne, Australia. Adam Yahiye Gadahn, an American convert to Islam, called the September 11, 2001 attacks “blessed events” and commenting on possible attacks in the future stated, “This time, don’t count on us demonstrating restraint and compassion.”

2008 – The Pentagon Memorial in Washington, DC, dedicated to the 184 people who died in the attack on the building on September 11, 2001, is opened to the public.

2012 – Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith. Stevens was the first U.S. Ambassador killed on duty since 1979. Three members of the team responsible for the Embassy’s security believe that Stevens would have survived the attack had they not been delayed three times for thirty minutes by the top CIA officer in Benghazi. Several hours later, a second assault targeted a different compound about one mile away, killing two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. Ten others were also injured in the attacks.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 9:59 am
September 12th ~

1609 – English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into the river that now bears his name. Hudson sailed for the Dutch East India Company in search of the Northwest Passage, a water route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, when he sailed up the present-day Hudson River.

1786 – Despite his failed efforts to suppress the American Revolution, Lord Cornwallis was appointed governor general of India.

1814 – A British fleet under Sir Alexander Cochrane began the bombardment of Fort McHenry, the last American defense before Baltimore. Lawyer Francis Scott Key had approached the British attackers seeking the release of a friend who was being held for unfriendly acts toward the British. Key himself was detained overnight on September 13 and witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a British ship. As the sun rose, Key was amazed to see the American flag still flying over the battered fort. This experience inspired Key to write the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and adapt them to the tune of a well-known British drinking song. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially recognized as the national anthem in 1931.

1814 – The Battle of North Point was fought near Baltimore during War of 1812 between General John Stricker’s Maryland Militia and a British force led by Major General Robert Ross. Although the Americans retreated, they were able to do so in good order having inflicted significant casualties on the British, killing one of the commanders of the invading force, significantly demoralizing the troops under his command and leaving some of his units lost among woods and swampy creeks, with others in confusion. This combination prompted British colonel Arthur Brooke to delay his advance against Baltimore, buying valuable time to properly prepare for the defense of the city as Stricker retreated back to the main defenses to bolster the existing force. The engagement was a part of the larger Battle of Baltimore, an American victory in the War of 1812.

1847 – The Battle of Chapultepec was a United States victory over Mexican forces holding Chapultepec Castle west of Mexico City during the Mexican-American War.

1861 – Confederate General Sterling Price continues his campaign to secure Missouri in the early days of the war by converging on a Union garrison at Lexington, Missouri. The nine-day siege ended with the surrender of the Federals. The Battle of Lexington followed shortly after the much larger Battle of Wilson’s Creek on August 10, 1861. That engagement, in southwestern Missouri, resulted in heavy losses and the scattering of the Union force in the area. Price, who was also the Confederate commander at Wilson’s Creek, now headed north to expand the Confederates’ hold on the state.

1862 – The Battle of Harpers Ferry took place in Virginia.

1916 – First demonstration of automatic stabilization and direction gear in aircraft.

1917 – General John J. Pershing selected the 7th Marine Company to guard his headquarters in France.

1918 – The US First Army and the French II Colonial Corps launch a five day attack on the salient at St. Mihiel. It has been held continuously by the Germans since 1914.

1919 – Adolf Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party.

1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

1939 – The US Navy begins regular neutrality patrols along the entire length of the eastern seaboard and in the Caribbean.

1941 – The US ship Busko captured the 1st German ship in WW II.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, major attacks by the Japanese units, from General Kawaguchi’s 35th brigade, begin. Fighting is heavy especially around the aptly named “Bloody Ridge”. Reinforcements of aircraft are flown to the Americans from the USS Wasp.

1942 – German U-boat U-156 sinks the passenger liner Laconia, just south of the equator, off the coast of Africa.

1943 – German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains.

1943 – German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains.

1944 – During World War II, U.S. Army troops entered Germany for the first time, near Trier.
1944 – Three groups of US Task Force 38, with 12 carriers, conduct air strikes on Japanese positions on the Visayas or central Philippine islands.

1945 – Field Marshal Sugiyama, former Commander in Chief of the Japanese Home Army, commits suicide together with his wife. Meanwhile, General MacArthur orders the dissolution of the Black Dragon society (the secret terrorist organization which for many years played a prominent role in Japanese imperialist policies and had been responsible for many political assassinations) and the arrest of seven of its leaders.

1945 – British troops arrive in Saigon to accept surrender of the Japanese according to the terms of the Potsdam Conference.

1952 – USS Coral Sea (CVB-43) took Marshall Josip Tito for a one-day cruise in the Adriatic Sea where he was shown flight operations.

1953 – When the 6,000 ton ore carrier SS Maryland grounded off Marquette, Michigan, a Coast Guard helicopter, in the face of driving wind and rain that required the combined efforts of both pilots to hold the controls and stabilize the aircraft, removed 12 crew members with a breeches buoy without any casualties.

1958 – Jack Kilby, an engineer at Texas Instruments, demonstrates the first integrated circuit.

1966 – Launch of Gemini 11, piloted by CDR Charles Conrad Jr., USN and LCDR Richard F. Gordon Jr., USN. Their mission lasted 2 days and 23 hours and included 44 orbits at an altitude of 1368.9 km.. Recovery was by HS-3 helicopter from USS Guam (LPH-9).

1970 – US professor Timothy Leary, LSD proponent, escaped from a California jail. Leary escaped from the State Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo with the help of his third wife, Rosemary and the Weather Underground. He went to Algiers and joined Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who kidnapped the Learys after a political disagreement. They soon escaped and made their way to Afghanistan. In 1974 he was caught and revealed his collaborators to the FBI.

1972 – U.S. intelligence agencies (the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency) report to the National Security Council that the North Vietnamese have 100,000 regular troops in South Vietnam and can sustain fighting “at the present rate” for two years.

1986 – Joseph Cicippio, the acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut, was kidnapped; he was released in December 1991.

1991 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off on a mission to deploy an observatory designed to study the Earth’s ozone layer.

1992 – The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off, carrying with it Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space; Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space; and Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly on a U.S. spaceship.

1993 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral on a 10-day mission.

1994 – Frank Eugene Corder crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House’s south lawn, striking the West wing and killing himself.

1999 – North Korea agreed indirectly to freeze its missile testing program.

2001 – Pres. Bush called Tuesday’s terrorist attacks “acts of war.” Stunned rescue workers continued to search for bodies in the World Trade Center’s smoking rubble a day after a terrorist attack that shut down the financial capital, badly damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. The US began building a broad int’l. coalition for a possible military retaliation against those responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sep 11. Federal authorities said followers of Osama bin Laden were responsible for airline hijackings directed at NYC and the Pentagon. The US air system remained grounded and financial markets closed.

2001 – In Afghanistan Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, went into hiding. The Taliban military repositioned weaponry in anticipation of a US strike.

2002 – Pres. Bush addressed the UN and laid out his case against Iraq’s Pres. Saddam Hussein. Bush told skeptical world leaders at the United Nations to confront the “grave and gathering danger” of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or to stand aside as the United States acted.

2011 – The 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City opens to the public. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (also known as the 9/11 Memorial and 9/11 Memorial Museum) is the principal memorial and museum commemorating the September 11 attacks of 2001, which killed 2,977 people, and the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, which killed six. The memorial is located at the World Trade Center site, on the former location of the Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the attacks. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation was renamed the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center in 2007. The winner of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was Israeli architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects, a New York- and San Francisco-based firm. Arad worked with landscape architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners on the design which calls for a forest of trees with two square pools in the center, where the Twin Towers once stood.

2013 – NASA announces the Voyager 1 space probe has left the solar system becoming the first man-made object to reach interstellar space.

2014 – NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover reaches its final destination Aeolis Mons, a mountain that rises 5.5 km at the center of Gale Crater.
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