** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:47 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1907 – World’s 1st air force was established as part of the US Army.

1911 – Trial of first Navy aircraft, Curtiss A-1. The designer, Glenn Curtiss, makes first flight in Navy’s first aircraft, A-1, at Lake Keuka, NY, then prepares LT Theodore G. Ellyson, the first naval aviator, for his two solo flights in A-1.

1916 – Establishment of informal school for officers assigned to submarines at New London, CT.

1917 – Race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, and 40 to 200 were reported killed.

1918 – USS Covington hit without warning by two torpedoes from German Submarine U-86 and sank the next day.

1921 – The Coast Guard’s first air station, located at Morehead City, North Carolina, was closed due to a lack of funding.

1939 – Lighthouse Service of Department of Commerce transferred to Coast Guard under President Franklin Roosevelt’s Reorganization Plan No. 11. Under the President’s Reorganization Plan No. 11, made effective this date by Public Resolution No. 20, approved 7 June 1939, it was provided “that the Bureau of Lighthouses in the Department of Commerce and its functions be transferred to and consolidated with and administered as a part of the Coast Guard.

This consolidation made in the interest of efficiency and economy, will result in the transfer to and consolidation with the Coast Guard of the system of approximately 30,000 aids to navigation (including light vessels and lighthouses) maintained by the Lighthouse Service on the sea and lake coasts of the United States, on the rivers of the United States, and on the coasts of all other territory under the jurisdiction of the United States with the exception of the Philippine Island and Panama Canal proper.” Plans were put into effect, “Providing for a complete integration with the Coast Guard of the personnel of the Lighthouse Service numbering about 5,200, together with the auxiliary organization of 64 buoy tenders, 30 depots, and 17 district offices.”

1940 – Roosevelt signs a further Navy bill providing for the construction of 45 more ships and providing $550,000,000 to finance these and other projects.

1941 – Aircraft from the United States Navy start antisubmarine patrols from bases in Newfoundland.

1941 – Commercial black and white television broadcasting began in the US.

1943 – “Pay-as-you-go” income tax withholding began.

1944 – Elements of the US 5th Army capture Cecina on the west coast while Pomerance falls, further inland, in the advance to Volterra.

1944 – Delegates from 44 countries began meeting at Bretton Woods, N.H., where they agreed to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The US hosted an international conference at Bretton Woods, N.H., to deal with international monetary and financial problems. The talks resulted in the creation of the IMF, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank in 1945.

In 1997 Catherine Caufield wrote “Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations.” The Bretton Woods institutions also include the United nations and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (renamed the World Trade organization). The agreement was a gold exchange standard and only the US was required to convert its currency into gold at a fixed rate, and only foreign central banks were allowed the privilege of redemption.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:49 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1945 – Some 550 B-29 Superfortress bombers — the greatest number yet to be engaged — drop 4000 tons of incendiary bombs on the Kure naval base, Shimonoseki, Ube and Kumanoto, on western Kyushu.

1946 – As a final step in the return of the Coast Guard to the Treasury Department from wartime operation under the Navy Department, the Navy directional control of the following Coast Guard functions was terminated: search and rescue functions, maintenance and operation of ocean weather stations and air-sea navigational aids in the Atlantic, continental United States, Alaska, and Pacific east of Pearl Harbor.

1946 – The United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The energy released by any one of the ten or so major earthquakes every year is about 1,000 times as much as the Bikini atomic bomb.

1947 – State Department official George Kennan, using the pseudonym “Mr. X,” publishes an article entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the July edition of Foreign Affairs. The article focused on Kennan’s call for a policy of containment toward the Soviet Union and established the foundation for much of America’s early Cold War foreign policy. In February 1946, Kennan, then serving as the U.S. charge d’affaires in Moscow, wrote his famous “long telegram” to the Department of State. In the missive, he condemned the communist leadership of the Soviet Union and called on the United States to forcefully resist Russian expansion.

Encouraged by friends and colleagues, Kennan refined the telegram into an article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” and secured its publication in the July edition of Foreign Affairs. Kennan signed the article “Mr. X” to avoid any charge that he was presenting official U.S. government policy, but nearly everyone in the Department of State and White House recognized the piece as Kennan’s work. In the article, Kennan explained that the Soviet Union’s leaders were determined to spread the communist doctrine around the world, but were also extremely patient and pragmatic in pursuing such expansion.

In the “face of superior force,” Kennan said, the Russians would retreat and wait for a more propitious moment. The West, however, should not be lulled into complacency by temporary Soviet setbacks. Soviet foreign policy, Kennan claimed, “is a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal.”

In terms of U.S. foreign policy, Kennan’s advice was clear: “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Kennan’s article created a sensation in the United States, and the term “containment” instantly entered the Cold War lexicon. The administration of President Harry S. Truman embraced Kennan’s philosophy, and in the next few years attempted to “contain” Soviet expansion through a variety of programs, including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Kennan’s star rose quickly in the Department of State and in 1952 he was named U.S. ambassador to Russia.

By the 1960s, with the United States hopelessly mired in the Vietnam War, Kennan began to question some of his own basic assumptions in the “Mr. X” article and became a vocal critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In particular, he criticized U.S. policymakers during the 1950s and 1960s for putting too much emphasis on the military containment of the Soviet Union, rather than on political and economic programs.

1950 – Task Force Smith, two companies of the 24th Infantry Division’s 21st Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith and the first U.S. combat unit in Korea, arrived at Pusan. Major General William F. Dean, the 24th Infantry Division commander, was named commander of all U.S. forces in Korea.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:51 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1951 – North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and Peng Teh-huai, commander of the Chinese “Volunteers,” agreed to begin armistice discussions.

1956 – The Highway Revenue Act of 1956 was put into effect by Congress, outlining a policy of taxation with the aim of creating a fund for the construction of over 42,500 miles of interstate highways over a period of 13 years. The push for a national highway system began many years earlier, when the privately funded construction of the Lincoln Highway begun in 1919.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) did much to set into motion plans for a federally funded highway system, but his efforts were halted by the outbreak of World War II. With the end of the war came America’s industrial boom and a massive increase in automobile registration. Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected president in 1952, had been a supporter of a federally funded highway system ever since, as an Army Lieutenant in 1919, he led a military convoy from San Francisco to New York. His travels through Germany during World War II only increased his desire to replicate Germany’s autobahn system.

Eisenhower’s 1954 State of the Union address made clear his intentions to follow through on his interest. He declared the need to “protect the vital interests of every citizen in a safe, adequate highway system.” It wasn’t until 1956 that Eisenhower saw his vision pass through Congress. The scale of the plan was breathtaking: At a time when the total federal budget approached $71 billion, Eisenhower’s plan called for $50 billion over 13 years for highways.

To pay for the project a system of taxes, relying heavily on the taxation of gasoline, was implemented. Legislation has extended the Interstate Highway Revenue Act three times. Today consumers pay 18.3¢ per gallon on gasoline. Eisenhower thought of the Federal Interstate System as his greatest achievement. Today, revisionists question the solutions offered by our massive labyrinth of highways. Undoubtedly the interstate system changed America and made it what it is today, with suburbs and “edge cities” springing up across the country.

Employment increased, as well as the U.S. gross national product. Still, both state and federal governments struggle to appropriate the funds to expand our national road network and meet the demand of the ever-growing population of car owners. Many economists subscribe to Helen Levitt’s theory that “congestion rises to meet road capacity,” and anti-road activists are citing the loss of productive farmland, the demise of small business, the destruction of the environment, and the “urbanization” of American society. Truly, the grass is always greener on the other side of the highway.

1958 – The new Atlantic merchant vessel [known by the acronym AMVER] position reporting program was established. It was aimed at encouraging domestic and foreign merchant vessels to send voluntary position reports and navigational data to U.S. Coast Guard shore based radio stations and ocean station vessels. Relayed to a ships’ plot center in New York and processed by machine, these data provided updated position information for U.S. Coast Guard rescue coordination centers. The centers could then direct only those vessels which would be of effective aid to craft or persons in distress. This diversion of all merchant ships in a large area became unnecessary.

1960 – USSR shot down a US RB-47 reconnaissance plane.

1962 – Intelligence has been an essential element of Army operations during war as well as during periods of peace. In the past, requirements were met by personnel from the Army Intelligence and Army Security Reserve branches, two-year obligated tour officers, one-tour levies on the various branches, and Regular Army officers in the specialization programs. To meet the Army’s increased requirement for national and tactical intelligence, an Intelligence and Security Branch was established in the Army effective July 1, 1962, by General Orders No. 38, July 3, 1962. On July 1, 1967, the branch was re-designated as Military Intelligence.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:53 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1965 – Undersecretary of State George Ball submits a memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson titled “A Compromise Solution for South Vietnam.” It began bluntly: “The South Vietnamese are losing the war to the Viet Cong. No one can assure you that we can beat the Viet Cong, or even force them to the conference table on our terms, no matter how many hundred thousand white, foreign (U.S.) troops we deploy.” Ball advised that the United States not commit any more troops, restrict the combat role of those already in place, and seek to negotiate a way out of the war.

As Ball was submitting his memo, the U.S. air base at Da Nang came under attack by the Viet Cong for the first time. An enemy demolition team infiltrated the airfield and destroyed three planes and damaged three others. One U.S. airman was killed and three U.S. Marines were wounded. The attack on Da Nang, the increased aggressiveness of the Viet Cong, and the weakness of the Saigon regime convinced Johnson that he had to do something to stop the communists or they would soon take over South Vietnam.

While Ball recommended a negotiated settlement, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara urged the president to “expand promptly and substantially” the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam. Johnson, not wanting to lose South Vietnam to the communists, ultimately accepted McNamara’s recommendation. On July 22nd, he authorized a total of 44 U.S. battalions for commitment in South Vietnam, a decision that led to a massive escalation of the war. There were less than ten U.S. Army and Marine battalions in South Vietnam at this time. Eventually there would be more than 540,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam.

1966 – The U.S. Marines launched Operation Holt in an attempt to finish off a Vietcong battalion in Thua Thien Province in Vietnam.

1966 – U.S. Air Force and Navy jets carry out a series of raids on fuel installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. The Dong Nam fuel dump, 15 miles northeast of Hanoi, with 9 percent of North Vietnam’s storage capacity, was struck on this day. The Do Son petroleum installation, 12 miles southeast of Haiphong, would be attacked on July 3rd. The raids continued for two more days, as petroleum facilities near Haiphong, Thanh Hoa, and Vinh were bombed, and fuel tanks in the Hanoi area were hit. These raids were part of Operation Rolling Thunder, which had begun in March 1965.

The attacks on the North Vietnamese fuel facilities represented a new level of bombing, since these sites had been previously off limits. However, the raids did not have a lasting impact because China and the Soviet Union replaced the destroyed petroleum assets fairly quickly. China reacted to these events by calling the bombings “barbarous and wanton acts that have further freed us from any bounds of restrictions in helping North Vietnam.” The World Council of Churches in Geneva sent a cable to President Lyndon B. Johnson saying that the latest bombing of North Vietnam was causing a “widespread reaction” of “resentment and alarm” among many Christians. Indian mobs protested the air raids on the Hanoi-Haiphong area with violent anti-American demonstrations in Delhi and several other cities.

1968 – The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

1972 – Date of rank of Rear Admiral Samuel Lee Gravely, Jr., who was first U.S. Navy Admiral of African-American descent.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:55 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1991 – A 14th Coast Guard District LEDET, all crewmen from the CGC Rush, deployed on board the U.S. Navy’s USS Ingersoll, made history when they seized the St. Vincent-registered M/V Lucky Star for carrying 70 tons of hashish; the largest hashish bust in Coast Guard history to date. The team, led by LTJG Mark Eyler, made the bust 600 miles west of Midway Island.

1991 – A high personnel retention level led the Commandant, ADM J. William Kime, to begin implementing a high-year tenure program, otherwise known as an “up or out” policy to “improve personnel flow and opportunities for advancement.” Two significant points of the program were that they limited enlisted careers to 30 years of active service and established “professional growth points” for pay grades E-4 through E-9, which had to be attained in order to remain on active duty. Up until this time, enlisted members could remain on active duty until age 62 — the only U.S. military work force with that option.

1992 – UNSCOM begins the destruction of large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and production facilities.

1993 – The space shuttle Endeavour returned from a 10-day mission.

1995 – As a result of UNSCOM’s investigations, Iraq admits for the first time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program, but denies weaponization.

1996 – The United States rejects an Iraqi plan for distributing food and medicine under United Nations Security Council Resolution 986. It would allow Saddam Hussein’s government to evade certain sanctions as well as to give it control over distribution of supplies to separatist Kurds in northern Iraq.

1996 – Twelve members of an Arizona anti-government group, the Viper Militia, were charged with plotting to blow up government buildings. The group was infiltrated by Drew Nolan, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

2001 – In China parts of the US spy plane were flown out from Hainan Island.

2002 – Jordan reported that 11 people, including a Palestinian-Jordanian who fled the American bombing on Osama bin Laden’s stronghold in Afghanistan, have been detained in connection with an alleged plot to attack American targets.

2003 – The US planned to suspend $48 million in aid to some 35 countries for failing to meet this day’s deadline for exempting Americans from prosecution before the new UN int’l. war crimes tribunal.

2004 – The US Coast Guard began boarding foreign vessels as int’l. security rules went into effect.

2004 – Historic Afghan elections scheduled for September were delayed because of wrangling among officials and political parties.

2004 – A defiant Saddam Hussein rejected charges of war crimes and genocide in a court appearance, telling a judge “this is all theater, the real criminal is Bush.”

2004 – In Iraq US jets pounded a suspected safehouse of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah.

2006 – A Web-posted message purportedly written by Osama bin Laden urged Somalis to build an Islamic state in the country and warned western states that his al-Qaeda network would fight against them if they intervened there.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:34 am
July 2nd ~

1775 – George Washington arrived in Boston and took over as commander-in-chief of the new Continental Army.

1776 – Congress passed Lee’s resolution that “these united Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States,” and then spent two days over the wording of Jefferson’s document.

1777 – Vermont became the 1st American colony to abolish slavery.

1809 – Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh calls on all Indians to unite and resist. Born around 1768 near Springfield, Ohio, Tecumseh early won notice as a brave warrior. He fought in battles between the Shawnee and the white Kentuckians, who were invading the Ohio River Valley territory. After the Americans won several important battles in the mid-1790s, Tecumseh reluctantly relocated westward but remained an implacable foe of the white men and their ways.

By the early 19th century, many Shawnee and other Ohio Valley Indians were becoming increasingly dependent on trading with the Americans for guns, cloth, and metal goods. Tecumseh spoke out against such dependence and called for a return to traditional Indian ways. He was even more alarmed by the continuing encroachment of white settlers illegally settling on the already diminished government-recognized land holdings of the Shawnee and other tribes. The American government, however, was reluctant to take action against its own citizens to protect the rights of the Ohio Valley Indians.

On this day in 1809, Tecumseh began a concerted campaign to persuade the Indians of the Old Northwest and Deep South to unite and resist. Together, Tecumseh argued, the various tribes had enough strength to stop the whites from taking further land. Heartened by this message of hope, Indians from as far away as Florida and Minnesota heeded Tecumseh’s call. By 1810, he had organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa, and Wyandot nations. For several years, Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region.

In 1811, however, the future president William Henry Harrison led an attack on the confederacy’s base on the Tippecanoe River. At the time, Tecumseh was in the South attempting to convince more tribes to join his movement. Although the battle of Tippecanoe was close, Harrison finally won out and destroyed much of Tecumseh’s army. When the War of 1812 began the following year, Tecumseh immediately marshaled what remained of his army to aid the British.

Commissioned a brigadier general, he proved an effective ally and played a key role in the British capture of Detroit and other battles. When the tide of war turned in the American favor, Tecumseh’s fortunes went down with those of the British. On October 5, 1813, he was killed during Battle of the Thames. His Ohio Valley Confederacy and vision of Indian unity died with him.

1862 – Lincoln signed an act granting land for state agricultural colleges.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:36 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1862 – Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough’s fleet covered the withdrawal of General McClellan’s army after a furious battle with Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee at Malvern Hill. Dependent on the Navy for his movement to Harrison’s Landing, chosen by McClellan at Com-modore J. Rodgers recommendation because it was so situated that gunboats could protect both flanks of his army, the General acknowledged the decisive role played by the Navy in enabling his troops to withdraw with a minimum loss: “Commodore Rodgers placed his gunboats so as to protect our flanks and to command the approaches from Richmond . . . During the whole battle Commodore Rodgers added greatly to the discomfiture of the enemy by throwing shell among his reserve and advancing columns.”

The Washington National Intelligencer of 7 July described the gunboats’ part in the action at Malvern Hill: “About five o’clock in the after-noon the gunboats Galena, Aroostook, and Jacob Bell opened from Turkey Island Bend, in the James River, with shot and shell from their immense guns. The previous roar of field artillery seemed as faint as the rattle of musketry in comparison with these monsters of ordnance that literally shook the water and strained the air. . . . They fired about three times a minute, frequently a broadside at a time, and the immense hull of the Galena careened as she delivered her complement of iron and flame. The fire went on . . . making music to the ears of our tired men. . . . Confederate] ranks seemed slow to close up when the naval thunder had torn them apart. . . During the engagement at White Oak Swamp, too, the Intelligencer reported, the gunboats “are entitled to the most unbounded credit. They came into action just at the right time, and did first rate service.”

The Navy continued to safeguard the supply line until the Army of the Potomac was evacuated to northern Virginia in August, bringing to a close the unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign.

1863 – General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia attacks General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac at both Culp’s Hill and Little Round Top, but fails to move the Yankees from their positions. On the north end of the line, or the Union’s right flank, Confederates from General Richard Ewell’s corps struggled up Culp’s Hill, which was steep and heavily wooded, before being turned back by heavy Union fire.

But the most significant action was on the south end of the Union line. General James Longstreet’s corps launched an attack against the Yankees, but only after a delay that allowed additional Union troops to arrive and position themselves along Cemetery Ridge. Many people later blamed Longstreet for the Confederates’ eventual defeat. Still, the Confederates had a chance to destroy the Union left flank when General Daniel Sickles moved his corps, against Meade’s orders, from their position on the ridge to open ground around the Peach Orchard. This move separated Sickles’ force from the rest of the Union army, and Longstreet attacked.

Although the Confederates were able to take the Peach Orchard, they were repulsed by Yankee opposition at Little Round Top. Some of the fiercest fighting took place on this day, and both armies suffered heavy casualties. Lee’s army regrouped that evening and planned for one last assault against the Union center on July 3rd. That attack, Pickett’s charge, would represent the high tide of Confederate fortunes.

1864 – General Early and Confederate forces reached Winchester.

1864 – Congress passes the Wade-Davis Bill, requiring a majority of a seceded state’s white citizens to take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and guarantee black equality, but President Abraham Lincoln pocket vetoes the harsh plan for dealing with the defeated Confederate states.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:38 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1881 – Only four months into his administration, President James A. Garfield is shot as he walks through a railroad waiting room in Washington, D.C. His assailant, Charles J. Guiteau, was a disgruntled and perhaps insane office seeker who had unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the U.S. consul in Paris. The president was shot in the back and the arm, and Guiteau was arrested. Garfield, mortally ill, was treated in Washington and then taken to the seashore at Elberon, New Jersey, where he attempted to recuperate with his family.

During this time, Vice President Chester A. Arthur served as acting president. On September 19, 1881, after 80 days, President Garfield died of blood poisoning. The following day, Arthur was inaugurated as the 21st president of the United States. Garfield had three funerals: one in Elberon; another in Washington, where his body rested in state in the Capitol for three days; and a third in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was buried. Charles Guiteau’s murder trial began in November, and in January 1882 he was found guilty and sentenced to death. In June 1882, he was hanged at his jail in Washington.

1915 – A bomb planted by a German professor from Harvard University, Erich Muenter, destroys a reception room in the Senate. The Senate had been out of session since the previous March and was not due to reconvene until December, Muenter headed for the Senate Chamber. Finding the chamber doors locked, he decided that the adjacent Senate Reception Room would serve his purposes. He worked quickly, placing his deadly package under the Senate’s telephone switchboard, whose operator had left for the holiday weekend.

After setting the timing mechanism for a few minutes before midnight to minimize casualties, he walked to Union Station and purchased a ticket for the midnight train to New York City. At 20 minutes before midnight, as he watched from the station, a thunderous explosion rocked the Capitol. The blast nearly knocked Capitol police officer Frank Jones from his chair at the Senate wing’s east front entrance. Ten minutes earlier, the lucky Jones had closed a window next to the switchboard.

A 30-year police veteran, the officer harbored a common fear that one day the Capitol dome would fall into the rotunda. For a few frantic moments, he believed that day had come. Jones then entered the Reception Room and observed its devastation—a shattered mirror, broken window glass, smashed chandeliers, and pulverized plaster from the frescoed ceiling. In a letter to the Washington Evening Star, published after the blast, Muenter attempted to explain his outrageous act. Writing under an assumed name, he hoped that the detonation would “make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war. This explosion is an exclamation point in my appeal for peace.”

The former German professor was particularly angry with American financiers who were aiding Great Britain against Germany in World War I, despite this country’s official neutrality in that conflict. Arriving in New York City early the next morning, Muenter headed for the Long Island estate of J. P. Morgan, Jr. Morgan’s company served as Great Britain’s principal U.S. purchasing agent for munitions and other war supplies. When Morgan came to the door, Muenter pulled a pistol, shot him, and fled. The financier’s wounds proved superficial and the gunman was soon captured. In jail, on July 6th, Muenter took his own life.

1923 – Commissioning of Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC.

1926 – The U.S. Army Air Corps was created by Congress.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:39 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1926 – The Distinguished Flying Cross was established in the Air Corps Act (Act of Congress, Public Law No. 446, 69th Congress). This act provided for award “to any person, while serving in any capacity with the Air Corps of the Army of the United States, including the National Guard and the Organized Reserves, or with the United States Navy, since the 6th day of April 1917, has distinguished, or who, after the approval of this Act, distinguishes himself by heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight.”

1926 – An Act of Congress (Public Law 446-69th Congress (44 Stat. 780)) which established the Soldier’s Medal for acts of heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy. The Secretary of War directed that the Quartermaster General prepare and submit appropriate designs of the Soldier’s Medal per letter signed by The Adjutant General dated 11 August 1926.

1937 – CGC Itasca, while conducting re-supply operations in the Central Pacific, made the last-known radio contact with Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan. Itasca later joined the Navy-directed search for the aircraft. The search was finally called off on 17 July with no trace of the aircraft having been found.

1941 – The US authorities very soon know of a Japanese determination to attempt to seize bases in Indonesia even if it should precipitate war through their code-breaking service which has managed to work out the key to the major Japanese diplomatic code and some other minor operational codes. The information gained from the diplomatic code is circulated under the code name Magic.

1943 – The American buildup on Rendova Island continues but the Japanese garrison continues to resist. During the night a Japanese naval force bombards the American positions with little effect.

1943 – The U.S. Army Air Corps 99th Fighter Squadron, the first of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen to see combat, had been based in Africa for four months when they were assigned to escort 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers on a routine mission over Sicilian targets. Lieutenant Charles B. Hall of Brazil, Indiana became the first Tuskegee Airman to score a confirmed kill when he shot down a German fighter plane.

1944 – There are Allied landing on Numfoor Island. About 7100 troops, including elements of the US 168th Infantry Division and Australian forces, under the command of US General Patrick establish a beachhead on the north coast near Kamiri Airfield. There is no Japanese resistance. Admiral Fechteler commands the naval support with US Task Force 74 and TF75 providing escort and a preliminary bombardment. On Biak Island, remnants of the Japanese force continue to resist.

1944 – On Saipan, American forces conduct a general advance. Garapan village is overrun.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:41 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1944 – As part of Operation Gardening, the British and American strategy to lay mines in the Danube River by dropping them from the air, American aircraft also drop bombs and leaflets on German-occupied Budapest. Hungarian oil refineries and storage tanks, important to the German war machine, were destroyed by the American air raid. Along with this fire from the sky, leaflets threatening “punishment” for those responsible for the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz were also dropped on Budapest.

The U.S. government wanted the SS and Hitler to know it was watching. Admiral Miklas Horthy, regent and virtual dictator of Hungary, vehemently anticommunist and afraid of Russian domination, had aligned his country with Hitler, despite the fact that he little admired him. But he, too, demanded that the deportations cease, especially since special pleas had begun pouring in from around the world upon the testimonies of four escaped Auschwitz prisoners about the atrocities there.

Hitler, fearing a Hungarian rebellion, stopped the deportations on July 8th. Horthy would eventually try to extricate himself from the war altogether-only to be kidnapped by Hitler’s agents and consequently forced to abdicate. One day after the deportations stopped, a Swedish businessman, Raoul Wallenberg, having convinced the Swedish Foreign Ministry to send him to the Hungarian capital on a diplomatic passport, arrived in Budapest with 630 visas for Hungarian Jews, prepared to take them to Sweden to save them from further deportations.

1945 – The submarine USS Barb fires rockets on Kaihyo Island, off the east coast of Karafuto (Sakhalin) Island. It is the first American underwater craft to fire rockets in shore bombardment. Meanwhile, Japanese sources report that only 200,000 people remain in Tokyo. All others have been evacuated to safer areas. The Japanese claim that some 5 million civilians have been killed or wounded by American fire-bombs.

1946 – Establishment of VX-3 to evaluate adaptability of helicopters to naval purposes.

1947 – Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov walks out of a meeting with representatives of the British and French governments, signaling the Soviet Union’s rejection of the Marshall Plan. Molotov’s action indicated that Cold War frictions between the United States and Russia were intensifying.

In the following weeks, the Soviet Union pressured its Eastern European allies to reject all Marshall Plan assistance. That pressure was successful and none of the Soviet satellites participated in the Marshall Plan. The Soviet press claimed that the American program was “a plan for interference in the domestic affairs of other countries.” The United States ignored the Soviet action and, in 1948, officially established the Marshall Plan and began providing funds to other European nations.

Publicly, U.S. officials argued that the Soviet stance was another indication that Russia intended to isolate Eastern Europe from the West and enforce its communist and totalitarian doctrines in that region. From the Soviet perspective, however, its refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan indicated its desire to remain free from American “economic imperialism” and domination.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:42 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1947 – An object crashed near Roswell, N.M. The Army Air Force later insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1950 – USS Juneau and 2 British ships sink 5 of 6 attacking North Korean torpedo boats and gunboats. This is the only significant naval engagement of the Korean War.

1950 – The Royal Australian Air Force 77 Squadron began flying F-51 Mustang missions in Korea.

1951 – The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division launched Operation DOUGHNUT, a series of attacks directed against hills in the Iron Triangle.

1957 – The Seawolf, the 1st submarine powered by liquid metal cooled reactor, was completed.

1957 – Grayback, the 1st submarine designed to fire guided missiles, was launched.

1959 – Wendy B. Lawrence, USN Lt Commander, astronaut, was born in Jacksonville, Fla.

1961 – Hanoi captures at least three members of Lansdale’s US-trained First Observation Group when their US C-47 aircraft goes down, whether by enemy fire or due to engine trouble remains unknown.

1964 – At a joint news conference, Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois) and House Republican leader Charles Halleck (Indiana) say that the Vietnam War will be a campaign issue because “Johnson’s indecision has made it one.” President Lyndon B. Johnson had assumed office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Kennedy had supported Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam, who was assassinated during a coup just before Kennedy was killed.

The deaths of both Diem and Kennedy provided an opportunity for the new administration to undertake a reassessment of U.S. policy toward Vietnam, but this was not done. Johnson, who desperately wanted to push a set of social reforms called the Great Society, was instead forced to focus on the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam. Caught in a dilemma, he later wrote: “If I…let the communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere in the entire globe.” Faced with having to do something about Vietnam, Johnson vacillated as he and his advisers attempted to devise a viable course of action.

The situation changed in August 1964 when North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers off the coast of North Vietnam. What became known as the Tonkin Gulf incident led to the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which passed 416 to 0 in the House, and 88 to 2 in the Senate. This resolution, which gave the president approval to “take all necessary measures to repel an armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression,” provided the legal basis for President Johnson to initiate a major commitment of U.S. troops to South Vietnam, which ultimately totaled more than 540,000 by 1968.

1967 – The U.S. Marine Corps launched Operation Buffalo in response to the North Vietnamese Army’s efforts to seize the Marine base at Con Thien.

1967 – During Operation Bear Claw, Seventh Fleet Amphibious Force conducts helicopter assault 12 miles inland at Con Thien.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:44 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1993 – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, some of whose followers were accused in the bombing of the World Trade Center, surrendered to immigration officials in New York City.

1996 – US federal officials announced the arrest of 12 members of a militia unit, called Viper Militia, that had planned to bomb government offices in the Phoenix area. On Dec 19 two members pleaded guilty to explosives and weapons charges. On Dec 27 three more members pleaded guilty.

1997 – The US began a round of underground nuclear weapons-related tests in Nevada.

1997 – A federal judge in New York ruled that the military policy, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” is unconstitutional and only serves to cater to the biases of many heterosexuals.

1998 – Apologizing to viewers and Vietnam veterans for “serious faults” in its reporting, Cable News Network retracted a story alleging U.S. commandos had used nerve gas to kill American defectors during the war.

2002 – Philippine Vice President Teofisto Guingona resigned as foreign minister, settling but perhaps not ending a public row with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo over U.S. military exercises in the south of the country.

2014 – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the new Islamic State, said that Muslims should unite to capture Rome in order to “own the world”. He called on Muslims the world over to unite behind him as their leader.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:08 pm
July 3rd ~

1775 – On Cambridge common in Massachusetts, George Washington rides out in front of the American troops gathered there, draws his sword, and formally takes command of the Continental Army. Washington, a prominent Virginia planter and veteran of the French and Indian War, was appointed commander in chief by the Continental Congress two weeks before. In serving the American colonies in their war for independence, he declined to accept payment for his services beyond reimbursement of future expenses.

George Washington was born in 1732 to a farm family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His first direct military experience came as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia colonial militia in 1754, when he led a small expedition against the French in the Ohio River valley on behalf of the governor of Virginia. Two years later, Washington took command of the defenses of the western Virginian frontier during the French and Indian War. After the war’s fighting moved elsewhere, he resigned from his military post, returned to a planter’s life, and took a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses. During the next two decades, Washington openly opposed the escalating British taxation and repression of the American colonies.

In 1774, he represented Virginia at the Continental Congress. After the American Revolution erupted in 1775, Washington was nominated to be commander in chief of the newly established Continental Army. Some in the Continental Congress opposed his appointment, thinking other candidates were better equipped for the post, but he was ultimately chosen because as a Virginian his leadership helped bind the Southern colonies more closely to the rebellion in New England. With his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers, General Washington led an effective war of harassment against British forces in America while encouraging the intervention of the French into the conflict on behalf of the colonists.

On October 19, 1781, with the surrender of British General Charles Lord Cornwallis’ massive British army at Yorktown, Virginia, General Washington had defeated one of the most powerful nations on earth. After the war, the victorious general retired to his estate at Mount Vernon, but in 1787 he heeded his nation’s call and returned to politics to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and in February 1789 Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the United States. As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, “I walk on un-trodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term. He died in 1799.

1778 – The Wyoming Massacre occurred during the American Revolution in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. As part of a British campaign against settlers in the frontier during the war, 360 American settlers, including women and children, were killed at an outpost called Wintermoot’s Fort after they were drawn out of the protection of the fort and ambushed.

1844 – Ambassador Caleb Cushing successfully negotiated a commercial treaty with China that opened five Chinese ports to U.S. merchants and protected the rights of American citizens in China.

1861 – US Colonel Jackson received his CSA commission as brigadier general.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:09 pm
July 3rd ~ {continued...}

1863 – Troops under Confederate General George Pickett begin a massive attack against the center of the Union lines at Gettysburg on the climactic third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the largest engagement of the war. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia encountered George Meade’s Army of the Potomac in Pennsylvania and battered the Yankees for two days. The day before Pickett’s charge, the Confederates had hammered each flank of the Union line but could not break through.

Now, on July 3rd, Lee decided to attack the Union center, stationed on Cemetery Ridge, after making another unsuccessful attempt on the Union right flank at Culp’s Hill in the morning. The majority of the force consisted of Pickett’s division, but there were other units represented among the 15,000 attackers. After a long Confederate artillery bombardment, the Rebel force moved through the open field and up the slight rise of Cemetery Ridge. But by the time they reached the Union line, the attack had been broken into many small units, and they were unable to penetrate the Yankee center.

The failed attack effectively ended the battle of Gettysburg. On July 4th, Lee began to withdraw his forces to Virginia. The casualties for both armies were staggering. Lee lost 28,000 of his 75,000 soldiers, and Union losses stood at over 22,000. It was the last time Lee threatened Northern territory.

1863 – Major General Grant and Lieutenant General Pemberton, CSA, the gallant and tireless commander of the Vicksburg defenses, arranged an armistice to negotiate the terms of capitulation of the citadel. Only with the cessation of hostilities did the activity of the fleet under Rear Admiral Porter come to a halt off Vicksburg.

1863 – Battle of Donaldsonville, LA.

1864 – Battle of Chattahoochee River, GA, began and lasted until July 9th.

1864 – At Harpers Ferry, WV, Federals evacuated in face of Early’s advance.

1890 – Idaho, the last of the 50 states to be explored by whites, is admitted to the union. Exploration of the North American continent mostly proceeded inward from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and northward from Spanish Mexico. Therefore, the rugged territory that would become Idaho long remained untouched by Spanish, French, British, and American trappers and explorers. Even as late as 1805, Idaho Indians like the Shoshone had never encountered a white man.

That changed with the arrival of the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the summer of 1805. Searching for a route over the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, Lewis and Clark traveled through Idaho with the aid of the Shoshone Indians and their horses. British fur traders and trappers followed a few years later, as did missionaries and a few hardy settlers. As with many remote western states, large-scale settlement began only after gold was discovered.

Thousands of miners rushed into Idaho when word of a major gold strike came in September 1860. Merchants and farmers followed, eager to make their fortunes “mining the miners.” By 1880, Idaho boasted a population of 32,610. In the southern section of the territory, many settlers were Mormons who had been dispatched from Salt Lake City to found new colonies.

Increasingly, Idaho territory became divided between a Mormon-dominated south and an anti-Mormon north. In the mid-1880s, anti-Mormon Republicans used widespread public antipathy toward the Mormon practice of polygamy to pass legislation denying the predominantly Democratic Mormons the vote. With the Democratic Mormon vote disarmed, Idaho became a Republican-dominated territory.

National Republicans eager to increase their influence in the U.S. Congress began to push for Idaho statehood in 1888. The following year, the Idaho territorial legislature approved a strongly anti-Mormon constitution. The U.S. Congress approved the document on this day in 1890, and Idaho became the 43rd state in the Union.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:11 pm
July 3rd ~ {continued...}

1898 – The Spanish cruisers Cristóbal Colón, Almirante Oquendo, Vizcaya and Infanta Maria Teresa, and two torpedo-boat destroyers, lay bottled up in Santiago Harbor, with seven American ships maintaining a blockade just outside. Without warning, the Spanish squadron attempted to break out, and the Americans attacked, sinking one torpedo boat and immediately running the other aground. The Americans gave chase to Oquendo, Vizcaya and Colón. After a brief battle, all the Spanish warships were overtaken, with only two American causalities, both from the U.S. armored cruiser Brooklyn.

1903 – The first cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila. Teddy Roosevelt placed the atoll of Midway Island under Navy supervision. The Commercial Pacific Cable Co. (later AT&T) set cable across the Pacific via Midway Island and the first around the world message was sent. The message took 9 minutes to circle the globe.

1905 – An Executive Order extended the jurisdiction of the Lighthouse Service to the noncontiguous territory of the American Samoan Island.

1915 – US military forces occupied Haiti, and remained until 1934.

1927 – Ensign Charles L. Duke, in command of CG-2327, boarded the rumrunner Greypoint in New York harbor and single-handedly captured the vessel, its 22-man crew, and its cargo of illegal liquor.

1930 – Congress created the U.S. Veterans Administration.

1943 – During the day, the Australians link up with the Americans from the Nassau Bay landing force in the Bitoi River region.

1943 – On New Georgia, American forces land at Zanana, about 8 miles east of Munda. There is no Japanese resistance and the beachhead is quickly consolidated.

1944 – Forces of the US 1st Army launch an offensive drive south from the Cotentin Peninsula with the objective of reaching a line from Coutances to St. Lo. The difficult terrain and poor weather contribute to a limited advance during the day toward St. Jean de Daye and La Haye du Puits. German forces resist.

1944 – Troops of the French Expeditionary Corps (part of US 5th Army) capture Siena. Other elements of the 5th Army reach Rosignano. Forces of the British 8th Army take Cortona.

1945 – The first American occupation troops arrive in Berlin. Meanwhile, Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, nominated by Hitler in 1940 to be Gauleiter of Britain, is captured by Allied troops.

1945 – American B-29 bombers attack Himeji, on Honshu, and the towns of Takamatsu, Tokushima and Kochi, on Shikoku Island, to the south of Honshu.

1947 – Soviet Union didn’t partake in the Marshall Plan.

1950 – USS Valley Forge and HMS Triumph participate in first carrier action of Korean Conflict. VF-51 aircraft (Valley Forge) shoot down 2 North Korean aircraft. The action is first combat test of F9F Panther and AD Skyraider.

1950 – Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Leonard H. Plog, flying a F9F Panther jet fighter, shot down a Yak-9P, claiming the first U.S. Navy aerial victory of the Korean War.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:15 pm
July 3rd ~ {continued...}

1968 – The U.S. command in Saigon releases figures showing that more Americans were killed during the first six months of 1968 than in all of 1967. These casualty figures were a direct result of the heavy fighting that had occurred during, and immediately after, the communist Tet Offensive. The offensive had begun on January 30, when communist forces attacked Saigon, Hue, five of six autonomous cities, 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and 64 of 245 district capitals.

The timing and magnitude of the attacks caught the South Vietnamese and American forces completely off guard, but eventually the Allied forces turned the tide. Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the communists. By the end of March 1968, they had not achieved any of their objectives and had lost 32,000 soldiers with 5,800 captured. U.S. forces suffered 3,895 dead; South Vietnamese losses were 4,954; non-U.S. allies lost 214. More than 14,300 South Vietnamese civilians died. Though the offensive was a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, early reports of a smashing communist victory went largely uncorrected in the U.S. news media. This was a great psychological victory for the communists.

The heavy U.S. casualties incurred during the offensive, coupled with the disillusionment over the earlier overly optimistic reports of progress in the war, accelerated the growing disenchantment with President Johnson’s conduct of the war. Johnson, frustrated with his inability to reach a solution in Vietnam, announced on March 31, 1968, that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of his party for re-election.

1986 – President Reagan presided over a gala ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.

1988 – In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship–the aircraft was hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels were in the gulf defending Kuwaiti oil tankers.

Minutes before Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down, the Vincennes had engaged Iranian gunboats that shot at its helicopter. Iran called the downing of the aircraft a “barbaric massacre,” but U.S. officials defended the action, claiming that the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,800 feet, and was on a descent toward the Vincennes.

However, one month later, U.S. authorities acknowledged that the airbus was in the commercial flight corridor, flying at 12,000 feet, and not descending. The U.S. Navy report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men who were in combat for the first time.

In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:17 pm
July 3rd ~ {continued...}

1996 – US Secret Service agents claimed to have broken up an operation by a New York couple that used monitoring equipment to steal 80,000 cellular phone numbers and id codes from motorists on an expressway that passed their apartment building.

1996 – Lockheed Martin Corp. won a $1 bil federal contract to build the next-generation space shuttle.

2000 – A 1970’s steel observation tower that preservationists said had desecrated the battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania was demolished.

2001 – The last parts of the US spy plane in China were flown out.

2002 – It was reported that Operation Xtermination, a drug investigation at Camp Lejeune, NC, seized over $1.4 million in drugs and convicted over 80 marines and sailors.

2002 – Chinese police found Wang Bingzhang, a pro-democracy activist and US resident, in Guangxi Province. He had been recently kidnapped with 2 others in Vietnam.

2002 – In Pakistan security forces killed 4 al Qaeda fighters near the Afghan border at Germa. 3 security men were killed. A land dispute broke out in Northern Waziristan near the Afghan border and 21 people were killed.

2002 – The first of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSSTs), MSST-91101 was commissioned in Seattle, Washington on 3 July 2002. MSSTs were created in response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on 11 September 2001. MSSTs are domestic, mobile units that possess specialized training and capabilities to perform a broad spectrum of port safety and security operations.

They were designed to offer operational commanders with a quick response capability that would meet changing threats in the nation’s harbors, ports, and internal waterways and to enforce moving and fixed security zones to protect commercial high interest vessels, U.S. Navy high value assets, and critical waterside infrastructure. Twelve MSST units were planned for deployment around the nation.

2003 – The US military commander in Europe was ordered to begin planning for possible American intervention in Liberia.

2003 – US troops killed 11 Iraqis who ambushed a convoy outside Baghdad.

2014 – ISIS captured Syria’s largest oilfield from rival Islamist fighters, Al-Nusra Front, who put up no resistance to the attack. Taking control of the al-Omar oilfield gave ISIS access to potentially useful crude oil reserves.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:37 pm
July 4th ~

INDEPENDENCE DAY

1636 – City of Providence, Rhode Island, was formed.

1754 – Lieutenant Colonel George Washington is compelled to surrender “Fort Necessity” to a French task force from Fort Duquesne (present day Pittsburgh). Washington had been dispatched by Virginia’s governor with a mixed force of soldiers of the Virginia Provincial Regiment and Virginia militiamen to remove the French from Duquesne which was located in an area claimed by colonial government.

When his advanced was blocked by the French, Washington had his troops build a quickly constructed log fort in hopes of holding the French at bay. However, he was soon surrounded and forced to surrender. The French commander granted him the “honors of war” by allowing him to march out with colors flying, retaining one piece of artillery and with his men under arms. This rebuff of the claim by Virginia, and by extension Britain, to this area led directly to the outbreak of war between France and Britain in 1756.

Known in Europe as the Seven Year’s War in American it’s more popularly called the “French and Indian War.” The men serving in the Virginia Provincial Regiment were full-time paid soldiers, mostly enlisted from the county militias. They were paid and equipped by the colony and used to garrison small outposts and patrol its western frontier. It was one of the first “professional” military organizations in British North America.

1776 – The Continental Congress approved adoption of the amended Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson and signed by John Hancock–President of the Continental Congress–and Charles Thomson, Congress secretary, without dissent. However, the New York delegation abstained as directed by the New York Provisional Congress. On July 9, the New York Congress voted to endorse the declaration. On July 19, Congress then resolved to have the “Unanimous Declaration” inscribed on parchment for the signature of the delegates. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, two went on to become presidents of the United States, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

1776 – The Declaration of Independence was signed by president of Congress John Hancock and secretary Charles Thomson. John Hancock said, “There, I guess King George will be able to read that.” referring to his signature on the Declaration of Independence. Other signers later included Benjamin Rush and Robert Morris. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, eight were born outside North America.

1777 – John Paul Jones hoists first Stars and Stripes flag on Ranger at Portsmouth, NH.

1785 – The first Fourth of July parade was held in Bristol, Rhode Island. It served as a prayerful walk to celebrate independence from England.

1796 – 1st Independence Day celebration was held.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:38 pm
July 4th ~ {continued...}

1800 – The Marine Band played at Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia, in their first public appearance.

1801 – First Presidential Review of U.S. Marine Band and Marines at the White House.

1802 – The United State Military Academy opened its doors at West Point, New York, welcoming the first 10 cadets.

1804 – Staging the first-ever Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi River, Lewis and Clark fire the expedition cannon and order an extra ration of whiskey for the men. Six weeks earlier, Lewis and Clark left American civilization to depart on their famous journey. Since their departure, the party of 29 men–called the Corps of Discovery–had made good progress, traveling up the Missouri River in a 55-foot keelboat and two dugout canoes. When the wind was behind them, Lewis and Clark raised the keelboat sail, and on a few occasions, managed to travel 20 miles in a single day.

By early July, the expedition had reached the northeastern corner of the present-day state of Kansas. The fertility of the land astonished the two leaders of the expedition. Clark wrote of the many deer, “as plenty as Hogs about a farm,” and with his usual creative spelling, praised the tasty “rasberreis perple, ripe and abundant.”

On this day in 1804, the expedition stopped near the mouth of a creek flowing out of the western prairie. The men asked the captains if they knew if the creek had a name. Knowing none, they decided to call it Independence Creek in honor of the day. The expedition continued upstream, making camp that evening at an abandoned Indian village. To celebrate the Fourth of July, Lewis and Clark commanded that the keelboat cannon be fired at sunset. They distributed an extra ration of whiskey to the men, and the explorers settled back to enjoy the peaceful Kansas night.

In his final journal entry of the day, Clark wondered at the existence of, “So magnificent a Senerey in a Contry thus Situated far removed from the Sivilised world to be enjoyed by nothing but the Buffalo Elk Deer & Bear in which it abounds & Savage Indians.” The next day, the travelers resumed their journey up the Missouri River toward the distant Pacific Coast. They would not pass by their pleasant camping spot in Kansas again until their return journey, two years and many adventures later.

1819 – The Territory of Arkansas was created.

1826 – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, respectively, die on this day, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Both men had been central in the drafting of the historic document; Jefferson had authored it, and Adams, who was known as the “colossus of the debate,” served on the drafting committee and had argued eloquently for the declaration’s passage.

After July 4, 1776, Adams traveled to France as a diplomat, where he proved instrumental in winning French support for the Patriot cause, and Jefferson returned to Virginia, where he served as state governor during the dark days of the American Revolution. After the British defeat at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, Adams was one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Paris that ended the war, and with Jefferson he returned to Europe to try to negotiate a U.S.-British trade treaty. After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Adams was elected vice president to George Washington, and Jefferson was appointed secretary of state.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:40 pm
July 4th ~ {continued...}

1831 – James Monroe, 5th President of the United States, died in New York City at age 73, making him the third ex-President to die on Independence Day.

1832 – The song “America” was sung publicly for the first time at a Fourth of July celebration by a group of children at Park Street Church in Boston. The words were written on a scrap of paper in half an hour by Dr. Samuel Francis Smith, a Baptist minister, and were set to the music of “God Save the King.”

1834 – President Andrew Jackson ordered green and buff as the Corps’ uniform colors.

1836 – The territorial government of Wisconsin was established.

1842 – First test of electrically operated underwater torpedo sinks gunboat Boxer.

1848 – The Communist Manifesto was published.

1848 – The Cornerstone of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. was laid by President Polk. The white marble obelisk, which is 555 feet tall and 55 fee square at the base, was not completed until 1184. The public was admitted to the monument on October 9, 1888.

1850 – President Zachary Taylor stood hatless in the sun for hours listening to long-winded speeches. He returned to the White House and attempted to cool off by eating cherries, cucumbers and drinking iced milk. Severe stomach cramps followed and it is likely that Taylor’s own physicians inadvertently killed him with a whole series of debilitating treatments. Taylor died July 9th.

1861 – Union and Confederate forces skirmished at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

1862 – Battle at Green River, Ky. (Morgan’s Ohio Raid).

1862 – U.S.S. Maratanza, Lieutenant Stevens, engaged C.S.S. Teaser, Lieutenant Davidson, at Haxall’s on the James River. Teaser was abandoned and captured after a shell from Maratanza exploded her boiler. In addition to placing mines in the river, Davidson had gone down the river with a balloon on board for the purpose of making an aerial reconnaissance of General McClellan’s positions at City Point and Harrison’s Landing.

By this time both Union and Confederate forces were utilizing the balloon for gathering intelligence; Teaser had been the Southern counterpart of U.S.S. G. W. Parke Custis, from whose deck aerial observations had been made the preceding year. The balloon, as well as a quantity of insulated wire and mine equipment, were found on board Teaser. Six shells with ”peculiar fuzes” were also taken and sent to Captain Dahlgren at the Washington Navy Yard for examination.

1863 – Boise, Idaho, was founded.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:42 pm
July 4th ~ {continued...}

1863 – The Confederacy is torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg. The Vicksburg campaign was one of the most successful campaigns of the war. Although Grant’s first attempt to take the city failed in the winter of 1862-63, he renewed his efforts in the spring. Admiral David Porter had run his flotilla past the Vicksburg defenses in early May as Grant marched his army down the west bank of the river opposite Vicksburg, crossed back to Mississippi, and drove toward Jackson. After defeating a Confederate force near Jackson, Grant turned back to Vicksburg.

On May 16th, he defeated a force under John C. Pemberton at Champion Hill. Pemberton retreated back to Vicksburg, and Grant sealed the city by the end of May. In three weeks, Grant’s men marched 180 miles, won five battles, and took 6,000 prisoners. Grant made some attacks after bottling Vicksburg, but found the Confederates well entrenched. Preparing for a long siege, his army constructed 15 miles of trenches and enclosed Pemberton’s force of 29,000 men inside the perimeter. It was only a matter of time before Grant, with 70,000 troops, captured Vicksburg.

Attempts to rescue Pemberton and his force failed from both the east and west, and conditions for both military personnel and civilians deteriorated rapidly. Many residents moved to tunnels dug from the hillsides to escape the constant bombardments. Pemberton surrendered on July 4th, and President Lincoln wrote that the Mississippi River “again goes un-vexed to the sea.” The town of Vicksburg would not celebrate the Fourth of July for 81 years.

1863 – General Lee’s army limped toward Virginia after defeat at Gettysburg. 28,063 of 75,000 confederate soldiers were lost. General Meade’s army suffered 23,049 soldiers killed, wounded and missing.

1863 – Paul Joseph Revere, US grandson of Paul Revere, Union brigadier general, died from wounds at Gettysburg.

1863 – Failed Confederate assault on Helena, Arkansas, left 640 casualties.

1863 – Skirmish at Smithburg, TN.

1864 – U.S.S. Hastings, Acting Lieutenant J. S. Watson, engaged Confederate sharpshooters on the White River above St. Charles, Arkansas. Lieutenant Commander Phelps, embarked in the 300-ton, 8-gun Hastings, commented in his report to Rear Admiral Porter: “I had been at a loss to know how we should celebrate the Fourth, being underway and having so much of a convoy in charge, but this attack occurring about noon furnished the opportunity of at once punishing the enemy and celebrating the day by firing cannon.”

It had been a year before, on July 4th, 1863, that Union forces had commemorated Independence Day with decisive victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the latter pivoting on the Union Navy. With control of the Western waters assured, the North was certain of victory.”

1872 – John Calvin Coolidge 30th President of the United States (1923-29), was born in Plymouth, Vermont. Calvin Coolidge, also known as ‘Silent Cal,’ was a Republican; Vice President from 1921-23 and succeeded to the Presidency on the death of Warren Harding in 1923; elected President in 1924 and served a full term. He was especially known for his economy of language. A lady dinner companion during his presidency told him she had a bet she could get him to say more than two words; he replied: “You lose.” “Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.”

1875 – White Democrats killed several blacks in terrorist attacks in Vicksburg, Miss.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:44 pm
July 4th ~ {continued...}

1884 – The Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States in ceremonies at Paris, France. The 225-ton, 152-foot statue was a gift from France in commemoration of 100 years of American independence. Created by the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the statue was installed on Bedloe Island (now Liberty Island) in New York harbor in 1885. It was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

1894 – The Provisional Government under Judge Stanford B. Dole declared Hawaii a republic.

1898 – A US flag was hoisted over Wake Island during the Spanish-American War.

1901 – William H. Taft, later the 27th president of the United States, became the American territorial governor of the Philippines. Taft soon appointed Prof. Bernard Moses secretary of public instruction for the Philippines. Taft, who had been solicitor general of the U.S. under President Benjamin Harrison, was a federal circuit court judge when President William McKinley appointed him to serve as president of the U.S. Philippines Commission in 1900-01.

Later in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt named Taft the first civil governor of the Philippines Islands, a post he held for four years. Roosevelt named Taft secretary of war in 1904. A Republican, Taft was president from 1909 to 1913 and Supreme Court Chief Justice from 1921 to 1930. He was born in 1857 and died on March 8, 1930, shortly after his resignation from the court.

1902 – President Roosevelt officially ended the Philippine-American War. Estimates for the civilian people killed ranged from 250,000 to 1 million. Creighton Miller in 1982 published “Benevolent Assimilation,” a comprehensive account of the conflict.

1916 – Tokyo Rose, (Iva Toguri D’Aquino), was born in Los Angeles. She did propaganda broadcasts against the U.S. from Japan during World War II.; imprisoned after the war, then received presidential pardon in 1977.

1917 – During a ceremony in Paris honoring the French hero of the American Revolution, US Lt. Col. Charles E. Stanton declared, “Lafayette, we are here!”

1926 – The NSDAP (Nazi) party formed in Weimar.

1942 – Irving Berlin’s musical review “This Is the Army” opened at the Broadway Theater in New York.

1942 – 1st American bombing mission over enemy-occupied Europe (WW II). US air offensive against Nazi-Germany began. Six American planes join a RAF squadron attacking airfields in Holland.

1943 – On New Georgia, US forces advancing from Zanana to Munda encounter heavy Japanese resistance. The Japanese land 1200 troops from 3 destroyers at Vila on Kolombangara.

1944 – Attacks by the US 7th and 8th Corps (parts of US 1st Army) continue. The Canadian 3rd Division (part of British 2nd Army) captures the village of Carpiquet, west of Caen, but cannot secure the airfield.

1944 – 1,100 US guns fired 4th of July salute at German lines in Normandy.

1944 – Elements of US Task Force 58 attack Guam Island with carrier aircraft.

1944 – Elements of US Task Force 58 attack Chichi Jima Island with carrier aircraft.

1944 – Elements of US Task Force 58 attack Iwo Jima Island with carrier aircraft.

1944 – Japanese made their first kamikaze (god wind) attack on a US fleet near Iwo Jima.

1945 – On Mindanao, the US 24th Division organizes an amphibious expeditionary force to liberate Sarangani Bay, in the south of the island, south of Davao. Filipino guerrilla forces assist in clearing out the Japanese pockets of resistance.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:47 pm
July 4th ~ {continued...}

1946 – The Philippines became independent of U.S. sovereignty. The Philippines, which officially became a territory of the United States in 1902, gained its independence. In 1932 a movement to implement Philippine independence began to grow. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934, providing for independence after 12 years, was unanimously accepted and a Philippine constitution approved by President Roosevelt in February 1935. Manuel Quezon was elected the first president of the Philippines on September 17, 1935. In 1937 a Joint Preparatory Commission on Philippine Affairs was established by Roosevelt to recommend a program for economic adjustment. The Republic of the Philippines was inaugurated.

1950 – General MacArthur informed the communists that the U.N. expected all prisoners of war to be well treated.

1959 – A 49-star flag was raised for the first time at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in honor of Alaska which had become the 49th state in the Union on July 7, 1958.

1960 – The 50-star flag made its debut in Philadelphia. A 50th star was added to the American flag in honor of Hawaii’s admission into the Union on August 21, 1959.

1963 – General Tran Van Don informs Lucien Conein of the CIA that certain officers are planning a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem, who had been supported by the Kennedy administration, had refused to make any meaningful reforms and had oppressed the Buddhist majority. Conein informed Washington that the generals were plotting to overturn the government. President John F. Kennedy, who had come to the conclusion that the Diem government should no longer be in command, sent word that the United States would not interfere with the coup.

In the early afternoon hours of November 1st, a group of South Vietnamese generals ordered their troops to seize key military installations and communications systems in Saigon and demanded the resignation of Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Diem was unable to summon any support, so he and Nhu escaped the palace through an underground passage to a Catholic church in the Chinese sector of the city. From there, Diem began negotiating with the generals by phone. He agreed to surrender and was promised safe conduct, but shortly after midnight he and his brother were brutally murdered in back of the armored personnel carrier sent to pick them up and return them to the palace.

Kennedy, who had given tacit approval for the coup, was reportedly shocked at the murder of Diem and Nhu. Nevertheless, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge called the insurgent generals to his office to congratulate them and cabled Kennedy that the prospects for a shorter war had greatly improved with the demise of Diem and Nhu.

1968 – The radio astronomy satellite Explorer 38 launched.

1970 – 100 were injured in race rioting in Asbury Park NJ.

1976 – The nation held a 200th anniversary party across the land in celebration of America’s 200 years of independence. President Ford made stops in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and New York, where more than 200 ships paraded up the Hudson River in Operation Sail.

1976 – A government program was begun in 1937 to provide American flags, certified to have flown over the capital, to the public. Each flag was provided a certificate with the date it was flown and the name of the person for whom it was flown. By 1998 the program average 250-300 flags per day with a peak of 10,471 flown on July 4, 1976, and a record of 154,224 flown in 1991.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:49 pm
July 4th ~ {continued...}

1982 – The space shuttle Columbia 4 concluded its fourth and final test flight with landing at Edwards AFB.

1987 – Discovery moved to Launch Pad 39B for STS-26 mission.

1994 – The United States opened its embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a Fourth of July party.

1994 – Cutters assigned to Operation Able Manner, which commenced under presidential order on 15 January 1994, rescued 3,247 Haitian migrants from 70 grossly overloaded sailboats in the Windward Passage. They rescued a total of 15,955 during the month of July, 1994.

1995 – The space shuttle “Atlantis” and the Russian space station “Mir” parted after spending five days in orbit docked together.

1997 – After traveling 120 million miles in seven months, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder becomes the first U.S. spacecraft to land on Mars in more than two decades. In an ingenious, cost-saving landing procedure, Pathfinder used parachutes to slow its approach to the Martian surface and then deployed airbags to cushion its impact. Colliding with the Ares Vallis floodplain at 40 miles an hour, the spacecraft bounced high into the Martian atmosphere 16 times before safely coming to rest.

On July 5th, the Pathfinder lander was renamed Sagan Memorial Station in honor of the late American astronomer, and the next day Sojourner, the first remote-control interplanetary rover, rolled off the station. Soujourner, which traveled a total of 171 feet during its 30-day mission, sent back a wealth of information about the chemical components of rock and soil in the area. In addition, nearly 10,000 images of the Martian landscape were taken. The Mars Pathfinder mission, which cost just $150 million, was hailed as a triumph for NASA, and millions of Internet users visited the official Pathfinder Web site to view images of the red planet.

1999 – In Puerto Rico anti US Navy protests drew some 50,000 people.

1999 – In Russia troops were forced to delay their departure for Kosovo after NATO blocked air corridors on their route.

2001 – The US counter-terrorism group run by Richard Clarke sent a memorandum to Condoleeza Rice, national security advisor, that described a series of steps that the White House had taken to put the nation on heightened terrorist alert. It noted that all 56 FBI field offices were tasked in late June to go to increased surveillance and contact informants related to known or suspected terrorists.

2002 – Hesham Mohamed Hadayet (41), an Egyptian-born 10-year resident of Irvine, opened fire at Israel’s El Al airline ticket counter in Los Angeles’ airport. Victoria Hen and Yaakov Aminov were killed before Hadayet, born July 4, 1961, was shot to death by a guard.

2002 – American warplanes bombed an Iraqi air defense system after coming under attack from Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery.

2002 – Benjamin O. Davis Jr. (89), leader of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and the first black general in the Air Force, died in Washington.

2003 – President Bush visited Dayton, Ohio, to praise the work of U.S. troops and celebrate the 100th anniversary of flight in the hometown of the Wright brothers.

2003 – US forces raided a Turkish special forces office in northern Iraq and detained 11 soldiers on reports that Turks were plotting to kill the governor of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

2003 – A voice purported to be Saddam Hussein’s, aired on the Arab television station Al-Jazeera, said he is in Iraq directing attacks on American forces and called on Iraqis to help the resistance against the US-led occupation.

2003 – Liberia’s President Charles Taylor, under US pressure to quit, said he had agreed to step down. A senior Nigerian official said Taylor had accepted an offer of asylum.

2004 – In NYC a 20-ton slab of granite, inscribed to honor “the enduring spirit of freedom,” was laid at the World Trade Center site as the cornerstone of the skyscraper that will replace the destroyed towers.

2004 – The Army’s 1st Armored Division stowed its flags and prepared to head home after the longest tour in Iraq of any American combat command — 15 months.
PostPosted: Sun Jul 03, 2016 9:38 am
The above entry marks the last post in this thread...a topic presented over the course of one full year.

I hope everyone here has enjoyed this thread topic as much as I have...and learned a little about Military History as it was presented to you...

Happy Independence Day...


May God Bless the United States of America and All the Armed Services that protect us everyday around the world...


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