May 4th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 4th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

1942 – The U.S. began food rationing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 4th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 4th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 4th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

1989 – US launched the Magellan Probe to Venus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~

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

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

1861 – CSA troops abandon Alexandria, VA.

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

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

1863 – Hooker begins to retreat from the Battle of Chancellorsville

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5th ~ {continued...}

1979 – Voyager 1 passed the planet Jupiter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 6th ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 6th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 6th ~ {continued...}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 6th ~ {continued...}

1941 – The first flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was one of the largest and heaviest fighter aircraft in history to be powered by a single piston engine. It was heavily armed with eight .50-caliber machine guns, four per wing. When fully loaded, the P-47 weighed up to eight tons, and in the fighter-bomber ground-attack roles could carry five-inch rockets or a significant bomb load of 2,500 pounds; it could carry more than half the payload of the B-17 bomber on long-range missions (although the B-17 had a far greater range).

The P-47, based on the powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine—the same engine used by two very successful U.S. Navy fighters, the Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair—was to be very effective as a short-to-medium range escort fighter in high-altitude air-to-air combat and, when unleashed as a fighter-bomber, proved especially adept at ground attack in both the World War II European and Pacific Theaters.

The P-47 was one of the main United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) fighters of World War II, and served with other Allied air forces, notably those of France, Britain, and Russia. Mexican and Brazilian squadrons fighting alongside the U.S. were equipped with the P-47. The armored cockpit was roomy inside, comfortable for the pilot, and offered good visibility. A modern-day U.S. ground-attack aircraft, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, takes its name from the P-47.

1942 – U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders all U.S. troops in the Philippines to the Japanese. The island of Corregidor remained the last Allied stronghold in the Philippines after the Japanese victory at Bataan (from which General Wainwright had managed to flee, to Corregidor). Constant artillery shelling and aerial bombardment attacks ate away at the American and Filipino defenders.

Although still managing to sink many Japanese barges as they approached the northern shores of the island, the Allied troops could hold the invader off no longer. General Wainwright, only recently promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and commander of the U.S. armed forces in the Philippines, offered to surrender Corregidor to Japanese General Homma, but Homma wanted the complete, unconditional capitulation of all American forces throughout the Philippines. Wainwright had little choice given the odds against him and the poor physical condition of his troops (he had already lost 800 men). He surrendered at midnight. All 11,500 surviving Allied troops were evacuated to a prison stockade in Manila.

General Wainwright remained a POW until 1945. As a sort of consolation for the massive defeat he suffered, he was present on the USS Missouri for the formal Japanese surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945. He would also be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman. Wainwright died in 1953, exactly eight years to the day of the Japanese surrender ceremony.

1942 – CAPT Milton Miles arrives in Chungking, China, to begin building an intelligence and guerilla training organization, Naval Group China.

May 6th ~ {continued...}

1943 – In Tunisia, US forces advance on three axes toward Bizerta, Ferryville and Protville.

1944 – A Japanese troopship convoy is destroyed by the American submarine Gurnard.

1944 – The first flight of the Mitsubishi A7M fighter (designed to replace the Zero) takes place. Technical problems and Allied bombing raids prevent mass production.

1945 – The US 97th Division, part of US 5th Corps of the US 3rd Army, occupies Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. The US 12th Corps advances toward Prague but the army is ordered to halt the advance and allow Soviets to occupy the rest of the country as has been arranged.

1945 – On Luzon, elements of the US 25th Division, part of US 1st Corps, capture the Kembu plateau. On Mindanao, the US 24th and 31st Divisions overrun Japanese positions north of Davao, where the Japanese 35th Army (General Morozumi) is concentrated.

1945 – On Okinawa, the Japanese offensive loses momentum. Japanese forces have sustain losses of at least 5000 killed. Even while it has been going on, American forces have made gains near Machinto airfield and Maeda Ridge.

1945 – Axis Sally made her final propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.

1945 – The Coast Guard-manned frigate USS Moberly (PF-63), in concert with USS Atherton, sank the U-853 in the Atlantic off Block Island. There were no survivors.

1945 – Naval landing force evacuates 500 Marshallese from Jaluit Atoll, Marshall Islands.

1953 – Planes from the carriers Princeton and Valley Forge blasted a mining area northwest of Songjin, causing numerous secondary explosions and destroying buildings and a main transformer station. The heavy cruiser Saint Paul and the destroyer Nicholas fired on coastal supply routes and storage areas.

1955 – West Germany joined NATO.

1962 – In the first test of its kind, the submerged submarine USS Ethan Allen fired a Polaris missile armed with a nuclear warhead that detonated above the Pacific Ocean.

1962 – Pathet Lao broke cease fire and conquered Nam Tha Laos.

1967 – Three US pilots shot down during a raid over Hanoi are paraded through the streets of that city. North Vietnam says the three pilots are based in Thailand.

1967 – Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, in a report to President Johnson, describes an encouraging turnout in recent village council elections. he estimates that 77 percent of eligible voters in participating villages cast ballots.

1969 – A US helicopter crashes 75 miles north of Saigon killing 34 and injuring 35 in what is believed to be the worst helicopter accident of the war. To this date, 2,595 helicopters have been lost.

1970 – More than 100 universities across the US shut down as thousands of students join a nationwide campus protest. Governor Ronald Reagan closes down the entire California university and college system until 11 may, involving more than 280,000 students on 28 campuses. A National Student Association spokesman reports that more than 300 campuses are boycotting classes.

1970 – Three new fronts are opened in Cambodia bringing to nearly 50,000 the number of allied troops there. One US spearhead, by troops of the 25th Infantry Division, moves across the border from Tayninh Province between the Fishhook and Parrot’s Beak areas. The US First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) is airlifted into the jungles 23 miles west of Phocbinh, South Vietnam, northeast of the Fishhook.

May 6th ~ {continued...}

1972 – The remnants of South Vietnam’s 5th Division at An Loc continue to receive daily artillery battering from the communist forces surrounding the city as reinforcements fight their way from the south up Highway 13. The South Vietnamese had been under heavy attack since the North Vietnamese had launched their Nguyen Hue Offensive on March 30th.

The communists had mounted a massive invasion of South Vietnam with 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments, more than 120,000 troops and approximately 1,200 tanks and other armored vehicles. The main North Vietnamese objectives, in addition to An Loc in the south, were Quang Tri in the north, and Kontum in the Central Highlands. In Binh Long Province, the North Vietnamese forces had crossed into South Vietnam from Cambodia on April 5th to strike first at Loc Ninh. After taking Loc Ninh, the North Vietnamese forces then quickly encircled An Loc, the capital of Binh Long Province, which was only 65 miles from Saigon.

The North Vietnamese held An Loc under siege for almost three months while they made repeated attempts to take the city, bombarding it around the clock. The defenders suffered heavy casualties, including 2,300 dead or missing, but with the aid of U.S. advisers and American airpower, they managed to hold out against vastly superior odds until the siege was lifted on June 18th.

Fighting continued all over South Vietnam into the summer months, but eventually the South Vietnamese forces prevailed against the invaders and they retook Quang Tri in September. With the communist invasion blunted, President Nixon declared that the South Vietnamese victory proved the viability of his Vietnamization program, which he had instituted in 1969 to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese armed forces.

1968 – Astronaut Neil Armstrong was nearly killed in a lunar module trainer accident.

1981 – A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Ying Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.

1981 – US expelled Libyan diplomats.

1990 – Freed American hostage Frank Reed said at a news conference in Arlington, Va., that he had been savagely beaten by his captors in Lebanon after two unsuccessful escape attempts.

1993 – The space shuttle “Columbia” landed safely in California after a 10-day mission.

1993 – The Bosnian Serb parliament, for the third time, rejected a U.N. peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, ordered a blockade of all supplies, except food and medicine, to the Bosnian Serbs.

1994 – The last HH-3F Pelican helicopter in Coast Guard service was retired. This ended the Coast Guard’s “amphibious era,” as no aviation asset left in service was capable of making water landings.

1995 – In London, thousands of World War II veterans celebrated the 50th anniversary of V-E Day.

May 6th ~ {continued...}

1996 – The body of former CIA director William Colby is found washed up on a riverbank in southern Maryland, eight days after he disappeared.

1997 – Sergeant Delmar Simpson received a 25 year sentence for raping 6 female trainees at the Aberdeen, Md., Proving Ground Army base.

1999 – Russia joined NATO to back a framework for ending the conflict in Kosovo that included an international security presence to enforce peace.

1999 – Electricity was restored in Belgrade as NATO air strikes continued in Yugoslavia. A main railroad bridge was destroyed near the Romanian border and oil depots in Nis were hit.

2002 – Two mailbox pipe bombs were found in Colorado and another one in Nebraska.

2002 – In Afghanistan the CIA fired a missile from a Predator in an attempt to kill Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of Hezb-e-Islami, and his top aides outside Kabul.

2004 – President Bush told King Abdullah II of Jordan that he was sorry for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US guards.

2004 – An audio recording attributed to Osama bin Laden offered rewards in gold for the killing of top U.S. and U.N. officials in Iraq or of the citizens of any nation fighting there.

2004 – U.S. soldiers backed by tanks and armored fighting vehicles seized control of the governor’s office from Shiite militiamen in the city of Najaf.

2011 – The United States Coast Guard closes a section of the Mississippi River near Caruthersville, Missouri due to heavy flooding.

2014 – Despite the clamor for Shinseki’s ouster, White House spokesman Jay Carney says Obama “remains confident in Secretary Shinseki’s ability to lead the department and take appropriate action.” Shinseki tells the Wall Street Journal he will not resign.

May 7th ~

1718 – The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Monsieur de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763). During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans (Spanish: Nueva Orleans) remained under Spanish control until 1801, when it reverted briefly to French oversight.

Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter) dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana (New France) to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city.

1763 – Pontiac’s Rebellion begins when a confederacy of Native American warriors under Ottawa chief Pontiac attacks the British force at Detroit. After failing to take the fort in their initial assault, Pontiac’s forces, made up of Ottawas and reinforced by Wyandots, Ojibwas, and Potawatamis, initiated a siege that would stretch into months. As the French and Indian Wars came to an end in the early 1760s, Native Americans living in former French territory found the new British authorities to be far less conciliatory than their predecessors.

In 1762, Pontiac enlisted support from practically every Indian tribe from Lake Superior to the lower Mississippi for a joint campaign to expel the British from the formerly French lands. According to Pontiac’s plan, each tribe would seize the nearest fort and then join forces to wipe out the undefended settlements. In April, Pontiac convened a war council on the banks of the Ecorse River near Detroit. It was decided that Pontiac and his warriors would gain access to the British fort at Detroit under the pretense of negotiating a peace treaty, giving them an opportunity to seize forcibly the arsenal there.

However, British Major Henry Gladwin learned of the plot, and the British were ready when Pontiac arrived in early May, and Pontiac was forced to begin a siege. At the same time, his allies in Pennsylvania began a siege of Fort Pitt, while other sympathetic tribes, such as the Delaware, the Shawnees, and the Seneca, prepared to move against various British forts and outposts in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

On July 31st, a British relief expedition attacked Pontiac’s camp but suffered heavy losses and were repelled in the Battle of Bloody Run. Nevertheless, they had succeeded in providing the fort at Detroit with reinforcements and supplies, which allowed it to hold out against the Indians into the fall. The major forts at Pitt and Niagara likewise held on, but the united tribes captured eight other fortified posts. At these forts, the garrisons were wiped out, relief expeditions were repulsed, and nearby frontier settlements were destroyed.

In the spring of 1764, two British armies were sent out, one into Pennsylvania and Ohio under Colonel Bouquet, and the other to the Great Lakes under Colonel John Bradstreet. Bouquet’s campaign met with success, and the Delawares and the Shawnees were forced to sue for peace, breaking Pontiac’s alliance. Failing to persuade tribes in the West to join his rebellion, and lacking the hoped-for support from the French, Pontiac finally signed a treaty with the British in 1766. In 1769, he was murdered by a Peoria Indian while visiting Illinois. His death led to bitter warfare among the tribes, and the Peorias were nearly wiped out.

May 7th ~ {continued...}

1769 – Revolution was in the air on this day in 1769, as George Washington launched a legislative salvo at Great Britain’s fiscal and judicial attempts to maintain its control over the American colonies. With his sights set on the British policy of “taxation without representation,” Washington brought a package of non-importation resolutions before the Virginia House of Burgesses. The resolutions, drafted by George Madison largely in response to England’s passage of the Townshend Act in 1767, also decried parliament’s plan to send American criminals to England for trial.

Though Virginia’s Royal Governor promptly fired back by disbanding the House of Burgesses, the revolutionaries were undeterred: during a makeshift meeting held at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia’s delegates gave their support the non-importation resolutions. As a result, Virginia sealed off a good chunk of its trade with England pending the repeal of the Townshend Acts. This proved to be a contagious maneuver, as the other American colonies spent the summer adopting their own non-importation resolutions.

1779 – Continental Navy sloop Providence captures British brig Diligent off Cape Charles.

1792 – Captain Robert Gray discovered Gray’s Harbor in Washington State.

1800 – Congress divided the Northwest Territory into two parts. The western part became the Indiana Territory and the eastern sections remained the Northwest Territory.

1862 – At the Battle of Eltham’s Landing in Virginia, Confederate troops struck Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley.

1862 – U.S.S. Wachusett, Commander W. Smith, U.S.S. Chocura, and Sebago escorted Army transports up the York River, supported the landing at West Point, Virginia, and countered a Confederate attack with accurate gunfire. U.S.S. Currituck, Acting Master William F. Shankland, sent on a reconnaissance of the Pamunkey River by Smith on the 6th, captured American Coaster and Planter the next day. Shankland reported that some twenty schooners had been sunk and two gunboats burned by the Confederates above West Point.

1864 – Following two days of intense fighting in the Wilderness forest, the Army of the Potomac, under the command of Union General Ulysses S. Grant, moves south. Grant’s forces had clashed with Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in a pitched and confused two-day battle in which neither side gained a clear victory. Nonetheless, Lee could claim an advantage, since he inflicted more casualties and held off the Yankees, despite the fact that he was outnumbered.

When Lee halted Grant’s advance, Grant proved that he was different than previous commanders of the Army of the Potomac by refusing to fall back. Many of his veteran soldiers expected to retreat back across the Rapidan River, but the order came down through the ranks to move the army south. The blue troops had just suffered terrible losses, and the move lifted their spirits. “We marched free. The men began to sing,” recalled one Yankee. In some ways, warfare would never be the same.

Grant had promised President Abraham Lincoln that there would be no turning back on this campaign. He would aggressively pursue Lee without allowing the Confederates time to retool. But the cost was high: Weeks of fighting resulted in staggering casualties before the two armies dug in around Petersburg by the middle of June.

1864 – Steamers U.S.S. Sunflower, Acting Master Edward Van Sice, and Honduras, Acting Master John H. Platt, and sailing bark J. L. Davis, Acting Master William Fales, supported the capture of Tampa, Florida, in a combined operation. The Union ships carried the soldiers to Tampa and provided a naval landing party which joined in the assault.

Van Sice reported of the engagement: “At 7 A.M. the place was taken possession of, capturing some 40 prisoners, the naval force capturing about one-half, which were turned over to the Army, and a few minutes after 7 the Stars and Stripes were hoisted in the town by the Navy.” The warships also captured blockade running sloop Neptune on 6 May with cargo of cotton.

May 7th ~ {continued...}

1873 – US marines attacked Panama.

1877 – Indian chief Sitting Bull entered Canada with a trail of Indians after the Battle of Little Big Horn.

1915 – British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned, including 128 Americans. The attack aroused considerable indignation in the United States, but Germany defended the action, noting that it had issued warnings of its intent to attack all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Britain.

In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement of the imminent sailing of the Lusitania liner from New York back to Liverpool. The sinking of merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting the vessel’s course.

The captain of the Lusitania ignored these recommendations, and at 2:12 p.m. on May 7th the 32,000-ton ship was hit by an exploding torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo blast was followed by a larger explosion, probably of the ship’s boilers, and the ship sunk in 20 minutes. It was revealed that the Lusitania was carrying about 173 tons of war munitions for Britain, which the Germans cited as further justification for the attack. The United States eventually sent three notes to Berlin protesting the action, and Germany apologized and pledged to end unrestricted submarine warfare. In November, however, a U-boat sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

On January 31, 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced that it would resume unrestricted warfare 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. On February 22nd, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2nd President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted to declare war against Germany, and two days later the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration. With that, America entered World War I.

1934 – USS Constitution completes tour of principal U.S. ports

1939 – Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1940 – FDR orders Pacific Fleet to remain in Hawaiian waters indefinitely.

May 7th ~ {continued...}

1940 – There is a major debate in the House of Commons on the conduct of the war and especially of the Norwegian campaign. At the vote Chamberlain’s government has a majority of 281-200 but when compared to former support this is not sufficient to allow the government to continue to claim to be representative. Neville Chamberlain resigns. In fact the errors of the Norwegian campaign have been at least as much Churchill’s as any others.

However, in a wider sense the responsibility is Chamberlain’s for failing to to establish a coherent decision-making structure to see that plans were properly coordinated and that subordinates worked sensibly and efficiently.

1942 – Battle of the Coral Sea: American Admiral Fletcher sends Task Force 44 to attack Japanese troop transports bound for Port Moresby. The Japanese retaliate with attacks from land based aircraft. The Japanese also sight the American tanker Neosho and the Sims, they send aircraft after the ships and the Neosho is sunk. The Americans find Japanese Admiral Goto’s close support force and they proceed to sink the carrier Shoho.

Meanwhile, Japanese Admiral Takagi sends planes out in an attempt to find the American fleet. Twenty-one of the Japanese planes are lost without engaging the enemy, including a small group which attempt to land on the American aircraft carrier Yorktown. The Japanese troop transports return to Rabaul to await the outcome of the battle.

1942 – General Wainwright broadcasts the news of the American surrender at Corregidor from Japanese custody. He invites the remainder of the American forces in the Philippines to surrender. Despite the American surrender, the opposition faced by Japanese forces has been effective in disrupting their plans. General Homma was allocated 50 days to take the Philippines, the actual conquest took five months. The continuing resistance of the Filipino forces has prevented the release of his troops for other campaigns.

1943 – Tunis and Bizerta are both captured in the afternoon by British and American forces, respectively. The Axis defenses can no longer contain the Allied pressure.

1943 – Americans lay mines in the waters around New Georgia to prevent Japanese supplies reaching the island.

1944 – The US 15th Air Force and British Bomber Command attack railway yards in Bucharest during the day and night, leaving the city in flames.

1944 – The US 8th Air Force conducts a massive raid on Berlin with 1500 aircraft.

1944 – The US 9th Air Force attacks the railway yards at Mezieres-Charleville with Marauders and P-38 Lightning's.

1944 – Elements of the US 46th Division occupy Cape Hopkins Airfield in the Bismarck Archipelago. There is no Japanese resistance encountered.

1945 – At 0141, General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France. At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. But General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces, those fighting in the East as well as in the West.

If this demand was not met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the enveloping Soviet forces. Jodl radioed Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, Hitler’s successor, with the terms. Donitz ordered him to sign.

So with Russian General Ivan Susloparov and French General Francois Sevez signing as witnesses, and General Walter Bedell Smith, Ike’s chief of staff, signing for the Allied Expeditionary Force, Germany was-at least on paper-defeated. Fighting would still go on in the East for almost another day. But the war in the West was over.

Since General Susloparov did not have explicit permission from Soviet Premier Stalin to sign the surrender papers, even as a witness, he was quickly hustled back East-into the hands of the Soviet secret police, never to be heard from again.

Alfred Jodl, who was wounded in the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, would be found guilty of war crimes (which included the shooting of hostages) at Nuremberg and hanged on October 16, 1946-then granted a pardon, posthumously, in 1953, after a German appeals court found Jodl not guilty of breaking international law.

May 7th ~ {continued...}

1945 – On Luzon, the US 43rd Division advances about 5 miles toward Ipo. American troops attacking towards a ridge near Guagua are repulsed by Japanese defenders.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 7th Division completes the elimination of Japanese units that infiltrated into the Tanabaru area. Fruitless attacks on the Japanese held Shuri Line continue.

1947 – General MacArthur approved the Japanese constitution.

1951 – The Air Force’s 3rd Air Rescue Squadron recovered its 50th behind-the-lines downed airman.

1952 – Communist prisoners rioting at Koje-do held the U.N. commander, Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd, hostage until May 11. At Panmunjom both sides announced a stalemate over the prisoner of war issue.

1952 – The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.

1953 – Communist negotiators at Panmunjom presented an eight-point proposal regarding the repatriation of POWs, including the establishment of a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission.

1954 – US, Great Britain and France rejected Russian membership in NATO.

1954 – In northwest Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces decisively defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, a French stronghold besieged by the Vietnamese communists for 57 days. The Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu signaled the end of French colonial influence in Indochina and cleared the way for the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at the conference of Geneva.

On September 2nd, 1945, hours after the Japanese signed their unconditional surrender in World War II, communist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, hoping to prevent the French from reclaiming their former colonial possession.

In 1946, he hesitantly accepted a French proposal that allowed Vietnam to exist as an autonomous state within the French Union, but fighting broke out when the French tried to reestablish colonial rule. Beginning in 1949, the Viet Minh fought an increasingly effective guerrilla war against France with military and economic assistance from newly Communist China. France received military aid from the United States.

In November 1953, the French, weary of jungle warfare, occupied Dien Bien Phu, a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos. Although the Vietnamese rapidly cut off all roads to the fort, the French were confident that they could be supplied by air. The fort was also out in the open, and the French believed that their superior artillery would keep the position safe.

In 1954, the Viet Minh army, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, moved against Dien Bien Phu and in March encircled it with 40,000 Communist troops and heavy artillery. The first Viet Minh assault against the 13,000 entrenched French troops came on March 12th, and despite massive air support, the French held only two square miles by late April.

On May 7th, after 57 days of siege, the French positions collapsed. Although the defeat brought an end to French colonial efforts in Indochina, the United States soon stepped up to fill the vacuum, increasing military aid to South Vietnam and sending the first U.S. military advisers to the country in 1959.

1960 – Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.

1963 – The United States launched the Telstar II communications satellite. It made the first public transatlantic broadcast.

1965 – 6,000 Marines of the 4th marine Division are sent to Chu Lai, a sandy pine barren along the coast 55 miles south of Danang to build a second jet air base. Chu Lai will sport a new type of field, the Short Airfield for Tactical Support (SATS) — a 4,000 foot long airstrip of aluminum matting with arrestor wires like an aircraft carrier. Initially all planes will take off via jet assist, but a catapult will be installed two years later. By June 1st, A-4 Skyhawks and MAG-12ss will be using the field.

May 7th ~ {continued...}

1975 – President Ford issues a proclamation designating this a the last day of the ‘Vietnam Era’ for military personnel to qualify for wartime benefits.

1975 – The Viet Cong celebrated the takeover of Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon.

1979 – During a city-wide strike by tugboat operators and longshoremen in New York City that began on 1 April 1979, Mayor Ed Koch of New York asked for federal assistance. The Secretary of Transportation, Brock Adams, at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, ordered the Commandant, ADM John B. Hayes, to direct the commanding officer of the Third Coast Guard District, VADM Robert I. Price, “to cooperate with Mayor Koch in the movement of sanitation barges within the harbor.”

Beginning on 7 May 1979, the cutters Sauk, Manitou and Red Beech began moving 16 garbage scows from a Staten Island landfill site to refuse pick-up points in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Although the Group received an anonymous bomb threat that proved to be a hoax, the towing effort was carried out without incident. These three cutters were relieved of “garbage duty” in June by the cutters Snohomish and Chinook.

1984 – Federal District Judge Jack B. Weinstein announces a $180 million out-of-court settlement against seven chemical manufacturers of the defoliant Agent Orange in a class-action suit brought by 15,000 Vietnam veterans. At least 40,000 veterans are involved in various suits against these companies, with potential claimants in the hundreds of thousands.

1992 – Astronaut and Coast Guard CDR Bruce Melnick made his second space flight when he served as a Mission Specialist aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on her maiden flight, Space Shuttle Mission STS-49, which flew from 7 to 16 May 1992. During this mission, astronauts rescued and repaired the Intelsat VI satellite. Melnick, by this point, had logged more than 300 hours in space.

1992 – A 203-year-old proposed constitutional amendment barring Congress from giving itself a midterm pay raise received enough votes for ratification as Michigan became the 38th state to approve it.

1996 – The first international war crimes proceeding since Nuremberg opened at The Hague in the Netherlands, with a Serbian police officer, Dusan Tadic, facing trial on murder-torture charges. A year later, he was convicted of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1997 – The Army accused its top enlisted man, Army Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney, of sexual misconduct. At his court-martial, McKinney was acquitted of sexual misconduct, but found guilty of obstruction of justice.