** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:10 pm
October 9th ~

1635 – Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.

1767 – Surveying for the Mason–Dixon line separating Maryland from Pennsylvania is completed.

1781 – The bombardment of the British forces at Yorktown begins. Among the American guns there were three twenty-four pounders, three eighteen pounders, two eight-inch (203 mm) howitzers and six mortars. At 3:00 pm, the French guns opened the barrage and drove the British frigate, HMS Guadeloupe across the York River, where she was scuttled to prevent capture. At 5:00 pm the Americans opened fire. George Washington fired the first gun; legend has it that it smashed into a table where British officers were eating. The Franco-American guns began to tear apart the British defenses. Washington ordered that the guns fire all night so that the British could not make repairs. All of the British guns on the left were soon silenced. The British soldiers began to pitch their tents in their trenches and soldiers began to desert in large numbers. Some British ships were also damaged by cannonballs that flew across the town and into the harbor.

1812 – American Lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliot captured two British brigs, the Detroit and Caledonia on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Elliot set the brig Detroit ablaze the next day in retaliation for the British capture seven weeks earlier of the city of Detroit.

1814 – USS Wasp vanished at sea. On this date, she informed the Swedish brig Adonis that she was “standing for the Spanish Main.” She was never seen again, and all hands were lost.”

1864 – At the Battle of Tom’s Brook the Confederate cavalry that harassed Sheridan’s campaign was wiped by Custer and Merrit’s cavalry divisions. After his victory at Fisher’s Hill, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan pursued Early’s army up the Shenandoah Valley to near Staunton. On October 6, Sheridan began withdrawing, as his cavalry burned everything that could be deemed of military significance, including barns and mills. Reinforced by Kershaw’s division, Early followed. Maj. Gen. Thomas Rosser arrived from Petersburg to take command of Fitz Lee’s cavalry division and harassed the retreating Federals. On October 9, Torbert’s troopers turned on their pursuers, routing the divisions of Rosser and Lomax at Tom’s Brook. With this victory, the Union cavalry attained overwhelming superiority in the Valley.

1867 – The Russians formally transferred Alaska to the US. The U.S. had bought Alaska for $7.2 million in gold.

1873 – LT Charles Belknap calls a meeting at the Naval Academy to establish the U.S. Naval Institute for the purpose of disseminating scientific and professional knowledge throughout the Navy.

1888 – The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public.

1906 – Joseph F. Glidden, inventor of barbed wire died.

1917 – The 8th Marines was activated at Quantico, Virginia. Although the regiment would not see combat in Europe during World War I, the officers and enlisted men of the 8th Marines participated in operations against dissidents in Haiti for over five years during the 1920s. During World War II, the regiment was assigned to the 2d Marine Division and participated in combat operations on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, and earned three Presidential Unit Citations.

1936 – Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles.

1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested congressional approval for arming U.S. merchant ships.

1942 – First three schools for enlisted WAVES open at Stillwater, OK (Yeoman), Bloomington, IN (Storekeepers), and Madison, WI (Radiomen) for WAVES recruiting activities.

1945 – Anti -submarine Patrol Craft USS PC -590 (Coast Guard -manned) grounded and sank in typhoon off Okinawa.

1952 – Vice Admiral Joseph J. “Jocko” Clark, the last commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet during the Korean War and a Cherokee descendent, became famous for his self -proclaimed “Cherokee Strikes.”

1969 – In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began on September 24th.

1985 – The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port Said, Egypt.

1990 – Saddam Hussein of Iraq threatened to hit Israel with a new missile.

1992 – To protect the US food airlift, the first American forces arrived in Somalia.

1992 – The U.N. Security Council voted to ban all military flights over Bosnia -Herzegovina.

1993 – Cease -Fire. Aidid unilaterally declares a “total cease fire.” Clinton bars retaliation against Aidid.

1994 – The United States sent troops and warships to the Persian Gulf after Saddam Hussein sent tens of thousands of elite troops and hundreds of tanks toward the Kuwaiti border.

1995 – Saboteurs pulled 29 spikes from a stretch of railroad track, causing an Amtrak train to derail in Arizona; one person was killed and about 100 were injured.

1999 – The last flight of the SR-71. The Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by Lockheed and its Skunk Works division. Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was responsible for many of the design’s innovative concepts. During reconnaissance missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes to allow it to outrace threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outfly the missile. The SR-71 served with the U.S. Air Force from 1964 to 1998. A total of 32 aircraft were built; 12 were lost in accidents, but none lost to enemy action.

The SR-71 has been given several nicknames, including Blackbird and Habu. Since 1976, it has held the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft, a record previously held by the YF-12. All Blackbirds have been moved to museums except for the two SR-71s and a few D-21 drones retained by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

2001 – The US declared air supremacy over Afghanistan. In the first daylight raids since the start of U.S. -led attacks on Afghanistan, jets bombed the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

2001 – The 2 anthrax cases in Florida were reported to probably have been caused by an intentional release of the deadly bacteria.

2002 – Newly -declassified Pentagon reports acknowledge that the United States used deadly chemical and biological warfare agents during Cold War military tests on American soil and in Britain and Canada from 1962 -1971.

2002 – Dean Meyers (53) was shot to death in Manassas, Va., in a shooting that appeared to be linked to 6 previous sniper attacks in the area.

2006 – North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device.

2009 – First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program. An unmanned Atlas V rocket launched the two space probes towards the Moon, where they provided a 3-D map and searched for water in conjunction with the Hubble Space Telescope.

2013 – Juno flies by Earth on its way to orbit Jupiter, but suffers a glitch during the fly-by that puts it in safe mode. Juno is a NASA New Frontiers mission to the planet Jupiter. Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011 and will arrive in July 2016. The spacecraft is to be placed in a polar orbit to study Jupiter’s composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, how its mass is distributed, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds of 618 kilometers per hour (384 mph).
PostPosted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 11:24 am
October 10th ~

680 – Imam Hussein, grandson of prophet Mohammed, was beheaded. He was killed by rival Muslim forces on the Karbala plain in modern day Iraq. He then became a saint to Shiite Muslims. Traditionalists and radical guerrillas alike commemorate his martyrdom as the ceremony of Ashura. The 10-day mourning period during the holy month of Muharram commemorates the deaths of Caliph Ali’s male relatives by Sunnis from Iraq.

732 – At Tours, France, Charles Martel killed Abd el-Rahman and halted the Muslim invasion of Europe. Islam’s westward spread was stopped by the Franks at Poitiers.

1798 – Secretary Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy, sent the first instructions to cutters acting in cooperation with the Navy in support of the Quasi-War with France, via the various collectors of customs.

1845 – In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipman students and seven professors.

1877 – The remains of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer were buried at West Point in New York.

1913 – Panama Canal was completed when President Woodrow Wilson triggered a blast which exploded the Gamboa Dike by pressing an electric button at the White House in Washington, D.C.

1918 – While President Woodrow Wilson was attempting to establish “peace without victory” with Germany, the German UB-123 torpedoed RMS Leinster, a civilian mail and passenger ferry, off the coast of Ireland. Leinster was usually escorted by a Royal Air Force airship as a precaution, but on October 10th the ferry set out alone. Leinster was sunk; 564 passengers and crewmen perished, many of them American and Allied troops. After Leinster, the Germans lost their chance for an easy peace.

1923 – First American-built rigid airship, Shenandoah, is christened. It used helium gas instead of hydrogen.

1938 – Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

1941 – The destroyer USS Kearney is attacked by a German, submarine. In the attack, ten sailors are killed and scores injured. America suffers its first war casualties in World War II. Pearl Harbor is still seven weeks away.

1944 – Nearly two hundred of Admiral Halsey’s planes struck Naha, Okinawa’s capital and principal city, in five separate waves. The city was almost totally devastated. The American war against Japan was coming inexorably closer to the Japanese homeland.

1950 – A total of sixteen Air Guard squadrons are mobilized for duty during the Korean War. Five of these fighter squadrons, the 111th (TX), 136th (TX), 154th (AR), 158th (GA) and 196th (CA) would fly missions in Korea. Sixteen other units were deployed to NATO bases in Europe.

1950 – A 3d ARS H-5 crew administered, for the first time while a helicopter was in flight, blood plasma to a rescued pilot. The crewmembers received Silver Stars for this action.

1953 – A Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea is concluded in Washington, D.C.

1954 – Ho Chi Minh entered Hanoi after French troops withdraw.

1960 – Navy assigned responsibility for program management and technial direction of Project SPASUR, the first U.S. universal satellite detection and tracking network.

1965 – Ronald Reagan spoke at Coalinga Junior College and called for an official declaration of war in Vietnam.

1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, comes into force. The Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, is a treaty that forms the basis of international space law.

1973 – Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with evasion of federal income tax.

1975 – Israel formally signed the Sinai accord with Egypt.

1979 – Panama assumed sovereignty over Canal Area.

1982 – US imposed sanctions against Poland for banning Solidarity trade union.

1985 – U.S. fighter jets from the USS Saratoga forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the gunmen were taken into custody.

1990 – The space shuttle “Discovery” landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California, ending a virtually flawless four-day mission.

1992 – Iraq released U.S. munitions expert Clinton Hall, two days after he’d been taken prisoner in the demilitarized zone separating Iraq and Kuwait.

1993 – Thousands of Somalis demonstrated in the capital of Mogadishu to support warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, an event that coincided with the arrival of special U.S. envoy Robert Oakley.

1994 – Iraq announced it was withdrawing its forces from the Kuwaiti border; seeing no signs of a pullback, President Clinton dispatched 350 additional aircraft to the region.

1995 – Israel began a West Bank pullback and freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

1998 – David Sheldon Boone (46), a former Pentagon analyst, was arrested for selling top defense secrets to the former Soviet Union. He was lured back to the US from Germany.

2001 – U.S. jets pounded the Afghan capital of Kabul, a terrorist stronghold.

2001 – An unmanned US spy plane was lost over southern Iraq, the 3rd since Aug 27th.

2001 – The FBI issued a list of 22 most wanted terrorists dating back to 1985 with rewards up to $5 million for tips that prevent attacks or lead to arrests.

2001 – In Florida a 3rd case of anthrax was identified in a 35-year-old woman who worked in the same office as Robert Stevens. The strain was reported to match one from Iowa in the 1950s commonly used by lab researchers.

2001 – Turkey granted the government the authority to send troops overseas and to allow foreign troops to be stationed on its soil.

2002 – The US Congress gave Pres. Bush authorization to use armed forces against Iraq. The House voted 296-133 in favor.

2002 – Allied planes bombed radar and missile sites in the southern no-fly zone over Iraq, targeting President Saddam Hussein’s air defenses for the third time this week.

2009 – United States President Barack Obama announces he will end the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against homosexuals serving in the U.S. military.

2013 – Scott Carpenter, Mercury 7 astronaut and second American to orbit the earth, dies at 88 following complications from a stroke. Malcolm Scott Carpenter (born May 1, 1925) was an American test pilot, astronaut, and aquanaut. He was one of the original seven astronauts selected for NASA’s Project Mercury in April 1959. Carpenter was the second American (after John Glenn) to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, following Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn. After being chosen for Project Mercury in 1959, Carpenter, along with the other six astronauts, oversaw the development of the Mercury capsule. He served as backup pilot for John Glenn, who flew the first U.S. orbital mission aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962. Carpenter, serving as capsule communicator on this flight, can be heard saying “Godspeed, John Glenn” on the recording of Glenn’s liftoff.

When Deke Slayton was withdrawn on medical grounds from Project Mercury’s second manned orbital flight (which Slayton would have named Delta 7), Carpenter was assigned to replace him. He flew into space on May 24, 1962, atop the Mercury-Atlas 7 rocket for a three-orbit science mission that lasted nearly five hours. His Aurora 7 spacecraft attained a maximum altitude of 164 miles (264 km) and an orbital velocity of 17,532 miles per hour (28,215 km/h).

In July 1964 in Bermuda, Carpenter sustained a grounding injury from a motorbike accident while on leave from NASA to train for the Navy’s SEALAB project. In 1965, for SEALAB II, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California. During the SEALAB II mission, Carpenter’s right index finger was wounded by the toxic spines of a scorpion fish. He returned to work at NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, then returned to the Navy’s Deep Submergence Systems Project in 1967, based in Bethesda, Maryland, as a Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III.

In the aftermath of aquanaut Berry L. Cannon’s death while attempting to repair a leak in SEALAB III, Carpenter volunteered to dive down to SEALAB and help return it to the surface, although SEALAB was ultimately salvaged in a less hazardous way. Carpenter retired from the Navy in 1969, after which he founded Sea Sciences, Inc., a corporation for developing programs for utilizing ocean resources and improving environmental health.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:01 pm
October 11th ~

1726 – Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia from England.

1776 – The first naval battle of Lake Champlain was fought during the American Revolution. American forces led by Gen. Benedict Arnold suffered heavy losses, but managed to stall the British. British forces had successfully resisted the American assault on Quebec in the early months of the war and pursued the retreating invaders back to their bases at Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga. The approach of winter in late 1775 had forced the British to return to Canada, but a strike against the rebels by way of Lake Champlain was a top priority for the campaign in 1776. Sir Guy Carleton, the British commander in Canada, supplemented his forces with 5,000 German mercenaries and a fleet of ships to be used in the planned assault. Vessels sailed up the St. Lawrence River, were laboriously disassembled and transported around the rapids on the Richelieu River, then reassembled for service on Lake Champlain. Smaller craft were built on site. The showpiece of the British fleet was the HMS Inflexible, an 18-gun man-of-war. The remnants of the American invasion force occupied Fort Ticonderoga in 1776 under increasingly dire circumstances. Food, clothing and ammunition supplies were low and morale was flagging. Brigadier General Benedict Arnold received permission to construct a fleet on Lake Champlain to stop or at least slow the impending British advance. Shipwrights were brought in from New England coastal towns to construct the fleet, including special flat-bottomed craft that were fitted with both sails and oars and carried cannon in the bow. The workers had no alternative to using green lumber, which quickly warped and allowed water into the vessels. In all, three schooners, three galleys, eight gunboats and a sloop were constructed.

The British were unaware of the American efforts to build a fleet and allowed their own shipbuilding activities to stretch into the late summer. Arnold realized that he was badly outgunned and would have no chance against a direct confrontation with the enemy. He sought the most favorable position he could find, choosing to array his fleet in an arc from Valcour Island to near the New York shore in an area a few miles south of the village of Plattsburgh. The British fleet finally set sail in early October, the Inflexible in the lead and the troop transports at the rear.

The two forces met on the 11th. The American ships were not easily visible in the bay and much of the British flotilla sailed past. When the American presence was made known, the larger British vessels had difficulty reversing direction and were late in joining the fray. In the ensuing seven-hour battle, both sides sustained heavy damage, but the British were unable to bring the full force of their firepower to bear because of the cramped confines forced by the American position; only a few of the British vessels could align themselves between the island and the shore and fire at close range. Soldiers delivered by Carleton’s ships poured withering fire from the shore into the American ships, which inflicted heavy casualties. As night approached, the British attempted to bottle-up the bay and were confident that they could complete their task in the morning. Arnold had lost the Philadelphia and knew he stood little chance when the battle resumed.

During the night a heavy fog descended. Arnold capitalized on the reduced visibility by silently sailing his damaged fleet around the British blockade and heading south toward Crown Point. When the fog lifted in the morning, the British beheld an empty bay and immediately began pursuit. A valiant delaying action was fought by the Congress, with Arnold at the helm, and the Washington, which enabled other ships to reach Crown Point. At the last moment, Arnold’s ship managed to sprint to shore, where it was set afire, and the crew escaped on land to Crown Point. Crown Point could not withstand a British assault, and was destroyed as the garrison and Arnold’s surviving men pushed on to Ticonderoga. When the British fleet arrived outside of Ticonderoga, the Americans blasted away with their cannon — despite the fact that they were dangerously low on powder and shot — which gave the British the impression that they were prepared to mount a protracted defense of their position. Carleton was taken in by the ruse. He returned American prisoners in his possession under a flag of truce, then turned his fleet around and sailed back to Canada. Arnold’s small navy was nearly destroyed: 11 of 15 ships were lost and 80 casualties sustained. However, Fort Ticonderoga was held and the British invasion halted. The significance of Arnold’s defense would be noted in the following year’s campaign when the British again mounted an offensive from the north; had Arnold and his men failed, the campaign of 1777 would have begun from Ticonderoga rather than Canada and might have ended differently.

1779 – Polish nobleman General Casimir Pulaski was killed while fighting for American independence during the Revolutionary War Battle of Savannah, Ga. Of all the Polish officers who took part in the American War of Independence, Casimir Pulaski was the most romantic and professionally the most prominent. He was born into the middle gentry at Warka, Poland, March 4, 1747. His family was rich and had enhanced their fortune as clients of the Czartoryski family with whose nationalist policies it was identified. His education was typical of its time, he learned a smattering of languages and manners in the service of the Duke of Courland. It was here that young Pulaski first came into contact with the interference of foreign powers in Polish affairs, that lead to the first great act of his life. Joseph Pulaski, Casimir’s father, impatient with the Russian interference precipitated an armed movement called the Confederation of Bar in 1768. Casimir was one of the founding members and on his father’s death in 1769, carried the burden of military command. His greatest success was in the taking and holding of Jasna Gora at Czestochowa, the holist place in Poland. His brilliant defense against the Russians thrilled all of Europe. Unfortunately soon afterward he was implicated in a plot to kill the Polish King and forced into exile.

Burdened by debts Pulaski was found in Paris by Benjamin Franklin and enlisted in for American cause. Pulaski joined George Washington’s army just before the battle of Brandywine. Acting under Washington’s orders without commission Pulaski lead the scouting party that discovered the British flanking movement and the American escape route. He then gathered all available cavalry to cover the retreat, leading a dashing charge that surprised the British and allowed the American army to escape. Congress rewarded Pulaski with a commission as brigadier general and command of all American cavalry. He spent the winter of 1777-8 training and outfitting the cavalry units but in March, he gave way before the intrigues of his jealous officers. He requested and Washington approved the formation of an independent corp of cavalry and light infantry of foreign volunteers. Pulaski’s Legion became the training ground for American cavalry officers including “Light Horse” Harry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee, and the model for Lee’s and Armand’s legions. Thirteen Polish officers served under Pulaski in the legion. The best assessment of Pulaski’s legion came from a British officer who called them simply “the best damned cavalry the rebels ever had”. In 1779 Pulaski and his legion were sent south to the besieged city of Charleston where he immediately raised morale and assisted in breaking the siege. A joint operation with the French was planed to recapture the city of Savannah. Against Pulaski’s advice the French commander ordered an assault against the strongest point of the British defense, Seeing the allied troops falter Pulaski galloped forward to rally the men, when he was mortally wounded by British cannon shot. He died two days later and was buried at sea.

Pulaski was the romantic embodiment of the flashing saber and the trumpets calling to the charge, and that is how history has remembered him. The larger-Than-life aspect of his death has often obscured his steadier, quieter, and more lasting services. It was in the drudgery of forging a disciplined American cavalry that could shadow and report on British movements, in the long distance forage raids to feed and clothe the troops at Valley Forge, and the bitter hit and run rearguard actions that covered retreating American armies that slowed British pursuit, that gave Pulaski the title of “Father of the American cavalry”.

1809 – Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder’s Stand. It is speculated that personal and professional problems may have driven him to suicide, but some people believe he was murdered.

1824 – Marquis de Lafayette visits the Washington Navy Yard during his year long tour of America. He returned to the yard the next day, October 12, to continue his visit.

1862 – The Confederate Congress in Richmond passed a draft law allowing anyone owning 20 or more slaves to be exempt from military service. This law confirmed many southerners opinion that they were in a ‘rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.’

1862 – American Civil War: In the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his men loot Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, during a raid into the north.

1864 – Slavery was abolished in Maryland.

1865 – President Johnson paroled CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens.

1879 – The first annual conference of the National Guard Association is held. The Association, which continues in operation today, acts as a political interest group representing Guard concerns with members of Congress. Federal law prohibits members of the armed forces on active duty from ‘lobbying’ Congress so the Association, which is composed of active and retired Guard officers, performs this function.

1890 – The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) was founded in Washington, D.C.

1896 – The crew of the Pea Island (North Carolina) Life-Saving Station, under the command of Keeper Richard Etheridge, performed one of their finest rescues when they saved the passengers and crew of the schooner E.S. Newman, after that ship ran aground during a hurricane. Pushed before the storm, the ship lost all sails and drifted almost 100 miles before it ran aground about two miles south of the Pea Island Lifesaving Station. Etheridge, a veteran of nearly twenty years, readied his crew. They hitched mules to the beach cart and hurried toward the vessel. Arriving on the scene, they found Captain S. A. Gardiner and eight others clinging to the wreckage. Unable to fire a line because the high water prevented the Lyle Gun’s deployment, Etheridge directed two surfmen to bind themselves together with a line. Grasping another line, the pair moved into the breakers while the remaining surfmen secured the shore end. The two surfmen reached the wreck and tied a line around one of the crewmen. All three were then pulled back through the surf by the crew on the beach. The remaining eight persons were carried to shore in this fashion. After each trip two different surfmen replaced those who had just returned. For their efforts the crew of the Pea Island Life-Saving station were awarded the Gold Life Saving Medal.

1910 – Former President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey in a plane built by the Wright brothers at Kinloch Field (Lambert–St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri.

1939 – Albert Einstein wrote his famous letter to FDR about the potential of the atomic bomb. Einstein, a long time pacifist, was concerned that the Nazis would get the bomb first. In the letter, Einstein argued the scientific feasibility of atomic weapons, and urged the need for development of a US atomic program. The physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller, who were profoundly disturbed by the lack of American atomic action, had enlisted the aid of the Nobel prize-winner Einstein in the summer of 1939, hoping that a letter from such a renowned scientist would persuade Roosevelt into action.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:02 pm
October 11th ~ ( continued... )

1942 – In the World War II Battle of Cape Esperance in the Solomon Islands, U.S. cruisers and destroyers decisively defeated a Japanese task force in a night surface encounter sinking two Japanese ships while losing only USS Duncan (DD-485).

1945 – Negotiations between Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung broke down. Nationalist and Communist troops were soon engaged in a civil war.

1950 – Task Force 77 Aircraft destroy North Korean vessels off Songjin and Wonsan and north of Hungham.

1951 – A Marine battalion was flown by transport helicopters to a frontline combat position for the first time, when HMR-161 lifted the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, and its equipment, during Operation Bumblebee, northeast of Yanggu, Korea. This is the first battalion sized combat helo lift.

1952 – Two USAF 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing F-86 Sabre jet pilots shot down enemy aircraft. It was future ace Captain Clyde A. Curtin’s first aerial victory of the war. Captain Clifford Jolley chalked up his seventh and final enemy aircraft kill. Four other MiGs were destroyed in a series of battles over northwest Korea.

1954 – The Vietminh formally take control of Hanoi and North Vietnam. Unlike Diem in the South, Ho Chi Minh face no rebellious factions or challenges to their authority. The long war against the French, however, has devastated the North economically.

1958 – The lunar probe Pioneer 1 was launched; it failed to go as far as planned, fell back to Earth, and burned up in the atmosphere.

1961 – At a meeting of the National Security Council, President Kennedy is asked to accept ‘as our real and ultimate objective the defeat of the Vietcong.’ The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate that 40,000 US troops could clean up ‘the Vietcong threat,’ and another 120,000 could cope with possible North Vietnamese or Communist Chinese intervention. Kennedy decides to send General Maxwell Taylor to Vietnam to study the situation.

1963 – A US National Security Action memorandum that recommended plans to withdraw 1,000 US Military personnel by the end of the year was approved. The memo followed McNamara’s return from a trip to South Vietnam.

1968 – Apollo 7, The first manned Apollo mission, was launched from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard. It made 163 orbits. The mission lasted 10 days and 20 hours. Recovery was by HS-5 helicopters from USS Essex (CVS-9).

1972 – A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker. During the USS Kitty Hawk riot, sometimes called the Kitty Hawk mutiny, many crewmen were injured, but Kitty Hawk participated in Linebacker as assigned. Approximately 100–200 black Kitty Hawk crewmen rioted as a response to perceived grievances against the Navy and the officers of Kitty Hawk, which appeared to represent institutionalized racism on the ship. Forty-five to 60 Kitty Hawk crewmen were injured in total.

The carrier’s commander—Captain Marland Townsend—and executive officer—Commander Benjamin Cloud (who was black)—dissuaded the rioters from further violence and prevented white sailors from retaliating. This allowed the carrier to launch her Linebacker air missions as scheduled on the morning of 12 October. Nineteen of the rioters were later found guilty by the Navy of at least one charge connected to the riot. The incident was publicized in The New York Times. Subsequent racial unrest on Kitty Hawk′s sister ship Constellation sparked Congressional hearings to examine race relations in the Navy and policies and programs instituted by Navy leaders to deal with racial issues.

1976 – George Washington’s appointment, posthumously, to the grade of General of the Armies by congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 is approved by President Gerald R. Ford.

1984 – Space shuttle Challenger astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space.

1986 – President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks concerning arms control and human rights in Reykjavik, Iceland.

1993 – Yasser Arafat won endorsement for his peace accord with Israel from the Palestine Central Council.

1994 – Iraqi troops began moving north, away from the Kuwaiti border.

1995 – In Bosnia a cease-fire was declared.

1996 – US FBI agents arrested 7 in West Virginia for plotting to bomb the national fingerprinting records facility in Charleston.

1998 – In Bosnia forensic experts began exhuming 274 bodies in the village of Donja Glumina. They were believed to be Bosnian Muslims killed in Srebrenica by Serbs in July 1995.

1999 – In Chechnya more people fled Russian attacks and Moscow demanded that Islamic militants be handed over before any peace settlement.

2000 – The shuttle Discovery with a crew of 7 lifted off from Cape Canaveral for an 11-day mission to the International Space Station. It marked the shuttle fleet’s 100th mission. STS-92 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Discovery. STS-92 marked the 100th mission of the Space Shuttle.

2001 – In his first prime-time news conference since taking office, President George W. Bush offered the Taliban a chance to stop America’s punishing assaults on Afghanistan by turning over suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

2001 – The FBI warned that new acts of terrorism could target Americans over the next few days.

2001 – The Bush administration asked newspapers not to publish full transcripts of messages from Osama bin Laden due to the possibility of coded messages.

2001 – In NYC Mayor Giuliani rejected a $10 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal due to an attached press release that said the US should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.

2001 – The Pentagon confirmed the 1st US death in Operation Enduring Freedom. Air Force Sgt. Evander Earl Andrews was killed in a fork lift accident in Qatar.

2002 – Kenneth Bridges (53) was shot and killed in Spotsylvania, Va., the 8th victim of the DC area sniper.

2004 – An Arabic language television station broadcast video showing three hooded gunmen threatening to behead a Turkish hostage within three days unless the Americans release all Iraqi prisoners and all Turks leave Iraq.

2007 – Turkey recalls its ambassador to the United States due to anger over an upcoming House of Representatives vote on recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

2009 – Luis Armando Pena Soltren, a suspect wanted for the 1968 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 281, is surrendered after more than 40 years. Pan Am Flight 281 was a regularly scheduled Pan American World Airways flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was hijacked on November 24, 1968, by 4 men from JFK International Airport, New York to Havana, Cuba. US Fighter jets followed plane to Cuba. Soltren, lived as a fugitive in Cuba. He pleaded guilty to the hijacking on March 18, 2010. On January 4, 2011 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, without the possibility of parole.

2012 – A gunman kills Qassem M. Aqlan, the Yemeni chief of security employed at the U.S. embassy in the capital, Sana’a.

2014 – USS America (LHA 6), the Navy’s newest and most technologically advanced amphibious assault ship, was commissioned during a formal ceremony at Pier 30/32 during San Francisco Fleet Week. More than 8,000 friends, family members and invited guests gathered in front of the ship to witness its introduction to the fleet. During the ceremony, Adm. Harry B. Harris, commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, commended the crew for their performance during acceptance trials and sailing around South America. He said because conflict and crisis can arise at any time, warships like America will be needed as the nation conducts its strategic rebalance to the Pacific.
PostPosted: Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:34 am
October 12th ~

1492 – Christopher Columbus sited land, an island of the Bahamas which he named San Salvador, but which was called Guanahani by the local Taino people. [HFA gives the date as Oct. 11] Pinta’s lookout, Rodrigo de Triana, saw a white cliff in the moonlight on the morning of Oct 12. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, or Cristobal Colon to his Spanish patrons, led a group of exhilarated sailors ashore on a sunny Caribbean island they christened San Salvador. Seeking to establish profitable Asian trade routes by sailing west, Columbus seriously underestimated the size of the Earth–never dreaming that two great continents blocked his path to the east. Columbus, returning to Spain after his first expedition, submitted a report of the wonders he had seen to Ferdinand and Isabella. The original report was not illustrated, but later editions, were imaginatively illustrated with woodcuts showing cowering Indians and an ocean-going ship with oars. Even after four voyages to America, Columbus believed until the end of his life in 1506 that he had discovered an isolated corner of Asia.

1792 – First celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York City.

1861 – The Confederate ironclad Manassas attacked the northern ship Richmond on the Mississippi River. The Manassas was the Confederacy‘s first operational ironclad. Originally a New England tugboat called the Enoch Train, the ship was refit with iron sheathing and an iron prow for ramming. The underpowered ship was used in defense of New Orleans, finally being dispatched by the Union warship Mississippi.

1862 – J.E.B. Stuart completed his “2nd ride around McClellan.” Following the September 17, 1862, Battle of Sharpsburg in Maryland, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s battered Confederate Army of Northern Virginia slipped back across the Potomac River and set up camp in the valleys of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains while it tried to reorganize and revitalize. Gen. George B. McClellan’s much larger Union Army of the Potomac had not been so badly hurt in the recent battle and probably could have destroyed Lee’s ragged army with a vigorous pursuit. Instead, McClellan kept his men in camps on the north side of the Potomac, citing the need to reorganize and recondition the force before following Lee into Virginia. Wanting to buy his army as much time to recuperate as possible, Lee summoned cavalry chief Gen. Jeb Stuart to headquarters on October 6 and proposed a cavalry raid into Pennsylvania. Lee needed information on enemy dispositions and intentions and wanted Stuart to destroy a vital Union railroad bridge at Chambersburg, PA, and then return with horses and supplies confiscated from the Pennsylvania countryside. This was just the type of daring, independent mission that Stuart loved to undertake.
On the afternoon of October 9, three 600-man Confederate cavalry brigades gathered at Darkesville, VA, and rode northward, arriving at McCoy’s Ford on the Potomac River after dark. At dawn the next morning the raiders easily pushed back the Union pickets at the ford and continued northward through the rolling hills of Maryland’s panhandle, reaching Pennsylvania by 10:00am. Stuart had given strict orders that the property of Marylanders was to be protected, but upon entering Pennsylvania, Rebel troopers spread out over the countryside and began seizing horses. The “Dutch” German immigrant farmers were flabbergasted to find Confederate troopers rounding up their horses and stealing their newly harvested fodder. Stuart ordered his men not to seize the horses of female travelers they came across.

1870 – Gen. Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va., at 63. General Robert Edward Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, dies peacefully at his home in Lexington, Virginia. He was 63 years old. Lee was born to Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee and Ann Carter Lee at Stratford Hall, Virginia, in 1807. His father served in the American Revolution under George Washington. Lee attended West Point and graduated second in his class in 1829. He did not earn a single demerit during his four years at the academy. Lee sided with the Confederacy and spent the first year of the war as an advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia when Joseph Johnston was wounded in battle in May 1862.
Over the next three years, Lee earned a reputation as one of the greatest military leaders in history for his use of brilliant tactics and battlefield leadership. His invasions of the north, at Antietam and Gettysburg, however, ended in defeat. After Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox in 1865, he returned to Richmond and an uncertain future. With his military career over, he accepted the presidency of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. Under his leadership, the struggling institution’s enrollment increased from a few dozen to more than 300 students. He contributed to faculty stability, revamped the curriculum, and improved the physical condition of the campus. He also became a symbol of the defeated South, a dignified and stoic figure who was lionized by North and South alike. He suffered a stroke on September 28, 1870, and lingered for two weeks before passing. The school changed its name to Washington and Lee College soon after he died.

1871 – President Grant condemned the Ku Klux Klan.

1872 – Apache (Chiricahua) leader Cochise signed a peace treaty with General O.O. Howard in Arizona Territory.

1892 – The American Pledge of Allegiance was 1st recited in public schools to commemorate Columbus Day. Francis Bellamy, a Socialist and magazine editor of Rome, NY, wrote the “Pledge of Allegiance.”

1901 – President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the “Executive Mansion” to the White House.

1914 – USS Jupiter (AC-3) is first Navy ship to complete transit of Panama Canal.

1917 – The 1st Marine Aviation Squadron and 1st Marine Aeronautic Company formed at Philadelphia.

1933 – The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice.

1942 – During World War II, President Roosevelt delivered one of his so-called “fireside chats” in which he recommended drafting 18- and 19-year-old men.

1950 – The battleship USS Missouri bombarded Chongjin.

1950 – The USS Pirate and USS Pledge were both destroyed by mines. The Pirate sank in four minutes with six killed and 43 wounded. The Pledge suffered seven killed in action and 36 wounded.

1953 – US and Greece signed a peace treaty that included US bases.

1957 – RADM Dufek arrives at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica to command Operation Deep Freeze III during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58.

1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute.

1964 – The Soviet Union launched a Voskhod space capsule with a three-man crew on the first manned mission involving more than one crew member.

1965 – End of Project Sealab II where teams of naval divers and scientists spent 15 days in Sealab moored 205 feet below surface near La Jolla, California.

1967 – At a news conference, Secretary of State Dean Rusk makes controversial comments in which he says that congressional proposals for peace initiatives–a bombing halt or limitation, United Nations action, or a new Geneva conference–were futile because of Hanoi’s opposition. Without the pressure of the bombing, he asked, “Where would be the incentive for peace?” He added that the Vietnam War was a test of Asia’s ability to withstand the threat of “a billion Chinese…armed with nuclear weapons.” Critics claimed that he had invoked the familiar “yellow peril” of Chinese power.

1970 – President Richard Nixon announced the pullout of 40,000 more American troops in Vietnam by Christmas.

1984 – IRA bombed the hotel where Margaret Thatcher was staying in Brighton. Thatcher escaped but five people were killed. Patrick McGee was sentenced to 8 life sentences for his role in the bombing. McGee was freed in 1999 as part of the Northern Ireland peace accord.

1986 – The superpower meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, ended in stalemate, with President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev unable to agree on arms control or a date for a full-fledged summit in the United States.

1993 – On President Clinton's watch...hundreds of militant right-wingers in Haiti cheered as an American warship retreated in a major setback for a U.N. mission to restore democracy.

1994 – NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere).

2000 – President Clinton lifts key economic sanctions against Serbia.

2000 – A US Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, refueling in Yemen suffered an enormous explosion in a terrorist attack. Initial reports had at least 6 sailors killed with 11 missing. The death toll was revised to 17. The 8,600-ton Cole was returned to the US aboard the Norwegian ship Blue Marlin. In 2001 a video tape by “Al-Sahab Productions” circulated among Muslim militants with footage of the bombed vessel. The Cole returned to active duty in 2003 following $250 million in repairs.

2001 – The US indicated it would aid Uzbekistan if it were attacked. Uzbekistan was the first among Central Asian nations to allow the US to use its airspace and deploy troops on its territory for the anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States set up a military base in southern Uzbekistan, deploying hundreds of troops there.

2002 – Kuwait’s interior minister said that 15 Kuwaitis in police custody had confessed to a deadly attack on U.S. Marines, but that no firm link has been established between them and al-Qaida.

2003 – In Baghdad a suicide attacker, stopped from reaching a hotel full of Americans, detonated his car bomb on a commercial avenue, killing six bystanders and wounding dozens.

2010 – The trial of Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to face a criminal trial in the United States, begins in New York City. He was indicted in the United States as a participant in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. He was on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list from its inception in October 2001. In 2004, he was captured and detained by Pakistani forces in a joint operation with the United States, and was held until June 9, 2009, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp; one of 14 Guantanamo detainees who had previously been held at secret locations abroad. Ghailani was transported from Guantanamo Bay to New York City to await trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in June 2009.
On November 17, 2010, a jury found him guilty of one count of conspiracy, but acquitted him of 284 other charges including all murder counts. On Tuesday, January 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, the presiding judge in the case, sentenced Ahmed Ghailani, 36, to life in prison for the bombing, stating that any sufferings Ghailani experienced at the hands of the CIA or other agencies while in custody at Guantanamo Bay pales in comparison to the monumental tragedy of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and left thousands injured or otherwise impacted by the crimes. The attacks were one of the deadliest non-wartime incidents of international terrorism to affect the United States; they were on a scale not surpassed until the September 11th attacks.

2011 – Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man also known as the “underwear bomber”, pleads guilty to attempting to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 in a trial in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. Abdulmutallab was convicted in a US federal court of eight criminal counts, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of 289 people. On 16 February 2012 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

2014 – A Texas health care worker contracts Ebola. The health care worker is the first person to contract the disease in the United States of America, the first infection in the US to occur by secondary contact, and the second in the world sickened from exposure outside of the African continent. The health care worker, who was in full protective gear while providing hospital care for an Ebola patient who later died, tested positive for the virus and is in stable condition, health officials said Sunday. Meanwhile, a top federal health official said the health care worker’s Ebola diagnosis shows there was a clear breach of safety protocol and all those who treated Thomas Eric Duncan must considered to be potentially exposed.
PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:31 am
October 13th ~

1670 – Virginia passed a law that blacks arriving in the colonies as Christians could not be used as slaves.

1754 – American Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher was born. During the American Revolution, at the Battle of Monmouth, NJ, Molly helped out as a water carrier, gaining her nickname, Molly Pitcher. Her husband, John, was wounded during the battle and Molly dropped the water pitcher, taking up her husband’s job of loading and firing a cannon. General George Washington appointed her a noncommissioned officer.

1775 – Navy Founded. The Continental Congress voted to fit out two sailing vessels, armed with ten carriage guns, as well as swivel guns, and manned by crews of eighty, and to send them out on a cruise of three months to intercept transports carrying munitions and stores to the British army in America. This was the original legislation out of which the Continental Navy grew and as such constitutes the birth certificate of the Continental Navy. A letter from General Washington was read in Congress in which he reported that he had taken under his command, at Continental expense, three schooners to cruise off Massachusetts to intercept enemy supply ships. The commander in chief had preempted members of Congress reluctant to take the first step of fitting out warships under Continental authority. Since they already had armed vessels cruising in their name, it was not such a big step to approve two more. The committee’s proposal, now appearing eminently reasonable to the reluctant members, was adopted. The Continental Navy grew into an important force. Within a few days, Congress established a Naval Committee charged with equipping a fleet. This committee directed the purchasing, outfitting, manning, and operations of the first ships of the new navy, drafted subsequent naval legislation, and prepared rules and regulations to govern the Continental Navy’s conduct and internal administration.

Over the course of the War of Independence, the Continental Navy sent to sea more than fifty armed vessels of various types. The navy’s squadrons and cruisers seized enemy supplies and carried correspondence and diplomats to Europe, returning with needed munitions. They took nearly 200 British vessels as prizes, some off the British Isles themselves, contributing to the demoralization of the enemy and forcing the British to divert warships to protect convoys and trade routes. In addition, the navy provoked diplomatic crises that helped bring France into the war against Great Britain.

1792 – The cornerstone of the executive mansion, later known as the White House, was laid during a ceremony in the District of Columbia by Masonic George Washington himself.

1812 – At the Battle of Queenston Heights, a Canadian and British army defeated the Americans who had tried to invade Canada. This was the 1st major land battle in the War of 1812.

1845 – An overwhelming majority of voters, 94%, in the Republic of Texas approve a proposed constitution that, if accepted by the U.S. Congress, will make Texas a U.S. State. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km2).

1860 – The 1st US aerial photo was taken from a balloon over Boston.

1864 – Battle of Harpers Ferry, WV (Mosby’s Raid). Learning that the garrison at Harpers Ferry had not retreated after his incursion into Maryland, Lee decided to surround the force and capture it. He divided his army into four columns, three of which converged upon and invested Harpers Ferry. On September 15, after Confederate artillery was placed on the heights overlooking the town, Union commander Col. Miles surrendered the garrison of more than 12,000. Miles was mortally wounded by a last salvo fired from a battery on Loudoun Heights. Jackson took possession of Harpers Ferry, then led most of his soldiers to join with Lee at Sharpsburg. After paroling the prisoners at Harpers Ferry, A.P. Hill’s division arrived in time to save Lee’s army from near-defeat at Sharpsburg.

1884 – Greenwich was established as universal time meridian of longitude.

1914 – Garrett Morgan invented and patented the gas mask.

1930 – New German Reichstag opened with 107 Nazi Party members in uniform.

1943 – During World War II, Italy declared war on Germany, its one-time Axis partner.

1944 – The US 1st army entered Aachen, Germany.

1951 – Hill 851, the last peak comprising Heartbreak Ridge, was secured by the 23rd Regimental Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division after a fierce assault of bayonets, grenades and flame-throwers. Total allied casualties were over 3,700, more than 1,800 suffered by the 23rd Infantry RCT alone. Total enemy casualties were estimated 25,000. A total of 6,060 prisoners were taken.

1960 – Opponents of Fidel Castro were executed in Cuba.

1969 – Pres. Nixon ordered a worldwide “secret” nuclear alert to scare the Soviets into forcing concessions from North Vietnam. Nixon called that tactic a “madman strategy,” and it did not work.

1971 – Camp Murray, Alaska and Fort Lewis, Washington — Two states tie for claiming to have enlisted the first female soldier into their Army National Guard. In Camp Murray Specialist Five Nora Campbell is sworn on this date as a member of the Washington National Guard. At virtually the same time Specialist Five Mary L. Cunningham is sworn in as a member of the Alaska Army Guard in Anchorage. (The Specialist Five rank is no longer in use, it was the equivalent to a Sergeant, E-5).
The Air Guard immediately enlisted its first prior-service woman when Technical Sergeant Reannie Pocock joined the 146th Military Airlift Wing, CA ANG in 1968. However, the Army Guard waited three years before finally accepting its first enlisted women soldiers.

1983 – The Space Shuttle Challenger, carrying seven, the largest crew to date, landed safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

1987 – The US Navy made the 1st military use of trained dolphins in the Persian Gulf.

1988 – The first U.S. merchant marine World War II veterans received their Coast Guard issued discharge certificates. Congress gave the merchant mariners veterans’ status and tasked the Coast Guard with administering the discharges.

1994 – Pro-British Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland announced a cease-fire matching the Irish Republican Army’s six-week-old truce.

1995 – The Coast Guard cutter Ida Lewis is launched, the first of the new 175-foot Keeper class buoy tenders.

1997 – The Cassini spacecraft was scheduled to be launched aboard a Titan rocket from Cape Canaveral for a trip to end in 2004 at Saturn. It will carry the Huygens probe to be deployed on the Saturn moon Titan. It was postponed.

2001 – Anthrax was confirmed in 3 US states. In Florida 5 more employees tested positive; in Nevada a letter sent to a Microsoft office tested positive; and in NYC a letter sent to NBC News tested positive.

2004 – A Russian rocket lifted off in Kazakhstan carrying 2 Russians and an American to replace the crew of the int’l. space station.

2006 – The establishment of the Dawlat al-ʻIraq al-Islāmīyah, “Islamic State of Iraq” (ISI) was announced. A cabinet was formed and Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi became ISI’s figurehead emir, with the real power residing with the Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri. ISI will had been through many names since its inception in early 2004, including Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the Mujahideen Shura Council. ISI will later be known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and, simply, the Islamic State. The group’s original founder was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

2012 – Residents of Los Angeles watch in awe as U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour inches through the city on a giant trolley, bound for a museum. Hundreds of trees in its path are chopped down.
PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 10:49 am
October 14th ~

1734 – Francis Lightfoot Lee, US farmer and signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born.

1773 – Britain’s East India Company tea ships’ cargo was burned at Annapolis, Md.

1890 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States (1953-1961), was born in Denison, Texas.

1912 – Theodore Roosevelt, former president and the Bull Moose Party candidate, was shot at close range by anarchist William Schrenk while greeting the public in front of the Hotel Gilpatrick in Milwaukee while campaigning for the presidency. He was saved by the papers in his breast pocket and still managed to give a 90 minute address in Milwaukee after requesting his audience to be quiet because “there is a bullet in my body.” Schrenk was captured and uttered the now famous words “any man looking for a third term ought to be shot.”

1917 – Marines 1st Aeronautic Co. prepared for Azores duty at Cape May, New Jersey.

1918 – Naval Aviators of Marine Day Squadron 9 make first raid-in-force for the Northern Bombing Group in World War I when they bombed German railroad at Thielt Rivy, Belgium.

1933 – The Geneva disarmament conference broke up as Germany proclaimed withdrawal from the disarmament initiative, as well as from the League of Nations, effective October 23rd.

1938 – Nazis planned Jewish ghettos for all major cities.

1938 – The first flight of the Curtiss Aircraft Company’s P-40 Warhawk fighter plane. The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was an American single-engined, single-seat, all-metal fighter and ground-attack aircraft. The P-40 design was a modification of the previous Curtiss P-36 Hawk which reduced development time and enabled a rapid entry into production and operational service. The Warhawk was used by most Allied powers during World War II, and remained in frontline service until the end of the war. It was the third most-produced American fighter, after the P-51 and P-47; by November 1944, when production of the P-40 ceased, 13,738 had been built, all at Curtiss-Wright Corporation’s main production facilities at Buffalo, New York. P-40 Warhawk was the name the United States Army Air Corps adopted for all models, making it the official name in the United States for all P-40s. The British Commonwealth and Soviet air forces used the name Tomahawk for models equivalent to the P-40B and P-40C, and the name Kittyhawk for models equivalent to the P-40D and all later variants.

P-40s first saw combat with the British Commonwealth squadrons of the Desert Air Force in the Middle East and North African campaigns, during June 1941. No. 112 Squadron Royal Air Force, was among the first to operate Tomahawks in North Africa and the unit was the first Allied military aviation unit to feature the “shark mouth” logo, copying similar markings on some Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 110 twin-engine fighters. The P-40’s lack of a two-stage supercharger made it inferior to Luftwaffe fighters such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 or the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in high-altitude combat and it was rarely used in operations in Northwest Europe.

Between 1941 and 1944, the P-40 played a critical role with Allied air forces in three major theaters: North Africa, the Southwest Pacific and China. It also had a significant role in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Alaska and Italy. The P-40’s performance at high altitudes was not as important in those theaters, where it served as an air superiority fighter, bomber escort and fighter bomber.

Although it gained a postwar reputation as a mediocre design, suitable only for close air support, recent research including scrutiny of the records of individual Allied squadrons, indicates that the P-40 performed surprisingly well as an air superiority fighter, at times suffering severe losses but also taking a very heavy toll of enemy aircraft, especially when flown against the lightweight and maneuverable Japanese fighters like the Oscar and Zero in the manner recommended in 1941 by General Claire Chennault, the AVG’s commander in southern China. The P-40 offered the additional advantage of low cost, which kept it in production as a ground-attack aircraft long after it was obsolete as a fighter. In 2008, 29 P-40s were still airworthy.

1943 – The American 8th Air Force conducts a raid on the German ball-bearing works at Schweinfurt. The force of 291 B-17 Flying Fortresses does considerable damage to the target but lose 60 planes with others damaged. The loss rate is too high to maintain so the USAAF abandons long-range, unescorted daylight raids.

1944 – German Field Marshal Rommel (52), suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, was visited at home by two of Hitler’s staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chose suicide and it was announced that he died of wounds.

1944 – CGCs Eastwind and Southwind captured the Nazi weather and supply vessel Externsteine off the coast of Greenland after a brief fire-fight. There were no casualties. The Coast Guardsmen christened their prize-of-war USS Eastbreeze and placed a prize crew on board.

1947 – Air Force test pilot Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager (24) flew the experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane aircraft and broke the sound barrier to Mach 1.07 for the first time over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., which was then called Muroc Army Air Field. The area has the largest dry lake bed in the world, a 44-square mile area known as Rogers Lake.

Suspended from the belly of a Boeing B-29, Glamorous Glennis was dropped at 10:26 a.m. from a height of 20,000 feet. Yeager (who had broken two ribs in a riding accident the night before) fired the four rocket motor chambers in pairs, breaking through the sound barrier as he increased airspeed to almost 700 mph and climbed to an altitude of 43,000 feet. The XS-1 remained at supersonic speeds for 20.5 seconds, with none of the buffeting that characterized high-speed subsonic flight. The 14-minute flight was Yeager’s ninth since being named primary pilot in June 1947. The Air Force and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the forerunner of NASA) did not make the event public until Jun 10, 1948.

1949 – Leaders of the American Communist Party were convicted of conspiracy to advocate the violent overthrow of the US government under provisions of the Smith Act. They were sentenced with fines and imprisonment. The trial, held in New York in 1949, was one of the lengthiest trials in American history.

1950 – Nine Chinese armies, totaling over 300,000 men, began to cross the Yalu River. By traveling at night and hiding during the day, the largely foot-mobile Communist Chinese Forces avoided detection by U.N. aerial surveillance.

1958 – The American Atomic Energy Commission, with supporting military units, carries out an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site, just north of Las Vegas.

1968 – The first live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft was transmitted from Apollo 7.

1993 – U.S. helicopter pilot Michael Durant and a Nigerian peacekeeper were freed by Somali fighters loyal to Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

1998 – The UN for a 7th year called for an end to the US economic embargo against Cuba. Only the US and Israel cast negative votes.

1999 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, Launch Complex 41, built in 1945, was destroyed to make way for Atlas V rockets.

2001 – President George W. Bush sternly rejected a Taliban offer to discuss handing over Osama bin Laden to a third country, saying, “They must have not heard. There’s no negotiations.”

2002 – Linda Franklin (47) of Arlington, Va., was shot in the head and killed as she and her husband loaded packages into their car outside a Home Depot at the Seven Corners Shopping Center. She had worked as an analyst for the FBI.

2005 – A high ranking undercover Central Intelligence Agency officer, Jose A Rodriguez, Jr., will coordinate CIA, FBI, and State Department spying operations as the new director of the National Clandestine Service.

2010 – The Obama administration asks United States District Court for the Central District of California judge Virginia A. Phillips to stay her ruling in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is unconstitutional while it appeals the decision.

2011 – U.S. President Barack Obama authorizes the deployment of up to 100 American soldiers to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assist in operations against the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency.
PostPosted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 9:14 am
October 15th ~

1789 – George Washington went to New England on the 1st presidential tour.

1813 – During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), was killed.

1817 – Tadeusz AB Kosciusko (b.1746), Polish Lt-Gen. and American Revolution freedom fighter, died. Trained in military academies in Warsaw and Paris, he offered his services to the colonists in the American Revolution because of his commitment to the ideal of liberty. Arriving in America in 1777, he took part in the Saratoga campaign and advised Horatio Gates to fortify Bemis Heights. Later he fortified (1778) West Point and fought (1780) with distinction under Gen. Nathanael Greene in the Carolina campaign. After his return to Poland he became a champion of Polish independence.

1861 – The British steamship Fingal, purchased by James D. Bulloch for the US Southern Confederacy, ran into the Austrian brig Siccardi, which sank with her load of coal in England’s Holyhead harbor. The Fingal quickly sailed for Savannah. The Fingal was later converted to an ironclad and renamed Atlanta.

1863 – For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sank during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, S.C, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.

1880 – Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists. Victorio Beduiat; was a warrior and chief of the Warm Springs band of the Tchihendeh (or Chihenne, usually called Mimbreño) division of the central Apaches in what is now the American states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

1892 – US government convinced the Crow Indians to give up 1.8 million acres of their reservation (in the mountainous area of western Montana) for 50 cents per acre. Presidential proclamation opened this land to settlers.

1917 – USS Cassin (DD-43) torpedoed by German submarine U-61 off coast of Ireland. In trying to save the ship, Gunner’s Mate Osmond Kelly Ingram becomes first American sailor killed in World War I and later is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism. He becomes the first enlisted man to have a ship named for him, in 1919.

1918 – Lieutenant Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan earned the Medal of Honor while leading his regiment, the 165th Infantry (formerly the 69th New York, the “Fighting 69th” of Civil War fame), 42nd “Rainbow” Division, in an attack to capture a German strongpoint. By acts of personal courage such as rallying platoons of soldiers decimated and about to break from enemy fire, he again led them forward. Though seriously wounded he refused to be evacuated and continued to command his men from a bomb crater. Eventually the Americans did have to withdraw after suffering devastating losses. Donovan started his Guard service by organizing his own cavalry troop which then commanded during its tour of duty on the Mexican border in 1916.

He then joined the 69th New York just prior to the mobilization for World War I. Even before earning the Medal of Honor, in July 1918, he displayed extreme courage while leading a battalion in its attack on German positions in the Oureq River (called by the Irish of the 69th as the “O’Rourke River”) sector. For this action he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (the Army’s second highest medal for valor). In World War II Donovan organized and commanded the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of today’s CIA.

1941 – The 1st mass deportation of German Jews to Eastern Europe.

1946 – Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.

1948 – First women officers on active duty sworn in as commissioned officers in regular Navy under Women’s Service Integration Act of June 1948 by Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan.

1951 – Operation DECOY, a mock amphibious landing near Kojo designed as a feint, was led by the battleship USS Iowa along with six carriers, four cruisers and more than 30 destroyers. Throughout the Korean War, U.S. and allied naval forces maintained a tight blockade of North Korean waters so the enemy could not use the sea to transport troops and supplies. Control of the sea also allowed the UN command to threaten other amphibious landings in the rear of the Chinese and North Korean armies arrayed along the 38th parallel. The enemy took the threat seriously and positioned sizeable troop units along both coasts and far from the front lines where they were badly needed.

1956 – Fortran, the first modern computer language, is shared with the coding community for the first time.

1960 – USS Patrick Henry (SSBN-599) begins successful firing of four Polaris test vehicles under operational rather than test conditions. Tests are completed on 18th October.

1964 – It was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office. He was succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev.

1997 – NASA’s plutonium-powered Cassini spacecraft rocketed flawlessly toward Saturn. It was destined to arrive at Saturn on July 1, 2004.

2001 – US warplanes carried out their heaviest bombings in 9 days over Afghanistan. The Pentagon called in the slow moving AC-130 Spectre gunships to targets around Kandahar.

2001 – Anthrax in a letter to a Reno Microsoft office was reported to be from Malaysia. 2 anthrax-tainted letters were reported to have been mailed from Trenton, New Jersey and 2 postal employees there showed symptoms. Anthrax spores were in a letter deliver to a Senate office. Officials announced that a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had tested positive for anthrax, and that the infant son of an ABC News producer in New York had developed skin anthrax.

2001 – Following the anthrax attacks in Florida and New York the EPA requested Coast Guard assistance. Members of the Atlantic Strike Team deployed to Washington, D.C., while Gulf Strike Team members were deployed to Florida. Strike team members conducted entries into the affected areas, collected samples, and assisted in the cleanup of those areas.

2002 – In Iraq Saddam Hussein won the presidential referendum for another 7-year term. He claimed a 100% victory the next day.

2003 – In China Shenzhou 5 launched into orbit with air force Lt. Col. Yang Liwei (38) aboard, making China the third nation to put a human in space on its own, after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

2003 – In the Gaza Strip a remote-controlled bomb exploded under a US diplomatic convoy, ripping apart an armored van and killing three Americans.

2003 – In Iraq the new dinar was launched. Exchange of the old currency was set to end Jan 15th.

2003 – NATO launched its elite rapid-reaction force, a prototype unit that will eventually become a 20,000-member force able to deploy in short notice anywhere in the world.

2004 – US Marines launched air and ground attacks on the insurgent bastion Fallujah after city representatives suspended peace talks with the government over PM Ayad Allawi’s demand to hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

2005 – Iraqis vote. The Iraqi public narrowly passes the draft constitution. In a referendum, the new Iraqi constitution was ratified.

2014 – A second health worker tests positive for the Ebola virus in Dallas, Texas.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 12:59 pm
October 16th ~

1492 – Columbus’ fleet anchored at “Fernandina” (Long Island, Bahamas).

1701 – Yale University was founded as The Collegiate School of Kilingworth, Connecticut by Congregationalists who considered Harvard too liberal.

1710 – British troops occupied Port Royal, Nova Scotia.

1780 – A raid on Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont are the last major raids of the American Revolutionary War. Just before dawn the town line of Tunbridge and Royalton was witness to the last major raid of the Revolutionary War in New England. In the “Royalton Raid” three hundred Indians led by British soldiers invaded from Canada along the First Branch of the White River. Part of a series of raids designed to terrorize frontier settlements, the result was the destruction of dozens of homes, crops and livestock necessary to survive the coming winter.

1781 – General Cornwallis finding no way out from Yorktown seige. At about 4:00 A.M. Lt. Colonel Robert Abercromby led 350 British troops on a sortie to spike allied guns now in position on the second parallel. Abercromby was able to spike four guns after pretending to be an American detachment. Moving to another position along the parallel, the British were this time driven back to their lines by a French covering party. However, they had managed to spike two more guns, but the allies were able to get all the spiked guns back into action within six hours. That evening, General Cornwallis attempted to ferry across the York River to see about fighting his way out by way of Gloucester, but a storm frustrated these efforts.

1846 – American dentist, William T. G. Morton first demonstrated ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Ether Dome.

1859 – On Sunday evening radical abolitionist John Brown and a tiny army of five black and 13 white supporters seized the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Convinced that local slaves would rise up behind him, Brown planned to establish a new republic of fugitives in the Appalachian Mountains. Brown’s plans immediately went awry when the expected slave rebellion did not happen and the townspeople trapped Brown’s men inside the engine house at the Federal arsenal.

Within 24 hours, Brown and his four surviving men were captured by a force of 90 U.S. Marines under the command of Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee. Brown, quickly convicted of criminal conspiracy and treason and sentenced to death, was hanged on December 2, 1859. As he went to the gallows, Brown handed a note to one of his guards: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

1861 – The Confederacy started selling postage stamps.

1909 – William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold a summit, a first between a U.S. and a Mexican president, and they only narrowly escape assassination. Frederick Russell Burnham, a private security officer, and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and Moore captured and disarmed the assassin within only a few feet of Taft and Díaz.

1940 – Benjamin O. Davis, became the U.S. Army’s first African American Brigadier General.

1940 – Registration begins for the draft according to the provisions of the Selective Service Act. The first drafts will be balloted on October 29th. This is the first peacetime draft in US history.

1942 – Near Guadalcanal, American aircraft from the carrier USS Hornet raid supply bases on Santa Isabel. On Guadalcanal, the Japanese increase their bombardment of American positions in preparation for a major attack.

1946 – Ten Nazi war criminals condemned during the Nuremberg trials were hanged. The defendants included: Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring, who was sentenced to death but committed suicide the morning of the execution; former deputy Führer Rudolph Hess, sentenced to life imprisonment; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, hanged; head of the armed forces high command Wilhelm Keitel, hanged; writer and “philosopher” of National Socialism Alfred Rosenberg; U-boat Admiral Karl Dönitz, 10-year imprisonment; Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, life imprisonment; Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Shirach, 20-year imprisonment; procurer of slave labor Fritz Sauckel, hanged; and Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the German high command, hanged. The hanging was badly botched as most Nazis slowly strangle to death.

1962 – The Cuban missile crisis began as President Kennedy was informed that reconnaissance photographs had revealed the presence of missile bases in Cuba. Kennedy organized the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. These 19 men will help him through the coming crisis.

1964 – Red China detonated its first atomic bomb and became the world’s 4th nuclear power.

1987 – In the Persian Gulf, an Iranian missile hit a re-flagged Kuwaiti ship in the first direct attack on the tanker fleet guarded by the U.S.

1990 – US forces reached 200,000 in Persian Gulf.

1999 – A New York Air National Guard plane rescued Dr. Jerri Nielsen from a South Pole research center after she’d spent five months isolated by the Antarctic winter, which forced her to treat herself for a breast lump.

1999 – In Afghanistan the Taliban rejected the UN ultimatum to surrender Osama bin Laden and castigated the UN for threatening sanctions.

2001 – A wing of the US Senate building was closed following confirmation that a letter to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., carried anthrax. It was later found that the anthrax contained the additive bentonite to enhance suspension in air. 12 Senate offices were closed as hundreds of staffers underwent anthrax tests.

2001 – Taliban leaders withdrew over $5 million from the Kandahar Da Afghanistan Bank.

2001 – Operation Active Endervour is christened. It operates in the Mediterranean Sea and is designed to prevent the movement of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction as well as to enhance the security of shipping in general. It began on October 4, 2001 as one of the eight NATO responses to the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was one of the first military actions taken by NATO in response to an invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which provides for collective defense. Since its inception, the ships of Active Endeavour have monitored over 79,000 ships (as of April 12, 2006) and conducted voluntary boardings of over 100. They have also escorted over 480 ships through the Strait of Gibraltar until escorting was suspended in 2004.

2002 – Congress gives President George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq to locate and destroy Saddam Hussein’s suspected stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. While the authorization encourages Bush to seek UN support for such action it did not require him to have it in order to attack Iraq. The war, known as Operation Iraqi Freedom, starts in March 2003.

2006 – American and Russian scientists announce the discovery of a new chemical element with the atomic number 118, temporarily designated as Ununoctium.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:19 am
October 17th ~

1777 – General John Burgoyne with British forces of 5,000 men surrendered to General Horatio Gates, commander of the American forces at Schuylerville, NY. In the fall of 1777, the British commander Gen’l. Burgoyne and his men were advancing along the Hudson River. After Burgoyne had retreated to the heights of Saratoga, the Americans stopped and surrounded them. The surrender was a turning point in the American Revolution, demonstrating American determination to gain independence. After the surrender, France sided with the Americans, and other countries began to get involved and align themselves against Britain.

1781 – Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown. Cornwallis’ options had been running out. He had even tried sending blacks infected with smallpox over enemy lines in an attempt to infect the American and French troops. After a futile counterattack, Cornwallis offered to surrender.

1814 – The crew of USRC Eagle, which had been driven ashore near Negros Head, New York in an encounter with the British brig HMS Dispatch, dragged the cutter’s guns up a bluff in an effort to continue the battle.

1814 – Marines and Sailors landed on Grand Terre Island, Louisiana, to punish pirates. Pirate leader, Jean Lafitte’s activities threatened to monopolize the city’s import trade. New Orleans merchants goaded the new American governor, William C. C. Claiborne, into accusing him of piracy and posting a $500 reward. Lafitte made Claiborne a laughingstock with his own offer of $1500 for Claiborne’s capture, and to rub it in he hired District Attorney John R. Grymes as his counselor (for a reported $10,000).
Lafitte would not be bought, bribed, or intimidated. In 1814 the British offered him $30,000 and a Royal Navy commission to help them capture New Orleans. The buccaneer turned them down and informed Claiborne of his wish to become a citizen and to give Claiborne his support, if his privateer followers were pardoned for all past crimes. Claiborne was ready to relent when the American Navy swooped down on the Grand Terre base and destroyed it. Fortunately for the infant United States, General Andrew Jackson sought out the buccaneer and agreed to honor his request.

1871 – President Grant suspended writ of habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in enforcement of the Ku Klux Klan Act.

1877 – Brigadier General Alfred Terry met with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians’ return to the United States. Sitting Bull and his followers had fled to Canada after the Little Big Horn. This meeting will fail.

1894 – Ohio national guard killed 3 lynchers while rescuing a black man. A mob gathered outside the Fayette County court house with the intent to lynch convicted rapist William “Jasper” Dolby. Gov. William McKinley ordered Ohio National Guard troops to subdue the mob. Oct. 17, 1894, the crowd battered the doors and was fired upon. Five men were killed. McKinley reaffirmed the National Guard troops decision, “The law was upheld as it should have been …but in this case at a fearful cost… Lynching cannot be tolerated in Ohio.” Bullet holes are still visible in the south court house doors.

1922 – LCDR Virgil C. Griffin in Vought VE-7SF makes first takeoff from U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV-1) anchored in York River, Virginia.

1933 – Due to rising anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Hitler’s Germany, Albert Einstein immigrated to the United States. He made his new home in Princeton, N.J.

1941 – The U.S. destroyer Kearney DD-432 was damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11 Americans were killed.

1941 – General Hideki Tojo (1885-1948) became Premier and Minister of War in Japan. When the bellicose war minister and most powerful man in Japan, Army General Hideki Tojo, became prime minister, there no longer was a chance of avoiding war with Britain and the United States.

1943 – The last operational German auxiliary cruiser, Michel, is sunk by the American submarine Tarpon off the Japanese coast. The German raider has sunk 17 ships during its cruise.

1945 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose,” was arrested by 3 CIC officers in her Tokyo apartment.

1973 – Arab oil-producing nations announced they would begin cutting back on oil exports to Western nations and Japan; the result was a total embargo that lasted until March 1974 and caused oil prices to quadruple.

1978 – President Carter signed a bill restoring U.S. citizenship to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1997 – The US Army used a Miracl (medium infra-red advanced chemical laser developed by TRW) laser beam to hit the MISTI-3 satellite in orbit. The laser test was prohibited by Congress in 1985, but the ban expired in 1995. The test failed to be recorded by sensors on the satellite.

2001 – Federal officials reported that the anthrax strains in New York and Florida appeared to be identical. The House and 6 congressional office buildings were closed for tests after over 30 Senate staff members tested positive for exposure to spores.

2004 – Jordan’s military prosecutor indicted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the most wanted insurgents in Iraq, and 12 other alleged Muslim militants for an alleged al-Qaida linked plot to attack the U.S. Embassy in Amman and Jordanian government targets.

2004 – The Tawhid and Jihad group, a militant group led by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

2011 – Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson opens the world’s first commercial spaceport, Spaceport America, in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The SpaceShipTwo spaceplane is expected to begin commercial flights from the spaceport by 2013.

2014 – The President of the United States Barack Obama names lawyer and former political operative Ron Klain as “ebola czar” to coordinate US response to the Ebola outbreak. Klain will not begin in the job until March 2015.

2014 – The X-37B experimental spaceplane, lands at Vandenburg Air Force base after 675 days in space. OTV-3, the second mission for the first X-37B and the third X-37B mission overall, was originally scheduled to launch on 25 October 2012, but was postponed because of an engine issue with the Atlas V launch vehicle.[55] The X-37B was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral on 11 December 2012. The launch was designated USA-240.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 1:35 pm
October 18th ~

Feast Day of St. Luke the Apostle, Patron Saint of the Medical Corps: Luke, the writer of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, has been identified with St. Paul’s “Luke, the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). We know few other facts about Luke’s life from Scripture and from early Church historians. It is believed that Luke was born a Greek and a Gentile. In Colossians 10-14 speaks of those friends who are with him. He first mentions all those “of the circumcision” — in other words, Jews — and he does not include Luke in this group. Luke’s gospel shows special sensitivity to evangelizing Gentiles. It is only in his gospel that we hear the parable of the Good Samaritan, that we hear Jesus praising the faith of Gentiles such as the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian (Lk.4:25-27), and that we hear the story of the one grateful leper who is a Samaritan (Lk.17:11-19). According to the early Church historian Eusebius Luke was born at Antioch in Syria.

1540 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s forces destroy the fortified town of Mabila in present-day Alabama, killing Tuskaloosa. When Hernando de Soto had first met Tuskaloosa at his home village, and asked him for supplies, Tuskaloosa advised them to travel to another of his towns, known as Mabila, where supplies would be waiting. A native messenger was sent ahead to Mabila, but when Tuskaloosa and the first group of Spaniards arrived, Tuskaloosa simply asked them to leave. When a fight broke out between one soldier and a native, many hidden warriors emerged from houses and began shooting arrows. The Spaniards fled, leaving their possessions inside the fortress.

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon, who rallied against the Virginian government, died of fever at 29. Bacon’s Rebellion fell apart when he fell ill.

1767 – The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Mason-Dixon line, was agreed upon. The two surveyors who mapped the line were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

1775 – The Burning of Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) prompts the Continental Congress to establish the Continental Navy. The Burning of Falmouth was an attack by a fleet of Royal Navy vessels on the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (site of the modern city of Portland, Maine, and not to be confused with the modern towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts or Falmouth, Maine). The fleet was commanded by Captain Henry Mowat. The attack began with a naval bombardment which included incendiary shot, followed by a landing party meant to complete the town’s destruction.

The attack was the only major event in what was supposed to be a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. Among the colonies, news of the attack led to rejection of British authority and the establishment of independent governments. It also led the Second Continental Congress to contest British Naval dominance by forming a Continental Navy.

1776 – At the Battle of Pelham Col. John Glover and the Marblehead regiment collided with British Forces in the Bronx. Sir William Howe, Commander-in-Chief of the British army, landed 4,000 English and Hessian troops near the stables on Pelham Parkway in an action which became the first permanent invasion of the American mainland in the American Revolution. Howe’s objective was to outflank the American army by marching west across today’s Bronx along the Boston Post Road. This would also cut off Washington’s vital supply route from New England and enable the British to surround Washington and quickly end the rebellion. However, 600 seamen from the Boston area, led by Colonel John Glover, and fighting from behind Pelham Manor’s stone walls put an end to Howe’s plan and saved Washington’s army.
The main significance of the Battle of Pelham lay in the fact that it bought time for Washington to remove the American army from an extremely perilous position and to retreat to White Plains. It is for this reason that the Battle of Pelham has been called the battle that saved the American Revolution.

1779 – The Franco-American Siege of Savannah is lifted. The Siege of Savannah or the Second Battle of Savannah was an encounter of the American Revolutionary War. The year before, the city of Savannah, Georgia, had been captured by a British expeditionary corps under Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell. The siege itself consisted of a joint Franco-American attempt to retake Savannah beginning on September 16, 1779. On October 9 a major assault against the British siege works had failed. With the failure of the joint American-French attack, the siege failed, and the British remained in control of Savannah until July 1782, near the end of the war.

1799 – In an action of the Quasi-War with France, USRC Pickering (70 men) captured the French privateer L’Egypte Conquiste (250 men).

1812 – U.S. sloop of war Wasp captures HM brig Frolic. Folic had been separated from a convoy by a storm. While repairing damage, the Wasp came into view and was at first taken for a part of the convoy. On October 18th the “Wasp” moved toward the British ship. The “Frolic” hoisted Spanish colors, this keep the strange ship from pursuing the convoy. At 11:30 a.m. the two ships were sailing no more than 60 yards apart. The “Wasp” fired her port guns, and the “Frolic” fired her starboard guns. The British ship fired rapidly, delivering three broadsides to the American’s two. Both crews cheered wildly as the battle became heated. The “Wasp” was landing more shot than the British ship. The ocean was very rough, the crew of the “Frolic” fired their cannon when they were on the crest of the waves. The Americans fired their guns on the lower part of the waves. But in spite of the weather both ships fire was well directed.

At 11:36 a.m. the “Wasp’s” maintop-mast was shot away and fell with it’s yard. At 11:46 a.m. her mizzentop -gallant mast came down and by 11:52 every brace and most of her rigging had been shot away. The British ship however, had been severely damaged in her hull and lower masts. The “Wasp” gradually moved ahead and raked the “Frolic” with a devastating effect. The American ship fired again, this caused many casualties on the “Frolic”. The ships came together, and after one failed attempt because of rough seas the Americans boarded the British ship. Not one Englishman was there to stop the crew of the “Wasp” from boarding. The man at the wheel was dazed but still at his post. Captain Whinyates and Lieutenant Wintle were wounded so severely that they could not stand without support. The crew of the “Frolic” could not fight any longer and Lieutenant Biddle lowered the flag at 12:15 just 43 minutes after the battle had started.

The American ship had been damaged severely in her rigging but only two or three shots struck her hull. The American’s had 5 killed and 5 wounded. The British had 30 killed and 60 wounded. The American ship “Wasp” had a crew of 135 and carried 9 guns. The British ship “Frolic” had a crew of 110 and carried 10 guns.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 1:36 pm
October 18th ~ { Continued }


1842 – US Commodore Thomas Catesby Jones sailed into Monterey, the Mexican capital of California, on the mistaken belief that the US and Mexico had gone to war.

1848 – Captain Douglas Ottinger, USRM, was designated by the Secretary of the Treasury to supervise the construction of the first Life-Saving Stations and the equipment and boats to be place at them.

1859 – U.S. Marines reach Harper’s Ferry, VA and assault the arsenal seized by John Brown and his followers. Colonel Robert E. Lee has Lieutenant JEB Stuart carry a note to Brown demanding his surrender. Brown refuses and closes and bars the doors of the Engine House. Stuart waves his hat up and down as a signal to begin the assault. The Marines attack the doors with sledgehammers, but to no effect. They find a heavy ladder and use that as a battering ram. In two blows, they create a small opening in the right hand door which is split, and they storm into the building. Lieutenant Israel Green, who leads the assault, attacks Brown with the dress sword he brought by mistake from Washington. The sword, which was never meant for combat, bends on Brown’s leather belt. Green grasps the sword by the ruined blade and hits Brown over the head with it, knocking him unconscious. The raid is over.

1862 – Morgan’s raiders captured federal garrison at Lexington, Ky. John Morgan and his cavalry surprised Union Major Seidel at Ashland and captured him and his command in broad daylight. After outfitting his command with new horses, colt revolvers and other captured goods, Morgan’s men burned the government stables and railroad depot before leaving Lexington.

1867 – United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.

1898 – The American flag was raised in Puerto Rico shortly before Spain formally relinquished control of the island.

1939 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned foreign war submarines from U.S. ports and waters.

1942 – In reaction to several incidents, Hitler orders that all prisoners taken from Commando or similar units are to be shot immediately whether in uniform or not and whether surrendering or not.

1943 – General Orders 27, 29th Infantry Division (DC, MD, VA) disbands the 29th Ranger Battalion (Provisional). Organized in December 1942 from volunteers drawn from the 29th Division, its 500-men undertook specialized training conducted by the famous British Commandos. The soldiers learned how to penetrate deep behind enemy lines, staging raids and gathering intelligence. When the battalion was organized it was planned by the Army to disband the unit so its men could return to their former companies and teach these advanced skills to other members of the division. Some veterans of D-Day and the Normandy campaign credit these added skills to saving their lives.

1944 – All able-bodied German males between the ages of 16 and 60 are now liable for conscription into the Volkssturm (the home defense force).

1945 – The USSR’s nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1950 – US forces drove north across the 38th parallel into the Peoples Republic of North Korea.

1954 – Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio.

1967 – A protest in Madison, Wisc., against recruiting by Dow Chemical, the maker of napalm and Agent Orange, turned violent.

1968 – In Operation Sea Lords, the Navy’s three major operating forces in Vietnam (TF 115, 116, and 117) are brought together for the first time to stop Vietcong infiltration deep into South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

1987 – President Reagan summoned congressional leaders to the White House to announce he had decided on what action to take in response to an Iranian missile attack on a U.S.-flagged tanker off Kuwait two days earlier. (The next day, U.S. destroyers bombarded an Iranian offshore oil rig.)

1989 – The space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a five-day mission that included deployment of the Galileo space probe on a course for Jupiter.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 1:38 pm
October 18th ~ { Continued }

1990 – Iraq offered to sell its oil to anyone—including the United States—for $21 a barrel, the same price level that preceded the invasion of Kuwait.

1997 – A $21.5 million memorial to honor the military service of US women was dedicated at entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

1999 – A US presidential panel recommended that Navy gunnery on the Vieques Island of Puerto Rico be reduced and abandoned in 5 years.

2000 – President Clinton honored the 17 sailors killed in a suicide bomb attack against the USS Cole as he attended a ceremony at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia.

2001 – CBS News announced that an employee in Dan Rather’s office had tested positive for skin anthrax.

2001 – Two new cases of anthrax were reported in New Jersey.

2001 – The FBI and Postal Service announced a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of anthrax mailings.

2001 – Four disciples of Osama bin Laden, convicted in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, were sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay $33 million in restitution to victims.

2001 – In Afghanistan the city of Kandahar was reported to have collapsed to “pre-Taliban lawlessness.” The first US Special Forces were reported to have begun operating on the ground in southern Afghanistan.

2001 – Germany issued an international arrest warrant for Zakariya Essabar for links to the bombing of the WTC.

2002 – Two US Navy planes, F/A-18F Super Hornet jets, collided off the Big Sur coast of California and 4 pilots were killed.

2002 – Space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth following an 11-day mission to the International Space Station.

2002 – Five trucks carrying looted Kuwaiti archives left the Iraqi capital, bound for Kuwait.

2003 – A new audiotape, purporting to be from Osama bin Laden and promised fresh attacks against the United States.

2003 – Russia launched a Soyuz capsule from Kazakhstan with a 3-man crew for the International Space Station. Aboard were an American, a Russian and a Spaniard.

2004 – Iraqi PM Allawi said that an exchange of weapons for cash will be extended across the country. A militant group in Iraq said it had executed two Macedonian men accused of spying for the US. Saboteurs attacked a key oil pipeline in northern Iraq, setting it on fire.

2005 – Saddam Hussein’s trial begins in Iraq

2011 – Spaceport America officially opens in New Mexico as the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

2011 – United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes an unannounced visit to the Libyan capital Tripoli, aiming to strengthen ties between the United States and the National Transitional Council, which has established itself as Libya’s ruling body following the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.

2014 – USS Detroit (LCS-7), a Freedom class littoral combat ship ( a class of relatively small surface vessels intended for operations close to shore) of the United States Navy, was launched and christened. The ceremonial “laying of the keel” was in early November 2012, at Marinette WI.
PostPosted: Mon Oct 19, 2015 12:19 pm
October 19th ~

1739 – England declared war on Spain over borderlines in Florida. The War is known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear because a Member of Parliament waved a dried ear and demanded revenge for alleged mistreatment of British sailors. British seaman Robert Jenkins had his ear amputated following a 1731 barroom brawl with a Spanish Customs guard in Havana and saved the ear in his sea chest.

1765 – The Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties.

1781 – Major General Lord Charles Cornwallis, surrounded at Yorktown, Va., by American and French regiments numbering 17,600 men, surrendered to George Washington and Count de Rochambeau. Cornwallis surrendered 7,157 troops, including sick and wounded, and 840 sailors, along with 244 artillery pieces. Losses in this battle had been light on both sides. Cornwallis sent Brig. Gen. Charles O’Hara to surrender his sword. At Washington’s behest, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln accepted it. Washington himself is seen in the right background of “The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown” by artist John Trumbull.
After conducting an indecisive foray into Virginia, Lt. Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis retired to Yorktown on August 2, 1781. On August 16, General Washington and Maj. Gen. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, began marching their Continental and French armies from New York to Virginia. The arrival of a French fleet, and its victory over a British fleet in Chesapeake Bay, sealed the trap.

1818 – US and Chickasaw Indians signed a treaty. Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby represented American interests. The Chickasaws ceded their claims to lands in Tennessee.

1843 – CAPT Robert Stockton in Princeton, the first screw propelled naval steamer, challenges British merchant ship Great Western to a race off New York, which Princeton won easily.

1848 – John “The Pathfinder” Fremont moved out from near Westport, Missouri, on his fourth Western expedition–a failed attempt to open a trail across the Rocky Mountains along the 38th parallel.

1864 – Philip Sheridan and his gelding horse Rienzi made their most famous ride to repulse an attack led by Lt. General Jubal A. Early at Cedar Creek, Virginia. Sheridan had been on his way back from a strategy session in Washington, D.C. when Early attacked. The Union scored a narrow victory which helped it secure the Shenandoah Valley.

1864 – The northernmost action of the American Civil War took place in the Vermont town of St. Albans. Some 25 escaped Confederate POWs led by Kentuckian Bennett Young (21) raided the town near the Canadian border with the intent of robbing three banks and burning the town. While they managed to leave town and hide out in Canada with more than $200,000, their attempts to burn down the town failed. Most of the raiders were captured and imprisoned in Canada and later released after a court ruled the robberies in St. Albans were acts of war.

1915 – Establishment of Submarine Base at New London, Connecticut. In 1868, Connecticut gave the Navy land and, in 1872, two brick buildings and a “T” shaped pier were built and officially declared a Navy Yard. Today the Naval Submarine Base New London (SUBASE NLON), located on the east side of Thames River in Groton, CT, proudly claims its motto to be “The First and Finest.”

1917 – The first doughnut was fried by Salvation Army (who would found the United Service Organization) volunteer women for American troops in France during World War I.

1919 – The US Distinguished Service Medal was awarded to a woman for the 1st time. Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, the first Director of the WAC, was the first woman to receive The U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.

1926 – John C. Garand patented a semi-automatic rifle. Civil Service employee John Garand was in a class all by himself, much like the weapons he created. Garand was Chief Civilian Engineer at the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts. Garand invented a semiautomatic .30 caliber rifle, known as the M-1 or “the Garand,” which was adopted in 1936 after grueling tests by the Army. It was gas-operated, weighed under 10 pounds, and was loaded by an 8-round enbloc clip. It fired more than twice as fast as the Army’s previous standard-issue rifle and was praised by General George S. Patton, Jr., as “a magnificent weapon” and “the most deadly rifle in the world.”

1933 – Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

1939 – Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering began plundering art treasures throughout Nazi occupied areas.

1942 – The Japanese submarine I-36 launched a floatplane for a reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor. The pilot and crew reported on the ships in the harbor, after which the aircraft was lost at sea.

1950 – The People’s Republic of China joins the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu River to fight United Nations forces.

1951 – President Truman signed an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.

1973 – President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes.

1987 – In Operation Nimble Archer, U.S. Navy warships disabled 3 Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on a U.S.-flagged tanker off Kuwait.

1990 – Iraq ordered all foreigners in occupied Kuwait to report to authorities or face punishment.

1993 – Two US Blackhawk helicopters are fired upon with RPG’s over Mogadishu.

1999 – A 2-year Rand analysis concluded that the drug pyridostigmine bromide could not be excluded as a contributor to Gulf War syndrome. The drug was an experimental nerve gas antidote given to as many as 300,000 US troops during the Persian Gulf War.

2001 – The FBI identified the Trenton, NJ, mailbox from which the anthrax letters were sent to NYC and Washington. Two more people were reported to be infected bringing the total to 8.

2001 – In Philadelphia luggage, from a baggage locker that was deposited Sep 29, was found to contain C-4 plastic explosives.

2005 – Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

2007 – Four United States Air Force officers are relieved of command following an investigation of an incident where live nuclear warheads were carried on a B-52 bomber from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
PostPosted: Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:45 am
October 20th ~

1786 – Harvard University organized the 1st astronomical expedition in US.

1803 – The US Senate voted to ratify Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.

1818 – The Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settles the Canada–United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.

1820 – Spain sold a part of Florida to US for $5 million.

1824 – U.S. Schooner Porpoise captures four pirate ships off Cuba.

1903 – The Joint Commission, set up on January 24 by Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate the disputed Alaskan boundary, ruled in favor of the United States. The deciding vote was Britain’s, which embittered Canada. The United States gained ports on the panhandle coast of Alaska.

1926 – President Calvin Coolidge ordered Marines to guard the U. S. Mail. In Elizabeth, New Jersey, on 14 October 1926, the brutal robbery and killing of a U. S. Mail truck driver forced President Calvin Coolidge to turn to the Marine Corps for assistance in the civil community. By Presidential Order, 2,500 Marines proceeded on duty to guard the mail. Soon after...they are issued Thompson SMG's.

1927 – Henry Ford hand stamped the very first Model A engine number. Even though the Model A was in production for only four years, it sold nearly five million units worldwide. The Model A was also one of the first affordable cars to take safety into consideration, with shatterproof glass, four wheel brakes and bumpers as standard equipment.

1939 – The German government warns that neutral merchant ships joining Allied convoys will be sunk without warning. It is also announced that Hitler has signed a decree by which 3,000,000 Jews now living in Poland will get their own territory in eastern Poland, with a Jewish capital at Lublin.

1942 – The United States Congress passes the largest tax bill in the country’s history. It will raise $6,881,000,000 in tax revenue.

1944 – Seventh Fleet lands over 60,000 Army troops on Leyte, Philippines while Japanese aircraft attack. Many Coast Guard units participated in the landings. During the night, Japanese forces launch unsuccessful counterattacks against the beachheads.

1944 – The US 19th Tactical Air Force breaches the dam at Dieuze, France, causing extensive flooding to the rear of German 1st Army, opposite US 3rd Army.

1945 – Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon formed the Arab League to present a unified front against the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. A representative of Palestinian Arabs, although he did not sign the charter because he represented no recognized government, was given full status and a vote in the Arab League. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was granted full membership in 1976.

1950 – President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order “activating” the Magnuson Act, which had been passed by Congress earlier that month. This act, authorizing the president to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917, tasked the Coast Guard with the port security mission.

1950 – In the first airborne operation of the Korean War, 2,860 paratroopers of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team jumped between Sukchon and Sunchon, 25 miles north of Pyongyang. Far East Air Force C-119s and C-47s transported the assault force and F-80 and F-51 fighters provided air cover.

1962 – Major General Donald McGowan, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau and the other Reserve Component directors are given a Top Secret briefing in the Pentagon on the impending crisis following the discovery on October 18th of Soviet nuclear missile sites being constructed in Cuba. President John Kennedy would announce this intelligence to the world in a televised speech on October 22nd, causing worldwide concern of a nuclear war. After the President’s speech a number of Guard units, primarily Air Guard fighter groups, were given alert notifications that they might be called up if the crisis deepened. All of these units began operating at an increased tempo (though officially in a training status), flying along American coastal areas keeping watch for anything suspicious. However, with the Soviet agreement to withdraw the missiles tensions began to subside and no Guard units were actually mobilized during the crisis.

1967 – Operation Coronado VII began in Mekong Delta, Vietnam. A M-132-Al flame configured armored personnel carrier was shoe-horned into an ATAC of River Assault Division NINETY-TWO. Tests were initiated and the results were excellent. This weapon would prove to be a great asset in future combat operations. It would give yeoman service as a destroyer of offensive bunkers

1973 – Arab oil-producing nations banned oil exports to the United States, following the outbreak of Arab-Israeli war.

1973 – “Saturday Night Massacre”: United States President Richard Nixon fires U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Robert Bork.

1978 – The cutter Cuyahoga sank after colliding with M/V Santa Cruz II near the mouth of the Potomac River. Eleven Coast Guard personnel were killed.

1981 – Three members of the radical Weather Underground were arrested following a bungled armored truck robbery in Nanuet, N.Y., where a guard was killed. 2 police officers were killed when the getaway truck was halted in Nyack. Kathy Boudin was sentenced 20 years to life for assisting in the getaway. In 2003 Boudin was paroled.

1983 – Due to political strife, USS Independence (CV-59) ordered to Grenada.

1992 – The host Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Atlanta Braves, 3-2 in game three of the World Series, taking a two-games-to-one lead. This was the first World Series game to be played outside the U.S. During the pre-game ceremony, a Marine color guard presented the Canadian flag.

1995 – Space shuttle “Columbia” was launched on a research flight that had been delayed six times. The second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) Spacelab mission will be the prime payload on STS-73. The 16-day flight will continue a cooperative effort of the U.S. government, universities and industry to push back the frontiers of science and technology in “microgravity”, the near-weightless environment of space.

1999 – The Cold War (1951-1977) locations of nuclear weapons minus their nuclear charges was partly revealed in a 1978 top secret Pentagon document entitled “History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons.”

2001 – It was reported that the US was using a 40-year-old EC C-130 plane called “Commando Solo” to broadcast messages and music over Afghanistan.

2001 – Traces of anthrax were found in a US House of Representatives mail room. This became the 3rd Capital Hill building infected.

2011 – The former leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, and his son Mutassim Gaddafi are killed shortly after the Battle of Sirte while in the custody of NTC fighters.
PostPosted: Wed Oct 21, 2015 11:57 am
October 21st ~

1774 – First display of the word “Liberty” on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America. The Sons of Liberty were in the habit of meeting under a large tree (most village greens had one), which was called the “Liberty Tree”. In cities or towns that lacked a tree big enough, the rebels would erect a tall pole as a symbolic tree.

1797 – The 44-gun 204-foot U.S. Navy frigate USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, was launched in Boston’s harbor. It was never defeated in 42 battles. 216 crew members set sail again in 1997 for its 200th birthday. Although her construction is almost halted by a 1796 peace treaty with Algiers, the CONSTITUTION is launched-christened by visiting Capt. James Sever using a bottle of Madeira. It is actually the third attempt to launch her; the first was a month earlier, when the ship sticks after moving only 27 feet. Two days later she moves another 31 feet before sticking once again. For the third attempt, workers make the launching ways steeper, which finally enables a successful event. The public, which includes several French aristocrats, is warned beforehand that the launch of such a large ship might cause a dangerously large wave, but none actually materializes during the event.

1837 – Under a flag of truce during peace talks, U.S. troops sieged the Indian Seminole Chief Osceola in Florida. Osceola, who was sick with malaria, knew the Indians could fight no more. He went to the General’s fort at St. Augustine with a white flag. When Osceola went to General Jesup the General had his men surround Osceola. They threw the white flag to the ground and put chains on his hands and feet. The Seminoles were so angry with Osceola’s capture that they continued to fight for the next five years.

1861 – A Union assault across the Potomac River north of Washington, DC, at a site named Harrison’s Landing or better known to history as “Ball’s Bluff” was repulsed with heavy losses. While Confederate loses were rather light the Union forces suffered 223 men killed and more than 700 captured, several hundred of them wounded.

1872 – The U.S. Naval Academy admitted John H. Conyers, the first African American to be accepted.

1879 – Thomas Edison invents a workable electric light bulb at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. which was tested the next day and lasted 13.5 hours. This would be the invention of the first commercially practical incandescent light. Popular belief is that he invented the first light bulb, which he did not.

1916 – US Army formed Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). Congress recognized the need for an expanded military reserve to supplement the National Guard, and it passed the National Defense Act. The National Defense Act provided for the establishment of the Officers’ Reserve Corps, to be comprised of men trained in ROTC and in Army training camps.

1917 – Members of the First Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, became the first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I. The first U.S. troops entered the front lines at Sommervillier under French command. During the night, a battalion from each regiment and designated batteries of the division moved in beside corresponding units of the 18th French Division and began training in caring for themselves in the trenches, in patrolling, observation, and artillery procedures. The battalions and batteries were rotated at ten-day intervals until all had been at the front.

1942 – Eight American and British officers landed from a submarine on an Algerian beach to take measure of Vichy French to the Operation Torch landings. The transports and escorts in support of the Allied invasion of French North Africa, sail. Despite the presence of 21 German U-boats in the waters off Gibraltar and the Moroccan coast, the transports are only mentioned vaguely in dispatches to Italy and Germany.

1944 – During World War II, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen. It was one of the largest urban battles fought by U.S. forces in World War II, and the first city on German soil to be captured by the Allies. The battle ended with a German surrender, but their tenacious defense significantly disrupted Allied plans for the advance into Germany.

1949 – Northrop launches the YB-49 Flying Wing, big brother to the B-2 stealth bomber. The Northrop YB-49 was a prototype jet-powered heavy bomber aircraft developed by Northrop Corporation shortly after World War II for service with the U.S. Air Force. The YB-49 featured a Flying Wing design and was a jet-powered development of the earlier, piston-engined Northrop XB-35 and YB-35. The two YB-49s actually built were both converted YB-35 test aircraft. The YB-49 never entered production, being passed over in favor of the more conventional Convair B-36 piston-driven design. Design work performed in the development of the YB-35 and YB-49 nonetheless proved to be valuable to Northrop decades later in the eventual development of the B-2 stealth bomber, which entered service in the early 1990s.

1959 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA. By the late 1960s their rockets were taking men to the moon.

1983 – The United States sent a ten-ship task force to Grenada, one of the smallest independent nations in the Western Hemisphere and one of the southernmost Caribbean islands in the Windward chain. The Cuban government had decided to utilize the former British colony as a holding place for arms and military equipment, complete with a major airport. Eastern Caribbean nations fully understood the implication of the communist threat and called upon the United States for help. The response was Operation Urgent Fury, a multinational, multiservice effort. Commanding officers of the US Navy ships have not yet been told what the mission in Grenada will be–to evacuate U.S. citizens, neutralize any resistance, stabilize the situation and maintain the peace.

1994 – United States and North Korea signed an agreement requiring the communist nation to halt its nuclear program and agree to inspections.

1997 – It was reported that The Energy Dept. and the Arthur D. Little company had developed a new fuel system for cars that uses fuel cell technology first developed by NASA. Electricity would be produced by extracting hydrogen from gasoline and combining it with oxygen.

1997 – Pictures of the Antennae galaxies, two intermeshed colliding galaxies, were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996 and revealed to the public for the first time.

1999 – Organizers called for a “Jam Echelon Day,” an effort to overload US National Security Agency (NSA) supercomputers with e-mail containing words such as “bomb.” Echelon was a worldwide surveillance network run by the NSA and partners in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

2001 – A DC postal worker was diagnosed with the deadly inhalation form of anthrax. DC postal worker Thomas L. Morris Jr. (55) died. Officials began testing thousands of postal employees.

2003 – Iran agreed to snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites and to freeze uranium enrichment.

2011 – With the collapse of the discussions about extending the stay of any U.S. troops beyond 2011, where they would not be granted any immunity from the Iraqi government President Obama announced at a White House press conference that all remaining U.S. troops and trainers would leave Iraq by the end of the year as previously scheduled, bringing the U.S. mission in Iraq to an end.
PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2015 9:48 am
October 22nd ~

1777 – British General William Howe requested that he be relieved. This request will be accepted.

1777 – American defenders of Fort Mercer on the Delaware River repulse repeated Hessian attacks in the Battle of Red Bank. The Battle of Red Bank was a battle of the American War for Independence in which a Hessian force was sent to take Fort Mercer on the left bank (or New Jersey side) of the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia, but was decisively defeated by a far inferior force of Colonial defenders. Although the British did take Fort Mercer a month later, the victory supplied a sorely-needed morale boost to the American cause, delayed British plans to consolidate gains in Philadelphia, and relieved pressure on General Washington’s army to the north of the city.

1790 – Warriors of the Miami tribe under Chief Little Turtle defeat United States troops under General Josiah Harmar at the site of present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the Northwest Indian War. The Harmar Campaign was an attempt by the United States to subdue Native Americans in the Northwest Territory in the Autumn of 1790. It was led by General Josiah Harmar and was part of the Northwest Indian War. The campaign featured a series of battles that were all overwhelming victories for the Native Americans, and the losses are sometimes referred to as Harmar’s Defeat.

1824 – The Tennessee Legislature adjourned ending Davy Crockett’s state political career. Crockett died at the legendary siege of the Alamo in 1836.

1836 – Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas.

1846 – Miss Lavinia Fanning Watson of Philadelphia christens the sloop-of-war Germantown, the first U.S. Navy ship sponsored by a woman.

1861 – The 1st telegraph line linking West & East coasts was completed.

1917 – U.S.A. seized raw material for war that had been purchased and stored by Germans in the U.S.A. during the first two years of the war.

1918 – Fierce fighting by the Americans on both banks of Meuse, north of Verdun and in the Woevre in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. III and V Corps had secured the Bois de Foret and Bois des Rappes and had pushed to the norther and westen limits of the Bois de Bantheville. First Army prepares for final assault on Sedan.

1918 – The new Army Air Service (forerunner of the U.S. Air Force) was organized. Calling for volunteers, First Lieutenant Reed Chambers, who was mobilized with a Tennessee National Guard unit, joined up. He was assigned to the newly organized 94th “Hat-in-the-Ring” Pursuit Squadron, soon to become nationally famous for the headlines some of its members, including Chambers, would generate by their combat exploits over “no man’s land” in France. Among the men serving in this squadron was Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, who would earn numerous awards for valor, including the Medal of Honor. Chambers, while not receiving the Medal of Honor, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross with an Oak Leaf Cluster (2nd Award) for his success in shooting down enemy aircraft. His most remarkable feat occurred on this date when he downed two German Folker D-VII’s (often regarded as the best airplane used in the war) in less than five minutes. He ended the war as an ‘ace’ with a total of five kills, and remained in the Air Service as late as 1920.

1951 – First of seven detonations, Operation Buster-Jangle nuclear test. This was a test of the Petite Plutonium fission bomb, designed by Ted Taylor. It consisted of a standard 60 inch, 10,000 lb. implosion system with the plutonium core reduced to what was estimated to be close to the minimum amount of fissile material for an appreciable yield. This was the lowest yield design yet tested, with a predicted yield of only 200 tons. It was a fizzle – the first actual failure of any U.S. nuclear device (the 18th exploded by the U.S.), and the first known failure of any nuclear device. Rather than being a sign of ineptness, this failure was indicative of the increasingly aggressive (and thus risky) U.S. experimental approach to weapon development. It established a close lower bound on the minimum amount of plutonium that could be used in a weapon to produce a significant yield, an important benchmark in weapon design. This was inadvertently a “zero yield” test. The device achieved supercriticality and produced detectable nuclear output, but the energy produced was negligible compared to the high explosive used. The tower was damaged but largely intact from the test. The first attempt to fire this device (on 19 October) was a true failure – nothing happened. The problem was traced to the control circuitry.

1952 – USAF ace Major Robinson “Robbie” Risner, flying an F-86 Sabre out of the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, claimed his sixth MiG-15 of the war.

1955 – The prototype of the F-105 Thunder Chief made its maiden flight. Republic Aircraft’s F-105 Thunderchief, better known as the ‘Thud,’ was the Air Force’s war-horse in Vietnam. In 1951, a design team under Alexander Kartveli at Republic Aircraft began work as a company venture on a new high-performance, single-seat low-level nuclear strike aircraft. The new aircraft, which was given the company designation of “AP-63”, where “AP” stood for “Advanced Project”, was to replace the Air Force’s Republic F-84F Thunderstreak. Many different design concepts were considered, gradually evolving towards something along the lines of a “stretched” F-84F with a bomb bay for a nuclear weapon.
The aircraft was to be fitted with an Allison J71 engine, though as it turned out, this power plant would not prove powerful enough for the aircraft that finally flew and was never actually used. The AP-63 would also be able to carry air-to-surface missiles (ASMs) and air-to-air missiles (AAMs) on under wing pylons. It was to have a top speed of Mach 1.5 and would be capable of defending itself against enemy fighters. The aircraft would have sophisticated combat avionics and mid-air refueling capability. Initial contracts were awarded to Republic in 1952 and 1953 for what at first was a total of 199 aircraft, with initial delivery in 1955.

1962 – President John F. Kennedy announced that missile bases had been discovered in Cuba and they had the potential to attack the United States with nuclear warheads. Kennedy ordered a naval and air blockade on further shipment of military equipment to Cuba. The Russians had previously agreed not to bring new offensive weapons into Cuba, but after hearing Kennedy’s announcement, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused to cooperate with the quarantine. Following a confrontation that threatened nuclear war, Kennedy and Khrushchev agree on October 28 on a formula to end the crisis. On November 2 Kennedy reported that Soviet missile bases in Cuba are being dismantled.

1968 – Apollo 7 returned safely, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. Apollo 7 accomplished what it set out to do- qualifying the command and service module and clearing the way for the proposed lunar-orbit mission to follow. And its activities were of national interest. A special edition of NASA’s news clipping collection called “Current News” included front page stories from 32 major newspapers scattered over the length and breadth of the nation. Although the post mission celebrations may not have rivaled those for the first orbital flight of an American, John Glenn in 1962, enthusiasm was high- and this fervor would build to even greater heights each time the lunar landing goal drew one step closer.

1972 – Operation Linebacker I, the bombing of North Vietnam with B-52 bombers, ended. The U.S. ended all tactical air sorties into North Vietnam above the 20th parallel and brought to a close Linebacker I operations. This “gesture of good will” in terminating the bombing above the 20th parallel was designed to help promote the peace negotiations being held in Paris.

1979 – The U.S. government allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to travel to New York for medical treatment — a decision that precipitated the Iran hostage crisis.

1992 – The space shuttle Columbia was launched on a 10-day mission that included deployment of an Italian satellite. Primary mission objectives were deployment of the Laser Geodynamic Satellite II (LAGEOS-II) and operation of the U.S. Microgravity Payload-1 (USMP-1). LAGEOS-II, a joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), was deployed on day 2 and boosted into an initial elliptical orbit by ASI’s Italian Research Interim Stage (IRIS). The spacecraft’s apogee kick motor later circularized LAGEOS orbit at its operational altitude of 3,666 miles.

1993 – Withdrawal of 750 Rangers from Somalia is complete. The move reflected the administration’s effort to shift the focus in Somalia toward pursuing a political settlement following the deaths of 18 Americans in the Ranger raid on Aidid loyalists Oct. 3.

2001 – A second Washington DC postal worker, Joseph P. Curseen (47), died of inhalation anthrax.

2001 – Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams urged the Irish Republican Army to begin disarming to save Northern Ireland’s peace process.

2011 – North Korea agrees, for the first time in 6 years, to let the United States search for the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War.

2014 – Nineteen days after the first known Ebola patient in the United States is diagnosed and isolated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that there will be a 21-day monitoring period for all travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:37 am
October 23rd ~

1775 – Continental Congress approved a resolution barring blacks from army.

1783 – Virginia emancipated slaves who fought for independence during the Revolutionary War.

1818 – The RC Monroe captured the armed brig Columbia inside the Virginia Capes. Columbia had been “cut out” of a Venezuelan fleet by pirates.

1861 – President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C. for all military-related cases.

1863 – General Grant arrived at Chattanooga and assumed command from General George Thomas.

1917 – The 1st Infantry division, “Big Red One,” fired the 1st US shot in WW I. This morning the first American shell of the war was sent screaming toward German lines by a First Division artillery unit.

1918 – President Wilson felt satisfied that the Germans were accepting his armistice terms and agreed to transmit their request for an armistice to the Allies. The Germans had agreed to suspend submarine warfare, cease inhumane practices such as the use of poison gas, and withdraw troops back into Germany.

1921 – Four unknown soldiers from the cemeteries of Asine-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme, and St. Mihiel were brought to the Hotel de Ville in France for final selection to commemorate the sacrifice of the 77,000 American servicemen who died during World War I. the US military selected bodies of unknown soldiers who died in France. One was chosen to be brought to Arlington National Cemetery. The chosen soldier would represent just one of many who would never be identified. The military service record describes the selection of the first unknown soldier out of a group of four: “The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death.”

The selection of the first unknown soldier to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery was made at the Hotel de Ville. Sergeant Edward F. Younger was chosen to select which of the four unknown soldiers would be brought to the United States. Younger entered the mortuary room, “carrying a spray of white roses which had been donated by M. Brasseur Brulfer, a former member of the City Council. Sergeant Younger passing between two lines formed by the officials, entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted. General Duport stepped forward at the other end of the casket and saluted in the name of the French people. He was followed by the other officials present.” The casket was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with the inscription, “An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War.”

1939 – North of Murmansk, a German prize crew steers the US ship City of Flint into Kola Bay. The steamer was seized as contraband by a German cruiser. SS City of Flint, a freighter of the United States Merchant Marine, was the first American ship captured by the Germans during World War II. Under the command of Captain Joseph H. Gainard, City of Flint first became involved in the war when she rescued 200 survivors of the torpedoed British passenger liner SS Athenia in early September 1939. On October 9, City of Flint was carrying 4000 tons of lubricating oil from New York to Great Britain. (Panzerschiff) Deutschland seized her some 1200 miles out from New York, declaring her cargo to be contraband and the ship a prize of war. A German prize crew painted out all US insignia and hoisted the German ensign.

To avoid the Royal Navy, the prize crew headed for Tromsø. The Norwegians, neutral at the time and disturbed by the sinking of the merchant SS Lotent W. Hassen, refused entry to the Germans. The prize crew then sailed for Murmansk, claiming havarie (the privilege of sanctuary for damage caused at sea), but the Russians also refused entry, stating that if the Germans claimed havarie, the American crew could not be prisoners of war. In the several weeks that elapsed, the United States ordered many US merchant ships to register with other countries, so as to continue supporting the Allies without violating the US’s nominal neutrality. The Royal Navy began closing on the captured ship. The prize crew then tried Norway again at the port of Haugesund. The Norwegian government again refused entry, describing the German crew as kidnappers. The approaching Royal Navy left the prize crew no choice, though; on November 3 they entered the harbor. The Norwegian Admiralty interned the German crew and, on November 6 returned City of Flint to Captain Gainard’s command.

1942 – The Western Task Force, destined for North Africa, departed from Hampton Roads, Virginia. The command of the Western Task Force, part of an invasion of North Africa during World War II known as Operation Torch, was given to General George Patton. Placed under the command of General George Patton, the Western Task Force had the advantage of having a man at the top who would stop at nothing to see that the mission was accomplished, a quality that would be needed in the days ahead. Naval operations were in the hands of Rear Adm. H. Kent Hewitt, an easygoing man who, in the beginning, found it difficult to work with Patton, but with increasing familiarity became a solid partner.

1944 – In the Philippines the Battle of Leyte Gulf began. The US 1st Cavalry Division (part of US 10th Corps) attacks northwest form Toclaban. To the right, armored forces attached to 7th Division (part of US 24th Corps) capture Burauen. At sea, the Japanese Center Force (Kurita) is sited off Palawan by two American submarines. The Japanese lose 2 cruisers to the submarines and sink 1 American submarine. The report of the sighting, however, alerts the three groups of Task Force 38, east of the Philippines.

1944 – The 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry, 36th Infantry Division (TX), soon known as the “Lost Battalion” was cut off on top of a hill by German infantry and armored forces. After six days of stemming repeated enemy attacks and suffering extremely high losses and with ammunition, food and water running out, the battalion was relieved by the other two battalions of the 141st along with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of Japanese-Americans.

1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow.

1950 – Communist troops massacred 68 American POWs in the Sunchon tunnel. A 1st Cavalry Division force under the command of Brigadier General Frank A. Allen rescued 21 survivors.

1954 – In Paris, an agreement was signed providing for West German sovereignty and permitting West Germany to rearm and enter NATO and the Western European Union. Britain, England, France and USSR agreed to end occupation of Germany.

1965 – The 1st Cavalry Division (United States) (Airmobile), in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launches a new operation seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleiku in the II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).

1973 – US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.

1983 – A truck filled with explosives, driven by a Moslem suicide terrorist, crashed into the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut International Airport in Lebanon. The bomb killed 241 Marines and sailors and injured 80. Almost simultaneously, a similar incident occurred at French military headquarters, where 58 died and 15 were injured. Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh was suspected of involvement. They were part of a contingent of 1,800 Marines that had been sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational force to help separate the warring Lebanese factions.

Twice during the early 1980s the U.S. had deployed troops to Lebanon to deal with the fall-out from the 1982 Israeli invasion. In the first deployment, Marines helped oversee the peaceful withdrawal of the PLO from Beirut. In mid-September 1982 — after the U.S. troops had left — Israel’s Lebanese allies massacred an estimated 800 unarmed Palestinian civilians remaining in refugee camps. Following this, 1,800 Marines had been ordered back into Lebanon. The president assembled his national security team to devise a plan of military action. The planned target was the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations.

Instead, President Reagan ordered the battleship USS New Jersey, stationed off the coast of Lebanon, to the hills near Beirut. The move was seen as largely ineffective. Four months after the Marine barracks bombing, U.S. Marines were ordered to start pulling out of Lebanon.

1983 – Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada, West Indies) begins.

1992 – President Bush announced that Vietnam had agreed to turn over all materials in its possession related to U.S. personnel in the Vietnam War.

1997 – The UN threatened a trade ban against Iraq unless Iraq cooperates with weapons inspectors.

2001 – President Bush announced he had authorized money for improved post office security following the deaths of two postal workers from inhalation anthrax.

2001 – Traces of anthrax were found at an off-site facility that handled mail for the White House.

2001 – A relieved NASA team celebrated as the 2001 Mars Odyssey slipped into orbit around the Red Planet, two years after back-to-back failures by Mars missions.

2001 – The Irish Republican Army (IRA) began to destroy its arsenal of weapons in a move to save the Northern Ireland peace process.

2004 – Some 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers were killed in eastern Iraq as they headed home on leave after basic training. Many were shot execution style with gunshots to the back of the head.

2007 – Space Shuttle Discovery successfully lifts off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the United States. The Shuttle was carrying the STS-120 crew on an assembly mission to the International Space Station, as well as the Harmony module.

2014 – A New York City physician tests positive for Ebola at the Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan after treating Ebola patients in Guinea.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:19 am
October 24th ~

1590 – John White, the governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the “lost” colonists.

1742 – Gooch’s American Regiment of Foot is disbanded and its men, most weakened by tropical diseases, are boarded on ships to return them to their respective colonies. With the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain in 1740 the British authorities decided to capture the Spanish colony of Cartagena (today the nation of Columbia) in South America. The regular army was stretched too thin to support this effort so it was determined to organize an expedition from volunteers drawn from the militia of eleven of the English North American colonies. Two colonies, Georgia and South Carolina, were too involved in their own ‘war’ against Indian raids coming from Spanish Florida to aid in the Cartagena campaign. From the remaining 11 colonies a huge regiment numbering almost 3,500 men was organized. It was known by several designations as the 61st Regiment of Foot, the American Regiment and probably most frequently as “Gooch’s Regiment” after Virginia’s Governor, William Gooch, who served as its colonel. Keeping with the regional composition of the regiment, the 1st Battalion was composed of men from New England, the 2nd from New Jersey and New York, the 3rd from Pennsylvania and Delaware and the 4th from Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Commanding a Virginia company in the 4th Battalion was Captain Lawrence Washington, older brother of George.
The expedition proved an utter failure, due to incompetence in leadership and poor planning which had the men involved in a siege operation during the height of the malaria and yellow fever season. Only about 600 men survived the expedition. Perhaps the most lasting effect of the entire venture was when Lawrence Washington returned home he named his plantation “Mount Vernon” in honor of Admiral Edward Vernon, the British naval commander of the expedition. When Lawrence died in 1752 and George inherited the property he retained the name, which it still carries today.

1755 – A British expedition against the French held Fort Niagara in Canada ended in failure. British Governor William Shirley determined that this makeshift navy had been unable to prevent French reinforcement and resupply of the fort and decided to delay the planned attack on Niagara until 1756.

1861 – West Virginia seceded from Virginia. Residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state. The accuracy of these election results have been questioned, since Union troops were stationed at many of the polls to prevent Confederate sympathizers from voting. The mountain range west of the Blue Ridge became the eastern border of West Virginia to provide a defense against Confederate invasion.

1861 – Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line. The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent as Justice Stephen J. Field of California transmitted a telegram to President Lincoln. Telegraph lines linked the West Coast to the rest of the country and made the Pony Express obsolete late in the year.'

1911 – Robert Scott’s expedition left Cape Evans for the South Pole.

1915 – The Marine Corps Recruit Depot was moved from Norfolk and established at Parris Island, South Carolina.

1929 – Black Thursday—the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression. Dow Jones was down 12.8%. Stock values collapsed and 13 million shares changed hands as small investors frantically tried to sell off their holdings, a new record; 4 million was the average of the day. Thousands of confused investors and brokers were ruined and banks, which had also invested heavily in the market, failed when they could not produce enough cash on demand for angry depositors. Most of the panic took place in the morning hours. The ticker tape machine fell behind by an hour and a half leaving investors madly scrambling to sell their investments without even knowing the current prices. Panic set in. A people gathered outside the exchanges and brokerages, police were dispatched to insure peace.

1944 – “Ace of Aces” David Mc Campbell (1910-1996) and one other fighter faced 60 planes approaching US forces. He shot down 9 “Zekes” and with his comrade managed to scatter the remaining 51 planes at the battle of Leyte Gulf. As the Jap planes approached the security of their bases on Luzon, the two Americans’ low fuel finally ended the slaughter. The Hellcats broke off and headed for Essex. In one morning sortie, Mc Campbell had shot down nine enemy planes and Rushing six, an unparalleled achievement in American fighter aviation.

1944 – Hitler informs his generals of his intention to launch a surprise counteroffensive against the weakly held Ardennes area of the Allied line.

1945 – The United Nations was born with the ratification of its charter by the first 29 nations at a San Francisco Conference chaired by the State Department’s Alger Hiss.

1946 – A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space. Launched from the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, the rocket reached a maximum altitude of 107.5 miles (173 km), well above the commonly accepted boundary of space at 100 kilometers.

1951 – Dr. Albert W. Bellamy, chief of Radiological Services for the California State Civil Defense, held a press conference to assure state residents that there would be no ill effects from the atomic test explosions near Las Vegas.

1951 – The largest air battle of the Korean War occurs at 150 MiGs attack a formation of B-29s escorted by 55 F-84 Thunderjets. Four of the bombers were destroyed and three others seriously damaged and one F-84 was lost. Eight MiGs were destroyed (an additional two probably destroyed) and 10 others heavily damaged.

1957 – The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and sabotage of enemy satellites. The program ran to 10 December 1963, cost $660 million ($5.08 billion today), and was cancelled just after spacecraft construction had begun.

1958 – USS Kleinsmith (APD-134) evacuates U.S. nationals from Nicaro, Cuba. While operating out of Guantanamo Bay 24 October, she rescued 56 U.S. citizens and 3 foreign nationals at Nicaro, Cuba, where they were endangered by military operations between the Cuban Army and the Castro rebels.

1962 – The U.S. blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis officially began under a proclamation signed by President Kennedy. Atlantic Fleet begins quarantine operations to force Soviet Union to agree to remove ballistic missiles and long range bombers from Cuba. On the day the quarantine was to take effect, the alignment of Soviet and free world nations continued to develop rapidly. The evening before, the U.S. position was presented to a special session of the United Nations Security Council.
Soviet Ambassador Zorin’s speech in reply emphasized that the present crisis existed between the United States and Cuba and reflected a Soviet desire to avoid the appearance of a direct Soviet-U.S. confrontation. This approach appeared to be calculated to create a climate for a U.S. reversal of the quarantine stand, to diminish the military threat to the U.S. and to reduce tensions among Soviet Bloc masses. Various developments throughout the day suggested that the Soviet Bloc intended to proceed with extreme caution. This indication was supported by Zorin’s comparatively mild statements at the UN, the lack of any Soviet move to evacuate dependents in East Germany and elsewhere, and other political developments. The Commander in Chief, Atlantic, established the surface quarantine line on an arc 500 miles from Cape Maysi between 27-30N, 75W and 20N, 65W. The line thus established was out of range of Soviet IL-28 “Beagle” bombers based in Cuba. The line was to be manned by 12 destroyers from Task Force 136.

1968 – At the National Air and Space Administration test pilot Bill Dana was at the controls of the North American X-15 rocket-propelled research aircraft when it made the 199th–and what turned out to be the final–flight of the X-15 program. He was flying the X-15-1, which had been the first of three aircraft to participate in a series of tests that spanned a decade and resulted in major advances for America’s space flight program. In the course of that research, the X-15s spent 18 hours flying above Mach 1, 12 hours above Mach 2, nearly 9 hours above Mach 3, almost 6 hours above Mach 4, one hour above Mach 5 and a few short minutes above Mach 6. The X-15 was hailed by the scientific community as the most successful research aircraft of all time.

1972 – Henry Kissinger in secret unauthorized talks in Paris proposed to end the war in Vietnam by this date, but was urged by Pres. Nixon to stretch the timing a few months so as to insure re-election in Nov. The peace agreement allowed North Vietnam to keep its army in the South.

1998 – Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission. Deep Space 1 (DS1) is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies. The Deep Space mission carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille, which was selected as the mission’s science target. Its mission was extended twice to include an encounter with Comet Borrelly and further engineering testing. Problems during its initial stages and with its star tracker led to repeated changes in mission configuration. While the flyby of the asteroid was a partial success, the encounter with the comet retrieved valuable information. Three of twelve technologies on board had to work within a few minutes of separation from the carrier rocket for the mission to continue.

2000 – The space shuttle Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base following the 100th shuttle flight and work on the Int’l. Space Station.

2001 – The US government arranged to buy 100 million Cipro tablets from Bayer for 95 cents each. The tablets were for anthrax.

2002 – John Allen Muhammad (41), an Army veteran who recently converted to Islam, and John Lee Malvo (17) were arrested near Frederick, Maryland, in connection with the sniper shootings that left 10 dead and 3 wounded. In 2003 a judge ruled that Malvo could be tried as an adult. Muhammad began to argue his own defense on Oct 20th.

2004 – A Soyuz capsule, carrying 2 Russians and an American, landed in Kazakhstan. The crew had spent 6 months at the int’l. space station.

2010 – South Korea and the United States cancel a joint naval drill against North Korea in the Yellow Sea, citing its previous anti-submarine training, held from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, and a desire “not to irritate neighboring countries” ahead of the upcoming 2010 G-20 Seoul summit.

2013 – Germany summons the United States Ambassador over claims that the US monitored Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:11 am
October 25th ~

1760 – King George III of Britain was crowned. He succeeded his late grandfather, George II and ruled until 1820. With the rule of George III the civil list (government officers, judges, ambassadors and royal staff) was paid by the Parliament in return for the king’s surrender of the hereditary revenues of the crown.

1812 – The U.S. frigate United States captured the British vessel Macedonian during the War of 1812.

1825 – Erie Canal opened, linking Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean.

1864 – Skirmishes took place at Mine Creek, KS. About six miles south of Trading Post, where the Marais de Cygnes engagement had occurred, the brigades of Col. Frederick W. Benteen and Col. John F. Phillips, of Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton’s Provisional Cavalry Division, overtook the Confederates as they were crossing Mine Creek. These Rebels, stalled by their wagons crossing the ford, had formed a line on the north side of Mine Creek. The Federals, although outnumbered, commenced the attack as additional troops from Pleasonton’s command arrived during the fight. They soon surrounded the Rebels, resulting in the capture of about 600 men and two generals, Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke and Brig. Gen. William L. Cabell. Having lost this many men, Price’s army was doomed. Retreat to friendly territory was the only recourse.

1888 – Richard E. Byrd, U.S. aviator and explorer who made the first flight over the North Pole, was born.

1923 – The Teapot Dome scandal came to public attention as Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, subcommittee chairman, revealed the findings of the past 18 months of investigation. His case would result in the conviction of Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, and later Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, the first cabinet member in American history to go to jail. The scandal, named for the Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming, involved Fall secretly leasing naval oil reserve lands to private companies.

1924 – Airship, USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), completes round trip transcontinental cruise that began on 7 October. The U.S.S. Shenandoah (ZR-1), the first American-built rigid airship, made her first flight on September 4, 1923. She was lost in a storm over southeastern Ohio on September 3, 1925, taking the lives of fourteen of her crew, including the ship’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne. One of the ship’s officers, Charles Rosendahl, free-ballooned in the detached bow section along with a number of other survivors until the bow came to rest on the ground.

1944 – The USS Tang under Richard O’Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship’s own malfunctioning torpedo.

1945 – Japanese surrendered Taiwan to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

1950 – U.N. forces approached to within 34 miles of the Yalu River, the Chinese Manchurian border, as the Chinese Communist Forces launched their First Phase Offensive around this date. UNC intelligence agencies remained ignorant of Chinese intentions and the extent of their commitment to intervening in the war.

1952 – The 7th Infantry Division battled the Chinese near Kumwha and suffered 2,000 casualties during the Battle of Sniper Ridge.

1952 – The USS Missouri hurled 500 tons of high-explosive shells against entrenched enemy in the vicinity of Tanchon.

1958 – The last U.S. troops left Beirut.

1960 – Cuba nationalized all remaining US businesses.

1962 – U.S. ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson presented photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba to the U.N. Security Council. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson demanded USSR and Zorin answer regarding Cuban missile bases saying ” Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don’t wait for the translation. Yes or no? I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over.”

1963 – Anti-Kennedy “WANTED FOR TREASON” pamphlets scattered in Dallas.

1971 – The UN General Assembly voted to admit the People’s Republic of China and expel Nationalist China (Taiwan).

1972 – The first female FBI agents were hired.

1974 – The US Air Force fired its 1st ICBM.

1983 – 1,800 U.S. Marines and Rangers, assisted by 300 soldiers from six Caribbean nations, invaded Grenada at the order of President Reagan, who said the action was needed to protect U.S. citizens there.

1985 – CGC Polar Sea arrived home to Seattle after a voyage through the Northwest Passage by way of the Panama Canal, the east coast, and then Greenland, sparking an international incident with Canada. She completed the first solo circumnavigation of the North American continent by a U.S. vessel and the first trip by a Polar-Class icebreaker. She also captured the record for the fastest transit of the historic northern route. She had departed Seattle to begin the voyage on 6 June 1985.

1990 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the Pentagon was laying plans to send as many as 100-thousand more troops to Saudi Arabia.

1993 – Colonel Irene Trowell-Harris, from the New York Air National Guard, is promoted to Brigadier General on this date; thus becoming the National Guard’s first African American woman to hold general officer rank.

1996 – Federal Judge Richard Matsch granted Oklahoma City bombing defendants Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols separate trials.

2001 – A day after the House signed on, the Senate sent President Bush a package of anti-terror measures giving police improved ability for searches and wiretaps.

2001 – A State Dept. mail worker in Virginia was diagnosed with the inhalational form of anthrax.

2001 – American warplanes dropped cluster bombs for the 1st time on Taliban front lines.

2001 – Operation Green Quest was the name given to a Treasury Dept. led task force headed by the Customs Service to crack down on financial sponsors of terrorism.

2004 – Hamid Karzai was assured of a majority in Afghanistan’s election to become its first democratically chosen president. A close to final tally soon gave Karzai 55.4% of the vote.

2004 – Saboteurs blew up a pipeline feeding Iraq’s biggest refinery.

2007 – The United States imposes economic sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for its support of terrorism.

2011 – The last of the United States’ nine-megaton B53 warheads, formerly the most powerful nuclear weapons in the country’s nuclear arsenal, is disassembled near Amarillo, Texas, having been in service since 1962.

2014 – USS North Dakota (SSN-784), a Virginia-class submarine of the United States Navy, is commissioned. She will be the second U.S. Navy ship to be named for the U.S. state of North Dakota.
PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:32 am
October 26th ~

1682 – William Penn accepted the area around the Delaware River from the Duke of York.
It would later be named Pennsylvania ( Penn's Woods ).

1774 – The first Continental Congress, which protested British measures and called for civil disobedience, concluded in Philadelphia. The Congress, which included delegated from 12 of the 13 colonies, Georgia had decided not to attend and were distracted by restive Creek Indians, had met at the Philadelphia Carpenter’s Hall. Major actions taken by the Congress included the following: The Association. The Congress adopted the Continental Association, or simply, the Association, which established a total boycott by means of non-importation, non-exportation and non-consumption accords. These agreements were to be enforced by a group of committees in each community, which would publish the names of merchants defying the boycott, confiscate contraband and encourage public frugality.
The Declaration of Rights and Grievances: The Congress composed a statement of American complaints. It was addressed to King George III, to whom the delegates remained loyal, and pointedly not to Parliament. The radical elements were critical of the Declaration because it conceded the right of Parliament to regulate colonial trade, a traditional view long held by most Americans, but one that was losing favor in the mid-1770s. Future Meeting. Finally the Congress agreed to convene the following spring if colonial complaints had not been properly addressed. That meeting, the Second Continental Congress, was indeed called in May 1775 in the wake of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The First Continental Congress was regarded as a success by both the general public and the delegates. The latter, despite heated and frequent disagreements, had come to understand the problems and aspirations of people living in other colonies. Many of the friendships forged there would make easier the gargantuan task of governing the new nation in the coming years.

1774 – Minutemen were selected in the American colonies. The terms militia and minutemen are sometimes used interchangeably, but there was a difference between them. Militia were military units formed to protect their towns from foreign invasion. Minutemen, on the other hand, were a small elite force, hand-picked by militia commanders, which were required to be able to assemble quickly. Usually 25 years of age or younger, they were chosen for their enthusiasm, reliability, and physical strength. Usually about a fourth of the militia served as Minutemen. Although today Minutemen are thought of as originating in the War for Independence, they actually began in Massachusetts during as early as 1645. Equipped with matchlocks or pikes, they were to report within half an hour of being warned. One thing the Minutemen lacked was central leadership, a flaw that would lead to their dissolution.
At Concord, Minutemen companies from Concord, Acton, Littleton, and other towns combined their units. They were sent to the North Bridge in Concord with a number of light infantry. After a few volleys were fired, the British light infantry retreated back to the Concord Common area. Lacking central command, each company of Minutemen chose their own action and they did not pursue the redcoats. In the running battle that ensued fifteen miles back to Boston the Massachusetts militia would see their last action as Minutemen in history. The militia would go on to form an army, surrounding Boston and inflicting heavy casualties on the British army at Bunker and Breed’s Hill.

1775 – King George III of Great Britain goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1776 – Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

1787 – “Federalist Papers,” a series of articles written under the pen name of Publius by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, were published and called for ratification of Constitution. Madison, widely recognized as the Father of the Constitution, would later go on to become President of the United States. Jay would become the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Hamilton would serve in the Cabinet and become a major force in setting economic policy for the US.

1795 – Pinckney’s Treaty (Treaty of San Lorenzo) between Spain and US was signed.

1861 – The Pony Express ended after 18 months of operation. Financially, the owners spent $700,000 on the Pony Express and had a $200,000 deficit. The company failed to get the million dollar government contract because of political pressures and the outbreak of the Civil War.

1864 – “Bloody Bill” Anderson, Confederate guerilla, is killed. Notorious Confederate guerrilla leader William “Bloody Bill” Anderson is killed in Missouri in an ambush. Born in Kentucky in 1839, Anderson grew up in Missouri and moved to Kansas in 1857. Arriving to settle on his father’s land claim east of Council Grove, he was soon enmeshed in the bitter fight over slavery that gave the area the nickname “Bleeding Kansas.” Before the war, he trafficked stolen horses and escorted wagon trains along the Santa Fe Trail. When the war broke out, Anderson joined an antislavery, pro-Union band of guerillas known as “Jayhawkers.” He soon switched sides and joined a band of pro-Confederate “Bushwhackers.”
In the partisan warfare of Kansas and Missouri, these groups were often more interested in robbery, looting, and personal gain than advancement of a political cause. Anderson’s father was killed in a dispute in 1862. Anderson and his brother Jim gunned down the killer and then moved the family back to western Missouri. Anderson became the head of a band ranging from 30 to 40 guerillas, and his activities cast a shadow of suspicion over the rest of his family. The Union commander along the border, General Thomas Ewing, arrested several wives and sisters of a notorious band, led by William Quantrill, that was terrorizing and murdering Union sympathizers. While Anderson commanded his own band, he often collaborated with Quantrill’s larger force. As a result, the group Ewing arrested also included three of Anderson’s sisters, who were imprisoned in a temporary Union jail in Kansas City. On August 14, the structure collapsed, killing Anderson’s 14-year-old sister Josephine and injuring his two other sisters. Quantrill assembled 450 men to exact revenge against the abolitionist community of Lawrence, Kansas. On August 21, the band killed 150 residents and burned much of the town. Anderson was credited with 14 murders that day. Anderson went to Texas that winter, got married, and returned to Missouri in 1864 with a band of about 50 fighters. Anderson embarked on a summer of violence, leading his group on a campaign that killed hundreds and caused extensive damage.
The climax came on September 27 when Anderson’s gang joined with several others to pillage the town of Centralia, Missouri. When more than 100 Union soldiers pursued them, the guerillas ambushed and massacred the entire detachment. Just a month later, Anderson’s band was caught in a Union ambush outside of Albany, Missouri, and Anderson was killed by two bullets to his head. The body of the “blood-drenched savage,” as he became known in the area, was placed on public display. Anderson kept a rope to record his killings, and there were 54 knots in it at the time of his death.

1876 – President Grant sent federal troops to SC. The soldiers assigned to South Carolina belonged to the 7th Cavalry, Lt. Col. (Brevet Maj. Gen.) George Armstrong Custer’s regiment, which had recently fought the Cheyennes on the Great Plains. The troops were headquartered in York County, the center for much of the Klan activity in the state, and they were commanded by 37-year-old Major Lewis M. Merrill. At first skeptical of the seemingly alarmist accounts of the KKK, Merrill soon became convinced of the basic truth of the allegations and would go on to play a crucial role in combating terrorism in the state.

1889 – Marine Barracks was established at Naval Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:35 am
October 26th ~ { continued... }

1912 – By an executive order Delaware was represented by the first star and Delaware was represented by the top stripe of the American flag. Delaware was the first of the 13 colonies to ratify the Constitution, on Dec. 7, 1787. It was thus assigned the top of the 13 stripes and the first of the then 48 stars by an executive order signed by President William Howard Taft. Each subsequent stripe was then assigned to the colonies in the order in which they ratified the Constitution. The first 13 stars (from left to right) also represent the order in which the colonies ratified, and are then followed by the rest of the states in the order in which they were admitted into the Union.

1918 – General Erich Ludendorff is replaces a deputy chief of the General Staff by General Wilhelm Groener. Ludendorff has recently quarreled with his superior, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg had suggested that Germany seek an armistice.

1921 – In first successful test, a compressed air, turntable catapult, launches an N-9 seaplane. This type of catapult was later installed on battleships, replacing turret-mounted platforms for launching aircraft.

1922 – LCDR Godfrey deChevalier makes first landing aboard a carrier (USS Langley) while underway off Cape Henry, Virginia.

1939 – On the eve of the Senate vote on amending the Neutrality Act, President Roosevelt delivers a fireside chat: “In and out of Congress we have heard orators and commentators and others beating their breasts proclaiming against sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe. That I do not hesitate to label as one of the worst fakes in current history. It is a deliberate setup of an imaginary bogey.”

1940 – Para Marines organize at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Two Marine parachute operations were planned during the war in the Pacific, but were both cancelled. The only combat jump by the Para Marines was in Southern France when a group of Marines jumped as part of an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team to aid the French Resistance. For the remainder of the war, the Para Marines were employed as regular infantry in the Pacific. In 1944 the Regiment was disbanded when it was decided the need for airborne Marines were no longer needed.

1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight. The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang was an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II, the Korean War and other conflicts. The Mustang was conceived, designed and built by North American Aviation (NAA) in response to a specification issued directly to NAA by the British Purchasing Commission. The prototype NA-73X airframe was rolled out on 9 September 1940, 102 days after the contract was signed and, with an engine installed, first flew on this date. The Mustang was originally designed to use the Allison V-1710 engine, which had limited high-altitude performance.
It was first flown operationally by the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a tactical-reconnaissance aircraft and fighter-bomber (Mustang Mk I). The addition of the Rolls-Royce Merlin to the P-51B/C model transformed the Mustang’s performance at altitudes above 15,000 feet, matching or bettering that of the Luftwaffe’s fighters. The definitive version, the P-51D, was powered by the Packard V-1650-7, a license-built version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 60 series two-stage two-speed supercharged engine, and armed with six .50 caliber (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns. From late 1943, P-51Bs (supplemented by P-51Ds from mid-1944) were used by the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force to escort bombers in raids over Germany, while the RAF’s 2 TAF and the USAAF’s Ninth Air Force used the Merlin-powered Mustangs as fighter-bombers, roles in which the Mustang helped ensure Allied air superiority in 1944. The P-51 was also in service with Allied air forces in the North African, Mediterranean and Italian theaters, and saw limited service against the Japanese in the Pacific War.
During World War II, Mustang pilots claimed 4,950 enemy aircraft shot down. At the start of the Korean War, the Mustang was the main fighter of the United Nations until jet fighters such as the F-86 took over this role; the Mustang then became a specialized fighter-bomber. Despite the advent of jet fighters, the Mustang remained in service with some air forces until the early 1980s. After World War II and the Korean War, many Mustangs were converted for civilian use, especially air racing, and increasingly, preserved and flown as historic war bird aircraft at airshows.

1942 – The Battle of Santa Cruz. Both American and Japanese forces launch at dawn. Two hours later the Japanese attack reach and seriously damages the USS Hornet. Both attacks have been launched at the extreme edge of the aircrafts’ range and the Japanese have the advantage as their range is longer. When the American planes find part of the Japanese force, there is not enough fuel left for an organized attack, however, the cruiser Chikuma of Admiral Abe’s Vanguard Group is damaged. The remainder of the planes attack the carrier Shokaku and damage it heavily. A second wave of Japanese attackers severely damages the USS Enterprise but many of the planes are shot down by the antiaircraft guns of the South Dakota. The third wave of Japanese planes from the Junyo suffer the same fate.
Even though the Enterprise is made partially operational, Admiral Kinkaid decides to withdraw. The battle is considered a Japanese victory. The damaged USS Enterprise is now the only American carrier in the Pacific. However, the victory is costly as again loss of Japanese aircrew is high and the lost of aircraft has removed the effectiveness of the undamaged aircraft carrier Zuikaku. The loss of planes and crew also mean that no attack on Henderson Field airstrip is possible.

1944 – Special Task Air Group One makes last attack in month long demonstration of TDR drone missile against Japanese shipping and islands in the Pacific. Of 46 missiles fired, 29 reached their target areas.

1950 – U.S. Amphibious Force Seventh Fleet lands 1st Marine Division at Wonsan, Korea

1950 – A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reached the Yalu River. They were the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushed the whole army down into South Korea.

1962 – JFK warned Russia that the US would not allow Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba. Nikita Khrushchev sent note to JFK offering to withdraw his missiles from Cuba if US closed its bases in Turkey. The offer was rejected. A boarding party from the Pierce and Kennedy executed the first quarantine interdiction of the Marucla. A tanker, the Groznyy is placed under aerial surveillance. Three more Soviet ships en route to Cuba were reported to have changed course and were returning to their ports of departure. They were the Vishnevsky, Okhotsk, and Sergev Botkin. Later in the day, Lawrence and MacDonough were shadowing Groznyy. The tanker had several cylindrical tanks topside and had declared them to contain ammonia.

1962 – At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasilli Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused to agree with his Captain’s order to launch nuclear torpedos against US warships and setting off what might well have been a terminal superpower nuclear war. The US had been dropping depth charges near the submarine in an attempt to force it to surface, unaware it was carrying nuclear arms. The Soviet officers, who had lost radio contact with Moscow, concluded that World War 3 had begun, and 2 of the officers agreed to ‘blast the warships out of the water’. Arkhipov refused to agree – unanimous consent of 3 officers was required – and thanks to him, we are here to talk about it.
PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:38 am
October 26th ~ { continued...}

1963 – USS Andrew Jackson (SSBN-619) launches first Polaris A-3 missile from a submerged submarine, off Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1966 – A fire breaks out on board the 42,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Tonkin. The accident occurred when a locker filled with night illumination magnesium flares burst into flame. The fire spread quickly through most of the ship, resulting in 35 officers and eight enlisted men killed and a further 16 injured. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the valor of crewmen who pushed 300 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound bombs that lay within reach of the flames on the hangar deck overboard. The fire destroyed four fighter-bombers and two helicopters, but it was brought under control after three hours. The fallen were returned to the United States for burial.

1967 – The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his Queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.

1968 – The 1st Infantry Division troops are attacked in Binh Long Province (III Corps), 60 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. Communist forces launched a mortar, rocket, and ground attack against Fire Support Base (FSB) Julie, eight miles west of An Loc. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry, manned the FSB. U.S. B-52s conducted 22 strikes over the area in an effort to disperse a reported massing of North Vietnamese forces. The defenders were successful in fending off the Communist attack but eight soldiers were killed and 33 were wounded.

1972 – National security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam. The war would drag on until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

1972 – Igor Sikorsky (83), Russian-born helicopter pioneer, died. Igor Ivan Sikorsky pioneered early Russian aviation while barely out of his teens and had the longest continuous aeronautical career in history-more than 60 years.

1977 – The experimental space shuttle Enterprise glided to a bumpy but successful landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This is the 5th and final test.

1998 – In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered an investigation of Osama bin Laden.

1998 – A UN panel reported that the Iraqi government lied to UN weapons inspectors about its nerve gas arsenal and had loaded the VX nerve agent on at least 2 warheads during the Persian Gulf War.

1999 – The US CIA agreed to give Germany copies of some 32,000 files that belonged to the Stasi, the former East German intelligence service. The CIA acquired the files in 1989.

2001 – Pres. Bush signed a sweeping anti-terrorism bill into law. It gave police and intelligence agencies vast new powers to fight terrorism. The USA Patriot Act.

2001 – Anthrax was found in the offices of 3 lawmakers in the Longworth House Office building on Capital Hill. The Supreme Court was shut down to test for anthrax spores.

2001 – Lockheed Martin won a $200 million military contract, the biggest in US history, for a new fleet of fighter jets for the US and British forces.

2002 – President Bush launched urgent diplomatic talks to unite Japan, South Korea and other allies behind a strategy to deal with a nuclear-armed North Korea. He also sought support for possible war with Iraq as Pacific Rim leaders stung by terrorism gathered for their annual summit.

2004 – Spacecraft Cassini flew within 745 miles of Titan providing scientists with new images of the Saturn largest moon.

2006 – George W. Bush signs into law The Secure Fence Act of 2006 to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Congress has failed to fund the project sufficiently to finish the fence.

2014 – Camp Leatherneck, an American base, and Camp Bastion, the last remaining British base in Afghanistan, next to it are handed over to the Afghan Government.
PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 10:41 am
October 27th ~

1682 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded. William Penn founded the city to serve as capital of Pennsylvania Colony. By the 1750s, Philadelphia had surpassed Boston to become the largest city and busiest port in British America, and second in the British Empire, behind London. During the American Revolution, Philadelphia played an instrumental role as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787. Philadelphia was one of the nation’s capitals during the Revolutionary War, and the city served as the temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C., was under construction. During the 19th century, Philadelphia became a major industrial center and railroad hub that grew from an influx of European immigrants. It became a prime destination for African Americans during the Great Migration and surpassed two million occupants by 1950.

1728 – Captain James Cook (d.1779), explorer, was born in Scotland. His discoveries included the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

1787 – The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of 77 essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, was published in a New York newspaper. The essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay were later published as “The Federalist Papers.”

1795 – In Madrid, the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also known as Pinckney’s Treaty), which provided for free navigation of the Mississippi River. The Treaty of San Lorenzo between Spain and the United States played a major role in the expansion of the infant nation’s boundaries. Preceded by the acquisition of lands set forth by the Northwest Ordinance eight years earlier, and soon-to-be followed by the Louisiana Purchase eight years later, the Treaty of San Lorenzo opened up the Mississippi River to American navigation.

1810 – President James Madison ordered the annexation of the western part of West Florida.

1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated. Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the Extermination Order in Latter Day Saint history, was an executive order issued on October 27, 1838 by the governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs. It was issued in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Mormons and a unit of the Missouri State Guard in northern Ray County, Missouri, during the 1838 Mormon War. Claiming that the Mormons had committed “open and avowed defiance of the laws”, and had “made war upon the people of this State,” Boggs directed that “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description”. While Executive Order 44 is often referred to as the “Mormon Extermination Order” due to the phrasing used by Boggs, no one is known to have been killed by the militia or anyone else specifically because of it.

1858 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States (1901-1909) who was the namesake of the “Teddy” bear, was born in New York City. Today a reconstruction of the house is a National Historic Site and open to the public. The 26th president of the U.S., Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919. He wrote the 4-volume “The Winning of the West.” In 1996 The American Experience series broadcast a 4-hr. TV special that covered his life. His pursuit of boxing left him blind in one eye. He put 230 million acres of land under federal protection. “Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.”

1862 – A Confederate force was routed at the Battle of Labadieville, near Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana. Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commanding Union forces in the Department of the Gulf, launched an expedition into the Bayou Lafourche region to eliminate the Rebel threat from that area, to make sure that sugar and cotton products from there would come into Union hands and, in the future, to use it as a base for other military operations.

1864 – Battle of Boydton Plank Road, Va. (Burgess’ Mill, Southside Railroad). Directed by Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, divisions from three Union corps (II, V, and IX) and Gregg’s cavalry division, numbering more than 30,000 men, withdrew from the Petersburg lines and marched west to operate against the Boydton Plank Road and South Side Railroad. The initial Union advance on October 27 gained the Boydton Plank Road, a major campaign objective. But that afternoon, a counterattack near Burgess’ Mill spearheaded by Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s division and Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton’s cavalry isolated the II Corps and forced a retreat. The Confederates retained control of the Boydton Plank Road for the rest of the winter.

1864 – LT William Cushing, USN, sinks Confederate ram Albemarle with a spar torpedo attached to the bow of his launch.

1873 – Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applied for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire. [see Nov 24, 1874] Joseph Glidden and Isaac Ellwood formed a company in De Kalb, Illinois to manufacture barbed wire, an essential product of old West. Patents on barbed wire were granted as early as 1867, but Glidden was the first to devise a commercially viable way of producing it after seeing a sample of barbed wire at a fair in 1873. Glidden and Ellwood’s product greatly increased the use of barbed wire to protect crops and livestock from roaming cattle. Open ranges dramatically dwindled in the face of new fencing over the next two decades.

1913 – Pres. Wilson said US will never attack another country.

1920 – League of Nations moved headquarters in Geneva.

1922 – Navy League of U.S. sponsors first annual celebration of Navy Day to focus public attention on the importance of the U.S. Navy. That date was selected because it was Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday.

1939 – The US Senate approves amendments to the Neutrality Act, repealing the arms embargo provision.

1941 – In a broadcast to the nation on Navy Day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared: “America has been attacked, the shooting has started.” He did not ask for full-scale war yet, realizing that many Americans were not yet ready for such a step.

1941 – The Chicago Daily Tribune dismissed the possibility of war with Japan, editorializing, “She cannot attack us. That is a military impossibility. Even our base at Hawaii is beyond the effective striking power of her fleet.”

1952 – The 8th Fighter-Bomber Wing recorded its 50,000th combat sortie of the war.

1954 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force.

1961 – The 1st Saturn launch vehicle made an unmanned flight test from Cape Canaveral. The Saturn rocket evolved from the idea of clustering a number of Jupiter engines around Redstone and Jupiter propellant tanks to build a large launch vehicle.

1962 – Negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union finally result in a plan to end the two-week-old Cuban Missile Crisis. Since President John F. Kennedy’s October 22 address warning the Soviets to cease their reckless program to put nuclear weapons in Cuba and announcing a naval “quarantine” against additional weapons shipments into Cuba, the world held its breath waiting to see whether the two superpowers would come to blows. U.S. armed forces went on alert and the Strategic Air Command went to a Stage 4 alert (one step away from nuclear attack).
On October 24, millions waited to see whether Soviet ships bound for Cuba carrying additional missiles would try to break the U.S. naval blockade around the island. At the last minute, the vessels turned around and returned to the Soviet Union. On October 26, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev responded to the quarantine by sending a long and rather disjointed letter to Kennedy offering a deal: Soviet ships bound for Cuba would “not carry any kind of armaments” if the United States vowed never to invade Cuba.

1962 – Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban missile crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

1988 – Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure.

1995 – William Kreutzer, US Army sergeant, opened fire on a field of 1300 soldiers. He killed a fellow 82nd Airborne soldier, Major Stephen Badger and wounded several others. Defense lawyers in 1996 pleaded that he suffered from depression. He was convicted of pre-meditated murder on 6/11/96. The next day he was sentenced to death.

1997 – The crew of the CGC Baranof confiscated two .50-caliber sniper rifles, ammunition and other military supplies that were allegedly to be used in an assassination attempt against Cuban President Fidel Castro. Four Cuban exiles were arrested for illegal possession of firearms after the 46-foot La Esperanza was ordered into Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, by the Baranof. There a search of the vessel turned up the weapons. One suspect confessed that the sniper rifles were to be used to assassinate Castro on his arrival on Venezuela’s Margarita Island for the Ibero-American Summit Conference. A magistrate in the U.S. District Court in San Juan later dismissed the charge of conspiracy to assassinate Castro but let the charges of illegal importation of firearms and making false statements stand.

1999 – The Clinton administration authorized the first direct military training for opponents of Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein.

2001 – In Washington, the search for deadly anthrax widened to thousands of businesses and 30 mail distribution centers.
PostPosted: Wed Oct 28, 2015 2:14 pm
October 28th ~

1492 – Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba on his first voyage to the New World.

1768 – Germans and Acadians joined French Creoles in their armed revolt against Antonio de Ulloa the Spanish governor of New Orleans. This combined militia will force his resignation the next day.

1775 – A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston.

1776 – Battle of White Plains; Washington retreated to New Jersey. Washington and his dispirited army believed that a major, perhaps decisive, battle would occur within the next few days. To their utter amazement, dawn on November 4 brought the sight of the British turning their backs on the lightly entrenched Americans and beginning a march back to Manhattan. Washington made a crucial decision to divide his army and led about 2,500 men into New Jersey. A larger force of some 11,000 men was left under the command of the erratic Charles Lee and was responsible for halting any future British advance into New England. Howe next turned his attention to the small American presence at Fort Washington.

1790 – NY gave up claims to Vermont for $30,000.

1793 – Eliphalet Remington, US gun maker, was born. He was an American inventor, gunsmith and arms manufacturer. Remington was trained in blacksmithing, but turned to gunsmithing at an early age. His father founded and ran a firearms firm in Ilion, N.Y., until he died in 1828. At this time, Eliphalet took over. He supplied the U.S. army with rifles in the Mexican war. In 1856 the business was expanded to include the manufacture of agricultural implements. When the firm held many government contracts, Eliphalet’s son, Philo Remington, directed the business. The Remington firm later supplied the armies with several European countries with breech-loading rifles. In 1879, it began making sewing machines. The Remington Firearms Company still manufactures guns today. It is the focal point of Ilion and aids greatly in the production of their economy.

1864 – Battle at Fair Oaks, Virginia, ended after 1554 casualties. Union forces withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond. The assault was actually a diversion to draw attention from a larger Union offensive around Petersburg.

1864 – Steamer General Thomas and gunboat Stone River destroy Confederate batteries on Tennessee River near Decatur, Alabama forcing the withdrawal of General Hood’s troops.

1882 – Orders issued for first Naval Attache (LCDR French Chadwick sent to London, England).

1917 – U.S.A. second Liberty Loan: £1,000,000,000 ($3,000,000 US) to France and Britain is approved at 5%.

1918 – World War I was reaching its climax as Allied forces all along the Western Front continue launching attacks against the German “Hindenburg Line”.

1919 – Congress passed the National Prohibition Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act, on this date. The Volstead Act authorized the enforcement of the 18th Amendment, ratified on the 29th of January 1919. The Act authorized the Coast Guard to prevent the maritime importation of illegal alcohol. This led to the largest increase in the size and responsibilities of the service to date.

1922 – Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

1929 – Black Monday, a day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which also saw major stock market upheaval.

1942 – The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.

1943 – The US 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion is landed by sea at Voza on Choiseul Island (Operation Blissful). They engage Japanese forces. This is a diversion from the intended attack on Bougainville.

1944 – The first B-29 Superfortress bomber mission flew from the airfields in the Mariana Islands in a strike against the Japanese base at Truk.

1951 – At Panmunjom, the communists agreed generally to accept the U.N. Command concept that the battle line should be the demarcation line. Both sides thereby had an incentive to take and hold ground, a factor that perhaps prolonged the war.

1960 – In a note to the OAS (Organization of American States), the United States charged that Cuba had been receiving substantial quantities of arms and numbers of military technicians” from the Soviet bloc.

1962 – The Cuban Missile crisis comes to a close as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agrees to remove Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for a promise from the United States to respect Cuba’s territorial sovereignty. This ended nearly two weeks of anxiety and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that came close to provoking a nuclear conflict.

1962 – An 11,000-man 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade left Camp Pendleton by sea for the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis. One week earlier, the entire 189,000-man Marine Corps had been put on alert and elements of the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions were sent to Guantanamo Bay to reinforce the defenders of the U.S. Naval Base. Other 2d Division units and squadrons from five Marine Aircraft Groups were deployed at Key West, Florida, or in Caribbean waters during the Cuban crisis.

1985 – The leader of the so-called “Walker family spy ring,” John Walker, pleaded guilty to giving U-S Navy secrets to the Soviet Union. John Walker was the KGB’s most important spy in the United States in the 1970s. As a chief warrant officer in the US Navy, Walker had access to naval secrets and spied for the Soviet Union in exchange for money. After retiring, John Walker continued to spy with the help of family members still serving in the Navy until the FBI caught him.

1990 – In a surprise move, Iraq said it was halting gasoline rationing imposed earlier in response to global economic sanctions.

1999 – Two Navy Blue Angel aviators, Kieron O’Connor (35) and Kevin Colling (32), were killed when their F/A-18 Hornet crashed during a training flight near Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. 23 pilots have died at shows or training since the group was formed in 1946.

2001 – The CDC reported a 13th case of anthrax in a New Jersey postal worker. Spores were found at the mail center in Landover, MD.

2002 – In Jordan an assassin pumped eight shots into Laurence Foley (62), an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development, outside his home in the first known killing of a Western envoy in Amman. 2 suspects were arrested Dec 14th.

2004 – Militants released a grisly video that showed the killing of 11 Iraqi troops held hostage for days, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style. Another group released a video of a kidnapped Polish woman, demanding Warsaw pull its troops from Iraq.

2005 – President Fidel Castro of Cuba agrees to allow three officials from the United States Agency for International Development into the country to assist in relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. The communist nation typically turns down offers of assistance from the United States since trade embargoes from the U.S. have been in place for over 40 years.

2007 – The USS Porter, a destroyer opened fire on pirates who had captured a freighter and with other vessels blockaded a port the pirates attempted to take refuge in.

2007 – Clocks are not set back one hour on this date, the last Sunday of October, as they have been since 1966. A 2005 act changed the end date of Daylight Saving to the fist Sunday of November (4 Nov, 2007) effective this year. Various technological glitches result.

2009 – NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X mission, the only rocket launch for its later-cancelled Constellation program.

2011 – NASA launches its NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite to send back data on weather and climate conditions.

2012 – The SpaceX Dragon capsule on a re-supply mission to the International Space Station returns to Earth.

2014 – An unmanned Antares rocket carrying NASA’s Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in the U.S. state of Virginia. The loss includes five thousand pounds of cargo.
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