February 7th ~ {continued...}

1942 – The federal government ordered passenger car production stopped and converted to wartime purposes. In spite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s exhortation that the U.S. auto industry should become the “great arsenal of democracy,” Detroit’s executives were reluctant to join the war cause. However, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the country mobilized behind the U.S. declaration of war. The government offered automakers guaranteed profits regardless of production costs throughout the war years.

Furthermore, the Office of Production Management allocated $11 billion to the construction of war manufacturing plants that would be sold to the automobile manufacturers at remarkable discounts after the war. What had at first seemed like a burden on the automotive industry became a boon. The production demands placed on the industry and the resources allocated to the individual automobile manufacturers during the war would revolutionize American car making and bring about the Golden Era of the 1950s.

1943 – During a fierce convoy battle near Greenland, the CGC Ingham rescued 33 survivors from the torpedoed troopship SS Henry Mallory while the Bibb rescued 202. Bibb then rescued 33 from the torpedoed Kalliopi.

1943 – The government announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days, limiting each purchaser to three pairs for the remainder of the year.

1943 – On Guadalcanal the US 161st Regiment continues a cautious advance. The Japanese proceed with their evacuation.

1944 – In the Kwajalein Atoll, American forces complete the elimination of isolated Japanese pockets of resistance.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, there are new attacks on the British 1st Division by German forces. The Germans aim for the village of Aprilia and “The Factory” nearby. Meanwhile, the British 56th Division and the US 45th Division arrive at Anzio.

1945 – In the US 5th Corps advance toward the Roer, Schmidt is taken. To the south, US 3rd Army units move into Germany east of the Our.

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

1945 – US 76th and 5th Infantry divisions began crossing Sauer.

1947 – Arabs and Jews rejected a British proposal to split Palestine.

1948 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley. Eisenhower will become President of Columbia University.

1950 – The United States and Great Britain extend de jure recognition to the Bao Dai regime. Vietnam is now effectively split between a communist-influenced north and an anti-communist south.

1950 – Senator Joe McCarthy claimed “communists” in US Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

1955 – Seventh Fleet ships begin evacuation of Chinese nationalists from Tachen Islands

1962 – President Kennedy began the blockade of Cuba and bans all Cuban imports and exports.

February 7th ~ {continued...}

1965 – As part of Operation Flaming Dart, 49 U.S. Navy jets from the 7th Fleet carriers Coral Sea and Hancock drop bombs and rockets on the barracks and staging areas at Dong Hoi, a guerrilla training camp in North Vietnam. Escorted by U.S. jets, a follow-up raid by South Vietnamese planes bombed a North Vietnamese military communications center. These strikes were in retaliation for communist attacks on the U.S. installation at Camp Holloway and the adjacent Pleiku airfield in the Central Highlands, which killed eight U.S. servicemen, wounded 109, and destroyed or damaged 20 aircraft.

Even before the attack, presidential advisors John T. McNaughton and McGeorge Bundy had favored bombing North Vietnam. After the attack in the Central Highlands, they strongly urged President Johnson to order the retaliatory raids. Johnson agreed and gave the order to commence Operation Flaming Dart, hoping that a quick and effective retaliation would persuade the North Vietnamese to cease their attacks in South Vietnam. Bundy, who had just returned from Vietnam, defended the air raids as “right and necessary.”

Senate Majority Leader Mansfield (D-Montana) and GOP leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois) supported the president’s decision, but Senators Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) attacked the action as a dangerous escalation of the war. The retaliatory raids did not have the desired effect. On February 10, the Viet Cong struck again, this time at an American installation in Qui Nhon, killing 23 Americans. Johnson quickly ordered another retaliatory strike, Flaming Dart II.

1968 – North Vietnamese used 11 Soviet-built light tanks to overrun the U.S. Special Forces camp at Lang Vei at the end of an 18-hour long siege.

1971 – Operation Dewey Canyon II ends, but U.S. units continue to provide support for South Vietnamese army operations in Laos. Operation Dewey Canyon II began on January 30 as the initial phase of Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos that was to commence on February 8th.

The purpose of the South Vietnamese operation was to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, advance to Tchepone in Laos, and destroy the North Vietnamese supply dumps in the area. In Dewey Canyon II, the vanguard of the U.S. 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, an armored cavalry/engineer task force, cleared the road from Vandegrift Combat Base (southwest of Cam Lo in the region south of the DMZ) along highway Route 9 toward Khe Sanh. The area was cleared so that 20,000 South Vietnamese troops could reoccupy 1,000 square miles of territory in northwest South Vietnam and mass at the Laotian border in preparation for the invasion of Laos.

In accordance with a U.S. congressional ban, U.S. ground forces were not to enter Laos. Instead, the only direct U.S. support permitted was long-range cross-border artillery fire, fixed-wind air strikes, and 2,600 helicopters to airlift Saigon troops and supplies.

1974 – The island nation of Grenada won independence from Britain.

1984 – While in orbit 170 miles above Earth, Navy Captain Bruce McCandless becomes the first human being to fly untethered in space when he exits the U.S. space shuttle Challenger and maneuvers freely, using a bulky white rocket pack of his own design. McCandless orbited Earth in tangent with the shuttle at speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour and flew up to 320 feet away from the Challenger.

After an hour and a half testing and flying the jet-powered backpack and admiring Earth, McCandless safely reentered the shuttle. Later that day, Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stewart tried out the rocket pack, which was a device regarded as an important step toward future operations to repair and service orbiting satellites and to assemble and maintain large space stations. It was the fourth orbital mission of the space shuttle Challenger.

1986 – President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvlaier of Haiti is flown to France on a United States jet after fleeing his country.

1990 – The Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party agrees to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70-year long monopoly of political power. The Committee’s decision to allow political challenges to the party’s dominance in Russia was yet another signal of the impending collapse of the Soviet system.

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left for a visit to the Gulf War zone.

February 7th ~ {continued...}

1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, after two years as a fugitive.

1997 – The Air Force suspended all its flights in restricted training areas on the East Coast after two close calls between National Guard jets and civilian airliners.

1999 – NASA launched the Stardust spacecraft on a mission to chase a comet in hopes of collecting a sample of comet dust.

2001 – The space shuttle Atlantis took off with the Destiny module, a laboratory compartment, for the Int’l. Space Station.

2001 – Turkish government officials state that Turkey aims to import about 80,000 barrels per day of Iraqi Kirkuk crude oil in 2002, an increase over the 50,000 barrels per day imported in 2001. The oil, which is taken into Turkey by truck, is transported by Turkey’s foreign trade under secretariat, for refining by Tupras. The trade is outside of the United Nations oil-for-food program.

2001 – In Washington Robert Pickett (47), an accountant with a history of mental illness, was shot in the leg by a Secret Service agent after brandishing a hand gun outside the White House gates.

2002 – The Bush administration allowed Geneva accords to cover Taliban fighters but not members of al Qaeda.

2003 – President Bush courted the leaders of France and China in an uphill struggle to win U.N. backing for war with Iraq.

2003 – The US moved its terror alert status to orange, the 2nd highest level. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the government had received intelligence information, corroborated by multiple sources, that Osama bin Laden’s terror organization sought to attack Americans at home or abroad during the annual hajj pilgrimage to the holy Saudi city of Mecca.

2003 – The CGC Matagorda, a 110-foot Island Class patrol boat, became the first cutter to begin the Integrated Deep Water System modernization and life extension overhaul when she was decommissioned on 7 February 2003 at the Bollinger Shipyard in Lockport, LA.

2005 – US troops manning a checkpoint found 4 Egyptian technicians who had been kidnapped the previous day in Baghdad, freeing them and arresting some of the abductors.

2005 – UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the head of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq and a senior official who dealt with contracts, following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct.

2006 – Mounir El Motassadeq, a member of the Hamburg cell led by Mohamed Atta, is ordered an early release by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The Berlin court rules there is an absence of proof in the government’s case that Motassadeq was informed about the 9/11 terrorist plot.

2008 – Space Shuttle Atlantis launches successfully on its STS-122 mission. STS-122 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS), flown by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. STS-122 marked the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS, and the 121st space shuttle flight since STS-1. The mission was also referred to as ISS-1E by the ISS program.

The primary objective of STS-122 was to deliver the European Columbus science laboratory, built by the European Space Agency (ESA), to the station. It also returned Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Daniel M. Tani to Earth. Tani was replaced on Expedition 16 by Léopold Eyharts, a French Flight Engineer representing ESA. After Atlantis’ landing, the orbiter was prepared for STS-125, the final servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.

2008 – British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri will be extradited to the United States to face terror charges.

February 8th ~

1690 – French and Indian forces attack Schnectady, New York during King William’s War. The fate of Schenectady was sealed in the middle of January, 1690, when 114 Frenchmen and 96 Sault and Algonquin Indians, started from Montreal to attack English outpost to the south. It was part of the master plan to fulfill the wishes of French King Louis XIV to “build a new empire in America”.

They came down the frozen ice on Lake Champlain and in about six days, down to a point that is known today as Fort Edward, it was here where they met with the Indian leaders and decided to attack Schenectady instead of Fort Orange. They continued on down and crossed the icy Mohawk. It was then that spies were sent to scout the Stockade and see if it was secured. Seeing the doors open, and no one guarding them, they reported back to their leaders, and the decision was made to attack. During the raid on Schenectady many men, women and children were killed, or taken captive by the French and Indians and marched up into Canada.

1698 – English Major Robert Ingoldesby arrives in New York leading a military force. Jacob Leisler contests on legal grounds the right of Ingoldesby to demand the surrender of the fort occupied by Leisler and his followers. Best known as a leader of a 1689 New York rebellion that came to bear his name, Jacob Leisler was one of late seventeenth-century New York’s most prominent merchants, land developers, and foremost exponent of Reformed religious fundamentalism and Orangist political ideology. He was intimately bound to the social, economic, and political development of New Netherland and New York from 1659, when he was employed as a nineteen-year-old in the Dutch West India Company’s Amsterdam office, until his execution for treason in New York City in May 1691.

In 1689, in the wake of England’s Glorious Revolution, he assumed the role of King William III’s governor of New York. He thereupon implemented a program based on direct popular representation that had, as contemporaries noted, wide impact from the Chesapeake to New England. The following year he called for and hosted English America’s first inter colonial congress and organized the first inter colonial military action independent of British authority.

Leisler’s administration of New York split the province into two distinct camps that were closely aligned with the Regent and Orangist factions in the United Provinces and the Whig and Tory factions in England, the legacy of which, according to some historians, is America’s unique two-party system. Other historians see in Leisler’s assumption of the New York government a forerunner of the American Revolution.

1712 – L. Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America, was born.

1770 – Alexander McDougall, the son of a Scotchman from the Hebrides, a sailor, an ardent Son of Liberty, and afterward a major-general in the Continental Army, is arrested for his authorship of a broadside criticizing the New York assembly. Titled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York,” the broadside was issued in December 1769.

When the obnoxious hand-bill was read before the Assembly by the Speaker, it was moved that the sense of the House should be taken “whether the said paper was not an infamous and scandalous libel.” When the vote was taken, twenty of the pliant Assembly voted that it was so, and only one member voted No. That member was Philip Schuyler. He boldly faced the rising storm, and by his solitary vote rebuked, in a most emphatic manner, the cowardice of those of his compeers who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in former trials.

The assembly then set about ferreting out the author of the broadside. They authorized the lieutenant governor to offer a reward of $500 for the discovery of the offender. Another individual was cited before the House, but was soon discharged. The printer of the broadside, when discovered, was brought to the bar, when the frightened man gave the name of McDougall as the author. He was taken before the House, where he would make no acknowledgment and refused to give bail. He was indicted for libel and cast into prison, where he remained fourteen weeks until arraigned for trial, when he pleaded not guilty, and gave bail.

Several months afterward he was again brought before the House, when he was defended by George Clinton, an active member of that body, who became the first governor of the State of New York. To the question whether he was the author of the hand-bill signed “A Son of Liberty,” McDougall replied, “That as the Grand Jury and the Assembly had declared the paper a libel, he could not answer; that as he was under prosecution in the Supreme Court, he conceived it would be an infraction of justice to punish twice for one offence; but that he would not deny the authority of the House to punish for a breach of privilege when no cognizance was taken of it, in another court.” His answer was declared to be a contempt, and he was again imprisoned, plead not guilty to the charges and is released on bail. This case never reaches the courts, as the colony’s witness dies in the meantime.

February 8th ~ {continued...}

1817 – Richard Stoddert Ewell (d.1872(), Lt Gen (Confederate Army), was born.

1820 – Future Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman is born in Lancaster, Ohio. On March 11, 1862, Halleck was assigned to command the Department of the Mississippi and Major-General U.S. Grant to command the army in the field. The organization and the name given to this army was the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman was placed in command of the Fifth Division of this army.

In July 1862, Sherman was assigned to command the District of Memphis. Later that year Sherman failed to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, but was with Grant in the campaign that finally ended in the capture of that city in July 1863. Sherman was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863.

In the spring of 1864, Sherman was made supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered by Grant to “create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy.” With a grand aggregate of 98,797 troops and 254 cannons, on May 4, 1864, Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign for which he is most (in)famous. Sherman wanted to split the Confederacy, and began planning his March to the Sea. He kept his most seasoned veterans, 60,000 in all and sent the rest of the troops back to Nashville to be under the command of Major-General George Thomas.

With four Corps of troops in two columns, in November 1864, Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea. Prior to leaving from Atlanta, he set fire to munitions factories, railroad yards, clothing mills, and other targets that could be resourceful to the Confederacy. Sherman never intended to burn the whole city, but the fire got out of hand and spread throughout the city. With the four Corps in two columns, Sherman cut a swath 60 miles wide marching towards Savannah, destroying anything that could aid or be resourceful to the enemy.

On December 23, 1864, Sherman sent a telegram to Lincoln stating that he was presenting him the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift. General Joe Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April 17, 1865 at Raleigh, North Carolina. After the war, Sherman was commissioned Lieutenant General in the regular army, and after Grant was elected was promoted to the grade of full general and given command of the entire U. S Army. He retired in 1883.

1837 – The Senate selected Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States. Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16.

1861 – Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Alabama.

1862 – Union General Ambrose Burnside scores a major victory when he captures Roanoke Island in North Carolina. The victory was one of the first major Union victories of the war and it gave the Yankees control of the mouth of Albemarle Sound, a key Confederate bay that allowed the Union to threaten the Rebel capital of Richmond from the south. During the war’s first winter, Union strategists focused their efforts on capturing coastal defenses to deny the Confederates sea outlets.

In August 1861, the Yankees took two key forts on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, paving the way for the campaign against Roanoke Island. On January 11, 1862, Burnside took a force of 15,000 and a flotilla of 80 ships down to the Outer Banks. The expeditionary force arrived at Hatteras Inlet on January 13, but poor weather delayed an attack for three weeks.

On February 7, Burnside landed 10,000 on the island. They were met by about 2,500 Confederates. Burnside attacked, and his force overwhelmed the outer defenses of the island. Confederate commander Colonel Henry Shaw retreated to the north end of the island but had no chance to escape. Shaw surrendered the entire force. The Yankees suffered 37 men killed and 214 wounded, while the Confederates lost 23 men killed and 62 wounded before the surrender. The Union now controlled a vital section of the coast. The victory came two days after Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry in northern Tennessee, and, for the first time in the war, the North had reason for optimism.

1863 – Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attacked a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.

1865 – Martin Robinson Delany became the 1st black major in US army.

February 8th ~ {continued...}

1865 – Officer Barton received orders from Secretary Mallory to return to the Confederacy. These orders symbolized the abandonment of the long cherished hopes of obtaining ironclad ships from Europe with which to break the ever-tightening blockade. Originally selected to be the flag officer in command of the turreted ironclads “294” and “295”, Barton had arrived in England during October 1863. The Laird rams, however, had been seized by the British government on 9 October 1863 and Barton thereafter served the Confederacy in Paris.

1865 – The first troops of General Schofield’s Twenty-Third Army Corps were landed at Fort Fisher. By mid-month the entire Corps had moved by ocean-transport from Alexandria and Annapolis to North Carolina. The protection of the Federal Navy and the mobility of water movement had allowed the redeployment of thousands of troops from Tennessee to the eastern theater for the final great struggles of the war.

1865 – In the United States, Delaware voters reject the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)

1887 – In a well-meaning but ultimately flawed attempt to assimilate Native Americans, President Grover Cleveland signs an act to end tribal control of reservations and divide their land into individual holdings. Named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, the Dawes Severalty Act reversed the long-standing American policy of allowing Indian tribes to maintain their traditional practice of communal use and control of their lands.

Instead, the Dawes Act gave the president the power to divide Indian reservations into individual, privately owned plots. The act dictated that men with families would receive 160 acres, single adult men were given 80 acres, and boys received 40 acres. Women received no land. The most important motivation for the Dawes Act was Anglo-American hunger for Indian lands. The act provided that after the government had doled out land allotments to the Indians, the sizeable remainder of the reservation properties would be opened for sale to whites. Consequently, Indians eventually lost 86 million acres of land, or 62 percent of their total pre-1887 holdings.

Still, the Dawes Act was not solely a product of greed. Many religious and humanitarian “friends of the Indian” supported the act as a necessary step toward fully assimilating the Indians into American culture. Reformers believed that Indians would never bridge the chasm between “barbarism and civilization” if they maintained their tribal cohesion and traditional ways.

1890 – USS Omaha sailors and marines assist Hodogary, Japan in subduing large fire.

1910 – The Boy Scouts of America are chartered in Washington, D.C., by William D. Boyce, who gets the idea from the English Boy Scouts established by Sir Robert Baden-Powell. In 1909, Boyce, a Chicago publisher, lost his way in a dense London fog. A boy came to his aid and, after guiding the man, refused a tip, explaining that as a Scout he would not take a tip for doing a Good Turn. This gesture by an unknown Scout inspired a meeting with Robert Baden-Powell, the British founder of the Boy Scouts. As a result, William Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910. He also created the Lone Scouts, which merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1924.

1911 – US helped overthrow President Miguel Devila of Honduras.

1915 – Director D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Civil War epic, which cost $100,000 and ran nearly three hours, used revolutionary filmmaking techniques, including multiple camera angles. The film provoked an outcry from liberals and black leaders, who objected to the film’s sympathetic portrayal of members of the Ku Klux Klan and demonization of Southern blacks. Despite attempts by several groups to ban the film, the picture became a financial success, drawing long lines to pay the unprecedented price of $2 a ticket. One of the songs in the movie’s score, “The Perfect Song,” became the first musical hit generated by a movie.

February 8th ~ {continued...}

1918 – The Army newspaper, “The Stars and Stripes”, begins publication for a second time. The first paper called The Stars and Stripes was a product of the Civil War, put out by four Union soldiers in 1861. Using the facilities of a captured newspaper plant in Bloomfield, Mo., they ran off a one-page paper that made just one appearance.

The World War I edition first appeared late in the war in Paris. It was produced weekly by an all-military staff to serve the doughboys of the American Expeditionary Force under General of the Armies John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. Some of its staff went on to journalistic fame, including Pvt. Harold Ross, who later became the founder and editor of The New Yorker magazine, and sports writer Lt. Grantland Rice.

The newspaper ceased production after the war ended, but 24 years later, on April 18, 1942, The Stars and Stripes was reborn during World War II. In a London print shop’s tiny room, a small group of servicemen founded a four-page weekly paper selling for two pence a copy (about 5 cents) which quickly grew to an eight-page daily newspaper. The Hawaii edition was launched a week after VE day (Victory in Europe, May 8, 1945) and became the forerunner of the Pacific Stars and Stripes.

1922 – President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.

1924 – The first coast-to-coast radio broadcast takes place. Bell Telephone’s vice president and chief of research spoke at a meeting of the Bond Men’s Club in a Chicago hotel. The speech was broadcast in Providence, New York, Washington, Oakland, and San Francisco and was heard by some 50 million people.

1926 – German Reichstag decided to apply for League of Nations membership.

1928 – 1st transatlantic TV image was received at Hartsdale, New York.

1928 – Scottish inventor J. Blaird demonstrated color TV.

1940 – “Harry Sawyer” (Sebold) arrives in New York to lead a German spy network in the USA. His special equipment includes “microdots”. (Sebold is a double agent, working for the FBI).

1941 – The Lend-Lease Bill is passed by the House by 260 votes to 165.

1942 – Congress advised FDR that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn’t oppose the US war effort.

1943 – The last 2000 Japanese troops are evacuated from Guadalcanal by 18 destroyers.

1943 – British General Wingate led a guerrilla force of “Chindits” against the Japanese in Burma. Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast Asia.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, the British 1st Division continues to battle German forces advancing toward Aprilia and “The Factory”.

1945 – The US 1st Cavalry Division is heavily engaged in the eastern suburbs of Manila. The US 37th Division is also fighting in the city.

1951 – Superfortress bombers attacked the key bridges at Toksil-li, Komusan, and Chuuronjang and cratered the highway paralleling the east-coast rail route. Air Force B-26s, F-51s and F-80s damaged seven bridges and 11 tunnels located mostly near Kilchu. Further south, B-26s bombed boxcars stacked up in the marshaling yard at Hamhung.

1956 – U.S. banned the launching of weather balloons because of Soviet complaints.

1957 – The United States agrees to continue military support of Saudi Arabia in return for a 5 year lease extension of Dhahran airfield which had been built by the US in 1944. Negotiations for this arrangement are concluded by President Eisenhower and King Ibn Saud.

February 8th ~ {continued...}

1958– A U.S. Navy P5M aircraft enroute from San Juan to Norfolk lost one engine and changed course to the island of San Salvador, British West Indies, to attempt a night ditching. AIRSTA Miami sent up a Coast Guard UF amphibian plane, later reinforced by a second amphibian. After contacting the disabled US Navy plane, the pilot of the first amphibian talked the Navy pilot out of attempting to ditch without benefit of illumination and alerted the commanding officer of the Coast Guard LORAN station on San Salvador for assistance after ditching.

In true Coast Guard tradition, the LORAN station’s CO borrowed a truck and an 18-foot boat to assist. The commanding officer managed to be on the scene 1 1/2 miles offshore, when the Navy P5M landed with two minutes of fuel remaining. While one of the amphibians provided additional illumination, the Navy plane was guided through a dangerous reef to a mooring, using her operative port engine. There were no casualties.

1959 – William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan (76), Office Strategic Services, died.

1962 – The Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), headed by Gen. Paul D. Harkins, former U.S. Army Deputy Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, is installed in Saigon as the United States reorganizes its military command in South Vietnam. 1963 – Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.

1963 – In Iraq the Baath Party first took power. Right-wing Baathists succeeded in mounting a coup and executed PM Gen. Abdel Karim Qassim. Abdul Salam Arif came to power. This was followed by a massacre of thousands of peasants, communists and trade unionists. The Arab Baath Socialist Party pulled off the coup and ruled Iraq for 9 months.

1965 – South Vietnamese bombed the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.

1968 – Robert F. Kennedy said that the U.S. cannot win the Vietnam War.

1968 – The National Guard at South Carolina State killed 3 black students and injured nearly 50 in the Orangeburg Massacre. The students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, S.C., during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley. In 2001 Gov. Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre.

1971 – South Vietnamese army forces invade southern Laos. Dubbed Operation Lam Son 719, the mission goal was to disrupt the communist supply and infiltration network along Route 9 in Laos, adjacent to the two northern provinces of South Vietnam. The operation was supported by U.S. airpower (aviation and airlift) and artillery (firing across the border from firebases inside South Vietnam). Observers described the drive on North Vietnam’s supply routes and depots as some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.

1973 – Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, including the chairman, Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C.

1974 – The three-man crew of “Skylab” space station returned to Earth after spending 84 days in space.

1978 – The deliberations of the Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time as members opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.

1980 – President Carter unveils a plan to re-introduce draft registration...a system of conscription that had been used during the Civil War and again during World War I with the draft mechanism in both instances being dissolved at the end of hostilities.

February 8th ~ {continued...}

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with American pilots in Saudi Arabia. Powell drew cheers as he described how allied troops would deal with the Iraqi force in Kuwait: “We’ll cut it off and kill it.”

1999 – The Senate heard closing arguments at President Clinton’s impeachment trial, with House prosecutors challenging senators to “cleanse the office” and the president’s attorney dismissing the case as one of partisan retribution.

2002 – In Afghanistan Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Taliban foreign minister, surrendered in Kandahar and was turned over to US military.

2002 – Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai met with Pakistan Pres. Musharraf in Islamabad and they agreed to bury past misunderstandings.

2003 – The US Navy conducted its last scheduled round of weapons tests on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico.

2003 – The chief UN arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad for a new round of crucial talks with Iraqi officials.

2003 – Philippine troops killed at least eight Abu Sayyaf rebels during a clash with the guerrillas in the southern town of Patikul.

2004 – In northeastern Afghanistan 4 days of fighting between rival warlords over control of the drug trade left 7 dead and 8 wounded.

2004 – US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for Croatia’s small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.

2004 – A UN team met with Iraqi leaders to discuss the feasibility of early legislative elections, and its leader pledged to do “everything possible” to help the country regain its sovereignty.

2005 – In Kuwait, Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, the alleged ringleader of a terror group accused of plotting to attack Americans and Kuwaiti security forces, died of heart failure while in prison.

2007 – The CGC Storis was decommissioned after 64 years of service.

2010 – Space Shuttle Endeavour launches successfully from Kennedy Space Center at 4:14 EST, marking the beginning of STS-130, a two-week mission to the International Space Station. STS-130 (ISS assembly flight 20A) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Space Shuttle Endeavour’s primary payloads were the Tranquility module and the Cupola, a robotic control station with six windows around its sides and another in the center, providing a 360-degree view around the station.

February 9th ~

1773 – William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the United States (March 4- April 4, 1841) was born in Charles City County, Va.

1775 – English Parliament declared the Mass. colony was in rebellion.

1799 – The USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente off the coast of Wisconsin.

1825 – As no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to elect John Quincy Adams, who won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election, as president of the United States. Adams was the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States. In the 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election.

1861 – Confederate Provisional Congress declared all laws under the US Constitution were consistent with constitution of Confederate states. The Congress elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H. Stephens vice president. Jefferson Davis’ Mexican War exploits led him to the Confederate White House.

1861 – Tennessee voted against secession.

1863 – The Intl. Committee of Red Cross (Nobel 1917, 1944, 1963) was formed in Geneva, Switzerland.

1864 – Union General George Armstrong Custer marries Elizabeth Bacon in Monroe, Michigan, while the young cavalry officer is on leave. “Libbie,” as she was known to her family, was a tireless defender of her husband’s reputation after his death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and her work helped establish him as an American hero. The two met in November 1862 at a party in Monroe. They courted while George was on winter furlough. After he retuned to service in 1863, Custer became, at 23 years old, the youngest general in the Union army. George and Libbie continued their correspondence, and when he returned to Monroe that winter, their relationship intensified.

George recognized that Libbie’s good judgment balanced the young general’s brash and impulsive behavior. They were engaged by Christmas. The bride wore a white satin dress for the nuptials, which were held in Monroe’s packed First Presbyterian Church. They honeymooned in New York, where they visited West Point, Custer’s alma mater. After spending time in New York City, they settled in Washington and the attractive couple soon became darlings of the social scene.

While her husband was in the field, Libbie worked to advance his career by hobnobbing with prominent Republican politicians. Her influence with some prominent members of Congress was helpful, and possible crucial, for Custer’s promotion to major general on April 15, 1865. After the war, Custer became a lieutenant colonel in the downsized postwar frontier army.

On June 25, 1876, he and the 210 men under his command were wiped out by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana. Libbie spent the remainder of her life building Custer’s reputation and defending his actions during his last battle. Not until after her death in 1933 did the first iconoclastic biography of her husband appear. The enduring legend of George Custer was due in large part to the tireless efforts of his widow.

1864 – 109 Union prisoners escaped through a tunnel from the Confederate Libby Prison in Richmond, Va., including Lt. James M. Wells of Michigan. In 1904 Wells published an account of the escape in the Jan. issue of McClure’s Magazine.

February 9th ~ {continued...}

1865 – U.S.S. Pawnee, Commander George B. Balch, U.S.S. Sonoma, Lieutenant Commander Thomas S. Fillebrown, and U.S.S. Daffodil, Acting Master William H. Mallard, engaged Confederate batteries on Togodo Creek, neat the North Edisto River, South Carolina. Pawnee took ten hits and the other ships two each, but the naval bombardment successfully silenced the Southern emplacements.

The action was one of several attacks along the coast that helped to clear the way and keep the South’s defenses disrupted while General Sherman’s army advanced northward. With assurance of aid from the sea when needed, Sherman could travel light and fast. On this date he was matching toward Orangeburg, on the north side of the Edisto River, and would capture it on the 12th.

1870 – The first National Weather Bureau is established by Act of Congress. It is designated as a part of the US Army Signal Corps. On July 1, 1891 it will be transferred to the Agriculture Department; on June 30, 1940 it will be merged into the Commerce Department.

1886 – President Cleveland declared a state of emergency in Seattle because of anti-Chinese violence.

1898 – Senor de Lome, Spanish Minister to the US is forced to resign when a private letter he has written to a Cuban friend is published in Hearst’s New York Journal. In the letter de Lome characterizes President McKinley as feebleminded. Publication arouses great indignation in the US.

1904 – Captain A. W. Catlin’s 49 Marines established the first permanent Marine garrison in Honolulu.

1909 – The 1st US federal legislation prohibiting narcotics was directed at opium.

1918 – Army chaplain school organized at Ft. Monroe, Va.

1922 – World War I left a mountain of debt in its wake: Great Britain owed the U.S. government over four billion dollars, while France and Italy racked up war-related loans of roughly $3 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively. Alhough President Woodrow Wilson blindly insisted on full repayment of all debts to the U.S., the reality was far thornier, as the European governments were simply too strapped for cash to make good on their loans. Britain attempted to broker a deal for the reciprocal remittance of the debts, but Wilson rebuffed the offer.

The debt dilemma festered into the early 1920s, stirring-up bitter and often anti-foreign feelings on both sides of the Atlantic. In hopes of resolving the issue, Congress convened on February 9, 1922, and voted in favor of establishing the World War Foreign Debt Commission. The Commission rounded the money owed to the U.S. to $11.5 billion and established a sixty-two-year term, at 2 percent interest, for the repayment of the debts.

However, by 1925, the U.S. could no longer ignore fiscal reality: the loans would never be repaid in full. Despite his initial refusal to scuttle the debts, President Calvin Coolidge relented and cancelled good chunks of various governments’ outstanding debts.

1940 – Sumner Welles, US Under-Secretary of State, is to visit the belligerent countries in Europe with the aim of trying to negotiate a peace settlement.

February 9th ~ {continued...}

1942 – The Normandie, regarded by many as the most elegant ocean liner ever built, burns and sinks in New York Harbor during its conversion to an Allied trip transport ship. Built in France in the early 1930s, the Normandie ruled the transatlantic passenger trade in its day. The first major liner to cross the Atlantic in less than four days, its masterful engineering was only surpassed by its design excellence. The 1,000-foot ship’s distinctive clipper-ship bow was immediately recognizable, and its elaborate architecture and decorations popularized the Moderne style.

After the American entrance into World War II, it was seized by the U.S. Navy for the Allied war effort and renamed the U.S.S. Lafayette. However, on February 9, 1942–just days before it was to be completed for trooping–a welder accidentally set fire to a pile of flammable life preservers with his torch, and by early the next morning the ship lay capsized in the harbor, a gutted wreck. It was later towed south to New Jersey and scrapped.

1942 – Chiang Kai-shek met with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in India. Detachment 101 harried the Japanese in Burma and provided close support for regular Allied forces.

1942 – Congress pushes ahead standard time for the United States by one hour in each time zone, imposing daylight saving time–called at the time “war time.” Daylight saving time, suggested by President Roosevelt, was imposed to conserve fuel, and could be traced back to World War I, when Congress imposed one standard time on the United States to enable the country to better utilize resources, following the European model.

The 1918 Standard Time Act was meant to be in effect for only seven months of the year–and was discontinued nationally after the war. But individual states continued to turn clocks ahead one hour in spring and back one hour in fall. The World War II legislation imposed daylight saving time for the entire nation for the entire year. It was repealed Sept. 30, 1945, when individual states once again imposed their own “standard” time. It was not until 1966 that Congress passed legislation setting a standard time that permanently supersedes local habits.

1943 – FDR ordered a minimal 48 hour work week in war industry.

1943 – Allied authorities declare Guadalcanal secure after Imperial Japan evacuates its remaining forces from the island, ending the Battle of Guadalcanal.

1943 – The US 161st and 132nd Regiments link up at Tenaro, too late to prevent the Japanese evacuation. The Japanese have lost 10,000 killed and the Americans have lost 1600 killed. Losses in ships and planes have been about equal. Guadalcanal has be a strategic defeat for the Japanese.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German forces capture Aprilia from the British 1st Division which continues to hold “The Factory”.

1945 – As well as the fighting in Manila, there is an attack by the US 11th Airborne Division southeast of the city near Nichols and Nielsen Fields.

1945 – The US 3rd Army is attacking near Prum on its northern flank (US 8th Corps) while US 12th Corps to the south also makes gains. Farther south still, the resistance of the German forces around Colmar comes to an end.

February 9th ~ {continued...}

1948 – The first Marine helicopters (HO3S-1s) were delivered to the Corps.

1950 – During a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican-Wisconsin) claims that he has a list with the names of over 200 members of the Department of State that are “known communists.” The speech vaulted McCarthy to national prominence and sparked a nationwide hysteria about subversives in the American government.

In fact, McCarthy never produced any solid evidence that there was even one communist in the State Department. Despite McCarthy’s inconsistency, his refusal to provide any of the names of the “known communists,” and his inability to produce any coherent or reasonable evidence, his charges struck a chord with the American people.

The months leading up to his February speech had been trying ones for America’s Cold War policies. China had fallen to a communist revolution. The Soviets had detonated an atomic device. McCarthy’s wild charges provided a ready explanation for these foreign policy disasters: communist subversives were working within the very bowels of the American government.

To be sure, McCarthy was not the first to incite anxiety about subversive communists. Congress had already investigated Hollywood for its supposed communist influences, and former State Department employee Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in January 1950 for testimony dealing with accusations that he spied for the Soviet Union during the 1930s. But McCarthy went a step further, claiming that the U.S. government, and the Department of State in particular, knew that communists were working in their midst.

“McCarthyism,” as the hunt for communists in the United States came to be known during the 1950s, did untold damage to many people’s lives and careers, had a muzzling effect on domestic debate on Cold War issues, and managed to scare millions of Americans. McCarthy, however, located no communists and his personal power collapsed in 1954 when he accused the Army of coddling known communists.

Televised hearings of his investigation into the U.S. Army let the American people see his bullying tactics and lack of credibility in full view for the first time, and he quickly lost support. The U.S. Senate censured him shortly thereafter and he died in 1957.

1951 – US, British, Australian, New Zealand and Dutch warships pounded the east and west coasts of Korea. The 1st Regiment of the ROK Capital Division entered Chumunjin.

1953 – General Walter Bedell Smith, USA, ended term as 4th director of CIA. Allen W. Dulles, became acting director of CIA and served to 1961.

1953 – The carriers USS Kearsarge, Philippine Sea and Oriskany renewed heavy air attacks against Wonsan with additional warships from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands in support.

1964 – The U.S. embassy in Moscow was stoned by Chinese and Vietnamese students.

1965 – A U.S. Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion is deployed to Da Nang. President Johnson had ordered this deployment to provide protection for the key U.S. airbase there. This was the first commitment of American combat troops in South Vietnam and there was considerable reaction around the world to the new stage of U.S. involvement in the war.

Predictably, both communist China and the Soviet Union threatened to intervene if the United States continued to apply its military might on behalf of the South Vietnamese. In Moscow, some 2,000 demonstrators, led by Vietnamese and Chinese students and clearly supported by the authorities, attacked the U.S. Embassy. Britain and Australia supported the U.S. action, but France called for negotiations.

1968 – USCG vessels helped thwart a Communist attempt to run four trawlers through the Market Time blockade off the coast of South Vietnam. The defeat of this attempted re-supply was hailed as “the most significant naval victory of the Vietnam campaign.”

February 9th ~ {continued...}

1971 – The “Apollo 14” spacecraft returned to Earth after man’s third landing on the moon.

1972 – The aircraft carrier USS Constellation joins aircraft carriers Coral Sea and Hancock off the coast of Vietnam. From 1964 to 1975, there were usually three U.S. carriers stationed in the water near Vietnam at any given time. Carrier aircraft participated in the bombing of North Vietnam and also provided close air support for U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. In 1972, the number of U.S. carriers off Vietnam increased to seven as part of the U.S. reaction to the North Vietnamese Eastertide Offensive that was launched on March 30–carrier aircraft played a major role in the air operations that helped the South Vietnamese defeat the communist invasion.

1986 – Iran crosses the Shatt al-Arab and captures the southern Faw peninsula. Saddam Hussein vows to repulse Iran “at all costs.”

1990 – The Galileo satellite flew by Venus.

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with military commanders in Saudi Arabia to evaluate a possible ground assault against Iraqi forces.

1994 – NATO delivered an ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs to remove heavy guns encircling Sarajevo, or face air strikes. Hours before the ultimatum was issued, the Bosnian Serbs agreed to withdraw their artillery and mortars from around Sarajevo.

1998 – The Pentagon announced that some 3,000 ground troops from Fort Hood, Texas, were to be sent to the Persian Gulf region over the next 10 days. The move was to discourage “creative thinking” on the part of Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

1998 – In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf informs the U.N. that Iraq can only export up to $4 billion of oil in six months. In addition, al-Sahhaf writes that a larger share of the oil sales should go towards humanitarian aid, while the amounts funding U.N. programs and a compensation fund for Persian Gulf war victims should be reduced.

2001 – The US nuclear submarine Greeneville struck the Japanese fishing boat, Ehime Maru, near Oahu with 35 people on board including 13 students. Nine people were missing. The sub was practicing a rapid ascent and had 15 civilian guests onboard. It was later revealed that civilian visitors sat at 2 of the subs 3 main controls when it surfaced. Capt. Scott Waddle, the sub skipper, was relieved of duty pending investigation.

2002 – The Afghan government released 320 captured Taliban fighters and gave each soldier the equivalent of $15 as a gesture of reconciliation.

2003 – Operation Eagle Fury, a military operation led by the United States in Afghanistan involving Bravo Company, 2nd BN, 7th SFG(A) US Army Special Forces, and USN SEALs, members of the QRF 82nd Airborne Division, and loyal Afghan fighters through 28 February, began. The aim of the operation was to corner Taliban fighters and leaders in the Bahgran Valley, located in Helmand Province, in the mountains of south-east Afghanistan. As part of this operation, in mid-February 2003, the 82nd conducted the first airdrop of fuel to support Operation Enduring Freedom. They dropped 38,088 gallons of fuel, almost certainly the first combat fuel drop since the Vietnam War.

2003 – President Bush told congressional Republicans at a policy conference that Iraq had fooled the world for more than a decade about its banned weapons and the United Nations was now facing “a moment of truth” in disarming Saddam Hussein.

2003 – The U.S. Navy ended its last planned bombing exercises on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island.

2003 – Iran reported the discovery of uranium reserves and planned production facilities for peaceful use of nuclear energy.

2003 – The United States announces the closure of its Interests Section in the Polish Embassy in Baghdad and urges all US citizens to get out of the country.

2012 – The United States Department of Defense issues new guidelines removing restrictions on use of women in combat.

February 10th ~

1676 – In King Philip’s War Narragansett and Nipmuck Indians, searching for food, raided Lancaster, Mass. Over 35 villagers were killed and 24 were taken captive including Mary Rowlandson and her 3 children. Rowlandson was freed after 11 weeks and an account of her captivity was published posthumously in 1682.

1677 – Virginia Governor William Berkley revokes the royal pardon which Colonel Herbert Jeffreys has brought for rebels of Bacon’s Rebellion. In defiance of the Crown, Berkley proceeds to execute 23 of the rebels.

1763 – The Seven Years’ War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by France, Great Britain, and Spain. In the early 1750s, France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought the country into armed conflict with the British colonies.

In 1756, the British formally declared war against France. In the first year of the war, the British suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia’s struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America.

By 1760, the French had been expelled from Canada, and by 1763 all of France’s allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India. The Seven Years’ War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763.

In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots.

1840 – A House resolution was introduced to inquire into transferring the Revenue Marine to the Navy.

1855 – US citizenship laws were amended to include all children of US parents born abroad.

1861 – Jefferson Davis receives word that he has been selected president of the new Confederate States of America. Davis was at his plantation, Brierfield, pruning rose bushes with his wife Varina when a messenger arrived from nearby Vicksburg. It was not a job he wanted, but he accepted it out of a sense of duty to his new country. Varina later wrote that she saw her husband’s face grow pale and she recalled, “Reading that telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes he told me like a man might speak of a sentence of death.”

Davis said of the job: “I have no confidence in my ability to meet its requirement. I think I could perform the function of a general.” He could see the difficulties involved in launching the new nation. “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles innumerable. We are without machinery, without means, and threatened by powerful opposition but I do not despond and will not shrink from the task before me.”

Davis was prescient in his concerns. He drew sharp criticism during the war–Alexander Stephens, the vice president, said Davis was “weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate,” and Stephens declared that he held “no more feeling of resentment toward him” than he did toward his “poor old blind and deaf dog.”

February 10th ~ {continued...}

1862 – Following the capture of Roanoke Island, a naval flotilla, including embarked Marines, under Commander Rowan in U.S.S. Delaware, pursuing Flag Officer Lynch’s retiring Confederate naval force up the Pasquotank River, engaged the gunboats and batteries at Elizabeth City, North Caro­lina. C.S.S. Ellis was captured and C.S.S. Seabird was sunk; C.S.S. Black Warrior, Fanny, and Forrest were set on fire to avoid capture; the fort and batteries at Cobb’s Point were destroyed.

Of Commander Rowan’s success, Admiral Daniel Ammen later wrote: ”Nothing more brilliant in naval ‘dash’ occurred during the entire Civil War than appears in this attack.” One example of “dash” was called to Flag Officer L. N. Goldsborough’s attention by Commander Rowan. ”I would respectfully call your attention to one incident of the engagement which reflects much credit upon a quarter gunner of the Valley City and for which Congress has provided rewards in the shape of medals. A shot passed through her magazine and exploded in a locker beyond containing fireworks.

The commander, Lieutenant Commander Chaplain, went there to aid in sup­pressing the fire, where he found John Davis, quarter gunner, seated with commendable coolness on an open barrel of powder as the only means to keep the fire out.” For demonstrating such courage, ”while at the same time passing powder to provide the division on the upper deck while under fierce enemy fire,” Davis was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by General Order 11, 3 April 1863.

1865 – The Confederate Navy began its last attempt to gain control of the James River and thus force the withdrawal of General Grant’s army by cutting its communications at City Point. The expedition of 100 officers and men was led by the audacious naval lieutenant, Charles W. Read. He loaded four torpedo boats on wagons and started overland from Drewry’s Bluff.

The plan called for marching to a place below City Point on the James River where the party would launch the boats, capture any passing tugs or steamers, and outfit these prizes with spats and torpedoes. The expedition would then ascend the river and attack and sink the Union monitors, leaving the Union gunboats at the mercy of the Confederate ironclads. The James, without which Grant would be denied transport and supplies, would be under Confederate control from Richmond to Hampton Roads.

1890 – Around 11 million acres, ceded to US by Sioux Indians, opened for settlement.

1896 – Insurgents in Cuba are suppressed when General Valeriano Wyler arrives from Spain. The “Yellow Press” quickly dubs him “the Butcher.”

1900 – Appointment of first naval governor of Guam, Commodore Seaton Schroder.

1915 – President Wilson blasted the British for using the U.S. flag on merchant ships to deceive the Germans. He also warned the Kaiser that he would hold Germany “to a strict accountability” for U.S. lives and property endangered. In Europe [Lithuania], the Germans encircled and captured 100,000 Russians near Nieman River. When the United States entered World War I, propagandist George Creel set out to stifle anti-war sentiment.

February 10th ~ {continued...}

1940 – CGCs Bibb and Duane make first transmissions as weather stations.

1940 – President Roosevelt condemns the USSR, saying the US backs Finland.

1941 – Iceland was attacked by German planes. In July, the US 5th Division will be deployed for the defense of Iceland.

1942 – The war halted civilian car production at Ford. Henry Ford opposed America’s entry into World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor, which inspired him to begin an all-out effort to manufacture planes and vehicles for the war effort.

1942 – The former French liner Normandie capsized in New York Harbor a day after it caught fire while being refitted for the U.S. Navy.

1942 – Japanese submarine launches a brutal attack on Midway, a coral atoll used as a U.S. Navy base. It was the fourth bombing of the atoll by Japanese ships since December 7. The capture of Midway was an important part of the broader Japanese strategy of trying to create a defensive line that would stretch from the western Aleutian Islands in the north to the Midway, Wake, Marshall, and Gilbert Islands in the south, then west to the Dutch West Indies.

Occupying Midway would also mean depriving the United States of a submarine base and would provide the perfect launching pad for an all-out assault on Hawaii. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack and commander in chief of the Japanese combined fleet, knew that only the utter destruction of U.S. naval capacity would ensure Japanese free reign in the Pacific. Japanese bombing of the atoll by ship and submarine failed to break through the extraordinary defense put up by Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, who used every resource available to protect Midway and, by extension, Hawaii. Yamamoto persevered with an elaborate warship operation, called Mi, launched in June, but the Battle of Midway was a disaster for Japan, and was the turning point for ultimate American victory in the Pacific.

1944 – Australian forces advancing from Sio link up with American forces near Saidor. Allied forces now occupy most of the Huon Peninsula.

1945 – German forces open the Schwammenauel Dam, opposite the US 1st Army, in a partially successful attempt to delay the advance of the American forces nearby.

1945 – Task Force 58, with Marine Fighter Squadrons 123, 216, 217, 212, and 451 on board carriers, attacked Tokyo and provided air cover support for Iwo Jima landing forces. They also bombed and strafed Okinawa.

1951 – Eighth Army units retook Inchon and Kimpo airfield. U.N. patrols entered Seoul.

1952 – Operation CLAM-UP began as a moratorium and was imposed on the use of infantry patrols, indirect fire missions and close-air support. The purpose of CLAM-UP was to lure the enemy into investigating the situation and them ambushing them. Unfortunately, the communists did not respond to the bait.

February 10th ~ {continued...}

1953 – General James A. Van Fleet retired. General Maxwell D. Taylor assumed command of Eighth Army.

1954 – Eisenhower warned against US intervention in Vietnam.

1955 – Bell Aircraft displayed a fixed-wing vertical takeoff plane. An ingenious blend of airplane and helicopter features, the Fairey Rotodyne was a case of almost–but not quite enough.

1960 – USS Sargo (SSN-583) surfaces at North Pole.

1962 – Francis Gary Powers, an American who was shot down over the Soviet Union while flying a CIA spy plane in 1960, is released by the Soviets in exchange for the U.S. release of a Russian spy. The exchange concluded one of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War. Powers had been a pilot of one of the high altitude U-2 spy planes developed by the United States in the late-1950s.

Supposedly invulnerable to any Soviet antiaircraft defense, the U-2s flew numerous missions over Russia, photographing military installations. On May 1, 1960, Powers’ U-2 was shot down by a Soviet missile. Although Powers was supposed to engage the plane’s self-destruct system (and commit suicide with poison furnished by the CIA), he and much of the plane were captured. The United States at first denied involvement with the flight, but had to admit that Powers was working for the U.S. government when the Soviets presented incontrovertible evidence.

In retaliation, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev called off a scheduled summit with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Powers was put on trial, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In February 1962, the Soviet Union announced that it was freeing Powers because of a petition from the prisoner’s family. American officials made it quite clear, however, that Abel was being exchanged for Powers-a spy-for-a-spy trade, not a humanitarian gesture on the part of the Soviet Union. The U.S. government announced that in exchange for Powers, it would release Col. Rudolf Abel, a Russian convicted of espionage in the United States.

On February 10, Abel and Powers were brought to the Gilenicker Bridge that linked East and West Berlin for the exchange. After the men were successfully exchanged, Powers was flown back to the United States. In an announcement, the Soviet Union declared that its release of Powers was partially motivated by “a desire to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.” U.S. officials were cautious in evaluating the Soviet overture, but did note that the action could certainly help lessen Cold War tensions. The exchange was part of the ongoing diplomatic dance between Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy.

Both men seemed earnestly to desire better relations, and the February 1962 exchange was no doubt part of their efforts. Just a few months later, however, the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the Soviets helped construct missile bases in Cuba, erased the memory of these diplomatic overtures and brought the two powers to the brink of nuclear conflict.

1965 – Viet Cong guerrillas blow up the U.S. barracks at Qui Nhon, 75 miles east of Pleiku on the central coast, with a 100-pound explosive charge under the building. A total of 23 U.S. personnel were killed, as well as two Viet Cong. In response to the attack, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a retaliatory air strike operation on North Vietnam.

1966 – Protester David Miller was convicted of burning his draft card.

1967 – The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities, is ratified. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President, as opposed to an Acting President, if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency.

February 10th ~ {continued...}

1988 – A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the Army’s ban on homosexuals, saying gays were entitled to the same protection against discrimination as racial minorities. However, the ruling was later set aside by the full appeals court.

1991 – In a broadcast on Baghdad Radio, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein praised his countrymen for withstanding attacks by allied warplanes and rockets.

1992 – Retired Coast Guard Chief Journalist Alex Haley, internationally noted author and the first person to ever hold that rate in the Coast Guard, dies of a heart attack.

1997 – The Army suspended its top-ranking enlisted soldier, Army Sgt. Major Gene McKinney, following sexual misconduct allegations.

1999 – US and British jets again hit Iraqi air defense sites. It was reported that Saddam Hussein has offered $14,000 to air defense troops who shoot down a US or British plane.

2000 – In Yemen tribesmen released Kenneth White (54), an American oil executive, who was kidnapped a month ago.

2001 – The space shuttle Atlantis’ astronauts installed the $1.4 billion Destiny laboratory on the international space station.

2003 – In Kabul, Afghanistan, Germany and the Netherlands took control of the 22-nation peacekeeping force (ISAF) charged with keeping order, replacing Turkey.

2003 – A Chinese court convicted U.S.-based dissident Wang Bingzhang on spying and terrorism charges and sentenced him to life in prison.

2003 – France, Germany and Belgium blocked NATO efforts to begin planning for possible Iraqi attacks against Turkey. Turkey responds and becomes the first country in NATO’s 53-year history to publicly invoke Article 4 of the alliance’s mutual defense treaty which binds the 19 allies to talks when one perceives a threat to its “territorial integrity, political independence or security”.

2003 – Iraq agreed to allow U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons; President Bush, however, brushed aside Iraqi concessions as too little, too late.

2004 – The US broke ground for a new U.S. Embassy compound in the Chinese capital, billed by the American government as the largest State Department project ever built on foreign soil.

2004 – Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi met with Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi, and the United States said it had restored diplomatic contacts with the country. In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks with the Libyan foreign minister.

2005 – New York civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted of smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients, radical Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his terrorist disciples on the outside. In 2006 Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison.

2005 – North Korea announced for the first time that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks anytime soon, saying it needs the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.

2007 – David Petraeus was made commander of Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I), the four-star post that oversees all coalition forces in country, replacing General George Casey. In his new position, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq and employed them in the new “Surge” strategy outlined by the Bush administration. 2007 also saw a sharp increase in insurgent chlorine bombings.

2008 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also arrives in Iraq from a Germany security conference to meet with Iraqi leaders, General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.

2013 – American general Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. takes over command of NATO forces in Afghanistan, replacing John R. Allen.

2015 – The Obama Administration announces the creation of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, a new United States federal government agency that will be a fusion center between existing agencies and the private sector for real-time use against cyber attacks.

February 11th ~

1752 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the 1st hospital in the US, opened.

1765 – The term “Sons of Liberty” is used in a letter written by Jared Ingersoll, Sr. The term would soon be adopted by American patriots. In turn, Ingersoll got the phrase from a speech in the House of Commons by Isaac Barré. A vigorous opponent of the taxation of America, Barré displayed his mastery of invective in his championship of the American cause. Another member, Charles Townshend, in a debate on 6 February, spoke scornfully: “And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength & opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

Townshend’s speech prompted Col. Barré, to defend us: “They planted by your care? No! your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country . . . . They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them . . . men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them . . . .They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defense . . . . The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated.”

Despite the speech, the House of Commons ended up approving the Stamp Act. Barré was soon proven right, however. The Americans were “jealous of their liberties” and would “vindicate them”. Ingersoll, having witnessed this exchange, wrote his letter to Governor Thomas Fitch of Connecticut. He later claimed that he was the only man to report the contents of at least one notable speech back to America. Thus, Ingersoll took credit for introducing the phrase “Sons of Liberty” into the American lexicon.

1766 – The Stamp Act was declared unconstitutional in Virginia.

1768 – Samuel Adams composes a letter to the other colonial governments outlining the sept taken in Massachusetts to oppose the Townshend Acts. The letter complains of “taxation without representation” and warns that the English may tamper with colonial governance to make it more independent of the colonies. Finally, the letter calls for united action by the colonies against the British government.

1790 – The first petition to Congress for emancipation of the slaves was made by the Society of Friends.

1794 – A session of US Senate was 1st opened to the public.

1805 – Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian interpreter and guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition, gives birth to her first child, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first met the young Sacagawea while spending the winter among the Mandan Indians along the Upper Missouri River, not far from present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. Still only a teenager, Sacagawea was the wife of a French-Canadian fur trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau, who had purchased her from Hidatsa kidnappers the year before.

1808 – Anthracite coal was 1st burned as fuel, by Jesse Fell, experimentally, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Jesse Fell was an early political leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He was the first to successfully burn anthracite on an open air grate. His method and ‘discovery’ in 1808 led to the widespread use of coal as the fuel source that helped to foster America’s industrial revolution. He lived in the Fell House and Tavern until his death.

1809 – Robert Fulton patented the steamboat.

1811 – President Madison prohibited trade with Britain for 3rd time in four years.

February 11th ~ {continued...}

1812 – Alexander Hamilton Stephens (d.1883), Vice Pres (Confederacy), was born near Crawfordville, Georgia. Stephens, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1859, was a delegate at the Montgomery meeting that formed a new union of the seceded states. He was elected vice president to Jefferson Davis on February 9, 1861. Stephens was later elected governor of Georgia in 1882 but died after serving just a few months.

1815 – News of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, finally reached the United States.

1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry pulled into Edo Bay, Japan, 12 months early with 9 warships to begin talks for a treaty.

1856 – President Franklin Pierce warns “border ruffians’ and the Free State men in Kansas to stop fighting. In May 1854 the Missouri Compromise, which ad stated that slavery would not extend above the 36’30” line was repealed in favor of Stephen Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska. Compromise which held that popular sovereignty in each territory would decide the slavery issue. Pro-slavery Missourians flooded into Kansas nd eventually there were two governments in Kansas Territory, each outlawing the other.

1861 – The US House unanimously passed a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.

1862 – The Secretary of the Navy directs formation of organization to evaluate new inventions and technical development which eventually led to National Academy of Science.

1865 – U.S.S. Keystone State, Aries, Montgomery, Howquah, Emma, and Vicksburg engaged Half Moon Battery, situated on the coastal flank of the Confederate defense line which crossed the Cape Fear Peninsula six miles above Fort Fisher. This bombardment contained General Hoke’s division while General Schofield’s troops moved up the beach and behind their rear. Deteriorating weather, however, prevented the landing of the pontoons, and Schofield withdrew his troops to the Fort Fisher lines. Porter’s gunboats also engaged the west bank batteries.

1887 – President Grover Cleveland vetoes the Dependent Pension Bill. The bill had passed Congress in January and would have provided a pension to all honorably discharged veterans who had served a minimum of 90 days in the Army if they are manual laborers and unable to earn a living. Later, when the country experiences a deepening of the economic recession, the bill will pass as a rider.

1890 – President Benjamin Harrison orders 11 million acres of Sioux Reservation territory open for settlement. This will eventually lead to a revitalization movement known as the “Ghost Dance” that sprang up among the Sioux Indians of the western plains. These rituals held that an Indian Spirit soon would destroy the whites and return stolen lands. Federal troops will confront a band of Sioux-a non-violent group who had left the reservation fearful of being caught up in the Indian awakening-at Wounded Knee in the Dakota badlands.

In this last battle waged on December 29, 1890, the U.S. Army massacred 150 Sioux men, women, and children; only 25 soldiers were killed. With the battle of Wounded Knee and the final distribution of Indian lands, the frontier era of American history had finally passed.

1904 – President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed strict neutrality for the U.S. in the Russo-Japanese War.

1904 – Marines landed at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

1920 – Daniel “Chappie” James was born on this date in 1920. He was an African American pilot and military commander. From Pensacola, Florida, he learned to fly while attending the Tuskegee Institute and after graduation in 1942 continued civilian flight training until he received appointment as a Cadet in the Army Air Corps in January 1943. He was commissioned in July 1943 and throughout the remainder of World War II he trained pilots for the all-Black 99th Pursuit Squadron while working in other assignments.

February 11th ~ {continued...}

1939 – A Lockheed P-38 Lightning flies from California to New York in 7 hours 2 minutes.

1942 – German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, as well as the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, escape from the French port of Brest and make a mad dash up the English Channel to safety in German waters. The Gneisenau and Scharnhorst had been anchored at Brest since March 1941. The Prinz Eugen had been tied to the French port since the Bismarck sortie in May 1941, when it and the battleship Bismarck made their own mad dash through the Atlantic and the Denmark Strait to elude Royal Navy gunfire. All three were subject to periodic bombing raids–and damage–by the British, as the Brits attempted to ensure that the German warships never left the French coast.

But despite the careful watch of British subs and aircraft, German Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax launched Operation Cerberus to lead the ships out of the French port. The Germans, who had controlled and occupied France since June 1940, drew British fire deliberately, and the Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Prinz Eugen used the resulting skirmish as a defensive smoke screen. Six German destroyers and 21 torpedo boats accompanied the ships for protection as they moved north late on the night of February 11th.

In the morning, German planes provided air cover as well; ace pilot Adolf Galland led 250 other fighters in an unusually well coordinated joint effort of the German navy and Luftwaffe. The British Royal Air Force also coordinated its attack with the Royal Navy Swordfish squadron, but a late start–the RAF did not realize until the afternoon of February 12 that the German squadron had pushed out to sea–and bad weather hindered their effort. All three German warships made it to a German port on February 13, although the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst had been damaged by British mines along the way.

The British lost 40 aircraft and six Navy Swordfish in the confrontation, while the Germans lost a torpedo boat and 17 aircraft. The “Channel Dash,” as it came to be called, was extremely embarrassing to the British, as it happened right under their noses. They would get revenge of a sort, though: British warships sunk the Scharnhorst in December 1944 as the German ship attempted to attack a Russian convoy. The Gneisenau was destroyed in a bombing raid while still in port undergoing repairs, and the Prinz Eugen survived the war, but was taken over by the U.S. Navy at war’s end.

1943 – General Eisenhower was selected to command the allied armies in Europe.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German forces capture “The Factory” from the British 1st Division. Meanwhile forces of the US 5th Army continue to engage German defenders around Cassino. The US 34th Division makes an unsuccessful attempt to approach the Cassino monastery from the north.

1945 – A week of intensive bargaining by the leaders of the three major Allied powers ends in Yalta, a Soviet resort town on the Black Sea. It was the second conference of the “Big Three” Allied leaders–U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin–and the war had progressed mightily since their last meeting, which had taken place in Tehran in late 1943. What was then called the Crimea conference was held at the old summer palace of Czar Nicholas II on the outskirts of Yalta, now a city in the independent Ukraine.

With victory over Germany three months away, Churchill and Stalin were more intent on dividing Europe into zones of political influence than in addressing military considerations. Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation administered by the three major powers and France and was to be thoroughly demilitarized and its war criminals brought to trial. The Soviets were to administer those European countries they liberated but promised to hold free elections. The British and Americans would oversee the transition to democracy in countries such as Italy, Austria, and Greece. Final plans were made for the establishment of the United Nations, and a charter conference was scheduled to begin in San Francisco in April.

1945 – Elements of the US 8th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) capture the important road junction at Prum.

February 11th ~ {continued...}

1951 – U.N. forces pushed north across the 38th parallel once again. Forty-five years after shipping out to fight in Korea, Col. Harry Summers, Jr., got new insight into what the war had been all about.

1951 – General MacArthur informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “It is evident that the enemy has lost his chance for achieving a decisive military decision in Korea.” This statement came on the eve of the Chinese fourth phase offensive.

1951 – The Chinese fourth-phase offensive was launched against X Corps in central Korea along the Hoengsong-Wonju axis. The U.S. 2nd and 7th Infantry Divisions and the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team suffered 2,018 casualties during the Battle of Hoengsong. The largest single loss of U.S. soldiers happened when 530 men of the 15th and 503rd Field Artillery Battalions were completely overrun.

1952 – Captain Margaret G. Blake, the first Army nurse in Korea to earn the Bronze Star Medal, and one of the very few in any service to return voluntarily to Korea, finished her second tour of duty.

1953 – President Eisenhower refused a clemency appeal for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1962 – Nine U.S. and South Vietnamese crewmen are killed in a SC-47 crash about 70 miles north of Saigon. The aircraft was part of Operation Farm Gate, a mission that had initially been designed to provide advisory support in assisting the South Vietnamese Air Force to increase its capability. In December, President John F. Kennedy expanded the Farm Gate mission to include limited combat missions by the U.S. Air Force pilots in support of South Vietnamese ground forces–the downed aircraft was part of this expanded effort.

1964 – Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blamed the U.S. for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.

1965 – President Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam. The American “Rolling Thunder” bombing campaign intensified.

1971 – Eighty-seven countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union, sign the Seabed Arms Control Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons on the ocean floor in international waters.

1973 – Due to “Vietnamization” the post of Senior Coast Guard Officer, Vietnam was discontinued.

1973 – First release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam takes place.

1974 – Communist-led rebels showered artillery fire into a crowded area of Phnom Penh, killing 139 and injuring 46 others. As the war in Vietnam wound down with the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the war in neighboring Cambodia was going from bad to worse.

1979 – Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, nine days after the religious leader returned to his home country following 15 years of exile. Premier Bakhtiar resigned.

1991 – President Bush met with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell, who had just returned from the Gulf region. Afterward, Bush said he would hold off on a ground war against Iraq for the time being, saying allied air strikes had been “very, very effective.”

1995 – The space shuttle Discovery landed at Cape Canaveral, Fla., ending a historic rendezvous mission with Russia’s Mir space station.

1997 – Space shuttle Discovery was launched on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

1999 – US jets struck 7 Iraqi air defense sites.

February 11th ~ {continued...}

2000 – The space shuttle Endeavour lifted into orbit with a crew of six under commander Kevin Kregel and a mission to map the Earth.

2000 – An early morning bomb exploded in NYC on the corner of Wall and Water streets in front of an office building owned by Barclay’s Bank. One person was slightly injured.

2001 – Two space commanders opened the door to Destiny, the American-made science laboratory attached the day before to the international space station.

2002 – The FBI issued a warning for a possible terrorist assault and identified Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeei, a Yemeni national, as a possible attacker.

2002 – In Afghanistan opium vendors shut down in Kandahar under US military orders.

2002 – In Jordan Raed Hijazi (33) was convicted and sentenced to be hung for plotting to blow up tourist sites during millennium celebrations.

2003 – Addressing a historic rift within NATO, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional hearing the future of the military alliance was at risk if it failed to confront the crisis with Iraq.

2003 – The purported voice of Osama bin Laden, broadcast over the Al Jazeera network, told his followers to help Saddam Hussein fight Americans.

2004 – Philippine troops rescued Alastair Joseph Onglingswan (35), a kidnapped American businessman, who was chained by his neck and feet for 22 days by a lone abductor.

2005 – CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit amid a furor over remarks he’d made about journalists being targeted by the U.S. military in Iraq.

2008 – The United States files charges against six alleged al-Qaeda operatives including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks, seeking the death penalty for war crimes and murder.

2009 – Miami-based LEDET (Law Enforcement Detachment) 405, operating as part of Combined Task Force (CTF) 151 and conducting counter-piracy operations aboard USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) and USS Mahan (DDG-72) in the Gulf of Aden, assisted in the apprehension of 16 suspected pirates in a 24-hour period.

2010 – The European Parliament rejects an agreement that would have granted the United States Terrorist Finance Tracking Program unlimited access to the SWIFT bank transactions database.

2010 – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran is now a nuclear state, following a successful 20% uranium enrichment.

2014 – The Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer USS Donald Cook of the U.S. Navy arrives at a Spanish base in Rota to begin deployment with the U.S. 6th Fleet.

2015 – The United States, United Kingdom, and France close their Yemeni embassies and evacuate their staff due to terrorist activities and continued unrest.

February 12th ~

1733 – English colonists led by James Oglethorpe founded Savannah, Ga. Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe sailed up the Savannah River with 144 English men, women and children and in the name of King George II chartered the Georgia Crown Colony. He created the town of Savannah, to establish an ideal colony where silk and wine would be produced, based on a grid of streets around six large squares.

1793 – Congress passes the first fugitive slave law, requiring all states, including those that forbid slavery, to forcibly return slaves who have escaped from other states to their original owners. The laws stated that “no person held to service of labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such labor or service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

As Northern states abolished slavery, most relaxed enforcement of the 1793 law, and many passed laws ensuring fugitive slaves a jury trial. Several Northern states even enacted measures prohibiting state officials from aiding in the capture of runaway slaves or from jailing the fugitives. This disregard of the first fugitive slave law enraged Southern states and led to the passage of a second fugitive slave law as part of the Compromise of 1850 between the North and South. The second fugitive slave law called for the return of slaves “on pain of heavy penalty” but permitted a jury trial under the condition that fugitives be prohibited from testifying in their own defense.

Notable fugitive slave trials, such as the Dred Scott case of 1857, stirred up public opinion on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Meanwhile, fugitive slaves circumvented the law through the “Underground Railroad,” which was a network of persons, primarily free African Americans, who helped fugitives escape to freedom in the Northern states or Canada.

1802 – Revenue Marine (Revenue Cutter Service) has 38 commissioned officers in service, 9 captains, 10 first mates, 9 second mates and 10 third mates.

1806 – The Senate, acting on President Madison’s reports on British naval hostilities, issues a resolution condemning British actions as “unprovoked aggression” and “a violation of neutral rights.” The resolution has no effect on British policies.

1809 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the US, was born in Hardin County (present-day Larue County), Kentucky. Lincoln was president of the United States during one of the most turbulent times in American history. Although roundly criticized during his own time, he is recognized as one of history’s greatest figures who preserved the Union during the Civil War and proved that democracy could be a lasting form of government.

Lincoln entered national politics as a Whig congressman from Illinois, but he lost his seat after one term due to his unpopular position on the Mexican War and the extension of slavery into the territories. The 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Senate gave him a national reputation. In 1860, Lincoln became the first president elected from the new Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865.

1825 – William McIntosh, Chief of the Creek nation, signs the Treaty of Indian Springs ceding all Creek lands in Georgia to the United States and agreeing to vacate by 1 September 1826. A Creek mob, denouncing McIntosh as a traitor, kills him.

1828 – Confederate General Robert Ransom, Jr., is born in Warren County, North Carolina. Ransom attended West Point, graduating 18th out of 44 in 1850. For the next decade, he served on the frontier and as an instructor at his alma mater. Ransom was in Kansas during the violent clashes between pro- and anti-slave forces after the creation of the territory in 1854. He was a captain when North Carolina seceded in April 1861, receiving the same rank in the Confederate cavalry. Within a year, Ransom was a brigadier general serving in North Carolina, where he saw action against Union coastal raiders near Goldsboro.

He was transferred to Virginia to defend Richmond, and his unit fought during the Seven Days battles in June and July 1862. Ransom commanded a brigade at Antietam in September, and a division at Fredericksburg in December. He returned to command troops in North Carolina in early 1863 and earned a promotion to major general. He next commanded the District of Southeast Virginia, where his troops guarded the railroads serving the capital at Richmond. Ransom went to Tennessee in the fall of 1863 with General James Longstreet during the attempt to save Tennessee from the Yankees. He fought at Chickamauga and the Knoxville campaign with Longstreet before returning to command the Richmond defenses in 1864.

He commanded a force that faced Union General Benjamin Butler southeast of the city, and his leadership helped bottle Butler’s force inside of a bend in the James River called the Bermuda Hundred. That summer, Ransom served with General Jubal Early during the Shenandoah Valley campaign. He ended the war commanding troops at Charleston, South Carolina. Ransom worked as a civil engineer and a farmer in his home state after the war, and he died at New Bern, North Carolina, in 1892.