May 13th ~ {continued...}

1945 – After more heavy fighting on Mindanao, the Del Monte airfield is captured by units of the US 40th Division. The US 24th Division advances northwards along the Talomo track in the river valley. On Luzon, the force of the US 1st Corps complete the occupation of the Balete Pass, clearing the way into the Cagayan valley. The US 43rd Division, part of US 11th Corps, comes within sight of the Ipoh dam.

1946 – US condemned 58 camp guards of Mauthausen concentration camp to death.

1952 – The Coast Guard announced the establishment of an Organized Reserve Training Program, the first in U.S. Coast Guard history. Morton G. Lessans was sworn in as the first member of the Organized Air Reserve on 12 December 1951.

1952 – Naval Task Force 77 began Operation INSOMNIA – a series of abbreviated night attacks.

1953 – General Clark authorized the mobilization of four more ROK divisions.

1953 – The Air Force’s 58th Fighter-Bomber Wing attacked Toksan Dam in North Korea and destroyed this major irrigation system.

1958 – The trademark Velcro is registered.

1960 – The 1st US launch of the Delta satellite launching vehicle failed.

1965 – President Johnson in a nationally televised address, accuses Communist China of opposing a political solution that could be in the best interests of North Vietnam, because China’s goal is to dominate ‘all of Asia.’

1965 – The US begins a five day suspension of air raids on North Vietnam, claiming, at first, operational reasons, but it is soon clear that the US hopes to give North Vietnam a chance to call for peace negotiations. North Vietnam and China will charge that the United States did not, in fact, stop the raids.

1968 – Peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam began in Paris.

1968 – Three additional Air Guard units are mobilized to join the 11 called up in January in response to the growing tensions in Korea and increased operational tempo in Vietnam. None of these three units deployed overseas. However, also mobilized on this date were 34 Army Guard units, including two infantry brigades; the 29th in HI and the 69th in KS/IA.

This was the only involuntary call up of Army Guard personnel during the Vietnam War. Eight Army Guard units, composed of about 2,700 Guardsmen, saw combat in Vietnam; they were: 107th Signal Co. (RI), 116th Engineer BN (ID), 126th Service & Supply Co. (IL), 131st Engineer Co. (VT), 2nd Battalion, 138th Artillery (KY), Company D, 151st Infantry, Rangers (IN), 3rd Battalion, 197th Artillery (NH) and the 650th Medical Detachment (AL).

In addition, over 4,300 Army Guardsmen mobilized in units which did not deploy, were levied and saw service in Vietnam as individual replacements. The first Army Guard unit to deploy to Vietnam, the 650th Medical Detachment (Dental Service), arrived just three months after being mobilized on this date. Shown is Captain Sidney T. Kellon, DDS, being observed working on a patient by the unit’s commander, Colonel Daniel T. Meadows, DDS. Of the eight Army Guard units deployed to Vietnam, at least six had African American Guard members in their ranks.

May 13th ~ {continued...}

1971 – Still deadlocked, the Vietnam peace talks in Paris enter their fourth year. The talks had begun with much fanfare in May 1968, but almost immediately were plagued by procedural questions that impeded any meaningful progress. Even the seating arrangement was disputed: South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky refused to consent to any permanent seating plan that would appear to place the National Liberation Front (NLF) on an equal footing with Saigon. North Vietnam and the NLF likewise balked at any arrangement that would effectively recognize the Saigon as the legitimate government of South Vietnam.

After much argument and debate, chief U.S. negotiator W. Averell Harriman proposed an arrangement whereby NLF representatives could join the North Vietnamese team but without having to be acknowledged by Saigon’s delegates; similarly, South Vietnamese negotiators could sit with their American allies without having to be acknowledged by the North Vietnamese and the NLF representatives. Such seemingly insignificant matters became fodder for many arguments between the delegations at the negotiations and nothing meaningful came from this particular round of the ongoing peace negotiations.

1972 – There was a burglary at the Chilean Embassy in Washington DC. Two members of Pres. Nixon’s secret White House team, known as the plumbers, were involved. Nixon later blamed the robbery on White House counsel John Dean.

1972 – Seventeen U.S. helicopters land 1,000 South Vietnamese marines and their six U.S. advisors behind North Vietnamese lines southeast of Quang Tri City in the first South Vietnamese counterattack since the beginning of the communist Nguyen Hue Offensive. The marines reportedly killed more than 300 North Vietnamese before returning to South Vietnamese-controlled territory the next day. Farther to the south, North Vietnamese tanks and troops continued their attacks in the Kontum area.

On May 1st, North Vietnamese troops had captured Quang Tri City, the first provincial capital taken during their ongoing offensive. The fall of the city effectively gave the North Vietnamese control of the entire province of Quang Tri. Farther south along the coast, three districts of Binh Dinh Province also fell, leaving about one-third of that province under communist control. These attacks were part of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive (later called the “Easter Offensive”), a massive invasion by North Vietnamese forces on March 30th to strike the blow that would win them the war.

The attacking force included 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments, with more than 120,000 troops and approximately 1,200 tanks and other armored vehicles. The main North Vietnamese objectives, in addition to Quang Tri in the north and Kontum in the Central Highlands, included An Loc farther to the south. The situation at Quang Tri would not be rectified until President Nguyen Van Thieu relieved the I Corps commander and replaced him with Maj. Gen. Ngo Quang Truong, whom Gen. Bruce Palmer, Jr., later described as “probably the best field commander in South Vietnam.” Truong effectively stopped the ongoing rout of South Vietnamese forces, established a stubborn defense, and eventually launched a successful counterattack against the North Vietnamese, retaking Quang Tri in September.

1979 – Shah and his family was sentenced to death in Teheran.

1986 – CGC Manitou stopped the 125-foot Sun Bird in 7th District waters and her boarding team discovered 40,000 pounds of marijuana hidden aboard. The boarding team then located the vessel’s builder’s plate and learned that the Sun Bird was the decommissioned “buck-and-a-quarter” cutter Crawford. The former cutter and her 14-man crew were taken into custody. A newspaper article describing the incident noted: “If Crawford was a person, Miami would have probably seen it blush . . . The ex-Coast Guard cutter received more publicity for smuggling the drugs than for its 20-year Coast Guard career.”

1987 – President Reagan said his personal diary confirmed that he’d talked with Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd about Saudi help for the Nicaraguan Contras at a time when Congress banned military aid, but Reagan said he did not solicit secret contributions.

1988 – The U.S. Senate voted 83-6 to order the U.S. military to enter the war against illegal drug trafficking, approving a plan to give the Navy the power to stop drug boats on the high seas and make arrests.

May 13th ~ {continued...}

1989 – In unusually strong language, President Bush called on the people of Panama and the country’s defense forces to overthrow their military leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1992 – A trio of astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour captured a wayward Intelsat-6 communications satellite during the first-ever three-person spacewalk.

1996 – Britain’s last Polaris submarine, the HMS Repulse, came home for good. The Polaris subs have been replaced by the US Trident nuclear subs.

2002 – President Bush announced that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin would sign a treaty to shrink their countries’ nuclear arsenals by two-thirds to 1,700-2,200 active warheads at the end of 10 years.

2003 – L. Paul Bremer, the new US administrator in Iraq, reportedly authorized troops to shoot looters on sight. Rumsfeld said muscle would be used to stop looting.

2003 – Algerian army commandos freed 17 European tourists kidnapped in the Sahara Desert by an al-Qaida-linked terror group. 9 captors were killed and 15 hostages remained.

2004 – The Space Ship One rocket climbed to 211,400 feet, becoming the 1st privately funded vehicle to reach the edge of space.

2008 – The United States Department of Defense drops charges against Mohammed al Qahtani, who was suspected of being the “20th hijacker” in the September 11, 2001 attacks. New charges will be filed in November.

May 14th ~

1607 – Just over 100 men and boys filed ashore from the small sailing ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, onto what English adventurers came to call Jamestown Island in Virginia. 104 Englishmen arrived. The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Established by the Virginia Company of London as “James Fort” on May 4, 1607 (O.S., May 14, 1607 N.S.), and considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610, it followed several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Jamestown served as the capital of the colony for 83 years, from 1616 until 1699.

The settlement was located within the country of Tsenacommacah, which was administered by the Powhatan Confederacy, and specifically in that of the Paspahegh tribe. The natives initially welcomed and provided crucial provisions and support for the colonists, who were not agriculturally inclined. Relations with the newcomers soured fairly early on, leading to the total annihilation of the Paspahegh in warfare within 3 years.

1767 – British government disbanded the import duty on tea in America.

1787 – Delegates began gathering in Philadelphia for a convention to draw up the U.S. Constitution. The Constitutional Convention (also known as the Philadelphia Convention, the Federal Convention, or the Grand Convention at Philadelphia) took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention. The result of the Convention was the creation of the United States Constitution, placing the Convention among the most significant events in the history of the United States.

1801 – Tripoli declares war against the United States.

1804 – One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Even before the U.S. government concluded purchase negotiations with France, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned his private secretary Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, an army captain, to lead an expedition into what is now the U.S. Northwest.

On May 14th, the “Corps of Discovery”—featuring approximately 45 men (although only an approximate 33 men would make the full journey)—left St. Louis for the American interior. The expedition traveled up the Missouri River in a 55-foot long keelboat and two smaller boats.

In November, Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader accompanied by his young Native American wife Sacagawea, joined the expedition as an interpreter. The group wintered in present-day North Dakota before crossing into present-day Montana, where they first saw the Rocky Mountains.

On the other side of the Continental Divide, they were met by Sacagawea’s tribe, the Shoshone Indians, who sold them horses for their journey down through the Bitterroot Mountains. After passing through the dangerous rapids of the Clearwater and Snake rivers in canoes, the explorers reached the calm of the Columbia River, which led them to the sea.

On November 8th, 1805, the expedition arrived at the Pacific Ocean, the first European explorers to do so by an overland route from the east. After pausing there for the winter, the explorers began their long journey back to St. Louis. On September 23rd, 1806, after almost two and a half years, the expedition returned to the city, bringing back a wealth of information about the largely unexplored region, as well as valuable U.S. claims to Oregon Territory.

1812 – The Ordnance Department was established by act of Congress. During the Revolutionary War, ordnance material was under supervision of the Board of War and Ordnance. Numerous shifts in duties and responsibilities have occurred in the Ordnance Corps since colonial times. It acquired its present designation in 1950.

May 14th ~ {continued...}

1836 – The Treaties of Velasco were two documents signed at Velasco, Texas (now Surfside Beach, Texas) between Antonio López de Santa Anna of Mexico and the Republic of Texas, in the aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836). The signatories were Interim President David G. Burnet for Texas and General Santa Anna for Mexico. The treaties were intended, on the part of the Texans, to provide a conclusion of hostilities between the two belligerents and offer the first steps toward the official recognition of the breakaway Republic’s independence.

It set the southern boundary of Texas at the Rio Grande, including the Nueces Strip. Santa Anna signed both a public treaty and a secret treaty, but neither treaty was ratified by the Mexican government because he had signed the documents under coercion as a prisoner. Mexico claimed Texas was a breakaway province, but was too weak to attempt another invasion.

1836 – U.S. Exploring Expedition authorized to conduct exploration of Pacific Ocean and South Seas, first major scientific expedition overseas. LT Charles Wilkes USN, would lead the expedition in surveying South America, Antarctica, Far East, and North Pacific.

1845 – First U.S. warship visits Vietnam. While anchored in Danang for reprovisioning, CAPT John Percival commanding USS Constitution, conducts a show of force against Vietnamese authorities in an effort to obtain the release of a French priest held prisoner by Emperor of Annam at Hue.

1863 – Union General Nathanial Banks took his army out of Alexandria, Louisiana, and headed towards Port Hudson along the Mississippi River. The fort was considered the second most important strategic location on the river, after Vicksburg.

1863 – The Battle of Jackson, in Jackson, Mississippi, was part of the Vicksburg Campaign in the American Civil War. Union commander Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee defeated Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, seizing the city, cutting supply lines, and opening the path to the west and the Siege of Vicksburg.

1864 – Union and Confederate troops clash at Resaca, Georgia. This was one of the first engagements in a summer-long campaign by Union General William T. Sherman to capture the Confederate city of Atlanta. The spring of 1864 saw a determined effort by the Union to win the war through major offensives in both the eastern and western theaters.

In the east, Union General Ulysses S. Grant took on Confederate General Robert E. Lee, while Sherman applied pressure on the Army of the Tennessee, under General Joseph Johnston, in the west. The Atlanta campaign was dictated by the hilly terrain of northern Georgia. Sherman would try to outflank Johnston on one side, but Johnston would move to block him. Sherman tried the other side, and Johnston blocked again. Johnston was losing ground, but he was stalling Sherman’s advance, and fanning the discontent in the North as the election of 1864 loomed.

On May 9th, part of Sherman’s army under James McPherson captured Snake Creek Gap. McPherson did not push further, however, because he ran into Confederates fortified at nearby Resaca. The Union army would not assault Resaca until May 14, triggering two days of combat. On the first day, the Federal troops gained important ground but failed to break the Confederate lines. The second day also saw no result.

But because the Confederates maintained their position and thwarted the Union offense, the Battle of Resaca was considered a tactical victory for the South. In the days after the battle, Sherman sent McPherson’s men on another swing around Johnston’s left flank. When these troops crossed the Oostanaula River south of Johnston’s army, he had to withdraw further south. The armies inched closer to Atlanta.

1897 – “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Phillip Sousa was performed for the first time in Philadelphia.

1897 – Guglielmo Marconi made the first communication by wireless telegraph.

1908 – 1st passenger flight in an airplane.

May 14th ~ {continued...}

1942 – The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) was established.

1942 – The first indications of Japanese planning for an attack on Midway Island, in the Central Pacific, reach the code breakers.

1943 – U.S. and Great Britain chiefs of staff, meeting in Washington, D.C., approve and plot out Operation Point Blank, a joint bombing offensive to be mounted from British airbases. Operation Point Blank’s aim was grandiose and comprehensive: “The progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people.” It was also intended to set up “final combined operations on the continent.” In other words, it was intended to set the stage for one fatal blow that would bring Germany to its knees.

The immediate targets of Operation Point Blank were to be submarine construction yards and bases, aircraft factories, ball bearing factories, rubber and tire factories, oil production and storage plants, and military transport-vehicle factories and stores. Ironically, the very day planning for Point Blank began in Washington, the Germans shot down 74 British four-engine bombers as the Brits struck a munitions factory near Pilsen. Joseph Goebbels, writing in his diary, recorded that the biggest setback about the British raid on the factory was that the drafting room was destroyed.

1944 – The attacks by forces of the US 5th Army continue. The French Expeditionary Corps advances into the Ausente Valley, capturing Ausonia, and continue to advance over the Aurunci Mountains toward the next German defensive line, which is not occupied in strength at this time. The US 2nd Corps makes progress against the defending German 94th Division.

1945 – US Army announced the discovery of millions of dollars worth of art looted by the Nazis from all over Europe well as 100 tons of gold bars and currency hidden in a salt mine located on the Losa Plateau in Austria. Meanwhile, the concentration camp at Ebensee is liberated and described as “more horrible than Buchenwald.”

1945 – On Luzon, units of the US 25th Division, part of US 1st Corps, advance north of the Balete Pass. Elements of the the US 43rd Division, part of US 11th Corps, reach the Ipoh dam, which has been fortified by the Japanese.

1945 – Elements of Florida’s 124th Infantry, 31st Infantry Division (AL, FL, LA, MS) repel several Japanese “banzi” suicidal attacks. The 31st Division, nicknamed “Dixie” first entered combat in World War II when, in March 1944, it took part in the fighting in New Guinea. Elements of it made an assault landing on near Aitape causing a diversion of Japanese defenders while the main portion of the division landed at Maffin Bay almost unopposed.

The 31st then moved to secure Morotai Island, cutting off 40,000 enemy soldiers based on Halmahera Island from reinforcements and supply from the Philippines. By the time the 31st landed on Mindanao it was a veteran division and proved its metal when it captured a Japanese airfield at Valencia, which led to the banzi attacks as fanatical Japanese soldiers tried in vain to recapture it.

The men of the ‘Dixie Division’ were still fighting in the mountains of the island when the war ended in August 1945. During the course of the war the division suffered 414 men killed in action with another 1,400 wounded and it had one member awarded the Medal of Honor.

1945 – The US 20th Air Force conducts a fire bombing raid Nagoya. About 2500 tons of incendiary bombs are dropped by 472 B-29 Superfortress bombers. Some 20 Japanese fighters are shot down.

1945 – On Okinawa, 20 American Marines reach the summit of Sugar Loaf Hill. The airfield at Yonabaru is captured.

1949 – President Harry Truman signed a bill establishing a rocket test range at Cape Canaveral.

1951 – USS Valcour was rammed by the collier Thomas Tracy. CGC Cherokee responded and assisted in extinguishing the resulting fires and towed the Valcour to Norfolk. Thirty-seven Navy sailors perished.

1951 – The U.S. National Security Council submitted to President Truman a statement of policy that the council believed the United States should follow in facing the communists in Korea and throughout Asia. Truman approved the statement on May 17th.

May 14th ~ {continued...}

1955 – The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.

The introduction to the treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact indicated the reason for its existence. This revolved around “Western Germany, which is being remilitarized, and her inclusion in the North Atlantic bloc, which increases the danger of a new war and creates a threat to the national security of peace-loving states.” This passage referred to the decision by the United States and the other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on May 9th, 1955 to make West Germany a member of NATO and allow that nation to remilitarize.

The Soviets obviously saw this as a direct threat and responded with the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact remained intact until 1991. Albania was expelled in 1962 because, believing that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was deviating too much from strict Marxist orthodoxy, the country turned to communist China for aid and trade.

In 1990, East Germany left the Pact and reunited with West Germany; the reunified Germany then became a member of NATO. The rise of non-communist governments in other eastern bloc nations, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, throughout 1990 and 1991 marked an effective end of the power of the Warsaw Pact.

In March 1991, the military alliance component of the pact was dissolved and in July 1991, the last meeting of the political consultative body took place.

1964 – Amid charges that US pilots in Vietnam are endangered and losing their lives due to obsolescent planes, it is announced that 60 USN dive bombers are being sent to Vietnam and that 40 revamped B-26s are being ready for Vietnam.

1964 – Defense Secretary McNamara resents a plan to President Johnson calling for increased aid to South Vietnam.

1969 – In his first full-length report to the American people concerning the Vietnam War, President Nixon responds to the 10-point plan offered by the National Liberation Front at the 16th plenary session of the Paris talks on May 8. The NLF’s 10-point program for an “overall solution” to the war included an unconditional withdrawal of United States and Allied troops from Vietnam; the establishment of a coalition government and the holding of free elections; the demand that the South Vietnamese settle their own affairs “without foreign interference”; and the eventual reunification of North and South Vietnam.

In his speech, Nixon responded to the communist plan by proposing a phased, mutual withdrawal of major portions of U.S. Allied and North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam over a 12-month period. The remaining non-South Vietnamese forces would withdraw to enclaves and abide by a cease-fire until withdrawals were completed. Nixon also insisted that North Vietnamese forces withdraw from Cambodia and Laos at the same time and offered internationally supervised elections for South Vietnam.

Nixon’s offer of a “simultaneous start on withdrawal” represented a revision of the last formal proposal offered by the Johnson administration in October 1966–known as the “Manila formula”–in which the United States stated that the withdrawal of U.S. forces would be completed within six months after the North Vietnamese left South Vietnam. The communists’ proposal and Nixon’s counteroffer were diametrically in opposition to each other and neither side gave in, so nothing meaningful came from this particular round of diplomatic exchanges.

1972 – A force of 4,000 soldiers of South Vietnam’s 1st Division move to within a half mile of Fire Base Bastogne.

1972 – For the first time in the war, US Marines make use of Bienhoa field. MAG-12 moves in with two A-4 Skyhawk squadrons. The Marine planes offer support to Military Regions I and IV and make some sorties into Cambodia.

1973 – US Supreme court approved equal rights to females in military.

May 14th ~ {continued...}

1973 – Skylab, America’s first space station, is successfully launched into an orbit around the earth. Eleven days later, U.S. astronauts Charles Conrad, Joseph Kerwin, and Paul Weitz made a rendezvous with Skylab, repairing a jammed solar panel and conducting scientific experiments during their 28-day stay aboard the space station.

The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the Soviet Union launched Salynut, the world’s first space station, into orbit around the earth. However, unlike the ill-fated Salynut, which was plagued with problems, the American space station was a great success, safely housing three separate three-man crews for extended periods of time and exceeding pre-mission plans for scientific study. Originally the spent third stage of a Saturn 5 moon rocket, the cylinder space station was 118 feet tall, weighed 77 tons, and carried the most varied assortment of experimental equipment ever assembled in a single spacecraft to that date.

The crews of Skylab spent more than 700 hours observing the sun and brought home more than 175,000 solar pictures. They also provided important information about the biological effects of living in space for prolonged periods of time. Five years after the last Skylab mission, the space station’s orbit began to deteriorate faster than expected, owing to unexpectedly high sunspot activity. On July 11th, 1979, the parts of the space station that did not burn up in the atmosphere came crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean. No one was injured.

1975 – Rescue operations begin as US Marines attack Tang Island and bomb Ream Air Base in the first use of US troops on foreign soil under the War Powers Act. Thirty-eight Marines are killed in the operation, with 50 wounded and three missing. All 40 members of the crew of the Mayaguez are released unharmed the same day.

1992 – Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev addressed members of the U.S. Congress, appealing to them to pass a bill aiding the people of the former Soviet Union.

1993 – President Clinton told a news conference his threat of military force to halt the war in the former Yugoslavia was “still on the table” despite opposition from European allies.

1996 – The US Energy Dept. announced that it would import 20 tons of nuclear waste from research reactors in 41 nations to prevent the weapons grade material from being used for bombs.

1996 – The Voice of America turned on its newest radio transmitter in Kuwait. It was 12 times more powerful than any broadcast station in the US and was directed at Iraq and Iran.

1997 – Negotiators agreed on a pact to create a Russia-NATO advisory council. NATO agreed not to base nuclear weapons or substantial combat forces in countries that were recently under Moscow’s control.

1999 – His previous calls rebuffed, President Clinton finally got through to Chinese President Jiang Zemin; Clinton expressed hope the two countries could repair the damage to their relations since the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

2002 – Nato agreed with Russia on an new framework that would include Russia on a handful of agreed-on issues.

May 14th ~ {continued...}

2002 – In The United Nations security council agrees to an overhaul of sanctions that were imposed against Iraq 11 years ago at the end of the Gulf War. The 15-member council vote unanimously to replace a blanket ban on a whole range of goods with “smart” sanctions, which are specifically targeted at military and dual-use equipment.

2002 – The UN Security Council revamped its sanctions against Iraq in order to ease the delivery of civilian goods and tighten controls on military items.

2003 – In Iraq villagers pulled body after body from a mass grave in Mahaweel, exhuming the remains of up to 3,000 people they suspect were killed during the 1991 Shiite revolt against Saddam Hussein’s regime.

2004 – The Pentagon announced that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq, had banned virtually all coercive interrogation practices on Iraqi prisoners.

2004 – In Iraq 4 people were detained in Salaheddin province for the killing of American Nicholas Berg, whose decapitation was captured on videotape. The informant who tipped off authorities was killed by unidentified gunmen the day after the arrests.

2009 – The South Korean Navy destroyer Mummu the Great and the U.S. Navy cruiser Gettysburg capture 17 suspected Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden.

2010 – Space Shuttle Atlantis lifts off for its final planned flight in the space shuttle program after a quarter century of service. STS-132 (ISS assembly flight ULF4) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, during which Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station on 16 May 2010. The primary payload was the Russian Rassvet Mini-Research Module, along with an Integrated Cargo Carrier-Vertical Light Deployable (ICC-VLD).

Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center on 26 May 2010. STS-132 was initially scheduled to be the final flight of Atlantis, provided that the STS-335/STS-135 Launch On Need rescue mission would not be needed. However, in February 2011, NASA declared that the final mission of Atlantis and of the Space Shuttle program, STS-135, would be flown regardless of the funding situation.

May 15th ~

Murcuralia; the Festival of Mercury, Patron of the Signal Corps: Mercury, was a Roman messenger god whose attributes were mainly borrowed from the Greek god Hermes although there are myths regarding Mercury that are distinctly Roman. He was also a god of trade, thieves, and travel. The name is closely related to merx, mercari, and merces which respectively mean merchandise, to trade, and wages. For good luck, on the Ides of May (May 15th) which was considered his birthday, the merchants of Rome would use laurel boughs to sprinkle their merchandise, their ships, and their heads with water from a fountain at Porta Capena known as aqua Mercurii. They also offered prayers to Mercury for forgiveness of past and future perjuries, for profit, and the continued ability to cheat customers!

1602 – Bartholomew Gosnold, an English lawyer, explorer, and privateer who was instrumental in founding the Virginia Company of London, and Jamestown in colonial America led the first recorded European expedition to Cape Cod. He is considered by Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) to be the “prime mover of the colonization of Virginia”.

1701 – The War of the Spanish Succession, known in North America as Queen Anne’s War, begins. the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought between France and England, later Great Britain, in North America for control of the continent. In addition to the two main combatants, the war also involved numerous Native American tribes allied with each nation, and Spain, which was allied with France. It was also known as the Third Indian War or in French as the Second Intercontinental War.

The war was fought on three fronts: Spanish Florida and the English Province of Carolina were each subjected to attacks from the other, and the English engaged the French based at Mobile in what was essentially a proxy war involving primarily allied Indians on both sides. The southern war, although it did not result in significant territorial changes, had the effect of nearly wiping out the Indian population of Spanish Florida, including parts of present-day southern Georgia, and destroying Spain’s network of missions in the area; The English colonies of New England fought with French and Indian forces based in Acadia and Canada. Quebec City was repeatedly targeted (but never successfully reached) by British expeditions, and the Acadian capital Port Royal was taken in 1710.

The French and Wabanaki Confederacy sought to thwart New England expansion into Acadia, whose border New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. Toward this end, they executed raids against targets in Massachusetts (including present-day Maine), most famously raiding Deerfield in 1704; On Newfoundland, English colonists based at St. John’s disputed control of the island with the French based at Plaisance. Most of the conflict consisted of economically destructive raids against the other side’s settlements. The French successfully captured St. John’s in 1709, but the British quickly reoccupied it after the French abandoned it.

Following a preliminary peace in 1712, the Treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713. It resulted in the French cession of claims to the territories of Hudson Bay, Acadia, and Newfoundland to Britain, while retaining Cape Breton and other islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Some of its terms were ambiguous, and concerns of various Indian tribes were not included in the treaty, setting the stage for future conflicts.

1755 – Laredo, Texas is established by the Spaniards.

1756 – The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for years. In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756–the first official year of fighting in the Seven Years War–the British suffered a series of defeats against the French and their broad network of Native American alliances.

However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia’s struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America.

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

The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots.

May 15th ~ {continued...}

1776 – The Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.

1800 – CAPT Preble in Essex arrives in Batavia, Java, to escort U.S. merchant ships.

1802 – Isaac Ridgeway Trimble (d.1888), Major General (Confederate Army), was born.

1819 – Thomas Leonidas Crittenden, Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1820 – The US Congress designated the slave trade as a form of piracy.

1850 – The Bloody Island Massacre takes place in Lake County, California, in which a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County are slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.

1862 – General Benjamin F. (“Beast”) Butler decreed “Woman Order,” that all captured women in New Orleans were to be his whores.

1862 – The Union ironclad Monitor, Revenue Cutter Naugatuck, and the gunboat Galena fired on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia.

1862 – The Confederate cruiser Alabama ran aground near London.

1862 – Corporal John Mackie became the first Marine awarded the Medal of Honor.

1864 – Students from the Virginia Military Institute take part in the Battle of New Market, part of the multipronged Union offensive in the spring of 1864 designed to take Virginia out of the war. Central to this campaign was Ulysses S. Grant’s epic struggle with Robert E. Lee around Richmond. Union General Franz Sigel had been sent to apply pressure on a key agricultural region, the Shenandoah Valley. He marched south out of Winchester in early May to neutralize the valley, which was always a threat to the North.

The Shenandoah was not only a breadbasket that supplied Southern armies, it also led to the Potomac north of Washington. The Confederates had used the valley very effectively in 1862, when Stonewall Jackson kept three Federal armies occupied while keeping pressure off of Richmond. But the Confederates were hard pressed to offer any opposition to Sigel’s 6,500 troops. Lee was struggling against Grant and was badly outnumbered. He instructed John Breckinridge to drive Sigel from the valley but could offer him little in the way of troops to do the job.

Breckinridge mustered a force of regular troops and militia units and pulled together 5,300 men. They included 247 cadets from the nearby Virginia Military Institute, some of the boys just 15 years old. On May 15th, Breckinridge attacked Sigel’s troops at New Market. Sigel fell back a half mile, reformed his lines, and began to shell the Confederate center.

It was at this juncture that Breckinridge reluctantly sent the VMI cadets into battle. The young students were part of an attack that captured two Yankee guns. Ten of the cadets were killed and 48 were wounded, but Sigel suffered a humiliating defeat and began to withdraw from the valley. The courage of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market became legendary, and the pressure was temporarily off of the Rebels in the Shenandoah Valley. Breckinridge was able to send part of his force east to reinforce Lee.

1864 – As ships of Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboat fleet neared the mouth of the Red River, they met continued resistance from Confederate shore batteries and riflemen. U.S.S. St. Clair, a 200-ton stern-wheeler under Acting Lieutenant Thomas B. Gregory, engaged a battery near Eunice’s Bluff, Louisiana. Gregory exchanged fire with the artillerists until the transports he was con-voying were out of danger, then continued downriver.

1864 – Battle of Resaca, Georgia ends. The battle was waged in both Gordon and Whitfield counties, Georgia, May 13–15th, 1864. It ended inconclusively with the Confederate Army retreating. The engagement was fought between the Military Division of the Mississippi (led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman) on the side of the Union and the Army of Tennessee (Gen. Joseph E. Johnston) for the Confederates.

May 15th ~ {continued...}

1905 – Las Vegas, is founded when 110 acres (0.45 km2), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.

1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.

1918 – The U.S. Post Office and the U.S. Army began regularly scheduled airmail service between Washington and New York through Philadelphia. Lieutenant George L. Boyle, an inexperienced young army pilot, was chosen to make the first flight from Washington. Even with a route map stitched to his breeches, Boyle lost his way and flew south rather than north.

The second leg of the Washington–Philadelphia–New York flight, however, took off and arrived in New York on schedule–without the Washington mail. The distance of the route was 218 miles, and one round trip per day was made six days a week. Army Air Service pilots flew the route until August 10, 1918, when the Post Office Department took over the entire operation with its own planes and pilots.

1918 – Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts received the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They were the first Americans to win France’s highest military medal.

1940 – USS Sailfish is re-commissioned. It was originally the USS Squalus. USS Sailfish (SS-192), a Sargo-class submarine, was originally named Squalus. Her keel was laid on 18 October 1937 by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, as Squalus, the only ship of the United States Navy named for the squalus.

She was launched on 14 September 1938 sponsored by Mrs. Thomas C. Hart (wife of the Admiral), and commissioned on 1 March 1939, with Lieutenant Oliver F. Naquin in command. Due to mechanical failure, Squalus sank during a test dive on 23 May 1939. She was raised, renamed, and re-commissioned as Sailfish.

1942 – Gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.

1942 – First Naval Air Transport Service flight across Pacific.

1942 – A bill establishing a women’s corps in the U.S. Army becomes law, creating the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACs) and granting women official military status. In May 1941, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, the first congresswoman ever from New England, introduced legislation that would enable women to serve in the Army in noncombat positions. Rogers was well suited for such a task; during her husband John J. Rogers’ term as congressman, Rogers was active as a volunteer for the Red Cross, the Women’s Overseas League, and military hospitals.

Because of her work inspecting field and base hospitals, President Warren G. Harding, in 1922, appointed her as his personal representative for inspections and visits to veterans’ hospitals throughout the country. She was eventually appointed to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, as chairwoman in the 80th and 83rd Congresses.

The bill to create a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps would not be passed into law for a year after it was introduced (the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a great incentive). But finally, the WAACs gained official status and salary-but still not all the benefits accorded to men. Thousands of women enlisted in light of this new legislation, and in July 1942, the “auxiliary” was dropped from the name, and the Women’s Army Corps, or WACs, received full Army benefits in keeping with their male counterparts.

The WACs performed a wide variety of jobs, “releasing a man for combat,” as the Army, sensitive to public misgivings about women in the military, touted. But those jobs ranged from clerk to radio operator, electrician to air-traffic controller. Women served in virtually every theater of engagement, from North Africa to Asia. It would take until 1978 before the Army would become sexually integrated, and women participating as merely an “auxiliary arm” in the military would be history. And it would not be until 1980 that 16,000 women who had joined the earlier WAACs would receive veterans’ benefits.

1943 – On Attu, fighting continues in the Clevesy Pass. Japanese forces hold the high ground and offer determined resistance to the American attacks. Forces of the US 5th Army assault the German-held Senger Line. The French Expeditionary Corps attacks Pico; the Canadian 1st Corps attacks Pontecorvo; and the Polish 2nd Corps attacks Piedimonte San Germano.

1944 – American forces have eliminated the Japanese garrison on Wadke, New Guinea. On the mainland, nearby, Japanese forces conduct weak attacks near Arare.

1944 – American aircraft the carriers of Task Group 58.2 (Admiral Montgomery) conduct a raid.

May 15th ~ {continued...}

1945 – On May 12th the Coast Guard-manned frigate USS Forsyth (PF-102) was called off her weather station to search through haze and fog for a German submarine that was attempting to surrender. Three days later Forsyth joined Sutton (DE-771) in accepting the surrender of U-234 at 46º 39′ N. x 45º 39′ W. This submarine was carrying a German technical mission and supplies, including a cargo of uranium, to Tokyo. Earlier, two Japanese passengers on board had committed suicide rather than surrender.

1945 – On Okinawa, American troops secure Chocolate Drop Hill after fighting in the interconnecting tunnels. Elements of the 1st Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, capture Wana Ridge. Elements of the US 6th Marine Division, part of the same corps, begin mopping up operations in the Japanese held caves of the Horseshoe and Half Moon positions.

They use flame-throwers and hollow-charge weapons and seal off some Japanese troops. Japanese forces counterattack on the Horseshoe position suffering an estimated 200 killed. To the east, the US 7th and 96th Divisions, of US 24th Corps, continue to be engaged in the capture of Yonabaru.

1945 – On Mindanao, the US 31st Division, part of US 10th Corps, advances northward and occupies positions near the town of Malaybalay and encounter Japanese artillery fire. Other units advance north of Davao and resist nighttime counterattacks.

1951 – After the quick rout of two South Korean divisions by an attack of some 120,000 Communist Chinese troops, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, supported by intense and accurate 105mm howitzer fire from Wyoming’s 300th Armored Field Artillery Battalion stemmed the enemy assault long enough for American positions to stabilize. For its determined resistance in the Battle of Soyang the 300th was awarded a Distinguished (now known as a Presidential) Unit Citation.

1952 – Air Force First Lieutenant James H. Kasler, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the war’s 15th ace after downing two MiGs for a total of five kills.

1953 – Cubmaster Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, in Manhattan Beach, California, won by Pack 280.

1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1962 – US marines “arrived” in Laos.

1963 – Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to that date. Faith 7 was the capstone of Project Mercury, the NASA program that put the first American into space in 1961 and the first astronaut into orbit in 1962. Cooper completed 22 orbits of the earth and spent 34 hours in space. He was the first American astronaut to spend more than a day in space.

On the afternoon of May 16th, Faith 7 landed safely in the Pacific Ocean, four miles from the recovery ship Kearsarge. Cooper was honored by parades in Hawaii and Washington, D.C., where he addressed a joint session of Congress, and in New York City, where he was greeted by a massive ticker-tape crowd. Later Shawnee, Oklahoma–Cooper’s hometown–celebrated the return of the sixth Mercury astronaut from space.

1967 – The Defense Department announces that a US F-105 Thunderchief may have crashed in Communist China after being hit during a raid on the Kep area in North Vietnam.

May 15th ~ {continued...}

1967 – U.S. forces just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) come under heavy fire as Marine positions between Dong Ha and Con Thien are pounded by North Vietnamese artillery. At the same time, more than 100 Americans were killed or wounded during heavy fighting along the DMZ. On May 17 and 18, the Con Thien base was shelled heavily. Dong Ha, Gio Linh, Cam Lo, and Camp Carroll were also bombarded.

On May 18th, a force of 5,500 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded the southeastern section of the DMZ to smash a communist build up in the area and to deny the use of the zone as an infiltration route into South Vietnam. On May 19th, the U.S. State Department said the offensive in the DMZ was “purely a defensive measure” against a “considerable buildup of North Vietnam troops.” On May 21st, the North Vietnamese government called the invasion of the zone “a brazen provocation” that “abolished the buffer character of the DMZ as provided by the Geneva agreements.”

1968 – U.S. Marines relieved army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.

1968 – To break an impasse at the Paris talks, the US asks that the meeting be moved into secret session.

1969 – At approximately 8:30 P.M. (Pacific Daylight Time), the nuclear powered attack submarine Guitarro (SSN-665) sank while tied up to the dock at the Mare Island site of the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. The ship had been under construction since August 1965, and was due to be commissioned in January 1970. Sinking was caused by uncontrolled flooding within the forward part of the ship. It was refloated at 11:18 A.M. (PDT), Sunday, May 18, and after inspection damages were estimated at between $15.2 million and $21.85 million. As a result of an investigation a Congressional Subcommittee concluded that, although the sinking of the USS Guitarro was accidental, the immediate cause of the sinking was the culpable negligence of certain shipyard employees.

1970 – President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.

1972 – Led by a platoon of 30 Soldiers flown in by helicopter, South Vietnamese troops retake Fire Base Bastogne, a matter of strategic importance, as the recapture should prevent the Communists from moving their heavy artillery to within shelling distance of Hue.

1972 – The US announces the movement of a seventh aircraft carrier, the USS Ticonderoga and six other destroyer type warships to Vietnam.

1975 – Merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. Some 200 Marines stormed the island of Koh Tang to rescue the crew of the Mayaguez, but the crew had been moved. The Marines fought all day against the Khmer Rouge and escaped by helicopter in the evening. Three comrades were left behind and later died under the Khmer Rouge. The crew was freed about the same time that the Marine assault began.

May 15th ~ {continued...}

1988 – More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

In December 1979, Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the communist, pro-Soviet government threatened by internal rebellion. In a short period of time, thousands of Russian troops and support materials poured into Afghanistan. Thus began a frustrating military conflict with Afghan Muslim rebels, who despised their own nation’s communist government and the Soviet troops supporting it. During the next eight years, the two sides battled for control in Afghanistan, with neither the Soviets nor the rebels ever able to gain a decisive victory.

For the Soviet Union, the intervention proved extraordinarily costly in a number of ways. While the Soviets never released official casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian troops died in Afghanistan, and the economic cost to the already struggling Soviet economy ran into billions of dollars. The intervention also strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States nearly to the breaking point.

President Jimmy Carter harshly criticized the Russian action, stalled talks on arms limitations, issued economic sanctions, and even ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow. By 1988, the Soviets decided to extricate itself from the situation. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as “Russia’s Vietnam.” For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992.

1996 – US Navy Admiral Jeremy Boorda committed suicide shortly before answering questions from Newsweek Magazine about his right to wear certain combat pins. Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.

1996 – The Coast Guard formally closed Governors Island. The Army left the base in the early 1960s and the Coast Guard took it over on 3 June 1966 as a way to consolidate its operations in the New York Area. At the height of Coast Guard involvement on the island over 4,600 people lived and worked there.

1997 – Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.

1997 – The United States government acknowledges the existence of the “Secret War” in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other “Secret War” veterans.

1999 – US warplanes attacked Iraqi air defense sites after being targeted by radar.

2002 – The White House acknowledged that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush was told by U.S. intelligence that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, but that officials did not know that suicide hijackers were plotting to use planes as missiles.

2003 – The Development Fund for Iraq was established to fund reconstruction projects with Iraqi oil revenue.

2003 – US Army forces stormed into a village near the northern city of Tikrit before dawn, seizing more than 260 prisoners, including one man on the most-wanted list of former Iraqi officials.

2004 – U.S. forces fought militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Karbala, while insurgents in the northern city of Mosul attacked an Iraqi army recruiting center, killing four people and wounding 19.

2007 – Space Shuttle Atlantis rolls out to launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for the STS-117 mission to the International Space Station. The rollout is the second for the mission, as Atlantis’s External Tank was damaged during a hailstorm on February 26, leading to the shuttle being rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.

2007 – Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute has been chosen to be President Bush’s “war czar,” overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2014 – Shinseki testifies before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “Any allegation, any adverse incident like this makes me mad as hell,” he says. At the same hearing, acting Inspector General Richard Griffin tells lawmakers that federal prosecutors are working with his office looking into allegations veterans died while waiting for appointments.

May 16th ~

1691 – Jacob Leisler, American colonist, was hanged for treason. He was a soldier, born in Frankfort on the Main, Germany. He came to this country in 1660 as a soldier in the service of the Dutch West India company. Leaving the army soon after his arrival, he engaged in the Indian trade, and became a comparatively wealthy man. While on a voyage to Europe in 1678 he was captured by Moorish pirates, and was compelled to pay a ransom of 2,050 pieces of eight to obtain his freedom.

Previous to this voyage he was a resident of Albany, where he was a magistrate, and had incurred the displeasure of Sir Edmund Andros, the governor, by the arbitrary and high-handed measures that he and his associates had adopted to prevent the spread of popery, the political bugbear of the day. Leisler had also endeared himself to the common people by befriending a family of French Huguenots that had been landed on Manhattan island so destitute that a public tribunal had decided they should be sold into slavery in order to pay their ship-charges. Leisler prevented the sale by purchasing the freedom of the widowed mother and son before it could be held.

Under Dongan’s administration in 1683 he was appointed one of the judges, or “commissioners,” of the court of admiralty in New York. In 1688 Governor Dongan was succeeded by Lieutenant-Governor Francis Nicholson. In 1689 the military force of the city of New York consisted of a regiment of five companies, of one of which Leisler was captain. He was popular with the men, and probably the only wealthy resident in the province that sympathized with the Dutch lower classes. At that time much excitement prevailed among the latter, owing to the attempts of the Jacobite office holders to retain power in spite of the revolution in England and the accession of William and Mary to the throne.

On a report that the adherents of King James were about to seize the fort and massacre their Dutch fellow citizens, an armed mob gathered on the evening of 2 June, 1689, to overthrow the existing government. The cry of “Leisler” was raised, and the crowd rushed to his house. At first he refused to lead the movement, but when the demand was reiterated by the men of his regiment he acceded, and within an hour received the keys of the fort, which had meanwhile been seized.

Fortunately for the revolutionists, the fort contained all the public funds, whose return the lieutenant-governor in vain demanded. Four hundred of the new party signed an agreement to hold the fort ” for the present Protestant power that reigns in England,” while a committee of safety of ten of the city freeholders assumed the powers of a provisional government, of which they declared Jacob Leisler to be the head and commissioned him as “captain of the fort.”

In this capacity he at once began to repair that work, and strengthened it with a “battery” of six guns beyond its walls, which was the origin of the public park that is still known as the Battery. Nicholson and the council of the province, with the authorities of the city, headed by Stephanus van Cortlandt, the mayor, attempted by pacific means to prevent the uprising, but without effect.

Finally, becoming alarmed for their own safety, the lieutenant-governor sailed for England, and the mayor, with the other officials, retired to Albany. To the latter city, where the Jacobite office holders still held control, Leisler sent his son-in-law, Milbourne, in November, with an armed force to assist in its defence against the Indians, but he was directed to withhold it unless Leisler’s authority was recognized. This was refused, and Milbourne returned unsuccessful.

In December a dispatch arrived from William and Mary directed “to Francis Nicholson, Esq., or in his absence to such as for the time being takes care for preserving the peace and administering the laws in his majesty’s province of New York.” This Leisler construed as an appointment of himself as the king’s lieutenant-governor. He therefore dissolved the committee of safety, swore in a council, and assumed the style of a royal lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief. In the spring of 1690, Albany, terrified by an Indian invasion, and rent by domestic factions, yielded to Milbourne. Amid distress and confusion a house of representatives was convened, and the government was constituted by the popular act.

After the massacre at Schenectady in February, 1690, Leisler engaged with great vigor in the expeditions against the French, and equipped and despatched against Quebec the first fleet of men-of-war that had been sent from the port of New York. In January, 1691, Major Ingoldesby arrived with the news of Henry Sloughter’s appointment as governor, and demanded possession of the fort, which Leisler refused. On Sloughter’s own demand immediately upon his arrival in the following March, he likewise refused to surrender it until he was convinced of Sloughter’s identity and the latter had sworn in his council.

As soon as the latter event occurred, he wrote the governor a letter resigning his command. Sloughter replied by arresting him and nine of his friends. The latter were subsequently released after trial, but Leisler was imprisoned, charged with treason and murder, and shortly afterward tried and condemned to death.

May 16th ~ {continued...}

1745 – A force numbering about 4,200 men, all of them drawn from New England militia regiments, under the command of General William Pepperrell of Maine, opens a brisk artillery bombardment against the French fortress of Louisbourg. In a siege operation that would last 47 days before the garrison surrenders, the colonial soldiers maintain a disciplined investment of the walled city and harbor.

Built in the 1720s by the French to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and French Canada it was the largest fort anywhere in North America. England and France had gone to war in 1741 and French privateers used Louisbourg’s protected harbor as a base from which to prey on British and colonial fishing and merchant fleets. When colonial authorities asked England for Royal Navy assistance to stop the attacks no help was forthcoming.

So the colonial governments decided to launch their own expedition to take Louisbourg and stop the raids. Militiamen from Massachusetts (which also included the present day state of Maine), Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire were gathered for the campaign. They were transported on 19 colonial ships, protected by 13 armed merchant ships. After the capitulation the militia garrisoned the fort until war’s end.

Rightfully proud of their achievement the colonies were dismayed to learn that the fortress was returned to France in the peace treaty ending the war. In the next war (the French and Indian War, 1755-1763) it had to be recaptured, this time by regular British troops and ships.


1771 – The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called The “Regulators”, occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina. The Battle of Alamance was the final battle of the War of the Regulation, a rebellion in colonial North Carolina over issues of taxation and local control. In the past, historians considered the battle to be the opening salvo of the American Revolution and locals agreed with this assessment. However, modern historians reject this, since there does not seem to have been any intent to rebel against the king or crown, merely to protest taxation and corrupt local government. Named for nearby Great Alamance Creek, the battle took place in what was then Orange County and has since become Alamance County in the central Piedmont about six miles south of present-day Burlington, North Carolina.

1820 – Congress becomes first U.S. warship to visit China.

1824 – Edmund Kirby-Smith, educator and soldier, was born. He was a Confederate general in the western theater.

1843 – The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

1846 – Eleven cutters were assigned to cooperate with Army and Navy in the Mexican War. USRCs McLane, Legare, Woodbury, Ewing, Forward, and Van Buren were assigned to the Army. USRCs Wolcott, Bibb, Morris, and Polk were assigned to the Navy.

1861 – Confederate government offered war volunteers a $10 premium.

1861 – Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality.

1861 – Tennessee officially admitted to the Confederacy.

May 16th ~ {continued...}

1861 – Commander John Rodgers ordered to report to the War Department to establish naval forces on the western rivers under the command of General John C. Fremont. The importance of controlling the Mississippi and its tributaries which pierced the interior in every direction was recognized immediately by the U.S. Government. This control was not only militarily strategic but was a vital factor in keeping the northwestern states in the Union. Under Rodgers, three river steamers were purchased at Cincinnati. Rodgers, overcoming no little difficulty in obtaining and training crews, getting guns and other equipment, converted the steamers to gunboats Tyler, Lexington, and Conestoga. These three gunboats, as stated by Alfred Thayer Mahan, were of inestimable service in keeping alive the attachment to the Union where it existed.”

1863 – The Union army seals the fate of Vicksburg by defeating the Confederates at the Battle of Champion’s Hill. General Ulysses S. Grant had successfully run the Confederate gauntlet at Vicksburg and placed the Army of the Tennessee south of the stronghold, the Rebels’ last significant holding on the Mississippi River. But he did not move directly on Vicksburg because he knew Joseph Johnston was assembling a Confederate force in Jackson, 40 miles east of Vicksburg.

Instead, Grant advanced toward Jackson and prevented Johnston from uniting with the Vicksburg garrison, headed by John C. Pemberton. After boldly attacking and defeating the Confederates at Jackson, Grant left William T. Sherman’s corps to hold Johnston at bay. The Confederates were divided not only by Grant’s army, but also by conflicting strategy. Johnston wanted Pemberton to head into northern Mississippi to join forces with his own army. But Pemberton insisted on sticking close to Vicksburg and defending the city.

Grant sent his other two corps, commanded by James McPherson and John McClernand, to take on Pemberton. They found the Confederates on Champion’s Hill, about halfway between Jackson and Vicksburg. There, some 30,000 Union troops attacked 20,000 Confederates. The battle swayed back and forth, but the Federals eventually gained the upper hand. Pemberton’s men were forced to retreat, and one division was completely cut off from the rest of the army.

Although Mc Clernand’s timidity kept the rout from being complete, the engagement was still the decisive action of the Vicksburg campaign. Pemberton fell back into Vicksburg, where Grant followed and soon bottled the Confederates. A six-week siege ensued, and Vicksburg fell on July 4th.

1864 – In the Atlanta Campaign, the battle of Resaca, begun May 13, ended.

1864 – Having crossed the rapids of the Red River at Alexandria, Rear Admiral Porter next had to traverse the many bars in the River near its mouth. The Admiral found that the water was higher there than had been anticipated and reported to Secretary Welles: “Providentially we had a rise from the backwater of the Mississippi, that river being very high at that time, the back-water extending to Alexandria, 150 miles distant, enabling us to pass all the bars and obstructions with safety.” After battling low water, rapids, and the harassing forces of General Taylor for two months along the Red River, Porter and his gunboats again entered the Mississippi.

1868 – The U.S. Senate failed by one vote, cast by Edmund G. Ross, to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him. Johnson, who came to office on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, was an honest but tactless man who made many enemies in the Radical Republican Congress. In response to Johnson’s recurrent interference with Radical Reconstruction, the U.S. House of Representatives drew up 11 articles of impeachment against the chief executive in March 1868. Although the charges against him were weak, Johnson was tried by the Senate as the Constitution provides.

May 16th ~ {continued...}

1899 – One month after the Spanish-American War began in April 1898, an expeditionary force sailed from San Francisco to capture the Spanish colonial capital of Manila, on Luzon Island, Philippines. Because most of the Regular Army was fighting in Cuba and Puerto Rico, three-quarters of this force was composed of state volunteer units, mostly from mid-western and western states. The Spanish surrendered by August and an uneasy peace settled in.

The Filipinos wanted independence and when the American government announced it was annexing the islands as a colony, the local people rose up in revolt in February 1899. By spring the American Army, still composed mostly of state units, was on the offensive cleaning out insurgent strongholds north of Manila. During this period a long-time American resident named Henry Young offered his services as a guide to the Army. He organized 25 men into a highly-mobile reconnaissance force called “Young’s Scouts” to patrol ahead of the advance. Most of the men in this unit were volunteers from the 1st North Dakota and 2nd Oregon Volunteer infantry regiments.

On May 13th, a patrol of 11 Scouts plus Young charged and routed about 300 insurgents. Young was killed in this attack. Three days later (this date) 22 Scouts rushed across a bridge being set ablaze by enemy soldiers. The Guardsmen, while under a heavy fire from about 600 Filipinos across the river, succeeded in routing the insurgents and saving the bridge from burning. They continued to hold off several assaults to recapture the bridge until relieved by the 2nd Oregon.

A total of 15 Medals of Honor were awarded to Guardsmen during the Philippine Insurrection. For their heroic actions in these two events ten Guardsmen of “Young’s Scouts” received the Medal, seven from North Dakota and three from Oregon.

1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later.

1919 – A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.

1927 – Marines participated in the Battle of La Paz Centro in Nicaragua.

1940 – Roosevelt asks Congress to authorize the production of 50,000 military planes per year and for a $900,000,000 extraordinary credit to finance this massive operation.

1943 – On Attu, the Japanese are forced to pull back as the Americans continue their attacks near Holtz Bay.

1944 – Most Allied forces of the US 5th Army meet reduced resistance to their ongoing offensive. Only the Polish 2nd Corps, at Cassino, continues to have difficulty. The British 13th Corps and the Canadian 1st Corps, in the Liri Valley, are advancing toward Pontecorvo and Piumarola. The US 2nd Corps advances along the western coast. The French Expeditionary Corps capture Monte Petrella and advance toward Monte Revole.

1944 – American forces move from Hollandia toward Wadke Island.

1945 – The Nazi submarine U-234 surrendered to US forces at Portsmouth, NH. It had been bound for Tokyo with 10 containers of uranium oxide. The atomic material ended up in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

May 16th ~ {continued...}

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division (part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps) reports heavy casualties in continuing attacks on Sugar Loaf Hill. Japanese antitank guns knock out a number of American tanks supporting an advance, by US 1st Marine Division, along the valley of the Wana River. Attacks by the US 77th Division to the north of Shuri continue to be unsuccessful. The US 96th Division reaches the edge of the village of Yonabaru. Love Hill, to the west of Conical Hill, continues to be held by Japanese forces.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 152nd Division, part of US 11th Corps, attacks Woodpecker Ridge with heavy artillery support and entrenches on the summit. The capture of the Bicol peninsula by forces of the US 14th Corps is declared to be completed. On Mindanao, Japanese forces hold the American advance along the Talomo River.

1951 – Chinese Communist Forces launched a second step, fifth-phase offensive [in Korea] and gained up to 20 miles of territory.

1953 – American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechoslovakia.

1955 – The US signs an agreement with Cambodia to supply direct military aid.

1960 – In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state. Khrushchev’s outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit.

On May 1st, 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA spy plane and captured the pilot, Gary Francis Powers. The United States issued public denials that the aircraft was being used for espionage, claiming instead that it was merely a weather plane that had veered off course. The Soviets thereupon triumphantly produced Powers, large pieces of wreckage from the plane, and Powers’ admission that he was working for the CIA.

The incident was a public relations fiasco for Eisenhower, who was forced to admit that the plane had indeed been spying on Russia. Tensions from the incident were still high when Eisenhower and Khrushchev arrived in Paris to begin a summit meeting on May 16th.

Khrushchev wasted no time in tearing into the United States, declaring that Eisenhower would not be welcome in Russia during his scheduled visit to the Soviet Union in June. He condemned the “inadmissible, provocative actions” of the United States in sending the spy plane over the Soviet Union, and demanded that Eisenhower ban future flights and punish those responsible for this “deliberate violation of the Soviet Union.”

When Eisenhower agreed only to a “suspension” of the spy plane flights, Khrushchev left the meeting in a huff. According to U.S. officials, the president was “furious” at Khrushchev for his public dressing-down of the United States. The summit meeting officially adjourned the next day with no further meetings between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s planned trip to Moscow in June was scrapped.

The collapse of the May 1960 summit meeting was a crushing blow to those in the Soviet Union and the United States who believed that a period of “peaceful coexistence” between the two superpowers was on the horizon. During the previous few years, both Eisenhower and Khrushchev had publicly indicated their desire for an easing of Cold War tensions, but the spy plane incident put an end to such talk, at least for the time being.

1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth in Friendship Seven, ending Project Mercury.

1964 – Governor Nelson Rockefeller accepts President Johnson’s offer to brief all Republican candidates for the presidency; afterwards, he agrees with a questioner that Americans are not getting the full story of the situation. Senator Barry Goldwater openly charges that US pilots have died because of obsolescent planes.

1965 – First US gunfire support in Vietnam by USS Tucker.

1965 – What is described by the United States government as “an accidental explosion of a bomb on one aircraft which spread to others” at the Bien Hoa air base leaves 27 U.S. servicemen and 4 South Vietnamese dead and some 95 Americans injured. More than 40 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes, including 10 B-57s, were destroyed.

May 16th ~ {continued...}

1969 – 23rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions conduct Operation Lamar Plain southwest of Tamky in Quangtin Province through August 13th.

1972 – A series of air strikes over five days destroys all of North Vietnam’s pumping stations in the southern panhandle, thereby cutting North Vietnam’s main fuel line to South Vietnam. These strikes were part of Operation Linebacker, an air offensive against North Vietnam that had been ordered by President Richard Nixon in early April in response to a massive communist offensive launched on March 30th.

1975 – Congress appropriates $05 million to fund a refugee aid program and authorizes resettlement of South Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in the US. Over 140,000 refugees are flown to the United States under the program in the next few months.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

1992 – The space shuttle Endeavour completed its maiden voyage with a safe landing in the California desert.

1996 – US Navy Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda (57), the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.

1996 – UN and Iraqi officials reached a tentative agreement to resume oil sales of $4 billion a year to buy food and medicine. The oil for food program mandated that 13% of the UN resources go to northern Kurdish areas. In 2004 it was reported that illicit trade agreements with neighbors netted Iraq nearly $11 billion between 1990 and 2003. In 2004 the estimate for illicit trade was raised to $21.3 billion.

1997 – The space shuttle Atlantis docked with Russia’s Mir station.

1999 – NATO admitted to some 100 casualties from its air strikes but cited executions by Serb forces of at least 4,600 ethnic Albanians.

2001 – Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was indicted on charges of spying for Moscow. Hanssen later pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2003 – US Special Envoy to Iraq and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority orders De-Baathification, banning ranking members of Hussein’s Baath Party from public service.

2006 – The United States releases a list of 759 former and current inmates of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba after a Freedom of Information Act action was filed by the Associated Press.

2007 – A flare dropped from a New Jersey National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcon is believed to be the cause of a wildfire that has burned 20 square miles (52 km2) at the edge of Pinelands National Reserve, New Jersey, burning three homes and causing the evacuation of 2,500 other homes.

2011 – STS-134 (ISS assembly flight ULF6), launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th and final flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.

2011 – Due to massive flooding along the river, the United States Coast Guard closes 15 miles of the Mississippi River near Natchez, Mississippi.

2011 – The USS Stephen W. Groves exchanged fire with Jih Chun Tsai 68, a known pirate mother ship. When a boarding team arrived, they found 3 pirates dead and captured 2 pirates.

2012 – The trial of former Bosnian Serb Army Colonel General Ratko Mladić starts in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands.

May 17th ~

1621 – Miles Standish was appointed 1st commander of Plymouth colony.

1778 – In response to Franco-American treaties, Lord North presents a plan of conciliation with the colonies to the British Parliament.

1801 – After one tie vote in the Electoral College and 35 indecisive ballot votes in the House of Representatives, Vice President Thomas Jefferson is elected the third president of the United States over his running mate, Aaron Burr. The confusing election, which ended just 15 days before a new president was to be inaugurated, exposed major problems in the presidential electoral process set forth by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

As dictated by Article Two of the Constitution, presidents and vice presidents are elected by “electors,” a group of voters chosen by each state in a manner specified by that state’s legislature. The total number of electors from each state is equal to the number of senators and representatives that state is entitled to in Congress. In the first few presidential elections, these electors were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both (by the 1820s, almost all states adopted the practice of choosing electors by popular vote).

Each elector voted for two people; at least one of who did not live in their state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes would be elected president, and the next in line, vice president. A majority of electors was needed to win election, thus ensuring consensus across states. Because each elector voted twice, it was possible for as many as three candidates to tie with a majority–in which case the House of Representatives was to vote a winner from among the tied candidates.

If no majority was achieved in the initial electoral vote, the House was to decide the winner from the top five candidates. In both cases, representatives would not vote individually but by state groups. Each state, no matter what its number of representatives, would be entitled to just one vote, and a majority of these votes was needed to elect a candidate president.

In the nation’s first presidential election, in 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected, and John Adams–his unofficial running mate–came in second in electoral votes, making him vice president. Both men were conservative and favored a strong federal government as established by the Constitution. To balance his Cabinet with a liberal, and thus maintain the widest possible support for the new American government, Washington chose Thomas Jefferson–the idealistic drafter of the Declaration of Independence–as secretary of state.

During Washington’s first administration, Jefferson often came into conflict with Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury. Jefferson objected to Hamilton’s efforts to strengthen the national government at the expense of the states, and the two men also differed significantly on foreign policy, with Hamilton advocating improved relations with conservative England and Jefferson calling for closer ties with Revolutionary France.

Although Washington detested the factional fighting, the disagreements gave rise to the nation’s first political parties: Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans (the forerunner of the Democratic Party) and Hamilton’s Federalists. In 1792, Washington was unanimously re-elected president, and Adams was re-elected vice president. Jefferson, his relations with Hamilton greatly deteriorated, resigned as secretary of state in 1793.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1801 - In 1796, Jefferson ran for president as the candidate of the Democratic-Republicans, and Adams, as the Federalist candidate. When the results of the election were tallied, it became clear that the nation’s forefathers had failed to properly anticipate the rise of political parties. Adams won the election with 71 votes, but his Federalist running mate, Thomas Pinckney, received only 59 votes, nine less than Thomas Jefferson, who was elected vice president. Jefferson’s running mate, Senator Aaron Burr of New York, received only 30 votes.

As vice president, Jefferson dedicated himself to his constitutional duty of presiding over the Senate and wrote the Manual of Parliamentary Practice, a book of congressional rules. He had little contact with the Adams administration. Meanwhile, tensions rose with France over U.S.-British trade, leading Congress to pass the Alien and Sedition Act, which restricted U.S. citizenship and prohibited public criticism of the president or the government of the United States.

Jefferson viewed the acts as the confirmation of the kind of federal tyranny he feared and left Philadelphia for Monticello in 1798 to pen the Kentucky Resolutions in response. He soon returned to the U.S. capital to carry on his duties in the Senate. In the election of 1800, Jefferson and Burr again took on Adams and Pinckney. By this time, America’s political tide was sweeping away from the conservative Federalists to Jefferson’s more democratic party. In addition, Adams was hampered in his re-election bid by Alexander Hamilton, who advocated the election of Pinckney as president and Adams as vice president. On November 4, the national election was held.

When the electoral votes were counted, the Democratic-Federalists emerged with a decisive victory, with Jefferson and Burr each earning 73 votes to Adams’ 65 votes and Pinckney’s 64 votes. John Jay, the governor of New York, received 1 vote. Because Jefferson and Burr had tied, the election went to the House of Representatives, which began voting on the issue on February 11, 1801. What at first seemed but an electoral technicality–handing Jefferson victory over his running mate–developed into a major constitutional crisis when Federalists in the lame-duck Congress threw their support behind Burr. Jefferson needed a majority of nine states to win, but in the first ballot had only eight states, with Burr winning six states and Maryland and Virginia.

Finally, on February 17, a small group of Federalists reasoned that the peaceful transfer of power required that the majority party have its choice as president and voted in Jefferson’s favor. The 35th ballot gave Jefferson victory with 10 votes. Burr received four votes and two states voted blank. Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated the third president of the United States on March 4th. Three years later, the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for the separate election of presidents and vice presidents, was ratified and adopted.

Under Jefferson, the power of the federal government was reduced but never to such a degree that it threatened the unity of the United States. The crowning achievement of his two terms in office was the Louisiana Purchase, an unprecedented executive action in which Jefferson violated his own constitutional scruples in the name of doubling the size of the United States. Aaron Burr was denied re-nomination by his party for the office of vice president in February 1804, and George Clinton of New York was chosen in his place.

Several months later, Burr challenged his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton to a duel and shot him dead. In 1807, he was put on trial for treason after being accused of plotting to establish an independent republic in the American Southwest. He was acquitted and eventually resumed his law practice in New York.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826–the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives,” though his old political adversary had died a few hours before.

1819 – The Senate passes the Missouri Compromise, an attempt to deal with the dangerously divisive issue of extending slavery into the western territories. From colonial days to the Civil War, slavery and western expansion both played fundamental but inherently incompatible roles in the American republic. As the nation expanded westward, the Congress adopted relatively liberal procedures by which western territories could organize and join the union as full-fledged states.

Southern slaveholders, eager to replicate their plantation system in the West, wanted to keep the new territories open to slavery. Abolitionists, concentrated primarily in the industrial North, wanted the West to be exclusively a free labor region and hoped that slavery would gradually die out if confined to the South.

Both factions realized their future congressional influence would depend on the number of new “slave” and “free” states admitted into the union. Consequently, the West became the first political battleground over the slavery issue. In 1818, the Territory of Missouri applied to Congress for admission as a slave state.

Early in 1819, a New York congressman introduced an amendment to the proposed Missouri constitution that would ban importation of new slaves and require gradual emancipation of existing slaves. Southern congressmen reacted with outrage, inspiring a nationwide debate on the future of slavery in the nation. Over the next year, the congressional debate grew increasingly bitter, and southerners began to threaten secession and civil war.

To avoid this disastrous possibility, key congressmen hammered together an agreement that became known as the Missouri Compromise. In exchange for admitting Missouri without restrictions on slavery, the Compromise called for bringing in Maine as a free state. The Compromise also dictated that slavery would be prohibited in all future western states carved out of the Louisiana Territory that were higher in latitude than the northern border of Arkansas Territory.

Although the Missouri Compromise temporarily eased the inherent tensions between western expansion and slavery, the divisive issue was far from resolved. Whether or not to allow slavery in the states of Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska caused the same difficulties several decades later, leading the nation toward civil war.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1861 – Local militia forced the surrender of the federal arsenal at San Antonio even before the state seceded on March 2. Subsequently, San Antonio served as a Confederate depot. Several units such as John S. Ford’s Cavalry of the West were formed there, though the city was removed from the fighting.

1862 – Ironclad C.S.S. Virginia (ex-U.S.S. Merrimack) commissioned, Captain Franklin Buchanan commanding.

1862 – Legislation was introduced in the Senate on 17 February 1862, which authorized the Congressional Medal of Honor for the Army and followed the pattern of a similar award approved for Naval personnel in December 1861.

The Resolution provided that: “The President of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to cause two thousand “medals of honor” to be prepared with suitable emblematic devices, and to direct that the same be presented, in the name of Congress, to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities during the present insurrection, and the sum of ten thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, for the purpose of carrying this resolution into effect.”

General George Washington had created the Badge of Military Merit on 7 August 1792 but it had fallen into disuse after the Revolutionary War. Decorations, as such, were still too closely related to European royalty to be of concern to the American people. However, the fierce fighting and deeds of valor during the Civil War brought into focus the realization that such valor must be recognized.

1864 – Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, Lieutenant George E. Dixon, CSA, destroyed U.S.S. Housatonic, Captain Charles W. Pickering, off Charleston, and became the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat. After Hunley sank the preceding fall for the second time she was raised, a new volunteer crew trained, and for months under the cover of darkness moved out into the harbor where she awaited favorable conditions and a target.

This night, the small cylindrical-shaped craft with a spar torpedo mounted on the bow found the heavy steam sloop of war Housatonic anchored outside the bar. Just before 9 o’clock in the evening, Acting Master John K. Crosby, Housatonic’s officer of the deck, sighted an object in the water about 100 yards off but making directly for the ship. “It had the appearance of a plank moving in the water.” Nevertheless Housatonic slipped her cable and began backing full; all hands were called to quarters. It was too late.

Within two minutes of her first sighting, H. L. Hunley rammed her torpedo into Housatonic’s starboard side, forward of the mizzenmast. The big warship was shattered by the ensuing explosion and “sank immediately.” The Charleston Daily Courier reported on 29 February: “The explosion made no noise, and the affair was not known among the fleet until daybreak, when the crew were discovered and released from their uneasy positions in the rigging. They had remained there all night. Two officers and three men were reported missing and were supposed to be drowned.

The loss of the Housatonic caused great consternation in the fleet. All the wooden vessels are ordered to keep up steam and to go out to sea every night, not being allowed to anchor inside. The picket boats have been doubled and the force in each boat increased.” Dixon and his daring associates perished with H. L. Hunley in the attack.

The exact cause of her loss was never determined, but as Confederate Engineer James H. Tomb later observed: “She was very slow in turning, but would sink at a moment’s notice and at times without it.” The submarine, Tomb added, “was a veritable coffin to this brave officer and his men. But in giving their lives the gallant crew of H. L. Hunley wrote a fateful page in history-for their deed foretold the huge contributions submarines would make in later years in other wars.

1865 – Union forces regained Fort Sumter.

1865 – During the night, Forts Moultrie, Sumter, Johnson, Beauregard, and Castle Pinckney were abandoned as the Confederates marched northward to join the beleaguered forces of General Lee. The Southern ironclads Palmetto State, Chicora, and Charleston were fired and blown up prior to the withdrawal, but C.S.S. Columbia, the largest of the ironclads at Charleston, was found aground and abandoned near Fort Moultrie and was eventually salvaged.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1865 – As the combined operation to capture Willington vigorously got underway, ships of Rear Admiral Porter’s fleet helped to ferry General Schofield’s two divisions from Fort Fisher to Smithville, on the west bank of the Cape Fear River. Fort Anderson, the initial objective for the two commanders, lay on the west bank mid-way between the mouth of the river and Wilmington. On the morning of the 17th, Major General Jacob D. Cox led 8,000 troops north from Smithville.

In support of the army advance on the Confederate defenses, the monitor Montauk, Lieutenant Commander Edward E. Stone, and four gunboats heavily bombarded Fort Anderson and successfully silenced its twelve guns. Unable to obtain other monitors for the attack, Porter resorted to subterfuge and, as he had on the Mississippi River, improvised a bogus monitor from a scow, timber, and canvas. Old Bogey”, as she was quickly nicknamed by the sailors, had been towed to the head of the bombardment line, where she succeeded in drawing heavy fire from the defending Southerners.

1865 – The soldiers from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army ransack Columbia, South Carolina, and leave a charred city in their wake. Sherman is most famous for his “March to the Sea” in the closing months of 1864. After capturing Atlanta in September, Sherman cut away from his supply lines and cut a swath of destruction across Georgia on his way to Savannah. His army lived off the land and destroyed railroads, burned warehouses, and ruined plantations along the way. This was a calculated effort–Sherman thought that the war would end quicker if civilians of the South felt some destruction personally, a view supported by General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of all Union forces, and President Lincoln.

After spending a month in Savannah, Sherman headed north to tear the Confederacy into smaller pieces. The Yankee soldiers took particular delight in carrying the war to South Carolina, the symbol of the rebellion. It was the first state to secede and the site of Fort Sumter, where South Carolinians fired on the Federal garrison to start the war. When General Wade Hampton’s cavalry evacuated Columbia, the capital was open to Sherman’s men. Many of the Yankees got drunk before starting the rampage. General Henry Slocum observed: “A drunken soldier with a musket in one hand and a match in the other is not a pleasant visitor to have about the house on a dark, windy night.”

Sherman claimed that the raging fires were started by evacuating Confederates and fanned by high winds. He later wrote: “Though I never ordered it and never wished it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the War.” Belatedly, some Yankees helped fight the fires, but more than two-thirds of the city was destroyed. Already choked with refugees from the path of Sherman’s army, Columbia’s situation became even more desperate when Sherman’s army destroyed the remaining public buildings before marching out of Columbia three days later.

1865 – Ships of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, including U.S.S. Pawnee, Sonoma, Ottawa, Winona, Potomska, Wando, J.S. Chambers, and boats and launches from these vessels supported the amphibious Army landing at Bull’s Bay, South Carolina. This was a diversionary movement in the major thrust to take Charleston and was designed to contain Confederate strength away from General Sherman’s route.

Such diversions had been part of Sherman’s plan from the outset as he took full advantage of Northern control of the sea. A naval landing party from the fleet joined the troops of Brigadier General Edward E. Potter in driving the Confederates from their positions and pushing on toward Andersonville and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

1867 – The 1st ship passed through the Suez Canal.

1870 – Mississippi became the 9th state readmitted to US after Civil War.