October 29th ~

1682 – The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, landed at what is now Chester, Pa. Penn founded Pennsylvania as a “Holy Experiment” based on Quaker principles.

1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.

1814 – Launching of the first American steam powered warship, at New York City. The ship was designed by Robert Fulton. While never formally named, Fulton referred to it as Demologos.

1847 – Marines help take a Mexican schooner in the Gulf of Mexico.

1863 – The troops of Union General Ulysses S. Grant open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee, when they drive away a Confederate attack by General James Longstreet. Although the Confederates still held the high ground above Chattanooga, the new supply line allowed the Union to hold the city and prepare for a major new offensive the next month. After the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia on September 19 and 20, the defeated Union army of General William Rosecrans fled back to nearby Chattanooga. Braxton Bragg’s Confederates took up positions along Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge to the east of the city. The Rebel lines made a semicircle around the city, and Confederate guns closed traffic on the Tennessee River. As a result, Union supplies had to come over a rugged mountainous route from the west.

1863 – Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.

1901 – Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted for the assassination of President McKinley at Auburn Prison in NY state. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo.

1922 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.

1929 – The DJIA dropped 11.7%. “Black Tuesday” was the worst day of the market crash as panicked survivors dumped 16 million shares on the market. Clerical workers stayed up all night to find that $30 billion in paper value had been wiped out in one day. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America’s Great Depression began. On Wall street prices plunged $14 million. By mid- November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September were been wiped out. Stocks continued to slide until 1932, but the fear caused by the crash made Americans unwilling to buy or invest and the economy slowly worsened into the Great Depression. In 1994 daily trades average 200-300 million shares.

1940 – The first draftees are selected by lottery from the Selective Service registrations. In New York, the first person chosen is Yuen Chong Chan. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, the Japanese, stung by their heavy losses begin withdrawals from the coast to the west of the American beachhead. The Americans begin preparing to occupy this area.

1943 – 3 Allied officers escaped the German camp Stalag Luft 3.

1952 – Eight Navy Aircraft from VF-54 struck the city of Kapsan in North Korea. Intelligence reports had indicated that a congregation of high-level Communist Party officials would be attending a meeting there. A week following the raid, North Korean broadcasts denounced the strike and labeled the participants as the “Butchers of Kapsan.”

1956 – Israeli armed forces push into Egypt toward the Suez Canal, initiating the Suez Crisis. They would soon be joined by French and British forces, creating a serious Cold War problem in the Middle East. The catalyst for the joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt was the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian leader General Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1956. The situation had been brewing for some time.

1967 – In Oakland, Ca., police made a traffic stop on Black Panther leader Huey Newton. In a gun battle Newton was wounded and police officer John Frey was killed. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but the conviction was overturned. Gene McKinney and Newton had driven out for takeout feed following a Black Panther Party fundraiser when they were pulled over. McKinney commandeered a passing car to get Newton to a hospital.

1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 pm, from Boelter Hall 3420. Kline transmitted from the university’s SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute’s SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word login; the l and the o letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was lo. About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full login. The first permanent ARPANET link was established on 21 November 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By 5 December 1969, the entire four-node network, adding University of California, Santa Barbara and The University of Utah, was established.

1971 – The total number of U.S. troops remaining in Vietnam drops to 196,700 – the lowest level since January 1966.

1979 – On the 50th anniversary of the great stock market crash, anti-nuclear protesters tried but failed to shut down the New York Stock Exchange.

1980 – USS Parsons (DDG-33) rescues 110 Vietnamese refugees 330 miles south of Saigon.

1980 – A demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for a second attempt at an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base’s Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.

1990 – The UN Security Council voted to hold Saddam Hussein’s regime liable for human rights abuses and war damages during its occupation of Kuwait.

1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1994 – Francisco Martin Duran of Colorado Springs, Colo., fired more than two dozen shots from a semiautomatic rifle at the White House while standing on Pennsylvania Avenue; Duran was later convicted of trying to assassinate President Clinton and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

1995 – Palestinians burned American and Israeli flags and swore revenge for the assassination of Dr. Fathi Shakaki, the leader of the radical Islamic Jihad and a top architect of terror attacks against Israel. Shakaki was gunned down three days earlier in Malta, reportedly by Israeli intelligence.

1998 – The shuttle Discovery blasted off with 6 crew mates including John Glenn (77), the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Hershel Glenn, Jr., is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging.

Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts. A decorated pilot, he had flown nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States, flying from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes. In April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and his spacecraft, Vostok 1, made a full orbit before returning to Earth. Less than one month later, American Alan B. Shepard, Jr., became the first American in space when his Freedom 7 spacecraft was launched on a suborbital flight. American “Gus” Grissom made another suborbital flight in July, and in August Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard Vostok 2, making 17 orbits.

As a technological power, the United States was looking very much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans wanted to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before another Soviet space advance arrived. On February 20, 1962, NASA and Colonel John Glenn accomplished this feat with the flight of Friendship 7, a spacecraft that made three orbits of the Earth in five hours. Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23 President John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral. Glenn later addressed Congress and was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

2000 – The wounded destroyer USS Cole departed Aden, Yemen, towed by tugboats to a Norwegian heavy-lift ship to be taken home to repair the gaping hole in its side; 17 sailors were killed in a suicide bombing attack on Oct. 12th.

2001 – President Bush said that he has created a task force to recommend sweeping changes on immigration laws to keep out terrorists and deport those already here.

2001 – A hospital worker in NY and a woman who handled mail in New Jersey were found to have anthrax. Since Oct 4 a total of 37 people have tested positive for exposure and 15 have contracted the disease.

2002 – The federal government filed charges against Washington sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad under a 1946 extortion law that could bring the death penalty, accusing him of a murderous plot to get $10 million.

2004 – Osama bin Laden appeared in a new video, dropped off at the Pakistan offices of Al-Jazeera television. He claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks and claimed more violence is possible regardless of who wins the US elections. Bin Laden vowed to bleed America to bankruptcy, according to a full transcript of the unaired portions.

2004 – Hundreds of British soldiers arrived at their base near Baghdad in a deployment aimed at provide cover for U.S. troops considering a new assault on Iraqi insurgents.

2007 – The USS Arleigh Burke enters Somali waters in pursuit of a Japanese ship carrying benzene that was hijacked by pirates.

October 30th ~

1735 – John Adams, second president of the United States (1797-1801), was born in Braintree (Quincy), Mass. In three remarkable careers as a foe of British oppression and champion of independence (1761-77), as an American diplomat in Europe (1778-88), and as the first vice-president (1789-97) and then the second president of the United States (1797-1801) John Adams was a founder of the United States. Like Jefferson, he died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Ninety years old at his death, Adams was revered by his countrymen not only as one of the founding fathers but also as a plain, honest man who personified the best of what the nation could hope of its citizens and leaders.

1775 – Congress authorizes four, by adding two to the pair authorized on 13 october, vessels for the defense of the United Colonies one to carry twenty guns, the other thirty-six, and increasing the membership of the Marine Committee to eleven.

1799 – William Balch becomes Navy’s first commissioned Chaplain.

1831 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.

1862 – Dr. Richard Gatling patented a machine gun. The Gatling Gun consisted of six barrels mounted in a revolving frame. A later version with ten barrels, fired 320 rounds a minute. The United States Army purchased these guns in 1865 and over the next few years most major armies in Europe purchased the gun. In 1870 Gatling opened a new factory in Hartford, Connecticut to produce his gun. He continued to improve the Gatling Gun and by 1882 it could fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute. However, sales of the gun declined after Hiram Maxim began producing his automatic Maxim Machine Gun. As well as guns, Gatling manufactured machines for sowing and breaking hemp, a steam power and a marine steam ram.

1882 – William F. “Bull” Halsey, Jr., American admiral, was born. He played an instrumental role in the defeat of Japan during World War II. William Halsey, the son of a naval captain, was born in New Jersey. He attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated in 1904 (43/62) and joined the United States Navy. Halsey won the Navy Cross during the First World War while commanding destroyer patrol forces in the Atlantic. After the war he served as a naval attaché in Germany, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Halsey, who learnt to fly in 1935, became one of the country’s leading exponents of naval air power. He commanded the aircraft carrier Saratoga for two years before becoming head of the Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1937. The following year he was given the responsibility of training air squadrons for the new carriers, Enterprise and Yorktown. In June 1940 he was promoted to vice admiral. Fortunately for Halsey he was at sea at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

1918 – Germany sent a note to the U.S.A. stating Armistice terms are being awaited.

1922 – Mussolini sent his black shirts into Rome and formed a government. The Fascist takeover was almost without bloodshed.

1939 – German U boat failed in an attack of English battleship Nelson with Winston Churchill, Dudley Pound and Charles Forbes aboard.

1941 – President Roosevelt, determined to keep the United States out of the war while helping those allies already mired in it, approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease loans to the Soviet Union.

1944 – Last transport for Auschwitz arrived in Birkenau.

1950 – The First Marine Division was ordered to replace the entire South Korean I Corps at the Chosin Reservoir area.

1950 – General Douglas McArthur ordered a combined Marine and Army outfit to cross the 38th parallel and “mop up” remaining North Korean soldiers. 12,000 Marines found themselves surrounded by 8 Chinese divisions. The marines lost 4,000 men and the Chinese lost 37,500.

1953 – Gen. George C. Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Albert Schweitzer received his 1952 Peace Prize.

1953 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves National Security Council Paper # NSC 162/2. The top secret document made clear that America’s nuclear arsenal must be maintained and expanded to meet the communist threat. It also made clear the connection between military spending and a sound American economy. The paper began by warning that the Soviet Union already possessed sufficient atomic weapons and delivery capabilities to inflict a “crippling blow to our industrial base and our continued ability to prosecute a war.” While in the short-term such action by the Soviets seemed unlikely, this did not mean that the United States could afford to slacken its efforts to stockpile “sufficient atomic weapons.”

1961 – The most powerful nuclear weapon the world has seen was detonated by the Soviet Union. Tsar Bomba was 1,400 times Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and ten times the entire combined fire power expended in WWII.The resulting fireball had a radius of nearly 10,000 vertical feet and its 210,000 foot tall mushroom cloud reached into the stratosphere. The light generated by the reaction could be seen from over a 1,000 km and the force of its explosion registered a 5.0 on the Richter scale. The shock wave generated air pressures topping 300 PSI, circled the Earth thrice, and cracked windows 900 km away in Norway and Finland. Buildings in the abandoned town of Severny 55 km away were leveled—all of them—and upon later inspection, ground zero was reportedly the texture of a skating rink. As one observer recalled, “The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from between two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange ball was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly and silently it crept upwards…. Having broken through the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole earth into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”

This utter destruction is only half of what the Tsar Bomba was capable of. It was designed and built to deliver a staggering 100 megaton payload. The Tsar was supposed to utilize fast-fissioning uranium tampers on the second and third stages of the bomb, which would have allowed for a bigger reaction and subsequent energy release. However, just before the test was to take place, Soviet leadership ordered the tampers swapped out with lead replacements in order to prevent nuclear fallout from reaching populated areas of the USSR. These lead tampers cut the bomb’s yield by 50 percent but they also eliminated 97 percent of the resulting fallout. As such the Tsar Bomba, the largest, most destructively powerful device ever built by man also holds the notable distinction of being the relatively “cleanest” nuclear weapon ever tested. Luckily, that record was only important for two years until the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty which brought an end to above-ground nuclear weapons tests.

1985 – The launch of the space shuttle “Challenger” was witnessed by schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. This was the first Space Shuttle mission largely financed and operated by another nation, West Germany. It was also the first Space Shuttle flight to carry a crew of eight. The primary mission was to operate a series of experiments, almost all related to functions in microgravity, in Spacelab D-1, the fourth flight of a Spacelab. Two other mission assignments were to deploy the Global Low Orbiting Message Relay Satellite (GLOMR) out of a Getaway Special canister in the cargo bay, and operate five materials processing experiments mounted in the cargo bay on a separate device called the German Unique Support Structure.

1990 – The Iraqi News Agency quoted Saddam Hussein as saying Iraq was making final preparations for war, and that he expected an attack by the United States and its allies within days.

1993 – Martin Fettman, America’s first veterinarian in space, chopped the heads off six rats and performed the world’s first animal dissections in space, aboard the shuttle Columbia.

1998 – Four abortion clinics in 3 states, Indian, Kentucky and Tennessee, received letters claiming to contain anthrax bacteria. The letters were tested and found to be free of anthrax.

2000 – Astronauts Bill Shephard of the US and Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev of Russia blasted off for the Int’l. Space Station for a 4-month stay.

2001 – NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey snapped its first picture of Mars, one week after the spacecraft safely arrived in orbit around the Red Planet.

2001 – Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo, fulfilling a pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

2002 – Allied warplanes bombed Iraqi defense systems in the northern no-fly zone over Iraq after being fired upon during routine patrols.

2002 – In Belarus authorities reported the discovery of a mass grave on a military base at Slutsk with the remains of up to 12,000 people killed during World War II. Some 800,000 Jew of Belarus were killed by Nazis.

2002 – Senior Sinn Fein-IRA figure Martin McGuinness declared his war has ended in a documentary broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corp.

2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project.

2006 – Specialist Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, an Iraqi American United States Army soldier currently listed as missing in action in Iraq, is reported to have married an Iraqi citizen, against U.S. military regulations.

October 31st ~

1803 – Congress ratified the purchase of the entire Louisiana area in North America, which added territory to the United States for 13 subsequent states.

1864 – Anxious to have support of the Republican-dominated Nevada Territory for President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, the U.S. Congress quickly admits Nevada as the 36th state in the Union. In 1864, Nevada had only 40,000 inhabitants, considerably short of the 60,000 normally required for statehood. But the 1859 discovery of the incredibly large and rich silver deposits at Virginia City had rapidly made the region one of the most important and wealthy in the West.

1913 – Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile highway across United States.

1918 – In the worst global epidemic of the century, influenza (an acute, contagious respiratory viral infection) had been spreading around the world since May. Before it ended in 1919 some 20 million people were killed worldwide, about twice as many as World War I, with about 500-600,000 of them in the US. October was the deadliest month and about 195,000 died with 21,000 dead the 1st week. It was estimated that 20-40 million people died worldwide.

1918 – Pershing’s troops break through the third and final German defensive line. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive is to be renewed after a brief period of rest and reinforcement.

1922 – Mussolini was made prime minister of Italy. He centralized all power in himself as leader of the Fascist party and attempted to create an Italian empire, ultimately in alliance with Hitler’s Germany.

1941 – The U.S. Navy destroyer “Reuben James” was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Iceland, killing 115, even though the United States had not yet entered World War II.

1943 – LT Hugh D. O’Neill of VF(N)-75 destroys a Japanese aircraft during night attack off Vella Lavella in first kill by a radar-equipped night fighter of the Pacific Fleet.

1952 – The United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. The first H-bomb ever ‘Mike’ was exploded at 7.15 am local time on November 1st 1952. The mushroom cloud was 8 miles across and 27 miles high. The canopy was 100 miles wide. Radioactive mud fell out of the sky followed by heavy rain. 80 million tons of earth was vaporised. Mike was the first ever megaton yeild explosion.

1954 – The Vietnamese Marine Corps is formally organized wit US marine Colonel Victor Croziat as its senior US advisor. At two-battalion strength by the end of the year, the Vietnamese Marine Corps enjoys the reputation of a well-disciplined unit.

1955 – Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, who earned five Navy Crosses (and 1 Army Distinguished Service Cross), retired as a Lieutenant General.

1956 – Rear Admiral G.J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at the South Pole. Navy men land in R4D Skytrain on the ice at the South Pole. RADM George Dufek, CAPT Douglas Cordiner, CAPT William Hawkes, LCDR Conrad Shinn, LT John Swadener, AD2 J. P. Strider and AD2 William Cumbie are the first men to stand on the South Pole since Captain Robert F. Scott in 1912.

1956 – USS Burdo (APD-133) and USS Harlan R. Dickson (DD-708) evacuate 166 persons from Haifa, Israel due to the fighting between Egypt and Israel.

1959 – A former U.S. Marine from Fort Worth, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald, announced in Moscow that he would never return to the United States.

1961 – End of Lighter than Air in U.S. Navy with disestablishment of Fleet Airship Wing One and ZP-1 and ZP-3, the last operating units in LTA branch of Naval Aviation, at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

1971 – Saigon began the release of 1,938 Hanoi POW’s.

1989 – President Bush announced he and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would hold an early December summit aboard ships in the Mediterranean near Malta.

1991 – During an extremely severe winter storm, CGC Tamaroa rescued four of five Air National Guard crewmen from an H-60 that had ditched south of Long Island due to fuel exhaustion.

1992 – It was announced that five American nuns in Liberia had been shot to death near the capital Monrovia; the killings were blamed on rebels loyal to Charles Taylor.

1997 – The US announced a plan to increase spending over the next decade to $1 billion per year to clear the world of land mines that threaten civilian populations by 2010.

1998 – The US and Israel signed a strategic cooperation agreement to protect the Jewish state from ballistic missiles. The Arrow “anti­tactical ballistic missile” program is one of the centerpieces of the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship. It is one of the most advanced missile defense systems currently in existence. The Arrow will offer Israel an essential capability against Scud-type ballistic missiles, and provides the U.S. with key research and technology for other “theater missile defense” programs.

1998 – Iraq said that it was suspending all cooperation with int’l. arms inspectors and would close down their long-term monitoring operations in response to a Security Council rejection of demands that a review of its relations with the UN should automatically result in a lifting of sanctions. The move condemned by the Security Council.

2000 – American astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts rocketed into orbit aboard a Soyuz rocket on a quest to become the first residents of the international space station.

2001 – The US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, received a letter that was later confirmed to contain anthrax.

2001 – Former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Sara Jane Olson pleaded guilty to 2 felony accounts in Los Angeles to the attempted murder of police officers from activities with the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1975. She was later sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

2001 – Kathy Nguyen (61), a NYC hospital worker, died of anthrax. She was the 4th person to perish in a spreading wave of bioterrorism. The source of infection remained a mystery.

2002 – Authorities charged the two Washington sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo with murder in a Louisiana attack that came just two days after a similar slaying in Alabama.

2004 – Iran’s parliament unanimously approved the outline of a bill that would require the government to resume uranium enrichment.

2008 – Libya pays US$1.5 billion in compensation for past terrorist attacks to the United States, clearing the way for normal diplomatic ties between the two countries.

2010 – A United States military commission sentences Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr to eight more years in prison after pleading guilty to the murder of an American soldier in 2002.

2013 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons declares that Syria has destroyed 21 of 23 known chemical weapons facilities, and now must destroy the chemical weapons themselves.

2014 – One person is dead and another injured after Virgin Galactic’s Space Ship Two explodes and crashes in California’s Mojave Desert during a test flight of the space plane.

2014 – A Mexican judge releases a United States Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi detained for mistakenly crossing the border with loaded guns eight months previously.

November 1st ~


1620 – 41 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact calling for a “body politick.” 102 Pilgrims stepped ashore. They called themselves Saints and the others Strangers. One passenger died enroute and 2 were born during the passage. Their military commander was Miles Standish.

1765 – The Stamp Act went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists. In the face of widespread opposition in the American colonies, Parliament enacts the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenue for British military operations in America. Defense of the American colonies in the French and Indian War (1754-63) and Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-64) were costly affairs for Great Britain, and Prime Minister George Grenville hoped to recover some of these costs by taxing the colonists. In 1764, the Sugar Act was enacted, putting a high duty on refined sugar. Although resented, the Sugar Act tax was hidden in the cost of import duties, and most colonists accepted it. The Stamp Act, however, was a direct tax on the colonists and led to an uproar in America over an issue that was to be a major cause of the Revolution: taxation without representation.

1783 – Continental Army dissolved and George Washington made his “Farewell Address.”

1784 – Maryland granted citizenship to Lafayette and his descendents.

1800 – John and Abigail Adams moved into “the President’s House” in Washington DC. It became known as the White House during the Roosevelt administration.

1841 – “Mosquito Fleet” commanded by LCDR J. T. McLaughlin, USN, carries 750 Sailors and Marines into the Everglades to fight the Seminole Indians.

1843 – Secretary of Treasury Spencer issued new “Rules and Regulations for the governing of the Revenue Cutter Service” centralizing control of cutters under Revenue Marine Bureau, but leaving superintendence and direction with Collectors of Customs.

1866 – 1st Civil Rights Bill passed.

1869 – Louis Riel seized Fort Garry, Winnipeg, during the Red River Rebellion. Louis Riel, Metis leader, helped stage an uprising against the influx of white settlers in Manitoba that resulted in a provisional government that he led. Manitoba was admitted as Canada’s 5th province and the Metis were allocated 1.4 million acres of land, but Riel fled charged with failing to stop the execution of Thomas Scott, an English Protestant captured during the fighting.

1870 – The U.S. Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations, using reports gathered by telegraph from 24 locations.

1915 – Parris Island is officially designated a United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

1918 – The third and final phase of the US-led Meuse-Argonne Offensive opens. The US First Army commanded by General Hunter Liggett resumes its northward advance and punches a way through the German defenses at Buzancy, thereby allowing the French Fourth Army to make a major crossing of the Aisne River. German resistance is collapsing and US forces move more rapidly along the valley of the Meuse River in the direction of Sedan.

1924 – The 118th Observation Squadron, an element of the 43rd Division receives federal recognition on this date. Originally issued with obsolete Curtis JN-4 “Jennies” left over from World War I, the unit was later equipped with experimental Curtis OX-12’s with rotary engines and a swept-wing design. While the planes proved an unstable photo-recon platform, the technology continued to improve so by World War II many American aircraft were propelled by rotary engines. When the unit was mobilized in February 1941 for World War II it was flying North American O-47B observation aircraft. Once on active duty it flew antisubmarine patrols off the coasts of South Carolina until it deployed to India in 1943. It ended the war flying reconnaissance missions in China.

1932 – Werner von Braun was named head of German liquid-fuel rocket program.

1939 – 1st jet plane, a Heinkel He 178, was demonstrated to German Air Ministry.

1940 – 1st US air raid shelter was made in Fleetwood, Pa.

1941 – Japanese marine staff officers Suzuki and Maejima arrived in Pearl Harbor.

1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8929 transferred the Coast Guard to Navy Department control. President Roosevelt announces that the U.S. Coast Guard will now be under the direction of the U.S. Navy, a transition of authority usually reserved only for wartime. The Coast Guard was established as the Revenue Marine Service by Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, in 1790.

1943 – The US 3rd Marine Division (General Turnage) lands on Bougainville, in Empress Augusta Bay at Cape Tarokina. By the end of the day 14,000 American troops are ashore.

1943 – President Roosevelt orders the Solid Fuels Administration, headed by Ickes, to take over the operation of coal mines. There are 530,000 miners on strike at this time. Roosevelt also urges Congress to continue food subsidies to encourage production and prevent inflation.

1950 – Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. Truman, who had avoided an attempt on his life from the right-wing Israeli Stern Gang a few years earlier, escaped unscathed. In the autumn of 1950, the White House was being renovated and President Truman and his family were living in the nearby Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
On the afternoon of November 1, Truman and his wife were upstairs when they heard a commotion on the front steps of the house. Alerted by the sound of gunshots, Bess Truman glanced out the window and exclaimed, “Harry, someone’s shooting our policemen!” Indeed, the pair of would-be assassins had strolled up to the front door of Blair House and opened fire. They never made it past the entry steps, however, due to the quick reaction of police officers and guards. Secret Service Agent Leslie Coffelt was mortally wounded in the ensuing melee, but not before he managed to kill Torresola.
Collazo later revealed to police just how poorly planned the assassination attempt was: the assailants were unsure if Truman would even be in the house when they launched their attack at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Torresola and Collazo were political activists and members of the extremist Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, a group fighting for full independence from the United States.

1950 – MiG-15 jet fighters made their first appearance during the Korean War as they flew along the Yalu River to contest the Fifth Air Force’s then complete dominance of the skies over North Korea.

1950 – The 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division became the first U.S. unit to engage the Chinese in major ground combat when its 3rd Battalion was overrun at Unsan and suffered 600 killed or captured out of a strength 800. The entire regiment was reduced to 3/4 strength. After the battle, the attacking 115th and 116th Divisions of the Chinese 39th Army disappeared into the mountains of North Korea.

1952 – The United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, in a test at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. The United States detonates the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific.
The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Following the successful Soviet detonation of an atomic device in September 1949, the United States accelerated its program to develop the next stage in atomic weaponry, a thermonuclear bomb. Popularly known as the hydrogen bomb, this new weapon was approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices. Opponents of development of the hydrogen bomb included J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb. He and others argued that little would be accomplished except the speeding up of the arms race, since it was assumed that the Soviets would quickly follow suit.
The opponents were correct in their assumptions. The Soviet Union exploded a thermonuclear device the following year and by the late 1970s, seven nations had constructed hydrogen bombs.

1954 – The US Senate admonished Joseph McCarthy for his slander campaign.

1955 – A time bomb aboard United DC-6 killed 44 above Longmont, Colorado. Jack Gilbert Graham rigged a time bomb for the Denver to Seattle flight and put it into his mother’s suitcase in order to collect the insurance money. Graham was executed in the gas chamber Jan 11, 1957. Graham had pioneered airliner bombing.

1956 – Walter Brattain, John Bardeen and William Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor.

1962 – Cuban missile crisis ended. JFK said USSR was dismantling missile bases.

1968 – Lyndon B. Johnson called a halt to bombing in Vietnam, hoping that this would lead to progress at the Paris peace talks.

1971 – The Eisenhower dollar was put into circulation.

1979 – Beginning of retirement of Polaris A-3 program begins with removal of missiles from USS Abraham Lincoln. Last Polaris missile removed in February 1982.

1984 – The largest marijuana bust to date in West Coast history took place November 1 as the cutter Clover nabbed the 63-foot yacht Arrikis 150 miles southwest of San Diego. The yacht was loaded with 13 tons of marijuana.

1992 – The space shuttle Columbia landed at Cape Canaveral, Fla., ending a 10-day mission that included the deployment of an Italian satellite.

1994 – The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report saying CIA Director R. James Woolsey’s response to the Aldrich Ames spy case was “seriously inadequate,” but that his predecessors were ultimately to blame for the scandal.

1998 – The military arm of the radical Islamic group Hamas made an unprecedented threat against Yasser Arafat, demanding the Palestinian leader halt a crackdown against it, or face violent vengeance.

1999 – In Panama the US handed over Howard Air Force Base, Fort Kobbe and the Farfan residential zone.

2001 – US planes made their heaviest assaults to date in northern Afghanistan.

2001 – Anthrax spores were found in 4 mailrooms in Rockville, Md., a postal facility in Kansas City, 3 new locations in a Manhattan processing center and a 6th postal facility in Florida.

2003 – It was reported that over a dozen members of Saddam Hussein’s government have been shot dead in the streets of Basra over the last month.

2009 – Six Uyghurs detained at Guantanamo Bay detention camp are released by the United States and resettled in Palau.

2011 – The President of the United States, Barack Obama, makes Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, a National Monument.

November 2nd ~

1675 – Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial militia against the Narragansett during King Philip’s War.

1772 – The first Committees of Correspondence were formed in Massachusetts under Samuel Adams.

1795 – James Knox Polk, the 11th president of the United States, was born in Mecklenburg County, N.C.

1824 – Popular presidential vote was 1st recorded; Jackson beat J.Q. Adams. Gen. Jackson won the popular vote followed by John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay. Jackson won 99 electoral votes, Adams won 84, Crawford won 41 and Clay won 37. Crawford, Treasury secretary, was accused of malfeasance. Henry Clay was denounced for passing days gambling and nights in a brothel. Clay convinced his supporters in congress to vote for Adams. The House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams, who chose Clay for vice president. A furious Jackson proceeded to help found the Democratic Party.

1865 – Warren Gamaliel Harding, the 29th president of the United States (1921-1923), was born near Corsica, Ohio.

1889 – North Dakota was made the 39th state.

1889 – South Dakota is made the 40th state.

1892 – Lawmen and soldiers surrounded outlaws Ned Christie and Arch Wolf near Tahlequah, Indian Country (present-day Oklahoma). It would take dynamite and a cannon to dislodge the two from their cabin.

1917 – In the Lansing-Ishii Agreement the US recognized Japan’s privileges in China. Relations between the United States and Japan worsened during the early years of World War I. The U.S. regarded itself as a Pacific power, having acquired territory there in the years following the Spanish-American War. Japanese actions in the area were regarded as heavy-handed and threatening to American interests.

1920 – Warren G. Harding was elected 29th president. He defeated James Cox. The election campaign was primarily a referendum on the Wilson presidency and the League of Nations. Cox supported it fully, while Harding did not make his position clear. Harding supported prohibition and Cox opposed it. Cox ran a vigorous campaign, while Harding ran a mostly a front porch campaign. Ultimately, the weariness of the nation determined the election in favor of Harding, who obtained an overwhelming victory.

1920 – Pittsburgh radio station KDKA broadcast the results of the 1920 presidential race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox. This was the first significant public radio news broadcast. The following year, Americans spent $10 million on radios. By 1922, some 500 radio stations were broadcasting programs, and the era of electronic entertainment had begun.

1923 – US Navy aviator, H.J. Brown, set new world speed record of 259 mph in a Curtiss racer.

1931 – VS-14M on the USS Saratoga and VS-15M on the USS Lexington were the first Marine carrier-based squadrons.1942 – Lt. General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for the invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch.

1936 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaims the Rome-Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis powers.

1943 – The Battle of Empress Augusta Bay in Bougainville ended in U.S. Navy victory over Japan. US Task Force 39 detects the approach of the Japanese cruiser squadron led by Admiral Omori (steaming from Rabaul in New Britain Island to Bougainville), shortly after midnight. In the engagement that follows the Japanese lose 1 cruiser and 1 destroyer and most of the other ships are damaged. The Americans suffer damage to 2 cruisers and 2 destroyers. However, the Japanese force abandons its mission. On Bougainville, the US 3rd Marine Division expands its beachhead.

1944 – During the day, the US 8th Air Force attacks the Leuna synthetic oil plant at Merseburg. The Americans claim 183 German fighters (including 4 jets) destroyed for the loss of 40 bombers and 28 fighters (including losses to antiaircraft defenses). During the night, Bomber Command attacks Dusseldorf with 992 bombers as well as sending smaller forces to strike other targets. A total of 20 planes are reported lost in all operations.

1948 – President Truman was elected 33rd president in an upset for prognosticators. During the presidential election campaign in 1948, almost everyone expected New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey to win and few had faith in a victory for incumbent Harry S. Truman. While Truman went on a “whistle stop” tour across the United States, giving more than 350 speeches, Dewey’s confident campaign was more reserved. The Chicago Daily Tribune had been so sure of Dewey’s victory that they had printed front-page “Dewey Defeats Truman” articles before the final results were in. Truman defeated Dewey by 2.2 million popular votes and 114 electoral votes.

1950 – After offering stiff resistance to troops of the 7th Marines south of the Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir, the Chinese 124th Division withdrew into the mountains.

1957 – The Levelland UFO Case in Levelland, Texas, generates national publicity. The Levelland UFO Case occurred in and around the small town of Levelland, Texas. Levelland, which in 1957 had a population of about 10,000, is located west of Lubbock on the flat prairie of the Texas panhandle. The case is considered by ufologists to be one of the most impressive in UFO history, mainly because of the large number of witnesses involved over a relatively short period of time. However, both the US Air Force and UFO skeptics have labeled the incident as being caused by either ball lightning or a severe electrical storm.

1962 – Lt Col John H. Glenn (first American to orbit the earth and the world’s only septuagenarian astronaut) became first recipient of the Alfred A. Cunningham Trophy for outstanding Marine pilots.

1976 – Former Georgia Gov. (James Earl) Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford. He became the 39th president and the first from the Deep South since the Civil War.

1988 – The Morris Worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT. According to its creator, the Morris Worm was not written to cause damage, but to gauge the size of the Internet. The worm was released from MIT to disguise the fact that the worm originally came from Cornell. It worked by exploiting known vulnerabilities in Unix send mail, finger, and rsh/rexec, as well as weak passwords. Due to reliance on rsh (normally disabled on untrusted networks); fixes to send mail, finger, and rsh; and improved awareness of the dangers of weak passwords, it should not succeed on a recent, properly configured system. A supposedly unintended consequence of the code, however, caused it to be more damaging: a computer could be infected multiple times and each additional process would slow the machine down, eventually to the point of being unusable.

1990 – The White House announced that President Bush planned to spend Thanksgiving with American GI’s in Saudi Arabia.

2001 – A 17th case of anthrax was reported in a NY Post employee.

2001 – NYC firefighters and police engaged in a scuffle as firefighters protested a limit to the number of firefighters working to retrieve their dead at the WTC disaster site.

2003 – In Havana, Cuba, 71 American firms from 18 states and Puerto Rico opened trade fair displays under an exception in a 42-year US trade embargo.

2003 – In central Iraq insurgents shot down a US Chinook helicopter as it carried troops headed for R&R, killing 15 soldiers and wounding 21. Attacks on US troops reached 33 a day.

2004 – It was reported that some 3,000 Arab intellectuals had signed a petition calling for an int’l. court to try Muslim clerics who encourage terrorism.

November 3rd ~

1741 – The Augusta County Regiment was organized on this date. Men from this regiment would fight under Lieutenant Colonel George Washington during the French and Indian War (1755-1763); again under Washington during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783); and under General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson during the Civil War, where the regiment earned the nickname “Stonewall Brigade” it still carries today. Its descendant unit, the 116th Infantry, became part of the 29th Infantry Division in 1917 and saw heavy fighting with it in both world wars, including leading the assault wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day. In the War on Terror different battalions of the 116th Infantry, still part of the 29th Division, have served on missions ranging from guarding the perimeter (but not the prisoners) of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to teaching soldier skills and combat tactics to the members of the newly organized Afghan army.

1783 – Washington ordered the Continental Army disbanded from its cantonment at New Windsor, NY, where it had remained since defeating Cornwallis in 1781. In a farewell message printed in the Philadelphia papers he thanked the officers and men for their assistance and reminded them that “the singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such, as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving; while the unparalleled perseverance of the Armies of the United States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement for the space of eight long years, was little short of a standing miracle.” A small residual force remained at West Point and some frontier outposts until Congress created the United States Army by their resolution of June 3, 1784.

1793 – Stephen Fuller Austin was born. Often referred to as the Father of Texas, for the hundreds of families he brought into this state due to the relatively poor economic conditions in the United States at the time,

1796 – John Adams was elected president. Adams’s ascension to the presidency was neither automatic nor unanimous. Before achieving that high office, had to emerge victorious from America’s first contested presidential election. Eight years earlier, in September 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had considered numerous plans for choosing a president. They had rejected direct election by qualified voters because, as Roger Sherman of Connecticut remarked, a scattered population could never “be informed of the characters of the leading candidates.” The delegates also ruled out election by Congress. Such a procedure, Gouverneur Morris stated, would inevitably be “the work of intrigue, cabal and of faction.” Finally, the convention agreed to an electoral college scheme, whereby “Each state shall appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” Presidential selection, therefore, would be decided through a state-by-state, rather than a national referendum.
Each elector chosen by the voters or the legislature of his state would cast votes for two candidates, one of whom had to come from outside his state. The electors’ ballots would be opened in the presence of both houses of Congress. If no one received a majority of the votes, or if two or more individuals tied with a majority of the electoral college votes, the members of the House of Representatives would cast ballots to elect the president.* Once the president had been decided upon, the candidate from among those remaining who had received the second largest number of electoral votes became the vice president. The framers of the Constitution believed that most electors would judiciously cast their two ballots for persons of “real merit,” as Morris put it. Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist 68–one of a series of essays penned by Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to encourage ratification of the Constitution in New York State–that it was a “moral certainty” that the electoral college scheme would result in the election of the most qualified man. Someone skilled in the art of intrigue might win a high state office, he wrote, but only a man nationally known for his “ability and virtue” could gain the support of electors from throughout the United States.
Indeed, the “electoral college” plan worked well during the first two presidential elections in 1788 and 1792, when every elector had cast one of his ballots for Washington. But by 1796, something unforeseen by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had occurred; men of different points of view had begun to form themselves into political parties.

1813 – American troops destroy the Indian village of Tallushatchee in the Mississippi Valley. US troops under Gen Coffee destroyed an Indian village at Talladega, Ala. The Creeks having assembled at the town of Tallasehatche, thirteen miles from the camp, the commander-in-chief despatched Coffee, now promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, with one thousand men, with one-half of whom he was directed to attack the enemy, and with the other half to scour the country near the Ten Islands, for the purpose of covering his operations.
Richard Brown, with a company of Creeks and Cherokees, wearing on their heads distinguishing badges of white feathers and deer’s tails, accompanied the expedition. Fording the Coosa at the Fish Dam, four miles above the islands, Coffee advanced to Tallasehatche, surrounded it at the rising of the sun, and was fiercely met by the savages with whoops and the sounding of drums–the prophets being in advance. Attacking the decoy companies they were soon surrounded by the troops, who charged them with great slaughter. After a short but terrible action, eighty-four women and children were made prisoners, while the bodies of one hundred and eighty-six warriors were counted upon the field, where some women also perished.

1816 – Jubal Anderson Early (died 1891), Lt. General (Confederate Army), was born. Confederate General Jubal Early is born in Franklin City, Virginia. Early had a distinguished career in the Confederate army, and in 1864 he waged a campaign in the Shenandoah Valley that kept Confederate hopes alive by relieving the pressure on General Robert E. Lee’s army around Richmond.
Early graduated from West Point in 1837, eleventh in his class of 50. He fought in Florida’s Seminole War in 1838 and was promoted to first lieutenant but resigned later that year. He studied in Virginia and was elected to the State House of Delegates in 1841. When war with Mexico broke out in 1846, Early rejoined the military as a colonel in the Virginia volunteers. He served in General Zachary Taylor’s army but saw no combat.

1853 – USS Constitution seizes suspected slaver H. N. Gambrill.

1868 – Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected 18th president. He won the election over Democrat Horatio Seymour. He used the 1867 typewriter phrase “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party” for his campaign. In 1868 the Republican nomination of General Ulysses S. Grant was a foregone conclusion. Stung by a string of defeats in northern state elections in 1867, amid charges of Republicans’ corruption and too cozy regard for black rights, the Republicans turned to the hero of Appomattox and ran on his record of Union victory and personal honesty and modesty.
Republican platform calls for equal suffrage, justice to blacks, and support for immigration got short shrift as Republicans discovered they could get more votes tarring Democrats as disloyal and despicable and echoing Grant’s plea, “Let us have peace.” Grant won the electoral vote handily, but did less well in the popular vote. Indeed, without black votes in key states, the Republicans would have lost. That fact moved Republicans heretofore reluctant to enfranchise blacks nationally to endorse a 15th Amendment to do just that.

1883 – U.S. Supreme Court declared American Indians to be “dependent aliens.”

1896 – Republican William McKinley was elected 25th president. He defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan for the presidency. McKinley and Garret Hobart supported the gold standard while The Democrats supported the free coinage of silver. Marcus Hanna, an Ohio industrialist, led the fund-raising for McKinley and personally underwrote the cost of winning this 1st modern presidential campaign.

November 3rd ~ { continued...}

1903 – With the support of the U.S. government, Panama issues a declaration of independence from Colombia.

1908 – Republican William Howard Taft was elected the 27th president, outpolling William Jennings Bryan. Long before the Republican convention met, Theodore Roosevelt had announced his intention to not seek a third term. He preferred to be succeeded by his secretary of war, William Howard Taft. TR perceived a certain docility in Taft that might induce him to pursue the former’s progressive reforms. Taft easily won his party’s nomination, but felt slighted when a convention demonstration for Roosevelt was much longer and louder than a later one for himself.

1917 – Germans drew first blood from the American Expeditionary Force in the French sector on a Saturday morning. The 1st Division had nearly completed its training with the French, and final training exercises were to take place as one infantry and one artillery battalion from each American regiment went into line with a French regiment for a ten-day period. A raid by a German patrol hit the American sector at Artois on the first morning of their tour and killed three Americans and captured sixteen. After daylight, Capt. George Marshall visited the unit and determined that it had shown a good account of itself. On Monday General Pershing ordered an inspection team to visit the unit and make a report. The team included the chief of the Army schools, a lieutenant colonel from the Operations Section, and Colonel Fiske, then deputy training officer of the AEF.

1918 – There was a mutiny of the German fleet at Kiel. This was the first act leading to German’s capitulation in World War I.

1931 – Dirigible USS Los Angeles makes 10 hour flight out of NAS Lakehurst, NJ, carrying 207 persons, establishing a new record for the number of passengers carried into the air by a single craft.

1936 – President Roosevelt, the 32nd president, was re-elected for second term in a landslide over Republican challenger Alfred M. “Alf” Landon. Landon ran on a “wrong-headed” economic program. Roosevelt received 60.8% of the popular vote and an astounding 98.5% of the Electoral College defeating Republican Alfred Landon, the governor of Kansas. In terms of winning the largest percentage of electoral votes, the presidential election of 1936 was the biggest landslide of the 20th century.

1939 – The US Senate votes to lift the embargo on the export of arms to belligerents.

1941 – The Combined Japanese Fleet receive Top-Secret Order No. 1: In 34 days time, Pearl Harbor is to be bombed, along with Mayala, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines.

1943 – Battleship Oklahoma, sunk at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, is refloated.

1943 – Elements of US 5th Army capture Sessa Aurunca, Italy.

1943 – The US 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion withdraws from Choiseul.

1943 – 500 aircraft of the U.S. 8th Air Force devastate Wilhelmshaven harbor in Germany.

1944 – The US 1st Army captures Schmidt, near Aachen.

1950 – The 25th Infantry Division was driven back from the Yalu area. The Eighth Army fell back to defend the vital Chongchon Bridgehead.

1956 – USS Chilton (APA-38), USS Thuban (AKA-19), and USS Fort Snelling (LSD-30) evacuate more than 1,500 U.S. and foreign nationals from Egypt and Israel because of the fighting.

1957 – The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space–a dog name Laika–aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika, part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. Laika survived for several days as a passenger in the USSR’s second artificial Earth satellite, kept alive by a sophisticated life-support system. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel. She died after the batteries of her life-support system ran down. At least a dozen more Russian dogs were launched into space in preparation for the first manned Soviet space mission, and at least five of these dogs died in flight. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1. He orbited Earth once before landing safely in the USSR.

1959 – Pres. Eisenhower laid the cornerstone for the CIA headquarters building in Langley, VA.

1964 – President Johnson soundly defeated Republican challenger Barry Goldwater to win a White House term as the 36th president. Johnson won over 61% of the vote with 486 electoral votes to Goldwater’s 52. It was one of the most crushing victories in the history of U.S. presidential elections.

1967 – In some of the heaviest fighting seen in the Central Highlands area, heavy casualties are sustained by both sides in bloody battles around Dak To, about 280 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. The 1,000 U.S. troops there were reinforced with 3,500 additional troops from the U.S. 4th Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade. They faced four communist regiments of about 6,000 troops.

1969 – Pres. Nixon elaborated his Nixon Doctrine in a televised speech. He stated that the US henceforth expected its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This was the start of the “VietNamization” of the Vietnam War. The Doctrine argued for the pursuit of peace through a partnership with American allies.

1973 – NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.

November 3rd ~ { continued... }

1979 – 63 Americans were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Teheran, Iran. The overthrow of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran by an Islamic revolutionary government earlier in the year had led to a steady deterioration in Iran-U.S. relations. In response to the exiled shah’s admission (Sept., 1979) to the United States for medical treatment, a crowd of about 500 seized the embassy. Of the approximately 90 people inside the embassy, 52 remained in captivity until the end of the crisis. President Carter applied economic pressure by halting oil imports from Iran and freezing Iranian assets in the United States. At the same time, he began several diplomatic initiatives to free the hostages, all of which proved fruitless.
On Apr. 24, 1980, the United States attempted a rescue mission that failed. After three of eight helicopters were damaged in a sandstorm, the operation was aborted; eight persons were killed during the evacuation. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the action, resigned after the mission’s failure. In 1980, the death of the shah in Egypt and the invasion of Iran by Iraq made the Iranians more receptive to resolving the hostage crisis. In the United States, failure to resolve the crisis contributed to Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Carter in the presidential election. After the election, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations began.
On Jan. 20, 1981, the day of President Reagan’s inauguration, the United States released almost $8 billion in Iranian assets and the hostages were freed after 444 days in Iranian detention; the agreement gave Iran immunity from lawsuits arising from the incident. In 2000 former hostages and their survivors sued Iran under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, which permits U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments in cases of state-sponsored terrorism. The following year they won the lawsuit by default when Iran did not offer a defense. The U.S. State Dept. sought dismissal of the suit, arguing it would hinder its ability to negotiate international agreements, and a federal judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ suit for damages in 2002, ruling that the agreement that resulted in their release barred awarding any damages.

1986 – The Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. The revelation, confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources on November 6, came as a shock to officials outside President Ronald Reagan’s inner circle and went against the stated policy of the administration. In addition to violating the U.S. arms embargo against Iran, the arms sales contradicted President Reagan’s vow never to negotiate with terrorists.

1992 – (William Jefferson) Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, was elected as the 42nd president of the United States, defeating President Bush who won 38% of the popular vote. As the 1992 presidential election approached, Americans found themselves in a world transformed in ways almost unimaginable four years earlier. The familiar landmarks of the Cold War — from the Berlin Wall to intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers on constant high alert — were gone. Eastern Europe was independent, the Soviet Union had dissolved, Germany was united, Arabs and Israelis were engaged in direct negotiations, and the threat of nuclear war was greatly diminished. It was as though one great history volume had closed and another had opened.
Yet at home, Americans were less sanguine — and faced some deep and familiar problems. Once the celebrations and parades following the Gulf War ended, the United States found itself in its deepest recession since the early 1980s. Many of the job losses were occurring among white-collar workers in middle management positions, not solely among blue-collar workers in the manufacturing sector who had been hit hardest in earlier years. Even when the economy began recovering in 1992, its growth was virtually imperceptible until late in the year, and many regions of the country remained mired in recession. Moreover, the federal deficit continued to mount, propelled most strikingly by rising expenditures for health care. Many Americans exhibited profound pessimism about their future, believing that their country was headed in the wrong direction.

1994 – The space shuttle Atlantis blasted into orbit on a mission to survey Earth’s ozone layer.

1995 – President Clinton dedicated a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery to the 270 victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

1996 – Paul Tatum, US businessman, was assassinated on the steps of a Moscow subway station in what his relatives suspect was a contract slaying by the Russian Mafia. He was in a long-running fight to regain control of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya hotel, a joint venture between Tatum and the City of Moscow.

2001 – U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with his Russian counterpart in Moscow to discuss nuclear arsenal cuts, American plans for a missile defense system, and U.S.-Russian cooperation in the campaign against terror. The visit was part of a 4-day tour with stops in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India.

2001 – The Al-Jazeera TV network broadcast a videotape from Osama bin Laden. He portrayed that attacks against Afghanistan as a war against Islam and denounced Arab leaders who cooperate with the UN for peace negotiations saying that amounted to a renunciation of Islam.

2002 – Saudi Arabia said it would not permit bases on its soil in an attack against Iraq and would not grant flyover rights to US military planes even if the UN sanctions an invasion. Prince Saud later said a final decision had not been made.

2002 – In northwest Yemen 6 al-Qaida suspects were killed when the car they were travelling in was struck by a missile from a US Predator drone. Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a suspected al-Qaida leader, was among the dead along with Kamal Derwish, a member of the Lackawanna, NY, sleeper cell.

2003 – Afghanistan unveiled a post-Taliban draft constitution.

2004 – President Bush’s campaign declared victory over Democratic Sen. John Kerry and claimed a second term in the White House, but Kerry refused to concede until all ballots were counted in the undecided state of Ohio.

2004 – Former U.S. Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins (64) pleaded guilty to abandoning his unit in 1965 and aiding the enemy by teaching English to North Korean military officer cadets. Jenkins was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail for desertion.

2004 – A National Guard F-16 fighter plane mistakenly fired off 25 rounds of ammunition at the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School in South New Jersey on this night.

2004 – Gunmen abducted a Lebanese-American contractor who worked with the U.S. Army from his Baghdad home. 4 Jordanian truck drivers were seized by assailants in a separate kidnapping. Gunmen also killed an Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, in a driveby shooting.

2010 – The United States Border Patrol finds a sophisticated tunnel between Tijuana in Mexico and Otay Mesa, California, used by drug smugglers.

2014 – Islamic State militants have captured the Jahar gas fields in the Syrian province of Homs, the second gas field they have captured in a week.

2014 – One World Trade Center officially opens, replacing its predecessor 13 years after the September 11 attacks.

November 4th ~

644 – Umar of Arabia, the 2nd Caliph of Islam, was assassinated at Medina and was succeeded as caliph by Uthman. On his deathbed Umar named a council to choose the next caliph. The council appointed Uthman. Uthman continued to expand the Muslim empire.

1791 – General Arthur St. Clair, governor of Northwest Territory, was badly defeated by a large Indian army near Fort Wayne. Miami Indian Chief Little Turtle led the powerful force of Miami, Wyandot, Iroquois, Shawnee, Delaware, Ojibwa and Potawatomi that inflicted the greatest defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Army at the hands of North American Indians. Some 623 regulars led by General Arthur St. Clair were killed and 258 wounded on the banks of the Wabash River near present day Fort Wayne, Indiana. The staggering defeat moved Congress to authorize a larger army in 1792.

1798 – Congress agreed to pay a yearly tribute to Tripoli, considering it the only way to protect U.S. shipping. The US has no appreciable Navy as yet. This is the most expedient and assured way to protect American shipping in the Mediterranean.

1846 – Benjamin F. Palmer of Meredith N.H. received a patent on an artificial human leg. James Potts of London had designed a prosthesis in 1800 that consisted of a wooden shank and socket, a steel knee joint and an articulated foot that was controlled by catgut tendons from the knee to the ankle. It was used by the Marquis of Anglesey after he lost his leg in the Battle of Waterloo and become known as the “Angelesey Leg”.

1854 – The first lighthouse on the West Coast was built at Alcatraz Island.

1856 – James Buchanan was elected US president. Stephen A. Douglas coveted the Democratic nomination in 1856, but his reputation had been badly tarnished by ongoing violence in Kansas. In his place the Democrats turned to James Buchanan, who had been the minister to Britain from 1853 to 1856 and was not linked to the Kansas issue. Further, Buchanan was popular in the South because of his part in the Ostend Manifesto. The Republicans ran their first presidential campaign in 1856, choosing noted Western explorer John C. Frémont, “The Pathfinder.” Frémont had no political record (regarded as a plus), but held abolitionist views (a negative in the eyes of many moderates). The American Party (Know-Nothings) nominated former president Millard Fillmore and capitalized on nativist discontent. The Republicans ran a campaign calling for repeal of the hated Kansas-Nebraska Act, opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories and support for internal improvement projects. They also took every opportunity to blame the Democrats for the horrors of “Bleeding Kansas.” Buchanan emerged the victor, but failed to gain a majority of the popular vote. In fact, a shift of a small number of votes in several states would have tipped the electoral tally to the Republicans.

1864 – There was a Confederate assault on Johnsonville, Tennessee. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest subjects a Union supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee, to a devastating artillery barrage that destroys millions of dollars in materiel. This action was part of a continuing effort by the Confederates to disrupt the Federal lines that supplied General William T. Sherman’s army in Georgia. In the summer of 1864, Sherman captured Atlanta, and by November he was planning his march across Georgia. Meanwhile, the defeated Confederates hoped that destroying his line would draw Sherman out of the Deep South. Nobody was better at raiding than Forrest, but Union pursuit had kept him in Mississippi during the Atlanta campaign. In the fall, Forrest mounted an ambitious raid on Union supply routes in western Tennessee and Kentucky. Johnsonville was an important transfer point from boats on the Tennessee River to a rail line that connected with Nashville to the east. When Sherman sent part of his army back to Nashville to protect his supply lines, Forrest hoped to apply pressure to that force. Forrest began moving part of his force to Johnsonville on October 16, but most of his men were not in place until early November. Incredibly, the Union forces, which numbered about 2,000, seem to have been completely unaware of the Confederates just across the river. Forrest brought up artillery and began a barrage at 2 p.m. on November 5. The attack was devastating. One observer noted, “The wharf for nearly one mile up and down the river presented one solid sheet of flame.” More than $6 million worth of supplies were destroyed, along with four gunboats, 14 transports, and 20 barges. General George Thomas, commander of the Union force at Nashville, had to divert troops to protect Johnsonville. After the raid, Forrest’s reputation grew, but the raid did not deter Sherman from embarking on the March to the Sea, his devastating expedition across Georgia.

1884 – Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected to his first term as president, defeating Republican James G. Blaine. The campaign that ensued was one of the most deplorable in our history. The personalities indulged in have never been exceeded. The private life of each of the leading candidates was assailed, and the general conduct of the campaign in this respect was so indecent that it shocked public sentiment, and has never since been indulged in. While every effort was made to heal the breach, it was not finally closed. The pivotal State was New York, and this was carried for Cleveland by slightly over 1,000 votes, though the Republicans claimed a fraudulent count in New York City of Butler votes for Cleveland, which would have elected Blaine. Butler, in his memoirs, also makes this claim.

1924 – Calvin Coolidge was elected 30th president on a platform of pro-business policies.

1939 – A modification of the neutrality legislation passes into law. Although by its terms the ban on American ships and civilians in clearly defined war zones is confirmed, it does provide for supply of arms to belligerents on a “cash and carry” basis. Such arms must be ordered from private companies, paid for up front and transported to the war zone in the in ships provided by the purchaser. British naval strength means that, as is intended, only the Allies will benefit from this. Within a few days both the British and the French establish purchasing missions in Washington.

1942 – 19 German and 21 Italian submarines begin to patrol around Gibraltar due to the increase of Allied shipping traffic in preparation for Operation Torch. They will achieve some success, but 6 submarines will be sunk and the destination of the transports will not be discovered.

1943 – A new Japanese squadron led by Admiral Kurita arrives in Rabaul, New Britain Island. The Japanese force consists of 10 cruisers and 10 destroyers. American reconnaissance sights the squadron en route and Task Force 38 prepares to attack with its carrier aircraft.

1944 – British General John Dill dies in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Arlington Cemetery, the only foreigner to be so honored. in March 1941, he championed Britain’s defense of Greece against the Axis invasion. But such early strategic successes were followed up by more cautious decision-making, which disturbed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who favored more aggressive maneuvers against the enemy. Consequently, Churchill removed Dill from his post and transferred him to the United States, to become chief British military representative to Washington. It was there that Dill developed a close personal friendship with George C. Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff, which resulted in a closer U.S.-British alliance. Upon Dill’s death, it was Marshall who intervened to have Dill buried at Arlington National Cemetery, normally reserved only for Americans who had served their nation during wartime. Dill’s plot is also marked by only one of two equestrian statues in the cemetery.

1948 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was concluded.

1950 – The 7th Marine Regiment, just north of Chinhung-ni near the Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir, destroyed the last four tanks of the North Korean 344th Tank Regiment.

1950 – The first incendiary bombs used in the Korean War are dropped by B-29 Superfortresses of the U.S. Air Force’s 98th Bombardment Group (Heavy) on the city of Chongjin in northeastern Korea.

1952 – Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) was elected president the 34th president, defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson in presidential elections. The Republicans took over for the first time in 20 years. A Univac computer in Philadelphia predicted the results based on early returns.

1952 – With the election of Eisenhower as US President, the Indochina War ceases to be regarded as a colonial war, and the fighting in Vietnam becomes a war between Communism and the free world. The possibility of direct Chinese intervention becomes a mater of urgent preoccupation for many of Eisenhower’s closest advisers, in particular Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Vice President Richard Nixon.

1952 – The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.

1956 – Following nearly two weeks of protest and political instability in Hungary, Soviet tanks and troops viciously crush the protests. Thousands were killed and wounded, and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.

1962 – In a test of the Nike Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope is successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Atoll. It would also be the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.

1969 – In the biggest battle in four months, South Vietnamese infantry, supported by U.S. planes and artillery, clash with North Vietnamese troops for 10 hours near Duc Lop near the Cambodian border. Eighty communist troops were reported killed. South Vietnamese losses included 24 killed and 38 wounded.

November 4th ~ { continued...}


1970 – The United States hands over an air base in the Mekong Delta to the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) as part of the Vietnamization program.

1971 – USS Nathanael Greene (SSBN-636) launches a Poseidon C-3 missile in first surface launch of Poseidon missile.

1979 – Student followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini send shock waves across America when they storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The radical Islamic fundamentalists took 90 hostages. The students were enraged that the deposed Shah had been allowed to enter the United States for medical treatment and they threatened to murder hostages if any rescue was attempted. Days later, Iran’s provincial leader resigned, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s fundamentalist revolutionaries, took full control of the country–and the fate of the hostages. Two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah began to release all non-U.S. captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the United States government. The remaining 52 captives were left at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months.
President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight U.S. military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continued. In November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations finally began between the United States and Iran.
On January 20, 1981–the day of Reagan’s inauguration–the United States freed almost $3 billion in frozen Iranian assets and promised $5 billion more in financial aid. Minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages flew out of Iran on an Algerian airliner, ending their 444-day ordeal. The next day, Jimmy Carter flew to West Germany to greet them on their way home.

1980 – Ronald Reagan was elected the 40th president of the United States. He beat President Carter by a wide margin. In the campaign of 1980 there were very clear issues dividing the candidates. Carter supported the Equal Rights Amendment, while Reagan opposed it. Reagan opposed S.A.L.T. II, while Carter supported it. Carter called for a national health insurance program. Ultimately, however, it was not these issues but the twin issues of the American Hostages in Iran and what the Republicans called the misery index (inflation plus unemployment) ended Carter’s chance of being re-elected.

1988 – In a ceremony at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, President Reagan signed a measure providing for U.S. participation in an anti-genocide treaty signed by President Truman in 1948.

1984 – The CGC Northwind seizes the P/C Alexi I off Jamaica for carrying 20 tons of marijuana, becoming the first icebreaker to make a narcotics seizure.

1989 – Iran marked the 10th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy.

1999 – Some ten-thousand Iranian students rallied outside the former US Embassy in Tehran to mark the 20th anniversary of its seizure by Islamic militants.

2000 – President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the leaking of government secrets.

2001 – The US moved more special operations forces into Afghanistan and continued air strikes on the Taliban front lines. The Air Force dropped a 15,000 pound fuel-air explosion bomb called a Daisy Cutter that was last used in the Vietnam War. Thousands of foreign volunteers were reported moving to the Taliban front lines.

2004 – In Iraq US jets pounded parts of Fallujah, targeting insurgents in a city where American forces were said to be gearing up for a major offensive.

2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

2011 – U.S. General John R. Allen, the head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, sacks Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller for making inappropriate comments about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government.

November 5th ~

1639 – 1st post office in the colonies opened in Massachusetts.

1653 – The Iroquois League signed a peace treaty with the French, vowing not to wage war with other tribes under French protection.

1768 – William Johnson, the northern Indian Commissioner, signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois Indians to acquire much of the land between the Tennessee and Ohio rivers for future settlement.

1780 – French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.

1782 – The Continental Congress elected John Hanson of Maryland its chairman, giving him the title of “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.” Under that title Hanson helped American gain a world position. During his tenure the first consular service was established, a post office department was initiated, a national bank was chartered, progress was made towards taking the first census, and a uniform system of coinage was adopted. As “President,” Hanson also signed a treaty with Holland affirming the indebtedness of the United States for a loan from that country. In addition, he signed all laws, regulations, official papers, and letters.

1814 – Having decided to abandon the Niagara frontier, the American army blew up Fort Erie and withdrew to Buffalo.

1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.

1862 – In Minnesota, more than 300 Santee Sioux are found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and are sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. One of the Indians was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in a bizarre mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of approving Minnesotans.

1862 – President Abraham Lincoln relieved General George McClellan of command of the Union armies and named Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside commander of the Army of the Potomac. A tortured relationship ends when President Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan ably built the army in the early stages of the war but was a sluggish and paranoid field commander who seemed unable to muster the courage to aggressively engage General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

1872 – Ulysses S. Grant was re-elected US president. Incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant was easily elected to a second term in office despite a split within the Republican Party that resulted in a defection of many key Republicans to opponent Horace Greeley. On November 29, 1872, after the popular vote but before the electoral college was convened, Greeley died. As a result, electors previously committed to Greeley voted for four different candidates for President, and eight different candidates for Vice President. Despite the absence of life, Greeley himself still received three electoral votes, but these votes were disallowed by Congress. Henry Wilson, who was chosen by the Republicans to succeed Schuyler Colfax as Vice President, died on November 22, 1875.

1895 – George B. Selden received a patent for his gasoline-powered automobile, first conceived of when he was an infantryman in the American Civil War. After 16 years of delay, United States Patent No. 549,160 was finally issued to Selden for a machine he originally termed a “road-locomotive” and later would call a “road engine.” His design resembled a horse-drawn carriage, with high wheels and a buckboard, and was described by Selden as “light in weight, easy to control and possessed of sufficient power to overcome any ordinary incline.” With the granting of the patent, Selden, whose unpractical automotive designs were generally far behind other innovators in the field, nevertheless won a monopoly on the concept of combining an internal combustion engine with a carriage.
Although Selden never became an auto manufacturer himself, every other automaker would have to pay Selden and his licensing company a significant percentage of their profits for the right to construct a motor car, even though their automobiles rarely resembled Selden’s designs in anything but abstract concept. In 1903, the newly created Ford Motor Company, which refused to pay royalties to Selden’s licensing company, was sued for infringement on the patent.
Thus began one of the most celebrated litigation cases in the history of the automotive industry, ending in 1909 when a New York court upheld the validity of Selden’s patent. Henry Ford and his increasingly powerful company appealed the decision, and in 1911, the New York Court of Appeals again ruled in favor of Selden’s patent, but with a twist: the patent was held to be restricted to the particular outdated construction it described. In 1911, every important automaker used a motor significantly different from that described in Selden’s patent, and major manufacturers like the Ford Motor Company never paid Selden another dime.

1912 – Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States, with Thomas R. Marshall as vice president. In a landslide Democratic victory, Wilson won 435 electoral votes against the eight won by Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and the 88 won by Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The presidential election was the only one in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate.

1913 – After pleas for help from city leaders following continued rioting on Election Day, Governor Samuel Ralston called out the Indiana National Guard and put the city of Indianapolis under martial law.

1915 – In AB-2 flying boat, LCDR Henry C. Mustin makes first underway catapult launch from a ship, USS North Carolina, at Pensacola Bay, FL.

1917 – German submarine torpedoes USS Alcedo off French coast. Alcedo, a 981 gross ton steam yacht built in 1895 at Glasgow, Scotland, was purchased by the U.S. Navy in June 1917 and placed in commission as USS Alcedo (SP-166) late in July. She crossed the Atlantic the next month to join the patrol forces fighting enemy U-boats in the waters off western Europe. In the early hours while she was escorting a convoy en route to Brest, France, Alcedo was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UC-71. Twenty-one of her crew were lost with their ship.

1923 – Tests designed to prove the feasibility of launching a small seaplane from a submarine occur at Hampton Roads Naval Base. A Martin MS-1, stored disassembled in a tank on board USS S-1, was removed and assembled. Then the submarine submerged allowing the plane to float free and take off.

1939 – After plotting with General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff, and retired General Ludwig Beck, former Chief of the General Staff, to arrest Hitler, unless he relents on the plan for a western offensive, the Commander in Chief of the German Army, Field Marshall Walter von Brauchitsch, meets Hitler to discuss the plans for an attack in the west. He argues very strongly that it should not take place as scheduled on November 12th because of weaknesses in the army. Hitler loses his temper during the meeting but is unconvinced by the arguments. Brauchitsch loses his nerve and returns to OKH (Army High Command) headquarters at Zossen, where the conspiracy collapses.

1939 – The German government lodges a protest against the release of the interned US merchant ship City of Flint and the German prize crew. The protest is rejected.

1940 – President Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office, beating Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie along with Surprise Party challenger Gracie Allen. Roosevelt was elected to a third term with the promise of maintaining American neutrality as far as foreign wars were concerned.

1941 – Japanese marine staff officers Suzuki and Maejima left Pearl Harbor.

1941 – The Japanese government decides to attempt to negotiate a settlement with the United States, setting a deadline of the end of November. The US rejects the offer because the Japanese will not repudiate the Tripartite Agreement with Italy and Germany and because the Japanese wish to maintain bases in China. The US code breaking service continues to intercept all Japanese diplomatic communication.

1942 – Admiral Tanaka takes command of the “Toyko Express,” the destroyer flotilla supplying Japanese forces on Guadalcanal.

1942 – American General Eisenhower arrives in Africa from Gibraltar to set up his headquarters for Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa. American General Doolittle and British Air Marshall Welsh will command the air forces. British General Anderson will lead the British 1st Army which comprises the main ground force.

1945 – Ensign Jake C. West (VF-41) makes first jet landing on board a carrier, USS Wake Island (CVE-65).

November 5th ~ { continued...}

1949 – First Marine Corps enlisted pilots to fly “Shooting Star” begin training at El Toro.

1950 – General Douglas MacArthur ordered a heavy air offensive over North Korea, including the Yalu River bridges at Sinuiju. This order was in violation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directive forbidding bombing within five miles of the Yalu River.

1950 – The 452nd Bombardment Wing (Light) sent its B-26s on their first combat mission. The 452nd was the first all-reserve Air Force unit to enter combat in Korea.

1961 – In the wake of the Soviet Union’s continued construction of the Berlin Wall which they started in August 1961, and a fear of possible conflict in Germany, on October 1st President John F. Kennedy mobilized selected reserve components units including elements of the Army and Air National Guard. To prove his determination to protect Germany along with the other NATO allies, he authorized the deployment of eleven Air Guard fighter squadrons to bases in Germany, France and Spain (a non-NATO ally). Fortunately, no war erupted and by the summer of 1962 all the Guard units were released from active duty.

1968 – Winning one of the closest elections in U.S. history, Republican challenger Richard Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Because of the strong showing of third-party candidate George Wallace, neither Nixon nor Humphrey received more than 50 percent of the popular vote; Nixon beat Humphrey by less than 500,000 votes.

1970 – U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam reports the lowest weekly death toll in five years. Twenty-four Americans died in combat during the last week of October, the fifth consecutive week that the U.S. death toll was under 50. Although the numbers of American dead were down, 431 were wounded during the reported period, mostly from mines, booby traps, and mortar and sniper fire. The reduced number of U.S. casualties reflected the gradual transfer of the responsibility for the war to the South Vietnamese under President Nixon’s Vietnamization program. While U.S. troops were still conducting combat operations, more and more of them were being withdrawn from Vietnam and the nature of their operations became more defensive.

1979 – Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared US “The Great Satan.”

1986 – USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China – the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.

1994 – Space probe Ulysses completed its 1st passage behind the Sun.

1996 – Pres. William Jefferson Clinton was re-elected in the US but voters kept Congress in Republican control.

1997 – A UN inspector claimed that Iraq was taking advantage of the inspection halt and had moved sensitive machinery out of camera view at certain weapons sites.

1998 – The UN Security Council unanimously demanded that Iraq resume cooperation with UN weapons inspectors.

2000 – In Iraq passenger flights resumed in the no-fly zones in a challenge to US and British imposed sanctions.

2001 – US bombing continued to hit Taliban front lines and attacks concentrated on caves and tunnels. About 2 dozen US commandos were reported to be in Afghanistan.

2001 – Six U.S. Navy Cyclone-Class patrol coastal warships were assigned to Operation Noble Eagle on 5 November 2001. This was the first time that U.S. Navy ships were employed jointly with the U.S. Coast Guard to help protect our nation’s coastline, ports and waterways from terrorist attack.

2004 – The US government said intelligence agencies had tripled their estimate of shoulder fired surface-to-air missile systems to be at large worldwide. At least 4,000 of the weapons from Iraq’s pre-war arsenal could not be accounted for.

2005 – Operation Steel Curtain was a military endeavor executed by coalition forces in early November 2005 to reduce the flow of foreign insurgents crossing the border and joining the Iraqi insurgency.

2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi’a Muslims in 1982. Reactions to the verdicts against Saddam and his compatriots vary with approval from some areas, particularly Iran and Shi’a regions of Iraq, but condemnation of the trial and process from some other quarters of the Muslim world. United States officials called it “a good day for the Iraqi people”. The European Union, while welcoming the guilty verdicts, expresses its opposition to the imposition of the death penalty on humanitarian grounds.

2009 – US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 29 at Fort Hood, Texas in the deadliest mass shooting at a US military installation.

2010 – The Government of Norway demands an explanation from the US Government on reports that the US embassy in Oslo conducted illegal surveillance on Norwegian citizens for more than ten years.

November 6th ~

1528 – A Spanish barge under Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca landed in East Texas. The survivors of 2 barges spent the winter on an island they named Isla de Malhado, “The Island of Misfortune.” By the spring of 1529 there were 15 castaways left and half the native population was dead from disease.

1827 – Marines prepared to fight pirates at Andros, Greece.

1850 – The San Francisco Bay Yerba Buena and Angel islands were reserved for military use.

1851 – U.S. Navy expedition under command of LT William Lewis Herndon, on a mission to explore the valley of the Amazon and its tributaries, reaches Iquitos in the jungle region of the upper Amazon after their departure from Lima, Peru.

1854 – John Philip Sousa, “The March Master,” American bandmaster, composer and the king of American march music, was born in Washington, D.C. He later wrote 5 novels. Among his 140 marches are “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis.”

1860 – Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates.

1861 – Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election simply confirmed the decision that had been made by the Confederate Congress earlier in the year. Like his Union counterpart, Abraham Lincoln, Davis was a native of Kentucky, born in 1808. He attended West Point and graduated in 1828. After serving in the Black Hawk War of 1832, Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of General (and future President) Zachary Taylor, and the couple settled on the Brier Field plantation in Mississippi. Tragically, Sarah contracted malaria and died within two months of their marriage. Davis was elected to a six-year term as established by the Confederate constitution.

1863 – Battle of Droop Mountain, in West Virginia, between the Federal army of General William Averell and the Confederate army of General John Echols. After eight hours of fighting and 275 casualties, Echol’s Confederate army was driven South into Virginia and was never able to regain control in West Virginia. Federal Casualties were 119.

1863 – Faced with the problem of passing through the maze of complicated Confederate obstructions near Fort Sumter if the capture of Charleston was to be effected from the sea, the North experimented with another innovation by John Ericsson, celebrated builder of U.S.S. Monitor. U.S.S. Patapsco, Commander Stevens, tested Ericsson’s anti-obstruction torpedo. The device, which was a cast-iron, shell some 23 feet long and 10 inches in diameter containing 600 pounds of powder, was suspended from a raft which was attached to the ironclad’s bow and held in position by two long booms.

The demonstration was favorable, for the shock of the explosion was “hardly perceptible” on board Patapsco and, though a “really fearful” column of water was thrown 40 or 50 feet into the air, little of the water fell on the ironclad’s deck. Even in the calm water in which the test was conducted, however, the raft seriously interfered with the ship’s maneuverability. Rear Admiral Dahlgren noted significantly that “perfectly smooth water” was “a miracle here. . . .” Stevens expressed the view that the torpedo was useful only against fixed objects but that for operations against ironclads “the arrangement and attachment are too complicated” and that “something in the way of a torpedo which can be managed with facility” was needed.

1888 – Benjamin Harrison of Indiana won the presidential election, beating incumbent Grover Cleveland on electoral votes, 233-168, although Cleveland led in the popular vote. Tammany Hall helped carry New York for the GOP. The Republicans in 1888 sensed an opportunity to regain the White House because President Cleveland had offended so many sectors of the electorate.

1891 – Comanche, the only 7th Cavalry horse to survive George Armstrong Custer’s “Last Stand” at the Little Bighorn, died at Fort Riley, Kansas.

1900 – President McKinley was re-elected, beating Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The election was strikingly similar to its predecessor; the major candidates, issues and results were much the same. William McKinley, the incumbent, was easily renominated. A new vice-presidential nominee was needed: Garret Hobart had died. McKinley expressed no preference and left the matter in the convention’s hands. Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York and hero of the Spanish-American War, was selected, bringing youth and vigor to the ticket.

1913 – After days of rioting and the declaration of martial law, an angry crowd surrounded the Indiana Statehouse, listed their grievances, demanded the military leave the city, and threatened more violence if their demands were not met.

1917 – Bolshevik “October Revolution” (October 25 on the old Russian calendar), led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, seized power in Petrograd. Led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin, leftist revolutionaries launch a nearly bloodless coup d’ýtat against Russia’s ineffectual Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in the Russian capital of Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and within two days had formed a new government with Lenin as its head. Bolshevik Russia, later renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was the world’s first Marxist state.

1928 – In a first, presidential election results were flashed on an electronic sign outside the New York Times building; Herbert Hoover beat Alfred E. Smith.

1939 – The American cargo ship, City of Flint, is returned to her captain, Joseph H. Gainard in Haugesund. Since October 9th, the ship has journeyed under the command of a German prize crew from the Deutschland.

1941 – USA lent Soviet Union $1 million.

1941 – On Neutrality Patrol, USS Omaha (CL-4) and USS Somers (DD-381) intercept the German blockade runner Odenwald. The smuggler is carrying a cargo of rubber from Japan, disguised as U.S. freighter, board her after the German crew abandoned the ship, and brought the ship to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the boarding party was awarded salvage shares.

1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

1945 – The first landing of a jet on a carrier took place on the USS Wake Island when an FR-1 Fireball touched down.

November 6th ~ { continued... }

1950 – A Chinese offensive was halted at Chongchon River, North Korea. General Douglas MacArthur charged the Chinese with unlawful aggression.

1956 – The Eisenhower-Nixon Republican ticket won the presidential elections beating Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson. The Democrats won a majority in both houses of Congress. Eisenhower was immediately nominated for re-election by the Republicans in San Francisco. The only question was whether Nixon would remain on the ticket. Eisenhower decided in favor of keeping him on the ticket.

1956 – Pressure from the US and USSR effected a cease-fire in the Middle-East. The UN created an emergency force (UNEF) to supervise a cease fire.

1963 – In the aftermath of the November 1 coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Gen. Duong Van Minh, leading the Revolutionary Military Committee of the dissident generals who had conducted the coup, takes over leadership of South Vietnam.

1968 – Richard Nixon was elected 37th president of the US, defeating Hubert Humphrey. Nixon entered the Republican convention as the front runner. He won the nomination on the first ballot. In his acceptance speech he stated:” When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight, when the richest nation in the world cannot manage its economy, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented racial violence, when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad, or to any major city at home, then it's time for new leadership for the United States.”

1970 – South Vietnamese forces launch a new offensive into Cambodia, advancing across a 100-mile-wide front in southeastern Cambodia.

1971 – The US Atomic Energy Commission exploded a 5-megaton bomb beneath Amchitka Island, Alaska, just 87 miles from the Petropavlovsk Russian naval base. It registered as a magnitude-7 earthquake.

1973 – The Symbonese Liberation Army (SLA) assassinated Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster and wounded Robert Blackburn, his assistant. The SLA warned against a proposed student ID program. Russell Little and Joseph Remiro were arrested following a shootout in Jan, 1974. Little’s eventual conviction was reversed Feb 28, 1979, due to errant jury instructions. Remiro was sentenced to life in prison.

1979 – Ayatollah Khomeini took over in Iran.

1984 – President Ronald Reagan was re-elected. President Reagan faced no opposition to his renomination as the Republican nomination for President. Senator Walter Mondale Jimmy Carter’s Vice President was the front runner throughout the election campaign. His most serious opposition was Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who ran on a theme of new ideas. Other opponents included Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, and Rev Jesse Jackson, the first serious Black candidate for President. Mondale was nominated on the first ballot at the Democratic convention in San Francisco. He selected Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate. Ferraro became the first women to be nominated by a major party.

1991 – Kuwait celebrated the dousing of the last oil fires ignited by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. Iraqi forces had blown up an estimated 732 Kuwaiti oil wells.

1995 – The US Air Force launched the most powerful unmanned rocket, Titan 4, with a $1 billion Milstar communications satellite for the DoD.

1997 – The Clinton administration warned Iraq it could face military action or economic sanctions if it continued to bar U.N. weapons inspections.

1997 – In Belgrade former Serb soldier and convict, Slobodan Misic, was arrested after he told reporters that he had killed up to 80 Croats and Muslims near Vukovar in eastern Croatia and in the Bratunac-Shrebrenica area of eastern Bosnia in 1991.

2002 – A new U.S. draft resolution on Iraq set off a final diplomatic push for tough new weapons inspections, backed by threats of force if Saddam Hussein continues to skirt his disarmament obligations.

2003 – Pres. Bush signed the $87.5 billion Iraq spending bill.

2012 – The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico votes for a non-binding resolution to become a U.S. state. If previous procedure is followed, Congress will now request that Puerto Rico establish a state constitution. Then, Congress would vote to approve it as a state, which it usually does. However, Congress is not obligated to follow this procedure, and by its vote, it ultimately must decide, which is not yet certain. Obama and Romney had both pledged to support the result of the referendum and to work with Congress on the issue.

November 7th ~

1775 – John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters in order to fight with Murray and the British.

1805 – Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean. Their survival over the ‘04-’05 winter was attributed to the help of the Nez Perce Indians.

1811 – Gen. William Henry Harrison won a battle against the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in the Indiana territory.

1814 – Andrew Jackson attacked and captured Pensacola, Florida, without authorization from his superiors. His aim was to end a threat posed by a small British garrison that had caused trouble in the area. Unknown to Jackson, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham had prepared 3,000 soldiers in Jamaica and was sailing to New Orleans to open a British offensive in the South. Pakenham’s army was supplemented by other soldiers brought from England. The opposing armies met in the famed January 1815 Battle of New Orleans.

1848 – General Zachary Taylor was elected president of US. Zachary Taylor, the Amercian general who led the war against the Mexican, as a war hero, was a clear favorite at the Whig convention in June of 1848. He received the needed two thirds of the votes on the fourth ballot. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass as their presidential candidate. The major issue in the election campaign was slavery, and this centered on the issue of whether to allow the areas acquired because of the Mexican War to allow slavery.

1861 – Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp at Belmont, Missouri, but are forced to flee when additional Confederate troops arrive. Although Grant claimed victory, the Union gained no ground and left the Confederates in firm control of that section of the Mississippi. This engagement was part of Grant’s plan to capture the Confederate stronghold at Columbus, Kentucky, just across the river from Belmont, by first driving away the Confederate garrison at Belmont.

1861 – Naval forces under Flag Officer Du Pont captured Port Royal Sound. While Du Pont’s ships steamed in boldly, the naval gunners poured a withering fire into the defending Forts Walker and Beauregard with extreme accuracy. The Confederate defenders abandoned the Forts, and the small Confederate naval squadron under Commodore Tattnall could offer only harassing resistance but did rescue troops by ferrying them to the mainland from Hilton Head. Marines and sailors were landed to occupy the Forts until turned over to Army troops under General T. W. Sherman.

1876 – Rutherford B. Hayes was elected 19th president of the US. Both major political parties were influenced by the Grant era corruption and sought to nominate candidates who could win the public trust. The Democrats turned to Samuel J. Tilden, who had established an enviable record as the reform-minded governor of New York. Tilden was on record as favoring the removal of the remaining federal occupation soldiers from the South, a position regarded favorably by his supporters in that region.

1903 – President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the new Panama republic.

1915 – The Austrian submarine U-38 shells and then torpedoes the liner, Ancona bound for New York from Italy. Among the 208 dead are 25 US citizens. The Austrian response to the protests of the US government is considered inadequate.

1916 – President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected over Charles Evans Hughes, but the race was so close that all votes had to be counted before an outcome could be determined, so the results were not known until November 11. President Woodrow Wilson was elected for a second term largely because he had successfully kept America out of the war that was raging in Europe since 1914.

1917 – (October 25 on the older Julian calendar then used by Russia), the provisional government of Premier Aleksandr Kerensky fell to the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He called his followers the Bolsheviks, meaning the majority, when they formed for a short period the majority of a revolutionary committee. The Bolsheviks became a majority of the ruling group, but they were only a small part of the total Russian population. Decades of czarist incompetence and the devastation of World War I had wrecked the Russian economy and in March 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated.

1918 – Goddard demonstrated tube-launched solid propellant rockets.

1918 – Word that a peace agreement had been signed ending World War I put Wall Street in a festive mood. The New York Stock Exchange closed early and traders hit the streets to celebrate. The problem was that no one had actually signed a peace agreement– it was just a hopeful rumor that had made its way to the trading floor. One week later, the armistice became a reality and the war finally drew to a close.

1919 – The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, arresting over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists in twenty-three different U.S. cities. The Palmer Raids were attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, American Marines, begin attacks to the east toward Koli Point. The Japanese stage landings after dark to the west of American holdings bringing elements of the 38th Infantry Division to shore.

1943 – US Task Force 38 with the carriers Saratoga and Princeton is attacked by 100 Japanese aircraft. The air attack fails to achieve any hits on the carriers. Meanwhile, on Bougainville Island, a Japanese battalion is landed to the north of the beachhead held by the US 3rd Marine Division. A battle ensues. The Japanese reinforce their garrison on Buka Island.

1944 – Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected president of the United States for a record third time, handily defeating his Republican challenger, Wendell Wilkie, the governor of New York. Roosevelt, a fifth cousin to former president Theodore Roosevelt, first came to the White House in 1933 with a promise to lead America out of the Great Depression. Aided by a Democratic Congress, Roosevelt took prompt action, and most of his “New Deal” proposals, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, National Industrial Recovery Act, and creation of the Public Works Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority, were approved within his first 100 days in office.

1944 – On Leyte, the US 96th Division captures Bloody Ridge. Near the north coast, the American advance is held by Japanese defenses.

1954 – A US spy plane was shot down North of Japan.

1956 – The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to immediately withdraw their troops from Egypt.

November 7th ~ { continued... }

1957 – The final report from a special committee called by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to review the nation’s defense readiness indicates that the United States is falling far behind the Soviets in missile capabilities, and urges a vigorous campaign to build fallout shelters to protect American citizens. The special committee had been called together shortly after the stunning news of the success of the Soviet Sputnik I in October 1957.

1964 – The latest U.S. intelligence analysis claims that Communist forces in South Vietnam now include about 30,000 professional full-time soldiers, many of whom are North Vietnamese. Before this, it was largely reported that the war was merely an internal insurgent movement in South Vietnam opposed to the government in Saigon.

1972 – Richard Nixon defeats Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) and is re-elected President of the United States. With only 55 percent of the electorate voting, the lowest turnout since 1948, Nixon carried all states but Massachusetts, taking 97 percent of the electoral votes.

1973 – Congress overrode President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval. The act requires the president to inform Congress within forty-eight hours of military action in a hostile area. Forces must be removed within sixty to ninety days unless Congress approves of the action or declares war. The resolution was prompted by the aggressive actions of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon without congressional approval or a declaration of war during the Vietnam War.

1983 – A bomb exploded in a public corridor near the Senate Republican Cloak Room, detonated at around 2300 EST with a time- delay device. The explosion damaged a wood-paneled conference room near the Senate Chamber and the offices of Senator Robert Byrd. No one was injured. A group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit claimed responsibility, saying it was done in response to U.S. military action in Grenada. Three women pleaded guilty in the attack and were sentenced to prison for five to 20 years.

1996 – NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a mission to map the surface of the Red Planet. It went into orbit around Mars in 2001.

1997 – In a rising war of words, the Clinton administration warned it was considering military options, including a cruise missile strike, if Iraq carried out its threat to shoot down U.N. surveillance planes.

1997 – In Iraq, Saddam Hussein rejected the efforts of UN envoys to resolve the dispute over weapons inspections.

1998 – The shuttle Discovery landed in Cape Canaveral, Fla. After 9 days in space. 77-year-old John Glenn returned to Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery, visibly weak but elated after the mission.

2000 – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country’s largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

2000 – In US elections Al Gore conceded to George Bush and then retracted his concession based on an early prediction of the vote in Florida, which was reversed as too close to call.

2001 – The Bush administration targeted Osama bin Laden’s multimillion-dollar financial networks, closing businesses in four states, detaining U.S. suspects and urging allies to help choke off money supplies in 40 nations. Federal agents raided 2 money transfer organizations, Al Barakaat and Al Taqwa that included 10 locations in 4 states.

2001 – Small numbers of US forces prepared to enter southern Afghanistan for special missions.

2002 – In his first news conference since the midterm elections, President Bush, charting an agenda for the new Republican Congress, said that homeland security came first and that an economic-recovery plan with new tax cuts would wait until the next year.

2003 – The US and Russia signed an agreement under which Russia would retrieve, within the next 5 to 10 years, uranium from research reactors in 17 countries.

2003 – In Tikrit, Iraq, an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed, apparently shot down by insurgents, killing all six U.S. soldiers aboard. 2 other soldiers were killed near Mosul.

2004 – The Iraqi government declared a 60-day state of emergency throughout most of the country, as US and Iraqi forces prepared for an all-out assault on rebels in Fallujah.

2007 – Space Shuttle Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center, ending STS-120, a 15-day mission to the International Space Station

November 8th ~

1731 – The first circulating library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia, was founded by Benjamin Franklin.

1861 – Union Captain Charles Wilkes of the sloop San Jacinto seized Confederate commissioners John Slidell and James M. Mason from the British mail ship Trent. Lincoln’s response to uproar: “One war at a time.” The incident turned into a major diplomatic crisis between Great Britain and the United States until the diplomats were released nearly two months later.

1864 – Northern voters overwhelmingly endorse the leadership and policies of President Lincoln when they elect him to a second term. With his reelection, the fate of the Confederacy was sealed and any hope for a negotiated settlement vanished. In 1864, Lincoln faced many challenges to his presidency. The war was now in its fourth year, and many were questioning if the South could ever be fully conquered militarily. General Ulysses S. Grant mounted a massive campaign in the spring of that year to finally defeat the Confederate army of General Robert E. Lee, but after sustaining horrifying losses at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, the Yankees bogged down around Petersburg. As the fall approached, Grant seemed no closer to defeating Lee than his predecessors. In the West, General William T. Sherman was planted outside of Atlanta, but he could not take that city. Some of the Radical Republicans were unhappy with Lincoln’s conciliatory plan for reconstruction of the South. And many Northerners had never been happy with Lincoln’s 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, which converted the war from one of reunion to a crusade to destroy slavery. Weariness with the war fueled calls for a compromise with the seceded states.
The Democrats nominated George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. McClellan was widely regarded as brilliant in organizing and training the army, but he had failed to defeat Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Virginia. He and Lincoln quarreled constantly during his tenure as general in chief of the army, and Lincoln replaced him when McClellan failed to pursue Lee into Virginia after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. In the months leading up to the election, the military situation changed dramatically. While Grant remained stalled at Petersburg, Mobile Bay fell to the Federal navy in August, Sherman captured Atlanta in September, and General Philip Sheridan secured Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in October.
On election day, Lincoln carried all but three states (Kentucky, New Jersey, and Deleware), and won 55 percent of the vote. He won 212 electoral votes to McCellan’s 21. Most significant, 78 percent of the Union troops voted for their commander in chief, including 71 percent of McClellan’s old command, the Army of the Potomac.
Perhaps most important was the fact that the election was held at all. Before World War II, no country had ever held elections during military emergencies. Lincoln himself said, “We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” Five months after Lincoln’s reelection, the collapse of the Confederacy was complete.

1864 – Rear Admiral Farragut, writing Secretary Welles, expressed his deeply held conviction that effective seapower was not dependent so much on a particular kind of ship or a specific gun but rather on the officers and men who manned them.

1889 – Montana became the 41st state. The state’s name is derived from the Spanish word montaña (mountain). Montana has several nicknames, although none official, including “Big Sky Country” and “The Treasure State”, and slogans that include “Land of the Shining Mountains” and more recently “The Last Best Place”. The land in Montana east of the continental divide was part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Subsequent to the Lewis and Clark Expedition American, British and French fur traders operated in both east and western portions of Montana. Until the Oregon Treaty (1846), land west of the continental divide was disputed between the British and U.S. and was known as the Oregon Country. The first permanent settlement in what today is Montana was St. Mary’s (1841) near present day Stevensville.

1892 – Former President Cleveland beat incumbent Benjamin Harrison and became the first (and, to date, only) president to win non-consecutive terms in the White House. Benjamin Harrison, the sitting president, did not enjoy the Republican Party’s unified backing at the convention in 1892. The president had offended the political bosses by his forays into civil service reform as well as a large segment of the general public by his staunch support of the McKinley Tariff. Even Harrison’s cabinet found his personality icy and unappealing. Despite support for rivals James G. Blaine and William McKinley, Harrison managed to secure renomination on the first ballot.

1898 – The Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only instance of an attempted coup d’état in American history. The Wilmington Coup d’Etat of 1898, also known as the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina starting on November 10, 1898 and continued for several days. It is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. The event is credited as ushering in an era of severe racial segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. Laura Edwards wrote in Democracy Betrayed (2000), “What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole.” Originally described by whites as a race riot (suggesting blacks were at fault), the events are now classified as a coup d’etat, as white Democratic insurgents overthrew the legitimately elected local government. A mob of nearly 2000 men attacked the only black newspaper in the state, and persons and property in black neighborhoods, killing an estimated 15 to more than 60 victims. Two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, two-thirds of which was white, Democratic Party white supremacists illegally seized power and overturned the elected government. Led by Alfred Waddell, who was defeated in 1878 as the congressional incumbent by Daniel L. Russell (elected governor in 1896), more than 2000 white men participated in an attack on the black newspaper, Daily Record, burning down the building. They ran officials and community leaders out of the city, and killed many blacks in widespread attacks, especially destroying the Brooklyn neighborhood. They took photographs of each other during the events. The Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) and federal Naval Reserves, ordered to quell the riot, became involved, using rapid-fire weapons and killing several black men in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Both black and white residents later appealed for help after the coup to President William McKinley, but his administration did not respond, as Governor Russell had not requested aid. After the riot, more than 2,100 blacks left the city permanently, having to abandon their businesses and properties, turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city.

1904 – Theodore Roosevelt (R), vice-president under McKinley, was elected president. He defeated Alton B. Parker (D). Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley, who was assassinated in September 1901. Roosevelt became the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination in 1904. However, a disgruntled segment of the party voiced their view that Roosevelt’s actions were too liberal. They favored instead the nomination of Mark Hanna. Hanna had advised Roosevelt for a few months after the assassination, but then lost influence in the administration. His death in 1904 probably averted a heated contest over what direction the Republican Party would take. With the contender gone, the convention nominated Roosevelt by acclamation.

November 8th ~ { continued... }

1916 – United States ship U. S.S. Columbian sunk by German submarine near Cape Finisterre.

1918 – Marshal Foch receives German armistice delegates at Rethondes (four miles from Compiegne), refuses request for provisional armistice, terms of armistice to be accepted or refused by 11 am on 11 November.

1923 – Adolf Hitler, president of the far-right Nazi Party, launches the Beer Hall Putsch, his first attempt at seizing control of the German government. After World War I, the victorious allies demanded billions of dollars in war reparations from Germany. Efforts by Germany’s democratic government to comply hurt the country’s economy and led to severe inflation. The German mark, which at the beginning of 1921 was valued at five marks per dollar, fell to a disastrous four billion marks per dollar in 1923.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the nationalist Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party’s bitter hatred of the democratic government, leftist politics, and German Jews. In early November 1923, the government resumed war-reparation payments, and the Nazis decided to strike. Hitler planned a coup against the state government of Bavaria, which he hoped would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the central, democratic government in Berlin.
On the evening of November 8, Nazi forces under Hermann Goering surrounded the Munich beer hall where Bavarian government officials were meeting with local business leaders. A moment later, Hitler burst in with a group of Nazi storm troopers, discharged his pistol into the air, and declared that “the national revolution has begun.” Threatened at gunpoint, the Bavarian leaders reluctantly agreed to support Hitler’s new regime. In the early morning of November 9, however, the Bavarian leaders repudiated their coerced support of Hitler and ordered a rapid suppression of the Nazis.
At dawn, government troops surrounded the main Nazi force occupying the War Ministry building. A desperate Hitler responded by leading a march toward the center of Munich in a last-ditch effort to rally support. Near the War Ministry building, 3,000 Nazi marchers came face to face with 100 armed policemen. Shots were exchanged, and 16 Nazis and three policemen were killed. Hermann Goering was shot in the groin, and Hitler suffered a dislocated elbow but managed to escape. Three days later, Hitler was arrested. Convicted of treason, he was given the minimum sentence of five years in prison. He was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress and spent his time writing his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and working on his oratorical skills. Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute Hitler’s sentence, and he was released after serving only nine months.
In the late 1920s, Hitler reorganized the Nazi Party as a fanatical mass movement that was able to gain a majority in the Reichstag in 1932. By 1934, Hitler was the sole master of a nation intent on war and genocide.

1932 – New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover for the presidency. Roosevelt became the 32nd president with about 87% of the Electoral College. Roosevelt came into the Democratic convention in Chicago as the front runner. His main opposition was Alfred Smith. Roosevelt secured the nomination on the third ballot. Roosevelt ignored tradition by coming to Chicago to personally accept the nomination.

1933 – In 1933, the United States was struggling through the Depression. The major economic indices were sagging and the unemployment rolls seemed to be growing fatter by the day. With winter looming on the horizon, President Roosevelt and Henry Hopkins, one of the architects of the New Deal, moved to offer relief. They unveiled the Civil Works Administration (CWA), a program designed to secure temporary work for people who would otherwise have to endure a winter of unemployment. The CWA provided a mix of white and blue-collar jobs that promised to pay normal wages for a limited schedule of work.

1939 – On the 16th anniversary of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, a bomb explodes just after Hitler has finished giving a speech. He was unharmed. Hitler had made an annual ritual on the anniversary of his infamous 1923 coup attempt, (Hitler’s first grab at power that ended in his arrest and the virtual annihilation of his National Socialist party), of regaling his followers with his vision of the Fatherland’s future. On this day, he had been addressing the Old Guard party members, those disciples and soldiers who had been loyal to Hitler and his fascist party since the earliest days of its inception. Just 12 minutes after Hitler had left the hall, along with important Nazi leaders who had accompanied him, a bomb exploded, which had been secreted in a pillar behind the speaker’s platform. Seven people were killed and 63 were wounded.
The next day, the Nazi Party official paper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, squarely placed the blame on British secret agents, even implicating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain himself. This work of propaganda was an attempt to stir up hatred for the British and whip the German people into a frenzy for war. But the inner-Nazi Party members knew better-they knew the assassination attempt was most probably the work of a German anti-Nazi military conspiracy.In an ingenious scheme to shift blame, while getting closer to the actual conspirators, Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo chief, sent a subordinate, Walter Schellenberg, to Holland to make contact with British intelligence agents. The pretext of the meeting was to secure assurances from the British that in the event of an anti-Nazi coup, the British would support the new regime. The British agents were eager to gain whatever inside information they could about the rumored anti-Hitler movement within the German military; Schellenberg, posing as “Major Schaemmel,” was after whatever information British intelligence may have had on such a conspiracy within the German military ranks. But Himmler wanted more than talk-he wanted the British agents themselves.
So on November 9, SS soldiers in Holland kidnapped, with Schellenberg’s help, two British agents, Payne Best and R.H. Stevens, stuffing them into a Buick and driving them across the border into Germany. Himmler now proudly announced to the German public that he had captured the British conspirators. The man who actually planted the bomb at their behest was declared to be Georg Elser, a German communist who made his living as a carpenter. While it seems certain that Elser did plant the bomb, who the instigators were-German military or British intelligence-remains unclear. All three “official” conspirators spent the war in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (Elser was murdered by the Gestapo on April 16, 1945-so he could never tell his story). Hitler dared not risk a public trial, as there were just too many holes in the “official” story.

November 8th ~ { continued...}

1942 – Operation Torch. The Allies land in French North Africa. There are three main task forces: The Western Task Force, commanded by General Patton, is comprised of 35,000 troops. It is supported by naval forces under Admiral Hewitt (two battleships, one fleet carrier, four escort carriers and numerous cruisers and destroyers); the Central Task Force, commanded by General Fredendall is comprised of 39,000 American troops. Commodore Toubridge commands its naval support force (two escort carriers and many smaller ships); the Eastern Task Force, contains 52 warships and 33,000 soldiers, led by General Ryder and Admiral Burroughs. The British contingent, 87th Division is supported by Admiral Syfret commanding British Force H, comprised of three battleships, three fleet carriers and a strong force of cruisers and destroyers.

1944 – 1st Lt. Edward R. “Buddy” Haydon, 357th Fighter Group killed Major Walter Nowotny, commander of Kommando Nowotny, flying the Me-262 jet fighter. This event almost caused Hitler to kill the jet fighter program.

1945 – In the wake of World War II, America needed to convert its economy back to peacetime conditions. The passage of the Revenue Act of 1945 on November 8 was a key step in rolling back the heavy taxes which had been implemented to help wage the war. Along with cutting $6 billion in taxes, the Revenue Act initiated an extensive post-war revision of the nation’s entire tax system.

1950 – During the Korean conflict the first all-jet air combat took place over Korea as U.S. Air Force Lieut. Russell J. Brown, piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shot down two North Korean MiG-15s. It lasted about 30 seconds.

1950 – President Harry Truman lifted the ban on bombing within five miles of the Yalu River, and the bridges at Sinuiju were struck. Seventy-nine B-29s along with naval aircraft carried out the mission.

1950 – The Korean Service Medal was authorized by Executive Order 10179. Some 1.7 million U.S. service members were eventually awarded this medal for service in Korea and its contiguous waters between June 27, 1950, to July 27, 1954.

1956 – Navy Stratolab balloon (LCDRs Malcolm D. Ross and M. Lee Lewis) betters world height record soaring to 76,000 feet over Black Hills, SD, on flight to gather meteorological, cosmic ray, and other scientific data.

1960 – Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy was elected 35th president by 118,550 popular votes. He defeated Richard Nixon in the US presidential elections. Popular legend later held that the political machine of Richard Daley in Chicago provided the necessary votes for Kennedy to win Illinois (27 electoral votes) and the elections. The Electoral College result was 303 to 219.

1974 – Charges were dropped against eight Ohio National Guardsmen for their role in the deaths of four anti-war protestors at Kent State University. A federal grand jury had indicted 8 National Guardsmen for the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings.

1988 – Republican Vice President George Bush was elected the 41st president. He defeated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Vice President Bush recovered from an early third place showing in the Iowa’s Caucuses, behind Senator Dole and Reverend Pat Robertson, to force all his opponents to withdraw from the race. He thus was unopposed at the Republican convention in New Orleans.
The only major issue at the convention was his decision to have Senator Quayle be his running mate, a decision that was widely criticized. Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts quickly became the front-runner after Gary Hart withdrew do to allegations of sexual improprieties, and Mario Cuomo of New York refused to run. One by one, Dukakis’ opponents withdrew, until only Jesse Jackson was left when the convention took place in Atlanta. Dukakis won on the first ballot after receiving 2,876 votes as opposed to Jackson 1218. Dukakis chose Senator Loyd Benson of Texas as his running mate. When the campaign began Governor Dukakis held a clear lead over Vice President Bush.
The Republicans successfully attacked Dukakis in a number of ways. One of the most notable was an attack on Dukakis surrounding the furlough release of Willie Horton an African American convicted of murder who was released on a weekend furlough from prison while Dukakis was governor. Bush stated ” don’t let murders out on vacation to terrorize innocent people…Dukakis owes the people an explanation of why he supported this outrageous program”. The Republicans then went on to sponsor a series of television ads with picutres of Horton and the crime scenes claiming that it was Dukakis who had let that happen. The fact that the program was started by Dukakis’s Republican predecessor and that while President Reagan had been governor of California it had been instituted there was not mentioned. This and other attack ads were very effective and Bush won by a large margin.

1990 – In Iraq Saddam Hussein fired his army chief and threatened to destroy the Arabian peninsula.

1992 – Volunteers began reading aloud the 58,183 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., as part of a tribute marking the 10th anniversary of the monument.

1995 – Retired General Colin Powell embraced the Republican Party, but said he would not run for president or any other political office in 1996 because it was “a calling that I do not yet hear.”

1998 – Four Navy fliers were lost at sea and presumed dead after their EA-6B Prowler struck an S-3 Viking aircraft on the carrier Enterprise during nighttime landing practice off of Virginia. 2 crewmen landed safely on the deck.

1999 – Former President Bush was honored in Germany for his role in the fall of the Berlin Wall ten years earlier.

November 8th ~ {continued...}

2000 – A statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. 19,000 votes were reported disqualified in West Palm Beach. Early that day, Vice President Al Gore telephoned Texas Gov. George W. Bush to concede, but called back about an hour later to retract his concession.

2000 – Saudi Arabia opened its border with Iraq and signed export contracts to nearly $600 million under exceptions to US sanctions.

2001 – In a prime-time address, President called on Americans to defy acts of terror by strengthening their communities, comforting their neighbors and remaining vigilant in the face of further threats.

2001 – U.S. jets struck Taliban targets across northern Afghanistan and fierce fighting was reported around the Taliban-held city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

2002 – President Bush said the new resolution presented the Iraqi regime “with a final test.”

2002 – The UN Security Council unanimously approved a tough new Iraq resolution, aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences.” Iraq has until Nov. 15 to accept its terms and pledge to comply. Iraq has until Dec. 8 to provide weapons inspectors and the Security Council with a complete declaration of all aspects of its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. Weapons inspectors have until Dec. 23 to resume their work in Iraq. Weapons inspectors are to report to the Security Council 60 days after the start of their work. If inspectors resume their work on Dec. 23, the latest they would be able to report to the council would be Feb. 21, 2003.

2003 – In Iraq insurgents killed two US paratroopers and wounded another west of Baghdad. In Tikrit US F-16s battered suspected targets. 5 Iraqis were killed and 16 taken custody in “Operation Ivy Cyclone.”

2004 – In Iraq some 10,000 US and Iraqi troops fought their way into the western outskirts of Fallujah. A car bomb hit a civilian convoy belonging to coalition forces on the main highway to Baghdad’s airport.

2004 – U.S. Federal District Judge James Robertson rules that the system of tribunals set up by the United States military to try and sentence prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay is illegal.

2006 – Amid criticism, Donald Rumsfeld resigns as Secretary of Defense. The President will later announce the selection of former Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld.

2014 – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “Caliph” of ISIS is critically wounded during an US airstrike at al-Qaim.

2014 – North Korea releases American detainees Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller.

November 9th ~

1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1764 – Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to British forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet. Mary Campbell (later Mary Campbell Willford) was an American colonial settler, taken captive as a child by Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Later rescued, she is believed to have been the first white child to travel to the Western Reserve.

1780 – In the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter. The Battle of Fishdam Ford was an attempted surprise attack by British forces under the command of Major James Wemyss against an encampment of Patriot militia around 1 am, late in the American Revolutionary War. Wemyss was wounded and captured in the attack, which failed because of heightened security in Sumter’s camp and because Wemyss did not wait until dawn to begin the attack.

1822 – The Action of 9 November 1822 between USS Alligator and a squadron of pirate schooners off the coast of Cuba. Fifteen leagues from Matanzas, Cuba, a large band of pirates captured several vessels and held them for ransom. Upon hearing of the pirate attacks, the Alligator under Lieutenant William Howard Allen rushed to the scene to rescue the vessels and seize the pirates. Upon arriving at the bay where the pirates were said to be, USS Alligator dispatched boats to engage the enemy vessels, as the water was too shallow for the American warship to engage them herself. With Allen personally commanding one of the boats, the Americans assaulted the piratical schooner Revenge. Although the Americans were able to force the pirates into abandoning Revenge, the buccaneers managed to fight their way out of the bay and inflict heavy casualties among the Americans, including Allen. With their commander mortally wounded, the Americans ceased pursuit of the pirates but managed to recover the vessels that had been held in the bay.

1862 – General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Union Army of the Potomac following the removal of George B. McClellan.

1875 – Indian Inspector E.C. Watkins submits a report to Washington, D.C., stating that hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians associated with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are hostile to the United States. In so doing, Watkins set into motion a series of events that led to the Battle of the Little Big Born in Montana the following year.

1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1906 – On the first foreign trip by a U.S. president, President Theodore Roosevelt departs the United States for Panama aboard the battleship Louisiana. The visit came three years after Roosevelt gave tacit U.S. military support to the Panamanian revolt against Colombian rule.

1918 – The abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II is announced. He goes into exile in the Netherlands the next day. The victorious powers request, halfheartedly, that he be tried as a war criminal. A member of the chancellor’s cabinet, Philipp Scheidmann, announces the creation of a republic. A new government and chancellor, Friedrich Ebert, are appointed the next day. Germany will remain politically unstable, with various left and right wing factions vying for control.

1921 – USS Olympia arrives at the Washington Navy Yard from France carrying the body of the Unknown Soldier for internment at Arlington National Cemetery.

1923 – In Munich, armed policeman and troops loyal to Germany’s democratic government crush the Beer Hall Putsch, the first attempt by the Nazi Party at seizing control of the German government.

1925 – German Nazis formed the SS (Schutzstaffel- elite special forces).

1935 – Japanese troops invaded Shanghai, China.

1938 – This day saw the organized destruction of Jewish businesses and homes in Munich, as well as the beating and murder of Jewish men, women, and children. It was an exercise in terror that would be called “Kristallnacht,” or “the Night of Broken Glass,” because of the cost of broken glass in looted Jewish shops–5 million marks ($1,250,000).

1940 – Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.

1944 – The 455-foot Red Oak Victory ship was launched from Richmond, Ca. It was named after an Iowa town with the highest number of casualties per capita in WW II. The Victory ships were successors of the Liberty ships.

1945 – FBI agents staked out a house in Berkeley, Ca., to watch George Eltenton, a suspected Soviet spy. In 1946 Eltenton admitted that he had tried to obtain secret data on Berkeley’s radiation lab. Eltenton moved to Britain in 1947.

1950 – In first engagement between MIG-15 and F9F jets (USS Philippine Sea), LCDR William T. Amen (VF-111) shoots down a MIG and becomes first Navy pilot to shoot down a jet aircraft. Corporal Harry J. LaVene, a tail gunner on a RB-29 over Sinuiju, became the first aerial gunner to shoot down a MiG-15.

1967 – NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched Apollo 4 into orbit from Cape Kennedy with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was the largest operational launch vehicle ever produced. Standing over 363 feet high with its Apollo Spacecraft payload, it produced over 7.5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.

1979 – In a nuclear false alarm, the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.

1980 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared holy war against Iran.

1989 – East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters.

1997 – In Lansdowne, Pa., some 200 people picketed in front of the home of Jonas Stelmokas (81) to protest delays to his deportation. He was accused of being a former member of the Lithuanian police force that helped Nazis kill Jews during WW II.

1999 – With fireworks, concerts and a huge party at the landmark Brandenburg Gate, Germany celebrated the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

2000 – William Leonard Pickard (55) and Clyde Apperson (45) of California were indicted by a grand jury in Kansas City for running a massive LSD laboratory inside a decommissioned nuclear missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

2001 – The Battle of Mazar-e Sharif may also mark the last use of hoseback mounted tactics by US troops. US Special Forces operators, blending modern and ancient, rode with Northern Alliance allies while using modern communications to direct air support.

2001 – A Pakistani newspaper published a Nov 7 interview with Osama bin Laden in which he claimed to have chemical and nuclear weapons.

2002 – President Bush said in his radio address that Saddam Hussein faced a final test to surrender weapons of mass destruction.

2004 – Iraqi authorities imposed the first nighttime curfew in more than a year on Baghdad and surrounding areas. US Army and Marine units thrust through the center of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, fighting bands of guerrillas in the streets and conducting house-to-house searches on the second day of a major offensive.

2012 – Two Iranian Revolutionary Guard fighter jets fire on an unmanned American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone in international airspace near Kuwait.

2012 – CIA Director David Petraeus submits his resignation to President Barack Obama, citing an extramarital affair he had.CIA Director David Petraeus submits his resignation to President Barack Obama, citing an extramarital affair he had.

2013 – The United States Navy christened the USS Gerald R. Ford – the $15.5 billion aircraft carrier is the most technologically advanced ship ever built.

November 10th ~

1674 – The Dutch formally ceded New Netherlands (NY) to English as provision of the Treaty of Westminster at the End of the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

1702 – English colonists under the command of James Moore besiege Spanish St. Augustine during Queen Anne’s War. The Siege of St. Augustine was an action in Queen Anne’s War during November and December 1702. It was conducted by English provincial forces from the Province of Carolina and their native allies, under the command of Carolina’s governor James Moore, against the Spanish colonial fortress of Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, in Spanish Florida. After destroying coastal Spanish communities north of St. Augustine, Moore’s forces arrived at St. Augustine and immediately began siege operations. The Spanish governor, Joseph de Zúñiga y Zérda, had advance warning of their arrival, and withdrew civilians and food supplies into the fortress, and also sent messengers to nearby Spanish and French communities for relief. The English guns did little damage to the fortress walls, prompting Governor Moore to send an appeal to Jamaica for larger guns. The Spanish calls for relief were successful; a fleet sent from Havana, Cuba landed troops nearby on 29 December. Moore lifted the siege the next day, and was forced to burn many of his boats before retreating to Charles Town in disgrace.

1775 – During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passes a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps. Serving on land and at sea, the original U.S. Marines distinguished themselves in a number of important operations during the Revolutionary War. The first Marine landing on a hostile shore occurred when a force of Marines under Captain Samuel Nicholas captured New Province Island in the Bahamas from the British in March 1776. Nicholas was the first commissioned officer in the Continental Marines and is celebrated as the first Marine commandant. After American independence was achieved in 1783, the Continental Navy was demobilized and its Marines disbanded. In the next decade, however, increasing conflict at sea with Revolutionary France led the U.S. Congress to establish formally the U.S. Navy in May 1798. Two months later, on July 11, President John Adams signed the bill establishing the U.S. Marine Corps as a permanent military force under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy. U.S. Marines saw action in the so-called Quasi-War with France and then fought against the Barbary pirates of North Africa during the first years of the 19th century. Since then, Marines have participated in all the wars of the United States and in most cases were the first soldiers to fight. In all, Marines have executed more than 300 landings on foreign shores. Today, there are more than 200,000 active-duty and reserve Marines, divided into three divisions stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Camp Pendleton, California; and Okinawa, Japan. Each division has one or more expeditionary units, ready to launch major operations anywhere in the world on two weeks’ notice. Marines expeditionary units are self-sufficient, with their own tanks, artillery, and air forces. The motto of the service is Semper Fidelis, meaning “Always Faithful” in Latin.

1782 – In the last battle of the American Revolution, George Rodgers Clark attacked Indians and Loyalists at Chillicothe, in Ohio Territory.

1808 – In a decision that would eventually make them one of the wealthiest surviving Indian nations, the Osage Indians agree to abandon their lands in Missouri and Arkansas in exchange for a reservation in Oklahoma. The Osage were the largest tribe of the Southern Sioux Indians occupying what would later become the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. When the first Anglo explorers and settlers moved into this region, they encountered a sophisticated society of Native Americans who lived in more or less permanent villages made of sturdy earthen and log lodges. The Osage-like the related Quapaw, Ponca, Omaha, and Kansa peoples-hunted buffalo and wild game like the Plains Indians, but they also raised crops to supplement their diets. Although the Southern Sioux warred among themselves almost constantly, Americans found it much easier to understand and negotiate with these more sedentary tribes than with the nomadic Northern Sioux. American negotiators convinced the Osage to abandon their traditional lands and peacefully move to a reservation in southern Kansas in 1810. When American settlers began to covet the Osage reservation in Kansas, the tribe agreed to yet another move, relocating to what is now Osage County, Oklahoma, in 1872. Such constant pressure from American settlers to push Native Americans off valuable lands and onto marginal reservations was all too common throughout the history of western settlement. Most Indian tribes were devastated by these relocations, including some of the Southern Sioux tribes like the Kansa, whose population of 1,700 was reduced to only 194 following their disastrous relocation to a 250,000-acre reservation in Kansas. The Osage, though, proved unusually successful in adapting to the demands of living in a world dominated by Anglo-Americans, thanks in part to the fortunate presence of large reserves of oil and gas on their Oklahoma reservation. In concert with their effective management of grazing contracts to Anglos, the Osage amassed enormous wealth during the twentieth century from their oil and gas deposits, eventually becoming the wealthiest tribe in North America.

1865 – Henry Wirz, a Swiss immigrant and the commander of Andersonville prison in Georgia, is hanged for the murder of soldiers incarcerated at his prison. He commanded a prison in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; escorted prisoners around the Confederacy; handled exchanges with the Union; and was wounded in a stagecoach accident. After returning to duty, he traveled to Europe and likely delivered messages to Confederate envoys. When Wirz arrived back in the Confederacy in early 1864 he was assigned the responsibility for Andersonville prison. While both sides incarcerated prisoners under horrible conditions, Andersonville deserves special mention for the inhumane circumstances under which its inmates were kept. A stockade held thousands of men inside a barren and polluted patch of ground. Barracks were planned but never built; the men slept in makeshift housing, called “shebangs,” constructed from scrap wood and blankets that offered little protection from the elements. A small stream flowed through the compound and provided water for the Union soldiers, but this became a cesspool of disease and human waste. Erosion caused by the prisoners turned the stream into a huge swamp. The prison was designed to hold 10,000 men but the Confederates had packed it with more than 31,000 inmates by August 1864. Wirz oversaw an operation in which nearly a third of its 46,000 inmates died. On the scaffold, Wirz said to the officer in charge, “I know what orders are, Major. I am being hanged for obeying them.” He was found guilty on October 24 and sentenced to die on November 10. Wirz was the only person executed for crimes committed during the war.

1910 – The date of Thomas A. Davis’ opening of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy.

1915 – Great fire at Bethlehem Steel Co., German incendiaries suspected. Many guns are destroyed.

1918 – Retired German Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands.

1918 – The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C.) that said on November 11, 1918, all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.

1919 – The American Legion held its first national convention, in Minneapolis.

1928 – Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan. Two years after the death of his father, Michinomiya Hirohito is enthroned as the 124th Japanese monarch in an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C.

November 10th ~ { continued... }

1939 – The US consulate advises Americans to leave the Netherlands.

1941 – Churchill promised to join the U.S. “within the hour” in the event of war with Japan.

1942 – German troops occupy Vichy France, which had previously been free of an Axis military presence. Since July 1940, upon being invaded and defeated by Nazi German forces, the autonomous French state had been split into two regions. One was occupied by German troops, and the other was unoccupied, governed by a more or less puppet regime centered in Vichy, a spa region about 200 miles southeast of Paris, and led by Gen. Philippe Petain, a World War I hero.

1944 – The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.

1951 – Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, N.J., called his counterpart in Alameda, California.

1951 – At Panmunjom, the U.N. Command proposed that the demarcation line should be that of the line of contact at the time of the signing of the armistice.

1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.

1954 – Lt. Col. John Strapp traveled 632 MPH in a rocket sled.

1964 – At a news conference, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara says that the United States has no plans to send combat troops into Vietnam. When asked whether the United States intended to increase its activities in Vietnam, he replied, “Wait and see.” By 1969, more than 500,000 American troops were in South Vietnam.

1972 – Three black men successfully hijack a DC-9 from Birmingham to Cuba with $10 million and 10 parachutes. They are still fugitives. The copilot is wounded. Two are sentenced in Cuba to 20 years, one to 15 years. They threaten to crash the plane into the Oak Ridge nuclear installation. At McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, the FBI shoots out the tires. The plane finally lands on a foam-covered runway in Havana.

1975 – PLO leader Yasser Arafat addressed the UN in NYC.

1982 – The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened .

1982 – After 18 years as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev dies. His death signaled the end of a period of Soviet history marked by both stability and stagnation.

1983 – Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0.

1986 – President Ronald Reagan refused to reveal details of the Iran arms sale.

1989 – Workers began punching a hole in the Berlin Wall, a day after East Germany abolished its border restrictions.

1997 – A jury in Fairfax, Va., convicted Mir Aimal Kasi of one count of capital murder, one count of first-degree murder and eight additional charges stemming from a shooting attack outside CIA headquarters in January 1993.

1997 – The U-2 surveillance flights over Iraq were resumed by the UN. The plane flew out of range of Iraqi gunners.

1998 – The US military moved warships into the Persian Gulf in anticipation of a possible attack on Iraq over cancellation of weapons inspections.

2000 – The battle over Florida’s disputed presidential election continued, with George W. Bush’s camp pressing Al Gore to concede without pursuing multiple recounts, and Democrats pressing ahead with protests, determined to find enough votes to erase Bush’s razor-thin lead in initial counting. An unofficial tally gave Bush a 327-vote lead.

2001 – President Bush made his 1st address to the UN. He warned that all nations were possible targets of terrorism and urged them to join with the United States in a campaign to prevent more attacks.

2001 – Traces of anthrax were reported in offices of the Hart and Longworth government buildings in Washington DC.

2002 – Bush administration officials promised “zero-tolerance” if Saddam Hussein refused to comply with international calls to disarm.

2002 – U.S. warplanes flying from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf struck missile sites in southern Iraq in response to hostile acts.

2003 – A top Iranian official said that his country had suspended its enrichment of uranium and sent a letter to the IAEA accepting additional inspections of its nuclear facilities.

2006 – The National Museum of the Marine Corps is opened and dedicated by U.S. President George W. Bush and announces that Marine Corporal Jason Dunham will receive the Medal of Honor in Quantico, Virginia.

2006 – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft records a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn which is the first time such an event has been observed on another planet.

2008 – Over five months after landing on Mars, NASA declares the Phoenix mission concluded after communications with the lander were lost.

2011 – Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs of the United States Army is convicted of murder in relation to the Maywand District killings in Afghanistan.

November 11th ~

VETERANS DAY

Feast Day of St. Martin of Tours, Patron Saint of Chaplains and Logisticians: When Sulpicius Severus first met Martin of Tours he was stunned. Not only did the bishop offer him hospitality at his residence — a monk’s cell in the wilderness instead of a palace — but Martin washed Sulpicius’ hands before dinner and his feet in the evening. But Sulpicius was just the kind of person Martin showed the greatest honor to — a humble man without any rank or privilege. People of nobility and position were turned away from his abbey by chalk cliffs, out of fear of the temptation to pride. From that visit, Sulpicius became Martin’s disciple, friend, and biographer. Little is known of many of the saints who died in the early years of Christianity but thanks to Sulpicius, who wrote his first biography of Martin before the saint died and who talked to most of the people involved in his life, we have a priceless record of Martin’s life.

1620 – The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the Separatists, sometimes referred to as the “Saints”, fleeing from religious persecution by King James of England. They traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620 along with adventurers, tradesmen, and servants, most of whom were referred to, by the Separatists as “Strangers”. The Mayflower Compact was signed aboard ship by most adult men. The Pilgrims used the Julian Calendar, also known as Old Style dates, which, at that time, was ten days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Signing the covenant were 41 of the ship’s 101 passengers, while the Mayflower was anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor within the hook at the northern tip of Cape Cod.

1778 – Iroquois Indians and Torries, led by William Butler, massacred 40 inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y. The Cherry Valley massacre was an attack by British and Iroquois forces on a fort and the village of Cherry Valley in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War. It has been described as one of the most horrific frontier massacres of the war. A mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Seneca and Mohawks descended on Cherry Valley, whose defenders, despite warnings, were unprepared for the attack. During the raid, the Seneca in particular targeted non-combatants, and reports state that 30 such individuals were slain, in addition to a number of armed defenders. The raiders were under the overall command of Walter Butler, who exercised little authority over the Indians on the expedition.

1813 – In the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, British and Canadian forces defeat a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign. The Battle of Crysler’s Farm, also known as the Battle of Crysler’s Field, was fought on 11 November 1813, during the War of 1812. The name Chrysler’s Farm is sometimes used for the engagement, but Crysler is the proper spelling.

1831 – Nat Turner was hanged and skinned in Southampton county, Va. Hysteria surrounded this rebellion and over 200 slaves, some as far away as North Carolina, were murdered by whites in fear of a generalized uprising. A martyr to the anti-slavery cause, Turner’s actions had the adverse effect of virtually ending all abolitionist activities in the south before the Civil War.

1839 – The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.

1861 – Thaddeus Lowe made balloon observation of Confederate forces from Balloon- Boat G.W. Parke Custis anchored in Potomac River.

1864 – Sherman’s troops destroyed Rome, Georgia and continued on toward Atlanta.

1864 – Commander Henry K. Davenport, U.S.S. Lancaster, captured Confederates on board steamer Salvador, bound from Panama to California, after having been informed that they intended to seize the ship at sea and convert her into a raider. Salvador’s captain had warned naval authorities at Panama Bay that the attempt was to be made, and Davenport and his men arranged to search the baggage of the passengers after the vessel passed the territorial limits of Panama. The search revealed guns and ammunition, along with a commission from Secretary Mallory for the capture; the Confederates were promptly taken into custody. This daring party, led by Acting Master Thomas E. Hogg, CSN, was one of many attempting to seize Union steamers and convert them into commerce raiders, especially with a view toward capturing the gold shipments from California. Union warships usually convoyed the California ships to prevent their capture.

1865 – Dr. Mary Edward Walker, 1st Army female surgeon, was awarded Medal of Honor by Pres. Andrew Johnson for her work as a field doctor for outstanding service at the Battle of Bull Run, at the Battle of Chickamauga, as a Confederate prisoner of war in Richmond, Va., and at the Battle of Atlanta.

1870 – Navy expedition to explore the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, southern Mexico, commanded by CAPT Robert W. Shufeldt, enters the Coatzacoalcos River to begin a survey for possible interoceanic canal. Support provided by USS Kansas and USS Mayflower.

1885 – George Smith Patton, one of the great American generals of World War II, is born in San Gabriel, California. Patton came from a family with a long history of military service. After studying at West Point, he served as a tank officer in World War I, and his experience in that conflict, along with his extensive military study, led him to become an advocate of the crucial importance of the tank in future warfare. After the American entrance into World War II, Patton was placed in command of an important U.S. tank division and played a key role in the Allied invasion of French North Africa in 1942. In 1943, Patton led the U.S. Seventh Army in its assault on Sicily and won fame for out-commanding Montgomery during the so-called Race to Messina.

Although Patton was one of the ablest American commanders in World War II, he was also one of the most controversial. He presented himself as a modern-day cavalryman, designed his own uniform, and was known to make eccentric claims that he was a direct descent from great military leaders of the past through reincarnation. During the Sicilian campaign, Patton generated considerable controversy when he accused a hospitalized U.S. soldier suffering from battle fatigue of cowardice and then personally struck him across the face. The famously profane general was forced to issue a public apology and was reprimanded by General Dwight Eisenhower. However, when it was time for the invasion of Western Europe, Eisenhower could find no general as formidable as Patton, and the general was again granted an important military post.

In 1944, Patton commanded the U.S. Third Army in the invasion of France, and in December of that year his expertise in military movement and tank warfare helped crush the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes. During one of his many successful campaigns, General Patton was said to have declared, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” On December 21, 1945, he died in a hospital in Germany from injuries sustained in an automobile accident near Mannheim.

1889 – Washington became the 42nd state of the US. Washington is located north of Oregon, west of Idaho, and south of the Canadian province of British Columbia on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Named after George Washington, the first President of the United States, the state was made out of the western part of the Washington Territory which had been ceded by Britain in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty as a settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute. It was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889. Although its official, unambiguous name is “The State of Washington,” the state’s name is often reversed and referred to as “Washington state” to the chagrin of many natives. This is meant to distinguish it from Washington, D.C., also named for George Washington. Another nickname is “the Evergreen State.” Its largest city is Seattle, situated in the west, followed by Spokane, located in the east, and its capital is Olympia.

November 11th ~ { continued...}

1909 – Construction began on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

1918 – At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends.

At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiýgne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.

On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany. For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France. The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris.

By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front–the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium–the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.

In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany.

In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918. World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict–the Treaty of Versailles of 1919–forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.

1919 – The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Centralia Massacre, also known as the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day.

This conflict between the American Legion and workers who were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or “Wobblies”) resulted in six deaths, additional wounded, multiple prison terms, and an ongoing and especially bitter dispute over the motivations and events that precipitated the massacre. It was the culmination of years of bad blood between members of the local Legion and members of the IWW. Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion, as well as a large number of IWW members, some also war veterans. The ramifications of this event included a trial that attracted national media attention, notoriety that contributed to the Red Scare of 1919–20, the creation of a powerful martyr for the IWW, a monument to one side of the battle and a mural for the other, a formal tribute to the fallen Legionnaires by President Warren G. Harding, and a deep-rooted enmity between the local American Legion and the Wobblies that persists into the 21st century.

1920– Lenah S. Higbee becomes the first woman to be awarded the Navy Cross. It was awarded for her World War I service.