May 2nd ~ {continued...}

1970 – American and South Vietnamese forces continue the attack into Cambodia that began on April 29. This limited “incursion” into Cambodia (as it was described by Richard Nixon) included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. The operation began on April 29 with South Vietnamese forces moving into what was known as the “Parrot’s Beak,” the area of Cambodia that projects into South Vietnam above the Mekong Delta.

During the first two days of the operation, an 8,000-man South Vietnamese task force, including elements of two infantry divisions plus four ranger battalions and four armored cavalry squadrons, killed 84 communist soldiers while suffering 16 dead and 157 wounded. The second stage of the campaign began on May 2nd with a series of joint U.S.-South Vietnamese operations aimed at clearing communist sanctuaries located in the densely vegetated “Fishhook” area of Cambodia (across the border from South Vietnam, 70 miles from Saigon).

The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with the South Vietnamese 3rd Airborne Brigade, killed 3,190 communists in the action and captured massive amounts of war materiel, including 2,000 individual and crew-served weapons, 300 trucks, and 40 tons of foodstuffs.

By the time all U.S. ground forces departed Cambodia on June 30, the Allied forces had discovered and captured or destroyed 10 times more enemy supplies and equipment than they had captured inside South Vietnam during the entire previous year. Many intelligence analysts at the time believed that the Cambodian incursion dealt a stunning blow to the communists, driving main force units away from the border and damaging their morale, and in the process buying as much as a year for South Vietnam’s survival.

However, the incursion gave the antiwar movement in the United States a new rallying point. News of the operation set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the deaths of four students at the hands of Army National Guard troops. Another protest at Jackson State in Mississippi resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory.

The incursion also angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would thenceforth severely limit the executive power of the president.

1970 – Student anti-war protesters at Ohio’s Kent State University burned down the campus ROTC building. Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes ordered in the National Guard to take control of the campus.

1970 – Alexander Haig, deputy to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger, requests FBI wiretaps on New York Times reporter William Beecher, Secretary of Defense laird’s military assistant Robert Pursley, State Department counselor Richard Peterson, and Assistant Secretary of State William H. Sullivan. The wiretaps will remain in place until the following February.

1972 – The South Vietnamese 3rd Division, protecting Quangtri Province, panics and collapses within a week. The entire defense north of Hue is left to one brigade of South Vietnamese Marines.

1972 – Secret negotiations between Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, and Xuan Thuy resume in Paris, but with no result. They will meet again sporadically throughout the year.

1975 – US Navy departs Vietnamese waters at the end of the evacuation.

May 2nd ~ {continued...}

1992 – Los Angeles began to recover from rioting that had erupted in the wake of the Rodney King-taped beating acquittals; about 2,800 National Guard troops patrolled the city while 3,200 stood by.

1992 – Iraq admits to having had a “defensive” biological weapons program.

1996 – UNSCOM supervises the destruction of Al-Hakam, Iraq’s main biological weapons facility.

1997 – A new national memorial honoring Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt was officially opened in Washington, D.C., and was dedicated by President Clinton.

1997 – In Texas Robert Scheidt surrendered to police and left behind 7 people of the Republic of Texas under the leadership of Richard McLaren. The number of separatists was reduced to 7 from an earlier estimate of 13.

1999 – A US F-16 went down over western Serbia on the 39th night of air strikes. Allied forces rescued the pilot.

1999 – Yugoslav authorities handed over to the Rev. Jesse Jackson three American prisoners of war who had been held for 32 days.

1999 – NATO bombings struck the Obrenovac power plant in Belgrade and blacked out large areas of Serbia. A soft bomb (KIT-18) sprayed graphite over the power station and shorted its circuits. A metal works factory in Valjevo was hit and missile hit Mitrovica where one woman was killed and several civilians wounded.

2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.

2001 – In China US technical experts examined the US spy plane on Hainan Island.

2002 – A report on Iraq’s oil sales showed that illegal surcharges allowed Iraq to siphon off large amounts for its war chest.

2004 – American hostage Thomas Hamill, kidnapped three weeks ago in an insurgent attack on his convoy, was found by U.S. forces south of Tikrit after he apparently escaped from his captors.

2011 – Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan shortly after 1:00 am PKT (20:00 UTC, May 1) by U.S. Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six).

The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation. In addition to DEVGRU, participating units included the U.S. Army Special Operations Command’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and CIA operatives. The raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was launched from Afghanistan.

After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden’s body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death. The United States had direct evidence that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Al-Qaeda confirmed the death on May 6th with posts made on militant websites, vowing to avenge the killing.

2013 – North Korea sentences American Kenneth Bae to 15 years of prison labor for “hostile acts” against the regime. The United States calls for amnesty.

May 3rd ~

1662 – John Winthrop the Younger, the son of the first governor of Massachusetts was honored by being made a fellow of the Royal Society, England’s new scientific society. Winthrop gained a new charter from the king, uniting the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven.

1783 – The 2nd Continental Light Dragoons and the 5th Connecticut Regiment, Continental Line, left the Continental Cantonment at New Windsor and reported to the nearby headquarters of Washington at the Hasbrouck House in Newburgh. There, before a guard mount of the 1st New York, the Commander-in-Chief awarded Sergeant Elijah Churchill and Sergeant William Brown their Badges of Military Merit.

Surviving records for the period confirm the presentation of only one other Badge of Military Merit, and the decoration was not used at all after the end of the Revolutionary War. It was revived in February 1932 as the Purple Heart out of respect to Washington’s memory and to his military achievements. The ceremony, however, symbolized much more than recognition of two brave men. Brown, a veteran of 18, had won praise for his bravery in the storming of Stony Point in 1779 and now was cited for gallantry in the trenches before Yorktown.

Churchill had distinguished himself during attacks against two forts on Long Island. It represented the climax of the molding of a citizen army of volunteers and militia into a force that had fought on equal terms with one of the world’s best armies, and in doing so, had played a vital role securing freedom and independence for themselves and their fellow citizens.

1802 – Washington, D.C., was incorporated as a city, with the mayor appointed by the president and the council elected by property owners.

1821 – The Richmond [Virginia] Light Artillery was organized.

1855 – American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua. William Walker was an American lawyer, journalist and adventurer, who organized several private military expeditions into Latin America, with the intention of establishing English-speaking colonies under his personal control, an enterprise then known as “filibustering.” Walker became president of the Republic of Nicaragua in 1856 and ruled until 1857, when he was defeated by a coalition of Central American armies. He was executed by the government of Honduras in 1860.

1861 – Lincoln asked for 42,000 Army Volunteers and another 18,000 seamen.

1863 – Stonewall Jackson’s arm was amputated and buried. Jackson told his medical director, Dr. Hunter McGuire, “If the enemy does come, I am not afraid of them; I have always been kind to their wounded, and I am sure they will be kind to me.” His words followed an order from Robert E. Lee to move Jackson to Guiney’s Station, fearing that nearby Federal troops might capture him. Following perhaps his greatest performance, leading a brilliant flanking maneuver against Union Major General Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville, he was mistakenly shot by his own troops while scouting ahead of their lines after dark. Jackson sustained severe wounds to the left arm and minor wounds to the right hand that later led to his death.

May 3rd ~ {continued...}

1863 – General Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac abandon a key hill on the Chancellorsville battlefield. The Union army was reeling after Stonewall Jackson’s troops swung around the Union right flank and stormed out of the woods on the evening of May 2nd, causing the Federals to retreat some two miles before stopping the Confederate advance.

Nonetheless, Hooker’s forces were still in a position to deal a serious defeat to Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia because they had a numerical advantage and a strategic position between Lee’s divided forces. But Lee had Hooker psychologically beaten. Union forces controlled the key geographical feature in the Chancellorsville area: Hazel Grove, a hill that provided a prime artillery location.

General J.E.B. Stuart, the head of the Confederate cavalry, assumed temporary command of Stonewall Jackson’s corps after Jackson was wounded the night before (a wound that proved fatal a week later) and planned to attack Hazel Grove the next morning. This move was made much easier when Hooker made the crucial mistake of ordering an evacuation of the decisive hill. Once Stuart’s artillery occupied Hazel Grove, the Confederates proceeded to wreak havoc on the Union lines around Chancellorsville. Rebel cannons shelled the Union line, and the fighting resulted in more Union casualties than Jackson’s attack the day before.

Hooker himself was wounded when an artillery shell struck the column he was leaning against. Stunned, Hooker took a shot of brandy and ordered the retreat from the Chancellorsville area, which allowed Jackson’s men to rejoin the bulk of Lee’s troops. The daring flanking maneuver had worked. Hooker had failed to exploit the divided Army of Northern Virginia, and allowed the smaller Rebel force to defeat his numerically superior force.

1863 – Having paved the way for a final assault on Grand Gulf with the attack of 29 April, Rear Admiral Porter once again moved his gunboats against the strong Confederate batteries. The Southerners, however, finding their position totally untenable, Grant having taken his army into the country back of Grand Gulf, had evacuated. The great land-sea pincer could now close on Vicksburg.

1885 – The US Navy transferred the USS Bear to the Revenue Cutter Service. The Bear became one of the most famous cutters to sail under the Revenue Cutter & Coast Guard ensigns.

1898 – Lt Dion Williams and Marines from the USS Baltimore raised the American flag over Cavite, Philippines.

1923 – The 1st non-stop flight across the US was made. Army lieutenants Kelly and Macready flew from New York to San Diego.

1926 – U.S. marines landed in Nicaragua and remained until 1933.

1942 – Executive Order 9066, signed by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, was issued by Lt. Gen’l. John DeWitt from his headquarters in the SF Presidio. It called for the evacuation of Japanese-Americans from Los Angeles effective May 9. Some 110,000-112,000 Japanese-Americans were settled in 10 relocation camps, the first of which was in Manzanar in Owens Valley, Ca. In the Bay Area most Japanese-Americans were sent to the Tanforan racetrack where they were put up in stables and later relocated to Topaz, Utah.

May 3rd ~ {continued...}

1942 – The first day of the first modern naval engagement in history, called the Battle of the Coral Sea, a Japanese invasion force succeeds in occupying Tulagi of the Solomon Islands in an expansion of Japan’s defensive perimeter. The United States, having broken Japan’s secret war code and forewarned of an impending invasion of Tulagi and Port Moresby, attempted to intercept the Japanese armada. Four days of battles between Japanese and American aircraft carriers resulted in 70 Japanese and 66 Americans warplanes destroyed.

This confrontation, called the Battle of the Coral Sea, marked the first air-naval battle in history, as none of the carriers fired at each other, allowing the planes taking off from their decks to do the battling. Among the casualties was the American carrier Lexington; “the Blue Ghost” (so-called because it was not camouflaged like other carriers) suffered such extensive aerial damage that it had to be sunk by its own crew.

Two hundred sixteen Lexington crewmen died as a result of the Japanese aerial bombardment. Although Japan would go on to occupy all of the Solomon Islands, its victory was a Pyrrhic one: The cost in experienced pilots and aircraft carriers was so great that Japan had to cancel its expedition to Port Moresby, Papua, as well as other South Pacific targets.

1943 – US General Devers is appointed to Commander in Chief of the American European Theater Command after General Andrews is killed in an airplane accident.

1943 – In Tunisia, the US 1st Division break out of “Mousetrap Valley” and capture Mateur. An improvised Axis defensive line prevents further progress.

1944 – Wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended in the United States.

1944 – An acoustic torpedo fired by the U-371 hit and destroyed the stern of the Coast Guard-manned destroyer escort USS Menges while she was escorting a convoy in the Mediterranean, killing thirty-one of her crew. The USS Menges was later repaired and returned to service. She assisted in the sinking of the U-866 on 19th March 1945.

1944 – Japanese Admiral Toyoda is designated Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet. He replaces Admiral Koga who was killed on March 31st.

1944 – The production of synthetic quinine (anti-malarial) by young Harvard scientists Woodward and Doering is announced in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1945 – Allies arrested German nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg.

1945 – Soviet forces have now reached the Elbe west of Berlin and made contact with US 1st and 9th Armies and in the north with the British 2nd Army. Fighting in Berlin ends.

1945 – In Austria, Innsbruck falls to the US 7th Army while other units advance near Salzburg.

1945 – American naval forces commanded by Admiral Noble land 1000 troops near Santa Cruz in the Gulf of Davao, on Mindanao. Davao City is taken by US 24th Division units.

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese forces launch a counteroffensive from positions in the south, during the night (May 3-4), but fail to break through the American lines. Japanese artillery batteries, that have remained silent until now to avoid American retaliation, support the assaults.

May 3rd ~ {continued...}

1946 – In Tokyo, Japan, the International Military Tribunals for the Far East begins hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II. On November 4, 1948, the trial ended with 25 of 28 Japanese defendants being found guilty. Of the three other defendants, two had died during the lengthy trial, and one was declared insane.

On November 12th, the war crimes tribunal passed death sentences on seven of the men, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as Japanese premier during the war, and others principles, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, and two were sentenced to lesser terms in prison.

On December 23, 1948, Tojo and the six others were executed in Tokyo. Unlike the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals, where there were four chief prosecutors, to represent Great Britain, France, the United States, and the USSR, the Tokyo trial featured only one chief prosecutor–American Joseph B. Keenan, a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general. However, other nations, especially China, contributed to the proceedings, and Australian judge William Flood Webb presided. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed.

Some observers thought that Emperor Hirohito should have been tried for his tacit approval of Japanese policy during the war, but he was protected by U.S. authorities who saw him as a symbol of Japanese unity and conservatism, both favorable traits in the postwar U.S. view.

1947 – Japan’s postwar constitution goes into effect. The progressive constitution granted universal suffrage, stripped Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power, stipulated a bill of rights, abolished peerage, and outlawed Japan’s right to make war. The document was largely the work of Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur and his occupation staff, who had prepared the draft in February 1946 after a Japanese attempt was deemed unacceptable.

As the defender of the Philippines from 1941 to 1942, and commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific theater from 1942 to 1945, Douglas MacArthur was the most acclaimed American general in the war against Japan. On September 2nd, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, he presided over the official surrender of Japan. According to the terms of surrender, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government were subject to the authority of the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers in occupied Japan, a post filled by General MacArthur.

On September 8th, Supreme Commander MacArthur made his way by automobile through the ruins of Tokyo to the American embassy, which would be his home for the next five and a half years. The occupation was to be a nominally Allied enterprise, but increasing Cold War division left Japan firmly in the American sphere of influence. From his General Headquarters, which overlooked the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, MacArthur presided over an extremely productive reconstruction of Japanese government, industry, and society along American models.

MacArthur was a gifted administrator, and his progressive reforms were for the most part welcomed by the Japanese people. The most important reform carried out by the American occupation was the establishment of a new constitution to replace the 1889 Meiji Constitution. In early 1946, the Japanese government submitted a draft for a new constitution to the General Headquarters, but it was rejected for being too conservative. MacArthur ordered his young staff to draft their own version in one week.

The document, submitted to the Japanese government on February 13, 1946, protected the civil liberties MacArthur had introduced and preserved the emperor, though he was stripped of power. Article 9 forbade the Japanese ever to wage war again. Before Japan’s defeat, Emperor Hirohito was officially regarded as Japan’s absolute ruler and a quasi-divine figure. Although his authority was sharply limited in practice, he was consulted with by the Japanese government and approved of its expansionist policies from 1931 through World War II. Hirohito feared, with good reason, that he might be indicted as a war criminal and the Japanese imperial house abolished.

MacArthur’s constitution at least preserved the emperor as the “symbol of the state and of the unity of the people,” so Hirohito offered his support. Many conservatives in the government were less enthusiastic, but on April 10, 1946, the new constitution was endorsed in popular elections that allowed Japanese women to vote for the first time. The final draft, slightly revised by the Japanese government, was made public one week later.

On November 3rd, it was promulgated by the Diet–the Japanese parliament–and on May 3, 1947, it came into force. In 1948, Yoshida Shigeru’s election as prime minister ushered in the Yoshida era, marked by political stability and rapid economic growth in Japan. In 1949, MacArthur gave up much of his authority to the Japanese government, and in September 1951 the United States and 48 other nations signed a formal peace treaty with Japan. On April 28, 1952, the treaty went into effect, and Japan assumed full sovereignty as the Allied occupation came to an end.

1949 – First Navy firing of a high altitude Viking rocket at White Sands, NM.

May 3rd ~ {continued...}

1951 – The U.S. Navy’s Air Group 19 conducted an air strike on the Hwachon Dam with 12 flack-suppressing F4U Corsairs and eight AD3 Skyraiders armed with Mark-13 aerial torpedoes. This was the first use of these weapons since World War II.

1951 – The Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, meeting in closed session, begin their hearings into the dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur by President Harry S. Truman. The hearings served as a sounding board for MacArthur and his extremist views on how the Cold War should be fought. General MacArthur served as commander of U.S. forces during the Korean War until 1951. In late 1950 he made a serious strategic blunder when he dismissed warnings that the People’s Republic of China would enter the conflict on the side of its communist ally, North Korea.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops smashed into the American lines in November 1950, driving the U.S. troops back with heavy losses. MacArthur, who had earlier complained about President Truman’s handling of the war, now went on an all-out public relations attack against the president and his Cold War policies. In numerous public statements and interviews, General MacArthur criticized Truman’s timidity. He also asked for permission to carry out bombing attacks against China and to expand the war. President Truman flatly refused, believing that expanding the war would lead to a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union and World War III.

On April 11, 1951, President Truman removed MacArthur from his command. Though Truman clearly did not appreciate MacArthur’s approach, the American public liked his tough stance on communism, and he returned home to a hero’s welcome. On May 3, 1951, just a few days after MacArthur’s return to the United States, the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Relations Committees began hearings into his dismissal. Partisan politics played a significant role in the hearings, which were instigated by Republican senators eager to discredit the Democratic administration of Harry Truman.

MacArthur was the featured witness, and he spoke for more than six hours at the opening session of the hearings. He condemned Truman’s Cold War foreign policy, arguing that if the president’s “inhibitions” about the war in Korea had been removed the conflict could have been “wound up” without a “very great additional complement of ground troops.” He went on to suggest that only through a strategy of complete military destruction of the communist empire could the U.S. hope to win the Cold War.

The hearings ended after seven weeks, with no definite conclusions reached about MacArthur’s dismissal. However, the general’s extremist stance and intemperate statements concerning the need for an expanded conflict against communism during the hearings soon eroded his popularity with the American public. MacArthur attempted to garner the Republican presidential nomination in 1952, but lost to the more moderate campaign of another famed military leader, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1952 – A ski-modified U.S. Air Force C-47 piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma and Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict of California becomes the first aircraft to land on the North Pole. A moment later, Fletcher climbed out of the plane and walked to the exact geographic North Pole, probably the first person in history to do so.

In the early 20th century, American explorers Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook, both claiming to have separately reached the North Pole by land, publicly disputed each other’s claims. In 1911, Congress formally recognized Peary’s claim. In recent years, further studies of the conflicting claims suggest that neither expedition reached the exact North Pole, but that Peary came far closer, falling perhaps 30 miles short. In 1952, Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher was the first person to undisputedly stand on the North Pole. Standing alongside Fletcher on the top of the world was Dr. Albert P. Crary, a scientist who in 1961 traveled to the South Pole by motorized vehicle, becoming the first person in history to have stood on both poles.

1952 – Air Force Captain Robert T. Latshaw, Jr., 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, and Major Donald E. Adams, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 13th and 14th jet aces of the Korean War, shooting down five enemy aircraft each.

May 3rd ~ {continued...}

1959 – Former President Harry S Truman, who was a Guard captain commanding Battery D, 129th Field Artillery from Missouri during World War I, is the honored guest at the dedication of the new National Guard Association “Memorial” on Capital Hill. The Association, organized in 1879, is a private organization with membership restricted to National Guard officers (active and retired), and represents Guard political and financial interests to members of Congress on actions prohibited by federal law for the Guard Bureau to pursue. To share information with its membership in 1947 the Association began publishing The National Guardsman (today National Guard) magazine. Over the years it taken upon itself the secondary mission of telling the Guard’s history through the “National Guard Memorial Museum” which is open free of charge to the public.

1964 – While the sinking of the USS Card had resulted in no injuries, 8 US service members are wounded when an insurgent throws a grenade into the crowd viewing the sunken hulk at dockside.

1965 – The lead element of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (“Sky Soldiers”), stationed in Okinawa, departs for South Vietnam. It was the first U.S. Army ground combat unit committed to the war. Combat elements of the 173rd Airborne Brigade included the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions, 503rd Infantry; the 3rd Battalion, 319th Airborne Artillery; Company D, 16th Armor; Troop E, 17th Cavalry; and the 335th Aviation company. Headquartered at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon, the Brigade conducted operations to keep communist forces away from the Saigon-Bien Hoa complex.

In February 1967, the Brigade conducted a combat parachute jump into a major communist base area to the north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. In November 1967, the Brigade was ordered to the Central Highlands, where they fought a major battle at Dak To against an entrenched North Vietnamese Army regiment on Hill 875. In some of the most brutal fighting of the war, the paratroopers captured the hill on Thanksgiving Day, winning the Presidential Unit Citation for bravery in action.

After more than six years on the battlefield, the Brigade was withdrawn from Vietnam in August 1971. During combat service, they suffered 1,606 killed in action and 8,435 wounded in action. Twelve paratroopers of the 173rd won the Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery in battle.

1968 – After three days of battle, the U.S. Marines retook Dai Do complex in Vietnam, only to find the North Vietnamese had evacuated the area.

1968 – At Phan Rang Air Base, Vietnam, Colorado’s 120th Tactical Fighter Squadron becomes the first Air Guard unit to arrive in Vietnam, less than four months after mobilization. Flying F-100C Super Sabre aircraft it, like the other three mobilized Air Guard units to serve in Vietnam, will primarily conduct low-level ground support missions in coordination with American and South Vietnamese units operating in South Vietnam. These include precision bombing plus machine gun and rocket attacks on enemy emplacements and troop concentrations.

1968 – After 34 days of discussions to select a site, the United States and North Vietnam agree to begin formal negotiations in Paris on May 10, or shortly thereafter. Hanoi disclosed that ex-Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy would head the North Vietnamese delegation at the talks. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman was named as his U.S. counterpart. The start of negotiations brought a flurry of hope that the war might be settled quickly. Instead, the talks rapidly degenerated into a dreary ritual of weekly sessions, during which both sides repeated long-standing positions without seeming to come close to any agreement.

May 3rd ~ {continued...}

1986 – In NASA’s first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its main engine shortly after liftoff, forcing safety officers to destroy it by remote control.

1992 – In Los Angeles, soldiers continued to patrol streets and guard fire-gutted and ransacked stores in the wake of rioting that erupted following the Rodney King-taped beating acquittals.

1993 – American sailor Terry M. Helvey confessed to stomping to death Allen Schindler, a homosexual shipmate, but told his court-martial in Japan that he was drunk and did not plan the killing. Helvey was later sentenced to life in prison.

1996 – A weak compromise treaty was passed in Geneva that aimed to phase out non-detectable plastic mines, and introduced rules to limit the lifespan of anti-personnel mines planted outside marked fields to 3 months. The new treaty will go into effect once it is signed by 20 countries and revised an outdated 1980 weapons protocol signed by 57 nations. It has few enforcement provisions. An international conference in Geneva ended 30 months of arduous negotiations over whether to ban land mines with a weak compromise treaty giving countries nine years to switch to detectable, self-destructive devices.

1997 – A group of Texas separatists ended a weeklong standoff with authorities; however, two armed followers fled into the woods. One was killed, the other eventually captured.

1998 – The Columbia Space Shuttle landed at Cape Canaveral after a 16-day mission. The mission studied the effects of space travel on neurological development in nearly 2000 animals.

1999 – President Clinton said that he would support a bombing pause if he was convinced that the Yugoslav crackdown on Kosovo guerrillas and civilians was ending and that Serbian forces were being withdrawn.

1999 – US jets attacked Iraqi air defense sites. Iraqi news reported 2 civilians killed and 12 injured north of Mosul.

1999 – The Justice and Treasury departments agreed to unfreeze the assets of Saleh Idris, the owner of the Sudanese factory that was bombed by US cruise missiles August 20, 1998.

1999 – NATO jets hit a bus in Kosovo and killed about 20 people.

2000 – General Wesley Clark left his post as NATO’s supreme allied commander. He was replaced by General Joseph Ralston.

2000 – The trial of two alleged Libyan intelligence agents accused of blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 opened in the Netherlands. In January 2001, one of the defendants, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was convicted of murder; the other defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.

2001 – US federal agents broke up a smuggling ring that brought hundreds of Ukrainians into the US through Mexico.

2002 – UNMOVIC and Iraqi officials hold talks. The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan says these are the first talks to take place at a technical level since December 1998.

2003 – In Baghdad, Iraq, schools re-opened for the 1st time since the start of war.

2004 – Militiamen pounded a U.S. base in the most intense attacks yet on U.S. troops in the Shiite city of Najaf. US troops killed 20 Shiite militiamen in Najaf. Insurgents opened fire in the Baghdad, killing one American soldier and wounding two others.

2011 – The US Army Corps of Engineers blasts a hole in two levees along the Mississippi River, flooding some 200 square miles (520 km2) of Missouri farmland in an effort to save the town of Cairo, Illinois further downriver from record-breaking flood waters.

May 4th ~

1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan Island. Peter Minuit became director-general of New Netherlands. Indians sold Manhattan Island for $24 (1839 dollars) in cloth and buttons. The 1999 value would be $345. The site of the deal was later marked by Peter Minuit Plaza at South Street and Whitehall Street.

1776 – Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

1862 – Battle at Williamsburg, Virginia.

1862 – Boat crew from U.S.S. Wachusett, Commander W. Smith, raised United States flag at Gloucester Point, Virginia, after General McClellan’s troops occupied Yorktown; two Confederate schooners were captured.

1863 – Battle of Chancellorsville ended when the Union Army retreated.

1863 – War correspondents Richard T. Colburn, Junius H. Brown and Albert Dean Richardson were captured enroute to Grant’s headquarters by a Confederate patrol near Vicksburg, Miss. Colburn was soon released but Brown and Richardson were sent to Libby Prison in Richmond, Va., and later to Salisbury Prison in North Carolina. They managed to escape in Dec 1864 and arrived in Knoxville, Tenn., on Jan 13, 1865.

1863 – Porter departed Grand Gulf with his gunboat squadron and rendezvoused that evening with the Farragut fleet at the mouth of the Red River. After obtaining supplies, he proceeded up the River the next day with U.S.S. Benton, Lafayette, Pittsburg, Sterling Price, ram Switzerland, and tug Ivy. U.S.S. Estrella and Arina joined en route. The evening of 5 May, the ships arrived at Fort De Russy, Louisiana, ”a powerful casemated work” which the Confederates had recently evacuated in the face of the naval threat. Porter pushed past a heavy obstruction in the river and proceeded to Alexandria, Louisiana, which he took possession of formally on the morning of the 7th, ”without encountering any resistance.”

Subsequently turning the town over to Army troops, and unable to continue upriver because of the low water, Porter’s force returned to Fort De Russy and partially destroyed it. Porter also sent U.S.S. Sterling Price, Pittsburg, Arina, and ram Switzerland up the Black River on a reconnaissance. At Harrisonburg these ships encountered heavy batteries, which they engaged with little effect because of the position of the guns ”on high hills.” Leaving the larger portion of his force at the Red River, Porter returned to Grand Gulf on the 13th.

May 4th ~ {continued...}

1864 – The Army of the Potomac embarks on the biggest campaign of the Civil War and crosses the Rapidan River, precipitating an epic showdown that eventually decides the war. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant became commander of all the Union forces and devised a plan to destroy the two major remaining Confederate armies: Joseph Johnston’s Army of the Tennessee, which was guarding the approaches to Atlanta, and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Grant sent William T. Sherman to take on Johnston, and then rode along with the Army of the Potomac, which was still under the command of George Meade, to confront Lee.

On May 4th, the Army of the Potomac moved out of its winter encampments and crossed the Rapidan River to the tangled woods of the Wilderness. Grant had with him four corps and over 100,000 men. The plan was to move the Federal troops quickly around Lee’s left flank and advance beyond the Wilderness before engaging the Confederates. But logistics slowed the move, and the long wagon train supplying the Union troops had to stop in the Wilderness. Although there was no combat on this day, the stage was set for the epic duel between Grant and Lee.

In the dense environs of the Wilderness, the superior numbers of the Union army was minimized. Lee attacked the following day—the first salvo in the biggest campaign of the war. The fighting lasted into June as the two armies waltzed to the east of Richmond, ending in Petersburg, where they settled into trenches and faced off for nearly nine months.

1886 – A bomb is thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, United States, killing eight and wounding 60. The police fire into the crowd. The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot) was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day and in reaction to the killing of several workers the previous day by the police.

An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they acted to disperse the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; scores of others were wounded. In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy. The evidence was that one of the defendants may have built the bomb, but none of those on trial had thrown it. Seven were sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison. The death sentences of two of the defendants were commuted by Illinois governor Richard J. Oglesby to terms of life in prison, and another committed suicide in jail rather than face the gallows. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887.

In 1893, Illinois’ new governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the remaining defendants and criticized the trial. The Haymarket affair is generally considered significant as the origin of international May Day observances for workers. The site of the incident was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1992, and a public sculpture was dedicated there in 2004. In addition, the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument at the defendants’ burial site in nearby Forest Park was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997.

1904 – The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal. The U.S. formally took control of the canal property inheriting from the French a depleted workforce and a vast jumble of buildings, infrastructure and equipment, much of it in poor condition. A U.S. government commission, the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), was established to oversee construction and was given control of the Panama Canal Zone, over which the United States exercised sovereignty. The commission reported directly to Secretary of War William Howard Taft and was directed to avoid the inefficiency and corruption that had plagued the French 15 years earlier.

May 4th ~ {continued...}

1910 – Congress required every passenger ship or other ship carrying 50 persons or more, leaving any port of United States, to be equipped with a radio (powerful enough to transmit to a 100-mile radius) and a qualified operator.

1916 – Responding to a demand from Pres. Wilson, Germany agreed to limit its submarine warfare, averting a diplomatic break with Washington.

1917 – First Navy ships, Destroyer Division 8, arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, to provide convoy escorts against German U-boats.

1942 – The U.S. began food rationing.

1942 – The Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Ernest J. King, ordered the Coast Guard Auxiliary to organize into a anti-submarine patrol force, which becomes known as the “Corsair Fleet” for service along the east coast.

1942 – Fighting lessens on Mindanao. Japanese bombardment of the American forces on Corregidor is very intense.

1942 – Aircraft from the USS Yorktown positioned 100 miles south of Guadalcanal, attack Japanese forces off Tulagi. The Yorktown then returns south to join the American Task Force 17 which is assembling to engage the Japanese. American actions are dictated by their code breaking which has revealed many of the Japanese plans to them.

1944 – The Coast Guard-manned destroyer escort USS Pride (DE-323), with three other escorts, sank U-371 in the Mediterranean.

1944 – Most meat products are removed from the ration list. Steaks and choice cuts for roasting remain rationed.

1945 – On Okinawa, the Japanese 32nd Army counterattacks. Artillery that was formerly concealed is used to support infantry charges. The US 7th and 77th Divisions hold the assaults. Meanwhile, the US 1st Marine Division attacks Machinato airfield and suffers heavy losses. At sea, Kamikaze attacks sink 14 small ships and damage the escort carrier Sangamon, 1 destroyer, and other ships. Some 131 Japanese planes are claimed to be shot down. The British carrier Formidable is damaged by a Kamikaze attack off the Sakishima Islands.

1945 – Admiral Donitz sends envoys to the headquarters of Field Marshal Montgomery, at Luneburg Heath, and they sign an agreement, at 1820 hours, for the surrender of German forces in Holland, Denmark and northern Germany. The Germans also agree to the Allied demand that German submarines should be surrendered rather than scuttled — in the German naval tradition.

The surrender becomes effective on May 5th. Meanwhile, in continuing fighting to the south, Salzburg is captured by American forces. Other units push into Czechoslovakia toward Pilsen. German forces conduct rearguard actions, in northern Germany, in Czechoslovakia and Austria, as the bulk of the German forces attempt to disengage and reach the Anglo-American lines.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 25th Division, part of US 1st Corps, capture Mount Haruna, west of the Balete Pass. Northwest of Manila, elements of the US 11th Corps attack toward Guagua but are forced back by Japanese defenses. On Mindanao, the US 24th Division mops up in around Davao while elements of the US 31st Division patrol north of Zibawe. Elements of the US 41st Division reach Parang, north of Cotabato while other forces land north of Digos, near Santa Cruz. On Negros, the Americal Division attempts to reopen its supply lines, which have been cut by the Japanese forces, in the eastern part of the island.

May 4th ~ {continued...}

1945 – Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov informs U.S. Secretary of State Stettinius that the Red Army has arrested 16 Polish peace negotiators who had met with a Soviet army colonel near Warsaw back in March. When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill learns of the Soviet double-cross, he reacts in alarm, stating, “There is no doubt that the publication in detail of this event…would produce a primary change in the entire structure of world forces.”

Churchill, fearing that the Russian forces were already beginning to exact retribution for losses suffered during the war (the Polish negotiators had been charged with “causing the death of 200 Red Army officers”), sent a telegram to President Harry Truman to express his concern that Russian demands of reparations from Germany, and the possibility of ongoing Russian occupation of Central and Eastern Europe, “constitutes an event in the history of Europe to which there has been no parallel.” Churchill clearly foresaw the “Iron Curtain” beginning to drop. Consequently, he sent a “holding force” to Denmark to cut off any farther westward advance by Soviet troops.

1948 – Twenty-five-year-old Norman Mailer’s first novel, The Naked and the Dead, is published on this day in 1948. The book is critically acclaimed and widely considered one of the best novels to come out of World War II. Mailer was born in New Jersey in 1923 and raised in Brooklyn. He attended Harvard and joined the Army during World War II. After leaving the Army in 1946, he studied at the Sorbonne, where he wrote the Naked and The Dead, based on his own military experiences. The book, which closely chronicles the lives of 13 soldiers stationed in the Pacific, presents a fictional story with precise, journalistic detail.

Mailer’s next two books, Barbaray Shore (1951) and The Deer Park (1955), were savaged by critics, but his subsequent journalistic chronicles fared better. The Armies of the Night (1968), an account of his participation in the Washington peace march of 1967, won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and the National Book Award in 1969. His novel The Executioner’s Song, a fictionalized account of the life of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1980. In 1991, his four-pound novel Harlot’s Ghost explored the CIA from 1948 through the Kennedy administration. Mailer’s reputation as a hard-drinking, tough-talking anti-feminist made him a controversial literary figure in the 1970s and 1980s. His high-profile exploits included drinking binges, the alleged stabbing of his wife at a party, and a run for the mayoralty of New York.

1951 – The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill to raise the maximum strength of the Marine Corps to 400,000 — double its strength at the time. The bill also made the Commandant of the Marine Corps a consultant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

1961 – Pilot CDR Malcolm D. Ross, USNR, and medical observer LCDR Victor A. Prather, Jr., ascended in two hours to over 110,00 feet in Strato-Lab 5, a 411-foot hydrogen filled balloon launched from from the deck of USS Antietam. This was the highest altitude attained by man in an open gondola. Tragically, Prather drowned during the recovery.

1961 – At a press conference, Secretary of State Dean Rusk reports that Viet Cong forces have grown to 12,000 men and that they had killed or kidnapped more than 3,000 persons in 1960. While declaring that the United States would supply South Vietnam with any possible help, he refused to say whether the United States would intervene militarily. At a press conference the next day, President John F. Kennedy said that consideration was being given to the use of United States forces. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, did eventually commit more than 500,000 American troops to the war.

1964 – Attempting to elicit what he thinks is waning support from the US, General Khanh tells Ambassador Lodge that he feels it is necessary to declare full-scale war on the North. He proposed that the US begin bombing campaigns and send 10,000 Special Forces troops to cover the entire Cambodian-Laotian border. Lodge declines to inform the General that the US is developing plans to bomb the North.

May 4th ~ {continued...}

1964 – In secret testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, William Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and pacific Affairs, says that the US must drive the Communists out of South Vietnam even if it means, ‘attacking countries to the north.’

1965 – President Johnson asks Congress to appropriate an additional $700 million ‘to meet mounting military requirements in Vietnam.’ Johnson will sign the approved bill on 7 May.

1968 – West of Hoi An City, the Marines begin Operation Allen Brook. The op will as through late August.

1970 – About 20 miles north of the “Fishhook area” inside Cambodia, US troops reach the site of what is believed to be the largest Vietnamese base in the area, known as The City. Communist forces launch heavy attacks in the area around Phnompenh as NVA and Vietcong units cut the Phnompenh-Saigon highway at a point 29 miles from the Cambodian capitol.

1970 – President Richard Nixon’s May 1st announcement of the American incursion into Cambodia leads to massive anti-Vietnam war protests on college campuses nationwide. At Kent State University students burned the ROTC building and rioted in downtown Kent. The governor of Ohio dispatched Guardsmen from the 1st Battalion, 145th Infantry and several Troops of the 107th Armored Cavalry (at peak strength a total of 1,395 men) to restore order in Kent. These men were already on state active duty in response to a wildcat truckers strike when moved to the campus.

Except for some trouble in the town of Kent on Saturday night, in which ten Guardsmen were injured by thrown bottles and rocks, overall for two days the situation remained calm. But on Monday the 4th a planned anti-war rally was scheduled, drawing both students and non-students. The campus authorities tried to stop the rally but the crowd on the Commons kept growing larger, more vocal and belligerent. The sheriff, riding a Guard jeep and with a Guard driver, approached the crowd to tell them to disperse when the jeep was pelted with stones, bottles and other missiles.

The Guard driver was hit in the eye from broken windshield glass. It was then decided to have the Guardsmen clear the crowd. At this time the Guard had no crowd control equipment other than CS (tear) gas fired from grenade launchers. They had no batons, face or body shields, no body armor and no non-lethal projectiles. What they did have were steel helmets, gas masks (which greatly restrict vision) and M-1 rifles with fixed bayonets.

Since ten Guardsmen had been injured two days earlier the men were now issued live ammunition. After firing a volley of tear gas the troops, totaling 125 men, moved out to push the crowd over “Blanket Hill” surmounted by the Student Center in hopes they would disperse in the parking lot on the other side. As the men moved forward, they came under a barrage of projectiles including chunks of concrete with steel rebar rods which had been stockpiled by protestors.

Fifty Guardsmen were hit, some multiple times, as they continued to advance. The line of troops split to move on each side of the Center as the crowd fell back over the hill. Once the men on the right side of the advance crested the hill they found themselves cut off from further advance by a steel fence. As they turned to return the way they came, their tear gas ran out and some in the crowd started to approach them shouting and throwing objects.

For reasons no one can fully explain someone fired a shot. Some say it came from a dorm room overlooking the crowd while others say only the Guard fired. Whichever version is right, the Guardsmen fired a ragged volley of 34 shots, hitting 13 people, four of whom were killed. In the aftermath the campus was immediately closed until the next school year. Years of court action resulted in no Guardsmen ever being convicted of a crime in the shooting. While Kent State will remain a dark day in Guard history some good did come from it.

As a result of studies made after the event, Guardsmen today have the proper crowd control equipment and non-lethal devices are available. And all Army Guard personnel receive extensive training in crowd control techniques. Perhaps the best evidence of change is that in the more than 35 years since that day, despite numerous calls upon the Guard in many states to control riotous behavior, there has been no repeat of the tragedy.

May 4th ~ {continued...}

1972 – The Vietcong formed revolutionary government in Quang Tri South Vietnam.

1972 – Official peace talks are suspended indefinitely citing a complete lack of progress.

1972 – USS Saratoga is ordered to Vietnam, bringing the number of carriers off that coast to six.

1977 – The US and Vietnam open the first round of negotiations in Paris on normalizing relations. The US pledges not to veto Vietnam’s entrance to the UN and to lift its trade embargo once diplomatic relations are established.

1989 – Fired White House aide Oliver North was convicted of shredding documents and two other crimes and acquitted of nine other charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair. The three convictions were later overturned on appeal.

1989 – US launched the Magellan Probe to Venus.

1993 – The United States handed over control of the relief effort in Somalia to the United Nations.

1995 – An Iranian nuclear official said spent fuel from Iran’s Russian-made reactors, potential raw material for nuclear bombs, would be returned to Russia for safeguarding.

1998 – Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.

1998 – The Clinton administration invoked sanctions against North Korea and Pakistan for a secret 1997 missile deal. Pakistan’s military named the acquired missile, Ghauri, after a famous Muslim warrior who slew a Hindu emperor named Prithvi, the name of a Russian made Indian missile.

1999 – Work crews struggled to restore electricity across Serbia after NATO strikes on major power grids left Belgrade and other cities in the dark.

2000 – In Puerto Rico US federal agents moved and arrested 216 protestors from the bombing range on Vieques Island.

2001 – US experts, following 3 days of inspections, said the US spy plane on China’s Hainan Island could be repaired and flown home.

2002 – Five pipe bombs were found in rural Nebraska mailboxes.

2003 – A Soyuz spacecraft safely delivered a three-man, US-Russian crew to Earth in the first landing since the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

May 5th ~

1494 – During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus first sighted Jamaica and commented on the daily rains. Columbus landed on the island of Jamaica, which he names Santa Gloria.

1823 – James Allen Hardie (d.1876), Bvt Major General (Union Army), was born.

1861 – CSA troops abandon Alexandria, VA.

1862 – President Lincoln, with Secretaries Stanton and Chase on board, proceeded to Hampton Roads on steamer Miami to personally direct the stalled Peninsular Campaign. The following day, Lincoln informed Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough: “I shall be found either at General Wool’s [Fort Monroe] or on board the Miami.” The President directed gunboat operations in the James River and the bombardment of Sewell’s Point by the blockading squadron in the five days he acted as Commander-in-Chief in the field.

1862 – Battle of Williamsburg commenced as part of the Peninsular Campaign. Confederate Captain Charles Bruce kept his father apprised of conditions during the crucial Peninsula campaign.

1863 – Hooker begins to retreat from the Battle of Chancellorsville

1864 – Atlanta Campaign: 5 days fighting began at Rocky Face Ridge.

1864 – While Rear Admiral Porter’s fleet awaited the opportunity to pass over the Red River rapids, the ships below Alexandria were incessantly attacked by Confederate forces. This date, wooden steamers U.S.S. Covington, Acting Lieutenant George P. Lord, U.S.S. Signal, Acting Lieutenant Edward Morgan, and transport Warner were lost in a fierce engagement on the Red River near Dunn’s Bayou, Louisiana.

On the 4th of May, Covington and Warner had been briefly attacked by infantry, and the next morning the Confederates reappeared with two pieces of artillery and a large company of riflemen. Warner, in the lead, soon went out of control, blocked the river at a bend near Pierce’s Landing, and despite the efforts of Lord and Morgan was forced to surrender. Signal also became disabled and although Covington attempted to tow her upstream, she went adrift out of control and came to anchor.

The gunboats continued the hot engagement, but Lord finally burned and abandoned Covington after his ammunition was exhausted and many of the crew were killed. After continuing to sustain the Confederate cannonade alone, the crippled Signal was finally compelled to strike the colors. The Southerners then sank Signal as a channel obstruction.

1864 – The forces of Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee clash in the Wilderness, beginning an epic campaign. Lee had hoped to meet the Federals, who plunged into the tangled Wilderness west of Chancellorsville, Virginia, the day before, in the dense woods in order to mitigate the nearly two-to-one advantage Grant possessed as the campaign opened. The conflict quickly spread along a two-mile front, as numerous attacks from both sides sent the lines surging back and forth. The fighting was intense and complicated by the fact that the combatants rarely saw each other through the thick undergrowth. Whole brigades were lost in the woods. Muzzle flashes set the forest on fire, and hundreds of wounded men died in the inferno.

The battle may have been particularly unsettling for the Union troops, who came across skeletons of Yankee soldiers killed the year before at the Battle of Chancellorsville, their shallow graves opened by spring rains. By nightfall, the Union was still in control of the major crossroads in the Wilderness. The next two days brought more pitched battles without a clear victory for either side. Grant eventually pulled out and moved further south toward Richmond, and for the next six weeks the two great armies maneuvered around the Confederate capital.

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1864 – By this point in the US Civil War, the most of the uniformed volunteers (forerunners of today’s National Guard) who had rushed to the colors at the start of the war were either dead, were so badly wounded and/or sick as to be sent home or had deserted. However both sides, especially in the southern armies, did still have many of early war Guard units in their establishment. The Confederates rarely disbanded units; they just plugged in available new replacements into the old units. This helped to maintain a ‘local’ connection (and its esprit) to a city or county carried over from the original members.

The Union adopted a different system entirely. When the numbers of a unit fell low enough, its remaining men were transferred to another unit from the same state and the old designation ceased to exist. Few individual replacements were assigned to existing units. Instead new men were placed in newly organized regiments. Several states, such as New York and Pennsylvania, had infantry regimental numbers as high as 194th (NY) and 215th (PA). Both states started the war with a “1st Volunteer Infantry” so it can be seen they suffered horrible losses during the war.

1864 – C.S.S. Albemarle, Commander Cooke, with Bombshell, Lieutenant Albert G. Hudgins, and Cotton Plant in company, steamed into Albemarle Sound and engaged Union naval forces in fierce action off the mouth of the Roanoke River. Bombshell was captured early in the action after coming under severe fire from U.S.S. Sassacus, and Cotton Plant withdrew up the Roanoke.

Albemarle resolutely continued the action. Sassacus, Lieutenant Commander Roe, gallantly rammed the heavy ironclad but with little effect. Sassacus received a direct hit in her starboard boiler, killing several sailors and forcing her out of action Side-wheelers U.S.S. Mattabesett, Captain M. Smith, and U.S.S. Wyalusing, Lieutenant Commander Walter W. Queen, continued to engage the Southern ram until darkness halted the action after nearly three hours of intensive fighting. As Assistant Surgeon Samuel P. Boyer, on board Mattabesett, wrote: “Shot and shell came fast like hail.”

Albemarle withdrew up the Roanoke River and small side-wheelers U.S.S. Commodore Hull and Ceres steamed to the river’s mouth on picket duty to guard against her reentry into the sound. The ironclad had returned to her river haven, but she had given new evidence that she was a mighty force to be reckoned with. Captain Smith reported: “The ram is certainly very formidable. He is fast for that class of vessel, making from 6 to 7 knots, turns quickly, and is armed with heavy guns. . . .” And Lieutenant Commander Roe noted: “. . . I am forced to think that the Albemarle is more formidable than the Merrimack or Atlanta, for our solid l00– pounder rifle shot flew into splinters upon her iron plates.”

Albemarle’s commander was more critical of her performance. Three days later he wrote Secretary Mallory that the ram “draws too much water to navigate the sounds well, and has not sufficient bouyancy. In consequence she is very slow and not easily managed. Her decks are so near the water as to render it an easy task for the enemy’s vessels to run on her, and any great weight soon submerges the deck.” For the next five months Union efforts in the area focused on Albemarle’s destruction.

1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery, except for “duly convicted” prisoners.

1866 – Villagers in Waterloo, NY, held their 1st Memorial Day service. On April 13, 1862, volunteers led by Sarah J. Evans had paid homage to the graves of Civil War soldiers in the Washington area. In 1966 President Johnson gave Waterloo, NY, the distinction of holding the 1st Memorial Day.

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1877 – Nearly a year after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull and a band of followers cross into Canada hoping to find safe haven from the U.S. Army. On June 25, 1876, Sitting Bull’s warriors had joined with other Indians in the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana, which resulted in the massacre of George Custer and five troops of the 7th Cavalry.

Worried that their great victory would provoke a massive retaliation by the U.S. military, the Indians scattered into smaller bands. During the following year, the U.S. Army tracked down and attacked several of these groups, forcing them to surrender and move to reservations. Sitting Bull and his followers, however, managed to avoid a decisive confrontation with the U.S. Army. They spent the summer and winter after Little Big Horn hunting buffalo in Montana and fighting small skirmishes with soldiers.

In the fall of 1876, Colonel Nelson A. Miles met with Sitting Bull at a neutral location and tried to talk him into surrendering and relocating to a reservation. Although anxious for peace, Sitting Bull refused. As the victor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull felt he should be dictating terms to Miles, not the other way around. Angered by what he saw as Sitting Bull’s foolish obstinacy, Miles stepped up his campaign of harassment against the chief and his people. Sitting Bull’s band continued to roam about Montana in search of increasingly scarce buffalo, but the constant travel, lack of food, and military pressure began to take a toll.

On this day in 1877, Sitting Bull abandoned his traditional homeland in Montana and led his people north across the border into Canada. Sitting Bull and his band stayed in the Grandmother’s Country-so called in honor of the British Queen Victoria-for the next four years. The first year was idyllic. The band found plenty of buffalo and Sitting Bull could rest and play with his children in peace. The younger warriors, though, soon tired of the quiet life. The braves made trouble with neighboring tribes, attracting the displeasure of the Canadian Mounties.

While the Canadian leaders were more reasonable and sensitive about Indian affairs than their aggressive counterparts to the south, they became increasingly nervous and pressured Sitting Bull to return to the U.S. Ultimately, though, Sitting Bull’s attempt to remain independent was undermined by the disappearance of the buffalo, which were being wiped out by Indians, settlers, and hide hunters. Without meat, Sitting Bull gave up his dream of independence and asked the Canadian government for rations.

Meanwhile, emissaries from the U.S. came to his camp and promised Sitting Bull’s followers they would be rich and happy if they joined the American reservations. The temptation was too great, and many stole away at night and headed south. By early 1881, Sitting Bull was the chief of only a small band of mostly older and sick people. Finally, Sitting Bull relented.

On July 10, 1881, more than five years after the fateful battle at the Little Big Horn, the great chief led 187 Indians from their Canadian refuge to the United States. After a period of confinement, Sitting Bull was assigned to the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota in 1883. Seven years later he was dead, killed by Indian police when he resisted their attempt to arrest him for his supposed participation in the Ghost Dance uprising.

1886 – The Bay View Tragedy, militia forces fire into a crowd of protesters in Milwaukee, killing seven. The Bay View Massacre (sometimes also referred to as the Bay View Tragedy) was the culmination of events that began on Saturday May 1 when 7,000 building-trades workers joined with 5,000 Polish laborers who had organized at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to strike against their employers, demanding an eight-hour work day.

By Monday, these numbers had increased to over 14,000 workers that gathered at the Milwaukee Iron Company rolling mill in Bay View. They were met by 250 National Guardsmen under order from Republican Governor Jeremiah M. Rusk to “shoot to kill” any strikers who attempted to enter. Workers camped in the nearby fields and the Kosciuszko Militia arrived by May 4. Early the next day the crowd, which by this time contained children, approached the mill and were fired upon. Seven people died as a result, including a thirteen-year-old boy. Several more were injured during the protest.

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1908 – The Great White Fleet arrived in San Francisco Bay.

1912 – The Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda began publishing. Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili took the name Stalin, meaning “man of steel,” about the time he helped found the Russian Communist newspaper Pravda. Stalin specialized in writing about national minorities in Russia and went on to become editor of Pravda.

1916 – U.S. marines invaded the Dominican Republic. The occupation began gradually. The first landing took place on May 5, 1916 when “two companies of marines landed from the U.S.S. Prairie at Santo Domingo.” Their goal was to offer protection to the U.S. Legation and the U.S. Consulate, and to occupy the Fort San Geronimo. Within hours, these companies were reinforced with “seven additional companies.” On May 6, forces from the U.S.S. Castine landed to offer protection to the Haitian Legation, a country under similar military occupation from the U.S. Two days after the first landing, constitutional President, Juan Isidro Jimenes resigned.

1920 – US President Wilson made the Communist Labor Party illegal. The party moved to the underground in response to mass arrests and deportations conducted by the US Justice Department and its Bureau of Investigation, guided by Special Assistant to the Attorney General J. Edgar Hoover. These raids and the move to the underground virtually destroyed the organization, which only existed in skeletal form in the first half of 1920, although publication of its legal newspaper, The Toiler, was maintained. The CLP also published an “illegal” underground monthly paper called Communist Labor Party News and issued the final issue of Ludwig Lore’s theoretical magazine, The Class Struggle under its auspices.

1920 – Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for murder.

1942 – Sales of sugar resumed in the United States under a rationing program.

1942 – Japanese forces enter China, via the Burma Road. General Stillwell, in command of the Chinese troops decides after intelligence on the true Japanese positions to withdraw his troops towards India, not China.

1942 – Japanese troops land on Corregidor. Fierce fighting by the remaining American troops under General Wainwright results, but the Japanese maintain a beach head.

1942 – Japanese Admiral Takagi’s carriers enter the Coral Sea. American Admiral Fletcher’s TF17 is there refueling, but the Japanese do not find it.

1942 – Imperial Headquarters orders the Japanese Navy to prepare for the invasion of Midway Island.

1944 – Hospital ship, USS Comfort is commissioned in San Pedro, CA; first ship to be manned jointly by Army and Navy personnel.

1945 – Ezra Pound, poet and author, was arrested by American Army soldiers in Italy for treason. He had served during the war as a pro-fascist and anti-Semitic spokesman for the Mussolini government.

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1945 – In Lakeview, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II.

The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and Ethel Patzke, the five slain children. The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one of only a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States, which were conducted early in the war by Japanese submarines and later by high-altitude balloons carrying explosives or incendiaries.

In comparison, three years earlier, on April 18, 1942, the first squadron of U.S. bombers dropped bombs on the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kobe, and Nagoyo, surprising the Japanese military command, who believed their home islands to be out of reach of Allied air attacks. When the war ended on August 14, 1945, some 160,000 tons of conventional explosives and two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan by the United States. Approximately 500,000 Japanese civilians were killed as a result of these bombing attacks.

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese counterattacks continue with minor successes.

1945 – The War Department announces that about 400,000 troops will remain in Germany to form the US occupation force and 2,000,000 men will be discharged from the armed services, leaving 6,000,000 soldiers serving in the war against Japan.

1945 – German Army Group G surrenders to US forces after negotiations are concluded at Haar in Bavaria. In Denmark, fighting breaks out in Copenhagen but is brought to an end when British units arrive by air in the evening.

1948 – VF-17A becomes first carrier qualified jet squadron (USS Saipan).

1950 – Congress approved the Uniform Code of Military Justice for the “government of the armed forces of the United States.”

1953 – The battleship USS New Jersey, the cruiser USS Bremerton, and the destroyers USS Twining and Colohan destroyed troop shelters, caves, concrete ammunition bunkers and an observation post.

1955 – The US detonated a 29-kiloton nuclear device in Nevada. “Apple 2” was the 2nd of 40 tests of Operation Cue, meant to study the effects of a nuclear explosion on a typical American community.

1955 – The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) becomes a sovereign state when the United States, France, and Great Britain end their military occupation, which had begun in 1945. With this action, West Germany was given the right to rearm and become a full-fledged member of the western alliance against the Soviet Union.

Shortly after the May 5th proclamation was issued, the Soviet Union formally recognized the Federal Republic of Germany. The two Germany’s remained separated until 1990, when they were formally reunited and once again became a single democratic country.

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1961 – From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world’s first artificial satellite–Sputnik 1–in 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth.

On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard’s suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program. NASA continued to trail the Soviets closely until the late 1960s and the successes of the Apollo lunar program.

In July 1969, the Americans took a giant leap forward with Apollo 11, a three-stage spacecraft that took U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon and returned them to Earth. On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.

1964 – The US announces that it is freezing all assets of North Vietnam and baring any further financial and commercial transactions between the two countries.

1964 – A USAF transport plane crashes at Tan Hiep killing 10 servicemen.

1968 – The second large scale Communist offensive of the year begins with the simultaneous shelling of 119 cities and towns in the South. Heavy action continues for a week and Saigon is the intended target.

1968 – U.S. Air Force planes hit Nhi Ha, South Vietnam in support of attacking infantrymen.

1970 – In Cambodia, a U.S. force captures Snoul, 20 miles from the tip of the “Fishhook” area (across the border from South Vietnam, 70 miles from Saigon). A squadron of nearly 100 tanks from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and jet planes virtually leveled the village that had been held by the North Vietnamese. No dead North Vietnamese soldiers were found, only the bodies of four Cambodian civilians. This action was part of the Cambodian “incursion” that had been launched by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces on April 29th.

In Washington, President Nixon met with congressional committees at the White House and gave the legislators a “firm commitment” that U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Cambodia in three to seven weeks. Nixon also pledged that he would not order U.S. troops to penetrate deeper than 21 miles into Cambodia without first seeking congressional approval. The last U.S. troops left Cambodia on June 30th.

1971 – There was a race riot in Brownsville section of Brooklyn, NYC.

1972 – South Vietnamese troops from the 21st Division, trying to reach beleaguered An Loc in Binh Long Province via Highway 13, are again pushed back by the communists, who had overrun a supporting South Vietnamese firebase. The South Vietnamese division had been trying to break through to An Loc since mid-April, when the unit had been moved from its normal area of operations in the Mekong Delta and ordered to attack in order to relieve the surrounded city. The South Vietnamese soldiers fought desperately to reach the city, but suffered so many casualties in the process that another unit had to be sent to actually relieve the besieged city, which was accomplished on June 18th.

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1979 – Voyager 1 passed the planet Jupiter.

1983 – In Beirut, Lebanon, a UH-1N helicopter carrying the commander of the American peace-keeping force, Colonel James Mead, was hit by machine gun fire. The six Marines aboard escaped injury. Colonel Mead and his crew had taken off in the helicopter to investigate artillery and rocket duels between rival Syrian-backed Druze Moslem militiamen and Christian Phalangists that endangered French members of the multinational force.

1987 – The televised congressional Iran-Contra hearings opened with former Air Force Maj. General Richard V. Secord as the lead-off witness.

1993 – Phase II, dubbed Operation Continue Hope, of the US intervention in Somalia begins, now under UN auspices.

1995 – As rescue workers ended their search for bodies in the Oklahoma City bombing.

1999 – President Clinton visited US troops in Germany and conferred with senior NATO commanders. Clinton’s morale-boosting trip to Europe included a visit to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he met the three American soldiers just released by Yugoslavia.

1999 – The first 453 Kosovar refugees from camps in Macedonia arrived at the 31,000-acre Fort Dix, New Jersey. A total of up to 20,000 refugees were expected in operation Task Force Open Arms.

1999 – Two US crew members were killed when an Apache helicopter crashed in Albania during training. Chief Warrant Officer David A. Gibbs (38), of Massillon, Ohio, and Chief Warrant Officer Kevin L. Reichert (28), of Chetek, Wis., crashed in a mountainous region 50 miles from Task Force Hawk base.

1999 – NATO strategists were reported to have a plan to send 60,000 ground troops into Kosovo around July to take the province from retreating Serbs. Their original plan called for 28,000 soldiers to supervise an interim peace settlement.

2004 – Coalition forces raided buildings used by a militia loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in two southern cities and clashed with militiamen elsewhere in fighting that killed 15 Iraqis.

2004 – Nicaragua said its army had destroyed 333 surface-to-air missiles at the urging of the US and that the military planned to destroy another 333 SAM-7s in late July. More than 2,000 Russian-made SAM-7s, shoulder-fired missiles capable of taking down a plane, were left over from the 1980s Contra war.

2004 – The Coast Guard presented the Purple Heart to BM3 Joseph Ruggiero in Miami for injuries sustained in action against the enemy while defending the Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal in Iraq on 24 April 2004. Ruggiero’s shipmate, DC3 Nathan Bruckenthal, was killed in this same bombing and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. They were the first Coast Guard recipients of the Purple Heart since the Vietnam War.

2005 – An explosion outside the United Kingdom consulate in New York City occurs at 07:35 GMT. There were no injuries.

2006 – Porter Goss resigns as director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

2011 – Members of the multi-state coalition conducting the military campaign in Libya hold talks in Rome, Italy, and agree to set up a new fund to aid Libyan rebels, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promising to use frozen assets of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

2014 – Veterans groups call for Shinseki’s resignation. American Legion National Commander Daniel Dillinger says the deaths reported by CNN appear to be part of a “pattern of scandals that has infected the entire system.”

May 6th ~

1856 – U.S. Army troops from Fort Tejon and Fort Miller prepared to ride out to protect Keyesville, California, from Yokut Indian attack.

1861 – Richmond, Virginia is declared the new capital of the Confederate States of America.

1861 – Confederate Congress passed act recognizing state of war with the United States and authorized the issuing of Letters of Marque to private vessels. President Davis issued instructions to private armed vessels, in which he defined operational limits, directed “strictest regard to the rights of neutral powers.” ordered privateers to proceed “With all … justice and humanity” toward Union vessels and crews, out-lined procedure for bringing in a prize, directed that all property on board neutral ships be exempt from seizure “unless it be contraband,” and defined contraband.

1861 – Arkansas and Tennessee becomes 9th & 10th state to secede from US.

1861 – Members of the 5th Louisiana Volunteer Infantry, take up garrison duties in this fort protecting the entrance to Pensacola Bay. In the early days of the Civil War, men in some southern units objected to being stationed outside of their home states (recall for most of the South the war was mostly over “state rights,” not slavery). Some of the men in this regiment questioned why they had to protect a part of Florida when areas of Louisiana remained vulnerable to Union Navy attack.

However, it soon became apparent that if the Confederacy was to have any chance to survive as a separate nation it needed a unified army, regardless of state affiliation. The unit remained here until May 1862 when Union forces captured Pensacola Bay. The 5th Louisiana later joined the Army of Northern Virginia and fought at Antietam in September 1862 and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864. A few members (“less than 80”) were among the men surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865.

1862 – Union forces occupy Williamsburg, Virginia, during the Peninsular campaign.

1863 – The Battle of Chancellorsville ends with the defeat of the Army of the Potomac by Confederate troops. The Battle of Chancellorsville was a major battle of the American Civil War, and the principal engagement of the Chancellorsville Campaign. Itbegan April 30 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville.

Two related battles were fought nearby on May 3rd in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. The campaign pitted Union Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac against an army less than half its size, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Chancellorsville is known as Lee’s “perfect battle” because his risky decision to divide his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force resulted in a significant Confederate victory.

The victory, a product of Lee’s audacity and Hooker’s timid decision making, was tempered by heavy casualties and the mortal wounding of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson to friendly fire, a loss that Lee likened to “losing my right arm.” The Chancellorsville Campaign began with the crossing of the Rappahannock River by the Union army on the morning of April 27, 1863.

Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. George Stoneman began a long distance raid against Lee’s supply lines at about the same time. This operation was completely ineffectual. Crossing the Rapidan River via Germanna and Ely’s Fords, the Federal infantry concentrated near Chancellorsville on April 30. Combined with the Union force facing Fredericksburg, Hooker planned a double envelopment, attacking Lee from both his front and rear.

On May 1st, Hooker advanced from Chancellorsville toward Lee, but the Confederate general split his army in the face of superior numbers, leaving a small force at Fredericksburg to deter Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick from advancing, while he attacked Hooker’s advance with about 4/5ths of his army. Despite the objections of his subordinates, Hooker withdrew his men to the defensive lines around Chancellorsville, ceding the initiative to Lee.

On May 2nd, Lee divided his army again, sending Stonewall Jackson’s entire corps on a flanking march that routed the Union XI Corps. While performing a personal reconnaissance in advance of his line, Jackson was wounded by fire from his own men, and Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart temporarily replaced him as corps commander. The fiercest fighting of the battle—and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War—occurred on May 3rd as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at Chancellorsville, resulting in heavy losses on both sides.

That same day, Sedgwick advanced across the Rappahannock River, defeated the small Confederate force at Marye’s Heights in the Second Battle of Fredericksburg and then moved to the west. The Confederates fought a successful delaying action at the Battle of Salem Church and by May 4th had driven back Sedgwick’s men to Banks’s Ford, surrounding them on three sides. Sedgwick withdrew across the ford early on May 5th, and Hooker withdrew the remainder of his army across U.S. Ford the night of May 5–6th. The campaign ended on May 7th when Stoneman’s cavalry reached Union lines east of Richmond.

1864 – Union and Confederate troops continue their desperate struggle in the Wilderness, which was the opening battle in the biggest campaign of the war. General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces, had joined George Meade’s Army of the Potomac to encounter Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the tangled Wilderness forest near Chancellorsville, the site of Lee’s brilliant victory the year before. The fighting was intense, and raging fires that consumed the dead and wounded magnified the horror of battle. But little was gained in the confused attacks by either side.

On May 6th, the second day of battle in the Wilderness, Grant sought to break the stalemate by sending Winfield Hancock’s corps against the Confederate right flank at the southern end of the battle line. The Federals were on the verge of breaking through the troops of James Longstreet when they stumbled in the dense undergrowth. Lee entered the fray to rally the Confederate troops, but his devoted solders urged him away from the action. Later in the morning, Longstreet’s men attacked Hancock’s forces and seemed poised to turn the Union flank. But, like the Union troops earlier, they became disoriented as they drove Hancock’s troops back.

In the confusion, Longstreet was wounded by his own men, just four miles from the spot where Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men the year before. The Confederate attack halted when Hancock’s men found refuge behind hastily constructed breastworks. In the evening, Lee attacked the Union flank at the northern end of the battlefield and nearly turned the Federal line. Grant’s men, however, held their ground, leaving the exhausted armies in nearly the same positions as when the battle began.

In two days, the Union lost 17,000 men to the Confederates’ 11,000. This was nearly one-fifth of each army. Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come. Grant pulled his men out of the Wilderness on May 7th, but, unlike the commanders before him in the eastern theater, he did not go back. He moved further south towards Spotsylvania Court House and closer to Richmond. At Spotsylvania, the armies staged some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

May 6th ~ {continued...}

1864 – General Sherman began to advance on Atlanta, Georgia.

1864 – U.S.S. Dawn, Acting Lieutenant John W. Simmons, transported soldiers to capture a signal station at Wilson’s Wharf, Virginia. After landing the troops two miles above the station, Simmons proceeded to Sandy Point to cover the attack. When the soldiers were momentarily halted, a boat crew from Dawn spearheaded the successful assault.

1864 – U.S.S. Eutaw, Osceola, Pequot, Shokokon, and General Putnam, side-wheelers of Rear Admiral Lee’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, supported the landing of troops at Bermuda Hundred, Virginia.

1877 – Chief Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. troops in Nebraska. Crazy Horse brought General Custer to his end.

1916 – First ship-to-shore radio telephone voice conversation from USS New Hampshire off Virginia Capes to SECNAV Josephus Daniels in Washington, DC.

1935 – The Works Progress Administration (WPA), threw open its doors and given the monumental task of sending scores of unemployed Americans back to work. Perhaps the key program of the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup” of government agencies aimed at alleviating the damage wrought by the Great Depression, the WPA handed Americans decent-paying jobs on a myriad of public works projects. It was a renamed and expanded effort of the Hoover administration, the Emergency Relief Administration, ERA, briefly renamed FERA (add Federal to the front) with it’s biggest difference being that the WPA was run directly by the Federal government, while ERA/FERA funded state and local programs.

Workers employed via the agency constructed a head-spinning array of public structures, including parks, playgrounds, schools, post-offices and National Guard armories. And, through its creatively inclined arms (the Federal Art Project and Federal Theater Project), the WPA set painters, actors, musicians and writers to work on public arts projects that depicted the lives of America’s workers. All told, the WPA (which was renamed the Works Projects Administration in 1939) was responsible for employing 8.5 million Americans during its eight-year tenure.

Despite these considerable fruits, the WPA was an expensive program–the agency spent roughly $11 billion during its lifetime–which prompted attacks from more penurious voices in the nation. In addition, the WPA refused to allow job training–workers had to bring skills with them–and so WPA was closed to unskilled labor and did not lead to better job opportunities for those who could participate. Workers were limited to 30 hours a week, and wages were set by a regional prevailing wage standard. Corruption was common.

Kentucky WPA workers were used in electioneering, enforced registration in the Democratic party, and diversion of pay to political campaigns. Similar cases were documented in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Illinois. By the summer of 1943, World War II had almost entirely usurped the efforts of America’s work force, and the WPA was permanently closed.

May 6th ~ {continued...}

1935 – The first flight of the Curtiss P-36 Hawk. The Curtiss P-36 Hawk, also known as the Curtiss Hawk Model 75, was an American-designed and built fighter aircraft of the 1930s and 40s. A contemporary of both the Hawker Hurricane and Messerschmitt Bf 109, it was one of the first of a new generation of combat aircraft—a sleek monoplane design making extensive use of metal in its construction and powered by a powerful radial engine.

Perhaps best known as the predecessor of the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the P-36 saw little combat with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. It was nevertheless the fighter used most extensively and successfully by the French Armee de l’air during the Battle of France. The P-36 was also ordered by the governments of the Netherlands and Norway, but did not arrive in time to see action over either country, before both were occupied by Nazi Germany. The type was also manufactured under license in China, for the Republic of China Air Force, as well as in British India, for the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF).

Axis and co-belligerent air forces also made significant use of captured P-36s. Following the fall of France and Norway in 1940, several dozen P-36s were seized by Germany and transferred to Finland; these aircraft saw extensive action with the Ilmavoimat (Air Force) against the Soviet Air Forces. The P-36 was also used by Vichy French air forces in several minor conflicts; in one of these, the Franco-Thai War of 1940–41, P-36s were used by both sides.

From mid-1940, some P-36s en route for France and the Netherlands were diverted to Allied air forces in other parts of the world. The Hawks ordered by the Netherlands were diverted to the Dutch East Indies and later saw action against Japanese forces. French orders were taken up by British Commonwealth air forces, and saw combat with both the South African Air Force (SAAF) against Italian forces in East Africa, and with the RAF over Burma.

Within the Commonwealth, the type was usually referred to as the Curtiss Mohawk. With around 1,000 aircraft built by Curtiss itself, the P-36 was a major commercial success for the company. It also became the basis not only of the P-40, but two other, unsuccessful prototypes: the YP-37 and the XP-42 .

1937 – The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany, bursts into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers and crewmembers. Frenchman Henri Giffard constructed the first successful airship in 1852. His hydrogen-filled blimp carried a three-horsepower steam engine that turned a large propeller and flew at a speed of six miles per hour.

The rigid airship, often known as the “zeppelin” after the last name of its innovator, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was developed by the Germans in the late 19th century. Unlike French airships, the German ships had a light framework of metal girders that protected a gas-filled interior. However, like Giffard’s airship, they were lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas and vulnerable to explosion. Large enough to carry substantial numbers of passengers, one of the most famous rigid airships was the Graf Zeppelin, a dirigible that traveled around the world in 1929.

In the 1930s, the Graf Zeppelin pioneered the first transatlantic air service, leading to the construction of the Hindenburg, a larger passenger airship. On May 3, 1937, the Hindenburg left Frankfurt, Germany, for the first of 10 scheduled journey’s across the Atlantic to Lakehurst’s Navy Air Base.

On its maiden voyage, the Hindenburg, stretching 804 feet from stern to bow, carried 36 passengers and crew of 61. While attempting to moor at Lakehurst, the airship suddenly burst into flames, probably after a spark ignited its hydrogen core. Rapidly falling 200 feet to the ground, the hull of the airship incinerated within seconds.

Thirteen passengers, 21 crewmen, and 1 civilian member of the ground crew lost their lives, and most of the survivors suffered substantial injuries. Radio announcer Herb Morrison, who came to Lakehurst to record a routine voice-over for an NBC newsreel, immortalized the Hindenberg disaster in a famous on-the-scene description in which he emotionally declared, “Oh, the humanity!”

The recording of Morrison’s commentary was immediately flown to New York, where it was aired as part of America’s first coast-to-coast radio news broadcast. Lighter-than-air passenger travel rapidly fell out of favor after the Hindenberg disaster, and no rigid airships survived World War II.

1941 – Bob Hope began broadcasting his first USO radio show from March Field at Riverside, Ca. The United Service Organizations (USO) began operations this year and provided free coffee, donuts, and entertainment to US military forces. The organization is supported entirely by private citizens and corporations.