September 10th ~

1608 – English adventurer John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia–the first permanent English settlement in North America.

1776 – George Washington asked for a spy volunteer and Nathan Hale volunteered.

1813 – In the first unqualified defeat of a British naval squadron in history, U.S. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry leads a fleet of nine American ships to victory over a squadron of six British warships at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.

1897 – The Lattimer Massacre was the violent deaths of 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff’s posse. Scores more workers were wounded. This initial incident did not result in military activity, but 2500 troops of the Third Brigade of the Pennsylvania National Guard were deployed to restore order to the resulting mob rule and prevented a reprisal by mine workers on the 20th. The artillery units were withdrawn on the 24th and all troops were returned home by the 29th.

1919 – New York City welcomed home Gen. John J. Pershing and 25,000 soldiers who had served in the U.S. First Division during World War I.

1925 – Submarine R-4 rescues crew of PN-9 10 miles from their destination of Hawaii.

1939 – The government of Canada declares war on Germany. The Canadians are the last of the great Dominions to declare war, however, the few days of hesitation permits the accelerated delivery from the US of large amounts of war goods which are now barred under American neutrality laws.

1942 – Following the example of several European nations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandated gasoline rationing in the U.S. as part of the country’s wartime efforts. Gasoline rationing was just one of the many measures taken during these years, as the entire nation was transformed into a unified war machine: women took to the factories, households tried to conserve energy, and American automobile manufacturers began producing tanks and planes. The gasoline ration was lifted in 1945, at the end of World War II.

1945 – At a meeting of the Allied Control Commission (Zhukov, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Koenig), it is decided to transmit to all neutral states a request for the return to Germany of “all German officials and obnoxious Germans” now in those countries. The states affected are Afghanistan, Eire (Ireland), Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland as well as Vatican City and the Tangier Zone.

1945 – General MacArthur order the dissolution of the Imperial general headquarters and imposes censorship of the printed press and radio.

1948 – Mildred Gillars, accused of being Nazi wartime radio broadcaster “Axis Sally,” was indicted in Washington, D.C., on treason charges. She was later convicted, and served 12 years in prison.

1963 – 20 black students entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Ala., following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C. Wallace. President John F. Kennedy federalized Alabama’s National Guard to prevent Governor George C. Wallace from using guardsmen to stop public-school desegregation.

1964 – Following the Tonkin Gulf incidents, in which North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers, and the subsequent passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution empowering him to react to armed attacks, President Lyndon Johnson authorizes a series of measures “to assist morale in South Vietnam and show the Communists [in North Vietnam] we still mean business.”

2000 – The US federal government agreed to drop its case against Wen Ho Lee, a former Los Alamos scientist, in exchange for a single guilty plea for downloading classified material to an insecure computer. Lee was released 3 days later.

2000 – The space shuttle Atlantis docked with the international space station.

2001 – Iraq said it shot down a 2nd US spy plane. The US reported an unmanned plane missing.

2002 – The Bush administration raised the nationwide terror alert to yellow, its second-highest level, closed nine U.S. embassies overseas and heightened security at federal buildings and landmarks in America on the eve of the Sept. 11 anniversary.

2006 – A lengthy statement from al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks calls on Muslims to step up their resistance against the United States.

2007 – In a speech made to Congress, General Petraeus “envisioned the withdrawal of roughly 30,000 U.S. troops by next summer, beginning with a Marine contingent [in September].” He warns against a too rapid withdrawal.

2013 – Barack Obama gives a televised address to the nation, saying that he has asked the United States Congress to postpone a vote on the use of force in Syria while he pursues a diplomatic solution.

2014 – Barack Obama authorizes $25 million for “immediate military assistance” to the Iraqi government and Kurdistan Regional Government. He also outlines plans to expand US operations against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant to Syria in a televised address to the nation.

September 11th ~

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there.

1775 – Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec leaves Cambridge, Massachusetts. Colonel Benedict Arnold led a force of 1,100 Continental Army troops on an expedition from Cambridge, Massachusetts to the gates of Quebec City. Part of a two-pronged invasion of the British Province of Quebec, his expedition passed through the wilderness of what is now Maine. By the time Arnold reached the French settlements above the Saint Lawrence River in November, his force was reduced to 600 starving men. The plan turned into nothing but failure, but Arnold was rewarded for his effort in leading the expedition with a promotion to brigadier general.

1776 – British–American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop the American War of Independence. The conference took place at Billop Manor, the residence of Colonel Christopher Billop, on Staten Island, New York. The participants were the British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, and members of the Second Continental Congress John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge. Since Lord Howe’s authority was, by design, extremely limited, the Congressional delegation was pessimistic about the meeting’s outcome. The conference, held in the days after the British capture of Long Island, lasted just three hours and was a failure. The Americans insisted on recognition of their recently declared independence, and Howe’s limited authority was inadequate to deal with that development. After the conference, the British continued their military campaign for control of New York City.

1777 – General George Washington and his troops were defeated by the British under General Sir William Howe at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania between the American army of General George Washington and the British army of General Sir William Howe. The British defeated the Americans and forced them to withdraw toward the American capital of Philadelphia. The engagement occurred near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania during Howe’s campaign to take Philadelphia, part of the American Revolutionary War. Howe’s army sailed from New York City and landed near Elkton, Maryland in northern Chesapeake Bay. Marching north, the British Army brushed aside American light forces in a few skirmishes. Washington offered battle with his army posted behind Brandywine Creek. While part of his army demonstrated in front of Chadds Ford, Howe took the bulk of his troops on a long march that crossed the Brandywine beyond Washington’s right flank. Due to poor scouting, the Americans did not detect Howe’s column until it reached a position in rear of their right flank. Belatedly, three divisions were shifted to block the British flanking force near a Quaker meeting house. After a stiff fight, Howe’s wing broke through the newly formed American right wing which was deployed on several hills. At this point Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen attacked Chadds Ford and crumpled the American left wing. As Washington’s army streamed away in retreat, he brought up elements of Nathanael Greene’s division which held off Howe’s column long enough for his army to escape to the northeast. The defeat and subsequent maneuvers left Philadelphia vulnerable. The British captured Philadelphia on September 26, beginning an occupation that would last until June 1778.

1783 – Benjamin Franklin drafted the Treaty of Paris.

1786 – The US Convention of Annapolis opened with the aim of revising the Articles of Confederation.

1813 – British troops arrive in Mount Vernon and prepare to march to and invade Washington, D.C..

1814 – During the Battle of Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, a newly built U.S. fleet under Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough destroys a British squadron, forcing the British to abandon their siege of the U.S. fort at Plattsburg and retreat to Canada on foot.

1857 – Mormon guerillas, stoked by religious zeal and a deep resentment of decades of public abuse and federal interference, murder 120 emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Utah. Although historical accounts differ, the conflict with the wagon train of emigrants from Missouri and Arkansas apparently began when the Mormons refused to sell the train any supplies. Some of the emigrants then began to commit minor depredations against Mormon fields, abuse the local Paiute Indians, and taunt the Mormons with reminders of how the Missourians had attacked and chased them out of that state during the 1830s. Angered by the emigrants’ abuse and fired by a zealous passion against the growing tide of invading gentiles, a group of Mormons guerillas from around Cedar City decided to take revenge. Cooperating with a group of Paiute Indians who had already attacked the train on their own initiative, the Mormon guerillas initially pretended to be protectors. The guerillas persuaded the emigrants that they had convinced the Paitues to let them go if they would surrender their arms and allow the Mormons to escort the wagon train through the territory. But as the train again moved forward under the Mormon escort, a guerilla leader gave a pre-arranged signal. The Mormons opened fire on the unarmed male emigrants, while the Paiutes reportedly murdered the women. Later accounts suggested that some Mormons had only fired in the air while others killed as few of the emigrants as they could. But when the shooting stopped in Mountain Meadows, 120 men and women were dead. Only 18 small children were spared. As a direct result of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the U.S. government demanded a new settlement from Brigham Young. In 1858, the Mormons agreed to accept a continued presence of federal troops and a Gentile governor for Utah Territory. No further significant Mormon-Gentile violence occurred, and the Latter Day Saints were thereafter largely left to govern themselves. But the era of complete Mormon domination of Utah ended as a result of the tragedy that day in Mountain Meadows.

1861 – Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee move into position against a Union stronghold on Cheat Mountain in western Virginia, only to retreat three days later without firing a shot.

1864 – A 10-day truce was declared between generals Sherman and Hood so civilians could leave Atlanta, Georgia.

1904 – The battleship Connecticut, launched in New York, introduced a new era in naval construction.

1918 – US troops landed in Russia to fight the Bolsheviks.

1918 – Often called the “war of the machines,” World War I marked the beginning of a new kind of warfare, fought with steel and shrapnel. Automotive manufacturers led the way in this new technology of war, producing engines for planes, building tanks, and manufacturing military vehicles. Packard was at the forefront of these efforts, being among the first American companies to completely cease civilian car production. Packard had already been the largest producer of trucks for the Allies, but the company began devoting all of its facilities to war production on this day, just a few months before the end of the war. Even after Packard resumed production of civilian vehicles, its wartime engines appeared in a number of vehicles, from racing cars and boats to British tanks in the next world war.

1919 – US Marines invaded Honduras (again).

1939 – Churchill begins correspondence with Roosevelt which he signs as “A Naval Person”.

1941 – As a result of public outrage over the Greer incident, the president announces that American warships will be able to “shoot on sight” to ensure the protection of waters “necessary for American defense.” This formalizes a situation which has been commonly occurring.

1941 – Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon.

1942 – Wheeler Bryson Lipes (1921-2005), a US Navy pharmacist’s mate, saved the life of sailor Darrell Dean Rector (19) by operating, following a medical manual, in the officer’s mess aboard the Sea Dragon below the surface of the South China Sea. George Weller (d.2002), war correspondent, won the Pulitzer in 1943 for his account of the operation.

1952 – Six Marine Corps F9F-4s from VMF-115 crashed into a mountain during an instrument letdown in the vicinity of airfield K-2, Korea. All pilots were killed instantly.

1965 – 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) begins to arrive in South Vietnam at Qui Nhon, bringing U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam to more than 125,000. The unit, which had a long and storied history, was the first full U.S. Army division deployed to Vietnam.

1969 – Heavy bombing of Vietnam resumed under orders from President Nixon.

1990 – President Bush addressed Congress on the Persian Gulf crisis, vowing that “Saddam Hussein will fail” in his takeover of Kuwait.

1992 – President Bush announced he was approving the sale of 72 F-15 jet fighters to Saudi Arabia.

1997 – NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.

SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001 ~

At 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. As the evacuation of the tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcasted live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident.

Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767–United Airlines Flight 175–appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center, and sliced into the south tower at about the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack.

The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the U.S. in the months before September 11 and acted as the “muscle” in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming the ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles. As millions watched in horror the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to a structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.

Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 mph and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 4,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and 23 policemen who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 other people were treated for injuries, many severe.

Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane–United Flight 93–was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger–Todd Beamer–was heard saying “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll” over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.” The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.

At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House. At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network based there, began on October 7th.

September 11th ~

2002 – The “Don’t Tread on Me” First Navy Jack is flown by Navy ships marking the first anniversary of the terrorists attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

2005 – An eleven minute video tape purporting to be from Al Qaeda is delivered to American network ABC in Pakistan and shown on Good Morning America, warns of future attacks on Los Angeles, California and Melbourne, Australia. Adam Yahiye Gadahn, an American convert to Islam, called the September 11, 2001 attacks “blessed events” and commenting on possible attacks in the future stated, “This time, don’t count on us demonstrating restraint and compassion.”

2008 – The Pentagon Memorial in Washington, DC, dedicated to the 184 people who died in the attack on the building on September 11, 2001, is opened to the public.

2012 – Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith. Stevens was the first U.S. Ambassador killed on duty since 1979. Three members of the team responsible for the Embassy’s security believe that Stevens would have survived the attack had they not been delayed three times for thirty minutes by the top CIA officer in Benghazi. Several hours later, a second assault targeted a different compound about one mile away, killing two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. Ten others were also injured in the attacks.

September 12th ~

1609 – English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into the river that now bears his name. Hudson sailed for the Dutch East India Company in search of the Northwest Passage, a water route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, when he sailed up the present-day Hudson River.

1786 – Despite his failed efforts to suppress the American Revolution, Lord Cornwallis was appointed governor general of India.

1814 – A British fleet under Sir Alexander Cochrane began the bombardment of Fort McHenry, the last American defense before Baltimore. Lawyer Francis Scott Key had approached the British attackers seeking the release of a friend who was being held for unfriendly acts toward the British. Key himself was detained overnight on September 13 and witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a British ship. As the sun rose, Key was amazed to see the American flag still flying over the battered fort. This experience inspired Key to write the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and adapt them to the tune of a well-known British drinking song. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially recognized as the national anthem in 1931.

1814 – The Battle of North Point was fought near Baltimore during War of 1812 between General John Stricker’s Maryland Militia and a British force led by Major General Robert Ross. Although the Americans retreated, they were able to do so in good order having inflicted significant casualties on the British, killing one of the commanders of the invading force, significantly demoralizing the troops under his command and leaving some of his units lost among woods and swampy creeks, with others in confusion. This combination prompted British colonel Arthur Brooke to delay his advance against Baltimore, buying valuable time to properly prepare for the defense of the city as Stricker retreated back to the main defenses to bolster the existing force. The engagement was a part of the larger Battle of Baltimore, an American victory in the War of 1812.

1847 – The Battle of Chapultepec was a United States victory over Mexican forces holding Chapultepec Castle west of Mexico City during the Mexican-American War.

1861 – Confederate General Sterling Price continues his campaign to secure Missouri in the early days of the war by converging on a Union garrison at Lexington, Missouri. The nine-day siege ended with the surrender of the Federals. The Battle of Lexington followed shortly after the much larger Battle of Wilson’s Creek on August 10, 1861. That engagement, in southwestern Missouri, resulted in heavy losses and the scattering of the Union force in the area. Price, who was also the Confederate commander at Wilson’s Creek, now headed north to expand the Confederates’ hold on the state.

1862 – The Battle of Harpers Ferry took place in Virginia.

1916 – First demonstration of automatic stabilization and direction gear in aircraft.

1917 – General John J. Pershing selected the 7th Marine Company to guard his headquarters in France.

1918 – The US First Army and the French II Colonial Corps launch a five day attack on the salient at St. Mihiel. It has been held continuously by the Germans since 1914.

1919 – Adolf Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party.

1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

1939 – The US Navy begins regular neutrality patrols along the entire length of the eastern seaboard and in the Caribbean.

1941 – The US ship Busko captured the 1st German ship in WW II.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, major attacks by the Japanese units, from General Kawaguchi’s 35th brigade, begin. Fighting is heavy especially around the aptly named “Bloody Ridge”. Reinforcements of aircraft are flown to the Americans from the USS Wasp.

1942 – German U-boat U-156 sinks the passenger liner Laconia, just south of the equator, off the coast of Africa.

1943 – German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains.

1943 – German paratroopers took Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by Italian resistance forces. Waffen-SS troops under Otto Skorzeny freed Mussolini at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains.

1944 – During World War II, U.S. Army troops entered Germany for the first time, near Trier.
1944 – Three groups of US Task Force 38, with 12 carriers, conduct air strikes on Japanese positions on the Visayas or central Philippine islands.

1945 – Field Marshal Sugiyama, former Commander in Chief of the Japanese Home Army, commits suicide together with his wife. Meanwhile, General MacArthur orders the dissolution of the Black Dragon society (the secret terrorist organization which for many years played a prominent role in Japanese imperialist policies and had been responsible for many political assassinations) and the arrest of seven of its leaders.

1945 – British troops arrive in Saigon to accept surrender of the Japanese according to the terms of the Potsdam Conference.

1952 – USS Coral Sea (CVB-43) took Marshall Josip Tito for a one-day cruise in the Adriatic Sea where he was shown flight operations.

1953 – When the 6,000 ton ore carrier SS Maryland grounded off Marquette, Michigan, a Coast Guard helicopter, in the face of driving wind and rain that required the combined efforts of both pilots to hold the controls and stabilize the aircraft, removed 12 crew members with a breeches buoy without any casualties.

1958 – Jack Kilby, an engineer at Texas Instruments, demonstrates the first integrated circuit.

1966 – Launch of Gemini 11, piloted by CDR Charles Conrad Jr., USN and LCDR Richard F. Gordon Jr., USN. Their mission lasted 2 days and 23 hours and included 44 orbits at an altitude of 1368.9 km.. Recovery was by HS-3 helicopter from USS Guam (LPH-9).

1970 – US professor Timothy Leary, LSD proponent, escaped from a California jail. Leary escaped from the State Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo with the help of his third wife, Rosemary and the Weather Underground. He went to Algiers and joined Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who kidnapped the Learys after a political disagreement. They soon escaped and made their way to Afghanistan. In 1974 he was caught and revealed his collaborators to the FBI.

1972 – U.S. intelligence agencies (the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency) report to the National Security Council that the North Vietnamese have 100,000 regular troops in South Vietnam and can sustain fighting “at the present rate” for two years.

1986 – Joseph Cicippio, the acting comptroller at the American University in Beirut, was kidnapped; he was released in December 1991.

1991 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off on a mission to deploy an observatory designed to study the Earth’s ozone layer.

1992 – The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off, carrying with it Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space; Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space; and Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly on a U.S. spaceship.

1993 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral on a 10-day mission.

1994 – Frank Eugene Corder crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House’s south lawn, striking the West wing and killing himself.

1999 – North Korea agreed indirectly to freeze its missile testing program.

2001 – Pres. Bush called Tuesday’s terrorist attacks “acts of war.” Stunned rescue workers continued to search for bodies in the World Trade Center’s smoking rubble a day after a terrorist attack that shut down the financial capital, badly damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. The US began building a broad int’l. coalition for a possible military retaliation against those responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sep 11. Federal authorities said followers of Osama bin Laden were responsible for airline hijackings directed at NYC and the Pentagon. The US air system remained grounded and financial markets closed.

2001 – In Afghanistan Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, went into hiding. The Taliban military repositioned weaponry in anticipation of a US strike.

2002 – Pres. Bush addressed the UN and laid out his case against Iraq’s Pres. Saddam Hussein. Bush told skeptical world leaders at the United Nations to confront the “grave and gathering danger” of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or to stand aside as the United States acted.

2011 – The 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City opens to the public. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (also known as the 9/11 Memorial and 9/11 Memorial Museum) is the principal memorial and museum commemorating the September 11 attacks of 2001, which killed 2,977 people, and the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, which killed six. The memorial is located at the World Trade Center site, on the former location of the Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the attacks. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation was renamed the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center in 2007. The winner of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was Israeli architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects, a New York- and San Francisco-based firm. Arad worked with landscape architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners on the design which calls for a forest of trees with two square pools in the center, where the Twin Towers once stood.

2013 – NASA announces the Voyager 1 space probe has left the solar system becoming the first man-made object to reach interstellar space.

2014 – NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover reaches its final destination Aeolis Mons, a mountain that rises 5.5 km at the center of Gale Crater.

September 13th ~

1759 – During the Seven Years War, a worldwide conflict known as the French and Indian War in America, the British under General James Wolfe achieve a dramatic victory when they scale the cliffs over the city of Quebec, defeating the Marquis de Montcalm’s French forces on the Plains of Abraham. Wolfe himself was fatally wounded during the battle, as did Montcalm...but his victory ensured British supremacy in Canada.

1782 – Franco-Spanish troops, acting abroad to distract British efforts from The American War of Independence, launch the unsuccessful “grand assault” during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. An attempt by Spain and France to capture Gibraltar from the British. This was the largest action fought during the war in terms of numbers, particularly the Grand Assault of 18 September 1782. At three years and seven months, it is the longest siege endured by the British Armed Forces.

1788 – The Congress of the Confederation authorized the first national election, and declared New York City the temporary national capital. The Constitutional Convention authorized the first federal election resolving that electors in all the states will be appointed on January 7, 1789. The Convention decreed that the first federal election would be held on the first Wednesday in February of the following year.

1789 – Start of the US National Debt as the government took out its first loan, borrowed from the Bank of North America (NYC) at 6 percent interest. The US debt had reached $77 million when Washington became president.

1803 – Commodore John Barry, considered by many the father of the American Navy, died in Philadelphia.

1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore.

1847 – General Winfield Scott wins the last major battle of the Mexican-American War, storming the ancient Chapultepec fortress at the edge of Mexico City. The war between the U.S. and its southern neighbor began the year before when President James Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to advance to the disputed Rio Grande border between the newly-minted American state of Texas and Mexico. The Mexican government had once controlled Texas and refused to recognize the American claim on the state or the validity of the Rio Grande as an international border. Viewing Taylor’s advance as an invasion of Mexican soil, the Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande and attacked the U.S. forces in Texas in April 1846. By mid-May the two nations were formally at war. The Mexican army was larger than the American army, but its leadership, training, and supplies were all inferior to those of the U.S. forces. Mexican gunpowder was notoriously weak, and cannon balls from their guns often just bounced slowly across battlefields where the American soldiers simply stepped out of the way. As a result, by January of 1847, General Taylor had conquered California and the northern Mexican territories that would later make up much of the American southwest.

1862 – Union soldiers find a copy of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s orders detailing the Confederates’ plan for the Antietam campaign near Frederick, Maryland. But Union General George B. McClellan was slow to act, and the advantage the intelligence provided was lost. On the morning of September 13, the 27th Indiana rested in a meadow outside of Frederick, Maryland, which had served as the site of a Confederate camp a few days before. Sergeant John Bloss and Corporal Barton W. Mitchell found a piece of paper wrapped around three cigars. The paper was addressed to Confederate General D.H. Hill. Its title read, “Special Order No. 191, Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia.” Realizing that they had discovered a copy of the Confederate operation plan, Barton and Mitchell quickly passed it up the chain of command. By chance, the division adjutant general, Samuel Pittman, recognized the handwriting on the orders as that of a colleague from the prewar army, Robert Chilton, who was the adjutant general to Robert E. Lee. Pittman took the order to McClellan. The Union commander had spent the previous week mystified by Lee’s operations, but now the Confederate plan was clear. He reportedly gloated, “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.” McClellan now knew that Lee’s forces were split into five parts and scattered over a 30-mile stretch, with the Potomac River in between. At least eight miles separated each piece of Lee’s army, and McClellan was just a dozen miles from the nearest Confederate unit at South Mountain. Bruce Catton, the noted Civil War historian, observed that no general in the war “was ever given so fair a chance to destroy the opposing army one piece at a time.” Yet McClellan squandered the opportunity. His initial jubilation was overtaken by his caution. He believed that Lee possessed a far greater number of troops than the Confederates actually had, despite the fact that the Maryland invasion resulted in a high rate of desertion among the Southerners. McClellan was also excruciatingly slow to respond to the information in the so-called Lost Order. He took 18 hours to set his army in motion, marching toward Turner’s Gap and Crampton’s Gap in South Mountain, a 50-mile long ridge that was part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lee, who was alerted to the approaching Federals, sent troops to plug the gaps, allowing him time to gather his scattered units.

1867 – Gen. E.R.S. Canby ordered South Carolina courts to impanel blacks as jurors.

1881 – Ambrose Everett Burnside, US Union general, died at 57.

1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.

1906 – Sailors and Marines from USS Denver land in Havana at the request of the Cuban government to preserve order during a revolution.

1918 – U.S. and French forces took St. Mihiel, France, in America’s first action as an expeditionary army.

1939 – Navy suspends transfers to the Fleet Reserve after 20 years service and retains men on active duty.

1939 – The US ambassador to Poland, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., reports that German bombers are attacking the civilian population. He says “they are releasing bombs they carry even when they are in no doubt as to the identity of their objectives.”

1950 – Task Force 77 struck Wolmi-do with naval gunfire in preparation for the amphibious assault against Inchon. Lieutenant David H. Swenson was killed aboard the destroyer USS Swenson when the North Koreans hit the ship with a two-gun salvo. Ironically, the ship was named after his uncle, Captain Lyman K. Swenson, who was killed in the South Pacific during World War II.

1951 – The U.S. Marine Corps conducted Operation “Windmill I,” the first mass helicopter resupply mission in military history.

1956 – IBM introduced the Model 305 computer capable of storing 20 megabytes of data. Reynold B. Johnson, IBM lab leader, developed a way to store computer data on a metal disk instead of on tape or drum. His Random Access Method of Accounting Control began the disk drive industry.

1961 – An unmanned Mercury capsule was orbited and recovered by NASA in a test for the first manned flight.

1971 – State police and National Guardsmen storm New York’s Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt. By the time the facility was retaken, nine hostages and 29 inmates had been killed.

1976 – The United States announced it would veto Vietnam’s UN bid.

1978 – The 1st flight of McDonnell Douglas F-18A Hornet.

1985 – Commander Middle East Force orders escort of Military Sealift Ships in Persian Gulf because of Iranian seizure of merchant vessels.

1990 – The 1st Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment embarked and arrived in Saudi Arabia in support of Desert Shield.

1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

1994 – Ulysses probe, a joint NAS ESA project, launched from teh Space Shuttle Discovery, passes the Sun’s south pole.

1995 – With the threat of terrorism growing, small and medium-sized companies started buying kidnapping and ransom insurance to protect workers heading overseas to conduct business.

2000 – With the US government all but abandoning its case against him, former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee pleaded guilty in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a single count of mishandling nuclear secrets; he was then set free with an apology from U.S. District Judge James Parker, who said the government’s actions had “embarrassed our entire nation.”

2001 – Pres. Bush asked Congress for powers to wage war against an unidentified enemy. Bush called the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington “the first war of the 21st century” as his administration labeled fugitive Osama bin Laden a prime suspect. The United States promised to wage all-out retaliation against those responsible and any regime that protected them. Jetliners returned to the nation’s skies for the first time in two days, carrying nervous passengers who faced strict new security measures.

2001 – The US requested that Pakistan grant air and land space for military actions in Afghanistan. US Special Forces arrived in Afghanistan.

2001 – The data flight recorder for United Flight 93 was found at the Pennsylvania crash site. In the Sep 11 terrorist attack, 18 hijackers were identified as ticketed passengers.

2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks.

2012 – Protestors breach the walls of the U.S. embassy compound in Sana’a, Yemen. Yemeni police fire warning shots in the air and four people are killed. The Egyptian ministry of health says 224 people are injured in demonstrations around the embassy in Cairo. In Kuwait, 500 people gather and chant near the embassy.

2012 – The U.S. deploys destroyers and surveillance drones to Libya to hunt for those responsible for the attack in Benghazi. The Libyan Deputy Interior minister says there were two parts in the attack – the second attack was on the safe house of which the location was previously leaked.

September 14th ~

1763 – Seneca warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Devil’s Hole during Pontiac’s War. Also known as the Devil’s Hole Massacre, was fought near Niagara Gorge in present-day New York state between a detachment of the British 80th Regiment of Light Armed Foot and about 300 Seneca warriors. The Seneca warriors killed 81 British soldiers and wounded 8 before they managed to retreat.

1716 – The 1st lighthouse in US was lit in Boston Harbor.

1814 – Francis Scott Key composes the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” after witnessing the massive British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. Key, an American lawyer, watched the siege while under detainment on a British ship and penned the famous words after observing that the U.S. flag over Fort McHenry had survived the 1,800-bomb assault. After circulating as a handbill, the patriotic lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20. Set to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an English drinking song written by the British composer John Stafford Smith, it soon became popular throughout the nation. It was not until 1916, and the signing of an executive order by President Woodrow Wilson, that it was formally designated as such. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a Congressional act confirming Wilson’s presidential order.

1847 – During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott enter Mexico City and raise the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier. The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico.

1861 – In the early morning darkness sailors and Marines from U.S.S. Colorado, rowing in to Pensacola Harbor, boarded and burned Confederate privateering schooner Judah. and spiked guns at Pensacola Navy Yard.

1862 – General Robert E. Lee’s exhausted Confederate forces hold off the pursuing Yankees by closing two passes through Maryland’s South Mountain, allowing Lee time to gather his forces further west along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg.

1862 – A contingent of Federal troops escaped from the beleaguered Harper’s Ferry.

1872 – Britain paid US $15 million for damages during Civil War. The British government paid £3 million in damages to the United States in compensation for building the Confederate commerce-raider Alabama. The confederate navy‘s Alabama was built at the Birkenhead shipyards. Despite its official neutrality during the American Civil War, Britain allowed the warship to leave port, and it subsequently played havoc with Federal shipping. The U.S. claimed compensation, and a Court of Arbitration at Geneva agreed, setting the amount at £3 million.

1899 – Gunboat Concord and monitor Monterey capture two insurgent schooners at Aparri, Philippine Islands.

1901 – Twenty-fifth President of the United States William McKinley, Jr., dies today of an assassin’s bullet shot into him on September 6th.

1939 – In the 1930s Igor Sikorsky turned his attention again to helicopter design and on this day flew the VS-300 on its first test flight. Sikorsky, scientist, engineer, pilot and businessman, was a pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. He was fascinated with flight even as a child in Russia, and a 1908 meeting with the Wright brothers determined the course of his life in aviation.

1940 – Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. It passed by one vote.

1944 – U.S. 1st Marine Division lands on the island of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands in the Pacific, as part of a larger operation to provide support for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was preparing to invade the Philippines. The cost in American lives would prove historic. The Palaus, part of the Caroline Islands, were among the mandated islands taken from Germany and given to Japan as one of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles at the close of World War I.

1944 – CGC Bedloe (ex-Antietam) and Jackson foundered off Cape Hatteras during a hurricane. 26 crewmen were lost from the Bedloe, 21 from the Jackson.

1950 – Sixty-two year old singer Al Jolson arrived in Korea to entertain the troops after paying his own way from the United States.

1958 – The 720th Missile Battalion, California National Guard, becomes operational on a 24-hour, seven day a week basis. Manning four batteries of NIKE-AJAX missiles, this is the first Army Guard unit armed with these surface-to-air missiles used to replace anti-aircraft guns in defensive positions. By 1962 a force of 17,000 Guardsmen (combined technicians and traditional) maintained 82 batteries stationed in 15 states. All were located around harbors and large cities important to national strategic interests. In the early 1960s the AJAX missiles were replaced by the longer-ranged and nuclear capable NIKE-HERCULES missile. The program, running from 1958 until it was discontinued in 1974, was one of the Guard’s most successful homeland defense missions performed in the 20th century.

1959 – The Soviet space probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.

1960 – The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was founded on this day at the Baghdad Conference of 1960, established by five core members: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Originally made up of just these five, OPEC began as an attempt to organize and unify petroleum policies, securing stable prices for the petroleum producers.

1965 – ARVN paratroopers and several U.S. advisers parachute into the Ben Cat area, 20 miles north of Saigon. This was the first major parachute assault of the war by the South Vietnamese. Although they failed to make contact with the enemy, they achieved their goal of driving the Viet Cong away from Route 13 (running between Saigon and the Cambodian border) at least temporarily.

1969 – The US Selective Service selects September 14 as the First Draft Lottery Date.

1989 – Sikorsky Aircraft unveiled the replacement for the Sikorsky HH-3F Pelican helicopter: the HH-60J. The Coast Guard planned to purchase 33 of the new helicopters and gave it the moniker “Jayhawk.”

1990 – During the Persian Gulf crisis, the US Navy reported that American troops had fired a warning shot at an Iraqi tanker, then boarded it briefly before allowing it to proceed.

1990 – The Secretary of Transportation and the Commandant of the Coast Guard authorized the first-ever deployment of a reserve port security unit overseas. PSU 303, staffed by reservists from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the first of three PSUs deployed. PSU 303 was stationed in Al-Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

1997 – An Air Force F-117A Stealth fighter broke apart in midair at a Baltimore County air show. The pilot ejected safely but about a dozen people on the ground were slightly injured.

1998 – In Miami ten people were charged in what prosecutors said was the largest Cuban spy ring uncovered in the United States since Fidel Castro came to power. Five men later pleaded guilty to lesser charges; the trial of the other five has been postponed until May 2000.

1998 – Iraq’s Parliament threatens to cut off all contacts with U.N. arms inspectors if the Security Council does not resume its review of sanctions.

2001 – The State Department, in a memo demanded that the Taliban surrender all known al-Qaeda associates in Afghanistan, provide intelligence on bin Laden and his affiliates and expel all terrorists from Afghanistan.

2001 – Congress passed legislation titled Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which was signed on 18 September 2001 by President Bush. It authorized the use of U.S. Armed Forces against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

2001 – Pres. Bush declared a national emergency and summoned as many as 50,000 military reservists. Congress authorizes President George W. Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” The number of hijackers involved in the Sep 11 attacks was raised from 18 to 19 and their names were made public.

2001 – Six chartered flights carrying mostly Saudi nationals departed from the US over the course of the next week.

2002 – President Bush said the United States was willing to take Iraq on alone if the United Nations failed to “show some backbone” by confronting Saddam Hussein.

2002 – In Lackawanna, New York, 5 men of Yemeni descent were charged with supporting foreign terrorist organizations. They trained in an al Qaeda camp run by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in the spring of 2001. A 6th member of the cell was arrested in Bahrain. All 6 were indicted Oct 21. In 2003 Mukhtar al-Bakri was sentenced to 10 years, Yasein Taher to 9 years. All terms ranged from 7-10 years.

2004 – Saboteurs blew up a junction where multiple oil pipelines cross the Tigris River in northern Iraq, setting off a chain reaction in power generation systems that left the entire country without power.

2007 – President Bush backed a limited withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Bush said 5,700 personnel would be home by Christmas 2007, and expected thousands more to return by July 2008. The plan would take troop numbers back to their level before the surge at the beginning of 2007.

2009 – U.S. special forces launch an attack on Islamist militants from Al-Shabab in Somalia. The Baraawe raid, code named Operation Celestial Balance, was a helicopter assault by United States Special Operations Forces against the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and associated al-Shabaab militants near the town of Baraawe in southern Somalia.

2012 – Fifty U.S. Marines are deployed to the American embassy in Yemen as a “precautionary measure” after clashes in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

2012 – The bodies of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Officer Sean Smith, and former SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, killed in the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, are returned to the United States, for their eventual funerals, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in a solemn military ceremony attended by President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

2014 – North Korea holds a trial for American tourist Matthew Miller who was detained in April and sentences him to six years of hard labor.

September 15th ~

1762 – The Battle of Signal Hill was the last battle of the North American theatre of the Seven Years’ War. The British under Lieutenant Colonel William Amherst forced the French to surrender St. John’s, which they had seized earlier that year in a surprise attack.

1776 – British forces occupied New York City during the American Revolution.

1776 – British forces captured Kip’s Bay, Manhattan, during the American Revolution. The Landing at Kip’s Bay was a British amphibious landing during the New York Campaign in the American Revolutionary War occurring on the eastern shore of present-day Manhattan.

1789 – The United States Department of State is established (formerly known as the “Department of Foreign Affairs”).

1862 – Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson captures Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and 12,000 Union soldiers as General Robert E. Lee’s army moves north into Maryland. The Federal garrison inside Harpers Ferry was vulnerable to a Confederate attack after Lee’s invasion of Maryland.

The strategic town on the Potomac River was cut off from the rest of the Union army. General George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, sent messages to Union General Dixon Miles, commander of the Harpers Ferry garrison, to hold the town at all costs. McClellan promised to send help, but he had to deal with the rest of the Confederate army. Jackson rolled his artillery into place and began to shell the town on September 14. The Yankees were short on ammunition, and Miles offered little resistance before agreeing to surrender on the morning of September 15. As Miles’ aid, General Julius White, rode to Jackson to negotiate surrender terms, one Confederate cannon continued to fire. Miles was mortally wounded by the last shot fired at Harpers Ferry. The Yankees surrendered 73 artillery pieces, 13,000 rifles, and 12,500 men at Harpers Ferry. It was the largest single Union surrender of the war.

1862 – John T. Wilder, the Union commander at Munfordville, used unconventional methods to stall Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s advance through Kentucky. On September 15, Bragg arrived to find some 4,000 men behind well-built defenses–far more than he had anticipated. He brought up more units and surrounded the area, but instead of pressing his advantage, agreed to a suggestion made by his subordinate, Maj. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner. Buckner suggested that he be allowed to parley with the garrison and convince them of the hopelessness of their position. Bragg grudgingly acquiesced.

1904 – Wilbur Wright made his 1st controlled half-circle while in flight.

1914 – President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition out of Mexico. The Expedition, headed by General John Pershing, had been searching for Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary.

1935 – In Berlin, the Reich under Adolf Hitler adopted The Nuremberg Laws which deprived German Jews of their citizenship, made the swastika the official symbol of Nazi Germany and established gradations of “Jewishness.” “Full Jews,” people with four “non-Aryan” grandparents, were deprived of German citizenship and forbidden to marry members of the “Aryan race.” German Jews, had been barred since 1938 from government, medical, and legal professions, and shut out from every area of German public life. After the war Gen’l. Patton gave the documents to a friend and they were stored in the Huntington Museum in California.

1941 – The Attorney General rules that the Neutrality Act is not violated when US ships carry war material to British territories in the Near and Far East or the Western Hemisphere.

1942 – Offshore at Guadalcanal, the Japanese submarine, I-19 sinks the USS Wasp with three torpedoes, also damaging the battleship USS North Carolina. A destroyer is sunk as well.

1945 – A hurricane in southern Florida and the Bahamas destroys 366 planes and 25 blimps at Richmond Naval Air Station in Florida.

1945 – The US Department of War issues figures showing that a total of 7,306,000 soldiers (including a small number of Allied forces and civilians) and 126,859,000 tons of war cargo have been moved from American ports to all fronts between December 1941 and August 31, 1945.

1948 – The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour.

1950 – This was D-Day for the Inchon landing by Joint Task Force 7. This 230-ship task force, commanded by Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble, was the largest naval armada since World War II. Meanwhile, the battleship USS Missouri bombarded the East Coast of Korea as a diversion to the landing.

1961 – The US resumed underground nuclear testing.

1962 – The Soviet ship Poltava arrives in Cuba with a cargo of R-12 medium range ballistic missiles, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is the second shipment.

1990 – France announced it would send 4,000 more soldiers to the Persian Gulf and expel Iraqi military attaches in Paris in response to Iraq’s raids on French, Belgian and Canadian diplomatic compounds in Kuwait.

1997 – In Oman a US Navy F/A-18 crashed and the pilot was killed.

1997 – A US Marine F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet crashed in North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound and its pilot was killed.

2001 – As many as 300,000 Afghans reportedly had fled Kandahar in fear of US air strikes against their Taliban rulers who were harboring Osama bin Laden.

2002 – 82d Airborne Division launched another big operation, Champion Strike. Approximately one thousand troops, including Schweitzer’s 3d Battalion; elements of the newly arrived 1st Battalion, 504th Infantry, led by Lt. Col. David T. Gerard; Special Forces teams; and Afghan militia, conducted air assaults into the Bermail valley of Paktika Province. They captured an al-Qaeda or Taliban financier along with other suspects and also uncovered weapons caches and Taliban documents. Female military police soldiers discovered that some Afghan females were concealing weapons and ammunition under their full-length garments (called burkas), probably because enemy fighters thought they would not be searched. Changes in U.S. troop behavior in these searches did not produce the same disruptions as in previous operations.

2002 – U.S. and British warplanes bombed Iraqi installations in the southern no-fly zone. Major air defense sites were being targeted.

2002 – Saudi Arabia indicates that American forces would be free to attack Iraq from bases on its soil if Baghdad rejects a fresh United Nations resolution on weapons inspectors.

2007 – A NATO-led Coalition Force in Afghanistan intercepted a shipment of Iranian arms intended for the Taliban.

2010 – Operation Dragon Strike, to reclaim the strategic southern province of Kandahar, which was the birthplace of the Taliban movement. The area where the operation took place has been dubbed “The Heart of Darkness” by Coalition troops. The main force leading the operation were units from the 101st Airborne Division. By the end of December 2010, the operation’s main objectives had been accomplished. The majority of Taliban forces in Kandahar had withdrawn from the province, and much of their leadership was said to have been fractured.

September 16th ~

1620 – The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists–half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs–had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the “Pilgrims” reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.

1776 – The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought during the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American War of Independence. The action took place in what is now the Morningside Heights and west into the future Harlem neighborhoods of northwestern Manhattan Island in New York Town. The Continental Army, under Commander-in-Chief General George Washington, Major General Nathanael Greene, and Major General Israel Putnam, totaling around 1,800 men, held a series of high ground positions in upper Manhattan against an attacking British Army division totaling around 5,000 men under the command of Major General Alexander Leslie.

British troops made a tactical error by having their light infantry buglers sound a fox hunting call, “gone away,” while in pursuit. This was intended to insult Washington, himself a keen fox hunter, who learned the sport from his neighbor and mentor near Alexandria, Virginia, the Sixth Lord Fairfax (Thomas Fairfax) during the French and Indian War. “Gone away” means that a fox is in full flight from the hounds on its trail. The Continentals, who were in orderly retreat, were infuriated by this and galvanized to hold their ground. After flanking the British attackers, the Americans slowly pushed the British back. After the British withdrawal, Washington had his troops end the pursuit. The battle went a long way to restoring the confidence of the Continental Army after suffering several defeats. It was Washington’s first battlefield victory of the war.

1814 – A detachment of Marines under Major Daniel Carmick from the Naval Station at New Orleans, together with an Army detachment, destroyed a pirate stronghold at Barataria, on the Island of Grande Terre, near New Orleans.

1854 – CDR David G. Farragut takes possession of Mare Island, the first U.S. Navy Yard on the Pacific.

1864 – Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest led 4,500 men out of Verona, Miss. to harass Union outposts in northern Alabama and Tennessee.

1893 – The largest land run in history begins with more than 100,000 people pouring into the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma to claim valuable land that had once belonged to Native Americans. With a single shot from a pistol the mad dash began, and land-hungry pioneers on horseback and in carriages raced forward to stake their claims to the best acres. Ironically, not many years before that same land had once been considered worthless desert.

1917 – Navy Department authorizes establishment of 16 Naval air stations abroad.

1918 – CGC Seneca’s crew attempted to bring the torpedoed British collier Wellington into Brest, France. Eleven of Seneca‘s crew, sent as a boarding party aboard the collier, were lost when Wellington foundered in a gale on 16 September 1918.

1919 – The American Legion was incorporated by an act of Congress.

1920 – As lunchtime approached on September 16, 1920, New York’s financial district was grinding through its regular motions–people were gathering outside to eat, and brokers were holed up inside, busily trading away the day. But before the clock hit noon, routine gave way to panic, as a horse-drawn wagon filled with explosives suddenly detonated near the subtreasury. Flames flooded Wall Street, shooting up nearly six-stories-high. The blast shattered windows around the area and sent a pipe crashing against the neck of a man strolling some six blocks away from the subtreasury. All told, 300 people were killed and a hundred more were wounded. The only famous financial figure to be injured was Junius Spencer, J.P. Morgan’s grandson, who suffered a slight gash on one hand. Since radical bashing was in vogue at the time, Communists, Anarchists, and anyone else leaning too far to the left were accused of having staged a violent protest against capitalism. More pragmatic souls argued that the wagon belonged to an explosives operation and had simply strayed from its prescribed route. Whatever merits these theories have, the ensuing investigation failed to uncover the culprit or cause of the blast, and the case remains a mystery.

1940 – The Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress, by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States is imposed. Selective Service was born. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one month later, as Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had been a key player in moving the Roosevelt administration away from a foreign policy of strict neutrality, began drawing draft numbers out of a glass bowl. The numbers were handed to the president, who read them aloud for public announcement.

1940 – Under authority granted by Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt orders the Army to begin mobilizing the entire National Guard for one year’s training prompted by the worsening conditions in Europe.

1942 – The Japanese base at Kiska in the Aleutian Islands was raided by American bombers.

1958 – USS Grayback fires first operational launch of Regulus II surface to surface guided missile off CA coast; Missile carries first U.S. mail sent by guided missile.

1961 – The United States Navy’s National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed temporarily reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury.

1969 – President Richard Nixon announces the second round of U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

1974 – President Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders. Limited amnesty was offered to Vietnam-era draft resisters who would now swear allegiance to the United States and perform two years of public service.

1990 – Iraqi television broadcast an eight-minute videotaped address by President Bush, who warned the Iraqi people that Saddam Hussein’s brinkmanship could plunge them into war “against the world.”

1991 – A federal judge in Washington dismissed all Iran-Contra charges against Oliver North.

1992 – Manuel Noriega, former Panamanian strongman, is sentenced to 40 years in prison, later reduced to 30 years, on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. His sentence was later further reduced to 17 years and sentence ended in 2007 so he could be extradited to France to stand trial there, where he was sentenced to 7 years in 2010, then released from French prison and extradited to Panama to be tried for human rights violations.

1994 – Two astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery went on the first untethered spacewalk in 10 years.

1996 – Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off more than six weeks late on a mission to pick up NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid, aloft since last March, from the Russian space station Mir.

1996 – Kuwait agreed to allow the US to send 3,300 troops to its soil over the confrontation with Iraq.

1997 – Two Air national Guard F-16 fighters collided off Atlantic City, N.J. All the crew members survived.

1998 – Iraq urges the Security Council to reverse its decision on sanctions reviews.

2001 – President George W. Bush pledged a crusade against terrorists, saying there was “no question” Osama bin Laden was the “prime suspect” in the Sept. 11 attack. US officials warned that the new war on terrorism will be a long, often secret and a “dirty” contest.

2001 – Pakistan told Afghanistan to surrender Osama bin Laden within 3 days or face almost certain military action.

2001 – More than 10,000 Army and Air Guard personnel from 29 states and Washington, DC, are on active duty providing humanitarian relief, security, air defense and communications support as a result of the attacks of September 11th.

2002 – Iraq said it would allow UN weapons inspectors unconditional access to suspected weapons sites. Naji Sabri, Iraq’s minister of foreign affairs, addressed the letter to UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan. The inspection commission, headed by Hans Blix, is responsible for overseeing the destruction of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them. Core staff: 63 people from 17 nations.

2006 – Operation Mountain Fury was a NATO-led operation begun as a follow-up operation to Operation Medusa, to clear Taliban rebels from the eastern provinces of Afghanistan.

2007 – Employees of Blackwater Worldwide, a private security firm engaged for the protection of US officials, allegedly shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad; all criminal charges against them are later dismissed, sparking outrage in the Arab world.

2013 – Lone gunman Aaron Alexis fatally shot twelve people and injured three others in a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) inside the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast Washington, D.C. The attack, which took place in the Navy Yard’s Building 197, began around 8:20 a.m. EDT and ended when Alexis was killed by police around 9:20 a.m. EDT.

2013 – The United States and Russia agree to a deal to eradicate chemical weapons in Syria.

2014 – The United States announces it will send thousands of troops to West Africa to build Ebola virus clinics and train health workers.

September 17th ~

1630 – The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.

1691 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony received a new charter.

1766 – Samuel Wilson, the future Uncle Sam, was born in Menotomy Mass. Menotomy later became Arlington. Samuel moved to Troy, New York, where he and his brother set up meat packing plants which later provided food for the US Army during the War of 1812.

1776 – The Presidio of San Francisco formed as a Spanish fort. The Spanish built the Presidio on the hill where the Golden Gate Bridge now meets San Francisco.

1778 – The Treaty of Fort Pitt — also known as the Treaty With the Delawares, the Delaware Treaty, or the Fourth Treaty of Pittsburgh, — was signed and was the first written treaty between the new United States of America and any American Indians—the Lenape (Delaware Indians) in this case. Although many informal treaties were held with Native Americans during the American Revolution years of 1775–1783, this was the only one that resulted in a formal document. It was signed at Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, site of present-day downtown Pittsburgh.

1787 – The Constitution of the United States of America is signed by 38 of 41 delegates present at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Supporters of the document waged a hard-won battle to win ratification by the necessary nine out of 13 U.S. states. Today, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution in operation in the world.

1787 – The “College of Electors” (electoral college) was established at the Constitutional Convention with representatives to be chosen by the states. Pierce Butler of South Carolina first proposed the electoral college system.

1796 – President George Washington delivered his “Farewell Address” to Congress before concluding his second term in office. Washington counseled the republic in his farewell address to avoid “entangling alliances” and involvement in the “ordinary vicissitudes, combinations, and collision of European politics.” Also “we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”

1862 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Union General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac fight to a standstill along a Maryland creek on the bloodiest day in American history. Although the battle was a tactical draw, it forced Lee to end his invasion of the North and retreat back to Virginia.

1862 – At the end of the single bloodiest day in American military history, both Union and Confederate armies arrayed along Antietam Creek stop fighting due to exhaustion. More than 23,000 soldiers on both sides were killed, wounded or missing. After the 18th passed quietly Confederate General Robert E. Lee started withdrawing his army on the morning of the 19th back into Virginia without interference.

1862 – The Allegheny Arsenal explosion results in the single largest civilian disaster during the Civil War. On Wednesday, around 2 pm, the arsenal exploded. The explosion shattered windows in the surrounding community and was heard in Pittsburgh, over two miles (3 km) away. At the sound of the first explosion, Col. John Symington, Commander of the Arsenal, rushed from his quarters and made his way up the hillside to the lab. As he approached, he heard the sound of a second explosion, followed by a third. Fire fighting equipment as well as a bucket brigade tried to douse the flames with water. The volunteer fire company from Pittsburgh arrived and assisted in bringing the fire under control.

1863 – Union cavalry troops clashed with a group of Confederates at Chickamauga Creek.

1863 – Reports of Confederate vessels building in the rivers of North Carolina were a source of grave concern to the Union authorities. Secretary Welles wrote Secretary of War Stanton suggesting an attack to insure the destruction of an ironclad– which would be C.S.S. Albemarle and a floating battery, reported nearing completion up the Roanoke River. Should they succeed in getting down the river, Welles cautioned, “our possession of the sounds would be jeopardized.”

1864 – General Grant approved Sheridan’s plan for Shenandoah Valley Campaign. “I want it so barren that a crow, flying down it, would need to pack rations.”

1900 – The Battle of Mabitac was an engagement in the Philippine-American War, when Filipinos under General Juan Cailles defeated an American force commanded by Colonel Benjamin F. Cheatham.

1902 – U.S. troops were sent to Panama to keep train lines open over the isthmus as Panamanian nationals struggled for independence from Colombia.

1908 – Orville Wright’s passenger on a test flight was Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. They were circling the landing field at Fort Myer, Va., when a crack developed in the blade of the aircraft’s propeller. Wright lost control of the Flyer and the biplane plunged to the ground. Selfridge became powered flight’s first fatality, and Wright was seriously injured in the crash. But despite the tragic mishap, the War Department awarded the contract for the first military aircraft to Wright.

1919 – General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I, leads the National Victory Day Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and past the White House. As Guard units are inactivated at their point of return to the United States, no Guard commands exist to take part in this parade. While not officially represented the Guard does have at least one “unofficial” contingent fall in at the back of he parade. They are African American veterans from the former 1st Battalion, 372nd Infantry, part of the Guard’s all-black 93rd Division during the war.

1941 – The US Navy increases its role in escorting Atlantic convoys. It assumes responsibility for some of the Halifax to Britain convoys and the security of traffic to Iceland. It will augment the Canadian Naval escorts which travel to 22 degrees west until British ships take over.

1942 – All atomic research is place under military control. General Groves is appointed head of the program. He has deep fears about security and a dislike of the British which leads to a policy of reluctant sharing of information concerning atomic weapon development with the British Allies.

1944 – Operation Market Garden begins. The Allied intention is to secure key bridges over a series of rivers and canals in Holland to achieve a rapid advance onto the north German plain.

1945 – Josef Kramer and 44 others German SS officers stand trial at Luneburg on charges of conspiracy to commit mass murder at Auschwitz and Belsen.

1950 – North Korean Air Force aircraft slightly damaged the USS Rochester at Inchon during the first enemy air attack of the war on a U.S. ship.

1959 – The X-15 rocket plane made its first flight.

1962 – U.S. space officials announced the selection of nine new astronauts, including Neil A. Armstrong, who became the first man to step onto the moon.

1976 – NASA publicly unveils its first space shuttle, the Enterprise, during a ceremony in Palmdale, California. Development of the aircraft-like spacecraft cost almost $10 billion and took nearly a decade. In 1977, the Enterprise became the first space shuttle to fly freely when it was lifted to a height of 25,000 feet by a Boeing 747 airplane and then released, gliding back to Edwards Air Force Base on its own accord. Regular flights of the space shuttle began on April 12, 1981, with the launching of Columbia from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the two-day mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider at California’s Edwards Air Force Base.

1972 – Three U.S. pilots are released by Hanoi. They were the first POWs released since 1969. North Vietnamese officials cautioned the United States not to force the freed men to “slander” Hanoi, claiming that “distortions” about Hanoi’s treatment of POWs from a previous release of prisoners in 1969 caused Hanoi to temporarily suspend the release of POWs. The conditions for their release stipulated that they would not do anything to further the U.S. war effort in Indochina. The rest of the POWs were released in March 1973 as part of the agreement that led to the Paris Peace Accords.

1990 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney sacked Air Force chief of staff General Mike Dugan for openly discussing contingency plans to launch massive air strikes against Baghdad and target Iraqi President Saddam Hussein personally.

1991 – The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet. While attending the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds became curious about operating systems and frustrated by the licensing of MINIX, which limited it to educational use only. He began to work on his own operating system which eventually became the Linux kernel. Torvalds began the development of the Linux kernel on MINIX and applications written for MINIX were also used on Linux. Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of “free”, “freak”, and “x” (as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the name “Freax” for about half of a year. Torvalds had already considered the name “Linux,” but initially dismissed it as too egotistical.

1999 – The CGC Dallas returned to Charleston after an 84-day deployment to the Mediterranean and Black seas. Originally scheduled to go to the Adriatic and Ionian seas in support of NATO forces engaged in Kosovo, the Dallas turned to support the U.S. 6th Fleet after tensions in Kosovo eased. The Dallas also visited several ports not normally seen by Coast Guard crews, including Rota, Spain; Souda Bay, Crete; Haifa, Israel; and Antayla, Turkey.

2001 – President Bush said the United States wanted terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” President Bush visited a mosque in Washington as he appealed to Americans to get back to everyday business and not turn against their Muslim neighbors.

2001 – In Afghanistan Islamic clerics demanded proof from the US that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the Sep 11 terrorist attacks. They also requested that the Organization of Islamic Conference, a group of over 50 Muslim countries, make a formal demand for bin Laden’s handover.

2004 – The Coast Guard made the largest cocaine seizure in its history (to date) when Coast Guard and Navy forces located and seized 30,000 pounds of cocaine aboard the fishing vessel Lina Maria approximately 300 miles southwest of the Galapagos Islands. LEDET 108, embarked aboard the USS Curts, made the seizure. A second Coast Guard and Navy team intercepted the Lina Maria’s sister ship, the fishing vessel San Jose, 500 miles west of the Galapagos, and discovered and seized 26,250 pounds of cocaine.

2007 – The Iraqi government announced that it was revoking the license of the U.S. security firm Blackwater USA over the firm’s involvement in the killing of eight civilians, including a woman and an infant, in a firefight that followed a car bomb explosion near a State Department motorcade.

2009 – The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Jan Fischer, says that President Barack Obama told him that the United States is abandoning plans for a missile shield based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

2010 – Pedro Mascheroni, a former scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and his wife, Marjorie, a contractor at LANL, are indicted on charges of trying to provide information about the United States nuclear program to Venezuela. The pair had access to nuclear secrets, including material on the design and manufacture of nuclear weapons. On June 21, 2013, Mascheroni and his wife pled guilty in Federal court. Mascheroni faces a prison sentence of 24 to 66 months. His wife faces a prison sentence of 12 to 24 months.

2012 – United States and Japanese government officials agree to put a second missile defense system in Japan.

2013 – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed he had contacted U.S. President Barack Obama via letters. Both countries cut all diplomatic relations after the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1980.

2014 – Al-Qaeda announced that it had temporarily captured the Pakistani Navy frigate PNS Zulfiquar, with the intent to attack the U.S fleet with onboard missiles, before it was recaptured by Pakistani Forces.

September 18th ~

1502 – Christopher Columbus landed at Costa Rica on his 4th & last voyage.

1634 – Anne Hutchinson, the first female religious leader in American colonies, arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her family. She preached that faith alone was sufficient for salvation. As her following grew, she was brought to trial and found guilty of heresy against Puritan orthodoxy and banished from Massachusetts. She left with 70 followers to Providence, Rhode Island, Roger Williams’s colony based on religious freedom.

1679 – New Hampshire became a county of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1755 – Ft. Ticonderoga was established in New York.

1758 – James Abercromby was replaced as supreme commander of British forces after his defeat by French commander, the Marquis of Montcalm, at Fort Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War.

1759 – Quebec surrendered to the British and the Battle of Quebec ended. The French surrendered to the British after their defeat on the Plains of Abraham.

1789 – With the new nation’s finances in disarray, the government took out its first loan. Under the supervision of newly appointed Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, the government took a little under a year to pay back the loan of $191,608.81.

1793 – President George Washington laid the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol on Jenkins Hill.

1850 – The U.S. Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

1862 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army pulls away from Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and heads back to Virginia. The day before, Lee’s force had engaged in the biggest one-day battle of the Civil War against the army of General George B. McClellan. The armies struggled to a standstill, but the magnitude of losses forced Lee to abandon his invasion of Maryland.

1873 – The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy, triggering a series of bank failures, the beginning of the Panic of 1873. Known as the Long Depression in Europe where it began, the Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered a depression that lasted from 1873 until 1879, and even longer in some countries.

1936 – Squadron 40-T, based in the Mediterranean, established to protect U.S. interests and citizens around Iberian peninsula throughout the Spanish Civil War.

1939 – President Roosevelt directs enlistment of 2,000 new Coast Guardsmen and opens two new training stations.

1941 – U.S. Navy ships escort eastbound British trans-Atlantic convoy for first time (Convoy HX-150). Although the U.S. Navy ships joined HX-150, which left port escorted by British ships on 16th, on night of 17 September, the official escort duty began on 18th.

1941 – President Roosevelt requests an additional $5,985,000,000 for Lend-Lease Aid to Britain from Congress.

1941 – Phase 1 of the combined Second and Third Army Maneuvers opens when the ‘Red Army’ attacks the ‘Blue Army’ southeast of Shreveport. This set of wargames, along with those held by the First Army in the Carolina’s in November, mark the largest such operations ever held by the U.S. Army in peacetime. These maneuvers included a total of 15 Army divisions, ten of which were from the Guard.

1943 – American planes from the carriers Lexington, Princeton and Belleau Wood attack the island of Tarawa. Admiral Pownall commands the carrier force.

1944 – American B-17 bombers drop 1284 containers of supplies to the embattled Polish Home Army (AK) in Warsaw. Only 228 fall on territory still controlled by the Poles. This is the only major supply drop, by the western Allies, allowed by the Soviets. The US planes land on Soviet territory after completing their mission.

1945 – General Douglas MacArthur moves his command headquarters to Tokyo, as he prepares for his new role as architect of a democratic and capitalist postwar Japan.

1947 – The National Security Act went into effect. It created a Cabinet secretary of defense and unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force into a National Military Establishment. The act established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

1947 – The U.S. Air Force was formed as a separate military service out of the old Army Air Corps. The Air Force’s motto is: “Uno Ab Alto” (One over all). At the same time the Air National Guard is created as a separate reserve component under control of the National Guard Bureau.

1959 – The US Navy’s Vanguard 3 is launched into Earth orbit. The satellite was launched from the Eastern Test Range into a geocentric orbit. The objectives of the flight were to measure the Earth’s magnetic field, the solar X-ray radiation and its effects on the Earth’s atmosphere, and the near-earth micrometeoroid environment. Instrumentation included a proton magnetometer, X-ray ionization chambers, and various micrometeoroid detectors. The spacecraft was a 50.8-cm-diameter magnesium sphere. The magnetometer was housed in a glass fiber phenolic resin conical tube attached to the sphere. Data transmission stopped on December 11, 1959, after 84 days of operation.

1977 – Voyager I takes three images that were combined into the first photograph of the Earth and the Moon together.

1991 – Saying he was “pretty fed up,” President Bush said he would send warplanes to escort U.N. helicopters searching for hidden Iraqi weapons if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein continued to impede weapons inspectors.

1991 – The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite was deployed from the space shuttle Discovery. It measured the ozone hole for the next decade. Operations of the satellite ceased in 2001 due to NASA economics.

1991 – The space shuttle Discovery landed in California, ending a five-day mission.

2001 – It was reported that more than 4 planes may have been targeted by hijackers on September 11th.

2001 – Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and later tested positive for anthrax, were sent to the New York Post and NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw.

2004 – The UN atomic watchdog agency demanded Iran suspend all uranium enrichment activities and set a November timetable for compliance.

2004 – Militants threatened to decapitate two Americans and a Briton being held hostage unless their demands were met within 48 hours. In Kirkuk a car bomb near a crowd of recruits killed 19 people and wounded 67.

2013 – Cygnus 1 (also known as Orbital Sciences COTS Demo Flight) launches the first planned flight of the Orbital Sciences’ unmanned resupply spacecraft Cygnus, its first flight to the International Space Station and the second launch of the company’s Antares launch vehicle. The flight is under contract to NASA as Cygnus’ demonstration mission in the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The launch site is MARS on the Delmarva Peninsula in Virginia.

2014 – The United States Senate passes a budget measure authorizing President Barack Obama to equip and train moderate rebels to fight ISIL in Syria.

September 19th ~

1676 – Rebels under Nathaniel Bacon set Jamestown, Va., on fire, burning it to the ground.

1737 – Charles Carroll (d.1832), American patriot and legislator, was born. He was the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration and his signature read Charles Carroll of Carrollton. He lived in Maryland where, as a Roman Catholic he was forbidden from voting and holding public office. However, the wealthy Carrolls moved in the highest social circle and entertained George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette at their estate.

1777 – During the Revolutionary War, American soldiers won the first Battle of Saratoga, aka Battle of Freeman’s Farm (Bemis Heights). The battle began when British General John Burgoyne moved some of his troops in an attempt to flank the entrenched American position on Bemis Heights. Benedict Arnold, anticipating the maneuver, placed significant forces in his way. While Burgoyne did gain control of Freeman’s Farm, it came at the cost of significant casualties. Disputes within the American camp led Gates to strip Arnold of his command.

1863 – The Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg soundly defeats General William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland in a two-day engagement at Chickamauga that proved almost as costly as the larger battles fought in the eastern theater. Bragg’s army suffered 18,000 causalities from his 66,300 men (27%) while Rosecrans’ army had 16,000 losses out of 58,000 men engaged (28%). The net effect was the Union forces had to quickly fall back to Chattanooga, TN. Bragg was slow to follow up and lost an opportunity to decisively eliminate this Union army from the field.

1864 – Union General Philip Sheridan routs a Confederate force under General Jubal Early in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. This battle was part of Sheridan’s pacification of the valley.

1881 – Eighty days after a failed office seeker shot him in Washington, D.C., President James A. Garfield dies of complications from his wounds.

1918 – American troops of the Allied North Russia Expeditionary Force received their baptism of fire near the town of Seltso against Soviet forces.

1944 – The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) is the name given to the series of fierce battles fought between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. The battles went on to 16 December 1944, over barely 50 square miles, east of the Belgian–German border. The U.S. commanders’ initial goal was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing the front lines further north in the Battle of Aachen, where the Allies were fighting a trench war between a network of fortified towns and villages connected with field fortifications, tank traps and minefields. A secondary objective may have been to outflank the front line.

1945 – Kim Il-sung arrives Port Wonsan onboard the Soviet warship Pugachev and begins to organize the Workers’ Party of Korea (which is formally announced on October 10, 1945).

1945 – In Japan, American occupation forces issue a press code, totally banning reports or publications about the atomic bombing.

1948 – Moscow announced it would withdraw all soldiers from Korea by the end of the year.

1957 – The United States conducted its first underground nuclear test, in the Nevada desert. Part of Operation Plumbbob, a series of nuclear tests conducted between May 28 and October 7, 1957 at the Nevada Test Site. It was the biggest, longest, and most controversial test series in the continental United States.

1957 – Bathyscaph Trieste, in a dive sponsored by the Office of Naval Research in the Mediterranean, reaches record depth of 2 miles.

1969 – President Nixon announces the cancellation of the draft calls for November and December. He reduced the draft call by 50,000 (32,000 in November and 18,000 in December). This move accompanied his twin program of turning the war over to the South Vietnamese concurrent with U.S. troop withdrawals and was calculated to quell antiwar protests by students returning to college campuses after the summer.

1991 – UN Resolution 712 allowed a partial lifting of the embargo against Iraq for humanitarian purposes.

1996 – American astronaut Shannon Lucid, on board the Russian Mir space station since March, eagerly greeted the crew of Atlantis hours after their arrival and docking.

1997 – A US Air Force B-1 bomber crashed on a training mission in Montana and all 4 crew members were killed.

2000 – Nine Cubans were rescued at sea after their Antonov AN-2 biplane plunged into the Gulf of Mexico. The cargo ship Chios Dream pulled found the survivors and a 10th body. Immigration officials soon granted their legal entry to the US.

2001 – Pres. Bush warned Afghanistan that he would not negotiate to take custody of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon began deploying troops, ships and planes to the Persian Gulf under code name “Operation Infinite Justice.” The title became a working name after Islamic scholars objected that “infinite justice” is reserved for God.

2002 – President Bush asked Congress for authority to “use all means,” including military force if necessary, to disarm and overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he did not quickly meet United Nations demands to abandon all weapons of mass destruction.

2002 – The Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri appeals to the U.N. that his country is free of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He quotes from a letter from the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein: “Our country is ready to receive any scientific experts accompanied by politicians you choose to represent any one of your countries to tell us which places and scientific installations they would wish to see…I hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.” President Saddam’s letter also called on the U.N. to help protect Iraq’s sovereignty in the face of possible U.S. military action.

2003 – In Iraq former Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, Saddam Hussein’s last defense minister, surrendered to an American commander after weeks of negotiations. He was no. 27 on the most-wanted list.

2004 – President George W. Bush has decided to lift sanctions against Libya, which he expects to trigger release of more than $1 billion US to families of Pan Am 103 victims.

2004 – US warplanes and artillery pounded the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah. A militant group posted a video showing the beheading of 3 Kurdish hostages.

2006 – The return of the space shuttle Atlantis is delayed by one day after a mysterious object is found floating near the shuttle.

2010 – The United States Army charges 5 US soldiers, the self-styled “Kill Team”, with murdering 3 Afghan civilians earlier this year.

2013 – Jihadis belonging to the al-Qaida offshoot known as the ISIL overrun the town of Azaz, after driving out the Free Syrian Army.

September 20th ~

NATIONAL POW/MIA RECOGNITION DAY

National POW/MIA Recognition Day is observed across the nation on the third Friday of September each year (can fall on any date from the 14th to the 20th of a given year).

Please take the time to remember those who were prisoners of war (POW) and those who are missing in action (MIA), as well as their families.

1565—Spanish forces under Pedro Menendez de Aviles capture the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The French, commanded by René Goulaine de Laudonnière, lost 135 men in the first instance of colonial warfare between European powers in America.

1737 – The finish of the Walking Purchase which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres (4,860 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Pennsylvania Colony. In Delaware Nation v. Pennsylvania (2004), the current nation claimed 314 acres (1.27 km2) included in the original purchase, but the US District Court granted the Commonwealth’s motion to dismiss. It ruled that the case was nonjusticiable, although it acknowledged that Indian title appeared to have been extinguished by fraud. This ruling held through the United States courts of appeals. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

1776 – American soldiers, some of them members of Nathan Hale’s regiment, filtered into British-held New York City and stashed resin soaked logs into numerous buildings and a roaring inferno was started. A fourth of the city was destroyed including Trinity Church. The events are documented in the 1997 book “Liberty by Thomas Fleming.”

1777 – British Dragoons massacred sleeping Continental troops at Paoli, Pa. Prior to launching a surprise night attack on Anthony Wayne’s Continental division at Paoli, General Charles Grey ordered his troops to rely entirely on their bayonets. To ensure that his troops obeyed, he had his men remove the flints from their weapons so they could not be fired.

1797 – The US frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides) was launched in Boston.

1814 – With the U.S. Capitol destroyed by the British in the War of 1812, Marines protected Congress in a hotel.

1861 – Lexington, Missouri, was captured by Union forces.

1863 – In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, the Confederate Army of Tennessee drives the Union Army of the Cumberland back into Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia. Although technically a Confederate victory, the battle had little long-term effect on the military situation in the region.

1881 – Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, succeeding James A. Garfield, who had been assassinated.

1917 – The 26th “Yankee” Division (CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT) becomes the first American division to arrive in Europe during World War I. More than one million American soldiers and Marines will join them by war’s end in November 1918. All 18 National Guard divisions will serve in France, but only 11 see combat as intact units.

1945 – German rocket engineers who have been captured at the end of the war and been brought to the US start work on the American rocket program.

1945 – Automotive manufacturers had been at the heart of a seamless war machine during World War II, producing trucks, tanks, and planes at astounding rates. But only after the last shots were fired did auto factories begin to produce cars again, focusing their sights on the booming postwar market. A month after the surrender of Japan, Packard followed the lead of every other company and ceased military production, turning out its last wartime Rolls-Royce Merlin engine on this day.

1950 – Marines of the 1st Marine Division crossed the Han River along a six-mile beachhead, eight miles northwest of Seoul, Korea. Five days later, the 1st and 5th Marines would attack Seoul and the city would be captured by 27 September.

1951 – In Operation Summit, the first combat helicopter landing in history, U.S. Marines were landed in Korea.

1954 – The 1st FORTRAN computer program was executed.

1972 – The USAF reveals that U.S. planes have been mining the coastal rivers and canals of northern Quang Tri province below the DMZ, the first mining of waterways within South Vietnam. This was an attempt to impede further reinforcement of North Vietnamese forces in the area and to remove the threat to the newly recaptured city of Quang Tri.

1984 – Twelve people were killed today when a suicide car bomber attacked the U.S. embassy complex in Beirut, Lebanon.

1990 – PSU 301 became the second reserve Coast Guard port security unit deployed in support of Operation Desert Shield. PSU 301 was staffed by reservists from Buffalo, New York. They were stationed in Al-Jubayl, Saudi Arabia.

1991 – U.N. weapons inspectors left Bahrain for Iraq to renew their search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

1992 – The space shuttle Endeavour landed at the Kennedy Space Center.

1994 – Space shuttle Discovery and its six astronauts landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California after an 11-day mission.

2001 – Pictures of most of the September 11 hijackers were published along with some personal data.

2001 – The FBI arrested Nabil Al-Marabh (34), a suspected bin laden associate, in the Chicago area.

2001 – A chartered flight left the US with members of the sprawling bin Laden family. The FBI interviewed 22 of the 26 people aboard.

2001 – A grand council of over 1,000 Muslim clerics from across Afghanistan that had convened to decide bin Laden’s fate, issued a fatwa, expressing sadness for the deaths in the 9/11 attacks, urging bin Laden to leave their country and calling on the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to conduct an independent investigation of “recent events to clarify the reality and prevent harassment of innocent people”. The fatwa went on to warn that should the United States not agree with its decision and invade Afghanistan, “jihad becomes an order for all Muslims.”

2001 – President Bush addresses joint session of Congress in response to 9/11 attacks, proposing a new Office of Homeland Security and requesting a declaration of a War on Terror.

2007 – The New York Police Department denies a request by the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City.

2010 – Admiral Thad Allen of the United States Coast Guard, the man responsible for leading the cleanup of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, declares that BP’s Macondo well is sealed.

2011 – The United States military ends its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.

September 21st ~

1673 – James Needham returned to Virginia after exploring the land to the west, which would become Tennessee.

1776 – Nathan Hale was arrested in NYC by the British for spying for American rebels.

1776 – NYC burned down in the Great Fire five days after British took over. The fire was devastating, it burned through the night on the west side of what then constituted New York City at the southern end of the island of Manhattan. It broke out in the early days of the military occupation of the city by British forces during the American War for Independence. The fire destroyed 10 to 25 percent of the city and some unburned parts of the city were plundered. Many people believed or assumed that one or more people deliberately started the fire, for a variety of different reasons. British leaders accused revolutionaries acting within the city, and many residents assumed that one side or the other had started it. The fire had long-term effects on the British occupation of the city, which did not end until 1783.

1780 – General Benedict Arnold, American commander of West Point, met with British spy Major John André to hand over plans of the important Hudson River fort to the enemy. Unhappy with how General George Washington treated him and in need of money, Arnold planned to “sell” West Point for 20,000 pounds–a move that would enable the British to cut New England off from the rest of the rebellious colonies. Arnold’s treason was exposed when André was captured by American militiamen who found the incriminating plans in his stocking. Arnold received a timely warning and was able to escape to a British ship, but André was hanged as a spy on October 2, 1780. Condemned for his Revolutionary War actions by both Americans and British, Arnold lived until 1801.

1820 – Union General John Fulton Reynolds is born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One of nine children, Reynolds received his education at private academies before Senator James Buchanan, a family friend, secured him an appointment at West Point in 1837. In 1862, Reynolds participated in the Seven Days’ Battles around Richmond. This was the climax of McClellan’s Peninsular campaign, in which Confederate General Robert E. Lee attacked the Yankees and drove them away from the Rebel capital.

At the Battle of Gaines’ Mills on June 26, Reynolds’s brigade—protecting a Union retreat—bore the brunt of a Confederate attack. The next day, Reynolds held his position, but he was detached from the main Union army. The Confederates overran Reynolds and part of his command, and the general was sent to Richmond’s Libby Prison. Reynolds spent less than six weeks at Libby before he was exchanged in August 1862. He was given command of a division, and fought at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29 and 30, just three weeks after his release. In November, Reynolds returned to the Army of the Potomac as a commander of I Corps. His force fought at Fredericksburg in December, but was held in reserve at Chancellorsville in May 1863. Reynolds commanded the left wing of the Army of the Potomac during the Gettysburg campaign. On the morning of July 1, he rode into Gettysburg and placed his force in front of advancing Confederates, forcing Union General George Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, to fight. Reynolds was killed by a Confederate volley and was buried in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on July 4.

1858 – Navy Sloop Niagara departs Charleston, SC, for Liberia with African slaves rescued from slave ship.

1872 – John Henry Conyers of SC became the 1st black student at Annapolis.

1904 – Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph dies on the Colville reservation in northern Washington at the age of 64. The whites had described him as superhuman, a military genius, an Indian Napoleon. But in truth, the Nez Perce Chief Him-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (“Thunder Rolling Down from the Mountains”) was more of a diplomat than a warrior.

1922 – Congress authorized officers of the Customs and of the Coast Guard to board and examine vessels, reaffirming authority to seize and secure vessels for security of revenue under act of March 2, 1799.

1931 – In the depths of the Depression, Americans had lost their faith in the nation’s banking system. Despite President Hoover’s various attempts to rekindle confidence, including temporary halts on debts and reparations, the nation remained wary. On September 21, 1931, that feeling of insecurity grew more pronounced with the announcement that Great Britain had decided to abandon the gold standard. Most people assumed that the United States would follow suit and pull out of the precious metal. Since gold was the standard bank reserve, the public also assumed that any money they had in the banks would be at risk. A mini-panic ensued, as people rushed to withdraw their savings and stockpile any available gold. By the end of October 1931, 827 banks had been forced to shut down. The public’s suspicions, meanwhile, proved to be a bit premature, as the government did not give up the gold standard until 1933.

1939 – President Roosevelt addresses a special joint session of Congress and urges the repeal of the Neutrality Act provisions embargoing arms sales to belligerent countries. “Our acts must be guided by one single hard-headed thought — keeping America out of this war,” the president said. Allowing arms to be sold on a cash-and-carry basis would be “better calculated than any other means to keep us out of war.”

1942 – The U.S. B-29 Super Fortress makes its debut flight in Seattle, Washington. It was the largest bomber used in the war by any nation. The B-29 was conceived in 1939 by Gen. Hap Arnold, who was afraid a German victory in Europe would mean the United States would be devoid of bases on the eastern side of the Atlantic from which to counterattack. A plane was needed that would travel faster, farther, and higher than any then available, so Boeing set to creating the four-engine heavy bomber.

The plane was extraordinary, able to carry loads almost equal to its own weight at altitudes of 30,000 to 40,000 feet. It contained a pilot console in the rear of the plane, in the event the front pilot was knocked out of commission. It also sported the first radar bombing system of any U.S. bomber. The Super Fortress made its test run over the continental United States on September 21, but would not make its bombing-run debut until June 5, 1944.

Meanwhile. the Marianas Islands in the South Pacific were being recaptured by the United States, primarily to provide air bases for their new B-29s-a perfect position from which to strike the Japanese mainland on a consistent basis. Once the bases were ready, the B-29s were employed in a long series of bombing raids against Tokyo. Although capable of precision bombing at high altitudes, the Super Fortresses began dropping incendiary devices from a mere 5,000 feet, firebombing the Japanese capital in an attempt to break the will of the Axis power. One raid, in March 1945, killed more than 80,000 people. But the most famous, or perhaps infamous, use of the B-29 would come in August, as it was the only plane capable of delivering a 10,000-pound bomb–the atomic bomb. The Enola Gay and the Bock’s Car took off from the Marianas, on August 6 and 9, respectively, and flew into history.

1945 – President Truman holds a cabinet meeting to discuss the question of sharing atomic secrets with the British and particularly the Soviet governments.

1949 – At the opening of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Peking, Mao Zedong announces that the new Chinese government will be “under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.” The September 1949 conference in Peking was both a celebration of the communist victory in the long civil war against Nationalist Chinese forces and the unveiling of the communist regime that would henceforth rule over China. Mao and his communist supporters had been fighting against what they claimed was a corrupt and decadent Nationalist government in China since the 1920s.

1952 - USAF Captain Robinson Risner, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, destroyed his fifth and sixth MiG-15 near Sinuiju to become the 20th jet ace of the Korean War.

1953 – North Korean pilot Lieutenant Ro Kim Suk landed his aircraft at Kimpo airfield outside Seoul. The Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, powered by a jet engine superior to those then used in American fighter planes, first saw combat in Korea during November 1950, where its performance shifted the balance of air power to Russian-backed North Korea. On April 26, 1953, two U.S. Air Force B-29s dropped leaflets behind enemy lines, offering a $50,000 reward and political asylum to any pilot delivering an intact MiG-15 to American forces for study. Although Ro denied any knowledge of the bounty, he collected the reward, and American scientists were able to examine the MiG-15.

1961 – The U.S. Army’s 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, is activated at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Special Forces were formed to organize and train guerrilla bands behind enemy lines. President John F. Kennedy, a strong believer in the potential of the Special Forces in counterinsurgency operations, visited the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg to review the program and authorized the Special Forces to wear the headgear that became their symbol, the Green Beret.

1961 – Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter. The Boeing CH-47 Chinook is an American twin-engine, tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter. Its primary roles are troop movement, artillery placement and battlefield resupply. It has a wide loading ramp at the rear of the fuselage and three external-cargo hooks. With a top speed of 170 knots (196 mph, 315 km/h) the helicopter is faster than contemporary 1960s utility and attack helicopters. The CH-47 is among the heaviest lifting Western helicopters. Its name is from the Native American Chinook people.

1964 – The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s first Mach 3 bomber, makes its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.

1974 – US Mariner 10 made a 2nd fly-by of the Planet Mercury.

1975 – Self-proclaimed revolutionary Sara Jane Moore attempted to kill President Gerald Ford as he walked from a San Francisco hotel. A bullet she fired slightly wounded a man in the crowd.

1977 – A nuclear non-proliferation pact is signed by 15 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union.

1984 – Mid East Force begins escort of U.S. flagged vessels in Persian Gulf.

1987 – A U.S. helicopter gunship disabled an Iranian vessel, the “Iran Ajr,” that was caught laying mines in the Persian Gulf; four Iranian crewmen were killed, 26 wounded and detained.

1996 – The board of all-male Virginia Military Institute voted to admit women.

September 21st ~ ( continued )

2000 – A Belgrade court found Pres. Clinton and other world leaders guilty of war crimes for the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. 14 leaders were sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison. The 120-page indictment charged the leaders for the deaths of 546 Yugoslav army soldiers, 138 Serbian police officers and 504 civilians, including 88 children.

2001 – A US unmanned reconnaissance plane was downed in Afghanistan.

2001 – A US Taurus rocket, made by Orbital Sciences, carrying a NASA satellite failed to launch and probably plunged into the Indian ocean.

2001 – In Afghanistan the ruling Taliban rejected Pres. Bush’s ultimatum and to give up Osama bin Laden. The Taliban also threatened to hang Afghan aid workers if they communicate with their int’l. counterparts.

2001 – Terrorist suspects were arrested in Britain (4), France (7), Germany (2 warrants), Peru (3 detained) and Yemen (20 detained). Lofti Raissi, an Algerian pilot arrested in Britain, was later described as the “lead instructor” to 4 of the hijackers. Raissi was released Feb 12, 2002, for lack of evidence.

2001 – Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly. Deep Space 1 (DS1) is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies. Launched on 24 October 1998, the Deep Space mission carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille, which was selected as the mission’s science target. Its mission was extended twice to include an encounter with Comet Borrelly and further engineering testing. Problems during its initial stages and with its star tracker led to repeated changes in mission configuration. While the flyby of the asteroid was a partial success, the encounter with the comet retrieved valuable information.

2002 – Iraq rejects U.S. efforts to secure new U.N. resolutions threatening war. Iraqi state-run radio announces Baghdad will not abide by the unfavourable new resolutions adopted by the U.N. Security Council. U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix says he expects an advance team of inspectors to be in Iraq by October 15, and some early inspections could be carried out soon afterward.

2003 – NASA’s $1.5 billion Galileo mission ended a 14-year exploration of the solar system’s largest planet and its moons with the spacecraft crashing by design into Jupiter at 108,000 mph.

2004 – The new $219 million Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington DC. It included some 800,000 artifacts collected by George Gustav Heye (1874-1957).

2004 – President Bush, defending his decision to invade Iraq, urged the U.N. General Assembly to stand united with the country’s struggling government.

2004 – Iran revealed that it started converting tons of raw uranium as part of a process that could be used to make nuclear arms.

2004 – A posting on an Islamic Web site claimed that the al-Qaida-linked group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has slain US hostage Jack Hensley.

2004 – A Turkish construction company announced that it was halting operations in neighboring Iraq in a bid to save the lives of 10 employees kidnapped by militants.

2006 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center, ending STS-115 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It was the first assembly mission to the ISS after the Columbia disaster, following the two successful Return to Flight missions, STS-114 and STS-121. STS-115 launched from Pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center on 9 September 2006 at 11:14:55 EDT (15:14:55 UTC). The mission is also referred to as ISS-12A by the ISS program. The mission delivered the second port-side truss segment (ITS P3/P4), a pair of solar arrays (2A and 4A), and batteries. A total of three spacewalks were performed, during which the crew connected the systems on the installed trusses, prepared them for deployment, and did other maintenance work on the station. STS-115 was originally scheduled to launch in April 2003.

However, the Columbia accident in February 2003 pushed the date back to 27 August 2006, which was again moved back for various reasons, including a threat from Tropical Storm Ernesto and the strongest lightning strike to ever hit an occupied shuttle launchpad.

2011 – Two American hikers, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, are set free on bail by Iran as a humanitarian gesture, after being detained in prison for over two years under allegations of espionage.

2014 – Over 60,000 Syrian Kurds flee into Turkey ahead of an ISIL offensive.

September 22nd ~


1554 – Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez, his health badly deteriorated from injuries and the toll of his strenuous travels, dies. He never found the fabled cities of gold that he had sought for decades.

1776 – In New York City, Nathan Hale, a Connecticut schoolteacher and captain in the Continental Army, is executed by the British for spying. A graduate of Yale University, Hale joined a Connecticut regiment in 1775 and served in the successful siege of British-occupied Boston. In the summer of 1776, he crossed behind British lines on Long Island in civilian clothes to spy on the British. While returning with the intelligence information, British soldiers captured Hale near the American lines and charged him with espionage. Taken to New York, he was hanged without trial the next day. Before being executed, legend holds that Hale said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” There is no historical record to prove that Hale actually made this statement, but if he did he may have been inspired by the lines in English author Joseph Addison’s 1713 play Cato: “What a pity it is/That we can die but once to serve our country.”

1862 – Motivated by his growing concern for the inhumanity of slavery as well as practical political concerns, President Abraham Lincoln changes the course of the war and American history by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Announced a week after the nominal Union victory at the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), this measure did not technically free any slaves, but it redefined the Union’s war aim from reunification to the abolition of slavery. The proclamation announced that all slaves in territory that was still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would be free.

1893 – America’s first automobile was not built by a Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler, but by Charles and Frank Duryea, two bicycle makers. Charles spotted a gasoline engine at the 1886 Ohio State Fair and became convinced that an engine-driven carriage could be built. The two brothers designed and built the car together, working in a rented loft in Springfield, Massachusetts. After two years of tinkering, Charles and Frank Duryea showed off their home invention on the streets of Springfield, the first successful run of an automobile in the U.S.

1919 – The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania setting in motion a train of events that will result in martial law and the involvement of the US Army.

1943 – The invasion of Finschafen, New Guinea: an Allied invasion fleet, including Coast Guard-manned landing ships, landed Australian troops at Finschafen. Coast Guard-manned ships in the invasion fleet included USSs LST-18, LST-67, LST-168, and LST-204. There were no casualties among the Coast Guard LSTs.

1945 – Gen. George S. Patton tells reporters that he does not see the need for “this de-nazification thing” and compares the controversy over Nazism to a “Democratic and Republican election fight.” Once again, “Old Blood and Guts” had put his foot in his mouth. Nevertheless, his impolitic press statements questioning the policy resulted in Eisenhower’s removing him as U.S. commander in Bavaria. He was transferred to the 15th Army Group, but in December 1945 he suffered a broken neck in a car accident and died less than two weeks later at the age of 60.

1947 – A Douglas C-54 Skymaster made the first automatic-pilot flight over the Atlantic.

1950 – Omar N. Bradley was promoted to the rank of five-star general, joining an elite group that included Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall and Henry H. “Hap” Arnold.

1958 – The nuclear submarine USS Skate remained a record 31 days under the North Pole.

1975 – President Gerald R. Ford dodged a second assassination in less than three weeks. Sara Jane Moore, an FBI informer and self-proclaimed revolutionary, attempted to shoot President Ford outside a San Francisco hotel, but missed. A bullet she fired slightly wounded a man in the crowd.

1980 – Iraq invaded Iran following border skirmishes and a dispute over the Shatt al-Arab waterway. This marked the beginning of a war that would last eight years. Iraq invaded Iran striking refineries and an oil-loading terminal on Kharg Island. The Iraqis used the political instability in Iran to try to capture long-disputed territory. They attacked across the Shatt al Arab River, a trunk of the great Tigris-Euphrates river system.

1993 – The space shuttle “Discovery” and its five astronauts landed at Kennedy Space Center, ending a 10-day mission.

1997 – President Clinton, addressing the United Nations, told world leaders to “end all nuclear tests for all time” as he sent the long-delayed global test-ban treaty to the Senate.

1998 – The U.S. and Russia agreed to help Russia privatize its nuclear program and stop the export of scientists and plutonium.

2001 – President Bush consulted at length with Russian President Vladimir Putin as the United States mustered a military assault on terrorism in the wake of Sept. 11th.

2006 – The U.S. military officially retires the F-14 Tomcat having been supplanted by the Boeing F/A-18E and F Super Hornets. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat is a fourth-generation, supersonic, twinjet, two-seat, variable-sweep wing fighter aircraft. The Tomcat was developed for the United States Navy’s Naval Fighter Experimental (VFX) program following the collapse of the F-111B project. The F-14 was the first of the American teen-series fighters, which were designed incorporating the experience of air combat against MiG fighters during the Vietnam War.

The F-14 first flew in December 1970 and made its first deployment in 1974 with the U.S. Navy aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65), replacing the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. The F-14 served as the U.S. Navy’s primary maritime air superiority fighter, fleet defense interceptor and tactical reconnaissance platform. In the 1990s, it added the Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) pod system and began performing precision ground-attack missions. As of 2014, the F-14 was in service with only the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, having been exported to Iran in 1976, when the U.S. had amicable diplomatic relations with Iran.

2011 – The Anniston Chemical Activity destroys its last mustard gas shells, becoming the fifth of nine US chemical weapons depots to close under terms of the Chemical Weapons Treaty.

2011 – Representatives of the United States and European nations walk out of the General Assembly of the United Nations during an accusatory speech by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

2011 – The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrests suspected members of the computer hacking groups Lulz Sec and Anonymous in the US cities of Phoenix, Arizona and San Francisco, California.

2014 – NASA’s MAVEN space probe successfully arrives in orbit over Mars. Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is a space probe designed to study the Martian atmosphere while orbiting Mars. Mission goals include determining how the Martian atmosphere and water, presumed to have once been substantial, were lost over time.

MAVEN was successfully launched aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle at the beginning of the first launch window on November 18, 2013. Following the first engine burn of the Centaur second stage, the vehicle coasted in low Earth orbit for 27 minutes before a second Centaur burn of five minutes to insert it into a heliocentric Mars transit orbit. On September 21, 2014 at 10:24 EDT, MAVEN was inserted into an areocentric elliptic orbit upon reaching Mars 3,900 miles by 93 miles above the planet’s surface.

September 23rd ~

1776 – Continental Marines were ordered to reinforce General George Washington in New York.

1779 – During the American Revolution, the U.S. ship Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, wins a hard-fought engagement against the British ships of war Serapis and Countess of Scarborough off the east coast of England. Scottish-born John Paul Jones first sailed to America as a cabin boy and lived for a time in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where his brother had a business. He later served on slave and merchant ships and proved an able seaman. After he killed a sailor while suppressing a mutiny, he went to the American colonies to escape possible British prosecution. With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, he traveled to Philadelphia and was commissioned a senior lieutenant in the new Continental Navy. He soon distinguished himself in actions against British ships in the Bahamas, the Atlantic, and the English Channel.

In August 1779, Jones took command of the Bonhomme Richard and sailed around the British Isles. On September 23, the Bonhomme Richard engaged the Serapis and the smaller Countess of Scarborough, which were escorting the Baltic merchant fleet. After inflicting considerable damage to the Bonhomme Richard, Richard Pearson, the captain of the Serapis, asked Jones if he had struck his colors, the naval sign indicating surrender. From his disabled ship, Jones replied, “I have not yet begun to fight,” and after three more hours of furious fighting the Serapis and Countess of Scarborough surrendered to him. After the victory, the Americans transferred to the Serapis from the Bonhomme Richard, which sunk the following day. Jones was hailed as a great hero in France, but recognition in the United States was somewhat belated. He continued to serve the United States until 1787 and then served briefly in the Russian navy before moving to France, where he died in 1792 at the age of 45, amid the chaos of the French Revolution. He was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1905, his remains were located under the direction of the U.S. ambassador to France and then escorted back to America by U.S. warships. His body was later enshrined in a crypt at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

1780 – British spy John Andre was captured along with papers revealing Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British.

1805 – Lieutenant Zebulon Pike ( of Pike's Peak fame ) paid $2,000 to buy from the Sioux a 9-square-mile tract at the mouth of the Minnesota River that would be used to establish a military post, Fort Snelling.

1806 – Amid much public excitement, American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return to St. Louis, Missouri, from the first recorded overland journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast and back. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had set off more than two years before to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

1899 – American Asiatic Squadron destroys a Filipino battery at the Battle of Olongapo. The Battle of Olongapo was began on September 18, 1899, during the Philippine–American War. The battle featured both land and sea fighting of which the objective was the destruction of the single Filipino artillery gun in Olongapo, a menace to American ships crossing the nearby sea.

1931 – LT Alfred Pride pilots Navy’s first rotary wing aircraft, XOP-1 autogiro, in landings and takeoffs on board USS Langley while underway.

1938 – British premier Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich to pacify Hitler.

1941 – US President Roosevelt announces the possibility of arming American merchant vessels against German attacks.

1942 – At Auschwitz Nazis began experimental gassing executions using car exhaust.

1943 – Benito Mussolini, deposed dictator of Italy, fashions a new fascist republic–by the leave of his new German masters–which he “rules” from his headquarters in northern Italy. In July 1943, after a Grand Council vote of “no confidence,” Mussolini was thrust from power and quickly placed under house arrest. The Italian masses, who had so enthusiastically embraced him for his promises of a new Italian “empire,” now despised him for the humiliating defeat they had suffered during the war. But Mussolini still had one fan–Adolf Hitler.

1944 – USS West Virginia (BB-48) reaches Pearl Harbor and rejoins the Pacific Fleet, marking the end of the salvage and reconstruction of 18 ships damaged at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

1945 – The first American died in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon to French forces.

1949 – In a surprisingly low-key and carefully worded statement, President Harry S. Truman informs the American people that the Soviets have exploded a nuclear bomb. On September 23, he issued a brief statement to the media. “We have evidence,” the statement read, “within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR.” The president attempted to downplay the seriousness of the event by noting that “The eventual development of this new force by other nations was to be expected. This probability has always been taken into account by us.”

1950 – The Battle of Hill 282 the first US friendly-fire incident on British military personnel since World War II occurred. US Mustangs accidentally bombed British troops on Hill 282 Korea, 17 killed.

1965 – The South Vietnamese government executes three accused Viet Cong agents held at Da Nang. They did it at night to prevent foreign photographers from recording it, but nevertheless, the story got out. Three days later, a clandestine Viet Cong radio station announced North Vietnam’s execution of two U.S. soldiers held captive since 1963, as “war criminals.”

1990 – Two Hospital ships (USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort) steam together for first time in Arabian Gulf.

1991 – UN weapons inspectors in Baghdad discovered documents detailing Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program and said Iraq was close to building a bomb. This triggered a standoff with Iraqi authorities.

1995 – Guillermo Gaede, an Intel engineer, was arrested in Phoenix. He had used his computer to tap into plans for the Pentium & 486 chip manufacturing process and video taped the information in May 1993. He sent the info to his former employer Advanced Micro Devices who notified federal authorities. He claimed to have been double-crossed by the FBI and also to have passed info from AMD to Cuba, China, North Korea and Iran.

1996 – Space shuttle Atlantis left Russia’s orbiting Mir station with astronaut Shannon Lucid, who ended her six-month visit with tender goodbyes to her Russian colleagues.

1999 – The $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter was presumed lost after it hit the Martian atmosphere. The crash was later blamed on navigation confusion due to 2 teams using conflicting English and metric units.

2001 – President George W. Bush returned the American flag to full staff at Camp David, symbolically ending a period of national mourning for September 11th.

2001 – NASA reported that its Deep Space I craft took pictures of the comet Borrelly.

2001 – Osama bin Laden issued a statement that called for Muslim brothers to resist the “Christian-Jewish crusade led by the big crusader Bush under the flag of the Cross…”

2001 – The 6-member Persian “Gulf Cooperation Council” (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAR) met in Jidda and pledged support for an international coalition against terrorism.

2002 – The United States military gives President George Bush a highly detailed military plan for ousting Saddam Hussein.

2002 – The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox (“Phoenix 0.1”) is released.

2004 – US warplanes fired on insurgent targets in the east Baghdad slum of Sadr City. Gunmen in Mosul killed a senior official of Iraq’s North Oil Co.

2004 – In Iraq kidnappers seized 2 more Egyptian construction engineers working for the country’s mobile phone company.

2005 – Earl Krugel, a leader of the Jewish Defence League, is sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a plot to blow up a mosque in Los Angeles and Lebanese-American congressman Darrell Issa’s office. His co-accused, Irv Rubin, committed suicide in 2002.

2010 – Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui is sentenced to 86 years in jail in a New York federal court for trying to kill United States soldiers in Afghanistan.

2014 – The United States and its allies commence air strikes against Islamic State in Syria. Warplanes, drones and Tomahawk missiles were used to targeted several areas including IS stronghold Raqqa. Support and participation were undertaken by coalition members, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

September 24th ~

1683 – King Louis XIV expelled all Jews from French possessions in America.

1780 – Benedict Arnold flees to British Army lines when the arrest of British Major John André exposes Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point.

1789 – The Judiciary Act of 1789 is passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. That day, President Washington nominated John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices. On September 26, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which their constitutionality was at issue. The high court was also designated to oversee cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction.

On February 1, 1790, the first session of the U.S. Supreme Court was held in New York City’s Royal Exchange Building. The U.S. Supreme Court grew into the most important judicial body in the world in terms of its central place in the American political order. According to the Constitution, the size of the court is set by Congress, and the number of justices varied during the 19th century before stabilizing in 1869 at nine. In times of constitutional crisis, the nation’s highest court has always played a definitive role in resolving, for better or worse, the great issues of the time.

1846 – During the Mexican–American War, US forces capture Monterrey. In the Battle of Monterrey (September 21–24, 1846) during the Mexican–American War, General Pedro de Ampudia and the Mexican Army of the North was defeated by the Army of Occupation, a force of United States Regulars, Volunteers and Texas Rangers under the command of General Zachary Taylor.

1862 – President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus against anyone suspected of being a Southern sympathizer.

1906 – The First US National Monument, Devils Tower, was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt. Devils Tower is a volcanic rock formation, rising 865 feet over a base of gray igneous rock at 1,700 feet, located in the Black Hills of Wyoming.

1918 – Ensign David S. Ingalls, USNR, in a Sopwith Camel, shoots down his fifth enemy aircraft, becoming the first U.S. Navy ace while flying with the British Royal Air Force.

1929 – U.S. Army pilot Lt. James H. Doolittle guided a Consolidated NY2 Biplane over Mitchel Field in New York in the first all-instrument flight.

1941 – Representatives from 15 Allied countries sign the Atlantic Charter, including the UK, USA and USSR, as well as several Commonwealth countries and the European governments-in-exile.

1941 – The Japanese consul in Hawaii is instructed to divide Pearl Harbor into five zones and calculate the number of battleships in each zone–and report the findings back to Japan. Relations between the United States and Japan had been deteriorating quickly since Japan’s occupation of Indo-China and the implicit menacing of the Philippines, an American protectorate, with the occupation of the Cam Ranh naval base only eight miles from Manila. American retaliation included the seizing of all Japanese assets in the States and the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping.

Little did Japan know that the United States had intercepted the message; unfortunately, it had to be sent back to Washington for decrypting. Flights east were infrequent, so the message was sent via sea, a more time-consuming process. When it finally arrived at the capital, staff shortages and other priorities further delayed the decryption. When the message was finally unscrambled in mid-October–it was dismissed as being of no great consequence. It would be found of consequence on December 7th.

1942 – MCAS Mojave, California organized.

1943 – The Coast Guard-manned USS LST-167 and the USS LST-334 with a partial Coast Guard crew landed troops during the invasion of Vella Lavella in the central Solomons despite fierce resistance from the Japanese defenders. Japanese aircraft attacked the invasion fleet, hitting LST-167 with two bombs that killed 10 of her crew and wounded 10. Five crewmen were reported as missing in action.

1945 – Japanese Emperor Hirohito says that he did not want war and blames Tojo for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1945 – General Jaques Philippe Leclerc, newly appointed as France’s military commander in Vietnam, arrives in Saigon to the general melee and a general strike called by the Vietminh. Leclerc declares, ‘We have come to reclaim our inheritance.’

1947 – The Coast Guard announced that it had virtually completed the return of United States buoys, lights, and other aids to navigation to a peacetime basis.

1948 – Mildred Gillars, accused of being Nazi wartime radio propagandist “Axis Sally,” pleaded innocent in Washington, D.C., to charges of treason. (Gillars ended up serving 12 years in prison.)

1953 – In a speech that is by turns confrontational and sarcastic, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declares that the United States will not “cringe or become panicky” in the face of Soviet nuclear weapons. Dulles’ speech indicated that although the Korean War had finally reached a peaceful conclusion, the United States would continue its policy of containing communist expansion, by force if necessary.

1955 – President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack while on vacation in Denver. The illness didn’t prevent Eisenhower from being re-elected to a second term the following year.

1960 – The USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Va. USS Enterprise (CVN-65), formerly CVA(N)-65, is a retired United States Navy aircraft carrier. She was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the eighth United States naval vessel to bear the name. Like her predecessor of World War II fame, she is nicknamed “Big E”. At 1,123 ft (342 m), she was the longest naval vessel in the world, a record which still stands. Her 93,284-long-ton (94,781 t) displacement ranked her as the 11th-heaviest supercarrier, after the 10 carriers of the Nimitz class. Enterprise had a crew of some 4,600 service members.

The only ship of her class, Enterprise was the third oldest commissioned vessel in the United States Navy after the wooden-hulled USS Constitution and USS Pueblo. She was originally scheduled for decommissioning in 2015, depending on the life of her reactors and completion of her replacement, USS Gerald R. Ford, but the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 slated the ship’s retirement for 2013, when she would have served for 51 consecutive years, longer than any other U.S. aircraft carrier.

1979 – CompuServe launches the first consumer internet service, which features the first public electronic mail service.

1987 – President Reagan rebuffed congressional calls to limit U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, and defended the recent U.S. attack on an Iranian mine-laying vessel.

1991 – Iraq agrees to allow U.N. helicopters to make unrestricted flights over its territory.

1992 – Acting Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe stripped three admirals of their jobs for failing to investigate aggressively the Tail Hook sex abuse scandal.

1998 – NATO instructed its generals to begin preparing for air strikes on Yugoslavia unless pres. Milosevic ends his attacks on ethnic Albanians.

2001 – President Bush ordered a freeze on the assets of 27 people and organizations with suspected links to terrorism, including Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, and urged other nations to do likewise.

2001 – The US received from Russia an essential go-ahead to use 3 former republics as bases for attacks on Afghanistan.

2002 – Iraq dismissed a British government report that said Saddam Hussein is pursuing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

2002 – U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thomas H. Collins announced the award of a $611 million contract to General Dynamics of Scottsdale, AZ, for the production, deployment and support of “Rescue 21,” a modernization of the National Distress and Response System. “Rescue 21” was planned to be the nation’s primary maritime “911” system for coastal waters of the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and navigable rivers and lakes within the United States.

2011 – The decommissioned NASA Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite re-enters Earth’s atmosphere without incident, after more than 20 years in orbit.

2012 – The US military announces that two US Marines have been referred for trial for urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan and failing to stop other misconduct by subordinates.

2014 – After 32 years of service to the nation, the last operational HU-25 Falcon, the only jet to ever be a part of the US Coast Guard’s air fleet, was retired in Corpus Christi, Texas. The Falcon played a significant role in search and rescue as well as counter drug missions and was a critical asset during the first Gulf War.

Now back from the Walk for the Wounded in Ocean City, NJ...the series continues:

September 29th ~

Feast Day of St. Michael the Archangel, Patron Saint of Soldiers, marines, Military Police, Aviation, and Airborne: The name Michael signifies “Who is like to God?” and was the war cry of the good angels in the battle fought in heaven against Satan and his followers. Holy Scripture describes St. Michael as “one of the chief princes,” and leader of the forces of heaven in their triumph over the powers of hell. He has been especially honored and invoked as patron and protector by the Church from the time of the Apostles. Although he is always called “the Archangel,” the Greek Fathers and many others place him over all the angels – as Prince of the Seraphim.

1789 – The U.S. War Department established a regular U.S. army with a strength of several hundred men.

1789 – The 1st United States Congress adjourns.

1812 – Seminole Indians ambushed Marines at Twelve Mile Swamp, Florida.

1850 – Pres. Millard Fillmore named Mormon leader Brigham Young as the first governor of the Utah Territory.

1862 – Union General Jefferson C. Davis mortally wounds his commanding officer, General William Nelson, in Louisville, Kentucky. Davis had been upset by a reprimand handed down by Nelson. After quarreling in a hotel lobby, Nelson slapped Davis. Davis then chased him upstairs and shot him. Davis was never court-martialed, and it is thought that the influence of Indiana Governor Oliver Morton, who was with Davis at the time of the shooting, was instrumental in preventing a trial. Davis went on to serve with distinction at the Battles of Stones River, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga.

1864 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant tries to break the stalemate around Richmond and Petersburg—25 miles south of Richmond—by attacking two points along the defenses of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The assault against Richmond, called the Battle of New Market Heights, and the assault against Petersburg, known as the Battle of Poplar Springs Church (Peeble’s Farm), both failed. But they kept the pressure on Lee and prevented him from sending reinforcements to the beleaguered General Jubal Early, who was fighting against General Philip Sheridan in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

1879 – Dissatisfied Ute Indians killed Agent Nathan Meeker and nine others in the “Meeker Massacre.”

1899 – Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) established.

1918 – At the Battle of St. Quentin Canal, Allied forces scored a decisive breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line during World War I. The Allied assualt involved British, Australian and American forces in the spearhead attack and as a single combined force against the German Siegfried Stellung of the Hindenburg Line. Under the command of Australian general Sir John Monash, the assault achieved all its objectives, resulting in the first full breach of the Hindenburg Line, in the face of heavy German resistance and, in concert with other attacks of the Great Offensive along the length of the line convinced the German high command that the writing was on the wall regarding any hope of German victory.

1918 – Lt. Frank Luke Jr. against orders destroyed 3 German balloons and downed 2 pursuing fighters in a final flight of vengeance for the loss of his wingman Lt. Joseph Wehner. Luke received a posthumous medal of honor.

1919 – The Secretary of War deploys federal troops to Omaha after the preceding day’s rioting. The race riot resulted in the brutal lynching of Will Brown, a black worker; the death of two white men; the attempted hanging of Mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of whites who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha.

1938 – Munich Agreement: Germany is given permission from France, Italy, and Great Britain to seize the territory of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. The meeting takes place in Munich, and leaders from neither the Soviet Union nor Czechoslovakia attend.

1939 – In New York city, Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, is imprisoned.

1939 – Germany and the Soviet Union agree to divide control of occupied Poland roughly along the Bug River–the Germans taking everything west, the Soviets taking everything east. As a follow-up to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact), that created a non-aggression treaty between the two behemoth military powers of Germany and the U.S.S.R., Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, met with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov, to sign the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty. Joseph Stalin, Soviet premier and dictator, personally drew the line that partitioned Poland. Originally drawn at the River Vistula, just west of Warsaw, he agreed to pull it back east of the capital and Lublin, giving Germany control of most of Poland’s most heavily populated and industrialized regions. In return, Stalin wanted Lvov, and its rich oil wells, as well as Lithuania, which sits atop East Prussia. Germany now had 22 million Poles, “slaves of the Greater German Empire,” at its disposal; Russia had a western buffer zone.

1943 – Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf was published in the United States.

1943 – General Eisenhower and Marshal Badoglio sign the armistice agreement aboard the HMS Nelson in Malta harbor.

1946 – Lockheed P2V Neptune, Truculent Turtle, leaves Perth, Australia on long distance non-stop, non-refueling flight that ends October 1.

1950 – In a ceremony in the National Assembly Hall while fighting still raged in the outskirts, Seoul was officially restored as the capital of the Republic of Korea. An emotional President Rhee called General MacArthur “the savior of our race.”

1965 – Hanoi publishes the text of a letter it has written to the Red Cross claiming that since there is no formal state of war, U.S. pilots shot down over the North will not receive the rights of prisoners of war (POWs) and will be treated as war criminals. The U.S. State Department protested, but this had no impact on the way the American POWs were treated and most suffered extreme torture and other maltreatment while in captivity.
The first pilot captured by the North Vietnamese was Navy Lieutenant Everett Alvarez, who was shot down on August 5, 1964. The American POW held longest was Army Special Forces Captain Floyd James Thompson, who had been captured in the South on March 26, 1964. American POWs were held in 11 different prisons in North Vietnam and their treatment by the North Vietnamese was characterized by isolation, torture, and psychological abuse. The exact number of POWs held by the North Vietnamese during the war remains a debatable issue, but the POWs themselves have accounted for at least 766 verified captives at one point. Under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese released 565 American military and 26 civilian POWs in February and March 1973, but there were still more than 2,500 men listed as Missing in Action (MIA).

1986 – Coast Guard officials signed the contract papers to acquire the H-60 series helicopter to replace the venerable Sikorsky HH-3F Pelicans.

1988 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking America’s return to manned space flight following the Challenger disaster.

1990 – The YF-22, which would later become the F-22 Raptor, flies for the first time. The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine, all weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The result of the USAF’s Advanced Tactical Fighter program, the aircraft was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities including ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and is responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems, and final assembly of the F-22, while program partner Boeing provides the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.

1994 – The crew of Coast Guard LORAN Station Iwo Jima decommissioned their station and turned it over to a crew from the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency. The turnover of all of the Northwest Pacific LORAN chain stations was arranged under a 1992 agreement between the U.S. and Japan.

1995 – The United States Navy disbands Fighter Squadron 84 (VF-84), nicknamed the “Jolly Rogers”. VF-84, Fighter Squadron 84 was an aviation unit of the United States Navy active from 1955 to 1995. The squadron was nicknamed the Jolly Rogers and was based at NAS Oceana. It took the number but not the lineage of a World War II squadron active in 1944–45, known as the “Wolf Gang”.

2003 – US The Justice Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and President Bush the next day directed his White House staff to cooperate fully. The White House denied that President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, had leaked a CIA agent’s identity to retaliate against an opponent of the administration’s Iraq policy.

2004 – A US federal judge ruled that a section of the Patriot Act, that allowed the search of phone and Internet records, was unconstitutional.

2004 – Kyrgyzstan police arrested a man for attempting the black market sale of 60 small containers of what was confirmed as plutonium.

2004 – A Yemeni judge sentenced two men to death and four others to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

2006 – The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes its first low-orbit, high-resolution pictures of Mars.

2010 – Germany makes the final payment of its World War I reparations.

2012 – One of the Guantanamo detainees, Omar Khadr, is transferred to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence.

2014 – Ashraf Ghani is sworn in as new president of Afghanistan.

September 30th ~

1541 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces enter Tula territory in present-day western Arkansas, encountering fierce resistance.

1777 – The Congress of the United States, forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces, moved to York, Pennsylvania.

1800 – U.S. concludes treaty of peace with France, ending Quasi War with France.

1857 – Unable to obtain trading privileges in Vietnam through diplomacy, the French begin their campaign to take Vietnam. They attack Danang and take the city in early 1858. This fails to foment the uprising of oppressed Christians that they had expected. Decimated by disease, they push south to take Saigon by 1861. Vietnam is divided by a strong popular rebellion in the north, and under the weak Emperor Tu Duc, regional risings against the French are never coordinated successfully. Hanoi falls in 1883.

1864 – Confederate troops failed to retake Fort Harrison from the Union forces during the siege of Petersburg.

1864 – In an attempt to cut the last rail line into Petersburg, Virginia, Union troops attack the Confederate defense around the besieged city. Although initially successful, the attack ground to a halt when Confederate reinforcements were rushed into place from other sections of the Petersburg line. This battle came after more than three months of trench warfare. Union commander General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee had fought a costly and fast-moving campaign in the spring, but by June they had settled into trenches around Petersburg. The lines extended all the way to Richmond, 25 miles north of Petersburg. Grant had made sporadic attacks to break the stalemate, and this battle was yet another attempt to drive Lee’s men from the trenches.

1899 – First Navy wireless message sent via Lighthouse Service Station at Highlands of Navesink, New Jersey.

1924 – Allies stopped checking on the German Navy and it's clandestine growth.

1932 – Marine Lt. General Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller won his second of five Navy Crosses.

1938 – Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sign the Munich Pact, which seals the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain would declare that the meeting had achieved “peace in our time.” Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. It also left the Czech nation open to complete domination by Germany. In short, the Munich Pact sacrificed the autonomy of Czechoslovakia on the altar of short-term peace-very short term.

1939 – Germany and Russia secretly agreed to partition Poland.

1943 – The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps became the Women’s Army Corps, a regular contingent of the U.S. Army with the same status as other army service corps.

1946 – U.S. Government announces that U.S. Navy units would be permanently stationed in the Mediterranean to carry out American policy and diplomacy.

1946 – An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes. Ribbentrop and Goering were sentenced to death.

1949 – After 15 months and more than 250,000 flights, the Berlin Airlift officially comes to an end. The airlift was one of the greatest logistical feats in modern history and was one of the crucial events of the early Cold War. In June 1948, the Soviet Union suddenly blocked all ground traffic into West Berlin, which was located entirely within the Russian zone of occupation in Germany. It was an obvious effort to force the United States, Great Britain, and France (the other occupying powers in Germany) to accept Soviet demands concerning the postwar fate of Germany. As a result of the Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin were left without food, clothing, or medical supplies.

1949 – The rank of commodore, established in 1943 as a wartime measure, was terminated by the President under the provisions of an Act of Congress approved 24 July 1941.

1950 – U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea as they pursued the retreating North Korean Army.

1954 – The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, is commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The Nautilus was constructed under the direction of U.S. Navy Captain Hyman G. Rickover, a brilliant Russian-born engineer who joined the U.S. atomic program in 1946. In 1947, he was put in charge of the navy’s nuclear-propulsion program and began work on an atomic submarine. Regarded as a fanatic by his detractors, Rickover succeeded in developing and delivering the world’s first nuclear submarine years ahead of schedule. In 1952, the Nautilus’ keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman, and on January 21, 1954, first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut. Commissioned on September 30, 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of January 17, 1955. Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines that preceded it, the Nautilus stretched 319 feet and displaced 3,180 tons. It could remain submerged for almost unlimited periods because its atomic engine needed no air and only a very small quantity of nuclear fuel. The uranium-powered nuclear reactor produced steam that drove propulsion turbines, allowing the Nautilus to travel underwater at speeds in excess of 20 knots. In its early years of service, the USS Nautilus broke numerous submarine travel records and in August 1958 accomplished the first voyage under the geographic North Pole. After a career spanning 25 years and almost 500,000 miles steamed, the Nautilus was decommissioned on March 3, 1980. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982, the world’s first nuclear submarine went on exhibit in 1986 as the Historic Ship Nautilus at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.

1954 – NATO nations agreed to arm and admit West Germany.

1959 – Last flight of airshps assigned to the Naval Air Reserve at Lakehurst, NJ takes place.

1961 – A bill for the 1773 Boston Tea Party was paid by Mayor Snyder of Oregon. He wrote a check for $196, the total cost of all tea lost.

1965 – The Lockheed L-100, the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules, is introduced.

1968 – USS New Jersey, the world’s only active battleship, arrives in Vietnamese waters and begins bombarding the Demilitarized Zone from her station off the Vietnamese coast.

1969 – Nazi war criminals Albert Speer, the German minister of armaments, and Baldur von Schirach, the founder of the Hitler Youth, were freed at midnight from Spandau prison after serving twenty-year prison sentences.

1975 – The Hughes (later McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight. The Boeing AH-64 Apache is a four-blade, twin-engine attack helicopter with a tail wheel-type landing gear arrangement, and a tandem cockpit for a two-man crew. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night vision systems. It is armed with a 30 mm (1.18 in) M230 Chain Gun carried between the main landing gear, under the aircraft’s forward fuselage. It has four hard points mounted on stub-wing pylons, typically carrying a mixture of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rocket pods. The AH-64 has a large amount of systems redundancy to improve combat survivability. The helicopter was introduced to U.S. Army service in April 1986. The first production AH-64D Apache Longbow, an upgraded Apache variant, was delivered to the Army in March 1997. Production has been continued by Boeing Defense, Space & Security; over 2,000 AH-64s have been produced to date. The U.S. Army is the primary operator of the AH-64.

1977 – Because of US budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, the Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down. The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) comprised a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site of each of the five Apollo missions to land on the Moon following Apollo 11 (Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17). Apollo 11 left a smaller package called the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, or EASEP.

1980 – Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation. Ethernet /ˈiːθərnɛt/ is a family of computer networking technologies for local area (LAN) and larger networks. It was first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3, and has since been refined to support higher bit rates and longer link distances. Over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI, and ARCNET. The primary alternative for contemporary LANs is not a wired standard, but instead a variety of IEEE 802.11 standards also known as Wi-Fi.

1989 – Thousands of East Germans who had sought refuge in West German embassies in Czechoslovakia and Poland began emigrating under an accord between Soviet bloc and NATO nations.

1992 – Congress approved a bill requiring the release of nearly all government files concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.

1992 – Marine Barracks, Subic Bay, Philippines, was disestablished. The Naval Base had been used by Americans for many years.

1993 – MS Dos 6.2 was released.

1994 – The space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts roared into orbit on an 11-day mission.

1996 – The United States Congress passes the Lautenburg Amendment that bars the possession of firearms for people who were convicted of domestic violence, even misdemeanor level.

2001 – Leaders of the Taliban said they had Osama bin Laden “under our control,” but would release him to the US only if shown proof that he plotted the Sep 11 attacks. Pres. Bush said he would not negotiate.

2004 – The Arab news network Al-Jazeera showed video of 10 new hostages seized in Iraq by militants.

2004 – The AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile for the F-14 Tomcat, is retired from service. Almost two years later, the Tomcat weapons platform is retired.

2010 – China and the United States officially resume military ties after a 10-month break following US arms sales to Taiwan, with the two countries emphasizing the importance of a close military dialogue.

2011 – In a US drone strike, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki is reported killed in Yemen.

2014 – A case of the Ebola Virus is being treated in the American city of Dallas, Texas.

October 1st ~

1768 – English troops under General Gage landed in Boston. Soldiers drawn chiefly from the 14th and 29th Infantry Regiments, and numbering about 700 men, landed at Boston without opposition.

1781 – The youngest of eleven children, James Lawrence was born in Burlington, NJ. His parents were Tories who had entertained the Hessian commander as a dinner guest at their home during the Revolution, but when the war ended, they remained in America. James was sent to study law at the age of 13, but proved an uncooperative student. Eventually, he was permitted to join the Navy as a midshipman in 1798, and gained experience in action against the Barbary pirates.

Commissioned a Lieutenant in 1802, he was a member of Stephen Decatur’s raiding party which destroyed the U.S.S. Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor after it was captured by the Tripolitans in 1804. During the War of 1812, Lawrence commanded the U.S.S. Hornet, which captured the H.M.S. Peacock, and was promoted to Captain as a result.

On June 1, 1813, commanding a new and untrained crew on the 49-gun frigate U.S.S. Chesapeake off Boston, Lawrence accepted a challenge from Philip Bowes Vere Broke, captain of the 38-gun H.M.S. Shannon. Four years Lawrence’s senior, Broke had commanded the Shannon for six years, and had the best trained crew in the Royal Navy. In less than 15 minutes, Lawrence’s crew was overwhelmed. Mortally wounded, Lawrence shouted, “Tell the men to fire faster and not to give up the ship; fight her till she sinks!” True to his words, every officer in the Chesapeake’s chain of command fought until he was either killed or wounded. Even so, the battle was lost in under an hour, the Chesapeake was captured, and Lawrence died four days later, leaving his wife and a daughter.

In honor of Captain Lawrence, a group of women stitched the words “Don’t Give Up The Ship” into a flag. The flag was presented to Oliver Hazard Perry, commander of the U.S.S. Lawrence – named for Captain Lawrence – in the summer of 1813. Perry went on to capture an entire squadron of British ships in the battle of Lake Erie, on September 13, though not before every officer on the Lawrence – except for Perry and his 13-year-old brother – was either killed or wounded. Lawrence’s words became the motto of the U.S. Navy, which has named numerous ships in his honor, and Perry’s flag now hangs in a place of honor at the United States Naval Academy. Copies may be seen at other Navy installations and, of course, in Burlington. Far less well known is Lawrence’s last command to his crew – “Burn her!”

1844 – Naval Observatory headed by LT Matthew Fontaine Maury occupies first permanent quarters. Founded in 1830 as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, the Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the country. As a service organization, one of its first tasks was the calibration of ship’s chronometers, which was accomplished by timing the transit of stars across the meridian. In 1855 the astronomical and nautical almanacs were started. From these service-oriented beginnings, USNO continues to be responsive to the fleet, DoD, and national needs through provision of applied astrometry and timing products and services.

1878 – General Lew Wallace was sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, the outlaw Billy the Kid and wrote the book Ben-Hur.

1880 – John Philip Sousa started his 12-year tour as director of the US Marine Band. He premiered many of his marches and produced the first commercial phonograph recordings.

1890 – Congress created the Weather Bureau, moving the Weather Warning Service from the US Army Signal Corps to the Department of Agriculture.

1928 – First class at school for enlisted Navy and Marine Corps Radio intercept operators (The “On the roof gang”)

1934 – Adolph Hitler expanded the German army and navy and created an air force, violating Treaty of Versailles.

1936 – General Francisco Franco was proclaimed the head of an insurgent Spanish state.

1938 – Germany annexed Sudetenland (1/3 of Czech Republic) as a result of the Munich Conference between Germany, England and France.

1942 – Bell P-59 Airacomet fighter, 1st US jet, made its maiden flight. Development of the P-59, America’s first jet-propelled airplane, was ordered personally by General H. H. Arnold on September 4, 1941. The project was conducted under the utmost secrecy, with Bell building the airplane and General Electric the engine. The first P-59 was completed in mid-1942 and it made its initial flight at Muroc Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force Base), California. One year later, the airplane was ordered into production, to be powered by I-14 and I-16 engines, improved versions of the original I-A. Bell produced 66 P-59s.
Although the airplane’s performance was not spectacular and it never got into combat, the P-59 provided training for AAF personnel and invaluable data for subsequent development of higher performance jet airplanes.

1946 – Twelve Nazi war criminals were sentenced to be hanged at Nuremberg trials– Karl Donitz, Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg. Karl Donitz was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

1947 – The North American F-86 Sabre flies for the first time. The North American F-86 Sabre — sometimes called the Sabrejet — was a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States’ first swept wing fighter which could counter the similarly-winged Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights over the skies of the Korean War (1950-53). Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras.
Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the ’50s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable, and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994. Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the U.S., Japan and Italy. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Sabre was by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.

1951 – The all-African-American 24th Infantry Regiment and 159th Field Artillery Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, were disbanded and the personnel reassigned to formerly all-white units. Other formerly all-African-American units were infused with white soldiers, thus beginning racial integration in the Army.

1955 – Commissioning of USS Forrestal (CVA-59), first of postwar super carriers. Forrestal (CVA-59) was launched 11 December 1954 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. Newport News, Va.; sponsored by Mrs. James V Forrestal, widow of Secretary Forrestal; and commissioned 1 October 1955, Captain R. L. Johnson in command. From her home port, Norfolk, Va., Forrestal spent the first year of her commissioned service in intensive training operations off the Virginia Capes and in the Caribbean. An important assignment was training aviators in the use of her advance d facilities, a duty on which she often operated out of Mayport, Fla. On 7 November 1956, she put to sea from Mayport to operate in the eastern Atlantic during the Suez Crisis ready to enter the Mediterranean should her great strength be necessary. She returned to Norfolk 12 December to prepare for her first deployment with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, for which she sailed 15 January 1957.
On this, as on her succeeding tours of duty in the Mediterranean, Forrestal visited many ports to allow dignitaries and the general public to come aboard and view the tremendous power for peace she represented. For military observers, she sta ged underway demonstrations to illustrate her capacity to bring air power to and from the sea in military operations on any scale. She returned to Norfolk 22 July 1957 for exercises off the North Carolina coast in preparation for her first NATO Operation, “Strikeback,” in the North Sea.

1958 – Inauguration of NASA. Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight. NASA’s first high profile program was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space, followed by Project Gemini, which built upon Mercury’s successes and used spacecraft built for two astronauts. NASA’s human space flight efforts then extended to the Moon with Project Apollo, culminating in 1969 when the Apollo 11 mission first put humans on the lunar surface. After the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Projects of the early and mid-1970s, NASA’s human space flight efforts again resumed in 1981, with the Space Shuttle program that continues today to help build the International Space Station.
Building on its NACA roots, NASA has continued to conduct many types of cutting-edge aeronautics research on aerodynamics, wind shear, and other important topics using wind tunnels, flight testing, and computer simulations. NASA’s highly successful X-15 program involved a rocket-powered airplane that flew above the atmosphere and then glided back to Earth unpowered, providing Shuttle designers with much useful data.

1961 – The United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is formed, becoming the country’s first centralized military espionage organization. As one of the principal members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), DIA informs national civilian and defense policymakers about the military intentions and capabilities of foreign governments and non-state actors, while also providing department-level intelligence assistance and coordination to individual military service intelligence components and the warfighter. The agency’s role encompasses collection and analysis of defense-related foreign political, economic, industrial, geographic, and medical and health intelligence. As part of its national IC responsibilities, DIA regularly provides input for the President’s Daily Brief. DIA is also designated a national manager for the highly technical measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT). The agency has no law enforcement authority, although it is occasionally portrayed so in American popular culture. Established under President John F. Kennedy by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, DIA has been at the forefront of U.S. intelligence efforts throughout the Cold War and rapidly expanded, both in size and scope, since the September 11 attacks. Due to the sensitive nature of its work, the spy organization has been embroiled in numerous controversies, including those related to its intelligence-gathering activities, its role in enhanced interrogations, as well as attempts to expand its activities on U.S. soil.

1979 – US returned the Canal Zone ( but not the canal ) to Panama after 75 years.

1979 – President Jimmy Carter awards the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to former naval aviators Neil Armstrong, CAPT Charles Conrad, Jr., USN (Ret.), COL John Glenn, USMC (Ret.), and RADM Alan Shepard, Jr., USN (Ret.)

1990 – Air Force General and VP candidate Curtis E. LeMay died at March Air Force Base, California, at age 83. General Curtis Emerson Lemay was the “Father of the Strategic Air Command.” When he left the command in 1957 to assume his new job as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, SAC was the most powerful military force the world had ever seen. He is buried in the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery at Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1990 – USS Independence (CV-62) enters Persian Gulf (first carrier in Persian Gulf since 1974)

1991 – The CGC Storis became the oldest commissioned cutter in the Coast Guard when the Fir was decommissioned. The cutter’s crew painted her hull number “38” in gold in recognition of her status.

1995 – France detonated another nuclear device, 5 times more powerful than the last one, on Fangatouga Atoll in the South Pacific.

1996 – A federal grand jury indicted Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski in 1994 mail bomb slaying of an ad executive.

1996 – NASA began turning over day-to-day shuttle operations to private industry.

1996 – Operation Frontier Shield commences. It is the largest counter-narcotics operation in Coast Guard history. FRONTIER SHIELD was the cornerstone of a strategy and a genuine case study for the regional impact of interdiction. The Coast Guard, in conjunction with interagency partners, conducted a large surge operation in the maritime approaches to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Interagency interdiction forces reduced the flow of cocaine into Puerto Rico approximately 50 percent from the level in1996, and that reduced flow rate was sustained through 1998. Maritime smuggling events in Puerto Rico and the Eastern Caribbean declined from 33 percent to about 20 percent of total events in the Caribbean.

1997 – The first African-American female colonel in the Marine Corps was promoted to that rank during a ceremony at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina. Colonel Gilda A. Jackson, a native of Columbus, Ohio, made Marine Corps history when she achieved the rank of colonel. She was serving as Special Projects Officer, 2d Marine Aircraft Wing at the time of her promotion.

1999 – In Russia Prime Minister Putin cut ties with the elected government of Chechnya.

2001 – New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in an impassioned speech to the United Nations, said there was no room for “neutrality” in the global fight against terrorism and no need for more studies or vague directives.

2001 – The US reported that some $6 million and 50 bank accounts were blocked as suspected terrorist assets.

2001 – The US gave NATO “clear and compelling” evidence that Osama bin Laden orchestrated the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.

2003 – US officials identified Abu Hazim al-Sha’ir (29), a Yemeni ex-bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, as al Qaeda’s new terror chief.

2008 – The United States Senate passes the civilian nuclear agreement with India by a vote of 86–13. India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but may now undertake nuclear trade to the States.

2014 – Julia Pierson resigns as the Director of the United States Secret Service following a series of security breaches at the White House.

October 2nd ~

1780 – British spy John Andre was hanged in Tappan, N.Y., for conspiring with Benedict Arnold. The Andre Monument in Tappan commemorates the hanging of Maj. John Andre, the British spymaster who was captured shortly after he was given the plans to West Point by Benedict Arnold.

1789 – Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton asked collectors of customs to report on expediency of employing boats for the “security of the revenue against contraband.” Hamilton’s plan proposed customs duties and tonnage taxes that discriminated against foreign goods and ships. This Tariff would need to be enforced due to smuggling and to ensure proper duties and taxes were paid. (Alternately known as the system of cutters, Revenue Service, and Revenue-Marine this service would officially be named the Revenue Cutter Service and would eventually become the United States Coast Guard.

1799 – Establishment of Washington Navy Yard. The Washington Navy Yard is the U.S. Navy’s oldest shore establishment, in operation since the first decade of the 19th century. It evolved from a shipbuilding center to an ordnance plant and then to the ceremonial and administrative center for the Navy. The yard is home to the Chief of Naval Operations and is headquarters for the Naval Historical Center, the Marine Corps Historical Center, and numerous naval commands.

1835 – The first battle of the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers defeated a Mexican cavalry near the Guadalupe River. When Domingo de Ugartechea, military commander in Texas, received word that the American colonists of Gonzales refused to surrender a small cannon that had been given that settlement in 1831 as a defense against the Indians, he dispatched Francisco de Castañeda and 100 dragoons to retrieve it. Ugartechea realized that, given the tensions between the Texans and Antonio López de Santa Anna’s Centralist government, the slightest provocation might ignite hostilities. He therefore instructed Castañeda to use force if necessary but to avoid open conflict if possible. The company rode out of San Antonio de Béxar on September 27, 1835. When Castañeda’s troops reached the Guadalupe River opposite Gonzales on September 29 they found their path blocked by high water and eighteen militiamen (later called the Old Eighteen). Castañeda announced that he carried a dispatch for alcalde Andrew Ponton but was informed that he was out of town and that the Mexican dragoons would have to wait on the west side of the river until he returned. Unable to proceed, Castañeda pitched camp 300 yards from the ford. As he awaited word from the absent alcalde, the men of Gonzales summoned reinforcements from several of the surrounding settlements.

Later, a Coushatta Indian entered the Mexican camp and informed Castañeda that the number of Texan volunteers now numbered at least 140 and more were expected. Knowing he could not force the guarded crossing, Castañeda abandoned his campsite near the ford and marched his troops in search of another place not so well defended, where he could “cross without any embarrassment.” Around sundown on October 1 he ordered his dragoons to pitch camp seven miles upriver from the contested ford on land belonging to colonist Ezekiel Williams. The Texans were also on the move. On the night of October 1 their troops crossed to the west bank of the Guadalupe and marched upriver toward Castañeda’s new camp. On the morning of October 2 they attacked the Mexicans, and Castañeda ordered his men to fall back to a low rise behind their camp. During a lull in the fighting Castañeda arranged a parley with Texan commander John Henry Moore. Castañeda inquired why he and his men had been attacked without provocation, and Moore replied that the Texans were fighting to keep their cannon and to uphold the Constitution of 1824. Castañeda then assured Moore that he was himself a Federalist and personally opposed to the policies of Santa Anna. He added that he had no wish to fight colonists; he only had orders to reclaim the cannon. Moore then invited Castañeda to join the Texans in their fight for the federal Constitution of 1824. Castañeda explained that as a soldier he was obliged to follow his orders, whether or not he agreed with the politics behind them.

At that point negotiations broke down, and the two commanders returned to their respective units. When the fighting resumed, Castañeda, finding himself outnumbered and outgunned, ordered a withdrawal toward Bexar. He may also have been mindful of his orders not to participate in actions that were likely to bring about a conflict. In his report to Ugartechea, Castañeda stated that “since the orders from your Lordship were for me to withdraw without compromising the honor of Mexican arms, I did so.” Despite Castañeda’s efforts to avoid war, the so-called battle of Gonzales (which was really only a brief skirmish) marked a clear break between the American colonists and the Mexican government.

1864 – Union forces attack Saltville, Virginia, but are defeated by Confederate troops. The First Battle of Saltville was fought near the town of Saltville, Virginia, during the American Civil War. The battle was fought by both regular and Home Guard Confederate units against regular Union troops, including one of the few black cavalry units, over an important saltworks in the town. The Union troops were led by Brig. Gen. Stephen G. Burbridge. The battle was a Confederate victory, but it has become better known for a massacre that happened afterward. Irregular guerrilla forces under the notorious Champ Ferguson murdered white and black Union soldiers, who had been wounded and captured. Ferguson was tried after the war in Nashville, Tennessee, for these and other non-military killings. He was found guilty and executed. A second battle occurred two months later at Saltville. In that encounter, Union general George Stoneman defeated Confederate defenders and burned the saltworks.

1865 – Former Confederate General Robert E. Lee became president of Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

1919 – President Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall was urged to assume the presidency but he refused. It was Marshall who had earlier said: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

1939 – Foreign ministers of countries of the Western Hemisphere agree to establish a neutrality zone around the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North and South America to be enforced by the U. S. Navy. All belligerent actions by hostile powers are supposed to be forbidden in this zone.

1942 – Enrico Fermi and others demonstrated the 1st self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

1942 – Major J. L. Smith shot down his 18th Jap Zero. He becomes the highest scoring ace to this date.

1951 – Future jet ace Colonel Francis S. “Gabby” Gabreski, Vice Commander of the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, downed his third MiG-15 of the war in an F-86 Sabre jet. Colonel Gabreski was a leading World War II ace with 28 German aircraft kills while flying a P-47 Thunderbolt.

1963 – Defense Sec. Robert McNamara told Pres. Kennedy in a cabinet meeting that: “We need a way to get out of Vietnam.” McNamara proposed to replace the 16,000 US advisers with Canadian personnel.

1999 – Russian troops engaged Chechen guerrilla defenders as armored columns rolled into the villages of Alpatova and Chernokosova.

2001 – Acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift unveiled security measures that included a new security chief at Logan International Airport, where hijackers boarded the two planes that smashed into the World Trade Center.

2001 – A US Treasury Dept official reported that over $100 million of suspected terrorist assets had been frozen in domestic and foreign banks since the Sep 11 attacks.

2002 – James Martin (55) was shot to death by a sniper in Wheaton, Md. He was the 1st to die at the hands of a local serial killer. The next day, five people in the Washington D.C. area were shot dead, setting off a frantic manhunt for the Beltway Sniper.

2014 – The United States partially lifts a long-time ban on lethal weapon sales to Vietnam to help it improve maritime security, a historic move that comes nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War.

October 3rd ~

1650 – The English parliament declared its rule over the fledgling American colonies.

1656 – Myles Standish, Plymouth Colony leader, died (birth date unknown). Myles Standish was one of the 102 English settlers who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. He had served in Queen Elizabeth’s Army and was chosen to command the first group of men to go ashore when the ship reached New England. Occasionally he was called upon to defend the colony when it found itself at odds with the native peoples.

1789 – George Washington proclaimed the 1st national Thanksgiving Day to be November 26th.

1794 – On this date President George Washington called on the governors of four states; Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia to furnish troops from their militia to march to western Pennsylvania to restore the peace and end the “Whiskey Rebellion.” Congress had enacted a tax on whiskey in 1791 and the result sparked mob actions from farmers in western Pennsylvania. They attacked excise agents, tax collectors and finally a federal marshal trying to enforce the law. This act and other provocations were enough for the president.
This marked the first time under the Constitution that militia (Guard) units would be called up for federal active duty. A total of 13,000 militia were raised and instructed to converge on two locations before linking up into one army. Elements from Maryland and Virginia, under the command of Virginia Governor Henry “Light Horse” Lee (a Revolutionary War hero and father of Robert E. Lee) met at Fort Cumberland, MD. One of the men serving in Captain Thomas Walker’s Volunteer Corps from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was Private Meriwether Lewis, who would with fellow Virginian William Clark, command the “Corps of Discovery” exploring the American west in 1803-1805. Other units from Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania gathered at the town of Harrisburg, PA (this city would not become the capital of PA until 1812).
President Washington, acting in his role as “Commander-in-Chief”, donned a military uniform and inspected the troops first at Harrisburg on this date and later in October at Ft. Cumberland. This marks the only time an American president has actually taken command of troops in the field. Washington was planning on leading the Army himself but changed his mind and turned command over to Lee. As the Army moved into western Pennsylvania the revolt collapsed with little bloodshed. The ringleaders were later tried and convicted, but they were all pardoned by Washington.

1921 – USS Olympia ( now a floating museum in Philadelphia ) sails for France to bring home the Unknown Soldier from World War I. The bodies of many soldiers killed in World War I could not be identified. To honor them, the remains of one were brought to the U.S. Capitol to lie in state, and on Armistice Day 1921 they were ceremoniously buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The tomb bears the inscription “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.” Congress later directed that an “Unknown American” from subsequent wars — World War II, Korea and Vietnam — be similarly honored. Because of the development of DNA technology, the unknown soldier from the Vietnam War was recently exhumed and identified. There may never be another unknown soldier.

1940 – After a month of training and experimentation the U.S. Army adopted airborne, or parachute, soldiers. In 1935 the Russians had a head start on Airborne warfare and made the world’s first spectacular use of parachutists. It was left to the Germans to develop and use paratroopers and glider-borne soldiers in mass operations. Their first use was in the sweep across Holland and Belgium, where paratroopers were used to seize key bridges and the powerful Belgian fortress Eben Emael. Their successful tactical use enabled the panzer divisions to sweep across the low countries, and made the conquest of France relatively easy. The invasion of Norway saw an even larger use of paratroopers. The invasion was a combined air and sea attack. The British warships wreaked havoc on the German amphibious forces, but the German Airborne troops were successful in establishing several airheads. As soon as these were established, thousands of German soldiers and their supplies were transported by air. As a direct consequence, Norway fell.
The American General Staff had been closely watching the daring use of Airborne soldiers by the Germans. In September 1940 the United States activated its first parachute battalion. Within a short time Airborne enthusiasts decided that the Airborne soldier provided the tactical commander with a new method of attaining surprise that could very easily revolutionize modern warfare. By the summer of 1944 we had formed five Airborne Divisions and six Airborne Regiments. By the end of World War II we had used our Airborne troops in fourteen major offensives.

1942 – Germany conducted the 1st successful test flight of an A-4/V-2 missile from the Peenemunde test site. It flew perfectly over a 118-mile course to an altitude of 53 miles (85 km). The 13 ton, 46-foot long V2 rocket was the world’s 1st long-range ballistic missile.

1943 – Aircraft from USS Ranger sink 5 German ships and damage 3 in Operation Leader, the only U.S. Navy carrier operation in northern European waters during World War II. Defying enemy shore batteries and warships lurking in Norwegian waters, a combined United States and British naval force that included a strongly escorted American aircraft carrier, struck a surprise blow at German merchant shipping in the Norwegian “leads” or inner waterways in the Bodoe area. German naval units in Norway, where the powerful battleship Tirpitz was lying in a fjord somewhere northeast of Trondheim, refusing to accept the obvious challenge to come out and fight. The only opposition was by enemy anti-aircraft fire and by two German planes, both of which were destroyed by fighters that took off from the American carrier.

1951 – Operation COMMANDO, one of the largest operations conducted after the commencement of truce negotiations, began. COMMANDO was a full-scale offensive designed to establish a defensive line that would screen the Yonchon-Chorwon Valley from enemy observation and long-range artillery.

1952 – USAF Major Frederick C. “Boots” Blesse, 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, flying an F-86 Sabre jet, scored his 10th and final aerial victory and became the fifth double ace of the Korean War.

1962 – Launch of Sigma 7 (Mercury 8) piloted by CDR Walter M. Schirra, Jr., USN. Although NASA was concerned that the path of Tropical Storm Daisy as projected on October 1, 1962 might pose a threat, launch preparations were carried out as scheduled with no postponements. Astronaut Schirra journeyed a total of 160,000 miles aboard the Sigma 7 spacecraft, which in contrast to the previous Mercury flight, splashed down within the intended recovery point. The capsule splashed down about 275 miles northeast of Midway Island just 9,000 yards from the recovery vessel.
Schirra participated in the first live television broadcast beamed back to Earth during a manned U.S. space flight. The television signal was broadcast to North America and Western Europe via Telstar-1, the first commercial communications satellite. The mission demonstrated that longer duration space flights were feasible, and Schirra commented that both he and the spacecraft could have flown much longer than six orbits. On October 5, 1962 the Air Force announced that Schirra would likely have been killed by radiation if the Sigma 7 spacecraft had exceeded 400 miles in altitude. Radiation monitoring devices on classified military satellites had confirmed this lethal radiation, which resulted from a high-altitude nuclear test conducted in July, 1962. In fact, at the altitude actually flown by Schirra, the radiation monitoring devices inside the spacecraft confirmed that the astronaut had been exposed to much less radiation than predicted even under normal circumstances. Schirra was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal by NASA Administrator James Webb on October 15, 1962 during a ceremony held at the astronaut’s hometown of Oradell, New Jersey.

1985 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J). STS-51-J was the 21st NASA Space Shuttle mission and the first flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, carrying a payload for the U.S. Department of Defense, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on 7 October.

1988 – Discovery completed a four-day mission, the first American shuttle flight since the Challenger disaster.

1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made his first known visit to Kuwait since his country seized control of the oil-rich emirate.

October 3rd ~ { continued...}

1993 – Battle at Bakhara Market. On 22 August, Task Force Ranger, consisting of one company of Rangers from 3/75, a special forces unit, and a deployment package of the 160th SOAR (A), was ordered to deploy to Mogadishu, Somalia. They departed on 26 August. The mission of the 160th SOAR (A) as defined by the task force commander was: “When directed, [to] deploy to Mogadishu, Somalia; [to] conduct operations to capture General Aideed and/or designated others. The aviation task force must be prepared to conduct two primary courses of action: moving convoy and strong point assault. . . . Success is defined as the live capture of General Aideed and designated individuals and recovery to the designated transload point; safely and without fratricide.”

In Mogadishu the task force occupied an old hangar and old construction trailers under primitive conditions. During the month of September, the force conducted several successful missions to arrest Aideed sympathizers and to confiscate arms caches. The aircraft also made frequent flights over the city to desensitize the public to the presence of military aircraft and to familiarize themselves with the narrow streets and alleys of the city. On the afternoon of 3 October 1993, informed that two leaders of Aideed’s clan were at a residence in central Mogadishu, the task force sent 19 aircraft, 12 vehicles, and 160 men to arrest them. During the mission, one of the Rangers fast-roping from an MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, missed the rope and fell 70 feet to the street below, badly injuring himself. The two leaders were quickly arrested, and the prisoners and the injured Ranger were loaded on a convoy of ground vehicles. Armed Somalis were converging on the target area from all over the city. In the meantime, another MH-60, call sign Super 61 and piloted by CW4 Clifton P. Wolcott and CW3 Donovan Briley, was flying low over the street a few blocks from the target area, and was struck from behind by an rocket propelled grenade (RPG). The MH-60 crashed to the street below. The convoy and the Somali crowds immediately headed for the crash site. An MH-6 Little Bird, call sign Star 41, piloted by CW4 Keith Jones and CW3 Karl Maier, landed in the street next to the downed MH-60 and attempted to evacuate the casualties. Both Wolcott and Briley had been killed in the crash. Jones went to assist survivors, successfully pulling two soldiers into the Little Bird, while Maier laid down suppressive fire from the cockpit with his individual weapon. Under intense ground fire, the MH-6 departed with its crew and survivors.

In the meantime, Blackhawk Super 64, with pilot CW3 Michael Durant, copilot CW4 Raymond Frank, and crewmembers SSG William Cleveland and SSG Thomas Field, moved in to take Super 61’s place in the formation. As Super 64 circled over the target area, an RPG suddenly struck it. The Blackhawk’s tail rotor was severely damaged, and the air mission commander ordered it back to the airfield. En route to the airfield, the tail rotor and much of the rear assembly fell off, and the helicopter pitched forward and crashed. Meanwhile the ground convoy had lost its way, and rescue forces were already overtaxed at the site of the first Blackhawk crash. As armed Somalis rushed toward the Super 64 crash site, the crew’s only hope came from SFC Randall Shughart and MSG Gary Gordon aboard the covering Blackhawk, Super 62, who volunteered to jump in and protect the crew of the downed helicopter. They would ultimately sacrifice their lives for their downed comrades. Durant and Frank had both suffered broken legs in the crash, and both of the crew chiefs were severely wounded. A large crowd of Somalis, organized by the local militia, surrounded the crew and their rescuers and engaged in a fierce firefight, killing all but Durant. Then, they rushed the downed pilot, severely beating him and taking him prisoner. Meanwhile another Blackhawk carrying a rescue team arrived over the crash site of Super 61 and the 15-man team fast-roped to the ground. They found both Wolcott and Briley already dead, but crew chiefs Staff Sgt. Ray Dowdy and Staff Sgt. Charlie Warren were still alive in the wreckage. It took hours to pry Wolcott’s body from the wreckage.

In the meantime, the soldiers set up a perimeter to protect against attack from Somali militia and armed civilians and awaited the arrival of a convoy from the 10th Mountain Division to rescue them. The militia had taken Mike Durant captive, planning to trade him for Somali prisoners. But before they could get him back to their village, they were intercepted by local bandits, who took Durant, intending to use him for ransom. He was taken back to a house where he was held, interrogated, and videotaped. Later, after Aideed paid his ransom, Durant was moved to the apartment of Aideed’s propaganda minister. After five days, he was visited by a representative of the International Red Cross and interviewed by British and French journalists. Finally, after ten days, with the intervention of former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia Robert Oakley, he was released and flew home to a hero’s welcome. The mission was over.

The 160th SOAR (A) had been involved in the fiercest battle since the Vietnam War. It had lost two MH-60 aircraft with two more severely damaged, suffered eight wounded and five killed in action, and had had one of its pilots taken captive. Despite the public perception that this was a failed mission, Task Force Ranger did take into custody and delivered the two leaders from Aideed’s clan, resulting in mission accomplishment. President Clinton expressed sorrow at the deaths of American soldiers in Somalia, but reaffirmed those U.S. forces would stay in the African nation.

1997 – US Defense Sec. William Cohen ordered the Nimitz Carrier Battle Group to the Persian Gulf as a warning to Iran and Iraq to stop incursions into the US-enforced “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq.

1998 – In Chechnya 4 men working to install a cellular phone system were kidnapped by 20 men. The severed heads Darren Hickey, Rudolf Petschi, Stanley Shaw and Peter Kennedy were found Dec 8. Their bodies were found Dec 26 in Chernorechiye.

2001 – Near Manchester, Tennessee, Damir Igric (29), a Croatian passenger on a Greyhound bus, slit the throat of the bus driver and caused a roll over that killed 6 people including the terrorist.

2002 – Police hunted for a “skilled shooter” who murdered five random victims over 16 hours with a high-powered rifle in Montgomery County, Maryland, just a short distance from Washington DC. James Buchanon (39), Premkumar Walekar (54), Sarah Ramos (34), Lori Ann Lewis Rivera (25) and Pascal Charlot (72) became the 2nd to 6th victims.

2003 – Afghan civilians accidentally set off an explosive inside a home near Bagram Air Base American military headquarters, killing seven people and wounding six others.

2010 – Germany makes its last reparations payment for World War I, settling its outstanding debt from the 1919 Versailles Treaty and quietly closing the final chapter of the conflict that shaped the 20th century. This is also the 20th anniversary of German unification, as well as the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country’s defeat.