May 17th ~ {continued...}

1872 – The Senate refuses to ratify a treaty with the Samoan Islands that would have given the US the right to install a naval coaling station on Pago Pago and become “protector” of Samoa. Earlier that year the United States ship Narragansett.

Commander Richard W. Meade, visited Pago Pago in the island of Tutuila and an agreement was concluded whereby Mauga, high chief of Tutuila, expressed a desire for the friendly protection of the United States, granting in return the exclusive privilege of establishing a naval station in Pago Pago harbour. The agreement was communicated to the United States Government, but, inasmuch as it was contrary to the foreign policy of that country, it was rejected.

1900 – In response to an ambush that has killed two Philippine based Marines the day before, the gunboat USS Manileno was present and willing to help but broken down, so Captain Draper, the local commander, prevailed upon the master of a native steamer to tow the gunboat with himself and a force of 107 men aboard to the village of Moron a little after midnight on the morning of 17 February.

Surprising the defenders, he took the town without much resistance, destroyed a store of ammunition, and burned the blockhouse. On the afternoon of the same day he ordered the inhabitants of Benictican and Baton to move into Olongapo, where the Marines were based, within three days or be declared outlaws. All obeyed his order except six families, who, according to his information, moved to another town.

1909 – Apache chief Geronimo dies of pneumonia at age 80, while still in captivity at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The slaughter of Geronimo’s family when he was a young man turned him from a peaceful Indian into a bold warrior. Originally Goyathlay (“One Who Yawns”) joined a fierce band of Apaches known as Chiricahuas and with them took part in raids in northern Mexico and across the border into U.S. territory which are now known as the states of New Mexico and Arizona.

Geronimo was the last Apache fighting force. He became the most famous Apache of all for standing against the U.S. government and for holding out the longest. He was a great Apache medicine man, a great spiritual leader. Geronimo was highly sought by Apache chiefs for his wisdom. He is said to have had magical powers. He could see into the future and walk without creating footprints. He could even prevent dawn from rising to protect his people.

In 1876, Federal authorities captured and forced Geronimo and his band onto a U.S. reservation at San Carlos, Arizona. It was described as “Hell’s Forty Acres.” He soon escaped and fled to Mexico to resume the life that he loved. Geronimo roamed Arizona and New Mexico and was pursued relentlessly by more than five-thousand U.S. troops. Exhausted and hopelessly out numbered, Geronimo surrendered in 1886. His band consisted of a handful of warriors, women, and children. Geronimo, along with a few hundred of his fellow Apaches, were shipped by box-car to Florida for imprisonment. Geronimo was relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma and, as a prisoner of war, unable to return to his much loved homeland, died of pneumonia. He is buried in the Apache cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

1933 – The League of Nations censured Japan in a worldwide broadcast. The rise of militaristic nationalism led Japan down the road to Pearl Harbor and World War II.

1933 – The Blaine Act ends Prohibition in the United States. The 21st Amendment reverses the 18th.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1940 – President Roosevelt sends Sumner Welles, Under-Secretary of State, on a “fact-finding” tour of Europe and appoints Myron C. Taylor as his “personal representative” to the Vatican.

1940 – United States Lines sells the liner President Harding and seven cargo ships to a Belgian concern in an attempt to circumvent the ban on US sea borne trade with Europe, imposed by the Neutrality Act.

1942 – The 296 men of the first naval construction unit to deploy from the United States was designated the First Construction Detachment arrived at Bora Bora in the Societies Islands with the mission of constructing a fueling station and other facilities. The unit left Quonset Point (Newport), Rhode Island, on 17 January 1942. It stopped at Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, and on 27 January left for their destination. This unit took on the name of Bobcat Detachment as Bobcat was the code name for Bora Bora. On 5 March, Construction Battalion personnel were officially named Seabees by the Navy Department and the fighting, building bee insignia and shoulder patch was approved.

1943 – Attacks by the forces under von Arnim and Rommel make good progress. In the north, Axis forces are approaching Sheitla, having destroyed two thirds of the US 1st Armored Division. To the south, Rommel’s forces enter Feriana. Von Arnim, with limited aims in mind, diverts 10th Panzer Division toward Foundouk, which has been abandoned by its American defenders, rather than pushing toward Sbeitla. Rommel, has proposed a more ambitious plan to the Italian and German High Commands but no decision is made.

1944 – Operation Catchpole is launched as American troops devastate the Japanese defenders of Eniwetok and take control of the atoll in the northwestern part of the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign was formulated during the August 1943 Quebec Conference. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed on, among other things, a new blueprint for fighting in the Pacific: an island-hopping strategy; the establishment of bases from which to launch B-29s for a final assault on Japan; and a new Southeast Asia command for British Adm. Louis Mountbatten.

The success of the island-hopping strategy brought Guadalcanal and New Guinea under Allied control. Though those areas were important, the Allies also still needed to capture the Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Gilbert Islands, which had comprised an inner defensive perimeter for the Japanese. Each was a group of atolls, with between 20 to 50 islets, islands, and coral reefs surrounding a lagoon. The Allies planned an amphibious landing on the islands–all the more difficult because of this unusual terrain.

On February 17th, a combined U.S. Marine and Army force under Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner made its move against Eniwetok. Air strikes, artillery and naval gunfire, and battleship fire 1,500 yards from the beach gave cover to the troops moving ashore and did serious damage to the Japanese defenses. Six days after the American landing, the atoll was secured. The loss for the Japanese was significant: only 64 of the 2,677 defenders who met the Marine and Army force survived the fighting.

The Americans lost only 195. The position on Eniwetok gave U.S. forces a base of operations to finally capture the entirety of the Marianas. Eniwetok was also useful to the United States after the war–in 1952 it became the testing ground for the first hydrogen bomb.

1944 – During the night (February 17-18), US destroyers bombard Japanese bases at Rabaul and Kavieng.

1944 – American forces attack the Japanese base at Truk and nearby shipping. Three groups of Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) and one group of Task Forces 50 (Admiral Spruance) engage. The operation is under the command of Spruance. In total 9 carriers and 6 battleships as well as cruisers, destroyers and submarines are involved.

1944 – German forces continue attacks on the Anzio beachhead. The US 45th Division barely contains the German attack. Heavy losses are sustained by both sides. Offshore, the British cruiser Penelope is damaged by a torpedo attack. To the south, near Cassino, German forces recover Point 593 after losing possession briefly to the British 4th Indian Division (part of the US 5th Army).

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1945 – There are new attacks by US 12th and 20th Corps, of US 3rd Army, from Luxembourg and around Saarlouis. US 7th Army units are attacking near Saarbrucken while US Task Force 58 conducts a second day of air raids. On this day the aircraft strike Tokyo and Yokohama. In two days of operations, the American planes have conducted over 2700 sorties, losing 88 aircraft. It is reported that twice as many Japanese planes are shot down. After completing the attacks, TF58 moves toward Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands.

1945 – US Task Force 54 and TF52 continue the preliminary bombardment of Iwo Jima. The battleship Tennessee and a cruiser as well as several smaller ships are damaged by Japanese return fire. Meanwhile, a USAAF raid by B-24 bombers is also conducted.

1947 – With the words, “Hello! This is New York calling,” the U.S. Voice of America (VOA) begins its first radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union. The VOA effort was an important part of America’s propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The VOA began in 1942 as a radio program designed to explain America’s policies during World War II and to bolster the morale of its allies throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. After the war, VOA continued as part of America’s Cold War propaganda arsenal and was primarily directed toward the western European audience.

In February 1947, VOA began its first Russian-language broadcasts into the Soviet Union. The initial broadcast explained that VOA was going to “give listeners in the USSR a picture of life in America.” News stories, human-interest features, and music comprised the bulk of the programming. The purpose was to give the Russian audience the “pure and unadulterated truth” about life outside the USSR. Voice of America hoped that this would “broaden the bases of understanding and friendship between the Russian and American people.”

By and large, the first program was a fairly dry affair. Much of it dealt with brief summaries of current events, discussions of how the U.S. budget and political system worked, and a rousing analysis of a “new synthetic chemical substance called pyribenzamine.” Music on the program was eclectic, ranging from “Turkey in the Straw” to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”

In addition, due to bad weather and technical difficulties, the sound quality for the Russian audience was generally poor. According to U.S. officials in the Soviet Union, Russians rated the program “fair.” VOA broadcasts into Russia did improve somewhat over the years, primarily because music played an increasingly prominent role. U.S. observers had discovered that the Soviet people’s appetite for American music, particularly jazz, was nearly insatiable.

How many Russians actually ever heard the broadcasts is uncertain, but reports from behind the Iron Curtain indicated that many VOA programs, specifically the music segments, were eagerly awaited each night. By the 1960s, VOA was broadcasting to every continent in several dozen languages. Today, VOA continues to operate, bringing “Life in America” to the world. And with “Radio Marti,” which is aimed at communist Cuba, it continues its Cold War tradition.

1951 – FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initiated a secret nationwide program intended to remove politically suspect employees from their jobs. Congress never authorized the “Responsibilities Program” and over 4 years it provided governors of nearly every state verbal reports on the political backgrounds of 908 employees.

1951 – B-26s flew the first night bombing mission using SHORAN, a short-range navigation system employing an airborne radar device and two ground beacon stations for precision bombing.

1953 – The 1,000th helicopter landing was recorded aboard the hospital ship USS Repose. The destroyers USS Mansfield, De Haven, Collet, and Swensen joined TF 90 for the third time.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1956 – The USCGC Casco saved 21 persons from a US Navy seaplane that was forced to ditch 100 miles south of Bermuda and delivered both the survivors and the disabled aircraft to the Naval Air Station at St. Georgia Harbor, Bermuda.

1957 – The Suez Canal reopened.

1959 – The U.S. launched its first weather station in space, Vanguard II weighing 9.8 kg. The satellite was designed to measure cloud-cover distribution over the daylight portion of its orbit, for a period of 19 days, and to provide information on the density of the atmosphere for the lifetime of its orbit (~300 years).

1965 – The Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the “Sea of Tranquility” would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing. During its mission, it transmitted 7,137 lunar surface photographs before it crashed into the Moon as planned.

This was the second successful mission in the Ranger series, following Ranger 7’s. Ranger 8’s design and purpose was very similar to its predecessor, Ranger 7. It also had six television vidicon cameras, two full-scan cameras, and four partial scan cameras. Its sole purpose was to document the Moon’s surface.

1966 – In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gen. Maxwell Taylor states that a major U.S. objective in Vietnam is to demonstrate that “wars of liberation” are “costly, dangerous and doomed to failure.” Discussing the American air campaign against North Vietnam, Taylor declared that its primary purpose was “to change the will of the enemy leadership.” The decision to launch a bombing campaign against North Vietnam was controversial. President Lyndon B. Johnson deliberated for a year before deciding to undertake the sustained bombing of North Vietnam.

Earlier in the month, he had ordered Operation Flaming Dart in response to communist attacks on U.S. installations in South Vietnam. It was hoped that these retaliatory raids would cause the North Vietnamese to cease support of Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam, but they did not have the desired effect. Out of frustration, Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder. The new bombing campaign was designed to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and thereby slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam.

The first Rolling Thunder mission took place on March 2, 1965, when 100 U.S. Air Force and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) planes struck the Xom Bang ammunition dump 100 miles southeast of Hanoi. Rolling Thunder continued, with occasional suspensions, until President Johnson, under intense domestic political pressure, halted it on October 31, 1968. Operation Rolling Thunder was closely controlled by the White House and at times targets were personally selected by President Johnson. From 1965 to 1968, an estimated 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam. A total of nearly 900 U.S. aircraft would be lost during Operation Rolling Thunder.

1967 – The first full day of Operation DECKHOUSE VI, which lasted until 3 March, was conducted near Quang Ngai city. The Special Landing Force (BLT Y4 and HMM-363) accounted for 280 enemy killed.

1968 – American officials in Saigon report an all-time high weekly rate of U.S. casualties–543 killed in action and 2,547 wounded in the previous seven days. These losses were a result of the heavy fighting during the communist Tet Offensive.

1972 – President Nixon departed on his historic 10-day trip to China.

1973 – President Gerald Ford announces sweeping changes in the US Intelligence Community. This includes the establishment of PFIAB, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1974 – Private First Class Robert K. Preston, US Army, a helicopter pilot who had washed out of training, crept across the tarmac at Fort Meade, Maryland, and boarded a UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. The aircraft was unarmed and, as was usual, was kept fueled on the flight line. With the practiced hand of his training, he quickly went through the start up sequence. Without clearance, he pushed in the power, pulled up on the controls and took off into the night.

For a time, he orbited the base at night, enjoying the view and hovering over base housing. Finally, bored with this, he set out for a new destination — the White House. When PFC Preston arrived in Washington, he took a flight down the Anacostia River, turned north at the Capitol Street Bridge and then flew directly to the White House. It was about 1:00 am.

At first the Secret Service was somewhat miffed. He buzzed the White House itself and then hovered overhead for six long minutes. At the time, policy was that they would not fire on a helicopter or other aerial intruder if it might endanger innocent bystanders, and so they waited. Finally, he flew down the South Lawn and landed about 100 yards toward the south fence. The Washington Monument towered in the background and he remained there on the ground for a minute. Two Maryland Police helicopters that had flown down from around Baltimore hovered nearby.

Suddenly, PFC Preston took back off into the night skies and the police gave close pursuit. An extended tail chase ensued at low level. In fact, it turned out that PFC Preston was indeed quite an expert pilot after all, as he managed to not only outmaneuver the two helicopters at ever turn but even managed to drive one down in the process. The second helicopter broke off but stayed nearby after what officials called, “a modern day dogfight”.

PFC Preston returned to the White House once more. It was nearly 2:00 am and he had led the officials on a prolonged chase — certainly, his fuel was running low. This time he flew up to the Washington Monument, hovering at seven feet of altitude along the base for a bit before flying back straight north onto the White House’s South Lawn. There too he hovered just a few feet over the grass and it seemed to officials that this time he might be preparing to make a dash to crash into the building.

The second Maryland Police helicopter set down quickly between him and the White House as Secret Service agents moved toward the helicopter. Then, without warning, they opened fire with handguns and shotguns hoping to cripple the helicopter. They also fired and hit PFC Preston with a shotgun blast, injuring slightly. He landed the damaged helicopter at once — though it seemed also that the damage from the gunfire had knocked the aircraft out of the sky, leaving the Secret Service to conclude that it had downed the helicopter.

Once on the ground, the Secret Service and Maryland Police rushed in. PFC Preston jumped clear and fought them hand to hand, though he was badly outnumbered. It wasn’t long before he was subdued, however. Handcuffed, he was taken into the White House for questioning before being transferred to Walter Reed hospital for treatment for his light injuries — mainly shotgun pellets. The following day, when being escorted into a police car, he was smiling. When asked why he had flown back to the White House a second time, he said that he knew it was wrong to fly over the White House so he had flown back “to turn himself in”.

The Secret Service ordered psychological testing. Ultimately, all civil charges were dropped and he was left to the military court system. In the end, PFC Preston had proven two things — first, he was a pretty darn good helicopter pilot after all; and second, that he was certainly not up to the moral and ethical standards of the US Army. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

1988 – Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins, an American officer, and veteran of Vietnam, serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group, was kidnapped in southern Lebanon by pro-Iranian terrorists. He was later slain by his captors. His remains were recovers and interred at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1999, the Navy named an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer for him.

1990 – Former President Reagan spent a second day in a Los Angeles courtroom, giving videotaped testimony about the Iran-Contra affair for the trial of his former national security adviser, John Poindexter.

May 17th ~ {continued...}

1996 – The NEAR-Shoemaker space craft was launched. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous craft was scheduled to reach the Eros asteroid in 4 years. NASA planned to land the craft on Eros, a 22 by 8 mile rock, in Feb 2001.

1997 – The Middle East Economic Survey reports that Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization is increasing crude oil sales to reach its targeted $1.0 billion in sales for the first 90 day period under the United Nations’ oil for food plan. The total value of contracts for the first 90 days is reported to be $800-$850 million, lower than expected due to lower oil prices (14% less than when the sale was announced in mid-December 1996) and the failure of Russian companies to lift contracted volumes.

1998 – President Clinton, preparing Americans for possible air strikes against Iraq, said military force is never the first answer “but sometimes it’s the only answer.”

1998 – A barge carrying about 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel sinks in rough seas off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. The barge is suspected of transporting smuggled fuel from Iraq.

1998 – UN Sec. Gen’l. Kofi Annan announced that he would travel to Baghdad to try to resolve the ongoing crises over Saddam Hussein’s refusal to allow unconditional weapons inspections.

2000 – A House panel said in a report that the program to inoculate all 2.4 million American military personnel against anthrax was based on “a paucity of science” and should be suspended; the Pentagon defended the program and vowed to continue the inoculations.

2003 – European Union leaders declared their solidarity with the United States, warning Saddam Hussein that Iraq faced one “last chance” to disarm peacefully but calling war a last resort.

2005 – President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government’s first national intelligence director (DNI). Central American politicians and human rights activists issued stinging criticism of Negroponte, citing the career diplomat’s active backing for the Contra rebels and support for a government involved in human rights abuses.

2005 – Iraq’s electoral commission certified the results of the Jan. 30 elections and allocated 140 of 275 National Assembly seats to the United Iraqi Alliance, giving the Shiite-dominated party a majority in the new parliament.

2009 – 17,000 extra US troops were ordered to Afghanistan to bolster security in the country and thereby boosted the 36,000 US troops already there by 50%. “This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,”

Obama said in a written statement. “The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border,” Obama also said. He recognized “the extraordinary strain this deployment places on our troops and military families”, but the deteriorating security situation in the region required “urgent attention and swift action”.

2010 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that as of 1 September, the name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” would be replaced by “Operation New Dawn”.

2012 – United States Capitol Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Amine El Khalifi, a man from Morocco who allegedly planned a suicide attack on the United States Capitol. At a hearing on June 22, 2012 before U.S. District Court Judge James C. Cacheris, El Khalifi pleaded guilty to one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction (specifically, a destructive device consisting of an improvised explosive device) against U.S. property, namely, the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

As part of the plea agreement, the United States and El Khalifi agree that a sentence within a range of 25 years to 30 years’ incarceration is the appropriate disposition of this case. El Khalifi was sentenced to 30 years in prison on September 14, 2012.

2014 – Venezuela orders the expulsion of three US consular officials amid rising tensions over anti-government protests after accusing the US of working with the opposition to undermine President Nicolás Maduro’s government.

May 18th ~

1631 – English colony of Massachusetts Bay granted Puritans voting rights and John Winthrop was elected 1st governor of Massachusetts.

1652 – Rhode Island passes the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.

1775 – Benedict Arnold captures British sloop and renames her Enterprise, first of many famous ships with that name.

1846 – US troops attacked at the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoros.

1861 – Battle of Sewell’s Point VA was the 1st Federal offense against South.

1861 – Arkansas admitted to the Confederate States of America

1862 – William High Keim (b.1813), US Union Brigadier-General, died in camp of fever in Harrisburg, Pa.

1863 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant surrounds Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, in one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war. Beginning in the winter of 1862-63, Grant made several attempts to capture Vicksburg.

In March, he marched his army down the west bank of the Mississippi, while union Admiral David Porter’s flotilla ran past the substantial batteries that protected the city. They met south of the city, and Grant crossed the river and entered Mississippi. He then moved north to approach Vicksburg from its more lightly defended eastern side. In May, he had to split his army to deal with a threat from Joseph Johnston’s Rebels in Jackson, the state capital that lay 40 miles east of Vicksburg. After defeating Johnston’s forces, Grant moved toward Vicksburg.

On May 16th, Grant fought the Confederates under John C. Pemberton at Champion’s Hill and defeated them decisively. He then attacked again at the Big Black River the next day, and Pemberton fled into Vicksburg with Grant following close behind. The trap was now complete and Pemberton was stuck in Vicksburg, although his forces would hold out until July 4. In the three weeks since Grant crossed the Mississippi in the campaign to capture Vicksburg, Grant’s men marched 180 miles and won five battles. They took nearly 100 Confederate artillery pieces and nearly 6,000 prisoners, all with relatively light losses.

1864 – The fighting at Spotsylvania in Virginia, reached its peak at the Bloody Angle.

1864 – Battle of Yellow Bayou, LA (Bayou de Glaize, Old Oaks).

1864 – James Byron Gordon (41) Confederate Brigadier-General, died.

1871 – The Kiowa Chief Satanta joins with other Indians to massacre a wagon train near the Red River in northeastern Texas. One of the leading chiefs of the Kiowa in the 1860s and 1870s, Satanta was a fearsome warrior but also a skilled orator and diplomat. He helped negotiate and signed treaties with the U.S. establishing a Kiowa reservation in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), but Satanta remained resistant to government efforts to force the Kiowa to abandon their nomadic ways.

The 1867 treaty allowed the Kiowa periodically to leave the reservation to hunt buffalo, but for more than a year, Satanta and other Kiowa continued to hunt and never even set foot on reservation lands. Fearing the Kiowa hunters would never come to the reservation, in late 1868 General Philip Sheridan had them arrested and brought in by force.

On this day in 1871, they spotted a wagon train traveling along the Butterfield Trail. Hoping to steal guns and ammunition, the warriors attacked the 10 freight trains, killing seven teamsters. They let the remaining drivers escape while they looted the wagons. Again, Satanta and the other warriors returned to the reservation. Informed of the Texas raid, the Indian agent asked if any of his charges had participated. Amazingly, Satanta announced that he had led the raid, and that their poor treatment on the reservation justified it. “I have repeatedly asked for arms and ammunition,” he explained, “which you have not furnished, and made many other requests, which have not been granted.”

Taken to Texas for trial, Satanta was sentenced to hang, but the penalty was later commuted to life in prison. Besieged with humanitarian requests, the Texas governor paroled Satanta back to the reservation in 1873. The following summer, Satanta again led war parties off the reservations, this time to participate in the Red River War from 1874 to 1875. By October 1875, Satanta and his allies were again forced to surrender.

Despite his vocal protests that he preferred execution to imprisonment, Satanta was returned to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. He fell into a deep depression, refused to eat, and slowly began to starve to death. Transferred to the prison hospital in 1878, he committed suicide by leaping headfirst from a second-story window.

May 18th ~ {continued...}

1899 – The First Hague Peace Conference opened in the Netherlands as 26 nations met on World Goodwill Day. The destruction or seizure of enemy property with no military value was banned at the convention.

1902 – Marines from the USS Ranger landed in Panama City to protect Americans.

1904 – Brigand Raizuli kidnapped American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

1916 – US pilot Kiffin Rockwell shot down German aircraft.

1917 – The U.S. Congress passed the Selective Service act, which allows for the registration and selective draft of men aged between 21 and 30, calling up soldiers to fight World War I.

1933 – The Tennessee Valley Authority Act was signed by President Roosevelt. The TVA proceeded to build dams in the Tennessee Valley, directly competing with private industry.

1940 – Tyler Kent, a clerk at the US Embassy in London, and Anna Wolkoff, a Russian emigree, are arrested on spying charges. Kent has had access to the correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt, and Wolkoff has helped pass it to Germany via Italian diplomats. Kent’s diplomatic immunity is waived by the United States ambassador. Wolkoff has had connections with a pro-Fascist organization, the Right Club.

1942 – New York ended night baseball games for the rest of World War II.

1943 – On Attu, American forces advancing from the north and south link up. They reorganize for the drive on what is believe to be the final Japanese positions on the approach to Chicago Harbor.

1943 – Adolf Hitler launches Operation Alaric, the German occupation of Italy in the event its Axis partner either surrendered or switched its allegiance. This operation was considered so top secret that Hitler refused to issue a written order. Instead, he communicated verbally his desire that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel should assemble and ultimately command 11 divisions for the occupation of Italy to prevent an Allied foothold in the peninsula.

1944 – The Polish Corps, part of a multinational Allied Eighth Army offensive in southern Italy, finally pushes into Monte Cassino as the battle to break German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s defensive Gustav Line nears its end. The Allied push northward to Rome began in January with the landing of 50,000 seaborne troops at Anzio, 33 miles south of the Italian capital.

Despite having met very little resistance, the Allies chose to consolidate their position rather than immediately battle north to Rome. Consequently, German forces under the command of Field Marshal Kesselring were able to create a defensive line that cut across the center of the peninsula. General Wladyslaw Anders, leader of the Polish troops who would raise their flag over the ruins of the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, commenting on the cost of the battle, said, “Corpses of German and Polish soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deathly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies.”

1944 – The US 163rd Infantry Regiment (General Doe) lands on Insoemar Island and advance to capture Wadke airfield.

1944 – The US 6th Army announces that the campaign in the Admiralty Islands has been completed. The Americans have suffered 1400 dead and wounded; the Japanese have suffered 3820 dead and 75 prisoners.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, captures most of the Sugar Loaf Hill, as well as parts of the Half Moon and the Horseshoe positions that overlook it, after several days of bitter fighting. The US 1st Marine Division continues to battle for the Wana river valley and Wana Ridge but fails to eliminate Japanese resistance, even with flame-throwers and tanks in support. Meanwhile, the US 77th and 96th Divisions, parts of US 24th Corps, attack Japanese positions on Flat Peak without success.

1945 – On Luzon, American units make some progress toward Woodpecker Ridge.

May 18th ~ {continued...}

1951 – The United Nations moved out of its temporary headquarters in Lake Success, N.Y., for its permanent home in Manhattan.

1951 – The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an embargo on the provision of strategic goods to China and North Korea by a vote of 47-0 with eight abstentions.

1951 – Naval Task Force 77 suffered its worst single day of the war when six planes failed to return to their carriers.

1953 – Air Force Captain Joseph C. McConnell, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, qualified as the top ace of the war and the first of only two triple jet aces (15 kills) after shooting down another three MiGs. Captain McConnell completed his combat tour on 19 May with a total of 106 missions and 16 MiG kills.

1953 – Air Force Lieutenant Colonel George I. Ruddell, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 31st ace of the war after making his fifth MiG kill in an F-86 Sabre called “MiG Mad Mavis.”

1953 – USAF Reserve Lt Col Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.

1958 – An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2,259.82 km/h).

1964 – President Johnson, in a special message to Congress, asks for $125,000,000 more for economic and military aid to Vietnam.

1965 – Following a 5 day suspension of aerial bombing by the US, North Vietnam charges that the halt was only ‘an effort to camouflage American intensification of the war and deceive world opinion.’

1965 – President Johnson releases a memo from Secretary of Defense McNamara showing how the recently appropriated $700 million will be spent on the military. he promises US servicemen a ‘blank check’ for their needs.

1966 – U.S. Representative Melvin Laird (R-Wisconsin) states that because the Johnson administration is not providing the American public with precise information on planned troop deployments to Vietnam, a “credibility gap” is developing. Informed sources reported that 254,000 U.S. troops were serving in Vietnam, and that another 90,000 were performing tasks directly concerned with the war. These numbers were higher than those provided by the government.

This was emblematic of the gap between what the administration said and what it did, leading to a growing distrust of the government among a large part of American society. This mistrust also plagued Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, who made Laird his secretary of defense. Like the Johnson administration, Nixon’s administration was marked by attempts to manage the information released about the war. Under Nixon, this included the secret bombing campaign of Cambodia, which was kept from the American public until it was exposed by William Beecher, a military correspondent for the New York Times, in May 1969.

1967 – Following three days of bombardment form the North, a force of 5,500 US and South Vietnamese troops invade the southeastern section of the DMZ to smash a Communist buildup in the area and to prevent infiltration into South Vietnam. This operation will continue for the next 4 days.

1967 – The 26th marines begin Operation Prairie IV east of Khesanh to clear the DMZ south of the Ben Hai River. This will last to the end of May.

1968 – 1st Marine Division begins Operation Mameluke Thrust in central Quang Nam province. Operations will continue until late October.

1969 – More than 1,500 communist troops attack U.S. and South Vietnamese camps near Xuan Loc, located 38 miles east of Saigon. After five hours of intense fighting, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces were driven off. At the U.S. camp, 14 Americans were killed and 39 wounded; 24 enemy soldiers were killed in the action. At the South Vietnamese camp, 4 South Vietnamese were killed and 14 wounded, with 54 communist soldiers reported killed and 9 captured.

May 18th ~ {continued...}

1969 – Launch of Apollo 10, dress rehearsal for first lunar landing mission. CDR John W. Young, USN, was the Command Module Pilot and CDR Eugene A. Cernan, USN, was the Lunar Module Pilot. During the 8 Day mission, the craft made 31 lunar orbits in 61.6 hours. Recovery was by HS-4 helicopters from USS Princeton (LPH-5).

1974 – In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message “Buddha has smiled” from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council–the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France. India, which suffered continuing border disputes with China, refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968.

Fearing a second war with China and a fourth war with Pakistan, India actively sought the development of a nuclear deterrent in the early 1970s. The successful detonation of its first bomb on May 18, 1974, set off an expanded arms race with Pakistan that saw no further nuclear tests but the development of lethal intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles by both countries. On May 11, 1998, India resumed nuclear testing, leading to international outrage and Pakistan’s detonation of its first nuclear bomb later in the month.

1989 – A crowd of protesters, estimated to number more than one million, marches through the streets of Beijing calling for a more democratic political system. Just a few weeks later, the Chinese government moved to crush the protests. Protests in China had been brewing since the mid-1980s when the communist government announced that it was loosening some of the restrictions on the economy, allowing for a freer market to develop. Encouraged by this action, a number of Chinese (particularly students) began to call for similar action on the political front. By early 1989, peaceful protests began to take place in some of China’s largest urban areas. The largest of these protests took place around Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing.

By the middle of May 1989, enormous crowds took to the streets with songs, slogans, and banners calling for greater democracy and the ouster of some hard-line Chinese officials. The Chinese government responded with increasingly harsh measures, including arrests and beatings of some protesters. On June 3, 1989, Chinese armed forces stormed into Tiananmen Square and swept the protesters away. Thousands were killed and over 10,000 were arrested in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The protests attracted worldwide attention. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev applauded the protesters and publicly declared that reform was necessary in communist China. In the United States, the Chinese students were treated like heroes by the American press. Following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, a shocked U.S. government suspended arms sales to China and imposed economic sanctions. The Chinese government, however, refused to bend, referring to the protesters as “lawless elements” of Chinese society.

May 18th ~ {continued...}

1999 – President Clinton declared for the first time that he would consider ground troops in Kosovo if he becomes convinced that the NATO bombing strategy would not bring victory.

1999 – Two Serb soldiers held as prisoners of war by the U.S. military in Germany were turned over to Yugoslav authorities.

1999 – NATO missiles hit at least 4 cities in Yugoslavia and one woman was reported killed and 12 injured. Some 1000 ethnic Albanians crossed into Macedonia.

2002 – The pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Abdel Azeem al-Muhajir, a senior al Qaeda leader, that a strike against the US was imminent and that the recent attack in Tunisia was its work.

2004 – In Afghanistan U.S. forces killed 3 Taliban commanders and arrested five more members of the hardline militia.

2004 – Before dawn U.S. troops killed nine fighters loyal to al-Sadr in Karbala. Ten Iraqi fighters were wounded in the clashes near the city’s Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines. At least five Iraqi insurgents were killed during clashes in Karbala later in the day.

2011 – The United States Coast Guard reopens a section of the Mississippi River to shipping that was closed on on the 17th as a result of the 2011 Mississippi River floods.

2011 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour docks at the International Space Station for the final time.

May 19th ~

1643 – Delegates from four New England colonies, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Harbor, met in Boston to form a confederation: the United Colonies of New England.

1749 – King George II of England grants the Ohio Company a charter of several hundred thousand acres of land around the forks of the Ohio River, thereby promoting westward settlement by American colonists from Virginia. France had claimed the entire Ohio River Valley in the previous century, but English fur traders and settlers contested these claims. The royal chartering of the Ohio Company, an organization founded primarily by Virginian planters in 1747, directly challenged the French claim to Ohio and was a direct cause of the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754.

With the defeat of the French in 1763, the Ohio River and the Great Lakes areas were placed within the boundaries of Canada, and the Ohio Company was merged with another land company to better exploit the region. Settlers in Ohio resented these acts and joined the patriots in their struggle against the British in the American Revolution. In 1783, Ohio was ceded to the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. In 1788, Marietta became the first permanent American settlement in what was known as the Old Northwest. During the next decade, Native Americans were suppressed and British traders were pushed out, and in 1799 Ohio became a U.S. territory. In 1803, it entered the Union as the 17th state.

1774 – Ann Lee and eight Shakers sailed from Liverpool to New York. The religious group originated in Quakerism and fled England due to religious persecution. They become the first conscientious objectors on religious grounds and were jailed during the American Revolution in 1776. In 1998 Suzanne Skees published “God Among the Shakers.” The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing is the full, proper name for the 19th-century religious group better known as the Shakers. Although they were the largest and best-known communal society a century ago, the Shakers were rarely referred to by their proper name. Outsiders dubbed them “Shakers” for the movements in their ritualistic dance.

1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Continental Army garrison surrenders in the Battle of The Cedars. The Battle of The Cedars (French: Les Cèdres) was a series of military confrontations early in the American Revolutionary War during the Continental Army’s invasion of Quebec that had begun in September 1775. The skirmishes, which involved limited combat, occurred in May 1776 at and around The Cedars, 45 km (28 mi) west of Montreal, Quebec. Continental Army units were opposed by a small number of British troops leading a larger force of Indians (primarily Iroquois), and militia.

Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, commanding the American military garrison at Montreal, had placed a detachment of his troops at The Cedars in April 1776, after receiving rumors of British and Indian military preparations to the west of Montreal. The garrison surrendered on May 19th after a confrontation with a combined force of British and Indian troops led by Captain George Forster. American reinforcements on their way to The Cedars were also captured after a brief skirmish on May 20th.

All of the captives were eventually released after negotiations between Forster and Arnold, who was bringing a sizable force into the area. The terms of the agreement required the Americans to release an equal number of British prisoners. However, the deal was repudiated by Congress, and no British prisoners were freed. Colonel Timothy Bedel and Lieutenant Isaac Butterfield, leaders of the American force at The Cedars, were court-martialed and cashiered from the Continental Army for their roles in the affair. After distinguishing himself as a volunteer, Bedel was given a new commission in 1777. News of the affair included greatly inflated reports of casualties, and often included graphic but false accounts of atrocities committed by the Iroquois that made up the majority of the British forces.

1796 – A game protection law was passed by Congress to restrict encroachment by whites on Indian hunting grounds.

May 19th ~ {continued...}

1846 – Secretary of Treasury Walker assigned Revenue Captain John A. Webster, USRCS, to control movements of vessels assigned to Army and to cooperate with the Navy in the War with Mexico.

1848 – Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US $15 million.

1858 – A pro-slavery band led by Charles Hameton executed unarmed Free State men near Marais des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.

1862 – Homestead Act became law and provided cheap land for settlement of West.

1863 – Union commander Major General Ulysses S. Grant fails in his first attempt to take the strategic Confederate city of Vicksburg, which sits on a bluff overlooking (and thereby controlling boat traffic on) the Mississippi River. After substantial causalities, he calls off the attack. Instead he develops a plan to encircle and besiege the city. Grant was a West Point trained engineer who had served in the Mexican War (1846-1848) but resigned from the Army in the 1850s. When the Civil War started, he was appointed by the governor of Illinois as the colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He soon proved his value as a battlefield commander and by 1864 would be placed in command of all Union armies. In 1868 he was elected as the 18th President of the United States.

1864 – A dozen days of fighting around Spotsylvania ends with a Confederate attack against the Union forces. The epic campaign between the Army of the Potomac, under the effective direction of Ulysses S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began at the beginning of May when Union forces crossed the Rapidan River. After a bloody two-day battle in the Wilderness forest, Grant moved his army further south toward Spotsylvania Court House. This move was a departure from the tactics of the previous three years in the eastern theater of the Civil War.

Since 1861, the Army of the Potomac had been coming down to Virginia under different commanders only to be defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia, usually under Lee’s direction, and had always returned northward. But Grant was different than the other Union generals. He knew that by this time Lee could not sustain constant combat. The numerical superiority of the Yankees would eventually wear Lee down. When Grant ordered his troops to move south, a surge of enthusiasm swept the Union veterans; they knew that in Grant they had an aggressive leader who would not allow the Confederates time to breathe.

Nevertheless, the next stop proved to be more costly than the first. After the battle in the Wilderness, Grant and Lee waged a footrace for the strategic crossroads at Spotsylvania. Lee won the race, and his men dug in. On May 8th, Grant attacked Lee, initiating a battle that raged for 12 awful days. The climax came on May 12th, when the two armies struggled for nearly 20 hours over an area that became known as the Bloody Angle. The fighting continued sporadically for the next week as the Yankees tried to eject the Rebels from their breastworks. Finally, when the Confederates attacked on May 19th, Grant prepared to pull out of Spotsylvania.

Convinced he could never dislodge the Confederates from their positions, he elected to try to circumvent Lee’s army to the south. The Army of the Potomac moved, leaving behind 18,000 casualties at Spotsylvania to the Confederates’ 12,000. In less than three weeks Grant had lost 33,000 men, with some of the worst fighting yet to come.

1864 – Battle of Port Walthall Junction, VA (Bermuda Hundred).

May 19th ~ {continued...}

1864 – U.S.S. General Price, Acting Lieutenant Richardson, engaged a Confederate battery on the banks of the Mississippi River at Tunica Bend, Louisiana. The Southerners, who had been attempting to destroy transport steamer Superior, were forced to evacuate their river position. Richardson put ashore a landing party which burned a group of buildings used by the Confederates as a headquarters from which attacks against river shipping were launched.

1865 – President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union Cavalry in Georgia.

1882 – Commodore Shufeldt (USS Swatara) lands in Korea to negotiate first treaty between Korea and Western power.

1890 – Ho Chi Minh, revolutionist and leader of North Vietnam (1946-1969), was born. He fought the Japanese, French and United States to gain independence for his country.

1918 – Raoul Lufbery, one of the top-scoring US fighter pilots of the war with 17 victories, is killed during air combat. He had served with other American volunteers in the French Escadrille Lafayette (originally the Escadrille Americaine and credited with 38 air victories) before the United States’ entry into the war. Lufbery was the commander of the famed 94th “Hat in the Ring” Aero Squadron at the time of his death.

1921 – Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants entering the United States.

1927 – The 11th Marine Regiment arrived at Esteli, Nicaragua, for garrison duty.

1941 – Viet Minh, a communist coalition, formed at Cao Bằng Province, Vietnam.

1942 – In the aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Task Force 16 heads to Pearl Harbor.

1943 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings (“D-Day”). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

1943 – On Attu, American forces advance along Clevesy Pass toward Chicagof.

1944 – Allied forces of US 5th Army continue to make advances. The US 2nd Corps captures Gasta Itri and Monte Grande. The French Expeditionary Corps nearly reaches Pico and battle for Campodimele. Meanwhile, British armor and infantry overrun the Aquino airfield, in the Liri Valley but German antitank guns repulse an attempt to seize the town.

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

1945 – On Luzon, in the Ipoh dam area north of Manila, where the US 43rd Division of US 11th Corps is operating, Japanese resistance ends. The US 152nd Division is holding its positions near Woodpecker Ridge. The US 25th Division, part of US 1st Corps, begins mopping up in the area north and west of Santa Fe.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 77th Division suffers heavy casualties while fighting for the Ishimmi ridge and withdraws.

1945 – Some 272 American B-29 Superfortress bombers strike Hamamatsu, 120 miles (192 km) from Tokyo. Bombs are dropped through the clouds from medium altitude.

1945 – The UN Charter committee met in Muir Woods. The meeting was planned by Roosevelt on a suggestion by Sec. of the Interior Ickes: one of the sessions “might be held among the giant redwoods in Muir Woods. Not only would this focus attention upon the nation’s interest in preserving these mighty trees for posterity, but in such a “temple of peace” the delegates would gain a perspective and sense of time that could be obtained nowhere better than in such a forest.”

May 19th ~ {continued...}

1951 – The 2nd Infantry Division, with attached French and Dutch battalions, fought their way out of a Chinese trap in the mountains of central Korea, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. The 38th Field Artillery Battalion fired 12,000 rounds in a 24-hour period in support of the division.

1958 – The United States and Canada formally established the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

1959 – The Peoples’ Army of Vietnam’s Military Transportation Group 559 formed on the 69th birthday of Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. It ultimately resulted in the creation of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail was intended to facilitate the infiltrating of troops and transporting supplies from North Vietnam to support the revolution in South Vietnam.

1960 – USAF Maj. Robert M White took the X-15 to 33,222 m.

1964 – The State Department announced the U.S. embassy in Moscow had been bugged. A network of more than 40 microphones embedded in the walls had been found.

1964 – The United States initiates low-altitude target reconnaissance flights over southern Laos by U.S. Navy and Air Force aircraft. Two days later, similar flights were commenced over northern Laos. These flights were code-named Yankee Team and were meant to assist the Royal Lao forces in their fight against the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese and Viet Cong allies.

1965 – 30th Naval Construction Regiment activated at Danang, Vietnam.

1967 – The first U.S. air strike on central Hanoi was launched.

1967 – One of the first major treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons goes into effect as the Soviet Union ratifies an agreement banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The United States, Great Britain, and several dozen other nations had already signed and/or ratified the treaty. With the advent of the so-called “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had begun in 1957 when the Russians successfully launched the Sputnik satellite, some began to fear that outer space might be the next frontier for the expansion of nuclear weapons.

To forestall that eventuality, an effort directed by the United Nations came to fruition in January 1967 when the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and dozens of other nations signed off on a treaty banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The agreement also banned nations from using the moon, other planets, or any other “celestial bodies” as military outposts or bases. The agreement was yet another step toward limiting nuclear weapons.

In 1959, dozens of nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, had agreed to ban nuclear weapons from Antarctica. In July 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, banning open-air and underwater nuclear tests. With the action taken in May 1967, outer space was also officially declared off-limits for nuclear weapons.

1970 – To commemorate Ho Chi Minh’s 80th birthday, Communist forces shell more than 60 allied positions.

1971 – Hanoi initiates three days of heavy rocket and mortar attacks on US positions along the DMZ.

1972 – Units of South Vietnam’s 9th and 21st Divisions, along with several South Vietnamese airborne battalions, open new stretches of road south of An Loc and come within two miles of the besieged city. In the Central Highlands, North Vietnamese troops, preceded by heavy shelling, tried to break through the lines of South Vietnam’s 23rd Division defending Kontum, but the South Vietnamese troops held firm.

May 19th ~ {continued...}

1976 – The US Senate established congressional oversight over the CIA with the permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

1979 – R.C., “In The Navy” by Village People peaked at #3 on the pop singles chart.

1987 – President Reagan defended America’s presence in the Persian Gulf, two days after 37 American sailors were killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. frigate Stark.

1990 – Secretary of State James A. Baker III concluded an agreement with the Soviet Union to destroy chemical weapons and settle longstanding disputes over limits on nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

1995 – NASA’s administrator unveiled plans to slash thousands of aerospace jobs and to overhaul virtually every part of the agency.

1996 – The Endeavour Shuttle rocketed into orbit with six astronauts. One task was to deploy an experimental antennae that would inflate and swell to the size of a tennis court.

1999 – Ali A. Mohamed, a former US Army sergeant, was indicted for conspiring with Osama bin Laden to kill Americans abroad.

1999 – As NATO’s Operation Allied Force entered its ninth week, Russia’s special envoy to the Balkans called on both NATO and Yugoslavia to suspend hostilities.

2000 – The shuttle Atlantis lifted off with 7 astronauts on a mission to fix the International Space Station.

2000 – Nine countries banded together to petition entry into NATO in 2002. They included Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

2002 – In Afghanistan, Operation Mountain Lion began in an attempt to seal off the border.

2002 – A team of 50 US Green Berets landed in Tbilisi for a 2-year training program for Georgia’s army.

2003 – In central Iraq 4 US Marines on a resupply mission were killed when their Ch-46 Sea-Knight helicopter crashed into a canal and a fifth drowned trying to save them.

2004 – US Army Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits received the maximum penalty, one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge, in the first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

2006 – The case of Khaled el-Masri, who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA because he was mistaken for another person, is dismissed by a district court in Alexandria, Virginia, as it would be a “grave risk” of damage to U.S. national security by exposing government secrets. The court rules that if the claims are true he “deserves a remedy” but this cannot be found in the court.

2006 – A riot takes place at the United States prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba after several inmates attempted suicide.

2013 – US Navy dolphins find a rare nineteenth-century torpedo off the coast of California.

2014 – The United States Department of Justice charges five Chinese military officers with hacking into private-sector American companies in a bid for competitive advantage.

2014 – Three supervisors at the Gainesville, Florida, VA hospital are placed on paid leave after investigators find a list of patients requiring follow-up care kept on paper, not in the VA’s computerized scheduling system.

May 20th ~

1497 – John Cabot sets sail for his second voyage from Bristol, England, on his ship Matthew looking for a route to the west.

1639 – Dorchester, Mass., formed the 1st school funded by local taxes.

1774 – The British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts to punish the colonists for their increasingly anti-British behavior. The acts closed the port of Boston.

1775 – North Carolina became the first colony to declare its independence. Citizens of Mecklenburg County, NC, declared independence from Britain.

1801 – Four warships sent to Mediterranean to protect American commerce form Barbary pirates.

1815 – Commodore Stephen Decatur ( Frigate Guerriere) sails with 10 ships to suppress Mediterranean pirates’ raids on U.S. shipping.

1844 – USS Constitution sails from New York on round the world cruise.

1861 – North Carolina voted to secede from the Union and became the 11th and last state to do so.

1861 – The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, Va.

1861 – US marshals appropriated the previous year’s telegraph dispatches, to reveal pro-secessionist evidence.

1862 – Union gunboats occupied the Stono River above Cole’s Island, South Carolina, and shelled Confederate positions there.

1862 – The Union Congress passes the Homestead Act, allowing an adult over the age of 21, male or female, to claim 160 acres of land from the public domain. Eligible persons had to cultivate the land and improve it by building a barn or house, and live on the claim for five years, at which time the land became theirs with a $10 filing fee. The government of the United States had long wrestled with the problem of how to get land into the hands of productive farmers. Throughout the 19th century, politicians had pursued a variety of schemes to raise revenues from land sales, but the results were always mixed.

By the 1830s, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton proposed a program that would allow citizens to claim land from the public domain to develop farmland. By the mid-19th century the issue of land became embroiled in sectional politics. In the 1850s, the fledgling Republican Party endorsed a homestead act as a way to develop an alliance between the Northeast and Midwest. But the South wanted no part of such a scheme. The expansion of slavery had become too important to the South, and they felt expansion to the west was the only way to keep the institution healthy.

Filling the West with small individual farmers did not sit well with Southerners. Consequently, it was impossible to agree upon a proposal while the struggle over slavery continued. The Republicans were strong enough by 1859 to push an act through Congress, but Democratic president James Buchanan vetoed the measure. However, the events of the war soon removed all obstacles to the bill.

The secession of Southern states opened the way for passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act was important symbolically if not in practice. By 1890, only about three percent of the lands west of the Mississippi had been given away under the act. This measure was far less effective in making vacant land productive than were liberal mining laws and grants to railroads. Nevertheless, it stands as a shining example of legislation that passed in the North while the South had seceded from the Union.

1864 – Battle at Ware Bottom Church, Virginia, killed or injured 1,400.

1864 – Spotsylvania-campaign ended after 10,920 were killed or injured person.

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

May 20th ~ {continued...}

1902 – The United States ended its three-year military presence in Cuba as the Republic of Cuba was established under its first elected president, Tomas Estrada Palma. Theodore Roosevelt had criticized the government’s sluggish withdrawal of disease-stricken US troops from Cuba.

1918 – The 1st electrically propelled warship (New Mexico).

1927 – At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

1930 – The first airplane, piloted by Charles Nicholson, was catapulted from a dirigible.

1939 – Regular trans-Atlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Marseilles, France.

1942 – US Navy 1st permitted black recruits to serve.

1943 – Establishment of Tenth Fleet in Washington, DC, under command of ADM King to coordinate U.S. antisubmarine operations in Atlantic.

1943 – On Attu, fighting continues in the Clevesy Pass. Japanese forces hold the high ground and offer determined resistance to the American attacks.

1944 – A V2, on a test flight, lands near the Bug River about 80 miles east of Warsaw. Polish resistance workers hide the rocket before German forces arrive to recover it.

1944 – 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. 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.

1944 – US Communist Party dissolved.

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.

May 20th ~ {continued...}

1949 – In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established.

1951 – Air Force Captain James Jabara, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the first Korean War ace and the first jet ace in aviation history after downing his fifth MiG. He accomplished this feat in an F-86 Sabre with one hung drop tank.

1951 – North of Kansong on the east coast, the flagship of the U.S. 7th Fleet, the battleship USS New Jersey, fired for the first time in the Korean War.

1953 – The U.S. National Security Council decided that if “conditions arise,” air and ground operations would be extended to China and ground operations in Korea would be intensified.

1954 – Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek became president of Nationalist China.

1956 – The United States conducts the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward.

The United States first detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1952 in the Marshall Islands, also in the Pacific. However, that bomb–and the others used in tests that followed–were large and unwieldy affairs that were exploded from the ground. The practical application of dropping the weapon over an enemy had been a mere theoretical possibility until the successful test in May 1956. The hydrogen bomb dropped over Bikini Atoll was carried by a B-52 bomber and released at an altitude of more than 50,000 feet. The device exploded at about 15,000 feet.

This bomb was far more powerful than those previously tested and was estimated to be 15 megatons or larger (one megaton is roughly equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT). Observers said that the fireball caused by the explosion measured at least four miles in diameter and was brighter than the light from 500 suns. The successful U.S. test meant that the ante in the nuclear arms race had been dramatically upped. The Soviets had tested their own hydrogen bomb in 1953, shortly after the first U.S. test in 1952.

In November 1955, the Soviets had dropped a hydrogen bomb from an airplane in remote Siberia. Though much smaller and far less powerful (estimated at about 1.6 megatons) than the U.S. bomb dropped over Bikini, the Russian success spurred the Americans to rush ahead with the Bikini test. The massive open-air blast in 1956 caused concerns among scientists and environmentalists about the effects of such testing on human and animal life.

During the coming years, a growing movement in the United States and elsewhere began to push for a ban on open-air atomic testing. The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, prohibited open-air and underwater nuclear testing.

1959 – Japanese-Americans regained their citizenship.

1964 – France proposes reconvening a 14-nation conference on Laos in Geneva; it is rejected by the United States and Great Britain but accepted by the Soviets, Poland, Cambodia, India, and Communist China.

1969 – After 10 days and 10 bloody assaults, Hill 937 in South Vietnam is finally captured by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. The Americans who fought there cynically dubbed Hill 937 “Hamburger Hill” because the battle and its high casualty rate reminded them of a meat grinder. Located one mile east of the Laotian border, Hill 937 was ordered taken as part of Operation Apache Snow, a mission intended to limit enemy infiltration from Laos that threatened Hue to the northeast and Danang to the southeast.

On May 10th, following air and artillery strikes, a U.S.-led infantry force launched its first assault on the North Vietnamese stronghold but suffered a high proportion of casualties and fell back. Ten more infantry assaults came during the next 10 days, but Hill 937’s North Vietnamese defenders did not give up their fortified position until May 20. Almost 100 Americans were killed and more than 400 wounded in taking the hill, amounting to a shocking 70 percent casualty rate.

The same day that Hamburger Hill was finally captured, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called the operation “senseless and irresponsible” and attacked the military tactics of President Richard Nixon’s administration. His speech before the Senate was seen as part of a growing public outcry over the U.S. military policy in Vietnam. U.S. military command had ordered Hill 937 taken primarily as a diversionary tactic, and on May 28th it was abandoned. This led to further outrage in America over what seemed a senseless loss of American lives. North Vietnamese forces eventually returned and re-fortified their original position.

May 20th ~ {continued...}

1970 – More than 100,000 construction workers, dock men, and office workers lead a parade in New York City supporting the policies of President Nixon and attacking Mayor John Lindsay and other opponents of the Vietnam War.

1970 – About 2,500 South Vietnamese soldiers, supported by US airpower and advisors, open up a new front in Cambodia, 125 miles north of Saigon, bringing the number of South Vietnamese troops in Cambodia to 40,000. South Vietnamese troops link up with Cambodian forces 25 miles north of Takeo after a cross country drive.

1972 – President Nixon meets with Leonid Brezhnev for summit talks in Moscow. Although Vietnam is discussed, there is no change in the Soviet Union’s support of North Vietnam, and both parties are apparently unwilling to risk détente over the topic.

1985 – US began broadcasts to Cuba on Radio Marti.

1985 – FBI arrested John A. Walker. US Navy Chief Petty Officer Walker began spying for the Soviet Union in 1968 for $1,000 per week. Walker’s ex-wife turned him into the FBI.

1987 – The commander of the U.S. frigate Stark, who lost 37 of his sailors in an Iraqi missile attack, broke his silence. Captain Glenn Brindel said he was warned only seconds before the missiles struck, and that he’d had no time to activate the ship’s defense system.

1989 – China declared martial law in Beijing. During the pro-democracy protests, Beijing officials ordered CBS and CNN to end their live on-scene reports.

1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first photographs.

1996 – The US paid North Korea $2 million to help recover the remains of US soldiers killed during the Korean War.

1996 – In New York, the United Nations and Iraq agree to U.N. Security Council Resolution 986. Iraqi oil exports are expected to begin by the Fall of 1996, after a pumping station on the Iraq-Turkey pipeline is repaired and U.N monitoring and aid distribution facilities are put in place. Shortly after the agreement, the White House announces its decision to allow U.S. oil companies to purchase Iraqi oil exports.

1997 – Marine Corporal Clemente Banuelos shot and killed the goat herder Esequiel Hernandez on the Mexican border at El Paso while on border patrol. The marine claimed self-defense after Hernandez fired 2 shots from a .22-caliber rifle. A grand jury later declined to indict Banuelos.

1999 – The CGC Bear arrived in Rota, Spain. She was deployed to the Adriatic Sea in support of “Operation Allied Force” and “Operation Noble Anvil”, NATO’s military campaign against the forces of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Bear served in the USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group providing surface surveillance and SAR response for the Sea Combat Commander, and force protection for the Amphibious Ready Group operating near Albania. Bear provided combat escort for U.S. Army vessel’s transporting military cargo between Italy and Albania. This escort operation took Bear up to the Albanian coastline, well within enemy surface-to-surface missile range.

2000 – The 5 nuclear powers of the UN Security Council agreed to eliminate their nuclear arsenals over time as part of a new disarmament agenda approved by 187 countries.

2003 – The Bush administration raised the terrorism alert level to orange on and called for increased security nationwide.

2003 – Afghan governors signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to pay vital customs revenues to the central government. Karzai had threatened to resign due to lack of revenue payments.

2004 – Iraqi police backed by American soldiers raided the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi politician.

2011 – At least one person is killed and ten people injured following an explosion in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, with a United States consular convoy targeted by the Pakistani Taliban.

2014 – The VA’s Office of Inspector General says it is investigating 26 agency facilities for allegations of doctored waiting times.

May 21st ~

1542 – On the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto dies, ending a three-year journey for gold that took him halfway across what is now the United States. In order that Indians would not learn of his death, and thus disprove de Soto’s claims of divinity, his men buried his body in the Mississippi River.

In late May 1539, de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with 600 troops, servants, and staff, 200 horses, and a pack of bloodhounds. From there, the army set about subduing the natives, seizing any valuables they stumbled upon, and preparing the region for eventual Spanish colonization. Traveling through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, across the Appalachians, and back to Alabama, de Soto failed to find the gold and silver he desired, but he did seize a valuable collection of pearls at Cofitachequi, in present-day Georgia. Decisive conquest also eluded the Spaniards, as what would become the United States lacked the large, centralized civilizations of Mexico and Peru.

As was the method of Spanish conquest elsewhere in the Americas, de Soto ill-treated and enslaved the natives he encountered. For the most part, the Indian warriors they encountered were intimidated by the Spanish horsemen and kept their distance. In October 1540, however, the tables were turned when a confederation of Indians attacked the Spaniards at the fortified Indian town of Mabila, near present-day Mobile, Alabama. All the Indians were killed, along with 20 of de Soto’s men. Several hundred Spaniards were wounded. In addition, the Indian conscripts they had come to depend on to bear their supplies had all fled with baggage.

De Soto could have marched south to reconvene with his ships along the Gulf Coast, but instead he ordered his expedition north-westward in search of America’s elusive riches. In May 1541, the army reached and crossed the Mississippi River, probably the first Europeans ever to do so. From there, they traveled through Arkansas and Louisiana, still with few material gains to show for their efforts.

Turning back to the Mississippi, de Soto died of a fever on its banks on May 21, 1542. The Spaniards, now under the command of Luis de Moscoso, traveled west again, crossing into north Texas before returning to the Mississippi. With nearly half of the original expedition dead, the Spaniards built rafts and traveled down the river to the sea, and then made their way down the Texas coast to New Spain, finally reaching Veracruz, Mexico, in late 1543.

1758 – Ten-year-old Mary Campbell is abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape tribesmen during the French and Indian War. She is returned six and a half years later.

1850 – Washington Navy Yard begins work on first castings for the Dahlgren guns.

1856 – Lawrence, Kansas, was captured and sacked by pro-slavery forces. The Sacking of Lawrence occurred when pro-slavery activists attacked and ransacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas, which had been founded by anti-slavery settlers to help ensure that Kansas would become a “free state”. The incident made worse the guerrilla war in Kansas Territory that became known as Bleeding Kansas.

1863 – Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Union Department of the Gulf, surrounds the Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson and attacks. Fortifications were built at Port Hudson in 1863 to protect New Orleans from a Union attack down the Mississippi River.

In 1863, the Union command began to focus attention on clearing the Mississippi of all Rebels. The major thrust of this effort was taking Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Confederate stronghold to the north of Port Hudson. In April, Ulysses S. Grant summoned Nathaniel Banks to participate in the campaign against Vicksburg. Banks wavered at first, preferring instead to wage an independent campaign against Confederates in Louisiana.

But in May, he set out to take Port Hudson, then under the command of Franklin Gardner. Banks had some 30,000 troops under his command, while Gardner possessed a force of just 3,500. When Banks began to encircle Port Hudson, Gardner made some feeble attacks to drive him away. On May 21, Gardner received orders from Joseph Johnston, operating in Mississippi, to abandon the fort. But Gardner refused, and asked for reinforcements. This was a fatal mistake, and Banks soon had Gardner surrounded. For the next three weeks, Banks attempted to capture Port Hudson but failed each time. It was not until Vicksburg surrendered on July 4th that Gardner also surrendered.

May 21st ~ {continued...}

1863 – Under Lieutenant Commander J. G. Walker, U.S.S. Baron De Kalb, Choctaw, Forest Rose, Linden, and Petrel pushed up the Yazoo River from Haynes’ Bluff to Yazoo City, Mississippi. As the gunboats approached the city, Commander Isaac N. Brown, CSN, who had commanded the heroic ram C.S.S. Arkansas the preceding summer, was forced to destroy three ”powerful steamers, rams and a “fine navy yard, with machine shops of all kinds, sawmills, blacksmith shops, etc. . . to prevent their capture. Porter noted that ”what he had begun our forces finished,” as the city was evacuated by the Southerners.

The Confederate steamers destroyed were Mobile, Republic, and ”a monster, 310 feet long and 70 feet beam.” Had the latter been completed, ”she would have given us much trouble.” Porter’s prediction to Secretary Welles at the end of the expedition, though overly optimistic in terms of the time that would be required, was nonetheless a clear summary of the effect of the gunboats’ sweep up the Yazoo: ”It is a mere question of a few hours, and then, with the exception of Port Hudson (which will follow Vicksburg), the Mississippi will be open its entire length.”

1864 – General David Hunter took command of Dept. of West Virginia.

1864 – Gunfire from ironclad steamer U.S.S. Atlanta, Acting Lieutenant Thomas J. Woodward, and U.S.S. Dawn, Acting Lieutenant John W. Simmons, dispersed Confederate cavalry attacking Fort Powhatan on the James River, Virginia. Dawn, a wooden steamer, remained above the fort during the night to prevent another attack.

1881 – In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross. Barton, born in Massachusetts in 1821, worked with the sick and wounded during the American Civil War and became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” for her tireless dedication.

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commissioned her to search for lost prisoners of war, and with the extensive records she had compiled during the war she succeeded in identifying thousands of the Union dead at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp.

She was in Europe in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and she went behind the German lines to work for the International Red Cross. In 1873, she returned to the United States, and four years later she organized an American branch of the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912.

1917 – USS Ericsson fires first US torpedo of World War I.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

1940 – Nazis surrounded the British Army at Dunkirk.

1941 – The first U.S. ship, the SS Robin Moor, was sunk by a U-boat. Roosevelt describes the sinking of the Robin Moor as “an act of intimidation” to which “we do not propose to yield.”

1944 – The American beachhead at Arare is reinforces and the airfield at Wadke is repaired.

1944 – The Coast Guard-manned USS LST-69 exploded at Pearl Harbor. None of her crew were killed but 13 were seriously injured.

May 21st ~ {continued...}

1944 – A small American force lands at Sperlonga, having embarked at Gaeta. Meanwhile, forces of the US 5th Army continue attacking. The US 2nd Corps captures Fondi while the French Expeditionary Corps takes Campodimele. German resistance in the Liri Valley and around Pico prevents significant gains in these areas.

1945 – On Okinawa, US 3rd Amphibious Corps reports advances near the Horseshoe, Half Moon and Wana positions, on the western flank. On the east-side, US 7th and 96th Divisions (parts of US 24th Corps) attack near Yonabaru. Japanese forces begin to pull out of the Shuri Line.

1945 – Hermann Goring, former Reichsmarshal of the Luftwaffe, is transferred from the prisoner of war camp at Augsburg to the Palace Hotel at Mondorf where he joins other senior Nazi officials awaiting Allied interrogation.

1945 – The Japanese supply base at Malaybalay on Mindanao is captured by elements of the US 31st Division.

1951 – The U.S. Eighth Army counterattacked to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea.

1951 – The Coast Guard announced the formation, within the Washington, DC area, of a new Organized Reserve Training Unit (Vessel Augmentation). The mission of this new unit was to develop a force of experienced personnel, well-trained in all shipboard billets, with particular emphasis on anti-submarine warfare, and the use of radar, radio, and other branches of electronics. Training was to be directed towards readying personnel of the unit for immediate assignment to ships of the Coast Guard and Navy in the event of mobilization.

1956 – The first known airborne US hydrogen bomb was tested over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

1961 – Governor Patterson declared martial law in Montgomery, Alabama.

1964 – The Navy initiates a the standing carrier presence at “Yankee Station” in the South China Sea.

1964 – The UN Security Council meets to consider Cambodia’s charge that the United States directs South Vietnamese raids into Cambodia. US Ambassador Adali Stevenson calls for a clear marking of the border and the stationing of some force to police it.

1968 – The allied command in Saigon announces the start of a new program, Operation Hearts Together, designed to resettle Saigon area families.

1968 – The nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

1970 – The National Guard was mobilized to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.

1980 – Ensign Jean Marie Butler became the first woman to graduate from a U.S. service academy as she accepted her degree and commission from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.

May 21st ~ {continued...}

1987 – In the wake of the Iraqi attack on the U.S. frigate Stark that claimed 37 lives, the Senate approved a proposal requiring President Reagan to send Congress a report detailing the threat to U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.

1992 – The Coast Guard announced that high-seas interdiction of Haitian refugees was being drastically scaled back because refugee camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, were filled.

1997 – The space shuttle Atlantis undocked from the Russian Mir space station.

2002 – The Bush administration announced that it would resume economic aid to Yugoslavia because it had met requirements to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

2003 – In Iraq US forces captured Aziz Saleh Numan, former Baath regional command chairman for west Baghdad. He was No. 8 on the most wanted list.

2003 – NATO’s 19 nations agreed unanimously to start planning to help Poland lead a multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq.

2004 – American AC-130 gunships and tanks bombarded militia positions near two shrines in the holy city of Karbala, killing 18 fighters loyal to a rebel cleric.

2009 – Four men are arrested for planning to bomb two synagogues and destroy military aircraft in New York, United States. The terrorist ring, led by James Cromitie, was tried and all were convicted. Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams, and Payen and were charged with conspiracy and weapons offenses at their first court appearance on May 21, 2009 and were ordered to be held without bail.

2011 – Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper, begins publication of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables it has obtained in a deal with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The cables show that the Pakistani military asked the United States to increase its drone attacks against insurgents on Pakistani territory, a request Pakistani authorities have not admitted in public.

2013 – U.S. Army Brigadier General Bryan T. Roberts, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Training Center and Fort Jackson in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, is suspended from his duties because of an investigation into alleged adultery (which is treated as a criminal violation, not just a civil matter, in the U.S. military), and for allegedly being in a physical altercation.

2014 – Obama says he “will not stand” for misconduct at VA hospitals, but asks for time to allow the investigation to run its course. The same day, Shinseki rescinds Phoenix VA director Sharon Helman’s $8,495 bonus. Helman got the bonus in April, even as agency investigators were looking into allegations at the facility.

May 22nd ~

1804 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition officially began as the Corps of Discovery departed from St. Charles, Missouri.

1807 – A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason.

1843 – A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the “Great Emigration,” the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon. After leaving Independence, the giant wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail for some 40 miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which it followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

From there, it traveled on to the Rocky Mountains, which it passed through by way of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River. The travelers then went southwest to Fort Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The Great Emigration finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey from Independence in five months. In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and in 1845 the number of emigrants who used the Oregon Trail exceeded 3,000. Travel along the trail gradually declined with the advent of the railroads, and the route was finally abandoned in the 1870s.

1856 – Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery. When the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed, popular sovereignty was applied within the two new territories and people were given the right to decide the slave issue by vote. Because the act nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the debate over slavery intensified. Northerners were incensed that slavery could again resurface in an area where it had been banned for over 30 years. When violence broke out in Kansas Territory, the issue became central in Congress.

On May 19th, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, an ardent abolitionist, began a two-day speech on the Senate floor in which he decried the “crime against Kansas” and blasted three of his colleagues by name, one of which—South Carolina Senator Andrew P. Butler—was elderly, sick, and absent from the proceedings. Butler’s cousin, Representative Preston Brooks, who had a history of violence, took it upon himself to defend the honor of his kin. Wielding the cane he used for injuries he incurred in a duel over a political debate in 1840, Brooks entered the Senate chamber and attacked Sumner at his desk, which was bolted to the floor. Sumner’s legs were pinned by the desk so he could not escape the savage beating.

It was not until other congressmen subdued Brooks that Sumner finally escaped. Brooks became an instant hero in the South, and supporters sent him many replacement canes. He was vilified in the North and became a symbol of the stereotypically inflexible, uncompromising representative of the slave power. The incident exemplified the growing hostility between the two camps in the prewar years. Sumner did not return to the Senate for three years while he recovered.

1863 – The US War Dept. established the Bureau of Colored Troops.

1863 – U.S. Grant’s second attack on Vicksburg, Miss., failed and a siege began.

1863 – Siege of Port Hudson: Union forces begin to lay siege to the Confederate-controlled Port Hudson, Louisiana.

1864 – Battle of North Anna River, VA.

1864 – After ten weeks, the Union Army’s Red River Campaign ends with the Union unable to achieve any of its objectives.