December 1st ~

1641 – Massachusetts became the 1st colony to give statutory recognition to slavery. It was followed by Connecticut in 1650 and Virginia in 1661.

1814 – The shallow-draft steamboat Enterprise, completed in Pittsburgh under the direction of keelboat captain Henry Miller Shreve, left for New Orleans to deliver guns and ammunition to General Jackson.

1824 – Congress turns over the presidential election to the House of Representatives, as dictated by the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In the November 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. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams–the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States–received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Virginia won 37 electoral votes.

As dictated by the Constitution, the election was then turned over to the House of Representatives. The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House. Representative Henry Clay, who was disqualified from the House vote as a fourth-place candidate, agreed to use his influence to have John Quincy Adams elected. Clay and Adams were both members of a loose coalition in Congress that by 1828 became known as the National Republicans, while Jackson’s supporters were later organized into the Democratic Party.

Thanks to Clay’s backing, on February 9, 1825, the House elected Adams as president of the United States. When Adams then appointed Clay to the top cabinet post of secretary of state, Jackson and his supporters derided the appointment as the fulfillment of a corrupt agreement. With little popular support, Adams’ time in the White House was largely ineffectual, and the so-called Corrupt Bargain haunted his administration. In 1828, he was defeated in his reelection bid by Andrew Jackson, who received more than twice as many electoral votes than Adams.

1842 – Midshipman Philip Spencer (18) on the brig-of-war Somers, the 1st US naval officer condemned for mutiny, was hanged. Spencer was the son of John Canfield Spencer, the Sec. of War under Pres. John Tyler. Boatswain Samuel Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small also hanged.

1863 – Belle Boyd, a Confederate spy, was released from prison in Washington. One of the most famous of Confederate spies, Belle Boyd served the Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Born in Martinsburg-now part of West Virginia-she operated her spying operations from her fathers hotel in Front Royal, providing valuable information to Generals Turner Ashby and “Stonewall” Jackson during the spring 1862 campaign in the Valley.

The latter general then made her a captain and honorary aide-de-camp on his staff. As such she was able to witness troops reviews. Betrayed by her lover, she was arrested on July 29, 1862, and held for a month in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. Exchanged a month later, she was in exile with relatives for a time but was again arrested in June 1863 while on a visit to Martinsburg.

On December 1, 1863, she was released, suffering from typhoid, and was then sent to Europe to regain her health. The blockade runner she attempted to return on was captured and she fell in love with the prize master, Samuel Hardinge, who later married her in England after being dropped from the navy’s rolls for neglect of duty in allowing her to proceed to Canada and then England. Hardinge attempted to reach Richmond, was detained in Union hands, but died soon after his release. While in England Belle Boyd Hardinge had a stage career and published Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. She died while touring the western United States.

1864 – Franklin-Nashville Campaign began with an action at Owen’s Crossroads, TN.

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1909 – President Taft severed official relations with Nicaragua’s Zelaya government, and declared support for the revolutionaries.

1914 – Following the outbreak of World War I, the nation’s markets temporarily shut down to safeguard against a debilitating bear run. But, this day, traders were back at it again, at least on the West Coast, where the San Francisco Stock & Bond Exchange became the first U.S. exchange to re-open its doors for business.

1918 – British, French, and US forces move into the German Rhineland in accordance with the armistice agreement made on November 11. By December 9th the Americans will have established their occupation headquarters at Koblenz.

1921 – In first flight of airship filled with helium, Blimp C-7 piloted by LCDR Ralph F. Wood left Norfolk, VA, for Washington, DC.

1941 – The first Civil Air Patrol in the U.S. was organized. Civil Air Patrol was conceived in the late 1930s by legendary New Jersey aviation advocate Gill Robb Wilson, who foresaw aviation’s role in war and general aviation’s potential to supplement America’s military operations. With the help of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the new Civil Air Patrol was established just days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

The CAP insignia, a red three-bladed propeller in the Civil Defense white-triangle-in-blue-circle, began appearing on private aircraft everywhere. CAP initially planned only on liaison and reconnaissance flying, but the civilian group’s mission expanded when German submarines began to prey on American ships off the coast of the United States and CAP planes began carrying bombs and depth charges.” A CAP crew first interrupted a sub attack on a flight out of Rehoboth Beach, saving a tanker off Cape May, N.J. Since radio calls for military bombers were often unproductive, unarmed CAP fliers dived in mock attacks to force subs to break and run. The CAP coastal patrol flew 24 million miles, found 173 submarines, attacked 57, hit 10 and sank two.

By Presidential Executive Order, CAP became an auxiliary of the Army Air Forces in 1943. A German commander later confirmed that coastal U-boat operations were withdrawn from the United States “because of those damned little red and yellow airplanes.” In all, CAP flew a half-million hours during the war, and 64 CAP aviators lost their lives in the line of duty. The U.S. Air Force was created as an independent armed service in 1947, and CAP was designated as its official civilian auxiliary the following year.

1941 – Japanese emperor Hirohito signed a declaration of war. Japan’s Tojo rejected U.S. proposals for a Pacific settlement as fantastic and unrealistic.

1942 – Nationwide gasoline rationing went into effect in the United States.

1943 – The Teheran Conference ends. The decision to invade western Europe in May 1944 is confirmed. Plans for an invasion of southern France are also agreed upon. Stalin promises to join the war against Japan once Germany has been defeated. There are rumors that the American accommodations were bugged by Soviet agents.

1943 – The first operational use of the American P-51D Mustang is in a fighter sweep over occupied Belgium. The P-51 was designed as the NA-73 in 1940 at Britain’s request. The design showed promise and AAF purchases of Allison-powered Mustangs began in 1941 primarily for photo recon and ground support use due to its limited high-altitude performance. But in 1942, tests of P-51s using the British Rolls-Royce “Merlin” engine revealed much improved speed and service ceiling, and in Dec. 1943, Merlin-powered P-51Bs first entered combat over Europe.

Providing high-altitude escort to B-17s and B-24s, they scored heavily over German interceptors and by war’s end, P-51s had destroyed 4,950 enemy aircraft in the air, more than any other fighter in Europe. Mustangs served in nearly every combat zone, including the Pacific where they escorted B-29s to Japan from Iwo Jima. Between 1941-5, the AAF ordered 14,855 Mustangs (including A-36A dive bomber and F-6 photo recon versions), of which 7,956 were P-51Ds. During the Korean War, P-51Ds were used primarily for close support of ground forces until withdrawn from combat in 1953.

1944 – Office of Air-Sea Rescue set up in the Coast Guard. The Secretary of the Navy at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff early in 1944 established the Air-Sea Rescue Agency, an inter-department and inter-agency body, for study and improvement of rescue work with the Commandant of Coast Guard as head.

1947 – The Corps’ first helicopter squadron, HMX-1, was commissioned at Quantico. HMX-1’s greatest distinction may be its special place in history as the first U.S. Marine Corps helicopter squadron ever established. The establishment of HMX-1 started a revolution in Marine Corps aviation and tactical doctrine. On 23 May 1948, the first airborne ship-to-shore movement began at Onslow Beach, Camp Lejeune, N.C. The first wave of the assault commenced with all five HO3S-1s taking off from Palau and arriving 30 minutes later in the landing zone. HMX-1 pilots made continuous flights, putting 66 Marines in the right place at the right time.

With the helicopter firmly entrenched in Marine warfighting doctrine, HMX-1’s mission evolved into developmental testing of new helicopter systems and products destined for the Fleet Marine Force. Today HMX-1 is the Marine unit tasked with helicopter transportation of the President.

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1950 – Eighth Army and X Corps began withdrawing in the face of the massive Chinese offensive. The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, the British 27th Brigade and the Turkish Brigade, began to fight their way south from the Kunu-ri area through the bloody Gauntlet, under continuous fire from Chinese forces occupying the terrain commanding the route to safety. The 2nd Infantry Division was virtually destroyed during the Battle of Kunu-ri where over 4,000 men were lost. The division’s overall combat capability was rated equivalent to a single regimental combat team by the end of the action. The ROK Capitol Division withdrew under heavy pressure to Pukchong.

1950 – Task Force MacLean/Faith, composed of elements of the U.S. 7th Infantry Division’s 31st and 32nd Infantry Regiments, was annihilated east of the Chosin/Changjin Reservoir. Only 385 soldiers of its 3,200-man force were able-bodied following their withdrawal.

1955 – In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1959 – Bureau of Ordnance (BUORD) merges with Bureau of Aeronautics (BUAER) to form the Bureau of Naval Weapons (BUWEPS).

1959 – Twelve nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign the Antarctica Treaty, which bans military activity and weapons testing on that continent. It was the first arms control agreement signed in the Cold War period. Since the 1800s a number of nations, including Great Britain, Australia, Chile, and Norway, laid claim to parts of Antarctica. These competing claims led to diplomatic disputes and even armed clashes.

In 1948, Argentine military forces fired on British troops in an area claimed by both nations. Incidents of that sort, together with evidence that the Soviet Union was becoming more interested in Antarctica, spurred the United States to propose that the continent be made a trustee of the United Nations. This idea was rejected when none of the other nations with interests on the continent would agree to cede their claims of sovereignty to an international organization.

By the 1950s, some officials in the United States began to press for a more active U.S. role in Antarctica, believing that the continent might have military potential as an area for nuclear tests. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, took a different approach. U.S. diplomats, working with their Soviet counterparts, hammered out a treaty that set aside Antarctica as a military-free zone and postponed settling territorial claims for future debate. There could be no military presence on the continent, and no testing of weapons of any sort, including nuclear weapons. Scientific ventures were allowed, and scientists would not be prohibited from traveling through any of the areas claimed by various nations. A dozen nations signed the document. Since the treaty did not directly tamper with issues of territorial sovereignty in Antarctica, the signers included all nations with territorial claims on the continent.

As such, the treaty marked a small but significant first step toward U.S.-Soviet arms control and political cooperation. The treaty went into effect in June 1961, and set the standard for the basic policies that continue to govern Antarctica.

1964 – In two crucial meetings (on this day and two days later) at the White House, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers agree, after some debate, to a two-phase bombing plan for North Vietnam. Phase I would involve air strikes by Air Force and Navy jets against infiltration routes and facilities in the Laotian panhandle. Phase II would extend the air strikes to a larger selection of targets in North Vietnam.

The more “hawkish” advisers–particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff–preferred a more immediate and intensive series of raids against many targets in North Vietnam, while “dovish” advisers questioned whether bombing was going to have any effect on Hanoi’s support of the war. Johnson agreed with the Joint Chiefs on the necessity of bombing, but wanted to take a more gradual and measured approach. When he agreed to the bombing plan, President Johnson made it clear that South Vietnamese leaders would be expected to cooperate and pull their government and people together if they hoped to receive additional aid from the United States. Johnson was concerned that the continuing political instability in Saigon would have a detrimental effect on the South Vietnamese government’s ability to pursue the fight against the communist Viet Cong.

1965 – An airlift of refugees from Cuba to the United States began in which thousands of Cubans were allowed to leave their homeland.

1969 – The U.S. government held its first draft lottery since World War II in 1942. The Selective Service System of the United States conducted two lotteries to determine the order of call to military service in the Vietnam War for men born from 1944 to 1950. These lotteries occurred during “the draft”—a period of conscription, controlled by the President, from just before World War II to 1973. The lottery numbers assigned in December 1969 were used during calendar year 1970 both to call for induction and to call for physical examination, a preliminary call covering more men.

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1980 – IBM delivered its 1st prototype PC to Microsoft. IBM selected Microsoft to create MS-DOS, the operating system for its first PC. Steve Ballmer arrived from Proctor & Gamble as an assistant to Gates. Paul Allen bought the QDOS operating system (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from a rival company for $50,000. It was renamed MS-DOS and licensed to IBM. The IBM 5150 PC standardized the marketplace.

1984 – NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, wherein an airliner is deliberately crashed in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes.

1986 – Lt. Col. Oliver North pleaded the fifth amendment before a Senate panel investigating the Iran Contra arms sale.

1987 – NASA announced that four companies — Boeing Aerospace, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics, General Electric’s Astro-Space Division and Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International — had been awarded contracts to help build a space station.

1990 – Iraq accepted a US offer to talk about resolving the Persian Gulf crisis.

1991 – Kidnappers in Lebanon pledged to release American hostage Joseph Cicippio within 48 hours.

1991 – The space shuttle Atlantis safely returned from a shortened military mission. Landing originally scheduled for Kennedy Space Center on December 4, but ten day mission shortened and landing rescheduled following November 30 on-orbit failure of one of three orbiter inertial measurement units. Lengthy rollout due to minimal braking for test. Orbiter returned to KSC on December 8th.

1993 – US Navy Ensign George Smith shot and killed his ex-fiancée and a friend and then himself. In Oct. he had passed a Navy screening test to gauge his psychological fitness for nuclear submarine duty.

2000 – The US Supreme Court heard arguments by attorneys of Al Gore and George W. Bush on the legality of a vote extension by the Florida Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court turned down 2 Democratic pleas for an immediate count of disputed ballots and for a new election in Palm Beach County where a “butterfly ballot” drew protests from Democratic voters.

2000 – Russia as of this date declared that it would no longer abide by a 1995 deal to halt arms exports to Iran. The US threatened sanctions.

2003 – North Korea said the US military conducted at least 150 spy flights against it in November and accused Washington of “watching for an opportunity to crush” the communist regime.

2004 – The Pentagon said it will boost US troops in Iraq to 150,000.

2004 – The US military command said multinational troops have arrested 210 suspected militants in a weeklong crackdown against insurgents in an area south of Baghdad known as the “triangle of death.”

2012 – The USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is officially inactivated in ceremonies held at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, completing a 51-year career in the United States Navy. In a pre-recorded speech, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announces that the U.S. Navy’s third Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, CVN-80, will be named Enterprise.

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

The only ship of her class, Enterprise was the third oldest commissioned vessel in the United States Navy after the wooden-hulled USS Constitution and USS Pueblo. She was originally scheduled for decommissioning in 2014 or 2015, depending on the life of her reactors and completion of her replacement, USS Gerald R. Ford, but the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 slated the ship’s retirement for 2013, when she would have served for 51 consecutive years, longer than any other U.S. aircraft carrier.

Enterprise’s home port was Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia as of September 2012. Her final deployment, the last before her inactivation, began on 10 March 2012 and ended 4 November 2012. Her official decommissioning will take place sometime in 2016 after the completion of an extensive terminal offload program currently underway.

December 2nd ~

1775 – Congress orders first Navy officers commissions printed.

1775 – The USS Alfred becomes the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag (the precursor to the Stars and Stripes); the flag is hoisted by John Paul Jones.

1776 – George Washington’s army began retreating across the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.

1777 – British Gen. Howe plotted his attack on Washington’s army for December 4th.

1812 – James Madison was re-elected president of United States.

1823 – During his annual address to Congress, President James Monroe proclaims a new U.S. foreign policy initiative that becomes known as the “Monroe Doctrine.” Primarily the work of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the Monroe Doctrine forbade European interference in the American hemisphere but also asserted U.S. neutrality in regard to future European conflicts.

The origins of the Monroe Doctrine stem from attempts by several European powers to reassert their influence in the Americas in the early 1820s. In North America, Russia had attempted to expand its influence in the Alaska territory, and in Central and South America the U.S. government feared a Spanish colonial resurgence. Britain too was actively seeking a major role in the political and economic future of the Americas, and Adams feared a subservient role for the United States in an Anglo-American alliance.

The United States invoked the Monroe Doctrine to defend its increasingly imperialistic role in the Americas in the mid-19th century, but it was not until the Spanish-American War in 1898 that the United States declared war against a European power over its interference in the American hemisphere.
The isolationist position of the Monroe Doctrine was also a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in the 19th century, and it took the two world wars of the 20th century to draw a hesitant America into its new role as a major global power.

1840 – William Henry Harrison was elected president of US. Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, Old Buckeye, and his running mate John Tyler ran and won in a landslide against Democrat Pres. Martin Van Buren. Depression and financial panic had marked Van Buren’s term. Fans of the Harrison Party rolled huge balls of paper, rope and tin through Midwestern towns and into the Pennsylvania convention. “Hard cider” Whigs disrupted the Democratic gathering in Baltimore.

1845 – Making his first annual address to Congress, President James K. Polk belligerently reasserts the Monroe Doctrine and calls for aggressive American expansion into the West. Polk’s aggressive expansionist program created the outline of the modern American nation. Polk’s extension of the Monroe Doctrine, however, carried a far more aggressive agenda, which reflected his willingness to use force to create a nation stretching across the continent. Polk felt that such expansion was part of America’s “manifest destiny.” Polk’s vision of America’s future included the rapid annexation of Texas, the acquisition of California, and an end to sharing control of Oregon territory with the British.

Always slightly paranoid about the Europeans, Polk worried that France would insist on maintaining a balance of power in North America and that Great Britain would try to keep the U.S. from acquiring Texas and California. In fact, neither nation was very aggressive about resisting American expansionism, and Great Britain peacefully surrendered its claim to the Oregon territory south of the 49th parallel in 1846. Polk’s ambition to take the Mexican-controlled Texas, California, and the rest of the Southwest away from Mexico proved more difficult to realize. Six months after his speech to Congress, Polk’s decision to annex the Republic of Texas led to war with Mexico. Despite Polk’s fears, neither France nor Great Britain leapt to the aid of the Mexicans in the war, leaving the U.S. free to act as it wished.

When the Americans emerged victorious in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave Polk precisely what he wanted: the vast northern provinces of the Mexican empire that would one day become the states of Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. This land was the final piece of the puzzle needed to create the territory of today’s United States.

1859 – In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown is executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection. Brown, born in Connecticut in 1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader of the Free State forces in Kansas he fought pro-slavery settlers in the sharply divided U.S. territory. Achieving only moderate success in his fight against slavery on the Kansas frontier, and committing atrocities in the process, Brown settled on a more ambitious plan in 1859.

With a group of racially mixed followers, Brown set out to Harpers Ferry in present-day West Virginia, intending to seize the Federal arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains of Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. Their republic hoped to form a guerrilla army to fight slaveholders and ignite slave insurrections, and its population would grow exponentially with the influx of liberated and fugitive slaves.

At Harpers Ferry on October 16, Brown’s well-trained unit was initially successful, capturing key points in the town, but Brown’s plans began to deteriorate after his raiders stopped a Baltimore-bound train and then allowed it to pass through. News of the raid spread quickly, and militia companies from Maryland and Virginia arrived the next day, killing or capturing several raiders.

On October 18, U.S. Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, both of whom were destined to become famous Civil War generals, recaptured the arsenal, taking John Brown and several other raiders alive. On November 2, Brown was sentenced to death by hanging. On the day of his execution, 16 months before the outbreak of the Civil War, John Brown prophetically wrote, “The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

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1861 – U.S.S. Sabine, Captain Cadwalader Ringgold, rescued Major John G. Reynolds and a battalion of U.S. Marines under his command from U.S. transport Governor, unit of the Port Royal Sound Expedition, sinking off Georgetown, South Carolina.

1863 – General Braxton Bragg turned over command of the Army of Tennessee to General William Hardee at Dalton, GA.

1864 – Major General Grenville M. Dodge was named to replace General Rosecrans as Commander of the Department of Missouri.1864 – Skirmish at Rocky Creek Church, Georgia.

1864 – Confederate General Archibald Gracie, Jr., is killed in the trenches at Petersburg, Virginia, when an artillery shell explodes near him. Gracie soon became an ardent supporter of the southern cause, and he was active in the Alabama state militia. In early 1861, before Alabama seceded from the Union, Gracie was ordered by the governor to seize the federal arsenal at Mount Vernon. Gracie joined the 3rd Alabama when hostilities erupted between North and South, and he served in Tennessee and Kentucky during the first part of the war. He was part of General Edmund Kirby Smith’s invasion of Kentucky in 1862, and his service earned him a promotion to brigadier general. He fought at Chickamauga and Chattanooga in 1863, and his brigade joined General James Longstreet for the campaign against Knoxville in November.

Gracie was wounded at the Battle of Bean’s Station on December 15, but he continued with Longstreet back to Virginia when Longstreet rejoined Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Gracie’s command protected Richmond in the summer of 1864, and his leadership at Drewry’s Bluff was instrumental in holding Union General Benjamin Butler’s force at bay near the Confederate capital. Gracie fought during the siege of Petersburg for the rest of the year, and he was recommended for promotion to major general. Unfortunately, he was killed before the rank was confirmed. Most of Gracie’s family remained in the North, and his relatives arranged for transfer of his body to Union lines. He was buried in New York City.

1864 – Paddle-wheelers U.S.S. Key West, Acting Lieutenant King, and U.S.S. Tawah, Acting Lieutenant Jason Goudy, patrolling the Tennessee River, encountered Undine and Venus, which the Confederates had captured three days earlier. After a heated running engagement, Venus was retaken, but Undine, though badly damaged, escaped. Carrying Southern troops, Undine outran her pursuers and gained the protection of Confederate batteries at Reynoldsburg Island, near Johnsonville, Tennessee. King wired his district commander, Lieutenant Commander Shirk, “Weather so misty and dark, did not follow her.”

1908 – Rear Admiral William S. Cowles submits report, prepared by LT George C. Sweet, recommending purchase of aircraft suitable for operating from naval ships on scouting and observation mission to Secretary of the Navy.

1917 – Russia and the Central Powers sign an armistice at Brest-Litovsk, and peace talks leading to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk begin.

1921 – The first successful helium dirigible, C-7, made a test flight in Portsmouth, VA.

1930 – In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Herbert Hoover proposes a $150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.

1941 – Naval Intelligence ended the bugging of the Japanese consul.

1941 – General Yamamoto ordered his fleet to Pearl Harbor. A special code order “Climb Mount Niitaka” is transmitted by Japanese naval headquarters to their carrier force bound for Hawaii. This order confirms that negotiations have broken down and the attack on Pearl Harbor is to proceed.

1941 – First Naval Armed Guard detachment (7 men under a coxswain) of World War II reports to Liberty ship, SS Dunboyne.

1942 – General Eichelberger, sent by General MacArthur to investigate the lack of progress at Buna, New Guinea, decides to relieve General Harding of command of the US forces there.

1942 – Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist, directs and controls the first nuclear chain reaction in his laboratory beneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, ushering in the nuclear age. Upon successful completion of the experiment, a coded message was transmitted to President Roosevelt: “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.”

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1943 – During the night (December 2-3) German bombers raid Bari, Italy. An ammunition ship in the harbor is hit and explodes, sinking 18 transports of 70,000 tons and 38,000 tons of supplies, including the American SS John Harvey, which is carrying a stockpile of World War I-era mustard gas.

1944 – Elements of the US 3rd Army reach Saarlautern. To the south, the US 7th Army advances to the Rhine river after the Germans have withdrawn across it at Kehl. The three available bridges are all demolished in the retreat.

1944 – Two-day destroyer Battle of Ormoc Bay begins. Vice Admiral James L. Kauffman had just reported as Commander, Philippine Sea Frontier and was under heavy pressure from General MacArthur to do something – anything – to interdict incoming Japanese reinforcements.

On 27 November 1944, he did the obvious, ordering first that the Canigao Channel be swept of mines by minesweepers USS Pursuit (AM-108) and USS Revenge (AM-110). That night, the Fletcher-class destroyers USS Waller (DD-466), USS Pringle (DD-477), USS Renshaw (DD-499) and USS Saufley (DD-465) under Captain Robert H. Smith, with a Black Cat PBY Catalina doing the spotting, steamed into the bay at flank speed.

The Destroyers raked the Ormoc dock area with main battery fire for about an hour when suddenly the PBY reported a surfaced sub entering the bay. USS Waller opened fire and the spunky sub returned the fire while at the same time fishtailing furiously. As the Waller got into position to ram, the sub suddenly submerged, but for the last time, stern first. The next night, Kauffman ordered four PT boats (PTs 127, 128, 191 and 331) into Ormoc Bay. Visibility was excellent, and in the light of a full moon they sunk a freighter and a patrol craft. They had caught the enemy by surprise and the mission was “a piece of cake,” in the words of PT skipper J.R. Chassee.

The following day Captain Smith again took four cans into Ormoc Bay – USS Waller (DD-466), USS Cony (DD-508), USS Renshaw (DD-499) and USS Conner (DD-582). There was no sign of enemy shipping in the harbor, and curiously enough, no enemy fire, so he withdrew.

Two days later, on the night of 1 December, DDs USS Conway (DD-507), USS Cony (DD-508), USS Eaton (DD-510) and USS Sigourney (DD-643) also found no shipping in the bay so they continued northwest around the San Isidro peninsula. At 0224 they made radar contact with an incoming transport, brought it under a withering barrage of shellfire and quickly dispatched it to the bottom. Many days action will follow but will involve no capital ships.

1946 – The U.S. and Britain merged the German occupation zones.

1950 – In the Chosin/Changjin Reservoir Area, 1st Marine Division elements began the fighting withdrawal from Yudam-ni to Hagaru-ri. The subzero weather earned the area the title “Frozen Chosin” from the Marines and soldiers who fought there.

1952 – President-elect Eisenhower began a three-day visit to Korea, fulfilling a promise he had made in the closing days of the election campaign.

1954 – The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct unbecoming of a senator. The condemnation, which was equivalent to a censure, related to McCarthy’s controversial investigation of suspected communists in the U.S. government, military, and civilian society.

1954 – The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Taiwan, is signed in Washington, D.C. Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, formally Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States of America and the Republic of China, essentially prevented People’s Republic of China from taking over Taiwan during 1955-1979. Some of its content was carried over to the Taiwan Relations Act.

1956 – Fidel Castro landed on coast of Cuba. Castro landed with a small armed force to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista. Che Guevara was one of the few who survived the disastrous landing of the rebels’ boat, the Granma.

1961 – Following a year of severely strained relations between the United States and Cuba, Cuban leader Fidel Castro openly declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist. The announcement sealed the bitter Cold War animosity between the two nations.

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1965 – USS Enterprise (CVAN-65) and USS Bainbridge (DLGN-25) become first nuclear-powered task unit used in combat operations with launch of air strikes near Bien Hoa, Vietnam.

1979 – Some 2,000 Libyans ransacked the US embassy at Tripoli, Libya, chanting support for the radical Islamic regime that took power in Iran earlier in the year.

1980 – Three American nuns and a lay worker were abducted, raped and shot in San Salvador. Peasants discovered their bodies the next day and buried them. Nuns Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford, Maura Clark, and lay worker Jean Donovan were raped and shot by guardsmen. The murders occurred as the US began a 10-year $7 billion aid effort to prevent left-wing guerrillas from coming to power. Five national guardsmen were later convicted in the killings, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

1988 – The space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a secret four-day mission. STS-27 deployed Lacrosse 1, a radar reconnaissance satellite. It was also reported that the satellite failed after release from the Shuttle. The Atlantis reapproached the payload and the crew repaired it. This implies that some of the crew members performed a spacewalk (Ross?, Shepherd?). Lacrosse was then released and performed a successful mission. It was the 27th Space Shuttle mission. Launch was originally scheduled Dec. 1, but was postponed one day because of cloud cover and strong wind conditions.

1991 – American hostage Joseph Cicippio, held captive in Lebanon for more than five years, was released.

1992 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with five astronauts and a spy satellite aboard. Classified United States Department of Defense primary payload (possibly a Satellite Data System relay), plus two unclassified secondary payloads and nine unclassified middeck experiments. Some later reports say the primary payload was a U.S. Navy ELINT / Sigint satellite in the Advanced Jumpseat series. Secondary payloads contained in or attached to Get Away Special (GAS) hardware in the cargo bay included the Orbital Debris Radar Calibration Spheres (ODERACS) the combined Shuttle Glow Experiment/Cryogenic Heat Pipe Experiment (GCP).

1993 – The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on a mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. With its very heavy workload, the STS-61 mission was one of the most sophisticated in the Shuttle’s history. It lasted almost 11 days, and crew members made five EVA sorties, an all-time record. Even the spectacular Intelsat IV retrieval of STS-49 in May 1992 required only four. To be on the safe side, the flight plan allowed for two additional sorties which could have raised the total number to seven EVA’s but the final two contingency EVA’s turned out not be be necessary. In order to bring off this exploit without too much fatigue, the five extravehicular working sessions were shared between two alternating shifts of two astronauts.

1995 – NASA launched a US-European observatory on a one billion-dollar mission to study the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, later detected rivers of charged particles flowing over the surface of the sun and sunquakes. In 2003 a motor failure crippled a high-gain antenna.

1998 – In Bosnia US troops arrested Bosnian Serb Gen’l. Radislav Krstic for genocide in the 1995 takeover of Srebrenica.

2001 – US bombers hit Taliban defenses around Kandahar.

2002 – A statement attributed to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the Nov 28 car-bombing of an Israeli owned hotel in Kenya and the attempted shoot-down of an Israeli airliner.

2003 – In northern Afghanistan, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed, 2 main feuding warlords, handed over tanks and cannons to the fledgling national army.

2004 – The European Union began its biggest-ever military operation, formally taking over NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Bosnia with 7,000 troops (EUFOR).

2004 – In Iraq a mortar barrage hammered the heavily fortified Green Zone and elsewhere in central Baghdad, killing at least one person.

2014 – The FBI launches a probe into a massive hacking attack on Sony Pictures, believing the leadership of North Korea to be responsible.

December 3rd ~

1762 – France ceded to Spain all lands west of the Mississippi- the territory known as Upper Louisiana.

1800 – US state electors met and cast their ballots for the presidency. A tie resulted between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

1818 – Illinois achieves full statehood on this day. Though Illinois presented unique challenges to immigrants unaccustomed to the soil and vegetation of the area, it grew to become a bustling and densely populated state. The strange but beautiful prairie lands east of the Mississippi and north of Lake Michigan presented a difficult challenge to the tide of westward-moving immigrants.

Accustomed to the heavily forested lands of states like Kentucky and Tennessee, the early immigrants to Illinois did not know what to make of the vast treeless stretches of the prairie. Most pioneers believed that the fertility of soil revealed itself by the abundance of vegetation it supported, so they assumed that the lack of trees on the prairie signaled inferior farmland. Those brave souls who did try to farm the prairie found that their flimsy plows were inadequate to cut through prairie sod thickly knotted with deep roots. In an “age of wood,” farmers also felt helpless without ready access to the trees they needed for their tools, homes, furniture, fences, and fuel. For all these reasons, most of the early Illinois settlers remained in the southern part of the state, where they built homes and farms near the trees that grew along the many creek and river bottoms.

1826 – Union General George McClellan is born in Philadelphia. Although McClellan emerged early in the war as a Union hero, he failed to effectively prosecute the war in the East. McClellan graduated from West Point in 1846, second in his class. He served with distinction in the Mexican War under General Winfield Scott, and continued in the military until 1857. After retiring from the service, McClellan served as president of the Illinois Central Railroad, where he became acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, who was then an attorney for the company.

When the war began, McClellan was appointed major general in charge of the Ohio volunteers. In 1861, he command Union forces in western Virginia, where his reputation grew as the Yankees won many small battles and secured control of the region. Although many historians have argued that it was McClellan’s subordinates who deserved most of the credit, McClellan was elevated to commander of the main Union army in the east, the Army of the Potomac, following that army’s humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.

1828 – Andrew Jackson was elected 7th president of the United States over John Quincy Adams. Resentment of the restrictive credit policies of the first central bank, the Bank of the United States, fueled a populist backlash that elected Andrew Jackson.

1862 – Confederate rebels attacked a Federal forage train on the Hardin Pike near Nashville, Tenn.

1863 – Confederate General Longstreet abandoned his siege at Knoxville, Ten., and moved his army east and north toward Greeneville. This withdrawal marked the end of the Fall Campaign in Tennessee.

1864 – Major General William Tecumseh Sherman met up with some resistance from Confederate troops at Thomas Station on his march to the sea. Kilpatrick’s cavalry division [Union], supported by Baird’s division, 14th Corps, moving on the extreme left of General Sherman’s army, reached the Augusta and Savannah Railroad and encamped, with Baird at Thomas’ Station (0.2 mile E) and Kilpatrick a mile N, both astride the rail and wagon roads. Details from both divisions began destroying the railroad. The main body, 14th Corps, with the artillery and trains, camped at Lumpkin’s Station, 4 miles S.

That night, Wheeler’s cavalry [Confederate] attacked the work details and shelled the camps, but after sharp skirmishing the attackers were repulsed by the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry without delaying the work of destruction. Next morning, supported by two of Baird’s infantry brigades, Kilpatrick, moved N to accomplish his mission of destroying the bridges over Brier Creek, N and E of Waynesboro. Finding Wheeler lightly entrenched S of the town, Kilpatrick attacked and, after hard fighting, forced him to retire beyond Brier Creek. Baird’s third brigade remained at Thomas’ Station to complete the destruction of three miles of track then, with the division trains, marched to Alexander enroute to Jacksonboro (5 miles N of Sylvania). The detached brigades turned SE from Waynesboro that afternoon and marched to Alexander, followed later by Kilpatrick after he had burned the bridges over Brier Creek.

1864 – Boat expedition from U.S.S. Nita, Stars and Stripes, Hendrick Hudson, Ariel, and Two Sisters, commanded by Acting Lieutenant Robert B. Smith, destroyed a large salt work at Rocky Point, Tampa Bay, Florida.

December 3rd ~ { continued... }

1915 – The U.S. expelled German attaches on spy charges.

1918 – The Allied Conference ended in London; Germany was required to pay to full limits for the war.

1925 – The final Locarno Treaty is signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements.

1940 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt embarks on USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37) to inspect bases acquired from Great Britain under Destroyer-for Bases agreement.

1940 – The British government announces that it has placed a first order with US yards for the construction of 60 merchant ships.

1942 – Admiral Tanaka leads 10 destroyers in a supply operation to bring food to the desperate Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal. To avoid air attacks, the cargo is dropped not landed. Only about 300 of the 1500 containers reach the Japanese forces.

1943 – Elements of US 5th Army reach the summit of Monte Camino and capture Monte Maggiore. The British 8th Army takes San Vito. However, around Orsogna, a counterattack by the German 26th Panzer Division forces the New Zealand 2nd Division to retreat.

1944 – Elements of US 13th Corps (part of US 9th Army) reach the Roer River. Elements of the US 20th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) cross the Saar River near Patchen, in assault boats. They secure the main bridge of the Saar.

1950 – In the east, the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division began withdrawal into the Wonsan-Hamhung area. The U.S. 7th Infantry Division’s 17th Infantry Regiment withdrew from the Yalu River area toward Hungnam.

1952 – The U.N. General Assembly resolved on the release and repatriation of prisoners in Korea. The fate of nonrepatriated prisoners was to be determined by a political conference three months after an armistice or by the U.N. Within two weeks, the communists rejected this resolution.

1953 – Eisenhower criticized McCarthy for saying communists are in Republican party.

1962 – Roger Hilsman, director of the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, sends a memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk pointing out that the communist Viet Cong fighters are obviously prepared for a long struggle.

1973 – Pioneer 10 passed Jupiter (1st fly-by of an outer planet). This mission was the first to be sent to the outer solar system and the first to investigate the planet Jupiter, after which it followed an escape trajectory from the solar system. The spacecraft achieved its closest approach to Jupiter on this day, when it reached approximately 2.8 Jovian radii (about 200,000 km). As of Jan. 1st, 1997 Pioneer 10 was at about 67 AU from the Sun near the ecliptic plane and heading outward from the Sun at 2.6 AU/year and downstream through the helio magnetosphere towards the tail region and interstellar space. This solar system escape direction is unique because the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft (and the now terminated Pioneer 11 spacecraft mission) are heading in the opposite direction towards the nose of the heliosphere in the upstream direction relative to the inflowing interstellar gas. The spacecraft is heading generally towards the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). The journey over a distance of 68 light years to Aldebaran will require about two million years to complete. Routine tracking and project data processing operatations were terminated on March 31, 1997 for budget reasons. Occasional tracking continued later under support of the Lunar Prospector project at NASA Ames Research Center with retrieval of energetic particle and radio science data.

The last successful data acquisitions through NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) occurred on March 3, 2002, the 30th anniversary of Pioneer 10’s launch date, and on April 27, 2002. The spacecraft signal was last detected on Jan. 23, 2003 after an uplink was transmitted to turn off the last operational experiment, the Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT), but lock-on to the sub-carrier signal for data downlink was not achieved. No signal at all was detected during a final attempt on Feb. 6-7, 2003. Pioneer Project staff at NASA Ames then concluded that the spacecraft power level had fallen below that needed to power the onboard transmitter, so no further attempts would be made.

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1975 – Laos fell to communist forces. The Lao People’s Democratic Rep. was proclaimed.1977 – The State Department proposed the admission of 10,000 more Vietnamese refugees to the United States.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.

1980 – Bernadine Dohrn, a former leader of the radical Weather Underground, surrendered to authorities in Chicago after more than a decade as a fugitive.

1983 – Two F-14s flying over Lebanon were fired upon.

1987 – Four days before his summit with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to sign a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles, President Reagan said in an interview with television network anchormen that there was a reasonably good chance of progress toward a treaty on long-range weapons.

1989 – Meeting off the coast of Malta, President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issue statements strongly suggesting that the long-standing animosities at the core of the Cold War might be coming to an end. Commentators in both the United States and Russia went farther and declared that the Cold War was over. The talks were part of the first-ever summit held between the two leaders. Bush and his advisers were cautiously optimistic about the summit, eager to follow up on the steps toward arms control taken by the preceding Reagan administration. Gorbachev was quite vocal about his desire for better relations with the United States so that he could pursue his domestic reform agenda and was more effusive in his declarations that the talks marked an important first step toward ending the Cold War.

The Russian leader stated, “The characteristics of the Cold War should be abandoned.” He went on to suggest that, “The arms race, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle, all those should be things of the past.” Bush was somewhat more restrained in his statement: “With reform underway in the Soviet Union, we stand at the threshold of a brand-new era of U.S.-Soviet relations. It is within our grasp to contribute each in our own way to overcoming the division of Europe and ending the military confrontation there.” Despite the positive spin of the rhetoric, though, little of substance was accomplished during the summit. Both sides agreed to work toward a treaty dealing with long-range nuclear weapons and conventional arms in 1990. Gorbachev and Bush also agreed that another summit would take place in June 1990, in Washington, D.C.

1991 – Radicals in Lebanon released American hostage Alann Steen, who had been held captive nearly five years.

1996 – The Justice Department barred 16 Japanese army veterans suspected of World War II atrocities from entering the United States.

1999 – President Clinton offered to reduce bombing practice on Vieques in the spring and use only dummy bombs plus $40 million in economic incentives with phase out in 5 years. Puerto Rico rejected the offer.

1999 – The Mars Polar Lander touched down at the Martian South Pole. 2 probes burrowed into the polar surface to test for water and carbon dioxide. NASA failed to make contact with the $165 million lander following set down.

2000 – Space shuttle Endeavour’s astronauts attached the world’s largest, most powerful set of solar panels to the international space station.

2001 – Tom Ridge, head of Homeland Security, ordered a state of high alert across the US to at least the end of Ramadan in 2 weeks.

2001 – A test US anti-missile launched from Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands successfully hit a dummy warhead from Vandenberg Air Base in California, 4,800 miles away.

2001 – Some 3,000 Taliban surrendered at Char Dara, 6 miles west of Kunduz.

2002 – U.N. weapons inspectors made their first unannounced visit to one of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces.

2003 – The head of the Iraqi Governing Council renewed his demand that a proposed transitional legislature be elected by Iraqi voters, a move opposed by U.S. occupation officials.

2004 – Insurgents launched two major attacks against a Shiite mosque and a police station in Baghdad, killing 30 people, including at least 16 police officers.

2005 – XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.

2010 – The Boeing X-37B, a United States Air Force unmanned space plane, lands autonomously at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, at 1:16am PST (0916 UTC) after 7 1/2 months in space.

2012 – NASA announces that the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has nearly reached the edge of the solar system and is imminently to past through the helio sphere into interstellar space.

December 4th ~

Feast Day of St. Barbara, Patron Saint of Field Artillery

1674 – Father Marquette built the 1st dwelling at what is now Chicago. Father Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary, established Michigan’s earliest European settlements at Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace in 1668 and 1671. He lived among the Great Lakes Indians from 1666 to his death in 1675. During these nine years, Father Marquette mastered several native languages and helped Louis Jolliet map the Mississippi River.

1783 – General George Washington said farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in NYC. Nine days after the last British soldiers left American soil and truly ended the Revolution, George Washington invited the officers of the Continental Army to join him in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern so he could say farewell. The best known account of this emotional leave-taking comes from the Memoirs of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, written in 1830 and now in the collection of Fraunces Tavern Museum. As Tallmadge recalled, “The time now drew near when General Washington intended to leave this part of the country for his beloved retreat at Mt. Vernon. On Tuesday the 4th of December it was made known to the officers then in New York that General Washington intended to commence his journey on that day.

At 12 o’clock the officers repaired to the tavern in Pearl Street where General Washington had appointed to meet them and to take his final leave of them. We had been assembled but a few moments when his excellency entered the room. His emotions were too strong to be concealed which seemed to be reciprocated by every officer present. After partaking of a slight refreshment in almost breathless silence the General filled his glass with wine and turning to the officers said, ‘With a heart full of love and gratitude I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.’ After the officers had taken a glass of wine General Washington said ‘I cannot come to each of you but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.’ General Knox being nearest to him turned to the Commander-in-chief who, suffused in tears, was incapable of utterance but grasped his hand when they embraced each other in silence. In the same affectionate manner every officer in the room marched up and parted with his general in chief. Such a scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed and fondly hope I may never be called to witness again.” The officers escorted Washington from the tavern to the Whitehall wharf, where he boarded a barge that took him to Paulus Hook, (now Jersey City) New Jersey.

Washington continued to Annapolis, where the Continental Congress was meeting, and resigned his commission. Washington’s popularity was great at the end of the Revolution and he had been urged to seize control of the government and establish a military regime. Instead, he publicly bid farewell to his troops at Fraunces Tavern and resigned as commander-in-chief at Annapolis, thus ensuring that the new United States government would not be a military dictatorship. Washington returned to Mount Vernon, believing that December 1783 marked the end of his public life. Little did he realize that he would return to New York six years later to be sworn in as the nation’s first president.

1786 – Mission Santa Barbara is dedicated (on the feast day of Saint Barbara).

1816 – James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States. He defeated Federalist Rufus King.

1833 – American Anti-Slavery Society was formed by Arthur Tappan in Philadelphia.

1844 – James K. Polk was elected 11th president of US. His wife, Sarah, recognized that James was insufficiently impressive to draw attention on appearance and therefore began the tradition of having “Hail to the Chief” played when he made a public showing.

1861 – The Federal Senate, voting 36 to 0, expelled Senator John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky because he joined the Confederate Army.

1863 – Seven solid days of bombardment ended at Charleston, S.C. The Union fired some 1,307 rounds.

1864 – Eight days of cavalry clashes in Georgia come to an end when Union General Judson Kilpatrick and Confederate General Joseph Wheeler skirmish for a final time at Waynesboro. Although the Rebels inflicted more than three times as many casualties as the Yankees, the campaign was considered a success by the Union because it screened Wheeler from the main Union force as it marched to Savannah, Georgia, on Sherman’s famous “March to the Sea.”

1867 – The Order of Patrons of Husbandry, more commonly known as the National Grange, was founded by Oliver Kelley, a traveling clerk with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The original purpose of the Grange was to provide enrichment opportunities for isolated farm families, but its purpose quickly became economic and political.

1895 – Marines in Tientsin, China, were awarded the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal for the period 4 December 1894 – May 1895.

December 4th ~ { continued... }

1915 – Ku Klux Klan received a charter from Fulton County, Georgia.

1915 – Automobile tycoon Henry Ford set sail for Europe on this day in 1915 from Hoboken, New Jersey, aboard the Ford Peace Ship. His mission: to end World War I. His slogan, “Out of the trenches and back to their homes by Christmas,” won an enthusiastic response in the States, but didn’t get very far overseas. Ford’s diplomatic mission was not taken seriously in Europe, and he soon returned.

1918 – President Wilson set sail in USS George Washington for France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference. He was the 1st chief executive to travel outside US while in office.

1941 – The Chicago Tribune and the Washington Herald published FDR’s top secret plan to invade Europe in 1943.

1942 – The US 9th Air Force bombs the harbor at Naples causing damage and sinking two cruisers. First American raid on the mainland of Italy.

1942 – US President Roosevelt receives a petition from 244 Congressman in support of the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.

1942 – Carlson’s patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign ends. Carlson’s patrol was an operation by the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion under the command of Evans Carlson during the Guadalcanal Campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army beginning 6 November 1942.

In the operation, the 2nd Raiders attacked forces under the command of Toshinari Shōji, which were escaping from an attempted encirclement in the Koli Point area on Guadalcanal and attempting to rejoin other Japanese army units on the opposite side of the U.S. Lunga perimeter. In a series of small unit engagements over 29 days, the 2nd Raiders killed almost 500 Japanese soldiers while suffering only 16 killed, although many were afflicted by disease. The raiders also captured a Japanese field gun that was delivering harassing fire on Henderson Field, the Allied airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal.

1943 – The Japanese escort carrier Chuyo is sunk by the US submarine Sailfish in Japanese home waters.

1943 – The US divisions on Bougainville receive further reinforcements and extend their perimeter.

1943 – Task Force 50 (Admiral Pownall) and a task force commanded by Admiral Montgomery attack Kwajalein with a combined fleet of 6 carriers and nine cruisers. The Japanese lose 6 transports and 2 cruisers are damaged. A claimed 55 Japanese aircraft are shot down for the loss of 5 attacking American planes. The USS Yorktown conducts an air raid on Wotje.

1943 – America had shrugged off the Depression and the economy was back in bloom. With the unemployment rolls fast emptying, President Franklin Roosevelt decided it was time to close the books on the Work Projects Administration (WPA). The announcement, made on December 4, concluded the four-year run of one of the government’s most ambitious public works programs. Inaugurated as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation in 1935 as the Works Progress Administration (the name changed to Works Projects Administration in 1939), the WPA was charged with the task of creating jobs for workers idled by the Depression.

Fueled by $11 billion of the government’s money, the program set Americans to work on an array of projects, including the construction 650,000 miles of road and 125,000 public buildings. The WPA also focused its attention on employing the country’s creative workers, serving as an umbrella for federal programs that set writers, actors, and artists to work on various public arts projects.

1944 – USS Flasher (SS-249) sinks Japanese destroyer Kishinami and damages a merchant ship in South China Sea. Flasher is only U.S. submarine to sink over 100,000 tons of enemy shipping in World War II.

1944 – US 9th Army ceases the offensive toward the Roer River. The US 3rd Army forces of US 20th Corps concentrates forces for the capture of Saarlautern, where reconnaissance indicates there is an intact bridge over the Saar River.

1945 – By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations.

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1950 – Marines rescued over 300 soldiers of the U.S. 7th Infantry Division, survivors of a communist ambush on the shores of the Chosin/Changjin Reservoir.

1952 – The Grumman XS2F-1 made its first flight.

1965 – Launch of Gemini 7 piloted by CDR James A. Lovell, USN. This flight consisted of 206 orbits at an altitude of 327 km and lasted 13 days and 18 hours. Recovery by HS-11 helicopters from USS Wasp (CVS-18).

1969 – In Chicago police stormed an apartment on the West Side and killed 2 Black Panthers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Panther defense minister Bobby Rush had left the site just hours earlier.

1981 – President Reagan broadened the power of the CIA by allowing spying in the U.S. This was Executive Order on Intelligence No 12333.

1967 – Elements of the U.S. mobile riverine force and 400 South Vietnamese in armored personnel carriers engage communist forces in the Mekong Delta. During the battle, 235 of the 300-member Viet Cong battalion were killed. The mobile riverine force was an Army-Navy task force made up of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division (primarily the 2nd Brigade and associated support troops) and the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 117. This force was often combined with units from the South Vietnamese 7th and 21st Infantry Divisions and the South Vietnamese Marine Corps.

The mobile riverine concept called for Army troops to operate with Navy gunboats and troop carrier boats in the Mekong Delta. This gave the force the capability to travel 150 miles in 24 hours and launch combat operations with its 5,000-man force within 30 minutes after anchoring. The mobile riverine force was activated in June 1967. It conducted operations throughout the Delta until the responsibility for this mission was transferred to the South Vietnamese forces in April 1971, as part of the “Vietnamization” program.

1966 – A Viet Cong unit penetrates the 13-mile defense perimeter around Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport and shells the field for over four hours. South Vietnamese and U.S. security guards finally drove off the attackers, killing 18 of them in the process. One U.S. RF-101 reconnaissance jet was badly damaged in the attack. The guerrillas returned that same night and resumed the attack, but security guards again repelled them, killing 11 more Viet Cong during the second battle.

1983 – Aircraft from USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) and USS Independence (CV-62) launch strike against anti-aircraft positions in Lebanon that fired on U.S. aircraft. Two U.S. Navy planes shot down. This is a retaliatory measure for the bombing of the Beirut Marine Barracks in October.

1987 – Cuban inmates at a federal prison in Atlanta freed their 89 hostages, peacefully ending an 11-day uprising. The agreement provided for a nationwide moratorium on deportations of Mariel detainees.

1989 – President Bush briefed NATO leaders in Brussels, Belgium, on the just-concluded Malta summit with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

1989 – The cutter Mesquite ran aground near Keweenaw Point in Lake Superior. She was deemed damaged beyond repair and was sunk as an artificial reef. There was no loss of life.

1990 – President Bush, on a five-nation South American tour, said in Uruguay he was not convinced that “sanctions alone” would bring Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “to his senses” about invading Kuwait.

1991 – Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest held of Western hostages in Lebanon, was released after nearly seven years in captivity. The last American hostages in Lebanon were released.

1992 – President Bush ordered American troops to lead a mercy mission to Somalia, threatening military action against warlords and gangs who were blocking food for starving millions.

1993 – Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour captured the near-sighted Hubble Space Telescope for repairs.

1994 – Bosnian Serbs released 53 of some 400 U.N. peacekeepers held as insurance against further NATO airstrikes.

1995 – In a near-freezing drizzle, the first NATO troops landed in the Balkans to begin setting up a peace mission that brought American soldiers into the middle of the Bosnian conflict.

December 4th ~ { continued... }

1996 – The Mars Pathfinder [delayed from Dec 2] was launched from Cape Canaveral on a 310 million-mile odyssey to explore the planet’s surface. It had a remote-controlled 22-pound, 6-wheel, roving vehicle to sample Martian soil and rock and send data back beginning on July 4, 1997.

1998 – It was reported that an informant known as CS-1 confessed that he participated in a bin Laden-inspired plot to attack American military facilities around the world.

1998 – The shuttle Endeavour was launched with a crew of 6 from Cape Canaveral. It contained the 2nd component of the new int’l. space station, the Unity Module. The Unity connecting module was the first U.S.-built component of the International Space Station. It is cylindrical in shape, with six berthing locations (forward, aft, port, starboard, zenith, and nadir) facilitating connections to other modules.

Unity measures 15.0 feet in diameter, is 17.9 feet long, and was built for NASA by Boeing in a manufacturing facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Sometimes referred to as Node 1, Unity was the first of the three connecting modules; the other two are Harmony and Tranquility.

1999 – NASA scientists continued to wait in vain for a signal from the Mars Polar Lander, raising questions about the whereabouts of NASA’s $165 million probe. It’s believed the spacecraft was destroyed after it plunged toward the Red Planet.

2001 – In Afghanistan US bombing continued at Kandahar and Tora Bora. Baglan and Balkh were noted as a pockets of resistance with up to 3,500 Taliban militiamen. An interim government was scheduled to take power Dec 22nd.

2001 – Operation Active Endeavour ships, Aliseo, Formion and Elrod, were called to assist in the rescue of 84 civilians from a stricken oil rig. In high winds and heavy seas, the Italian helicopter of the Aliseo removed all 84 workers from the oil rig in 14 flights.

2002 – Iraqi forces shot at allied aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone and U.S. planes retaliated by bombing part of the country’s air defense system.

2002 – Kurdish militiamen of the PUK battled Islamic militants (Ansar al-Islam) believed to be linked to al-Qaida in northern Iraq, and as many as 30 militiamen were killed or wounded.

2004 – Colombian drug kingpin Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela was flown to the US, becoming the most powerful Colombian trafficker ever extradited to face US justice.

2004 – Suicide attackers carried out a string of car bombings against Iraqi policemen in Baghdad and Kurdish militiamen in the north, killing 14 people and wounding at least 59.

2008 – The U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was approved by the Iraqi government.

2009 – US Marines and Afghan troops launch Operation Cobra’s Anger in northern Helmand province. The main goal of the operation was to disrupt Taliban supply and communications lines in the strategic Now Zad valley. some 300 Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines and the Marine recon unit Task Force Raider dropped into the Now Zad valley via CH-53E helicopters and V-22 Osprey aircraft.

This was the first time the Osprey were used in combat operations in Afghanistan. In preparation for the Marine offensive the Taliban planted thousands of homemade bombs and dug in positions throughout the valley at the foot of the craggy Tangee Mountains. No major resistance was encountered.

2009 – The North Atlantic Treaty Organization announces that 25 member countries will contribute a further 7,000 troops to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in addition to 30,000 additional American and 500 British troops previously announced.

2013 – The United States stops shipping supplies to Afghanistan through Pakistan due to protests over drone attacks.

December 5th ~

1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1782 – Martin Van Buren, 8th President (1837-1841) and first born in the United States, was born in Kinderhook, N.Y.

1792 – George Washington was re-elected president; John Adams was re-elected vice president.

1804 – Thomas Jefferson was re-elected US president. George Clinton, the seven-term governor of New York, was elected vice president under Jefferson and again under Madison in 1808. Clinton died in office on April 20, 1812.

1831 – Former President John Quincy Adams took his seat as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1832 – Andrew Jackson was re-elected US president. The US anti-Mason Party with William Wirt drew 8% of the vote against Henry Clay and the eventual winner, Andrew Jackson. Clay led the Whig Party which coalesced against the power of Andrew Jackson. The Whigs came from the conservative, nationalist wing of the Jeffersonian Republicans.

1839 – Union General George Armstrong Custer is born in Harrison County, Ohio. Although he is best known for his demise at the hands of the Lakota and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, Custer built a reputation as a dashing and effective cavalry leader during the Civil War. Custer entered West Point in 1857, where he earned low grades and numerous demerits for his mischievous behavior. He graduated last in the class of 1861. Despite his poor academic showing, Custer did not have to wait long to see military action. Less than two months after leaving West Point, Custer fought in the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861.

Custer served the entire war in the Army of the Potomac. He was present for nearly all of the army’s major battles, and Custer became, at age 23, the youngest general in the Union army in June 1863. He led the Michigan cavalry brigade in General Judson Kilpatrick’s 3rd Cavalry Division. Less than a week after his promotion, Custer and his “Wolverines” played a key role in stopping Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry attack, which helped preserve the Union victory at Gettysburg. As a leader, Custer earned the respect of his men because he personally led every charge in battle. Wrote one man of Custer’s command, “So brave a man I never saw and as competent as brave. Under him a man is ashamed to be cowardly. Under him our men can achieve wonders.”

He achieved his greatest battlefield success in the campaigns of 1864. At Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864, Custer led the charge that resulted in the death of Stuart. One month later at Trevalian Station, Custer’s command attacked a supply train before being surrounded by Confederate cavalry. His men formed a triangle and bravely held off the Rebels until help arrived. In October, Custer’s men scored a decisive victory over the Confederate cavalry at Tom’s Brook in the Shenandoah Valley, the most one-sided Yankee cavalry victory of the war in the East. Custer was demoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the downsizing that took place after the war ended. He was much less effective in his postwar assignments fighting Indians, and his reckless assault on the camp at Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, earned him an unsavory reputation that overshadowed his earlier success in the Civil War.

1843 – Launching of USS Michigan at Erie, Penn., America’s first iron-hulled warship, as well as first prefabricated ship.

1848 – President Polk triggered the Gold Rush of ’49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.

1861 – The forerunner to the modern machine gun, the Gatling gun, was patented by Richard Gatling.

1862 – Union general Ulysses Grant’s cavalry received a setback in an engagement on the Mississippi Central Railroad at Coffeeville, Mississippi.

1864 – Confederate General Hood sent Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry and a division of infantry towards Murfreesboro, Tenn.

1864 – The naval landing force under Commander Preble participated in heavy fighting around Tulifinny Crossroads, Georgia, while Federal troops attempted to cut the Savannah-Charleston Railway and join with the advancing forces of General Sherman. The Naval Brigade was withdrawn from Boyd’s Landing, Broad River, on 5 December, and while Union gunboats, made a feint against the Coosawwatchie River fortifications, soldiers and sailors landed up the nearby Tulifinny River.

During the next four days, the versatile naval brigade participated in a series of nearly continuous heavy actions, though plagued by rain and swampy terrain. Union forces advanced close enough to the strategic railway to shell it but failed to destroy it.

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1904 – Japanese destroyed Russian fleet at Port Arthur in Korea.

1912 – Italy, Austria, and Germany renewed the Triple Alliance for six years.

1929 – Marine Captain A. N. Parker was the first person to fly over unexplored Antarctica.

1932 – German physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa, making it possible for him to travel to the United States.

1933 – Prohibition was repealed–much to the delight of thirsty revelers–when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The nationwide prohibition of the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcoholic beverages was established in January 1919 with passage of the 18th Amendment. Prohibition’s supporters gradually became disenchanted with it as the illegal manufacture and sale of liquor fostered a wave of criminal activity.

By 1932, the Democratic Party’s platform called for the repeal of Prohibition. In February 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing the 21st Amendment to repeal the 18th and with Utah’s vote in December, Prohibition ended. Three-quarters of the states approved the repeal of the 18th amendment and FDR proclaimed the end of Prohibition.

1936 – Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR, Kazakh SSR & Kirghiz SSR became constituent republics of Soviet Union.

1936 – The New Constitution in the Soviet Union promised universal suffrage, but the Communist Party remained the only legal political party.

1941 – President Roosevelt sent a message to Japanese Emperor Hirohito expressing hope that gathering war clouds would be dispelled. Hirohito smiled enigmatically, knowing that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor in a few days.

1941 – USS Lexington, one of the two largest aircraft carriers employed by the United States during World War II, makes its way across the Pacific in order to carry a squadron of dive bombers to defend Midway Island from an anticipated Japanese attack. Negotiations between the United States and Japan had been ongoing for months. Japan wanted an end to U.S. economic sanctions. The Americans wanted Japan out of China and Southeast Asia and Japan to repudiate the Tripartite “Axis” Pact with Germany and Italy before those sanctions could be lifted. Neither side was budging.

President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were anticipating a Japanese strike as retaliation-they just didn’t know where. The Philippines, Wake Island, Midway Island-all were possibilities. American intelligence reports had sighted the Japanese fleet movement out from Formosa (Taiwan), apparently headed for Indochina.

The U.S. State Department demanded from Japanese envoys explanations for the fleet movement across the South China Sea. The envoys claimed ignorance. Army intelligence reassured the president that, despite fears, Japan was most likely headed for Thailand-not the United States. The Lexington never made it to Midway Island; when it learned that the Japanese fleet had, in fact, attacked Pearl Harbor, it turned back-never encountering a Japanese warship en route or employing a single aircraft in its defense. By the time it reached Hawaii, it was December 13th.

1942 – Japanese forces repel a strong US attack on their defensive positions at Buna, New Guinea.

1943 – U.S. Army Air Force begins attacking Germany’s secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow. Crossbow was the code name of the World War II campaign of Anglo-American “operations against all phases of the German long-range weapons program, specifically the V series rockets—operations against research and development of the weapons, their manufacture, transportation and their launching sites, and against missiles in flight”.

1945 – At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned. Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful.

After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel. By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again.

Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m. The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft were ever found. Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the “Lost Squadron” helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.

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1950 – Pyongyang in Korea fell to the invading Chinese army.

1950 – The carrier, USS Princeton, commanded by World War II hero Captain William O. Gallery, arrived on station in Korea.

1962 – President Kennedy discussed stockpiling nuclear weapons to deter Soviet attacks with senior staff including Defense Secretary McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor.

1969 – The four node–UCLA-Stanford Research Institute, UC-Santa Barbara, University of Utah–ARPANET network is established.

1970 – A North Vietnamese newspaper declares that the country will not be intimidated by U.S. bombing threats. Earlier in the week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird had warned that the U.S. would initiate new bombing raids on North Vietnam if the communists continued to fire on unarmed reconnaissance aircraft flying over their air space.

Responding to Laird’s threats, North Vietnamese officials declared that any U.S. reconnaissance planes that flew over North Vietnam would be fired upon. This declaration implied that North Vietnam would not be forced into concessions, and was prepared to continue the war regardless of the cost.

1978 – The American space probe Pioneer Venus I, orbiting Venus, began beaming back its first information and picture of the planet to scientists in Mountain View, California.

1978 – In an effort to prop up an unpopular pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union signs a “friendship treaty” with the Afghan government agreeing to provide economic and military assistance. The treaty moved the Russians another step closer to their disastrous involvement in the Afghan civil war between the Soviet-supported communist government and the Muslim rebels, the Mujahideen, which officially began in 1979. The Soviet Union always considered the bordering nation of Afghanistan of interest to its national security.

1987 – FBI agents searched a federal prison where Cuban inmates had peacefully ended an 11-day hostage siege the day before. The agents reported finding bottle bombs and homemade machetes, but no booby-traps or bodies.

1988 – Shuttle Atlantis launched the world’s 1st nuclear-war-fighting satellite.

1990 – President Bush, on a visit to Argentina, said he was “not optimistic” that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would withdraw from Kuwait without a fight.

1993 – Astronauts began the repair of Hubble telescope in space.

1997 – The space shuttle Columbia returned from a 16-day mission that had been marred by the bungled release of a satellite.

1997 – Turkish troops began an offensive against Turkish Kurds in northern Iraq. The 20,000 man force was to be assisted by 8,000 men of the Kurdistan Democratic party, an Iraqi group.

2001 – NASA launched space shuttle Endeavour to deliver a new 3-man crew to the Alpha space station. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Onufrienko flew to replace Doug Culbertson as skipper.

2001 – A 2000-pound US bomb killed 3 American Green Berets near Kandahar along with 18 Afghan fighters. 20 Americans were injured along with 18 Afghan fighters including newly appointed Afghan leader Hamid Karzai.

2003 – Syria continued to reject US pressure to hand over an estimated $250 million that Saddam Hussein’s regime had deposited there.

2004 – Gunmen opened fire at the bus as it dropped off Iraqis employed by coalition forces at a weapons dump in Tikrit. 17 people died and 13 were wounded. A suicide car bomber drove into an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint in Beiji. 3 guardsmen, including a company commander, were killed and 18 wounded. Guerrillas ambushed a joint Iraqi-coalition patrol in Latifiyah and attacked Iraqi National Guardsmen patrolling near Samarra. 2 Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded.

2014 – The first flight test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft launches successfully at 7:05 EST (12:05 UTC) and splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean at 8:29 PST (16:29 UTC).

December 6th ~

Feast Day of St. Nicholas, Patron Saint of Military Intelligence

1790 – Congress moved from New York City to Philadelphia.

1820 – James Monroe, the 5th US president, was elected for a 2nd term.

1830 – Naval Observatory, the first U.S. national observatory, established at Washington, DC, under commander of Lieutenant Louis Malesherbes.

1833 – John Singleton Mosby (d.1916), lawyer and Col. (“Grey Ghost” of Confederate Army), was born. He later gave riding lessons to young George Patton.

1846 – Battle of San Pasqual.

1861 – Union General George G. Meade led a foraging expedition to Gunnell’s farm near Dranesville, Va.

1862 – President Lincoln ordered the hanging of 39 of the 303 convicted Indians who participated in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. They were to be hanged on Dec. 26. The Dakota Indians were going hungry when food and money from the federal government was not distributed as promised. They led a massacre that left over 400 white people dead. The uprising was put down and 300 Indians were sentenced to death. Pres. Lincoln reduced the number to 39, who were hanged. The government then nullified the 1851 treaty.

1863 – U.S.S. Weehawken, Commander Duncan, sank while tied up to a buoy inside the bar at Charleston harbor. Weehawken had recently taken on an extra load of heavy ammunition which reduced the freeboard forward considerably. In the strong ebb tide, water washed down on an open hawse pipe and a hatch. The pumps were unable to handle the rush of water and Weehawken quickly foundered, drowning some two dozen officers and men.

1864 – Monitors U.S.S. Saugus, Onondaga, Mahopac, and Canonicus participated in a lively engagement with strong shore batteries at Howlett’s, James River, Virginia. Saugus received a solid 7-inch shot which disabled her turret.

1864 – U.S.S. Neosho, Acting Lieutenant Howard, with Lieutenant Commander Fitch embarked, with the three small steamers U.S.S. Fairplay, Silver Lake, and Moose and several army transports in company, moved down the Cumberland River from Nashville and engaged Confederate batteries near Bell’s Mills, Tennessee. With ironclad Neosho in the lead and lightly protected ships to the rear, Fitch steamed slowly up and single-handedly engaged the Southern artillery.

As the gallant officer reported later: ”I had also great faith in the endurance of the Neosho, and therefore chose this position [directly in front of the main Confederate battery] as the most favorable one to test her strength and at the same time use canister and grape at 20 to 30 yards range. Our fire was slow and deliberate, but soon had the effect to scatter the enemy’s sharpshooters and infantry, but owing to the elevated position of the batteries directly over us we could do but little injury. The enemy’s fire was terrific, and in a very few minutes everything perishable on our decks was completely demolished.”

After holding his position for about two and a half hours, Fitch withdrew upstream, and aware that his lighter-armed vessels would not survive a passage of the batteries, returned with them to Nashville. During this fierce action, Quartermaster John Ditzen-back, seeing Neosho’s ensign shot away by the concentrated Southern fire, coolly left the pilot house, and, despite the deadly shot raking Neosho’s decks, took the flag which was drooping over the wheelhouse and made it fast to the stump of the highest mast remaining. For this courageous act Ditzenback was awarded the Medal of Honor. Later in the day, Fitch in the Neosho joined by Carondelet again engaged the batteries, and, choosing a different firing position disabled some of the Confederate guns. Attesting to the endurance of Neosho under fire, Fitch was able to report to Rear Admiral Lee: “During the day the Neosho was struck over a hundred times, but received no injury whatever.”

1865 – The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the U.S. Constitution. The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery.

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1884 – The Washington Monument was completed by Army engineers 101 years after George Washington himself approved the location halfway between the proposed sites of the Capitol and the White House. Construction did not begin on the 555-foot Egyptian obelisk until July 4, 1848, when a private citizens’ group, the Washington National Monument Society, raised enough money to begin the project. The original design called for the familiar obelisk surrounded by a large building with a statue of Washington driving a Roman chariot on top.

Construction was halted in 1854 when the money ran out and for 22 years the monument stood embarrassingly unfinished, looking, as Mark Twain put it, like “a factory chimney with the top broken off.” In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant authorized the funds to complete the construction–but without the ornate building and classical statue. When the final capstone and 9-inch aluminum pyramid were set in place in 1884, the Washington Monument was the tallest structure in the world.

1889 – Jefferson Davis (81), the first and only president of the Confederate States of America (1861-1865), died in New Orleans.

1906 – Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge flew a powered, man-carrying kite that carried him 168 feet in the air for seven minutes at Baddeck, Nova Scotia.

1917 – USS Jacob Jones is the first American destroyer to be sunk by enemy action when it is torpedoed, off the coast of England, by German submarine SM U-53.

1917 – Former Czar Nicholas II and family were made prisoners by the Bolsheviks in Tobolsk.

1917 – At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with another vessel.

1923 – A presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as President Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.

1928 – A small detail of Marines under Captain Maurice G. Holmes defeated Nicaraguan bandits near Chuyelite. GySgt Charles Williams was mortally wounded during the fighting. Capt Holmes was later awarded the Navy Cross for gallantry, and a posthumous award was given to GySgt Williams.

1941 – President Roosevelt-convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that the Japanese fleet is headed for Thailand, not the United States-telegrams Emperor Hirohito with the request that “for the sake of humanity,” the emperor intervene “to prevent further death and destruction in the world.” The Royal Australian Air Force had sighted Japanese escorts, cruisers, and destroyers on patrol near the Malayan coast, south of Cape Cambodia. An Aussie pilot managed to radio that it looked as if the Japanese warships were headed for Thailand-just before he was shot down by the Japanese. Back in England, Prime Minister Churchill called a meeting of his chiefs of staff to discuss the crisis.

While reports were coming in describing Thailand as the Japanese destination, they began to question whether it could have been a diversion. British intelligence had intercepted the Japanese code “Raffles,” a warning to the Japanese fleet to be on alert-but for what? Britain was already preparing Operation Matador, the launching of their 11th Indian Division into Thailand to meet the presumed Japanese invasion force. But at the last minute, Air Marshall Brooke-Popham received word not to cross the Thai border for fear that it would provoke a Japanese attack if, in fact, the warship movement was merely a bluff. Meanwhile, 600 miles northwest of Hawaii, Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, announced to his men: “The rise or fall of the empire depends upon this battle. Everyone will do his duty with utmost efforts.” Thailand was, in fact, a bluff. Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii was confirmed for Yamamoto as the Japanese target, after the Japanese consul in Hawaii had reported to Tokyo that a significant portion of the U.S. Pacific fleet would be anchored in the harbor-sitting ducks.

The following morning, Sunday, December 7, was a good day to begin a raid. “The son of man has just sent his final message to the son of God,” FDR joked to Eleanor after sending off his telegram to Hirohito, who in the Shinto tradition of Japan was deemed a god. As he enjoyed his stamp collection and chatted with Harry Hopkins, his personal adviser, news reached him of Japan’s formal rejection of America’s 10-point proposals for peace and an end to economic sanctions and the oil embargo placed on the Axis power. “This means war,” the president declared. Hopkins recommended an American first strike. “No, we can’t do that,” Roosevelt countered. “We are a democracy and a peaceful people.”

1941 – Dutch and British pilots saw Japanese invasion fleet at Singapore.

December 6th ~ { continued... }

1941 – Japanese forces leave Palau bound for the attack on the Philippines.

1942 – In New Guinea, US forces managed to reach the beach on the east side of Buna after heavy fighting. The Australian attack at Gona has little success. Japanese reinforcement fighting along the coast from the west make some headway.

1943 – The US 5th Army offensive continues. The British 10th Corps captures Monte Camino while the US 2nd Corps attacks Monte la Difensa. To the east, the British 8th Army approaches the Moro River.

1944 – Elements of the US 3rd Army enter Saareguemines which is defended by German forces. In Holland, the British 2nd Army is held up southwest of Arnhem by the German demolition of dikes and the consequent flooding.

1944 – Coast Guardsmen participated in the landings at Ormoc, Philippine Islands.

1945 – U.S. extended a $3 billion loan to Britain to help compensate for the termination of Lend-Lease.

1948 – The “Pumpkin spy papers” were found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers. They became evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss was spying for the Soviet Union.

1950 – Fifth Air Force jets and Australian F-51 Mustangs were credited with killing 2,500 enemy troops in an attack near Pyongyang. This did not, however, prevent the Chinese communists for occupying the North Korean capitol.

1950 – The United Nations issued a call for the communist forces to halt at the 38th parallel in Korea.

1950 – Far East Air Forces’ 27th Fighter-Escort Wing F-84 Thunderjets flew their first combat mission of the Korean War.

1957 – A launch pad explosion of Vanguard TV3 thwarts the first United States attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1961 – U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff authorize combat missions by Operation Farm Gate pilots. With this order, U.S. Air Force pilots were given the go-ahead to undertake combat missions against the Viet Cong as long as at least one Vietnamese national was carried on board the strike aircraft for training purposes. The program had initially been designed to provide advisory support to assist the South Vietnamese Air Force in increasing its capability.

1973 – House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew. Agnew, vice president to President Richard M. Nixon, resigned from his office and pleaded no contest to one charge of income tax evasion in return for the dropping of all other charges. Agnew, the only US Vice President to resign in disgrace, was fined $10,000 and given three year’s probation.

1983 – USS America battle group with 5,500 sailors, departs coast of Somalia, reducing offshore strength from 9,195 to 3,833. USS Independence takes up station.

1988 – The space shuttle Atlantis landed in California after a successful mission.

December 6th ~ { continued... }

1990 – Iraq announced that it would release all its hostages, saying foreigners could begin leaving in two days.

1998 – The astronauts of the Endeavour space shuttle attached Node 1 of the new space station to the cargo block Zarya.

2000 – A Pentagon investigation concluded in a 168-page report that 3 top Army Corps of Engineers officials manipulated a study to justify a construction binge on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

2000 – A Russian court found US Citizen, Edmond Pope, guilty of espionage. Pope was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment by a Moscow court for espionage; however, he was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and released eight days after his sentencing.

2001 – President George W. Bush dedicated the national Christmas tree to those who died on Sept. 11 and to GIs who died in the line of duty.

2001 – Anthrax tainted mail turned up at a sorting site outside the Federal building in Washington DC. It had been received Dec 5th.

2001 – In Afghanistan Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, decided to surrender Kandahar.

2001 – The U.S. government rejected amnesty for Mullah Omar or any Taliban leaders.

2004 – In Haiti gunfire erupted in a stronghold of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide overnight, leaving at least three dead.

2004 – In Iraq 5 U.S. troops were reported killed in separate clashes in a volatile western province. Insurgents blew up part of a domestic oil pipeline in northern Iraq.

2004 – In Saudi Arabia Islamic militants threw explosives at the gate of the heavily guarded US consulate in Jiddah in a bold assault, then forced their way into the building, prompting a gunbattle that left 9 people dead and several injured. In 2005 two AK-47 assault rifles used in the attack were later traced to Yemen’s Ministry of Defense.

2005 – In Iraq, assailants kidnapped an American security consultant. On 8 December 2005, the assailants killed their victim. The Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) claimed responsibility.

2006 – The Iraq Study Group Report was released. Iraq Study Group, made up of people from both of the major U.S. parties, was led by co-chairs James Baker, a former Secretary of State (Republican), and Lee H. Hamilton, a former U.S. Representative (Democrat). It concluded that “the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating” and “U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end.” The report’s 79 recommendations include increasing diplomatic measures with Iran and Syria and intensifying efforts to train Iraqi troops.

2006 – NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars.

2014 – An American civilian, journalist Luke Sommers, and a South African civilian, teacher Pierre Korkie, are killed during an attempt to rescue them by U.S. Navy SEALs in Yemen. Eight others were successfully recovered. They were being held hostage by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

2014 – NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reawakened at 8:00 PM UTC in preparation for observing the dwarf planet Pluto and its satellites. New Horizons, launched on January 19, 2006, will begin distant observations on January 15, 2015.

December 7th ~

1776 – Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, arranges to enter the American military as a major general.

1787– In Dover, Delaware, the U.S. Constitution is unanimously ratified by all 30 delegates to the Delaware Constitutional Convention, making Delaware the first state of the modern United States. Less than four months before, the Constitution was signed by 37 of the original 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia. The Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, and, by the terms of the document, the Constitution would become binding once nine of the former 13 colonies had ratified the document. Delaware led the process, and on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, making federal democracy the law of the land. Government under the U.S. Constitution took effect on March 4, 1789.

1796– Electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the United States.

1805 – Having spied the Pacific Ocean for the first time a few weeks earlier, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark cross to the south shore of the Columbia River (near modern-day Portland) and begin building the small fort that would be their winter home. Lewis, Clark, and their men deserved a rest. During the past year, they had made the difficult trip from the upper Missouri River across the rugged Rockies, and down the Columbia River to the ocean.

1808– James Madison was elected president in succession to Thomas Jefferson.

1836– Martin Van Buren was elected the eighth president of the United States.

1861– USS Santiago de Cuba, under Commander Daniel B. Ridgely, halted the British schooner Eugenia Smith and captured J.W. Zacharie, a New Orleans merchant and Confederate purchasing agent.

1862– Northwestern Arkansas and Southwestern Missouri is secured for the Union when a force commanded by General James G. Blunt holds off a force of Confederates under General Thomas Hindman. Hindman assembled a force at Fort Smith, Arkansas, to make an attempt to recapture territory lost during the Pea Ridge campaign of early 1862.

Hindman planned to cross the Boston Mountains into northwestern Arkansas and then Missouri, but the Union Army of the Frontier, commanded by John Schofield, made a preemptive move to Maysville, Arkansas. Schofield had to leave the army due to illness, and Blunt assumed command. When Hindman sent an advance detachment of cavalry under John Marmaduke through the mountains in late November, Blunt moved south and defeated Marmaduke in a minor engagement at Cane Hill. After Cane Hill, Hindman moved his 11,000-man army across the Boston Mountains and approached Blunt’s 5,000 troops. Hindman prepared to attack, but was surprised by the approach of Union reinforcements from Missouri.

In one of the most dramatic marches of the entire war, Union General Francis Herron had moved 7,000 reinforcements more than 110 miles in three and a half days. Hindman turned to face Herron, but then took up defensive positions in Prairie Grove. Herron arrived and attacked Hindman on December 7. Herron sent only half of his force to the assault, believing that this was only part of Hindman’s force. Outnumbered nearly three to one, Herron’s attack failed. Hindman ordered a counterattack, but it was repulsed with heavy loses. Hearing noise from the battle, Blunt moved toward Prairie Grove and attacked Hindman later that day. This, too, failed, as did another Confederate counterattack. Darkness ended the engagement with the Confederates still holding the high ground at Prairie Grove.

The battle was a tactical draw but Hindman’s army was running low on ammunition. Confederate losses amounted to more than 1,400 killed and wounded, while the Yankees lost more than 1,200. Hindman retreated back to Fort Smith, and the region was secured for the Union.

1917– U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary with only one dissenting vote in Congress and became the 13th country to do so.

1917 – Four U.S. battleships arrive at Scapa Flow taking on the role of the British Grand Fleet’s Sixth Battle Squadron. Include USS Delaware (BB-28), USS Florida (BB-30), New York (BB-34), and USS Wyoming (BB-32).

1930 – W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts telecasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The telecast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.

December 7th ~ { continued... }

1941– At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.

With diplomatic negotiations with Japan breaking down, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers knew that an imminent Japanese attack was probable, but nothing had been done to increase security at the important naval base at Pearl Harbor. It was Sunday morning, and many military personnel had been given passes to attend religious services off base. At 7:02 a.m., two radio operators spotted large groups of aircraft in flight toward the island from the north, but, with a flight of B-17s expected from the United States at the time, they were told to sound no alarm. Thus, the Japanese air assault came as a devastating surprise to the naval base.Much of the Pacific fleet was rendered useless: Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded, many while valiantly attempting to repulse the attack. Japan’s losses were some 30 planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than 100 men.

Fortunately for the United States, all three Pacific fleet carriers were out at sea on training maneuvers. These giant aircraft carriers would have their revenge against Japan six months later at the Battle of Midway, reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy in a spectacular victory. US Coast Guard patrol boat Tiger conducted anti-submarine sweeps outside of Pearl Harbor and another patrol boat Taney opened fire on Japanese aircraft that appeared over Honolulu Harbor during the attack. The Americans lose 188 aircraft; the Japanese 29. Admiral Nagumo, despite the task forces’s capacity and against advice, does not send a third wave against the base. The three American aircraft carriers serving in the Pacific are not in port and escape unharmed as does much of the infrastructure of the port, including the oil storage tanks.

However, the attack leaves the Allies with only the three US carriers and two British battleships as active capital ships in the theater. The cruisers destroyers and submarines available from the Dutch and Free French reduce the numerical inferiority against the Japanese navy, however, the Allied craft are widely dispersed and under multiple commands. The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and declared, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” After a brief and forceful speech, he asked Congress to approve a resolution recognizing the state of war between the United States and Japan. The Senate voted for war against Japan by 82 to 0, and the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 388 to 1. The sole dissenter was Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a devout pacifist who had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I.

Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the U.S. government responded in kind. The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives.

1941– Evidence arose in 1999 that one of five Japanese mini submarines penetrated Pearl Harbor and hit at least one ship with torpedoes.

1941- The 1st Japanese submarine was sunk by a US ship, the USS Ward.

1941 – The last part of the Japanese signal, stating specifically that relations are being broken is intercepted and decoded by the Americans. Delays in decoding of the message and difficulty in securing an appointment with Secretary Hull ensure that the Japanese delegation do not meet their country’s deadline for presentation of official note breaking of diplomatic ties until after the attack upon Pearl Harbor is launched.

1941 – Japanese forces bomb Guam and Wake and Midway is bombarded by Japanese destroyers.

1941 – The Canadian government declares war on Japan.

1941 – Wall Street ran for cover, as panicked traders looked to dump their holdings. After a day of frantic action, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 4.08 points to close at 112.52.

1942 – The Japanese counterattacks threaten the American positions. The Americans ultimately hold.

1942 – American PT Boats force a Japanese supply convoy to turn back before landing their supplies on Guadalcanal. The convoy is escorted by 7 destroyers led by Captain Sato.

1942– The U.S. Navy launched the USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.

1943 – The US 5th Army secures the Mignano gap and expands its offensive. The US 2nd and 6th Corps attack Monte Sammucro and San Pietro. There is determined German resistance.

1944 – On Leyte, the US 77th Division lands about one mile south of Ormoc. There is some Japanese resistance. One of the 12 escorting destroyers is sunk by a Kamikaze attack. Meanwhile, the US 7th Division continues attacking northward toward Ormoc.

1944 – The US 3rd Army penetrates the Siegfried Line northwest of Saarlautern.

1945– The microwave oven was patented. Percy Spencer accidentally discovered that microwaves would also heat food. Spencer, an eighth-grade dropout and electronic wizard, worked for the Raytheon Manufacturing Corporation of Massachusetts developing a radar machine using microwave radiation.

December 7th ~ { continued... }

1950 – Eight U.S. Air Force C-119 transports drop four spans of M-2 treadway bridge in the vicinity of Funchilin Pass. This operation allowed the 1st Marine Division to breach the most difficult natural obstacle of the entire breakout from the Chosin/Changjin Reservoir.

1952 – In the largest single-day tally of the Korean War, U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabre jet pilots report seven of 32 enemy fighters destroyed, one damaged and one probably destroyed.

1962– Great Britain performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.

1963– During the Army-Navy game, videotaped instant replay was used for the first time in a live sports telecast as CBS re-showed a one-yard touchdown run by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh. Navy beat Army, 21-15.

1964 – The situation worsens in South Vietnam, as the Viet Cong attack and capture the district headquarters at An Lao and much of the surrounding valley 300 miles northeast of Saigon. South Vietnamese troops regained control only after reinforcements were airlifted into the area by U.S. helicopters. During the course of the action, two U.S. advisors were killed. There were over 300 South Vietnamese casualties and as many as 7,000 villagers were temporarily forced to abandon their homes.

In response, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, who had just returned from Washington, held a series of conferences with Premier Tran Van Huong, General Nguyen Khanh, and other South Vietnamese leaders. Taylor told them that the United States would provide additional financial aid to help stabilize the worsening situation in the countryside. It was agreed that the funds would be used to strengthen South Vietnam’s military forces (which South Vietnam agreed to increase by 100,000 men) and to “further economic assistance for a variety of reforms of industrial, urban, and rural development.”

Nothing was said during these discussions about President Lyndon B. Johnson’s plans to commence the bombing of North Vietnam, which had been decided during Taylor’s meeting with the president and his advisers when Taylor was in Washington earlier in December.

1965 – In a memorandum to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara states that U.S. troop strength must be substantially augmented “if we are to avoid being defeated there.” Cautioning that such deployments would not ensure military success, McNamara said the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong “continue to believe that the war will be a long one, that time is their ally and their own staying power is superior to ours.”

1972– America’s last moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 12:33 a.m., and landed on the moon December 11 at 3:15 p.m.. A historic photo was taken of the Earth that showed our “isolated blue planet.”

1981– Spain became a member of NATO.

1987– Despite protests in Washington concerning Soviet human rights abuses, most Americans get swept up in “Gorbymania” as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives for his summit with President Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, charmed the American public and media by praising the United States and calling for closer relations between the Soviet Union and America. Aside from the excitement surrounding Gorbachev (whose face was soon plastered on T-shirts, cups, and posters), the summit with Reagan resulted in one of the most significant arms control agreements of the Cold War. Reagan and Gorbachev signed off on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, which called for the elimination of all ground cruise and ballistic missiles and launchers in Europe with ranges of 320 to 3,400 miles.

By June 1991, the United States had eliminated over 800 missiles and the Soviets had eliminated 1,800 such weapons. The INF Treaty was the first arms control agreement that eliminated, rather than simply limited, nuclear weapons. The treaty also required on-site inspections to ensure compliance, part of Reagan’s famous “trust but verify” credo. Some critics in the United States denounced the treaty, claiming that it would “de-nuke” Europe and leave America’s allies at the mercy of the Soviets’ massive conventional forces. Most Americans, however, considered it a monumental step toward the reduction of the risk of nuclear war. The treaty was ratified by the Senate and went into effect in June 1988.

1988 – The Coast Guard hosted an international summit between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Ronald Reagan, and President-elect and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush on Governors Island on 7 December 1988 after Gorbachev had addressed the United Nations. In planning his trip to the UN, Gorbachev requested a meeting with Reagan. Reagan was in final weeks of his presidential term and his advisors felt it important that the visit remain low profile, so a large-scale summit or state visit to the White House was not in the cards. Yet, a short and informal meeting between the heads of state and newly elected President George Bush was possible.

The White House selected the Coast Guard base at Governors Island as a meeting site since it was a secure military installation in the middle of New York harbor and just minutes away from the United Nations. The leaders met for lunch at the LANTAREA commander’s [VADM James Irwin] home. The summit was characterized as “just a luncheon” and the meeting was the last time President Reagan and Gorbachev would meet during Reagan’s remaining term.