January 29th ~ {continued...}

1737 – Thomas Paine, political essayist, was born. He wrote “The Rights of Man” and “The Age of Reason.” Thomas Paine was born on the twenty-ninth of January 1737 at Thetford, Norfolk in England, as a son of a Quaker. After a short basic education, he started to work, at first for his father, later as an officer of the excise. During this occupation Thomas Paine was an unsuccessful man, and was twice dismissed from his post.

In 1774, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who advised him to emigrate to America, giving him letters of recommendation. Paine landed at Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. Starting over as a publicist, he first published his African Slavery in America, in the spring of 1775, criticizing slavery in America as being unjust and inhumane. At this time he also had become co-editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine On arriving in Philadelphia, Paine had sensed the rise of tension, and the spirit of rebellion, that had steadily mounted in the Colonies after the Boston Tea Party and when the fighting had started, in April 1775, with the battles of Lexington and Concord. In Paine’s view the Colonies had all the right to revolt against a government that imposed taxes on them but which did not give them the right of representation in the Parliament at Westminster. But he went even further: for him there was no reason for the Colonies to stay dependent on England.

On January 10, 1776 Paine formulated his ideas on American Independence in his pamphlet Common Sense. In his Common Sense, Paine states that sooner or later independence from England must come, because America had lost touch with the mother country. In his words, all the arguments for separation of England are based on nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments and common sense. Government was necessary evil that could only become safe when it was representative and altered by frequent elections. The function of government in society ought to be only regulating and therefore as simple as possible.

Not surprisingly, but nevertheless remarkable was his call for a declaration of independence. Due to the many copies sold (500.000) Paine’s influence on the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 is eminent. Another sign of his great influence is the number of loyalist reactions to Common Sense. During the War of Independence Paine volunteered in the Continental Army and started with the writing of his highly influential sixteen American Crisis papers, which he published between 1776 and 1783.

In 1777 he became Secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in Congress, but already in 1779 he was forced to resign because he had disclosed secret information. In the following nine years he worked as a clerk at the Pennsylvania Assembly and published several of his writings. In 1787 Thomas Paine left for England, initially to raise funds for the building of a bridge he had designed, but after the outbreak of the French Revolution he became deeply involved in it.

Between March 1791 and February 1792 he published numerous editions of his Rights of Man, in which he defended the French Revolution against the attacks by Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. But it was more then a defense of the French Revolution: An analysis of the roots of the discontent in Europe, which he laid in arbitrary government, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and war. The book being banned in England because it opposed to monarchy, Paine failed to be arrested because he was already on his way to France, having been elected in the National Convention.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

Though a true republican, he was imprisoned in 1793 under Robespierre, because he had voted against the execution of the dethroned king Louis XVI. During his imprisonment the publication of his Age of Reason started. Age of Reason was written in praise of the achievements of the Age of Enlightenment, and it was on this book that he was accused of being an atheist. After his release he stayed in France until 1802, when he sailed back to America, after an invitation by Thomas Jefferson who had met him before when he was minister in Paris and who admired him.

Back in the United States he earned that he was seen as a great infidel, or simply forgotten for what he had done for America. He continued his critical writings, for instance against the Federalists and on religious superstition. After his death in New York City on June 8, 1809 the newspapers read: He had lived long, did some good and much harm, which time judged to be an unworthy epitaph.

1779 – Augusta, Georgia is captured by a British force led by Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell. In the autumn of 1778, General Prevost, who was in command of some British regulars, Tories and Indians, in East Florida, sent from St. Augustine two expeditions into Florida. One of these made an extensive raid, carrying off negro slaves, grain, horses, and horned cattle; destroying crops and burning the village of Midway; the other appeared before the fort at Sunbury, and demanded its surrender. Colonel Mackintosh, the commander of the garrison, said, “Come and take it,” when the invaders retreated. These incursions caused General Robert Howe to lead an expedition against St. Augustine.

On the banks of the St. Mary’s River, a malarias disease swept away a quarter of his men. After a little skirmishing, he led the survivors back to Savannah, and these composed the handful of dispirited men who confronted Campbell at Brewton’s Hill. The expulsion of Howe from Savannah was soon followed by the arrival of Prevost, who came up from Florida, captured the fort at Sunbury on the way (January 9, 1779), and assumed the chief command of the British troops in the South. The combined forces of Prevost and Campbell numbered about three thousand men. In the meantime General Benjamin Lincoln of Massachusetts, appointed in September to the chief command of the patriot troops in the Southern States, had arrived in South Carolina, and on the 6th of January (1779), made his headquarters at Purysburg, twenty-five miles above Savannah.

There he began the formation of an army to oppose the British invasion. It was composed of the remnants of Howe’s troops, some Continental regiments, and some raw recruits. Campbell, elated by his easy victory, began the work of subjugation with a strong hand. He promised protection to the inhabitants provided all their able-bodied men would “support the royal government with their arms.” They had the alternative to fight their own countrymen or fly to the interior uplands or into South Carolina. Howe’s captive troops, who refused to take up arms for the king, were thrust into loathsome prison-ships, where many perished with disease.

It was evident that the war was to be waged without mercy, and this conviction gave strength to the determined patriots in the field, for they were fighting for their lives and the welfare of those whom they loved most dearly. Prevost sent Campbell up the Georgia side of the Savannah, to Augusta, with about two thousand men, for the purpose of encouraging the Tories, opening communication with the Creek Indians in the west, and subduing the Whigs into passiveness.

1820 – Ten years after mental illness forced him to retire from public life, King George III, the British king who lost the American colonies, dies at the age of 82. In 1760, 20-year-old George succeeded his grandfather, George II, as king of Great Britain and Ireland. Although he hoped to govern more directly than his predecessor had, King George III was unable to find a minister he could trust, until 1770, when he appointed Lord North as his chief minister. Lord North proved able to manage Parliament and willing to follow royal leadership, but George’s policy of coercion against the American colonists led to the outbreak of the American War for Independence. The subsequent loss of England’s most profitable colonies contributed to growing opposition to the king, but in 1784 his appointment as prime minister, William Pitt (the younger), succeeded in winning a majority in Parliament.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1834 – The banks of the Potomac River erupted in violence, as workers on the then-unfinished Chesapeake and Ohio Canal rioted after a planned strike was brutally extinguished. Never exactly a fast friend of indecision or conciliatory action, President Andrew Jackson swiftly called on Secretary of War Lewis Cass to send Federal troops in to quell the workers.

While this was an eventful moment for the nation it marked the first, though hardly the last time Federal troops were deployed to settle a labor “dispute” it was just another roadblock in the troubled history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Originally conceived as a transit and trade friendly route between the Midwest and Atlantic seaports, the canal was periodically delayed by fiscal woes, stiff competition from the Erie Canal, as well as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

When construction began in 1828, the canal was designed to reach Pittsburgh; by the time the project was abandoned in 1850, the waterway reached Cumberland. Flooding forced the close of the canal in 1924; it was bought by the U.S. government in 1938 and transformed into a national historic park in 1971.

1843 – William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States (1897-1901), was born in Niles, Ohio. McKinley was the last Civil War veteran to serve as President of the United States. He had served with the 23rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteers, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major. He saw action at South Mountain, Antietam, Winchester and Cedar Creek. For a time he served on Rutherford B. Hayes’ staff. McKinley was elected the 25th president in 1896. He led the country in the Spanish-American War. He died in Buffalo, New York, on September 14, 1901, after being shot by an anarchist assassin on September 6th.

1850 – Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.

1861 – The territory of Kansas is admitted into the Union as the 34th state, or the 28th state if the secession of eight Southern states over the previous six weeks is taken into account. Kansas, deeply divided over the issue of slavery, was granted statehood as a free state in a gesture of support for Kansas’ militant anti-slavery forces, which had been in armed conflict with pro-slavery groups since Kansas became a territory in 1854. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce.

The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas’ first election proved a violent affair, as more than 5,000 so-called Border Ruffians invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, appointed territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown.

During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in “Bleeding Kansas,” as it became popularly known. The territory’s admittance into the Union in January 1861 only increased tension, but just three and a half months later the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the full-scale outbreak of the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Kansas suffered the highest rate of fatal casualties of any Union state, largely because of its great internal divisions over the issue of slavery.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1861 – Secretaries of the Navy and War ordered that the Marines and troops on board U.S.S Brooklyn, Captain Walker, en route Pensacola, not be landed to reinforce Fort Pickens unless that work was taken under attack by the Confederates.

1863 – The Bear River Massacre, or the Battle of Bear River and the Massacre at Boa Ogoi, took place in present-day Idaho. The United States Army attacked Shoshone gathered at the confluence of the Bear River and Beaver Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory. The site is located near the present-day city of Preston in Franklin County, Idaho. Colonel Patrick Edward Connor led a detachment of California Volunteers as part of the Bear River Expedition against Shoshone Chief Bear Hunter.

1865 – William Quantrill and his Confederate raiders attack Danville, Kentucky. Quantrill is killed in the raid. William Clarke Quantrill came to Kansas as a young man in 1858. Two years later he acheived a measure of notoriety by engineering a scheme with four free-state men to liberate the slaves of a Missouri farmer; however, Quantrill warned the farmer before the raid occurred, and three of the Kansas men were killed in the ambush.

Quantrill adapted well to the ruthless chaos that Civil War brought to the Southwest, and until 1864 was the most popular and powerful leader of the various bands of Border Ruffians that pillaged the area. While he and the men who followed him had more in common with the Confederate than the Union cause, they were by no means enlisted soldiers. They terrorized the Kansas countryside almost entirely for profit: to rob the citizens and loot the towns.

In addition, the innumerable atrocities committed on both sides made the guerilla armies convenient vehicles to carry out personal vengeance. The climax of Quantrill’s guerilla career came on August 21, 1863, when he led a force of 450 raiders into Lawrence, Kansas, a stronghold of pro-Union support and the home of Senator James H. Lane, whose leading role in the struggle for free-soil in Kansas had made him a public enemy to pro-slavery forces in Missouri. Lane managed to escape, racing through a cornfield in his nightshirt, but Quantrill and his men killed 183 men and boys, dragging some from their homes to murder them in front of their families, and set the torch to much of the city.

The Lawrence Massacre led to swift retribution, as Union troops forced the residents of four Missouri border counties onto the open prairie while Jayhawkers looted and burned everything they left behind. Quantrill and his raiders took part in the Confederate retaliation for this atrocity, but when Union forces drove the Confederates back, Quantrill fled to Texas. His guerrilla band broke up into several smaller units, including one headed by his vicious lieutenant, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, known for wearing a necklace of Yankee scalps into battle.

1877 – A highly partisan Electoral Commission, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, was established by Congress to settle the issue of Democrat Samuel Tilden for president against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Under the terms of the Tilden-Hayes Election Compromise, Hayes became president and the Republicans agreed to remove the last Federal troops from Southern territory, ending Reconstruction. On election night, 1776, it was clear that Tilden had won the popular vote, but it was also clear that votes in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon were fraudulent because of voter intimidation. Republicans knew that if the electoral votes from these four states were thrown out, Hayes would win. The country hovered near civil war as both Democrats and Republicans claimed victory. Illustrator Thomas Nast drew his cartoon, ”Tilden or Blood,” showing the Democrats threatening violence.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1885 – The Senate decides not to ratify the 1884 treaty which authorizes the building of a canal across Nicaragua. The canal issue is plagued with doubt and indecision. Americans are still reluctant to shoulder responsibilities outside the continental domain. The Federal Government is not yet a clearly define entity, people still being more closely identified with their states.

Gradually a change is taking place and some people see far enough to make preparations for predictable circumstances. Secretary of the Navy Whitney has brought his prestige to bear on building a steel navy. Commodore Stephen Bleeker has founded a navy training school and Secretary of State Blaine is slowly turning the nation’s attention to events in Hawaii, the Philippines, Korea, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Haiti.

1886 – 1st successful gasoline-driven car was patented by Karl Benz in Karlsruhe.

1914 – U.S. Marines land in Haiti to protect U.S. consulate.

1918 – The Supreme Allied Council met at Versailles.

1919 – 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Its enforcement was authorized by the National Prohibition Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act on 28 October 1919. The Coast Guard had been tasked with the prevention of the maritime importation of illegal alcohol. This led to the largest increase in the size and responsibilities of the service to date.

1941 – Secret staff talks begin between British and American representatives. The talks will continue until March 27th. They produce conclusions code named ABC1 which state that Allied policy in the event of war with Germany and Japan should be to put the defeat of Germany first. The talks mark an important stage in the development of cooperation between the US and Britain. As well as their important decisions they accustom the staffs to working with each other.

1942 – US Task Force 18, under the command of Admiral Giffen, is attacked by Japanese aircraft off Rennel Island while providing covering escort to a supply operation to Guadalcanal. The heavy cruiser Chicago is sunk.

1942 – Britain and the USSR secure an agreement with Iran that offers the Iran protection while creating a “Persian corridor” for the Allies-a supply route from the West to Russia. Early in the war, Iran collaborated with Germany by exporting grain to the Axis power in exchange for technicians. But the Allies viewed Iran as a valuable source of oil and conveniently situated as a route for shipping Western war material east to the USSR. On August 25, 1941, both Allied powers invaded Iran (which Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred to call “Persia,” so there would be no confusion between “Iran” and “Iraq”), the Soviets from the north and the Brits from the south. In four days, the Allies effectively controlled Iran.

1943 – Beginning of the 2 day battle of Rennell Island after which U.S. transports reached Guadalcanal. By 23 January, US aerial reconnaissance had reported a large number of Japanese transports , freighters and destroyers at Rabaul, and Buin and carriers and battleships milling around Ontong Java, North of Guadalcanal. These were preparations for the final Japanese evacuation of Guadalcanal. Halsey, however, interpreted this activity as preparations for another major Japanese reinforcement effort.

In an attempt to lure the Japanese into another naval battle Halsey sent up 4 fully loaded transports along with strong covering forces, from Efate and Numea, to reinforce the US garrison on Guadalcanal. Among the covering force were six US cruisers including the USS Chicago, the only heavy cruiser to survive the battle of Savo Island, 5 1/2 month earlier. In the twilight of Jan 29, at 1945 hours, 50 miles north of Rennell Island, Japanese torpedo laden Bettys from Munda successfully attacked the supporting group and the Chicago was struck and went dead in the water.

Placed under tow she was heading slowly SE on the afternoon of the 30th when 9 Bettys once again caught up with her a few miles east of Rennell Island. At 1600 4 torpedoes struck home into Chicagos already damaged starboard side. She sank in 20 minutes. This Battle of Rennell Island was the last of seven naval battles in the Guadalcanal Campaign.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1944 – The fourth Missouri (BB-63), the last battleship completed by the United States, was laid down 6 January 1941 by New York Naval Shipyard; launched 29 January 1944; sponsored by Miss Margaret Truman, daughter of then Senator from Missouri Harry S Truman, later President; and commissioned 11 June 1944, with Capt. William M. Callaghan in command.

1944 – At Anzio the Allied forces now number 69,000 troops with 508 guns and 237 tanks. General Lucas makes preparations for an offensive to break out of the beachhead. Meanwhile, the German cordon now consists of 8 divisions under 14th Army. There are German air strikes which result in 1 cruiser and 1 transport sunk. To the south, along the German-held Gustav Line, forces of the US 5th Army continue attacking. The 34th Division makes some progress in expanding the bridgehead over the Rapido River.

1944 – US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) bombs and shells Japanese targets on Roi, Namur, Maloelap and Wotje. American land-based aircraft bomb Jaluit and Mille.

1945 – The Coast Guard-manned attack cargo vessel USS Serpens exploded off Guadalcanal due to unknown causes. Only two men aboard survive. This was the single greatest Coast Guard loss of life in history.

1945 – The US 1st Army reports the capture of the town of Bullingen, east of St. Vith. Forces of the US 3rd Army cross the Oure River at two points, 8 miles south of St. Vith.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 11th Corps (General Hall) lands at San Antonio north of Subic Bay to join the American offensive. About 30,000 men go ashore on the first day of the landing. Their task is to advance across the neck of the Bataan Peninsula and clear it of Japanese resistance.

1952 – The U.S. Air Force’s 315th Air Division, Combat Cargo Command, airlifted its 1,000,000th passenger between Japan and Korea.

1953 – A 19th BG B-29 exploded over the target southwest of Sariwon. Enemy fighters apparently silhouetted the B-29 against a full moon and shot it down. This was the fourth B-29 loss since December but the last of the war. USMC Skynight aircraft escorting B-29s used new tactics to down an enemy night interceptor, the first enemy jet destroyed at night by a radar-equipped jet fighter.

1964 – Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opens in theaters to both critical and popular acclaim. The movie’s popularity was evidence of changing attitudes toward atomic weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrence. The movie focused on the actions of a rogue U.S. officer who believes that communists are threatening the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans.

Without authorization, he issues orders to U.S. bombers to launch atomic attacks against the Soviet Union. When it becomes evident that some of the bombers may actually drop their atomic payloads, American President Merkin Muffley frantically calls his Soviet counterpart. The Russian leader informs Muffley that an atomic attack on the Soviet Union will automatically unleash the terrible “doomsday machine,” which will snuff out all life on the planet. Muffley’s chief foreign policy advisor, Dr. Strangelove, reassures the president and chief officials that all is not lost: they can, he posits, survive even the doomsday machine by retreating to deep mineshafts.

Close scrutiny of the Dr. Strangelove character indicated that he was probably a composite of three people: Henry Kissinger, a political scientist who had written about nuclear deterrence strategy; Edward Teller, a key scientist in the development of the hydrogen bomb; and Wernher von Braun, the German scientist who was a leading figure in missile technology. Little scrutiny was needed, however, to grasp Kubrick’s satirical attacks on the American and Russian policies of nuclear stockpiling and massive retaliation.

The film’s jabs at some of the sacred core beliefs of America’s defense strategy struck a chord with the American people. Particularly after the frightening Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962–when nuclear annihilation seemed a very real possibility–the American public was increasingly willing to question the nation’s reliance on nuclear weapons.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1968 – A court convened in Vietnam for the murder of Cambodian, triple agent Inchin Lam, by Special Forces Captain John J. McCarthy Jr. Murder charges were later dropped due to exculpatory evidence and proven prosecutorial fraud on the court. A civil action for $1.3 billion is pending in US Federal District Court, Washington D.C. against the CIA and associated agencies.

1968 – In his annual budget message, President Lyndon B. Johnson asks for $26.3 billion to continue the war in Vietnam, and announces an increase in taxes. The war was becoming very expensive, both in terms of lives and national treasure. Johnson had been given a glowing report on progress in the war from Gen. William Westmoreland, senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam. Westmoreland stated in a speech before the National Press Club that, “We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view. I am absolutely certain that, whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing. The enemy’s hopes are bankrupt.”

The day after Johnson’s budget speech, the communists launched a massive attack across the length and breadth of South Vietnam. This action, the Tet Offensive, proved to be a critical turning point for the United States in Vietnam. In the end, the offensive resulted in a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, but the size and scope of the communist attacks caught the American and South Vietnamese allies by surprise.

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

1974 –The fighting continues in South Vietnam despite the cease-fire that was initiated on January 28, 1973, under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords.

1979 – Deng Xiaoping, deputy premier of China, meets President Jimmy Carter, and together they sign historic new accords that reverse decades of U.S. opposition to the People’s Republic of China. Deng Xiaoping lived out a full and complete transformation of China.

1991 – A few hours after darkness fell on Jan. 29, a column of several dozen Iraqi tanks approached the abandoned Saudi town of Khafji. With all turrets pointed to the rear in the international military sign of surrender, the small number of Saudi forces defending the town permitted the enemy force to draw close, in anticipation of their surrender. As the tanks approached, however, the Iraqis turned their turrets toward the defenders and opened fire.

This surprise attack proved to be the spearhead of an invasion of Khafji and in a short time the Iraqis drove out the joint force defending the town, occupied it, and began the formation of a defensive posture in anticipation of a counterattack. This force was estimated at approximately 40 tanks and 500 ground troops.

During this time, in addition to casualties inflicted on the retreating forces, two soldiers from a U.S. transportation battalion – one a female – were reported missing and believed captured and two six-man Marine recon teams were stranded behind enemy lines. These Marines took up covert positions on rooftops, and would continue to relay back vital information on Iraqi troop movements throughout the battle. At the time, however, the Marines were stranded, surrounded, and in imminent danger. Realizing the scope of the situation, the coalition next had to determine the intent of the Iraqi probes, contain the offensive forces, and regain control over Khafji.

For the US led coalition ground forces, the Iraqi attack came at an awkward moment. The Army component was in the midst of its three-week redeployment from the coastal area to attack positions more than 200 miles west. Any disruption to the 24-hour-a-day caravan might upset the timetable for the upcoming attack. Containing the offensive and pushing the Iraqis out of Saudi territory was vital. As the battle began, theater commander Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf told reporters, “The mere fact that they launched these attacks indicates they still have a lot of fight left in them.”

January 29th ~ {continued...}

JSTARS reports of Iraqi movement on the border and behind the lines flowed into the Tactical Air Control Center that night at about 10 p.m. local time. Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson received the first JSTARS reports and conferred with Horner. The JFACC ordered the single JSTARS aircraft flying that night to swing back to the KTO and concentrate its arc of coverage over the border area near Khafji.

Later that night–at 2 a.m. on Jan. 30–the JSTARS sensors began to detect more movement as the 5th Mechanized entered Khafji and elements of the 3d Armored advancedthrough the adjacent Al Wafra forest. To the west, the Iraqi 1st Mechanized Division probed across the border. Unbeknownst to Saddam, Schwarzkopf had decided not to play into his hands by launching a ground counterattack. “Schwarzkopf told us he didn’t want to put any other forces over there,” recalled retired USAF Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Olsen, who at the time was serving as CENTAF deputy commander. Schwarzkopf instructed his commanders to use airpower as the key element, along with Marine, Saudi, and other coalition ground forces, to stop the attack.

To increase the margin of safety, the Marines embarked on a phased redeployment in their sector to put a buffer of about 20 kilometers of territory between coalition forces and the Iraqis. As long as airpower could reach deep to stop the offensive, the coalition ground forces in the area would not have to be reinforced, and Schwarzkopf would not have to reposition the redeploying Army forces. At the Air Operations Center, the first task was to direct sorties already scheduled on the night’s Air Tasking Order to strike moving Iraqi forces picked up by the JSTARS sweep. Air attacks were funneled into the KTO from different altitudes and directions using a grid of designated “kill boxes” as a control measure. Each box measured 30 kilometers by 30 kilometers and was subdivided into four quadrants. Planners pushed a four-ship flight through each kill box every seven to eight minutes in daytime and every 15 minutes at night. In the designated area of the box, a flight lead was free to attack any targets he could identify.

Within the CINC’s guidance to the air component, air interdiction operated independently. Hundreds of air attacks on Iraqi forces in Kuwait were already scheduled and under way. For example, more than 100 Air Force A-10 sorties were concentrated on the Republican Guards Tawakalna Division far to the northwest of Khafji. Many of the other sorties listed on the Air Tasking Order were already assigned to areas where the three divisions were gathered for the offensive. With airpower already flowing through the kill boxes, air controllers quickly diverted sorties to the Marine forward air controllers or sent them ahead to interdict the Iraqi forces attempting to reach coalition lines.

Pilots found the Iraqi armored vehicles were easier to identify and target once they were on the move. Near Al Wafra, an A-10 pilot described the sight of a column of vehicles as “like something from A-10 school.” A-6s joined in, using Rockeye air-to-ground weapons. A-10 pilot Capt. Rob Givens later recalled with some amazement: “I, myself–one captain in one airplane–was engaging up to a battalion size of armor on the ground” and “keeping these guys pinned for a little bit.” AFSOC AC-130 gunships waiting on alert were scrambled after a hasty briefing.

As lead elements of the 5th Mechanized with some support from the 3d Armored reached Khafji, one Air Force gunship caught the column and stopped many of them from entering the town. Anti-aircraft fire and occasional missile launches were reported by the aircrews. However, the rapid attacks to squelch the initiative of the maneuver force also hit the Iraqis before they could bring up and assemble most of their heavier air defense guns and shoulder-fired SAMs, an important edge for the coalition that contributed to increased aircraft survivability and effectiveness.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1992 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin unveiled an ambitious plan to cut nuclear weapons spending and said his republic’s weapons would no longer be aimed at any U.S. targets.

1993 – President Clinton announced that he was ordering the draft of a formal directive by July 15 to end the longstanding ban on homosexuals in the U.S. military.

1996 – A Navy F-14 fighter jet crashed in Nashville, Tennessee, demolishing three houses and killing five people.

1998 – In Birmingham, Ala., the New Woman, All Woman Health Care [abortion] Clinic was bombed. Robert Sanderson (35), a moonlighting police officer, was killed and Emily Lyons, a nurse, was critically injured. A note was later received claiming the “Army of God” was responsible. Eric Robert Rudolph (31) of North Carolina was later sought as a suspect. He was arrested May 31,2003.

1998 – The US, Russia and 13 other nations of the European Space Agency agreed to cooperate on building an int’l. space station.

1999 – The US and major European allies set Feb 19 as a deadline for Serbia to accept a peace plan in Kosovo or face NATO bombing.

1999 – The UN Security Council agreed to establish panels to assess Iraqi disarmament and adherence to other UN resolutions.

2001 – Serb thrown hand grenades hit an ethnic Albanian home in Kosovo. 1 person was killed, 2 injured and NATO peacekeepers broke up an ensuing riot.

2003 – Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, signed an open letter calling on the peace camp, implicitly Germany, France and Russia, to rally to the U.S. standard against Iraq.

2003 – Iraq responded to chief inspector Hans Blix’s tough assessment of its disarmament, accusing him of misrepresenting its record of compliance, offering some new information and pledging continued cooperation.

2004 – The US freed 3 juvenile Afghan detainees (13-15) from Guantanamo, Cuba.

2014 – National Guard troops are deployed to reach students stranded overnight on buses after ice and snow cause widespread traffic chaos in Atlanta, Georgia.

January 30th ~

1798 – A brawl broke out in the House of Representatives in Philadelphia. Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut, who responded by attacking him with a hickory walking stick. Lyon was re -elected congressman while serving a jail sentence for violating the Sedition Acts of 1798.

1815 – The burned Library of Congress was reestablished with Jefferson’s 6,500 volumes.

1816 – Union General Nathaniel Banks is born in Waltham, Massachusetts. Banks was a “political general”–he had few military skills, but as an anti-slave Republican from Massachusetts, he helped the Lincoln administration maintain support in that region.

1835 – In the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol, President Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, survives the first attempt against the life of a U.S. president. During a funeral service honoring the late Representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina, a man identified as Richard Lawrence discharged two separate pistols in the direction of President Jackson. Both weapons misfired, and Lawrence was promptly subdued and arrested. During the subsequent criminal investigation, the suspect was found to be insane and was sent to a mental prison. Three decades later, President Abraham Lincoln would become the first president to be assassinated.

1861 – Secretary John A. Dix of Treasury ordered Lt. Caldwell “to arrest Capt. Breshwood (Confederate sympathizer) assume command of cutter (McClelland) and if anyone attempts to haul down the flag, shoot him on the spot.” The message was not delivered by the telegraph office. Breshwood turned McClelland over to the State of Louisiana. She ended up in Confederate service.

1862 – U.S.S. Monitor, the Union’s first sea-going ironclad vessel, launched at Greenpoint, New York. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Fox wired John Ericsson, referring to Monitor’s launching: ”I congratulate you and trust she will be a success. Hurry her for sea, as the Merrimack is nearly ready at Norfolk, and we wish to send her here.”

1863 – U.S.S. Commodore Perry, Lieutenant Commander Charles W. Flusser, on a joint expedition with Army troops, landed at Hertford, North Carolina, and destroyed two bridges over the Perquimans River. As a result of the successful mission, Flusser reported: ”There are now no bridges remaining on the Perquimans, so that the goods sent from Norfolk to the enemy on the south side of the Chowan (by whom they are conveyed to Richmond) have to be passed over a ford, and the roads leading from that ford can be guarded by the troops at Winfield.” Three days later (2 February), Commodore Perry anchored at the mouth of the Yeopim River; two boats were sent into the river and succeeded in capturing three Confederate small boats. Two of the captures contained cargoes including salt. The constant harassment and interruption of supply lines through the Union Navy’s control of the waterways hurt the Confederacy sorely.

1865 – Returning from an afternoon reconnaissance of King’s Creek, Virginia, Acting Ensign James H. Kerens U.S.S. Henry Brinker, and his two boat crews “discovered 5 men, who, upon seeing us, immediately fled.” His suspicions aroused, Kerens determined to return under cover of darkness to search the vicinity. That night he and two boat crews returned to the mouth of King’s Creek and, after more than an hour of careful searching, found “two very suspicious looking mounds. . . . Removing the earth Kerens found two galvanic batteries and torpedoes, each containing some 150 pounds of powder. Acting Third Assistant Engineer Henry M. Hutchinson and Landsman John McKenna cut the connections from the batteries to the torpedoes and the weapons were safely removed and taken on board Henry Brinker.

1882 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States (1933 -1945), was born in Hyde Park, N.Y. He led the country out of the Great Depression and through most of World War II.

January 30th ~ {continued...}

1911 – The destroyer USS Terry makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of James McCurdy 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.

1912 – Barbara Tuchman, U.S. historian best remembered for her book “The Guns of August,” was born.

1931 – The United States awarded civil government to the Virgin Islands.

1933 – German President Paul von Hindenburg made Adolf Hitler chancellor. After World War I, Germany fell into disarray and looked for a leader to strengthen it again. Hitler had emerged after joining the Nazi Party in 1919 and taking it over in 1921. In 1932 Hitler ran against von Hindenburg and lost – -but not by a wide margin.

The Nazis won 230 seats in the German parliament and continued to gain influence, stifling democracy and communism by force and by making laws against them. After Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Der Führer of the Third Reich and continued as Germany’s leader through World War II. Gen. Kurt von Hammerstein -Equord tried to block the appointment of Hitler as chancellor but was overruled by President Hindenburg.

1934 – The House looked to put a halt to the oscillation in the value of the US Dollar by passing the Gold Reserve Act. The value of American currency ping-ponged up and down wildly throughout the Great Depression. The adoption of the act gave President Franklin Roosevelt license to peg the value of the dollar within a range of 50 to 60 cents in terms of gold. Roosevelt took swift action: the next day he announced that the dollar would be worth 59.06 cents, while gold would be valued at $35 per ounce.

The Gold Reserve Act also paved the way for the “nationalization” of gold: as per the legislationýs mandate, the various Federal Reserve banks handed control of their gold supplies, including all coins, bullion and gold certificates, to the U.S. Treasury. The U.S. Treasury shuttled a good chunk of the gold to a well-protected spot in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

1942 – The capsized hulk of the CGC Alexander Hamilton was sunk by the US Navy after she was torpedoed off the coast of Iceland by the U-132 the previous day. She was the first cutter sunk by enemy action during World War II. 26 of her crew perish.

1942 – USS Wakefield, the former passenger liner SS Manhattan converted to a troop transport and manned by a Coast Guard crew, transported 20,000 British troops to Singapore. Having disembarked all 20,000 troops, she was bombed by Japanese aircraft while still in port. Five of her Coast Guard crew were killed, the first Coast Guard casualties of World War II. After quick temporary repairs, she evacuated 500 women and children to Bombay before the port fell to the Japanese.

1942 – The last pre-war automobiles produced by Chevrolet and DeSoto rolled off the assembly lines today. Wartime restrictions had shut down the commercial automobile industry almost completely, and auto manufacturers were racing to retool their factories for production of military gear.

1943 – On Guadalcanal American forces continue to advance against Japanese resistance. There is heavy fighting along the River Bonegi.

1943 –Second day of the Battle of Rennell Island. The USS Chicago is sunk and a U.S. destroyer is heavily damaged by Japanese torpedoes.

1944 – At Anzio the Allied offensive begins. There are heavy losses and no gains against the German defenses. To the south, along the German-held Gustav Line, the US 5th Army continues attacking. The British 5th Division (part of 10th Corps) breaks through the line and captures Monte Natale. Around Monte Cassino, the US 34th Division (part of 2nd Corps) holds its bridgehead on the west bank of the Rapido River.

1944 – US Task Force 58 continues the bombardment of Kwajalein, Roi, Namur and Eniwetok. There are 7 battleships involved and 400 bombing sorties are flown.

January 30th ~ {continued...}

1945 – US Army Rangers and Filipino guerrillas executed a flawless rescue of 486 POWs from Camp Cabanatuan north of Manila. The Raid at Cabanatuan, also known as The Great Raid, was a rescue of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians from a Japanese camp near Cabanatuan City, in the Philippines.

On January 30, 1945, during World War II, United States Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas liberated more than 500 from the POW camp. After the surrender of tens of thousands of American troops during the Battle of Bataan, many were sent to a Cabanatuan prison camp following the Bataan Death March. The Japanese transferred most of the prisoners to other areas, leaving just over 500 American and other Allied POWs and civilians in the prison. Facing brutal conditions including disease, torture, and malnourishment, the prisoners feared they would all be executed as General Douglas MacArthur and his American forces returned to Luzon.

In late January 1945, a plan was developed by Sixth Army leaders and Filipino guerrillas to send a small force to rescue the prisoners. A group of over a hundred Rangers and Scouts and several hundred guerrillas traveled 30 miles (48 km) behind Japanese lines to reach the camp. In a nighttime raid, under the cover of darkness and a distraction by a P-61 Black Widow, the group surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties.

The Rangers, Scouts, and guerrillas escorted the POWs back to American lines. The rescue allowed the prisoners to tell of the death march and prison camp atrocities, which sparked a new rush of resolve for the war against Japan. The rescuers were awarded commendations by MacArthur, and were also recognized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A memorial now sits on the site of the former camp, and the events of the raid have been depicted in several films.

1945 – A US battalion is landed to take Gamble Island in Subic Bay. To the north, US 11th Corps begins to advance inland quickly and takes Olongapo on Luzon.

1945 – The Allies launched a drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.

1948 – Orville Wright (b.1871), US aviation pioneer, died.

1952 – Operation HIGHBOY, an attack by self-propelled 155mm howitzers with direct fire on enemy bunkers and fortifications located on steep slopes, met with limited success.

1953 – President Dwight Eisenhower announced that he would pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Captain Benjamin L. Fithian, and his “backseater” Lieutenant Sam Lyons, 319th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, achieved the first F-94 aerial victory when they destroyed a Lavochkin La-9, a “Bedcheck Charlie,” which was the nickname given to small communist aircraft that regularly harassed U.N. troops after midnight. The two men made the kill at night using only their fire control radar, a combat first in its own right.

1953 – Lieutenant Raymond J. Kinsey, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, shot down the first communist bomber in more than a year, a twin engine TU-2.

1956 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.’s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1964 – The United States launched Ranger 6 from Cape Canaveral. It was an unmanned spacecraft carrying six television cameras that was to crash -land on the moon.

January 30th ~ {continued...}

1968 – In coordinated attacks all across South Vietnam, communist forces launch their largest offensive of the Vietnam War against South Vietnamese and U.S. troops. Dozens of cities, towns, and military bases–including the U.S. embassy in Saigon–were attacked. The massive offensive was not a military success for the communists, but its size and intensity shook the confidence of many Americans who were led to believe, by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the war would shortly be coming to a successful close.

On January 30, 1968-during the Tet holiday cease-fire in South Vietnam-an estimated 80,000 troops of the North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front attacked cities and military establishments throughout South Vietnam. The most spectacular episode occurred when a group of NLF commandos blasted through the wall surrounding the American embassy in Saigon and unsuccessfully attempted to seize the embassy building. Most of the attacks were turned back, with the communist forces suffering heavy losses. Battles continued to rage throughout the country for weeks–the fight to reclaim the city of Hue from communist troops was particularly destructive. American and South Vietnamese forces lost over 3,000 men during the offensive. Estimates for communist losses ran as high as 40,000.

While the communists did not succeed militarily, the impact of the Tet Offensive on public opinion in the United States was significant. The American people, who had been told a few months earlier that the war was successful and that U.S. troops might soon be allowed withdraw, were stunned to see fighting taking place on the grounds of the U.S. embassy. Despite assurances from the Johnson administration that all was well, the Tet Offensive led many Americans to begin seriously questioning such statements, and to wonder whether American military might could truly prevail over the communist threat on foreign shores.

In the 1950s, Americans had almost unconditionally supported a vigorous American response to communism; the reaction to the Tet Offensive seemed to reflect the growing skepticism of the 1960s, when Americans felt increasingly doubtful about the efficacy of such Cold War tactics. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, support for the U.S. effort in Vietnam began steadily to decline, and public opinion turned sharply against President Johnson, who decided not to run for re-election.

1971 – Operation Dewey Canyon II begins as the initial phase of Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos that would commence on February 8. The purpose of the South Vietnamese operation was to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, advance to Tchepone in Laos, and destroy the North Vietnamese supply dumps in the area. In Dewey Canyon II, the vanguard of the U.S. 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division began moving from Vandegrift Combat Base along highway Route 9 toward Khe Sanh with an armored cavalry/engineer task force.

These units were to clear the way for the move of 20,000 South Vietnamese troops along the highway to reoccupy 1,000 square miles of territory in northwest South Vietnam and to mass at the Laotian border in preparation for Lam Son 719. U.S. ground forces were not to enter Laos, in accordance with a U.S. congressional ban. Instead they gave logistical support, with some 2,600 helicopters on call to airlift Saigon troops and supplies. In addition, U.S. artillerymen provided long-range artillery fires into Laos from American firebases just inside the South Vietnamese border.

1979 – The civilian government of Iran announced it had decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who’d been living in exile in France, to return.

1981 – An estimated two million New Yorkers turned out for a ticker -tape parade honoring the freed American hostages from Iran.

1989 – The American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan closes.

January 30th ~ {continued...}

1990 – A federal judge ordered former President Reagan to provide excerpts of his personal diaries to John M. Poindexter for the former national security adviser’s Iran -Contra trial. The judge later reversed himself, deciding the material was not essential.

1992 – President George H.W. Bush and other world leaders gathered for an unprecedented U.N. Security Council summit to coordinate policy on peacekeeping, disarmament and quelling aggression.

1992 – The space shuttle Discovery landed in California, ending an eight -day mission.

1997 – The Marine Corps opened an investigation of two videotaped hazing incidents in 1991 and 1993 known as “blood pinings” in which elite paratroopers had golden jump pins beaten into their chests. One incident led to a recommended discharge for a sergeant.

1999 – UNSC Presidential Note issued. Establishes three panels (disarmament, humanitarian situation, and Kuwaiti issues) for Iraq. Disarmament panel to recommend how to reestablish effective disarmament/ongoing monitoring and verification regime in Iraq.

1999 – NATO authorized its secretary general to launch military action in Yugoslavia if the warring parties failed to negotiate an agreement for autonomy in Kosovo.

2001 – In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicted Abdel Basset Ali al -Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, of murder in the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A 2nd Libyan, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.

2002 – The satellite Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, launched in 1992, broke up in Earth’s atmosphere over Egypt. It had surveyed the entire Milky Way and beyond and transmitted date until Jan 31 2001.

2002 – Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai visited the World Trade Center site and placed a wreath of yellow roses by a memorial wall as he surveyed the ruins of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

2002 – In Afghanistan war lords Padsha Khan Zadran and Saifullah led fighting for the control of Paktia province.

2003 – President Bush put allies on notice that diplomacy would give way to a decision on war with Iraq in “weeks, not months.” Wary world leaders and congressional critics urged patience and demanded proof of Iraq’s transgressions.

2003 – Spencer Abraham, US Energy Secretary, said the US would rejoin the $5 billion int’l. project to build an experimental fusion reactor. The US had left the project in 1998.

2003 – Richard Reid, the British citizen and al -Qaida follower who’d tried to blow up a trans -Atlantic jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoes, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Boston.

2003 – In Afghanistan 4 American soldiers were killed when special operations UH -60 Black Hawk helicopter went down seven miles east of the Bagram Air Base while on a training mission.

2004 – It was reported that Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange had filed their 1st suit against the US companies that produced the toxic defoliant used by American forces during the Vietnam War.

2005 – An estimated 58 percent of Iraq’s population defy threats of violence to vote in the first elections since Saddam Hussein’s ouster. Iraqis voted to elect 275 members of a transitional national assembly, which will write a constitution; 111 members of the Kurdish legislature; and local councils in Iraq’s 18 provinces. Insurgents struck polling stations with a string of suicide bombings and mortar volleys, killing at least 44 people, including 9 attackers. 5 people were killed and 17 injured when a suicide attacker blew himself up aboard a minibus bound for a polling station in central Iraq.

2008 – United States District Court judge Stanwood Duval dismisses a class action suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over flooding from a levee breach in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

2014 – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announces that federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

January 31st ~

1620 – Virginia colony leaders wrote to the Virginia Company in England, asking for more orphaned apprentices for employment.

1795 – Wounded by the sharp criticism of his colleagues, Alexander Hamilton resigned his post as the Secretary of the Treasury on this day in 1795. During his run as the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Hamilton put his conservative stamp on the young nation’s finances, establishing a national bank and a tax-based system to fuel the repayment of national and foreign debts. Hamilton also pushed for the Federal government to assume full responsibility for debts incurred by the states during the Revolutionary War.

However, Hamilton’s Federalist ardor was a frequent target for controversy, as was his role in meting out the country’s neutrality stance during the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars. Hamilton’s involvement in the latter bit of policy drew particularly heavy fire and helped seal his departure from office. And so, Hamilton putatively retired to lick his wounds and count his vast personal fortune. But, the siren call of politics proved irresistible and Hamilton served a long stint as an unofficial presidential advisor.

1846 – After the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown and Kilbourntown unify as the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Bridge War, sometimes simply the Bridge War, was an 1845 conflict between people from different regions of what is now Milwaukee, Wisconsin over the construction of a bridge crossing the Milwaukee River. By the 1840s, there had grown a great rivalry between Juneautown—east-side Milwaukee—and Kilbourntown—west-side Milwaukee—mostly due to the actions of Byron Kilbourn, Kilbourntown’s founder, who had been trying to isolate Juneautown to make it more dependent on Kilbourntown.

In 1840, the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, finding the ferry system on the Milwaukee River to be “inadequate”, ordered the construction of a bridge. Kilbourn and his supporters viewed the bridge as a threat to their plans. Furthermore, the two towns disputed over the funding for the bridge; ultimately, this led to Kilbourn destroying part of the bridge in 1845. Mobs formed on the east side of the river, but further violence was prevented for two more weeks when two smaller bridges were destroyed by men from Juneautown in an attempt to cut Kilbourntown off from the east and south side. Eventually, skirmishes broke out between the inhabitants of the two towns; no one was killed, although several people were injured, some seriously. It was in the aftermath of the Bridge War that Juneautown and Kilbourntown began making greater attempts at cooperation, ultimately resulting in their unification as the City of Milwaukee.

1848 – John C. Frémont is Court-martialed for mutiny and disobeying orders. On January 16, 1847, Commodore Stockton had appointed Frémont military governor of California following the Treaty of Cahuenga. However, U.S. Army Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny, who allegedly outranked both Stockton and Frémont, had orders from President Polk and secretary of war William L. Marcy to serve as military governor. (In reality, Stockton’s rank was equivalent to a rear admiral (lower half) today.

Therefore, Stockton and Kearny had the same equivalent rank (one star,) and the War Department had not worked out a protocol for who would be in charge.) He asked Frémont to give up the governorship, which the latter stubbornly refused to do before finally relenting. Ordered to march with Kearny’s army back east, Frémont was arrested on August 22, 1847 when they arrived at Fort Leavenworth. He was charged with mutiny, disobedience of orders, assumption of powers, along with several other military offenses. Ordered by Kearny to report to the adjutant general in Washington to stand for court-martial, Frémont was convicted of mutiny, disobedience of a superior officer and military misconduct.

1863 – The 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later called the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops was officially recognized. Components of the regiment had been in training since early 1962.

1864 – An expedition comprising some 40 sailors and 350 soldiers with a 12-pound howitzer, under command of Lieutenant Commander Charles W. Flusser, marched inland from the Roanoke River North Carolina. They “held the town of Windsor several hours, and marched back 8 miles to our boats without a single shot from the enemy.”

January 31st ~ {continued...}

1865 – The U.S. House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. It read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” When the Civil War began, President Lincoln’s professed goal was the restoration of the Union. But early in the war, the Union began keeping escaped slaves rather than returning them to their owners, so slavery essentially ended wherever the Union army was victorious.

In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in areas that were still in rebellion against the Union. This measure opened the issue of what to do about slavery in border states that had not seceded or in areas that had been captured by the Union before the proclamation. In 1864, an amendment abolishing slavery passed the Senate but died in the House as Democrats rallied in the name of states’ rights. The election of 1864 brought Lincoln back to the White House and significant Republican majorities in both houses, so it appeared the amendment was headed for passage when the new Congress convened in March 1865.

Lincoln preferred that the amendment receive bipartisan support–some Democrats indicated support for the measure, but many still resisted. The amendment passed 119 to 56, seven votes above the necessary two-thirds majority. Several Democrats abstained, but the 13th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification, which came in December 1865. With the passage of the amendment, the institution that had indelibly shaped American history and had started the Civil War was eradicated.

1865 – Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate armies.

1916 – President Woodrow Wilson refused the compromise on Lusitania reparations.

1917 – Germany announces the renewal of unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sited in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. None of the 25 Americans on board were killed, and all were later picked up by a British steamer.

1942 – HMS Culver (ex-CGC Mendota–she was one of the “Lake” Class cutters transferred to the Royal Navy in 1941 under the Lend-Lease program) was torpedoed with 13 survivors.

1944 – Operation Overlord (D-Day) was postponed until June.

1944 – American landings begin on the islands of Kwajalein Atoll. Admiral Spruance is in overall command and General Holland Smith commands the various landing forces. Elements of US 4th Marine Division (Smith) land on Roi, Namur and nearby islets. Task Force 53 (Admiral Connolly) provides transport and naval support, including battleships and escort carriers. The landing on Roi makes rapid progress. On Namur there is heavy Japanese resistance. Meanwhile, there are also landings on Majuro Atoll by the US 27th Infantry Regiment. Admiral Hill’s task force provides naval support. The Majuro Atoll is captured quickly and is immediately prepared to become a base for American forces. Also, the carriers of Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) continue attacks on Eniwetok and Maleolap.

January 31st ~ {continued...}

1944 – The US 5th Army continues offensive operations against the German-held Gustav Line. Caira is captured by forces of US 2nd Corps. The Free French Corps recaptures Monte Abate.

1944 – During the Anzio campaign the 1st Ranger Battalion (Darby’s Rangers) is destroyed behind enemy lines in a heavily outnumbered encounter at Battle of Cisterna, Italy.

1945 – Units of US 18th Corps from US 1st Army enter Germany east of St. Vith as they continue their advance from the Ardennes. To the south, in Alsace, French 1st Army attacks near Colmar also make some ground.

1945 – On Luzon, two regiments of General Swing’s 11th Airborne Division are landed by sea near Nasugbu southwest of Manila. Admiral Fechteler leads the naval support with a cruiser and eight destroyers. There is little opposition to the landing. North of Manila, the US advance is still making progress. US 14th Corps units have nearly reached Calumpit in a converging attack.

1945 – Pvt. Eddie Slovik becomes the first American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion-and the only one who suffered such a fate during World War II. Pvt. Eddie Slovik was a draftee. Originally classified 4-F because of a prison record (grand theft auto), he was reclassified 1-A when draft standards were lowered to meet growing personnel needs. In January 1944, he was trained to be a rifleman, which was not to his liking, as he hated guns.

In August of the same year, Slovik was shipped to France to fight with the 28th Infantry Division, which had already suffered massive casualties in France and Germany. Slovik was a replacement, a class of soldier not particular respected by officers. As he and a companion were on the way to the front lines, they became lost in the chaos of battle and stumbled upon a Canadian unit that took them in. Slovik stayed on with the Canadians until October 5, when they turned him and his buddy over to the American military police. They were reunited with the 28th Division, which had been moved to Elsenborn, Belgium.

No charges were brought, as replacements getting lost early on in their tours of duty were not unusual. But exactly one day after Slovik returned to his unit, he claimed he was “too scared and too nervous” to be a rifleman, and threatened to run away if forced into combat. His confession was ignored-and Slovik took off. One day later he returned and signed a confession of desertion, claiming he would run away again if forced to fight, and submitted it to an officer of the 28th. The officer advised Slovik to take the confession back, as the consequences were serious. Slovik refused and was confined to the stockade.

The 28th Division had many cases of soldiers wounding themselves or deserting in the hopes of a prison sentence that might protect them from the perils of combat. A legal officer of the 28th offered Slovik a deal: dive into combat immediately and avoid the court-martial. Slovik refused. He was tried on November 11 for desertion and was convicted in less than two hours. The nine-officer court-martial panel passed a unanimous sentence of execution, “to be shot to death with musketry.” Slovik’s appeal failed. It was held that he “directly challenged the authority” of the United States and that “future discipline depends upon a resolute reply to this challenge.” Slovik had to pay for his recalcitrant attitude, and the military made an example of him.

One last appeal was made-to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander-but the timing was bad for mercy. The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest was resulting in literally thousands of American casualties, not to mention the second largest surrender of an U.S. Army unit during the war. Eisenhower upheld the death sentence. Slovik was shot and killed by a 12-man firing squad in eastern France. None of the rifleman even flinched, firmly believing Slovik had gotten what he deserved.

1948 – Mrs. Fannie M. Salter, keeper of the Turkey Point Lighthouse in upper Chesapeake Bay since 1925 and the last woman keeper of a lighthouse in the United States, retired from active service. The first woman had been hired as a lighthouse keeper 150 years before. Salter’s retirement temporarily closed the tradition of women serving as keepers at lighthouses.

January 31st ~ {continued...}

1950 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan.

Then, several weeks after that, British and U.S. intelligence came to the staggering conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top-ranking scientist in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. These two events, and the fact that the Soviets now knew everything that the Americans did about how to build a hydrogen bomb, led Truman to approve massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb,” as he described it in his public announcement on January 31.

On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device, built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion, instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. The incredible explosive force of Mike was also apparent from the sheer magnitude of its mushroom cloud–within 90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet and entered the stratosphere. One minute later, it reached 108,000 feet, eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000 feet. Half an hour after the test, the mushroom stretched 60 miles across, with the base of the head joining the stem at 45,000 feet.

Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the “hell bomb,” as it was known by many Americans, and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.

1954 – Edwin H. Armstrong (d.1890), US radio inventor of frequency modulation (FM), committed suicide.

1955 – A document thus dated stated that Yuri Rastvorov, a Soviet defector, told Eisenhower administration officials in a private Jan 28 meeting that US and other UN POWs were held in Siberia during the 1950-1953 Korean War.

1957 – Eight people on the ground in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.

1958 – Explorer 1, the first successful US satellite, was launched by a Jupiter-C rocket and the United States entered the Space Age. It discovered the “Van Allen radiation belts” around Earth named after James Van Allen. Radio signals from the transmitter aboard the 30.8 pound satellite were picked up in California within a few minutes after the launch. Two months earlier, the first attempt to launch a satellite had failed.

1958 – James Van Allen discovers the Van Allen radiation belt.

1961 – Ham became the 1st primate in space (158 miles) aboard Mercury-Redstone 2. Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) was the penultimate test flight of the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle prior to the first manned American space mission in Project Mercury. It was launched at 16:55 UTC on January 31, 1961 from LC-5 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Mercury spacecraft No. 5 carried Ham the Chimp, a chimpanzee, on a suborbital flight, landing in the Atlantic Ocean 16 minutes and 39 seconds after launch.

1961 – Lieutenant Commander Samuel Lee Gravely, Jr. becomes first African-American to command a combat ship, USS Falgout.

January 31st ~ {continued...}

1962 – The United States has installed a tactical air control system in South Vietnam and furnishes additional aircraft for combat and airlift support.

1966 – U.S. planes resumed bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.

1968 – As part of the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong soldiers attack the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. A 19-man suicide squad seized the U.S. Embassy and held it for six hours until an assault force of U.S. paratroopers landed by helicopter on the building’s roof and routed them. The offensive was launched on January 30, when communist forces attacked Saigon, Hue, five of six autonomous cities, 36 of 44 provincial capitals, and 64 of 245 district capitals.

The timing and magnitude of the attacks caught the South Vietnamese and American forces off guard, but eventually the Allied forces turned the tide. Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the communists. By the end of March 1968, they had not achieved any of their objectives and had lost 32,000 soldiers and had 5,800 captured. U.S. forces suffered 3,895 dead; South Vietnamese losses were 4,954; non-U.S. allies lost 214. More than 14,300 South Vietnamese civilians died.

While the offensive was a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, the early reporting of a smashing communist victory went largely uncorrected in the media and this led to a great psychological victory for the communists. The heavy U.S. casualties incurred during the offensive coupled with the disillusionment over the earlier overly optimistic reports of progress in the war accelerated the growing disenchantment with President Johnson’s conduct of the war.

1971 – Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned mission to the moon. On February 5, after suffering some initial problems in docking the lunar and command modules, Shepard and Mitchell descended to the lunar surface on the third U.S. moon landing.

Upon stepping out of the lunar module, Shepard, who in 1961, aboard Freedom 7, was the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon. Shepard and Mitchell remained on the lunar surface for nearly 34 hours, conducting simple scientific experiments, such as hitting golf balls into space with Shepard’s golf club, and collecting 96 pounds of lunar samples. On February 9, Apollo 14 safely returned to Earth.

1972 – In a communique charging President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger with “unilaterally” divulging the substance of the secret talks, creating the impasse at the secret meeting, and distorting the facts, North Vietnam publishes the nine-point plan they submitted during the secret talks. Since August 1969, talks between Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives had been going on secretly in Paris.

On January 25, Nixon, in response to criticism that his administration had not made its best efforts to end the war, revealed that Kissinger had been involved in the secret talks. Nixon also disclosed the text of an eight-point peace proposal presented privately to the North Vietnamese on October 11, 1971. In their communique, the North Vietnamese answered with their own peace plan.

While Washington requested the withdrawal of all foreign forces from South Vietnam with the condition of an agreement in principle on a final solution, Hanoi insisted on the withdrawal of U.S. and Allied troops from all of Indochina without condition. Hanoi also demanded the immediate resignation of the South Vietnamese Thieu regime. With the secret talks made public and at an impasse, the North Vietnamese leadership decided to launch a massive invasion of South Vietnam in March 1972.

January 31st ~ {continued...}

1981 – Era of Enlisted Naval Aviators ends when last pilot retired.

1989 – Jury selection began in the trial of former National Security Council aide Oliver North, charged in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. He was later convicted on three counts, but those convictions were set aside, and the case was not retried.

1990 – The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opens in Moscow.

1991 – During the Gulf War, Army Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy and Army Specialist David Lockett were captured by Iraqi forces near the Kuwaiti-Saudi border; both were eventually released.

1992 – Leaders of the U.N. Security Council’s member states held an unprecedented summit, after which they issued a declaration on collective security, arms control and nuclear non-proliferation.

1996 – The last Cubans held in refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base boarded a plane for Florida.

1996 – In Sri Lanka an explosive-packed truck crashed into the Central Bank in Colombo and killed at least 55 and injured at least 1400 people. The Tamil Tigers rebel group were blamed.

1998 – The space shuttle Endeavour returned from Mir with its crew of 7. Astronaut David Wolf returned to Earth after four months on the Russian space station Mir.

1999 – A series of almost daily U.S. missile air strikes on Iraq’s air defences has had a “grave impact” on President Saddam Hussein’s ability to challenge allied enforcement of the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.

2000 – The US persuaded Puerto Rico to continue use of the Navy firing range off Vieques Island with dummy bombs in exchange for $40 million. A vote by islanders to approve live ammunition would bring Puerto Rico an additional $50 million. A no vote would require clean up and a halt to training by May 1, 2003.

2001 – In the Netherlands a Scottish court sentenced Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, to life in a Scottish prison for the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A second Libyan was acquitted.

2002 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a speech that the United States had to prepare for potential surprise attacks “vastly more deadly” than the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings.

2002 – It was reported that the US and Kazakstan planned a joint venture to use a former Soviet nuclear weapons plant to process uranium for power plants and absorb atomic workers.

2003 – Top UN arms inspectors said they would not agree to new talks in Baghdad unless Iraq demonstrated more cooperation and met unspecified conditions.

2004 – The Mars rover Opportunity rolled off its landing pad onto the surface of Mars.

2004 – The crews of a 47-foot MLB from Station Chincoteague and a rescue helicopter from Air Station Elizabeth City combined to rescue five men after their vessel began taking on water 25 miles east of Chincoteague.

2005 – US guards in southern Iraq opened fire on prisoners during a riot at the detention facility for security detainees at Umm Qasr, killing 4 of them. 6 other prisoners were injured.

2005 – Iraqis elected the Iraqi Transitional Government in order to draft a permanent constitution. Although some violence and a widespread Sunni boycott marred the event, most of the eligible Kurd and Shia populace participated.

2007 – Boston transit officials and the U.S. Coast Guard shut down parts of Interstate 93, two bridges, and a section of the Charles River after the discovery of suspicious devices placed around the city. Turner Broadcasting released a statement that the items were marketing tools placed within ten U.S. cities for the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. One arrest was made.

2009 – Iraq held provincial elections. Provincial candidates and those close to them faced some political assassinations and attempted assassinations, and there was also some other violence related to the election.

2013 – NASA unveils the prototype of a lunar mining robot called the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR).

February 1st ~

1633 – The tobacco laws of Virginia were codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.

1780 – The British fleet carrying General Clinton’s 8,000-man army arrives from New York off Charleston, South Carolina.

1790 – In the Royal Exchange Building on New York City’s Broad Street, the Supreme Court of the United States meets for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding. The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article Three of the U.S. Constitution, which took effect in March 1789.

The Constitution granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which constitutionality was at issue. The court was also designated to rule on cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction. In September 1789, the Judiciary Act was passed, implementing Article Three by providing for six justices who would serve on the court for life.

The same day, President George Washington appointed John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge of South Carolina, William Cushing of Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, Robert Harrison of Maryland, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania to serve as associate justices. Two days later, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The Supreme Court later grew into arguably the most powerful judicial body in the world in terms of its central place in the U.S. political order. In times of constitutional crisis, for better or worse, it always played a definitive role in resolving the great issues of the time.

1800 – In the undeclared naval war with France, the USS Constellation engages in a decisive battle with the French vessel La Vengeance.

1809 – In the winter of 1807, the U.S. was thrust into the middle of the Napoleonic wars, as the British and French hassled American merchant ships in hopes of gaining a strategic edge in their ongoing battles. However, in an attempt to keep the nation out of another bloody and costly conflict, President Thomas Jefferson quickly pushed the Embargo Act through the legislative chain. But, the legislation, which effectively sealed U.S. ports, backfired: intended as a nonviolent, fiscal response to the British and French attacks, the act instead served to aid foreign merchants at the expense of American interests.

Mercantilists in New England and New York suffered mightily and, in some instances, resorted to smuggling and other underhanded tactics to elude the crippling grip of the Embargo Act. In January of 1809, the Federal government passed the Enforcement Act, which called for severe penalties against illegal trading. Infuriated by the latest round of legislation, anti-embargo forces mounted a strong drive to nullify the acts.

On February 1, Massachusetts Senator Thomas Pickering stepped into the fray and convened an assembly in New England that demanded the demise of the Embargo Act. An ardent Federalist, as well as a strong British ally and staunch opponent of Jefferson’s policies, Pickering helped force the president’s hand. With but a few days remaining in his second term, Jefferson signed the Non-Intercourse Act on March 1, 1809; the legislation reopened U.S. ports, save for trading with the British and French.

1861 – A furious Governor Sam Houston stormed out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas had voted 167-7 to secede from the Union. Texas Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union when a state convention votes 166 to 8 in favor of the measure.

The Texans who voted to leave the Union did so over the objections of their governor, Sam Houston. The hero of the Texas War for Independence was in his third term as the state’s chief executive; a staunch Unionist, his election seemed to indicate that Texas did not share the rising secessionist sentiments of the other southern states. But events in the year following Houston’s election swayed many Texans to the secessionist cause. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859 raised the specter of a massive slave insurrection, and the ascendant Republican Party made many Texans uneasy about continuing in the Union.

After Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, pressure mounted on Houston to call a convention so that Texas could consider secession. He did so reluctantly in January, and he sat in silence on February 1 as the convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of secession. Houston grumbled that Texans were “stilling the voice of reason,” and he predicted an “ignoble defeat” for the South. Texas’ move completed the first round of secession.

Seven states–South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas–left the Union before Lincoln took office. Four states–Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas– waited until the formal start of the war with the firing on Ft. Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina, before deciding to leave the Union. The remaining slave states–Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri–never mustered the necessary majority for secession.

February 1st ~ {continued...}

1862 – “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was first published in “Atlantic Monthly” as an anonymous poem. The lyric was the work of Julia Ward Howe and was based on chapter 63 of the Old Testament’s Book of Isaiah. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” soon became the most popular Union marching song of the Civil War and is still being sung and to the tune of a song titled, “John Brown’s Body”.

Julia Ward Howe (b.1819-1908) was an influential social reformer and wife of fellow reformer and educator Samuel Gridley Howe. She was prominent in the anti-slavery movement, woman‘s suffrage, prison reform and the international peace movements. Julia Ward Howe was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Fine Arts and Letters in 1908. Ralph Waldo Emerson, said: “I honor the author of ‘The Battle Hymn’ … she was born in the city of New York. I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts. We have no such poetess in New England.”

1863 – Ironclad U.S.S. Montauk, Commander Worden, with U.S.S. Seneca, Wissahickon, Dawn, and mortar schooner C. P. Williams, again tested the defenses of Fort McAllister described by Rear Admiral Du Pont as “rather a thorn in my flesh.”

On the 28th of January, Worden had learned, through “a contraband,” the position of the obstructions and torpedoes which bad effectively blocked his way in the assault of 27 January. “This information,” Worden reported,” with the aid of the contraband, whom I took on board, enabled me to take up a position nearer the fort in the next attack. . . ” Ammunition supplies replenished, Montauk moved to within 600 yards of McAllister in the early morning; the gunboats took a position one and three-quarters miles below the fort. Worden opened fire at 7:45 a.m., and reported at ”7:53 a.m. our turret was hit for the first time during this action at which time the enemy were working their guns with rapidity and precision.

The Confederate fire was concentrated on the ironclad, which took some 48 hits in the 4-hour engagement. Colonel Robert H. Anderson, commanding Fort McAllister, paid tribute to the accuracy of the naval gunfire: ”The enemy fired steadily and with remarkable precision. Their fire was terrible. Their mortar fire was unusually fine, a large number of their shells bursting directly over the battery. The ironclad’s fire was principally directed at the VIII- inch columbiade, and the parapet in front of this gun was so badly breached as to leave the gun entirely exposed.”

General Beauregard added: ”For hours the most formidable vessel of her class hurled missiles of the heaviest caliber ever used in modern warfare at the weak parapet of the battery, which was almost demolished; but, standing at their guns, as became men fighting for homes, for honor, and for independence’. the garrison replied with such effect as to cripple and beat back their adversary, clad though in impenetrable armor and armed with XV and XI inch guns, supported by mortar boats whose practice was of uncommon precision.

1865 – Lincoln’s home state of Illinois became the first to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United States. President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, but it had not effectively abolished slavery in all of the states. It did not apply to slave-holding border states that had remained with the Union during the Civil War.

After the war, the sentiment about blacks was mixed even among anti-slavery Americans: some considered Lincoln’s address too conservative and pushed for black suffrage, arguing that blacks would remain oppressed by their former owners if they did not have the power to vote. After the amendment was passed, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created to help blacks with the problems they would encounter while trying to acquire jobs, education and land of their own.

1893 – The US Minister to Hawaii, at the request of President Dole, placed the Provisional Government under formal US protection and raised the US flag over Hawaii.

February 1st ~ {continued...}

1865 – A boat expedition from U.S.S. Midnight, Acting Master John C. Wells, landed and destroyed salt works “of 13,615 boiling capacity” at St. Andrews Bay, Florida. The making of salt from sea water became a major industry in Florida during the Civil War as salt was a critical commodity in the Confederate war effort.

Large quantities were needed for preserving meat, fish, butter, and other perishable foods, as well as for curing hides. Federal warships continuously destroyed salt works along the coasts of Florida. The expedition led by Wells was the finale in the Union Navy’s effective restriction of this vital Confederate industry.

1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1906 – 1st federal penitentiary building completed in Leavenworth, Kansas.

1909 – U.S. troops left Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president.

1915 – The government of Germany agrees to permit an unrestricted submarine warfare campaign. Ships, even those of neutral countries, can now be sunk without warning. On 4 February the Germans announce a submarine blockade of Britain to begin on the 18th. All vessels bound for Britain are deemed legitimate targets.

1917 – Admiral Tirpitz (1849-1930) announced that Germany would attack all shipping in the North Atlantic with its feared U-Boats.

1923 – Fascists Voluntary Militia formed in Italy under Mussolini.

1940 – The Chinese Communist Mao Tse-tung calls for the US to stand firm against Japan.

1941 – There is a major reorganization of the US Navy. It is now to be formed in three fleets, the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Asiatic. Admiral King is appointed to command the new Atlantic Fleet. There is to be a significant strengthening of the forces in the Atlantic.

1942 – U.S. Navy conducts Marshalls-Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater. These were tactical airstrikes and naval artillery attacks by United States Navy aircraft carrier and other warship forces against Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) garrisons in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.

The Japanese garrisons were under the overall command of Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the 4th Fleet. Japanese aircraft in the islands belonged to the IJN’s 24th Air Flotilla under Rear Admiral Eiji Gotō. The U.S. warship forces were under the overall command of Vice Admiral William Halsey, Jr. The raids were carried out by two separate U.S. carrier task forces. Aircraft from Task Force 17 (TF 17), commanded by Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher and centered on the carrier USS Yorktown, attacked Jaluit, Mili, and Makin (Butaritari) islands.

The Yorktown aircraft inflicted moderate damage to the Japanese naval installations on the islands and destroyed three aircraft. Seven Yorktown aircraft were lost, as well as a floatplane from one of TF 17’s cruisers. Aircraft from TF 8, commanded by Halsey and centered on the carrier USS Enterprise, struck Kwajalein, Wotje, and Taroa. At the same time, cruisers and destroyers bombarded Wotje and Taroa.

The strikes inflicted light to moderate damage on the three islands’ naval garrisons, sank three small warships and damaged several others, including the light cruiser Katori, and destroyed 15 Japanese aircraft. The heavy cruiser USS Chester was hit and slightly damaged by a Japanese aerial bomb, and six Enterprise aircraft were lost. TFs 8 and 17 retired from the area immediately upon completion of the raids.

1942 – Coast Guard enlistees after this date were restricted to enlistment in the USCG Reserve. This was done to prevent having too many enlistees in the service at war’s end.

1942 – Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States government, begins broadcasting with programs aimed at areas controlled by the Axis powers.

1943 – One of America’s most decorated military units of World War II, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese-Americans, was authorized.

February 1st ~ {continued...}

1943 – Japanese forces on Guadalcanal Island, defeated by Marines, start to withdraw after the Japanese emperor finally gives them permission. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island, part of the Solomon Islands chain, and began constructing an airfield. In response, the U.S. launched Operation Watchtower, in which American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain, including Guadalcanal.

The landings on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tananbogo met with much initial opposition from the Japanese defenders, despite the fact that the landings took the Japanese by surprise because bad weather had grounded their scouting aircraft. “I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting,” wrote one American major general on the scene. “These people refuse to surrender.” The Americans who landed on Guadalcanal had an easier time of it, at least initially. More than 11,000 Marines landed, but 24 hours passed before the Japanese manning the garrison knew what had happened.

The U.S. forces quickly met their main objective of taking the airfield, and the outnumbered Japanese troops temporarily retreated. Japanese reinforcements were landed, though, and fierce hand-to-hand jungle fighting ensued. The Americans were at a particular disadvantage because they were assaulted from both sea and air, but when the U.S. Navy supplied reinforcement troops, the Americans gained the advantage.

By February 1943, the Japanese retreated on secret orders of their emperor. In fact, the Japanese retreat was so stealthy that the Americans did not even know it had taken place until they stumbled upon abandoned positions, empty boats, and discarded supplies. In total, the Japanese lost more than 25,000 men compared with a loss of 1,600 by the Americans. Each side lost 24 warships.

1944 – American operations against the Kwajalein Atoll continue. On Roi US forces are mopping up. There is heavy fighting on Namur. US Task Force 52 (Admiral Turner) provides naval support for the landing of the 7th Infantry Division (General Corlett) on Kwajalein. Here, the Americans overrun a third of island, despite heavy Japanese resistance.

1944 – The forces of US 5th Army continue operations against the German defenses of the Gustav Line. The 34th Division gains some ground north of Cassino, around Monte Maiola.

1945 – The US 6th Corps from 7th Army crosses the river Moder and advances to Oberhofen.

1945 – The American advance on all fronts is slowed by fierce Japanese resistance. US 1st Corps is heavily engaged near Rosario and San Jose while US 11th Corps is struggling to make more ground across the neck of the Bataan Peninsula.

1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).

1946 – A press conference for what is considered the first computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC), was held at the University of Pennsylvania. The machine took up an entire room, weighed 30 tons and used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes to perform functions such as counting to 5,000 in one second.

ENIAC, costing $450,000, was designed by the U.S. Army during World War II to make artillery calculations. The development of ENIAC paved the way for modern computer technology–but even today’s average calculator possesses more computing power than ENIAC did. John Mauchley and John “Pres” Eckert supervised the project.

February 1st ~ {continued...}

1951 – The third A-bomb tests were telecast for the 1st time and completed in the desert of Nevada.

1951 – Alfred Krupp & 28 other German war criminals were freed.

1951 – By a vote of 44 to 7, the United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning the communist government of the People’s Republic of China for acts of aggression in Korea. It was the first time since the United Nations formed in 1945 that it had condemned a nation as an aggressor.

In June 1950, communist forces from North Korea invaded South Korea in an attempt to unify the nation, which had been divided in 1945 when Soviet troops occupied the northern portion of the country and U.S. troops the southern in order to accept the surrender of Japanese forces in Korea. In late 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed into North Korea to do battle with U.S. forces, which had earlier driven the invading North Korean forces out of South Korea. By 1951, the United States was deeply involved in Korea, having committed thousands of troops and millions of dollars in aid to South Korea.

The General Assembly vote followed unsuccessful attempts by the U.S. delegation to the United Nations to have the Security Council take action against the Chinese. Exercising his nation’s veto power, the Soviet representative on the Security Council consistently blocked the U.S. effort. (The United States, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Nationalist China had absolute veto power of any Security Council proposal.) Turning to the General Assembly, the U.S. delegation called for the United Nations to condemn communist China as an aggressor in Korea.

The final vote fell largely along ideological lines, with the communist bloc nations of the Soviet Union, Byelorussia, Ukraine, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, joined by neutralists Burma and India, voting against the resolution. Despite the votes against it, the resolution passed, declaring that China was “engaged in aggression in Korea,” and asked that it “cause its forces and nationals in Korea to cease hostilities against the United Nations forces and to withdraw from Korea.”

The action was largely symbolic, because many nations-including some that voted for the resolution-were reluctant to take more forceful action against the People’s Republic of China for fear that the conflict in Korea would escalate. While economic and political sanctions could have been brought against China, the United Nations decided to take no further action. The Korean War dragged on for two more bloody years, finally ending in a stalemate and cease-fire in 1953. By that time, over 50,000 U.S. troops had died in the conflict.

1951 – The 23rd Regimental Combat Team, of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, engaged the Chinese Communist Forces in the Battle of the Twin Tunnels, killing an estimated 1,300 Chinese. U.S. casualties included 45 killed, four missing and 207 wounded in action.

1955 – Operation Deep Freeze, a research task force, established in Antarctic.

1959 – Texas Instruments requested a patent for the IC (Integrated Circuit).

1958 – Elvis Presley records his last single, “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck,” before joining the army. Elvis had topped the charts eight times since April 1956, when “Heartbreak Hotel” hit No. 1. Drafted in 1958, Elvis enlisted in the army in March that year and served until 1960. When he joined the army, his monthly salary dropped from $100,000 to $78. Fortunately, his manager had already recorded enough material to keep Elvis singles on the charts during most of The King’s army service.

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson rejected Charles de Gaulle’s plan for a neutral Vietnam.