August 12th ~

1508 – Ponce de Leon arrived in Puerto Rico. Spain had appointed him to colonize Puerto Rico. He explored Puerto Rico and Spanish ships under his command began to capture Bahamanian Tainos to work as slaves on Hispaniola. His settlement at Caparra, 2 miles south of San Juan Bay, was plagued by Taino Indians and cannibalistic Carib Indians.

1658 – The 1st US police corps formed in New Amsterdam.

1812 – USS Constitution captures and destroys brig Adeona.

1817 – The Revenue Cutter Active captured the pirate ship Margaret in the Chesapeake Bay.

1862 – Confederate cavalry leader General John Hunt Morgan captures a small Federal garrison in Gallatin, Tennessee, just north of Nashville. The incident was part of a larger operation against the army of Union General Don Carlos Buell, which was threatening Chattanooga by late summer.

1863 – Confederate raider William Quantrill led a massacre of 150 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrill’s last ride.

1867 – President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1898 – Hawaii was formally annexed to the United States.

1898 – The brief and one-sided Spanish-American War comes to an end when Spain formally agrees to a peace protocol on U.S. terms: the cession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Manila in the Philippines to the United States pending a final peace treaty. The Spanish-American War had its origins in the rebellion against Spanish rule that began in Cuba in 1895. The repressive measures that Spain took to suppress the guerrilla war, such as herding Cuba’s rural population into disease-ridden garrison towns, were graphically portrayed in U.S. newspapers and enflamed public opinion.

1918 – SECNAV approves acceptance of women as yeoman (F) in U.S. Navy.

1918 – The Secretary of the Navy authorized the enlistment of women into the Marine Corps Reserve.

1942 – USS Cleveland (CL-55) demonstrates effectiveness of radio-proximity fuze (VT-fuze) against aircraft by successfully destroying 3 drones with proximity bursts fired by her five inch guns.

1944 – The first PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) becomes operational carrying fuel from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg.

1944 – LT Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., USNR, the older brother of John F. Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot in a mid-air explosion after taking off from England in a PB4Y from Special Attack Unit One (SAU-1). Following manual takeoff, they were supposed to parachute out over the English Channel while the radio-controlled explosive filled drone proceeded to attack a German V-2 missile-launching site. Possible causes include faulty wiring or FM signals from a nearby transmitter.

1945 – The battleship USS Pennsylvania is damaged by an attack from a Japanese torpedo bomber off the island of Okinawa. Meanwhile, A Japanese submarine sinks the American destroyer Thomas F. Nickel and the landing craft Oak Hill.

1953 – The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

1957 – In first test of Automatic Carrier Landing System, LCDR Don Walker is landed on USS Antietam.

1958 – USS Nautilus (SSN-571) arrives Portland, England completing first submerged under ice cruise from Pacific to Atlantic Oceans.

1959 – The 1st ship firing of a Polaris missile was from Observation Island.

1960 – USAF Major Robert M White takes X-15 to 41,600 miles.

1960 – The first balloon satellite, the Echo 1, was launched by the US from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It bounced phone calls from JPL in California to the Bell Labs in New Jersey.

1961 – In an effort to stem the tide of refugees attempting to leave East Berlin, the communist government of East Germany begins building the Berlin Wall to divide East and West Berlin. Construction of the wall caused a short-term crisis in U.S.-Soviet bloc relations, and the wall itself came to symbolize the Cold War.

1972 – As the last U.S. ground troops left Vietnam, B-52’s made their largest strike of the war.

1976 – The orbiter Enterprise made its 1st approach and lands test (ALT).

1977 – High Energy Astronomy Observatory 1 was launched into Earth orbit.

1977 – The space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test by taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating and then touching down in California’s Mojave Desert.

1981 – President Reagan, citing alleged Libyan involvement in terrorism, ordered U.S. jets to attack targets in Libya.

1981 – IBM introduces the PC and PC-DOS version 1.0. The computer had shrunk from being a room-clogging behemoth to a relatively dainty machine that could fit on desks in homes and schools. So, IBM’s introduction of its Personal Computer (PC) on August 12, 1981, didn’t exactly signal a technical revolution. But that didnýt stop Big Blue’s PC from bursting onto the scene. Their new product sold 136,000 units in its first year and a half of release, propelling the company’s stock on an upward climb that peaked later in the decade. IBM had seemingly served notice to the computer industry: the granddaddy of business computing was making a break from the boardroom and looking to conquer America’s homes. Not as widely noticed was the fact that IBM’s new machine was a pastiche of other company’s components, including a processing chip courtesy of Intel and an operating system developed by a thirty-two person concern called Microsoft.

1993 – The launch of space shuttle Discovery was scrubbed at the last second.

2002 – Iraq’s information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf told the Arabic satellite television station Al-Jazeera that there was no need for U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad. He branded as a “lie” allegations that Saddam Hussein still had weapons of mass destruction.

2014 – The US announced that it would not extend its airstrikes against the Islamic State to areas outside northern Iraq, emphasizing that the objective of the airstrikes was to protect US diplomats in Erbil. The US and the UK airdropped 60,000 litres of water and 75,000 meals for stranded refugees. The Vatican called on religious leaders of all denominations, particularly Muslim leaders, to unite and condemn the IS for what it described as “heinous crimes” and the use of religion to justify them.

August 13th ~

1779 – The Royal Navy defeats the Penobscot Expedition with the most significant loss of United States naval forces prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1831 – Nat Turner sees a solar eclipse, which he believes is a sign from God. Eight days later he and 70 other slaves kill approximately 55 whites in Southampton County, Virginia, beginning the rebellion that bears his name.

1846 – The American flag was raised for the first time in Los Angeles as a joint expedition led by CDR Robert Stockton seizes the city.

1862 – Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest defeated a Union army under Thomas Crittenden at Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

1870 – Armed tug Palos becomes first U.S. Navy ship to transit Suez Canal.

1906 – At Fort Brown, Texas, some 10-20 armed men engaged an all-Black Army unit in a shooting rampage that left one townsperson dead and a police officer wounded. A 1910 inquiry placed guilt on the soldiers and Pres. Roosevelt ordered all 167 discharged without honor. In 1970 John Weaver (d.2002) authored “The Brownsville Raid,” an account of the incident that led the Army to exonerate all 167 men.

1918 – Opha M. Johnson enlisted at HQMC, becoming the first woman Marine.

1942 – Major General Eugene Reybold of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizes the construction of facilities that would house the “Development of Substitute Materials” project, better known as the Manhattan Project.

1945 – Japanese surrender documents, approved by President Truman, are sent to General MacArthur.

1945 – About 1600 American aircraft fly over Tokyo and other Japanese cities dropping millions of leaflets explaining the position reached in the surrender negotiations and the state of affairs in Japan. Most Japanese “hawks” still refuse to admit defeat. Japanese Sub-Lieutenant Saburo Sakai, the one-eyed fighter ace (with 64 victories), shoots down a B-29 near Tokyo during the night (August 13-14).

1950 – Pres. Truman gave military aid to the Vietnamese regime of Bao-Dai.

1960 – The first two-way telephone conversation by satellite took place with the help of Echo 1, a balloon satellite.

1962 – Two Americans, David Healy and Leonard Oeth, skyjack a charter plane heading to Miami, Florida, and force its pilot to fly to Cuba. Apparently unwelcome, they were later returned to the United States and jailed.

1969 – The Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine to enjoy a ticker tape parade in New York, New York. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, California, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

1972 – Communist sappers (demolitions specialists) attack the ammo dump at Long Binh, destroying thousands of tons of ammunition. Some observers said that the Communists might have been reverting to guerrilla tactics due to the overall failure of the Nguyen Hue Offensive that had been launched in March.

1987 – A rented Piper Cherokee airplane flew close to President Reagan’s helicopter in restricted airspace over Southern California; the pilot and passenger of the plane were arrested.

1989 – The space shuttle Columbia returned from a secret military mission.

1990 – President Bush ordered Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to the Persian Gulf for the second time since Iraq invaded Kuwait. American combat troops in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, were told to prepare for a long stay.

2003 – In southern Afghanistan a bomb ripped through a bus in Lashkargah, killing 15 people, including six children. Officials blamed al-Qaida and remnants of the Taliban militia for the bombing, the deadliest in nearly a year. Heavy fighting erupted between government soldiers and Taliban remnants. 43 deaths were reported in the fighting.

2003 – Iraq began pumping crude oil from its northern oil fields for the first time since the start of the war.

2004 – Iraqi officials and aides to a radical Shiite cleric negotiated to end fighting that has raged in the holy city of Najaf for 9 days, after American forces suspended an offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia.

2004 – An Islamic Web site posted still pictures that purportedly show Iraqi militants beheading an Egyptian man they claim was spying for the U.S. military.

2004 – A southern Philippines court sentenced 17 members of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militant group to death for kidnapping nurses from a hospital there three years ago.

August 14th ~

1559 – Spanish explorer de Luna entered Pensacola Bay, Florida.

1720 – The Spanish military Villasur expedition is wiped out by Pawnee and Otoe warriors near present-day Columbus, Nebraska.

1756 – French commander Louis Montcalm took Fort Oswego, New England, from the British.

1765 – Massachusetts colonists challenged British rule by an Elm (Liberty Tree).

1784 – On Kodiak Island, Grigory Shelikhov, a Russian fur trader, founds Three Saints Bay, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska. The European discovery of Alaska came in 1741, when a Russian expedition led by Danish navigator Vitus Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland. Russian hunters were soon making incursions into Alaska, and the native Aleut population suffered greatly after being exposed to foreign diseases.

1812 – Marines help to capture British sloop “Alert” during the War of 1812.

1813 – British warship Pelican attacked and captured US war brigantine Argus.

1824 – General Lafayette returned to US.

1842 – The Second Seminole War ended and the Seminoles were moved from Florida to Oklahoma.

1848 – The Oregon Territory was established.

1864 – Confederate General Joe Wheeler besieged Dalton, Georgia.

1864 – A Federal assault continued for a 2nd day of battle at Deep Bottom Run, Virginia.

1866 – SECNAV establishes Naval Gun Factory at Washington Navy Yard.

1937 – China declared war on Japan. The beginning of air-to-air combat of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in general, when 6 Imperial Japanese Mitsubishi G3M bombers are shot down by the Nationalist Chinese Air Force while raiding Chinese air bases.

1940 – Sir Henry Tizard heads a British scientific mission to the United States, carrying with him details of all of Britain’s most advanced thinking in several vital fields. There are ideas on jet engines, explosives, gun turrets and above all a little device called the cavity magnetron. This valve is vital for the development of more advanced types of radar, including the versions used in proximity fuses later and the types working on centimetric wavelengths which will be vital at sea in the U-boat war. The US Official History will later describe this collection as the “most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores.”

1942 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower was named the Anglo-American commander for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa.

1945 – At a government meeting with Emperor Hirohito, the emperor states that the war should end. He records a radio message to the Japanese people saying that they must “bear the unbearable.” During the night, begining about 2300 hours, a group of army officers lead forces number over 1000 in an attempt to steal the recording and prevent it being broadcast but fail to overcome the guards at the Imperial Palace. Coup leader, Major Kenji Hatanaka, who killed the commander of the imperial guard, commits suicide after its failure. The Japanese decision to surrender is transmitted to the Allies.

1945 – In the last air raid of the war, during the night (August 14-15) US B-29 Superfortress bombers strike Kumagaya and Isezaki, northwest of Tokyo, and Akita-Aradi oil refinery.

1974 – Congress authorized US citizens to own gold.

1984 – IBM releases PC DOS version 3.0.

1990 – Interrupting his vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine, President Bush returned to Washington, where he told reporters he saw no hope for a diplomatic solution to the Persian Gulf crisis, at least until economic sanctions forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

1994 – Space telescope Hubble photographed Uranus with rings.

1994 – Carlos the Jackal was captured in Khartoum, Sudan.

1995 – Shannon Faulkner officially became the first female cadet in the history of The Citadel, South Carolina’s state military college. She quit the school less than a week later, citing the stress of her court fight, and her isolation among the male cadets.

1997 – An unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was formally sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.

2001 – US warplanes attacked an Iraqi air defense system modernized with fiber optics by Chinese technicians.

2001 – Helios, a remote-controlled, solar powered NASA plane, reached a record 96,500 feet.

2007 – The deadliest single attack of the whole war occurred. Nearly 800 civilians were killed by a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks on the northern Iraqi settlement of Kahtaniya. More than 100 homes and shops were destroyed in the blasts. U.S. officials blamed al-Qaeda. The targeted villagers belonged to the non-Muslim Yazidi ethnic minority. The attack may have represented the latest in a feud that erupted earlier that year when members of the Yazidi community stoned to death a teenage girl called Du’a Khalil Aswad accused of dating a Sunni Arab man and converting to Islam. The killing of the girl was recorded on camera-mobiles and the video was uploaded onto the internet.

August 15th ~

1812 – Potawatomi Indians kill William Wells, an Indian captive turned Indian fighter. Born in Pennsylvania in 1770, Wells migrated with his family to Kentucky when he was nine years old. Five years later he was captured by Miami Indians and adopted into the family of the Wea village chief Gaviahatte. The young boy quickly adapted to Indian ways. He became a distinguished warrior and married the daughter of a prominent Miami war chief. For several years, Wells fought with the Miami against American soldiers attempting to push them off their land. In 1792, however, the army captured his wife and adopted mother. In exchange for their freedom, Wells agreed to join the American army as an interpreter. A reunion with a long lost brother helped reinforce the allegiance of Wells to the Americans, though his loyalties remained conflicted for the rest of his life.

1824 – Freed American slaves formed the country of Liberia.

1861 – Just months after he surrendered Fort Sumter, Union General Robert Anderson is named commander of the Department of the Kentucky. Although he was pro-slavery and pro-South, Anderson remained loyal to the United States. Anderson was assigned to command Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in hopes that a pro-South officer would help smooth tensions with local residents. When he surrendered the fort after a 36-hour bombardment, he was hailed a national hero.

Released by Confederates nearly six weeks after the surrender of Fort Sumter, Anderson was promoted to brigadier general. He was given command of the Department of Kentucky and carefully maintained the balance of neutrality in the state. But poor health forced him to resign his command two months later, and William T. Sherman replaced him. Anderson returned to active duty briefly in 1865 to hoist the American flag over Fort Sumter after the Confederate surrender. He died in 1871 and is buried at West Point.

1863 – Submarine H. L. Hunley had arrived in Charleston on two covered railroad flat cars. Brigadier General Jordan advised Mr. B.A. Whitney that a reward of $100,000 dollars would he paid by John Fraser and Company for the destruction of U.S.S. New Ironsides. He added that “a similar sum for destruction of the wooden frigate Wabash, and the sum of fifty thousand dollars for every Monitor sunk” was also being offered. The next day, Jordan ordered that “every assistance be rendered in equipping the submarine with torpedoes. Jordan noted that General Beauregard regarded H. F. Hunley as the most formidable engine of war for the defense of Charleston now at his disposition & accordingly is anxious to have it ready for service. . . .”

1876 – US law removed Indians from Black Hills after gold find. Sioux leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull led their warriors to protect their lands from invasion by prospectors following the discovery of gold. This led to the Great Sioux Campaign staged from Fort Laramie. Gold was discovered in Deadwood in the Dakota territory by Quebec brothers Fred and Moses Manuel. The mine was incorporated in California on Nov 5, 1877, as the Homestake Mining Company.

1895 – Commissioning of U.S.S. Texas, the first American steel-hulled battleship. Texas served off Cuba during the Spanish-American War and took part in the naval battle of Santiago. Under the name of San Marcos, she was sunk in weapon effects tests in Chesapeake Bay in 1911. Her hulk continued in use as a gunnery target through World War II.

1908 – First Navy post offices established in Navy ships.

1914 – The American-built waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship.

1934 – 19 years of occupation ended as the 1st Marine Brigade departed Haiti.

1942 – The Japanese submarine I-25 departed Japan with a floatplane in its hold. It was assembled upon arriving off the West Coast of the US, and used to bomb U.S. forests.

1945 – World War II gasoline rationing in America ended on this day. Rationing was just one of the special measures taken in the U.S. during wartime. Civilian auto production virtually ceased after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the U.S. automotive industry turned to war production. Automotive firms made almost $29 billion worth of military materials between 1940 and 1945, including jeeps, trucks, machine guns, carbines, tanks, helmets, and aerial bombs. After the war, rationing ended and the auto industry boomed.

1945 – Celebrations mark the end of World War II — VJ Day. A two-day holiday is proclaimed for all federal employees.

1945 – South Korea was liberated after nearly 40 years of Japanese colonial rule.

1948 – The Republic of Korea [South Korea] was proclaimed.

1961 – Two days after sealing off free passage between East and West Berlin with barbed wire, East German authorities begin building a wall–the Berlin Wall–to permanently close off access to the West. For the next 28 years, the heavily fortified Berlin Wall stood as the most tangible symbol of the Cold War–a literal “iron curtain” dividing Europe.

1971 – Richard Nixon turned his attention away from the war in Vietnam and announced a sweeping series of economic initiatives, including a ninety-day freeze on wages and rents, as well as the end of America’s twenty-five-year-old policy of converting foreign money into gold.

1994 – Terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, long known as Carlos, is captured in Khartoum, Sudan, by French intelligence agents. Since there was no extradition treaty with Sudan, the French agents sedated and kidnapped Carlos. The Sudanese government, claiming that it had assisted in the arrest, requested that the United States remove their country from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

2001 – The Air Force gave the go-ahead to build its new F-22 fighter, but said it would build fewer planes for more money than it had once planned.

2002 – Some 600 families of 9/11 victims files a $3 trillion lawsuit against Saudi princes, foreign banks, charities and the government of Sudan for funding the terrorist networks that launched the 2001 attacks.

August 16th ~

1691 – Yorktown, Va., was founded.

1777 – The Americans led by General John Stark rout British and Brunswick troops under Friedrich Baum at the Battle of Bennington in Walloomsac, New York.

1780 – American troops under Gen. Horatio Gates were badly defeated by the British at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina.

1812 – During the War of 1812, American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit and his army to the British without a fight. Hull, a 59-year-old veteran of the American Revolution, had lost hope of defending the settlement after seeing the large English and Indian force gathering outside Detroit’s walls. The general was also preoccupied with the presence of his daughter and grandchildren inside the fort. Of Hull’s 2,000-man army, most were militiamen, and British General Isaac Brock allowed them to return to their homes on the frontier. The regular U.S. Army troops were taken as prisoners to Canada. In September 1813, U.S. General William Henry Harrison, the future president, recaptured Detroit. In 1814, William Hull was court-martialed for cowardice and neglect of duty in surrendering the fort, and sentenced to die. Because of his service in the revolution, however, President James Madison remitted the sentence.

1812 – USS Constitution recaptures American merchant brig Adeline.

1861 – President Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.

1861 – Union and Confederate forces clashed near Fredericktown and Kirkville, Missouri.

1864 – Confederate General John Chambliss is killed during a cavalry charge at Deep Bottom, Virginia—one of the sieges of Petersburg. Union General Ulysses S. Grant had bottled the army of Confederate General Robert E. Lee behind a perimeter that stretched from Petersburg to the Confederate capital at Richmond, 20 miles north. By June 1864, the armies had settled into trench warfare, with little movement of the lines. In August, Grant sought to break the stalemate by attacking the Southern defenses near Richmond. In an attempt to regain control of a section of trenches breached by the Yankees, the Confederates counterattacked, and Chambliss was killed. His body was recovered by a former West Point classmate, Union General David Gregg, who made a surprising discovery: a detailed map of the Richmond defenses. Gregg gave the plan to Union topographical engineers, who then looked for a way to copy and distribute the map through the army’s command structure.

Using a new photographic technique known as Margedant’s Quick Method, which did not require a camera, the engineers traced Chambliss’s map and laid it over a sheet of photographic paper. The paper was then exposed to the sun’s rays, which darkened the paper except under the traced lines. The result was a mass-produced negative of the map, which was distributed to all Union officers in the area within 48 hours. It may not have helped the Union capture Richmond—that would take another seven months—but it may have reduced casualties by preventing foolhardy attacks on well-defended positions.

1914 – Austrian-born Adolf Hitler volunteers to fight with the German Army. He will serve throughout the conflict on the Western Front as a messenger, suffer wounds, and receive various medals for valor.

1942 – The US Navy L-8 patrol blimp crash-landed at 419 Bellevue St., Daly City, Ca., after drifting in from the ocean. The ship’s crew, Lt. Ernest Dewitt Cody (27) and Ensign Charles E. Adams (38), were missing and no trace of them was ever found.

1945 – The Emperor issues an Imperial Rescript (decree) at 1600 hours (local time) ordering all Japanese forces to cease fire. The Cabinet resigns. General Prince Higashikumi becomes the prime minister of Japan and forms a new government. He orders the Imperial Army to obey the Emperor’s call and lay down their arms.

1945 – Honolulu Coast Guard District transferred to Navy.

1945 – Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, (captured by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor, in the Philippines), is freed by Russian forces from a POW camp in Manchuria, China. When Wainwright arrived in Yokohama, Japan, to attend the formal surrender ceremony, Gen. MacArthur, his former commander, was stunned at his appearance-literally unable to eat and sleep for a day. Wainwright was given a hero’s welcome upon returning to America, promoted to full general, and awarded the Medal of Honor.

1959 – William F. Halsey (Bull Halsey), US vice-admiral (WW II Pacific), died.

1960 – Air Force COL Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that held until 2012: High-altitude jump, free fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft.

1972 – U.S. fighter-bombers fly 370 air strikes against North Vietnam, the highest daily total of the year; additionally, there are eight B-52 strikes in the North. Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes flew 321 missions (including 27 B-52 strikes) in South Vietnam, mostly in Quang Tri province. Despite this heavy air activity, hopes for an agreement to end the war rise as Henry Kissinger leaves Paris to confer with President Thieu and his advisers.

1990 – In Iraq, President Saddam Hussein issued a statement in which he repeatedly called Bush a “liar” and said the outbreak of war could result in “thousands of Americans wrapped in sad coffins.”

1999 – For the first time, weapons were fired from a Coast Guard HITRON helicopter “to execute the interdiction of a maritime drug smuggler.”

2001 – Zacarias Moussaoui (33), a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested in Minneapolis on immigration charges. He was taking lessons on flying Boeing jets with no interest in taking off or landing. He was later suspected as a 5th member of one of the Sep 11 WTC attack teams.

In Nov the FBI reported that Moussaoui wanted to learn how to take off and land but not to fly. Mueller also said Ramzi Omar of Yemen, aka Ramsi Binalshibh, may have been the 20th hijacker. The local FBI contacted the CIA for action on Moussaoui when FBI managers failed to take action. Agent Coleen Rowley later charged that senior officials fumbled an opportunity to possibly prevent the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.

2004 – Pres. Bush announced plans to pull 70-100 thousand US troops from Europe and Asia and redeploy them to meet the demands of the global war on terrorism.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — After 150 years at the bottom of the Savannah River, the armored skeleton of the Confederate warship CSS Georgia is being raised to the surface one 5-ton chunk at a time.

Navy divers who began working in late June to recover cannons, unexploded shells and other artifacts from the riverbed finally started midweek on their last major task — retrieving an estimated 250,000 pounds of the Civil War ironclad's armored siding.

The CSS Georgia was scuttled by its own crew to prevent Gen. William T. Sherman from capturing the massive gunship when his Union troops took Savannah in December 1864. Still classified as a captured enemy vessel by the Navy, the remains of the Confederate ironclad are being salvaged as part of a $703 million deepening of the Savannah harbor for cargo ships.

"The historical significance is evident in everything we do," Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jason Potts, the Navy's on-scene commander, said Wednesday as his crew prepared to start raising the first of three giant slabs of armor.

The CSS Georgia was a crude example of the first armored warships designed during the Civil War to stand up to cannon and artillery fire. Its 1,200-ton frame was built using three layers of timber topped with 24-foot strips of railroad iron.

Having sections of the Georgia's armor for study should reveal more about how the Confederacy compensated for the South's lack of an industrial base when it came to building ships and other war machines.

"A lot of these ironclads are built by house carpenters, they're not built by shipwrights," said Jeff Seymour, historian and curator for the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus. "So what are the construction techniques? They vary from ship-to-ship."

The Georgia proved so bulky its own engines were too weak to propel it against the Savannah River's currents. The Confederates anchored the ironclad off Old Fort Jackson as a floating gun battery. It was sunk without ever firing a shot in combat.

After months of preparation work by underwater archaeologists, Navy divers from the Virginia Beach-based Mobile Diving Salvage Unit 2 arrived in late June.

Their first task was to raise 132 unexploded shells — both cannonballs and rifled shells shaped like large bullets — found scattered across the wreckage site. Using a crane mounted on a barge, they also pulled up four cannons weighing 1,000 to 10,000 pounds apiece.

Other artifacts soon emerged from 40 feet or more of water: a flywheel, a pump and sections of the steamship's boiler. Perhaps most impressive, the Georgia's propeller was recovered intact and still attached to the long shaft that turned it.

"We don't just simply want to bring it all back to the surface," Potts said. "We want to bring it back intact. So we go to the maximum effort to make sure we don't rip these things apart on the way up."

The three large sections of the Georgia's armored casemate, however, proved too heavy to raise without cutting them down into smaller pieces. They're being separated into about 20 total chunks, each measuring about 4 feet by 24 feet and weighing roughly 5 tons.

After a century and a half, Potts said, most of the ship's wooden hull has rotted away. But the railroad iron remains essentially glued together by mud and silt from the riverbed. The crew uses a crane-held tool with a long, flat blade to slide between the iron strips and pry apart chunks of the armor.

A web of slings is then attached to the slab of armor to ensure its weight is evenly distributed as the crane lifts it from the river.

With river currents typically limiting divers to less than three hours underwater each day, Potts estimates it will take his team nearly a month to raise all of the armored siding. That's at a rate of roughly one 5-ton chunk per day.

All artifacts from the CSS Georgia are being sent to the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, for cataloging and preservation. The Navy hasn't said where those artifacts will ultimately reside.

August 17th ~

1585 – A first group of colonists sent by Sir Walter Ralegh under the charge of Ralph Lane lands in the New World to create Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina.

1590 – John White, the leader of 117 colonists sent in 1587 to Roanoke Island (North Carolina) to establish a colony, returned from a trip to England to find the settlement deserted. No trace of the settlers was ever found.

1862 – Minnesota erupts in violence as desperate Dakota Indians attack white settlements along the Minnesota River. The Dakota were eventually overwhelmed by the U.S. military six weeks later. The Dakota Indians were more commonly referred to as the Sioux, a derogatory name derived from part of a French word meaning “little snake.”

1862 – Major General J.E.B. Stuart is assigned command of all the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

1864 – General Robert E. Lee, attempting to consolidate his position on the James River below Richmond, turned to the ships of Flag Officer Mitchell’s squadron for gunfire support. The enemy is on Signal Hill, fortifying,” he telegraphed. “Please try and drive him off. Our picket line is reestablished with the exception of Signal Hill.” Ironclads C.S.S. Virginia II, Lieutenant Johnston, and C.S.S. Richmond, Lieutenant J. S. Maury, promptly steamed to a position above Signal Hill where they took the Union position under fire. Shortly thereafter scouts reported that Union forces had fallen back and that Lee’s troops now commanded the hill.

1864 – Battle of Gainesville, Confederate forces defeat Union troops near Gainesville, Florida.

1877 – Asaph Hall discovered the Mars moon Phobos. Hall of the US Naval Observatory
discovered the moons around Mars and named them Deimos (anxiety) and Phobos (fear), Homer’s names for the attendant’s of the god of war.

1896 – A prospecting party discovered gold in Alaska, a finding that touched off the Klondike gold rush.

1929 – Horace Alderman, convicted of murdering 2 Coast Guardsmen and a Secret Service agent in 1927, was hanged at Coast Guard Base 10 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was the only person ever executed on Coast Guard property.

1942 – The first bombing raid flown by a completely American squadron bombs Rouen in France.

1943 – The USAAF bombs the ball-bearing manufacturing centers at Schweinfurt and Regensburg in a daylight raid. A total of 51 bombers are lost. During the night (August 17-18), the German rocket research center at Peenemunde is bombed by nearly 600 British bombers. A total of 41 bombers are lost in the raid. This bombing creates a significant delay in the German rocket program. Also noteworthy about the raid is the British use of “window,” dropped by Mosquito bombers, which causes about 200 German fighters to concentrate over Berlin.

1943 – U.S. General George S. Patton and his 7th Army arrive in Messina several hours before British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery and his 8th Army, winning the unofficial “Race to Messina” and completing the Allied conquest of Sicily. During one of his many successful campaigns, General Patton was said to have declared, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” On December 21, 1945, he died in a hospital in Germany from injuries sustained in an automobile accident near Mannheim.

1945 – Ho Chi Minh begins the first of a series of eight letters to President Harry Truman. Because of his relations with the OSS, collaborating against the Japanese, he regards the US as the friend of all struggling peoples. he asks for US aid in gaining Vietnam’s independence from France. There is no record of any US official ever answering these appeals. The US government is in a quandary, not wanting to support French colonialism, but not wanting to turn Vietnam over to a Communist administration.

1950 – The bodies of 20 mortar men of the 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division were recovered near Hill 303 in the vicinity of Waegwan. North Korean soldiers murdered the soldiers after they had surrendered.

1958 – World’s 1st Moon probe, US’s Thor-Able, exploded at T +77 sec.

1960 – American Francis Gary Powers pleaded guilty at his Moscow trial for spying over the Soviet Union in a U-2 plane.

1962 – Navy’s first hydrofoil patrol craft, USS High Point (PCH-1) launched at Seattle, WA.

1966 – Pioneer 7 launched into solar orbit.

1982 – The first Compact Discs (CDs) are released to the public in Germany.

1987 – Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, is found strangled to death in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, apparently the victim of suicide. Hess was the last surviving member of Hitler’s inner circle and the sole prisoner at Spandau since 1966.

1998 – Pres. Clinton testified via video via closed-circuit TV from the White House before a grand jury concerning his relations with Monica Lewinsky. He then delivered a TV address in which he denied previously committing perjury, admitted his relationship with Lewinsky was “wrong,” and criticized Kenneth Starr’s investigation. “I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate… It was wrong.”

1998 – NATO forces began a 5-day exercise in Albania as a threat to Serbia.

1998 – It was reported that spy satellites had detected a secret underground complex in North Korea that was suspected of being involved in a nuclear weapons program.

2002 – The new $ 1 billion Navy destroyer McCampbell, completed in July at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, was commissioned in San Francisco.

2014 – For the first time, an unmanned plane took off and landed form a US Aircraft Carrier, alongside a manned aircraft. The X-47B UCAS participated in flight operations side by side with the Navy’s standard F/A/-18E Super Hornet fighter. The goal for the flight test on the USS Theodore Roosevelt was for the two aircraft to take off within 90 seconds of one another and then for both had to land within a minute and a half.

August 18th ~

1587 – In the Roanoke Island colony, Ellinor and Ananias Dare became parents of a baby girl whom they name Virginia Dare, the first English child born on what is now Roanoke Island, N.C., then considered Walter Raleigh’s second settlement in Roanoke, Virginia. Virginia Dare, born to the daughter of John White, became the first child of English parents to be born on American soil.

1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony in present-day North Carolina, returns from a supply-trip to England to find the settlement deserted. White and his men found no trace of the 100 or so colonists he left behind, and there was no sign of violence. Among the missing were Ellinor Dare, White’s daughter; and Virginia Dare, White’s granddaughter and the first English child born in America. August 18 was to have been Virginia’s third birthday. The only clue to their mysterious disappearance was the word “CROATOAN” carved into the palisade that had been built around the settlement. White took the letters to mean that the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island, some 50 miles away, but a later search of the island found none of the settlers. The Roanoke Island colony, the first English settlement in the New World, was founded by English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in August 1585.

1812 – Returning from a cruise into Canadian waters Captain Isaac Hull’s USS Constitution of the fledgling U.S. Navy encountered British Captain Richard Dacre’s HMS Guerriere about 750 miles out of Boston. After a frenzied 55-minute battle that left 101 dead, Guerriere rolled helplessly in the water, smashed beyond salvage. Dacre struck his colors and surrendered to Hull’s boarding party. In contrast, Constitution suffered little damage and only 14 casualties.

1864 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant tries to cut a vital Confederate lifeline into Petersburg, Virginia, with an attack on the Weldon Railroad. Although the Yankees succeeded in capturing a section of the line, the Confederates simply used wagons to bring supplies from the railhead into the city. Grant’s spring campaign against General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia ended at Petersburg, 20 miles south of Richmond. In June, Grant ceased frontal assaults, and the two armies settled into trenches for a siege.

1911 – First Navy Nurse Corps superintendent, Esther Voorhees Hasson, was appointed.

1914 – President Wilson issued his Proclamation of Neutrality, aimed at keeping the United States out of World War I.

1914 – Germany declared war on Russia.

1920 – The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is ratified by Tennessee, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it the law of the land. The amendment was the culmination of more than 70 years of struggle by woman suffragists. Its two sections read simply: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” and “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

1942 – On Guadalcanal, Japanese reinforcements are landed at Taivu and a detachment of 1,000 troops under the leadership of Colonel Ichiki starts towards the American position. The Japanese believe there are only 3,000 Americans on the Island. There are actually 10,000 and the airstrip is now ready to receive aircraft.

1951 – The Battle of Bloody Ridge began. During the battle, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and its attached units sustained 326 killed in action, 2,032 wounded and 414 missing. The enemy’s dead totaled 1,389. The 15th Field Artillery Battalion set a record of 14,425 rounds fired in a 24-hour period.

1951 – U.N. aircraft began Operation STRANGLE to interdict North Korean rail and supply lines.

1951 – The 1st transcontinental wireless phone call was made from SF to NYC by Mark Sullivan, president of PT&T, and H.T. Killingworth of AT&T.

1965 – After a deserter from the First Vietcong Regiment had revealed that an attack was imminent against the U.S. base at Chu Lai, the Marines launch Operation Starlite in the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province. In this, the first major U.S. ground battle of the Vietnam War, 5,500 Marines destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold, scoring a resounding victory. During the operation, which lasted six days, ground forces, artillery from Chu Lai, close air support, and naval gunfire combined to kill nearly 700 Vietcong soldiers. U.S. losses included 45 Marines dead and more than 200 wounded.

1966 – First ship-to-shore satellite radio message sent from USS Annapolis in South China Sea to Pacific Fleet Headquarters at Pearl Harbor.

1976 – Two U.S. Army officers were killed in Korea’s demilitarized zone as a group of North Korean soldiers wielding axes and metal pikes attacked U.S. and South Korean soldiers. Major Arthur G. Bonifas was attacked and beaten to death by North Korean soldiers as he attempted to cut down a poplar tree in the DMZ.

1987 – American journalist Charles Glass escaped his kidnappers in Beirut after 62 days in captivity.

1990 – A US frigate fired warning shots across the bow of an Iraqi oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman—apparently the first shots fired by the United States in the Persian Gulf crisis.

1991 – Hard-line elements of the Soviet government and military begin a coup attempt against President Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup attempt signified a decline in Gorbachev’s power and influence, while one of his most ardent opponents, Boris Yeltsin, came out of the event with more power than ever.

1995 – Shannon Faulkner, who’d won a two-and-a-half-year legal battle to become the first female cadet at The Citadel, quit the South Carolina military college after less than a week, most of it spent in the infirmary.

1997 – In Virginia the VMI class of 2001 included 30 women among the 460 freshman students. Beth Ann Hogan became the first coed in the Virginia Military Institute’s 158-year history.

2002 – Operation Mountain Sweep was the first for the 82nd Airborne Division since its arrival in Afghanistan. The troopers of the 82nd joined with Army Rangers and other coalition special operations forces to mount five combat air assault missions. Combat engineers, aviation assets and civil affairs detachments also took part in the operation. Mountain Sweep continued Operation Mountain Lion in searching out al Qaeda and Taliban forces and information about the terrorist organizations.

2002 – US federal agents said they had seized over 2,300 unregistered missiles at a “counter-terrorism” school, High Energy Access Tools (HEAT), in Roswell, New Mexico, that was training students from Arab countries and arrested its Canadian leader.

2014 – Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon orders the National Guard into Ferguson, MO, after police cited “pre-planned” acts of aggression by protesters. Over the preceding two nights, protesters shot at police, threw Molotov cocktails at officers, looted businesses and carried out a “coordinated attempt” to block roads and overrun the police’s command center. Ferguson is a predominantly black city of 21,000 on the outskirts of St. Louis that had been experiencing nightly rioting since Aug. 9, when white police officer Darren Wilson, 28, fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

August 19th ~

1779 – Americans under Major Henry Lee took the British garrison at Paulus Hook, New Jersey.

1782 – Battle of Blue Licks – the last major engagement of the War of Independence, almost ten months after the surrender of the British commander Charles Cornwallis following the Siege of Yorktown.

1818 – CAPT James Biddle takes possession of Oregon Territory for U.S.

1854 – The First Sioux War begins when United States Army soldiers kill Lakota chief Conquering Bear and in return are massacred.

1862 – American Indian Wars: during an uprising in Minnesota, Lakota warriors decide not to attack heavily-defended Fort Ridgely and instead turn to the settlement of New Ulm, killing white settlers along the way.

1905 – Roald Amundsen and his crew of 6 aboard Gjøe, a converted herring boat, made contact with the US Coast Guard cutter Bear which confirmed their crossing the Northwest Passage following a 26-month journey. Amundsen continued by dogsled to the Yukon while his crew completed their journey at Point Bonita, California, just outside the Golden Gate. Gjøe was returned to Norway in 1972. A commemorative sculpture was left next to the Beach Chalet at Ocean Beach.

1919 – “The Marines’ Hymn” was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

1940 – First flight of the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber.

1942 – A major raid by mainly Canadian Forces (2nd Canadian Division, under General Roberts), with a British commando component (Nos. 3 & 4 commandos under Lord Lovat) and 50 American Rangers, is staged on the French coast, at Dieppe. Its function is to test German coastal defenses and gather intelligence. The raid goes badly and there is much controversy about it, including the cancellation and remounting of the raid, the inaccurate intelligence concerning German defensive positions and the lack of bomber support for the raid. In all there are 3600 casualties on the Allied side. 106 aircraft, one destroyer, 30 tanks and 33 landing craft are also lost. German casualties are light, 600 men and 50 tanks.

1942 – 19 US Marines died during a commando raid on Makin atoll in the Gilbert Islands. The raid was 2,000 miles behind enemy lines and 9 Marines were left behind. The 1943 movie, “Gung Ho,” was based on the raid and starred Randolph Scott as Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, leader of the raid. In 2001 the bodies of 13 Marines, who died on Makin, were reburied at Arlington National Cemetery.

1943 – Italians have approached the Allies about negotiating a surrender. General Bedell Smith, General Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, and General Strong, his chief of intelligence areeive to continue talks with approaches to the British ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare. The leading Italian representative is General Castellano.

1944 – Elements of the US 3rd Army reach the Seine River at Mantes Grassicourt. There is heavy fighting between Falaise and Argentan.

1944 – Liberation of Paris – Paris, France rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.

1945 – Japanese representatives of the government arrive in Manila to conclude the surrender of the remaining Japanese troops and receive instructions on the plans for the occupation of Japan and the signing of the surrender documents. Meanwhile, General MacArthur ordered a halt to all amphibious landing operations.

1950 – The United Nations accepted offers of troops from Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Thailand and the Philippines.

1950 – The USS Missouri, the only active battleship in the Navy fleet at that time, departed Norfolk, Va., for Korea, arriving Sept. 15th.

1953 – Gen’l. Zahedi ousted Prime Minister Mossadegh and became the Premier of Iran in a bloody coup that left 300 dead. The US CIA under Allen Dulles planned a secret mission to overthrow the government. The US government made a formal apology for the coup in 2000.

1957 – The first balloon flight to exceed 100,000 feet took off from Crosby, Minnesota. US Major David Simons reached 30,933 m. in a balloon.

1960 – A tribunal in Moscow convicted American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage. About 18 months later, the Soviets agreed to release him in exchange for Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy convicted 5 years earlier. The CIA and the Senate cleared Powers of any personal blame for the incident.

1965 – U.S. forces destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold near Van Tuong, in South Vietnam.

1967 – Operation Coronado IV begins in Mekong Delta.

1974 – U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet that penetrated the American embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, during a protest by Greek Cypriots.

1981 – 2 US Navy F-14 jet fighters shot down 2 Soviet-built Libyan SU-22 over the Gulf of Sidra.

1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein offered to free all foreigners detained in Iraq and Kuwait provided the United States promise to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia and guarantee that an international economic embargo would be lifted.

1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup. oviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Ukraine.

1994 – Operation Able Vigil commenced during a massive influx of Cuban migrants fleeing Cuba. It was the “largest joint peace-time operation” in Coast Guard history, according to then-commandant, ADM Robert Kramek.

1995 – Three top US diplomats heading to peace talks in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, were killed when their armored vehicle plunged off a muddy road and exploded.

1997 – In North Korea groundbreaking ceremonies were held for 2 nuclear power plants to be built by a US led Int’l. consortium.

2003 – In Baghdad a car bomb exploded in front of the hotel housing the UN headquarters, collapsing the front of the building. UN Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello (55) of Brazil and 22 other people were killed. UNICEF said that its program coordinator for Iraq, Canadian Christopher Klein-Beekman, was among the dead.

2003 – Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Iraqi vice president known as “Saddam’s knuckles” for his ruthlessness and No. 20 on the US list of most-wanted Iraqis, was turned over to US forces in Mosul.

2004 – In Iraq PM Allawi gave what he said was a final warning to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disarm and the leave the holy shrine in Najaf.

2010 – The last US combat brigades departed Iraq in the early morning. Convoys of US troops had been moving out of Iraq to Kuwait for several days, and NBC News broadcast live from Iraq as the last convoy crossed the border. While all combat brigades left the country, an additional 50,000 personnel (including Advise and Assist Brigades) remained in the country to provide support for the Iraqi military.

2014 – In what may be considered the first attack of the Islamic State on the United States, IS releases a video that show the apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley, and threatens the life of another American journalist if President Barack Obama doesn’t end military operations in Iraq. Foley had disappeared form northwest Syria on 22 November 2012 while working for the US-based online news outlet GlobalPost. The other journalist, still in captivity, is Steven Sotloff, kidnapped form the Syria-Turkey border region in 2013. Sotloff is a contributor to Time and Foreign Policy magazines.

August 20th ~

1494 – Columbus returned to Hispaniola. He had confirmed that Jamaica was an island and failed to find a mainland.

1619 – The 1st African slaves arrived to North America aboard a Dutch privateer. It docked in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo.

1707 – The first siege of Pensacola in Spanish Florida by English supported Creek Indians resulted in the destruction of the town, but Fort San Carlos de Austria successfully resisted the onslaught.

1775 – The Spanish establish the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.

1781 – George Washington began to move his troops south to fight Cornwallis.

1804 – Sergeant Charles Floyd dies three months into the voyage of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, becoming the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the journey.

1864 – The 8th and last day of battle at Deep Bottom Run, Va., left about 3900 casualties.

1865 – President Andrew Johnson proclaimed an end to the “insurrection” in Texas.

1866 – President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, even though the fighting had stopped months earlier.

1908 – The American Great White Fleet arrived in Sydney, Australia, to a warm welcome.

1910 – The 1st shot fired from an airplane was during a test flight over Brooklyn’s Sheeps Head Bay.

1920 – Pioneering American radio station 8MK in Detroit (later WWJ) began daily broadcasting.

1940 – Radar was used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain.

1941 – Adolf Hitler authorized the development of the V-2 missile.

1942 – Plutonium was first weighed. Glenn T. Seaborg was a co-discoverer of Plutonium.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, the first aircraft, 31 Marine (MAG-23) fighters from the escort carrier USS Long Island are flown into Henderson Field Air Strip.

1942 – Searchlights crossing the sky cease to be a fixture of Hollywood premieres as of this day. In an attempt to avoid attack and surveillance by enemy forces in World War II, the entire West Coast was required to dim its lights at night. During the war, movie studies were also limited in the amount of cloth they could use in costumes, the quantity of new construction they could devote to sets, and the amount of film stock they could purchase.

1944 – During the night, the last elements of German 5th Panzer and 7th Armies to escape the Falaise pocket filter through Allied line around Chambois and St. Lambert. Some 70-80 miles to the east, the US 3rd Army captures crossings over the Seine River at Mantes Grassicourt, 30 miles west of Paris. To the southwest of Paris, the US 20th Corps (also part of US 3rd Army) enters Fontainbleau.

1944 – Americans announce that Japanese resistance on Biak Island has ended. The Japanese have suffered 4700 killed and 220 captured. US casualties are listed at 2550.

1945 – The War Production Board removes most of its controls over manufacturing activity.

1946 – World War II civilian truck restrictions were lifted in the U.S. Truck restrictions were only the beginning of special regulations during the war. Civilian auto production virtually ceased after the attack on Pearl Harbor as the U.S. automotive industry turned to war production, and gas rationing began in 1942.

1948 – The United States ordered the expulsion of the Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob Lomakin, accusing him of attempting to return two consular employees to the Soviet Union against their will.

1950 – General MacArthur repeated his July 4th warning to North Korean leader Kim Il Sung concerning the treatment of prisoners of war as a result of the Hill 303 (Waegwan) murder of 36 American soldiers.

1952 – In interservice air operation at Chang Pyong-ni, Korea, U.S. Navy, Marine and Air Force aircraft destroy 80 percent of assigned area.

1953 – The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.

1968 – In the face of rising anti-Soviet protests in Czechoslovakia, Soviet troops (backed by troops from other Warsaw Pact nations) intervene to crush the protest. The brutal Soviet action shocked the West and dealt a devastating blow to U.S.-Soviet relations.

1974 – In the wake of Nixon’s resignation, Congress reduces military aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion to $700 million. This was one of several actions that signaled the North Vietnamese that the United States was backing away from its commitment to South Vietnam.

1975 – Viking 1, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Mars.

1977 – The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.

1982 – During the Lebanese Civil War, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. It was the beginning of a problem-plagued mission that would stretch into 17 months and leave 262 U.S. servicemen dead.

1994 – President Clinton slapped new sanctions on Cuba that included prohibiting payments by Cuban-Americans to their relatives in Cuba.

1995 – Iraq provides to UNSCOM and the IAEA previously concealed information: 680,000 pages of documents, computer disks, videotapes, and microfilm, related to its prohibited weapons programs which subsequently leads to further disclosures by Iraq concerning the production of the nerve agent VX (the most advanced, deadly, and long-lasting chemical agent) and Iraq’s development of a nuclear weapon. Observers speculate that this was prompted by the defection of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, who the Iraqi government believed would cooperate with UN inspectors and Western governments to provide previously undisclosed information on Iraqi weapons programs.

1998 – Pres. Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan 13 days after the deadly embassy bombings in East Africa. About 50 missiles were fired at the camp of Osama Bin Laden and some 25 missiles against a suspected chemical plant in Khartoum. The plant in Sudan was suspected of producing the chemical EMPTA, one of the ingredients in VX nerve gas, but also an ingredient in fungicides and anti-microbial agents.

1998 – Following its regular 60-day review of trade sanctions against Iraq, the U.N. Security Council decides to extend the sanctions and expresses concern over Iraq’s continuing refusal to cooperate with arms inspectors.

2002 – The Guardian reports that U.S. oil companies have radically reduced imports from Iraq in the past five months amid fears that any military action will disrupt supplies. Iraq exported 69% of its oil to the US a year ago, but the figure has dropped to only 16% since the end of May. Iraqi oil exports have halved overall, dropping from around an average of 2m barrels a day last year to just short of 1m barrels at the end of May.

August 21st ~

1680 – Pueblo Indians took possession of Santa Fe, N.M., after driving out the Spanish. They destroyed almost all of the Spanish churches in Taos and Santa Fe.

1800 – U.S. Marine Corps Band gave its first concert in Washington, D.C.

1814 – Marines defended Washington, DC, at Bladensburg, Maryland, against the British.

1831 – Believing himself chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery, Nat Turner launches a bloody slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, a slave and educated minister, planned to capture the county armory at Jerusalem, Virginia, and then march 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where his rebels would be able to elude their pursuers. With seven followers, he slaughtered Joseph Travis, his slave owner, and Travis’ family, and then set off across the countryside, hoping to rally hundreds of slaves to his insurrection en route to Jerusalem. During the next two days and nights, Turner and 75 followers rampaged through Southampton County, killing about 60 whites. Local whites resisted the rebels, and then the state militia–consisting of some 3,000 men–crushed the rebellion. Only a few miles from Jerusalem, Turner and all his followers were dispersed, captured, or killed.

In the aftermath of the rebellion, scores of African Americans were lynched, though many of them were non-participants in the revolt. Turner himself was not captured until the end of October, and after confessing without regret to his role in the bloodshed, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. On November 11, he was hanged in Jerusalem.

1862 – As the economy took a beating from the Civil War, the Treasury Department sprung into action by releasing fractional currency, alternately known as postage currency. The new 5, 10, 25, and 50-cent notes hit the streets on this day.

1863 – The vicious guerilla war in Missouri spills over into Kansas and precipitates one of the most appalling acts of violence during the war when 150 men in the abolitionist town of Lawrence are murdered in a raid by Southern partisans. The Civil War took a very different form in Kansas and Missouri than it did throughout the rest of the nation. There were few regular armies operating there; instead, partisan bands attacked civilians and each other. The roots of conflict in the region dated back to 1854, when the Kansas-Missouri border became ground zero for tension over slavery. While residents of Kansas Territory were trying to decide the issue of slavery, bands from Missouri, a slave state, began attacking abolitionist settlements in the territory. Abolitionists reacted with equal vigor. When the war began, the long heritage of hatred between partisans created unparalleled violence in the area.

1883 – The first installation of electric lights in a US Navy warship took place during the summer.

1867 – After the Civil War settlers rushed to claim lands in the Great Plains. By the mid-1867 the native peoples in Kansas began resisting by attacking settlements, railroad workers and travelers heading west. To help meet this emergency the War Department authorized placing volunteer units on active duty to patrol and protect the settlements. They were soon joined by elements of the U.S. 10th Cavalry. This unit was one of four Regular Army African American regiments composed of all-black enlisted men but almost entirely commanded by white officers. These men are often referred to as the “Buffalo Soldiers”, a nick name given them by the Native American because their hair resembles that of the buffalo.

1920 – Radio station built by U.S. Navy and French Government transmits first wireless message heard around the world. At time it was the most powerful radio station in the world.

1944 – Representatives from the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China meet in the Dumbarton Oaks estate at Georgetown, Washington, D.C., to formulate the formal principles of an organization that will provide collective security on a worldwide basis-an organization that will become the United Nations.

1945 – Japan appeals to Kamikaze pilots to cease operations. A joint statement by the Japanese Imperial headquarters and the government instructs the general public in Japan to go about its business calmly and, according to the official news agency, authorities have forbidden fraternization saying “there will be no direct contact between the general public and the Allied landing forces.”

1945 – Haroutune (Harry) Krikor Daghlian, Jr. (May 4, 1921 – September 15, 1945), an Armenian American physicist with the Manhattan Project, accidentally irradiated himself during a critical mass experiment at the remote Omega Site facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, resulting in his death 25 days later. Daghlian was irradiated as a result of a criticality accident that occurred when he accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a 6.2 kg delta phase plutonium bomb core. This core, available at the close of World War II and later nicknamed the “Demon core”, also resulted in the death of Louis Slotin in a similar accident, and was used in the Able detonation, during the Crossroads series of nuclear weapon testing.

1951 – First contract for nuclear-powered submarine awarded.

1959 – The modern United States receives its crowning star when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the Union as the 50th state. The president also issued an order for an American flag featuring 50 stars arranged in staggered rows: five six-star rows and four five-star rows. The new flag became official July 4, 1960.

1965 – Launch of Gemini 5, piloted by LCDR Charles Conrad Jr., USN, who completed 120 orbits in almost 8 days at an altitude of 349.8 km. Recovery was by helicopter from USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39).

1965 – It is revealed by MACV headquarters (Headquarters Military Assistance Command Vietnam) in Saigon that U.S. pilots have received approval to destroy any Soviet-made missiles they see while raiding North Vietnam. This was a major change from previous orders that restricted them to bombing only previously approved targets.

1968 – William Dana reached 80 km. in the last high-altitude X-15 flight.

1968 – After 5 years Russia once again jammed Voice of America radio.

1968 – Soviet forces invaded Czechoslovakia because of the country’s experiments with a more liberal government.

1968 – James Anderson, Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1972 – US orbiting astronomy observatory Copernicus was launched.

1972 – Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon with Boeing Lunar Rover #2.

1987 – Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the first Marine ever court-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB after becoming romantically involved with a Soviet woman while serving as a U.S. Embassy guard in Moscow. Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison, and was released in February 1996.

1989 – The U.S. space probe Voyager 2 fired its thrusters to bring it closer to Neptune’s mysterious moon Triton.

1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein delivered a speech in which he defended the detaining of foreigners in his country, and promised “a major catastrophe” should fighting break out in the Persian Gulf.

1991 – Just three days after it began, the coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev collapses. Despite his success in avoiding removal from office, Gorbachev’s days in power were numbered. The Soviet Union would soon cease to exist as a nation and as a Cold War threat to the United States.

1993 – In a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft on a $980 million mission. Its fate remains unknown.

2001 – The CIA placed Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi under suspicion as part of the investigation in the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen. The 2 were among the hijackers who commandeered the jet that hit the Pentagon on Sept 11th.

2002 – A new Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket launched a 4-ton French communications satellite into orbit.

2003 – The US military reported that Ali Hassan al-Majid (“Chemical Ali”), No. 5 on the list of most-wanted Iraqis, had been captured.

August 22nd ~

1775 – England’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies in a state of open rebellion.

1777 – With the approach of General Benedict Arnold’s army, British Colonel Barry St. Ledger abandoned Fort Stanwix and returns to Canada.

1816 – The Revenue Cutter Active, under the command of Revenue Captain Steven White and acting under orders of the Collector at Baltimore, took possession of the Spanish brig Servia, recently departed from Baltimore, which was anchored in the Patuxent River. The Servia had been captured by an American privateer and Active was ordered to arrest the Servia and return it to Baltimore for examination.

1846 – The United States annexed New Mexico.

1864 – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention, the first codified international treaty that covered the sick and wounded soldiers in the battlefield.

1902 – President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile in Hartford, Conn.

1911 – President William Taft vetoed a joint resolution of Congress granting statehood to Arizona. Taft vetoed the resolution because he believed a provision in the state constitution authorizing the recall of judges was a blow at the independence of the judiciary. The offending clause was removed an Arizona was admitted to statehood on February 14, 1912. Afterward, the state restored the article in its constitution.

1912 – Birthday of the Navy’s Dental Corps.

1934 – H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War (1991), was born in Trenton, NJ.

1942 – The 4th Marine Air Wing was commissioned at Ewa, Hawaii, as the 4th Marine Base Defense Air Wing.

1943 – US forces occupy islands of the Ellice group, including Nukufetau and Namumea. There is no Japanese opposition. Work begins on constructing airfields.

1944 – The Liberty ship SS Alexander V. Frazer, named for the “first” commandant of the Revenue Cutter Service, was launched.

1945 – Conflict in Vietnam began when a group of Free French parachute into southern Indochina, in response to a successful coup by communist guerilla Ho Chi Minh.

1945 – The Japanese garrison on Mili Atoll capitulated in a ceremony on an American destroyer escort; USS Levy. This is the first time a Japanese force surrenders en masse.

1950 – During the fighting at the “Bowling Alley” near Tabudong, North Korean Lieutenant Colonel Chong Pong UK, commander of the artillery regiment supporting the North Korean 13th Division, surrendered to the ROK 1st Division. Chong, the highest-ranking communist prisoner to date, gave precise information on the location of his artillery. Eighth Army immediately launched air and artillery strikes on the enemy guns. Chong had defected in protest against what he felt was an unfair reprimand by the 13th Division commander.

1962 – Savannah, world’s 1st nuclear powered ship, completed here maiden voyage from Yorktown, Va., to Savannah, Ga.

1963 – American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km (66 mi).

1968 – For the first time in two months, Viet Cong forces launch a rocket attack on Saigon, killing 18 and wounding 59. Administration officials denounced the attack as a direct repudiation of President Johnson’s speech of August 19, in which he appealed to the North Vietnamese to respond favorably to his limitation of the air campaign north of the DMZ.

1990 – President Bush signed an order calling up reservists to bolster the US military buildup in the Persian Gulf.

1993 – NASA engineers continued trying, without success, to re-establish contact with the Mars Observer, a day after losing contact.

1993 – In Somalia, six US soldiers are WIA when their truck is blown up.

1994 – The Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea and the CCCS Louis S. Ste Laurent became the first “North American surface ships” to reach the North Pole. An HH-65A from Aviation Training Center Mobile, detached to the Polar Sea, became the first U.S. (and also Coast Guard) helicopter to reach the pole as well.

1996 – The US Army began operating an incinerator in Utah to destroy a 14,000 ton stockpile of chemical weapons over 7 years.

1997 – A $64.8 million 890- lb. Lewis satellite was launched by NASA on a hoped-for 5-year mission. It went into an uncontrolled spin on Aug 22 and was expected to fall and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere in Sept.

1998 – President Clinton, in his Saturday radio address, announced he had signed an executive order putting Osama bin Laden’s Islamic Army on a list of terrorist groups.

2001 – The space shuttle Discovery returned and brought home 3 crew members, Yuri Usachev, Susan Helms, and Jim Voss, who had spent nearly 6 months on the Int’l. Space Station.

2001 – NATO members gave formal approval for alliance soldiers to collect weapons from Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia.

2002 – The US and Russia took away 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging nuclear reactor in Belgrade to Russia for re-processing.

2002 – Two US helicopter pilots were reported lost in South Korea. Their bodies were found the next day 13 miles south of Camp Page.

2004 – U.S. warplanes bombed Najaf’s Old City and gunfire rattled amid fears a plan to end the standoff with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr could. A car bomb exploded north of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring four others, including a deputy provincial governor.

2007 – The Storm botnet, a botnet created by the Storm Worm, sends out a record 57 million e-mails in one day.

August 23rd ~

1775 – American Revolutionary War: King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St. James’s stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.

1784 – Eastern Tennessee settlers declared their area an independent state and named it Franklin; a year later the Continental Congress rejected it.

1819 – Oliver Hazard Perry, naval hero, died on his 34th birthday.

1820 – The Revenue Cutter Louisiana captured four pirate vessels.

1861 – Allen Pinkerton, head of the new secret service agency of the Federal government, places Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow under house arrest in Washington, D.C. Greenhow was a wealthy widow living in Washington at the outbreak of the war. She was well connected in the capital and was especially close with Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson. The Maryland native was openly committed to the Southern cause, and she soon formed a substantial spy network. Greenhow’s operation quickly paid dividends for the Confederacy. One of her operatives provided key information to Confederate General Pierre G. T. Beauregard concerning the deployment of Union General Irwin McDowell’s troops before the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. Beauregard later testified that this dispatch, along with further information provided by Greenhow herself, was instrumental in Beauregard’s decision to request additional troops. The move led to a decisive victory by the Rebels.

It did not take the Federals long to track down the leaks in Washington. Pinkerton placed Greenhow under house arrest, and he soon confined other suspected women in her home. However, Greenhow was undeterred. She was allowed visitors, including Senator Wilson, and was able to continue funneling information to the Confederates. Frustrated, Pinkerton finally confined Greenhow and her daughter to the Old Capitol Prison for five months in early 1862. In June 1862, she and her daughter, “Little Rose,” were released and exiled to the South. Greenhow traveled to England and France to drum up support for the Southern cause, and she penned her memoirs while abroad. She returned to the Confederacy in September 1864, but a Yankee war vessel ran her ship aground in North Carolina. Weighted down by a substantial amount of gold, Greenhow’s lifeboat overturned and she drowned.

1863 – A ruthless band of guerillas attacks the town of Lawrence, Kansas, killing every man and boy in sight. Led by William Quantrill and William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, the guerillas were said to have carried out the brutal attack on behalf of the Confederacy. Included in their group was Jesse James’ brother Frank and Cole Younger, who would also play a large role in the James gang later on. Bloody Bill Anderson got his name for his love of shooting unarmed and defenseless people. Reportedly, he carried as many as eight handguns, in addition to a saber and a hatchet. His horse was also outfitted with several rifles and backup pistols. Although he claimed to have political motives for his terrorism, Anderson more likely used the Civil War as an opportunity to kill without repercussion. Jesse James, only 17 at the time, teamed up with Bloody Bill after he split from Quantrill’s band of killers.

On September 24, 1864, their small splinter group terrorized and destroyed most of the town of Centralia, Missouri. They also ambushed a small troop of Union soldiers whose train happened to stop at Centralia. Twenty-five Northern soldiers were stripped and lined up while Anderson and Arch Clement proceeded to shoot each of them down in cold blood, sparing only the sergeant. A month later, Anderson paid for his crimes: He was caught by a full contingent of Union army troops in Missouri and killed in the ensuing battle. Jesse James was never brought to justice by the North for his war crimes and went on to become the 19th century’s most infamous criminal.

1864 – The Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field is adopted by 12 nations meeting in Geneva. The agreement, advocated by Swiss humanitarian Jean-Henri Dunant, called for nonpartisan care to the sick and wounded in times of war and provided for the neutrality of medical personnel. It also proposed the use of an international emblem to mark medical personnel and supplies. In honor of Dunant’s nationality, a red cross on a white background–the Swiss flag in reverse–was chosen. In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize. In 1881, American humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons founded the American National Red Cross, an organization designed to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.

1889 – The 1st ship-to-shore wireless message was received in US in SF.

1923 – Captain Lowell Smith and Lieutenant John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.

1939 – Lloyd’s of London advanced war-risk rates as the Nazis threatened to invade Poland and Europe braced itself for war. The Dow responded to the news with a 3.25 drop to close the day at 131.82.

1939 – Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies. But the dictators were, despite appearances, both playing to their own political needs. After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, Britain had to decide to what extent it would intervene should Hitler continue German expansion. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, at first indifferent to Hitler’s capture of the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, suddenly snapped to life when Poland became threatened. He made it plain that Britain would be obliged to come to the aid of Poland in the event of German invasion.

Both sides were extremely suspicious of the other, trying to discern ulterior motives. But Hitler was in a hurry; he knew if he was to invade Poland it had to be done quickly, before the West could create a unified front. Agreeing basically to carve up parts of Eastern Europe-and leave each other alone in the process-Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow and signed the non-aggression pact with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov (which is why the pact is often referred to as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). Supporters of bolshevism around the world had their heretofore romantic view of “international socialism” ruined; they were outraged that Stalin would enter into any kind of league with the fascist dictator. But once Poland was German-occupied territory, the alliance would not last for long.

1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster; A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people.

1945 – Clarence V. Bertucci is granted a discharge from the Army and sent to a mental institution for further tests and evaluation. He is responsible for the massacre of German POWs at Camp Salina, Utah on July 8th.

1950 – Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps were called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.

1951 – The Navy recommissioned the battleship USS Iowa under the command of Captain William R. Smedberg, III.

1954 - First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built originally by Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin. Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally designed as a troop, medical evacuation, and cargo transport aircraft. The versatile airframe has found uses in a variety of other roles, including as a gunship (AC-130), for airborne assault, search and rescue, scientific research support, weather reconnaissance, aerial refueling, maritime patrol, and aerial firefighting. It is now the main tactical airlifter for many military forces worldwide. Over 40 models and variants of the Hercules serve with more than 60 nations. The C-130 entered service with U.S., followed by Australia and others. During its years of service, the Hercules family has participated in numerous military, civilian and humanitarian aid operations.

The family has the longest continuous production run of any military aircraft in history. In 2007, the C-130 became the fifth aircraft—after the English Electric Canberra, Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Tupolev Tu-95, and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, all designs with various forms of aviation gas turbine power plants—to mark 50 years of continuous use with its original primary customer, in this case, the United States Air Force. The C-130 is one of the only military aircraft to remain in continuous production for over 50 years with its original customer, as the updated C-130J Super Hercules.

1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

1973 – Secretary of Defense Melvin R Laird announces the adoption of the “Total Force Policy” as the new doctrine of American military preparedness. The war in Vietnam has just ended. One of the major conclusions drawn from that experience was that the American people had not supported the war because it was fought without a stated declaration and the Johnson Administration failed to mobilize and use large numbers of Reserve Component (RC) forces, including the National Guard. By conscripting (drafting) individual men for service there is little notice by the larger community. However, when an RC unit is mobilized, often taking dozens to hundreds of personnel at one time, attracting big local headlines and impacting whole communities in numerous ways. Only by having a supportive populous, one backing the effort, can American military objectives be met.

1979 – The keel of the first of the new 270-foot class medium endurance cutters, the CGC Bear, was laid.

1989 – The markets took a nosedive and the Dow lost a hefty 76.73 points just a month after it nearly broke the 3,000 point barrier. The culprit for the decline? Wall Street’s increasing fears about the Persian Gulf crisis, which began in early August when the Iraqi army rolled into the oil-rich territory of its neighbor, Kuwait. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein openly declared his intention of annexing Kuwait, prompting President George Bush to deride the invasion as an act of “naked aggression.” As Bush and Hussein faced off, oil prices marched upward, in turn triggering the sell-off on Wall Street. Indeed, fears of war and escalating prices were written all over the markets: during the week of the 23rd, the Dow lost 6 percent of its total value.

1990 – US began to call up of 46,000 reservists to the Persian Gulf.

1990 – East and West Germany announced that they would unite Oct 3.

1990 – Iraqi state television showed President Saddam Hussein meeting with a group of about 20 Western detainees, telling the group—whom he described as “guests”—that they were being held “to prevent the scourge of war.”

1991 – Internaut’s day; Tim Berners-Lee opens the WWW, World Wide Web to new users.

1991 – In the wake of a failed coup by hard-liners in the Soviet Union, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin acted to strip the Communist Party of its power and take control of the army and the KGB.

1993 – The Galileo spacecraft discovers a moon, later named Dactyl, around 243 Ida, the first known asteroid moon.

1994 – A new Coast Guard record for people rescued was set on 23 August 1994 when 3,253 Cubans were rescued from dangerously overloaded craft during Operation Able Vigil.

1994 – Eugene Bullard, one of only two black pilots, and the only black American pilot, in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.’

2000 – Boeing made the first successful launch of its Delta III rocket.

2001 – Brian Regan (38), retired US Air Force master sergeant and cryptanalyst, was arrested by the FBI at Dulles Int’l. Airport on charges of spying. In 2002 Regan was accused of trying to spy for Iraq, Libya and China.

2011 – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the 2011 Libyan civil war.

August 24th ~

1682 – Duke James of York gave Delaware to William Penn.

1781 – A small force of Pennsylvania militia is ambushed and overwhelmed by an American Indian group, which forces George Rogers Clark to abandon his attempt to attack Detroit.

1814 – British forces under General Robert Ross overwhelm American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and march unopposed into Washington, D.C. Most congressmen and officials fled the nation’s capital as soon as word came of the American defeat, but President James Madison and his wife, Dolley, escaped just before the invaders arrived. Earlier in the day, President Madison had been present at the Battle of Bladensburg and had at one point actually taken command of one of the few remaining American batteries, thus becoming the first and only president to exercise in actual battle his authority as commander in chief.
The British army entered Washington in the late afternoon, and General Ross and British officers dined that night at the deserted White House. Meanwhile, the British troops, ecstatic that they had captured their enemy’s capital, began setting the city aflame in revenge for the burning of Canadian government buildings by U.S. troops earlier in the war. The White House, a number of federal buildings, and several private homes were destroyed. The still uncompleted Capitol building was also set on fire, and the House of Representatives and the Library of Congress were gutted before a torrential downpour doused the flames. The next day, President Madison returned to a smoking and charred Washington and vowed to rebuild the city. James Hoban, the original architect of the White House, completed reconstruction of the executive mansion in 1817.

1862 – The C.S.S. Alabama was commissioned at sea off Portugal’s Azore Islands, beginning a career that would see over 60 Union merchant vessels sunk or destroyed by the Confederate raider. The ship was built in secret in the in Liverpool shipyards, and a diplomatic crisis between the US government and Britain ensued when the Union uncovered the ship’s birth place.

1863 – General Dabney H. Maury, CSA, reported: “The submarine boat sent to Charleston found that there was not enough water under the Ironsides for her to pass below her keel; therefore they have decided to affix a spike to the bow of the boat, to drive the spike into the Ironsides, then to back out, and by a string to explode the torpedo which was to be attached to the spike.” N. F. Hunley had originally been provided with a floating copper cylinder torpedo with flaring triggers which she could tow some 200 feet astern. The submarine would dive beneath the target ship, surface on the other side, and continue on course until the torpedo struck the ship and exploded. When the method proved unworkable, a spare torpedo containing 90 pounds of powder was affixed to the bow.

1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.

1894 – Congress passed the first graduated income tax law, which was declared unconstitutional the next year. It imposed a 2% tax on incomes over $4000.

1909 – Workers started pouring concrete for Panama Canal.

1912 – US passed an anti-gag law giving federal employees the right to petition government.

1912 – By an act of Congress, Alaska was given a territorial legislature of two houses.

1912 – Launching of USS Jupiter, first electrically propelled Navy ship. This collier will later be converted in to the first US Aircraft Carrier, the USS Langly.

1942 – U.S. forces continue to deliver crushing blows to the Japanese, sinking the aircraft carrier Ryuho in the Battle of the East Solomon Islands. Key to the Americans’ success in this battle was the work of coastwatchers, a group of volunteers whose job it is to report on Japanese ship and aircraft movement. The Marines had landed on Guadalcanal, on the Solomon Islands, on August 7. This was the first American offensive maneuver of the war and would deliver the first real defeat to the Japanese.
On August 23, coastwatchers, comprised mostly of Australian and New Zealander volunteers, hidden throughout the Solomon and Bismarck islands and protected by anti-Japanese natives, spotted heavy Japanese reinforcements headed for Guadalcanal. The coastwatchers alerted three U.S. carriers that were within 100 miles of Guadalcanal, which then raced to the scene to intercept the Japanese. By the time the Battle of the Eastern Solomons was over, the Japanese lost a light carrier, a destroyer, and a submarine and the Ryuho. The Americans suffered damage to the USS Enterprise, the most decorated carrier of the war; the Enterprise would see action again, though, in the American landings on Okinawa in 1945.

1945 – The last Cadillac-built M-24 tank was produced on this day, ending the company’s World War II effort. Civilian auto production virtually ceased after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the U.S. automotive industry turned to war production. Between 1940 and 1945, automotive firms made almost $29 billion worth of military materials, including jeeps, trucks, machine guns, carbines, tanks, helmets, and aerial bombs.

1949 – The North Atlantic Treaty went into effect.

1959 – Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. Senator... while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. Representative.

1960 – USS Bexar (APA-237) deploys to Pangahan Province in response to emergency request for aid from the Province’s governor.

1968 – France became the world’s fifth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.

1969 – Peru nationalized US oil interests.

1970 – U.S. B-52s carry out heavy bombing raids along the DMZ. In the United States, a radical protest group calling themselves the New Year’s Gang, a cover for or faction of the Weather Underground, blew up in the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Army Mathematics Research Center in Madison. A graduate student who was working late was killed in the blast. The center, which reportedly was involved in war research, had been a focus for protest in the past, but previously protests had all been nonviolent.

1987 – A military jury in Quantico, Va., sentenced Marine Sgt. Clayton Lonetree to 30 years in prison for disclosing U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. The sentence was later reduced; with additional time off for good behavior, Lonetree ended up serving eight years in a military prison.

1989 – Voyager II passed within three thousand miles of Neptune sending back striking photographs.

1990 – Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.

1990 – Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sent a message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warning the Persian Gulf situation was “extremely dangerous.”

1993 – NASA’s Mars Observer, which was supposed to map the surface of Mars, was declared lost.

1995 – Harry Wu, Chinese human rights activist and writer, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by Chinese law and then expelled from China. China expelled Harry Wu, hours after convicting him of spying.

1996 – Four women began two days of academic orientation at The Citadel; they were the first female cadets admitted to the South Carolina military school since Shannon Faulkner.

1998 – The United States and Britain agreed to allow two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 to be tried by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands.

1998 – In Egypt Abu Nidal was captured after crossing the border from Libya. He had split from the PLO in 1974 and was responsible for terrorist bombings in 1985 at the Rome and Vienna airports and a 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 as well as a number of assassinations of PLO figures. Egypt denied the report of Nidal’s capture.

2000 – Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz says “Iraq will not cooperate”with UNMOVIC, the body created by the United Nations to replace the former UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM). UNMOVIC is headed by Hans Blix ,a Swedish diplomat and arms control expert. Under the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1284 creating UNMOVIC, U.N. economic sanctions could be lifted if Iraq fulfills various conditions, including cooperation with UNMOVIC.

2001 – The United States decides to support a modified British proposal to tighten procedures for pricing Iraqi crude oil. According to reports, Iraq is attempting to price its oil at artificially low levels, and favouring buyers willing to pay surcharges to secret accounts, thereby circumventing United Nations control over Iraqi oil revenue. Britain had proposed that the U.N. and Iraq set prices every 10 days, instead of the current 30days, to make it more difficult for Iraq to exploit fluctuations in the market.

2002 – In the Canary Islands over a dozen beaked whales beached themselves following NATO exercises that involved a cluster of warships and submarines. 9 of the whales washed ashore dead and showed lesions in the brain and hearing system, consistent with acoustic impact...from sonar.

2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term “planet” such that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.

2104 – The British Ambassador to the US apologizes after a British Embassy tweet: “Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the burning of the White house. Only sparkers this time!” The Twitter message was complete with a photo of a Whitehouse cake with the mentioned sparklers surrounding it.

August 25th ~

1540 – Explorer Hernando de Alarcon traveled up the Colorado River.

1718 – Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans.

1765 – In protest over the stamp tax, American colonists sacked and burned the home of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson.

1814 – British forces destroyed the Library of Congress, containing some 3,000 books.

1829 – Pres. Jackson made an offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refused.

1843 – Steam frigate Missouri arrives at Gibralter completing first Trans-Atlantic crossing by U.S. steam powered ship.

1861 – John La Mountain began balloon reconnaissance ascensions at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

1862 – Union and Confederate troops skirmished at Waterloo Bridge, Virginia, during the Second Bull Run Campaign.

1864 – Confederate troops secure a vital supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, when they halt destruction of the Weldon and Petersburg Railroad by Union troops. The railroad, which ran from Weldon, North Carolina, was a major supply line for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

1883 – The signing of a Treaty of Protectorate formally ends Vietnam’s independence. The name ‘Vietnam’ is officially eliminated, and the French divide Vietnam into northern and southern protectorates (Tonkin and Annam, respectively), both tightly under French control, although Annam retains its imperial Vietnamese administration. Southern Vietnam (Cochin China) has been a French colony since 1867. A general uprising in 1885 fails. In the Red River Valley of the north the French begin a period of twelve years of slaughter known as the ‘pacification’ of Tonkin.

1901 – Clara Maass (25), army nurse, sacrificed her life to prove that the mosquito carries yellow fever. Clara Louise Maass lost her life during scientific studies to determine the cause of yellow fever. A graduate of Newark German Hospital Training School for Nurses, she worked as an Army nurse in Florida, Cuba, and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. In 1900, Maass returned to Cuba at the request of Maj. William Gorgas, chief sanitation officer. There she became embroiled in a controversy over the cause of yellow fever. To determine whether the tropical fever was caused by city filth or the bite of a mosquito, seven volunteers, including Maass, were bitten by the mosquitoes. Two men died, but she survived. Several months later she again volunteered to be bitten, this time suffering severe pain and fever. Maass died of yellow fever at the age of 25. In her memory, Newark German Hospital was renamed Clara Maass Memorial Hospital and in 1952, Cuba issued a national postage stamp in her name. In 1976, the U.S. Postal Service honored Clara Louise Maass with a commemorative stamp.

1921 – The Battle of Blair Mountain, one of the largest civil uprisings in United States history and the largest armed rebellion since the American Civil War, begins. For five days in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders, who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired, and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.

1921 – The United States, which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally signed a peace treaty with Germany.

1944 – After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris’ landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation. Choltitz signed a formal surrender that afternoon, and on August 26, Free French General Charles de Gaulle led a joyous liberation march down the Champs d’Elysees.

1945 – Captain John Birch of the US Army is shot dead in a scuffle with Chinese Communist soldiers. The liberation of China is becoming a race between the rival Nationalist and Communist forces. In the 1950s, Robert Welch would create a right-wing, anticommunist organization called the John Birch Society. For Welch, Birch was “the first casualty in the Third World War between Communists and the ever-shrinking Free World.”

1947 – Marion Carl, US Navy test pilot, set a world speed record of 651 mph in a D-558-I at Muroc Field (later Edwards AFB), Ca. He was shot to death in Oregon by a house robber in 1998 at age 82.

1950 – President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike. The railroads were returned to their owners 2 years later.

1950 – Major General William F. Dean, 24th Infantry Division commander, was taken prisoner by the North Koreans after evading capture for 46 days after the fall of Taejon.

1951 – 23 Navy Banshee and Panther fighters from USS Essex (CV-9) escort Air Force heavy bombers attacking Najin, Korea since the target, the rail marshaling yards at Rashin located on the extreme northeast Korean border, was beyond range of land-based fighters.

1971 – The Secretary of Transportation announced the awarding of a contract to the Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company of Seattle, Washington, “to build the world’s most powerful icebreaker for the US Coast Guard,” Polar Star, the first of the Polar-Class of icebreakers.

1981 – The U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet.

1985 – STS 51-I was scrubbed at T –9 min because of an onboard computer problem.

1988 – NASA launched space vehicle S-214.

1989 – NASA scientists received stunning photographs of Neptune and its moons from Voyager 2.

1990 – The United Nations gave the world’s navies the right to use force to stop vessels trading with Iraq.

1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.

1997 – NASA sent a Delta rocket aloft with the Ace solar observatory, Advanced Composition Explorer. The 5-year $110 million project will go into orbit at a point 1 million miles from Earth and 92 million miles from the Sun where the gravity of Earth and Sun balance.

2003 – NASA launched the largest-diameter infrared telescope ever in space. NASA showed the 1st images from the $670 million Spitzer Space Telescope on Dec 18.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina made landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura, Florida, as a Category 1 hurricane. Four days later it came ashore again near Empire, Buras and Boothville, Louisiana. The rescue and response effort was one of the largest in Coast Guard history, with 24,135 lives saved and 9,409 evacuations.

2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space becoming the first man-made object to do so.

August 26th ~

1775 – Rhode Island Resolve: Rhode Island delegates to Continental Congress press for creation of Continental Navy to protect the colonies.

1791 – John Fitch is granted a United States patent for the steamboat.

1804 – Following the death of Sergeant Charles Floyd, Lewis and Clark promote Patrick Gass as his replacement. Barely three months into their journey to the Pacific, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark lost the only man to die on the journey. On August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died from a disease Lewis diagnosed as “Biliose Chorlick,” or bilious colic. Based on the symptoms described, Floyd’s appendix had probably ruptured and he died of peritonitis. After burying Floyd on a high bluff above the Missouri River, the expedition moved on toward the Pacific Ocean. Two days later, the captains held an election among the men to determine Floyd’s replacement. Private Patrick Gass received a majority of the votes. A native of Pennsylvania, Gass had joined the U.S. Army in 1799 at the age of 28. He proved to be a reliable soldier and soon won promotion to sergeant. When a call for volunteers to join Lewis and Clark’s journey of exploration to the Pacific was released, Gass jumped at the chance. Lewis overrode the commander’s objections to giving up his best noncommissioned officer, and Gass joined the Corps of Discovery as a private.

1839 – The slave ship Amistad was captured off Long Island. The U.S.S. Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad York, and escorted it to New London, Connecticut.

1847 – Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic. Freed American slaves founded Liberia. They modeled their constitution after that of the US, copied the US flag, and named their capital Monrovia, after James Monroe, who financed early settlers.

1861 – Union amphibious force lands near Hatteras, NC

1862 – The stage is set for the Second Battle of Bull Run on this day when Confederate cavalry under General Fitzhugh Lee enter Manassas Junction and capture the rail center. Union General John Pope’s Army of Virginia was soon on its way, and the two armies would clash on August 29.

1865 – Civil War ends with Naval strength over 58,500 men and 600 ships.

1873 – Lee De Forest (d.1961), inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, was born in Council bluffs, Iowa. He is considered the father of radio.

1945 – Japanese diplomats boarded the USS Missouri to receive instructions on Japan’s surrender at the end of WW II.

1957 – The Soviet Union announces that it has successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of being fired “into any part of the world.” The announcement caused great concern in the United States, and started a national debate over the “missile gap” between America and Russia. For years after World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union had been trying to perfect a long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Building on the successes of Nazi Germany in developing the V-1 and V-2 rockets that pummeled Great Britain during the last months of World War II, both American and Russian scientists raced to improve the range and accuracy of such missiles. (Both nations relied heavily on captured German scientists in their efforts.) In July 1957, the United States seemed to win the race when the Atlas, an ICBM with a speed of up to 20,000 miles an hour and an effective range of 5,000 miles, was ready for testing. The test, however, was a disaster. The missile rose only about 5,000 feet into the air, tumbled, and plunged to earth. Just a month later, the Soviets claimed success by announcing that their own ICBM had been tested, had “covered a huge distance in a brief time,” and “landed in the target area.” No details were given in the Russian announcement and some commentators in the United States doubted that the ICBM test had been as successful as claimed. Nevertheless, the Soviet possession of this “ultimate weapon,” coupled with recent successful test by the Russians of atomic and hydrogen bombs, raised concerns in America. If the Soviets did indeed perfect their ICBM, no part of the United States would be completely safe from possible atomic attack.

Less than two months later, the Soviets sent the satellite Sputnik into space. Concern quickly turned to fear in the United States, as it appeared that the Russians were gaining the upper hand in the arms and space races. The American government accelerated its own missile and space programs. The Soviet successes–and American failures–became an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy charged that the outgoing Eisenhower administration had allowed a dangerous “missile gap” to develop between the United States and the Soviet Union. Following his victory in 1960, Kennedy made missile development and the space program priorities for his presidency.

1969 – New Hampshire’s 3rd Battalion, 197th Artillery suffers its highest loss of life when a truck carrying seven soldiers is blown up by a landmine less than two weeks before the unit was scheduled to return home from Viet Nam. Five men, all Guardsmen from Manchester’s Battery A, are immediately killed. The shock wave to hit the city was devastating. These deaths brought to six the total number of Guard members from the battalion killed in action. A bronze plaque now stands in front of the Manchester Armory to their memory.

1981 – Voyager 2 took photo’s of Saturn’s moon Titan.

1987 – In an attempt to eliminate a superpower stumbling block, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said his country would destroy its 72 Pershing 1A rockets if Washington and Moscow scrapped all their intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

1990 – Fifty-five Americans, who had been evacuated from the US Embassy in Kuwait, left Baghdad by car and headed for the Turkish border.

1991 – In an address to the Supreme Soviet, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised national elections in a last-ditch effort to preserve his government, but leaders of Soviet republics told him the hour of central power had passed.

1993 – Manhunt begins. 3rd Battalion. 75th Ranger Regiment and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment (DELTA) deploy to Somalia to capture warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid.

1996 – A Cuban court convicted fugitive U.S. financier Robert Vesco of economic crimes. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for economic crimes against the state.

1997 – Two defectors and their families from North Korea were accepted by the US. One was Chang Sung Gil, the ambassador to Egypt, the other was his brother Chang Sung Ho, a commercial councilor at the North Korean mission in Paris. High level arms talks were immediately terminated.

1998 – U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigns, saying the Security Council and the United States have failed to take a tougher stand against Iraq.

1998 – A $225 million rocket and communication satellite exploded after take-off at Cape Canaveral.

1998 – Libya indicated that it would accept an American and British proposal that 2 suspects of the infamous 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet be tried in the Netherlands by Scottish judges.

2001 – IBM computer scientists reported that they had constructed a working logic circuit within a single molecule of carbon fiber known as a carbon nanotube.

2003 – Investigators concluded that NASA’s overconfident management and inattention to safety doomed the space shuttle Columbia as much as did damage to the craft.

August 27th ~

1776 – The Americans were defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island, New York. The American forces, composed of Continental Line and militia regiments from several states, attempted to hold back a well coordinated attack by the British Army. While most state units gave a poor showing, often running away upon the enemy approach, this was not always the case. American General Lord Sterling commanding a brigade of Maryland and Delaware regiments blunted their advance long enough for other troops to safely withdraw.

1780 – Marines guarding workmen cutting masts for the Navy pursued Indians near Reading, Pennsylvania.

1832 – Blackhawk, leader of Sauk-Indians, gave himself up, ending the Blackhawk War.

1859 – Edwin Drake struck oil at 69 feet near Titusville, Pennsylvania–the world’s first successful oil well. This source of crude oil, or petroleum, opened up a new inexpensive source of power and quickly replaced whale oil in lamps. Within a few decades of Drake’s discovery, oil drilling was widespread in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the East Indies. However, it was the development of the automobile that catapulted petroleum into a position of paramount importance, for petroleum is the primary source of gasoline. Asphalt, also derived from petroleum, is used to surface roads and highways.

1861 – Union ships sail into North Carolina’s Hatteras Inlet, beginning a two-day operation that secures the area for the Federals and denies the Confederates an important outlet to the Atlantic. The Outer Banks is a series of long, narrow islands that separate Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic, with Hatteras Inlet as the only deep-water passage connecting the two. In the first few months of the war, the Outer Banks were a haven for Confederate blockade runners and raiders.

1862 – As the Second Battle of Bull Run raged, Confederate soldiers attacked Loudoun County, Virginia.

1864 – U.S.S. Niphon, Acting Lieutenant Joseph B. Breck, and U.S.S. Monticello, Acting Master Henry A. Phelon, conducted an expedition up Masonboro Inlet, North Carolina, to silence a Confederate battery which was reported to have been erected in the vicinity. The two screw steamers shelled the shoreline and a number of buildings at Masonboro; landing parties went ashore and captured a quantity of rifles, ammunition, foodstuffs.

1901 – In Havana, Cuba, U.S. Army physician James Carroll allowed an infected mosquito to feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of yellow fever. Days later, Carroll developed a severe case of yellow fever, helping his colleague, Army Walter Reed, prove that mosquitoes can transmit the sometimes deadly disease.

1918 – The Battle of Ambos Nogales ( “The Battle of Both Nogales” ), or as it is known in Mexico La batalla del 27 de agosto ( “The Battle of 27 August” ), was an engagement fought between Mexican forces and elements of United States Army soldiers of the 35th Infantry Regiment, who were reinforced by the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, and commanded by Lt. Col. Frederick J. Herman. The American soldiers and militia forces were stationed in Nogales, Arizona and the Mexican soldiers and armed Mexican militia were in Nogales, Sonora.

This battle was notable for being a significant confrontation between U.S. and Mexican forces during the Border War which took place in the context of the Mexican Revolution and the First World War. This occurred after the Zimmermann Telegram during World War I when the international border between the two Nogales was a wide open boulevard named International Street. There had been several previous fatal incidents in this area which helped increase international tensions and leading to armed conflict. This included the claim of German military advisors as agitators with Mexican Villa rebels, claims of racism and border politics. As a result of this battle, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to divide the two border communities with a chain-link border fence, the first of many permanent incarnations of the U.S.–Mexico border wall between the two countries.

1928 – Fifteen nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, outlawing war and calling for the settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven other countries eventually sign the pact. The pact was developed by French foreign minister Aristide Briand and U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg. The document did not stipulate any sanctions and allowed for so many exceptions—including wars of ‘self-defense‘ and obligations under the League Covenant and Monroe Doctrine—that the pact was quite ineffective.

1942 – CGC Mojave rescues 293 men from the torpedoed transport, Chatham in the Strait of Belle Isle.

1942 – The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese submarine I-26 damages the USS Saratoga. It will remain out of action until October. The USS Wasp is now the only operational US carrier in the Pacific.

1944 – USS Stingray (SS-186) lands men and supplies on Luzon, Philippines to support guerilla operations against the Japanese.

1945 – B-29 Superfortress bombers began to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in China.

1945 – The Allied fleets anchor in Sagami (Tokyo) Bay within sight of Mount Fujiyama. Admiral Halsey, commander of the US 3rd Fleet, is present for what is probably the greatest display of naval might in history. The armada includes 23 aircraft carriers, 12 battleships, 26 cruisers, 116 destroyers and escorts, 12 submarines and 185 other vessels. In addition to the American and British ships, there are ships from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Netherlands represented.

1945 – President Truman says that the situation in the Pacific continues to have many elements of danger and urges Congress to continue conscription for a further two years.

1950 – Fifth Air Force established a Rescue Liaison Office in the Joint Operations Center at Nagoya Air Base, Japan.

1952 – As the presidential election of 1952 begins to heat up, so do accusations and counteraccusations concerning communism in America. The “Red Scare”–the widespread belief that international communism was operating in the United States–came to dominate much of the debate between Democrats and Republicans in 1952. On August 27, 1952, the New York Times front page contained three stories suggesting the impact of the Red Scare on the upcoming election.

1959 – Off Cape Canaveral, FL, USS Observation Island (EAG-154) makes first shipboard launching of a Polaris missile.

1962 – The United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe with an Atlas D booster. On December 14, 1962, Mariner 2 passed within just over 20,000 miles of Venus, reporting an 800F surface temperature, high surface pressures, a predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere, continuous cloud cover, and no detectable magnetic field.

1972 – In the heaviest bombing in four years, U.S. aircraft flatten North Vietnamese barracks near Hanoi and Haiphong as part of ongoing Operation Linebacker I, part of President Nixon’s response to the NVA Easter Offensive. Planes also hit bridges on the northeast railroad line to China. In an associated action, four U.S. ships raided the Haiphong port area after dark, shelling to within two miles of the city limits. As the U.S. ships withdrew from the area, the cruiser USS Newport News sank one of two North Vietnamese patrol boats in pursuit, and destroyer USS Rowan set the other on fire.

1984 – President Reagan announced the Teacher in Space project.

1989 – The first U.S. commercial satellite rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., a Delta booster carrying a British communications satellite.

1989 – Chuck Berry performed his tune Johnny B. Goode for NASA staff in celebration of Voyager II’s encounter with the planet Neptune.

1990 – Fifty-two Americans reached freedom in Turkey after they were allowed to leave Iraq; three young men originally in the group, however, were detained by the Iraqis. In Washington, the State Department ordered the expulsion of 36 Iraqi diplomats.

1992 – President Bush ordered federal troops to Florida for emergency relief in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.

1993 – Operation “Eyes Over Mogadishu” steps up helicopter flights over the capitol.

1997 – There was a report on the US nuclear arsenal broken down to the number of nuclear weapons in each state. New Mexico was 1st with 2,850, Georgia 2nd with 2,000, and Washington State 3rd with 1,600. The total stockpile was totaled at 12,500 warheads, of which 8,750 were described as “operational.”

1998 – Two suspects in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya were sent to the United States to face charges.

1999 – A boarding team from the CGC Munro discover 172 illegal Chinese migrants aboard the fishing vessel Chih Yung off the coast of Mexico.

2001 – An unmanned US reconnaissance aircraft, Predator, was reported shot down over southern Iraq near Basra. In northern Iraq US planes attacked a missile and Iraq claimed 1 civilian was killed.

2001 – Intel unveiled a 2-GHz Pentium 4 chip.

2001 – In Macedonia NATO troops began collecting rebel weapons and one British soldier was killed when a suspected block of concrete was thrown at his vehicle by Macedonian youths.

2002 – Pres. Bush met with Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who said war with Iraq was not acceptable and that Saudi Arabia would not cooperate. Bush told the Saudi diplomat he had not yet decided whether to attack Iraq.

2003 – American and Afghan forces killed about a dozen insurgents and recaptured a mountain pass in southeastern Afghanistan.

2004 – Al-Sadr’s followers handed over the keys to the Imam Ali Shrine to religious authorities loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Militants, who had been holed up in the site, left it after Iraq’s top Shiite cleric brokered a peace deal to end three weeks of fighting. Iraqi police discovered about 10 bodies in a maverick religious court run by rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s followers.

2004 – In Iraq saboteurs hit a pipeline that runs within the West Qurna oilfields, 90 miles north of the southern city of Basra.

2004 – Riot police used water cannons to disperse protesters demanding that the Philippines lift its ban on allowing its citizens to go to war-ravaged Iraq for jobs.

2008 – CGC Dallas, while deployed as part of the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet, delivered 76,000 pounds of humanitarian relief supplies to the port of Bat’umi, Georgia after that country was attacked by Russia as part of “Operation Assured Delivery.” She was the second U.S. military vessel to deliver relief supplies to Georgia.

August 28th ~

1565 – St Augustine Florida, oldest city in the US, was established.

1609 – Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.

1640 – The Indian War in New England ended with the surrender of the Indians.

1676 – Indian chief King Philip, also known as Metacom, was killed by English soldiers, ending the war between Indians and colonists.

1814 – The War of 1812 was still going strong, as the British continued their ransacking of America. By August 28, they had captured a large portion of the East Coast, including Washington, D.C., prompting New York banks to halt specie payments.

1861 – Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, falls to Union troops after a two-day operation, closing an important outlet from Pamlico Sound for Confederate blockade runners.

1862 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee, by splitting his smaller army and using flanking maneuvers, succeeds in routing the Union Army under the command of General John Pope from field. Fought over much of the same area as the Battle of First Manassas a year earlier, the losses on both sides were much higher. Lee attempts to capitalize on this victory by marching into Maryland to take the war north. He was stopped at Antietam Creek in September.

1862 – The Battle of Thoroughfare Gap, VA.

1862 – Confederate spy Belle Boyd was released from Old Capital Prison in Washington, DC.

1867 – Captain William Reynolds of Lackawanna raises U.S. flag over Midway Island and took formal possession of these islands for the U.S.

1883 – John Montgomery (d.1911 in a glider crash) made the first manned, controlled flight in the US in his “Gull” glider, whose design was inspired by watching birds.

1898 – Marines defended American interests in Valparaiso, Chile.

1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signed Executive Order 3160 which returned the Coast Guard to the administrative control of the Treasury Department from the Navy after World War I.

1933 – The government took steps to safeguard the nation’s gold supplies as the Depression rolled on. On this day, an executive order was handed down that prohibited “hoarding” gold and placed limits on exports of precious metal.

1941 – With the nation on the verge of entering World War II and prices threatening to skyrocket, the government chose to take action against inflation. On this day, President Franklin Roosevelt handed down an executive order establishing the Office of Price Administration (OPA). Charged with controlling consumer prices in the face of war, the OPA wheeled into action, imposing rent controls and a rationing program which initially targeted auto tires.
Soon, the agency was churning out coupon books for sugar, coffee, meat, fats, oils, and numerous other items. Though goods were in tight supply, Americans were urged to stick to the system of rationing. Some even took the Homefront Pledge, a declaration of their commitment to avoiding the black market in favor of buying the OPA way.

1942 – 1st and 2nd Bn 7th Marines leave Pago Pago for combat.

1942 – 120 women, commissioned directly as ENS or LTJG, reported to “USS Northampton,” Smith College for training.

1942 – At Guadalcanal, the Japanese received more reinforcements brought in by Admiral Tanaka’s 2nd Destroyer Flotilla, nicknamed the “Tokyo Express.”

1943 – Captured Benito Mussolini was transferred from La Maddalena Sardinia to Gran Sasso.

1944 – Elements of US 1st Army cross the Marne River at Meaux. The US 3rd Army is approaching Reims.

1944 – The German garrisons in Toulon and Marseilles surrender. In the Rhone valley, some elements of the German 19th Army have been cut off, to the south of Montelimar, by forces of the US 7th Army. Among those elements is the German 11th Panzer Division, which launches an attack northward and succeeds in breaking through the line with heavy losses from Allied artillery and ground attack aircraft.

1945 – Goring, Ribbentrop, and 22 others former Nazi government officials are indicted as war criminals. Hermann Goring heads the list of 24. Rudolf Hess, formerly deputy to Hitler, who has been a prisoner in Britain since May 1941, is next on the list, followed by Martin Bormann, the secretary of the NSDAP, who disappeared from the Berlin bunker. Others include Konstantin von Neurath, the first foreign minister to Hitler; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, the industrialist; Franz von Papen, the vice-chancellor in 1933-34; and, Hjalmar Schacht, who served as the minister of finance in the Nazi government until falling out of favor with Hitler.

1945 – Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung arrived in Chunking to confer with Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in a futile effort to avert civil war.

1952 – Units on USS Boxer (CV-21) launch explosive-filled drone which explodes against railroad bridge near Hungnam, Korea. First guided missile launched from ship during Korean Conflict.

1963 – As soon as two U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft became reported as overdue at their destination, Homestead Air Force Base, Florida, the U.S. Coast Guard Eastern Area Commander initiated an intensive air search. It lasted through 2 September with as many as 25 U.S. Coast Guard, Air Force, and Navy planes participating. None of the 11 occupants of the two KC-135’s were ever found, only wreckage, indicating that there had been a midair collision.

1965 – Navy CDR Scott Carpenter and 9 aquanauts enter SeaLab II, 205 ft. below Southern California’s waters to conduct underwater living and working tests.

1965 – The Viet Cong were routed in the Mekong Delta by U.S. forces, with more than 50 killed.

1966 – It is reported in three Soviet newspapers that North Vietnamese pilots are undergoing training in a secret Soviet air base to fly supersonic interceptors against U.S. aircraft. This only confirms earlier reports that the Soviets had initiated close relations with North Vietnam after a visit by Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin to Hanoi in February 1965.

1972 – The U.S. Air Force gets its first ace (a designation traditionally awarded for five enemy aircraft confirmed shot down) since the Korean War. Captain Richard S. Ritchie, flying with his “backseater” (radar intercept officer), Captain Charles B. DeBellevue, in an F-4 out of Udorn Air Base in Thailand, shoots down his fifth MiG near Hanoi. Two weeks later, Captain DeBellvue, flying with Captain John A. Madden, Jr., shot down his fifth and sixth MiGs. The U.S. Navy already had two aces, Lieutenants Randall Cunningham and Bill Driscoll. By this time in the war, there was only one U.S. fighter-bomber base left in South Vietnam at Bien Hoa. The rest of the air support was provided by aircraft flying from aircraft carriers or U.S. bases in Thailand. Also on this day: Back in the United States, President Nixon announces that the military draft will end by July 1973.

1973 – Judge John Sirica ordered President Nixon to turn over secret Watergate tapes. Nixon refused and appealed the order.

1986 – US Navy officer Jerry A. Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years for spying.

1990 – German spy Juergen Mohamed Gietler was arrested for passing military information to Iraq. He provided Iraq with intelligence reports on US military plans that included what the West knew of Iraqi Scud-B missile sites. He was convicted in a secret trial in 1991, sentenced to 5 years in prison and released in 1994 after which he moved to Egypt.

1990 – Iraq declared occupied Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq, renamed Kuwait City Kadhima, and created a new district named after President Saddam Hussein.

1995 – A request from the commander in chief of naval forces Europe led to the deployment of the CGC Dallas to the Mediterranean. She departed Governors Island on 29 May 1995 and visited ports throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea, including Istanbul and Samsun in Turkey; Durres, Albania; Varna, Bulgaria; Constanta, Romania; Koper, Slovenia; Taranto, Italy; and Bizerte, Tunisia. The crew trained with naval and coast guard forces in each country. She deployed for a few days with the Sixth Fleet and served as a plane guard for the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The crew was also able to coordinate schedules with six NATO and non-NATO nations to conduct boardings. She returned to the U.S. in August and arrived at Governors Island on 28 August.

2002 – Federal grand juries charged six men in Detroit with conspiring to support al-Qaeda’s terrorism as members of a sleeper cell.

2004 – Shiite militants and U.S. forces battled in the Baghdad’s Sadr City slum. U.S. warplanes carried out airstrikes for the second straight day in the city of Fallujah.

2004 – A Yemen court convicted 15 militants on terror charges including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and plotting to kill the U.S. ambassador.

August 29th ~

1708 – Haverhill, Mass., was destroyed by French & Indians.

1758 – The first American Indian Reservation is established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey.

1776 – General George Washington retreated during the night from Long Island to New York City withdrawing from Manhattan to Westchester.

1778 – The Battle of Rhode Island, also known as the Battle of Quaker Hill and the Siege of Newport, took place. Continental Army and militia forces under the command of General John Sullivan were withdrawing to the northern part of Aquidneck Island after abandoning their siege of Newport, Rhode Island, when the British forces in Newport sortied, supported by recently arrived Royal Navy ships, and attacked the retreating Americans. The battle ended inconclusively, but the Continental forces afterward withdrew to the mainland, leaving Aquidneck Island in British hands. The battle took place in the aftermath of the first attempt at cooperation between French and American forces following France’s entry into the war as an American ally. The operations against Newport were to have been made in conjunction with a French fleet and troops; these were frustrated in part by difficult relations between the commanders, and a storm that damaged both French and British fleets shortly before joint operations were to begin. The battle was also notable for the participation of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, a locally recruited segregated regiment of African Americans. It was the only major military action to include a racially segregated unit on the American side in the war.

1786 – Shay’s Rebellion began in Springfield, Mass. Daniel Shay led a rebellion in Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt. Shay was a Revolutionary War veteran who led a short-lived insurrection in western Massachusetts to protest a tax increase that had to be paid in cash, a hardship for veteran farmers who relied on barter and didn‘t own enough land to vote. The taxes were to pay off the debts from the Revolutionary War, and those who couldn‘t pay were evicted or sent to prison.

1861 – U.S.S. Yankee, Commander T. T. Craven, and U.S.S. Reliance, Lieutenant Mygatt, engaged Confederate battery at Marlborough Point, Virginia.

1861 – United States Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.

1861 – Four U.S. steamers engaged Confederate battery at Aquia Creek, Virginia, for three hours.

1862 – Union General John Pope’s army was defeated by a smaller Confederate force at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1863 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, Lieutenant Payne, sank in Charleston harbor for the first time. After making several practice dives in the harbor, the submarine was moored by lines fastened to steamer Etiwan at the dock at Fort Johnson. When the steamer moved away from the dock unexpectedly, H. L. Hunley was drawn onto her side. She filled with water and rapidly sank, carrying with her five gallant seamen. Payne and two others escaped. H. L. Hunley was subsequently raised and refitted, as, undaunted by the “unfortunate accident,” another crew volunteered to man her.

1864 – While removing Confederate obstructions from the channel leading into Mobile Bay, five sailors were killed and nine others injured when a torpedo exploded. Farragut regretted the unfortunate loss, but resolutely pressed on with the work: ”As it is absolutely necessary to free the channel of these torpedoes, I shall continue to remove them, but as every precaution will be used, I do not apprehend any further accident.” Like the loss of Tecumseh, this event demonstrated that although some torpedoes had been made inactive by long immersion, many were very much alive when Farragut made the instant decision, “Damn the torpedoes" .

1909 – World’s 1st air race was held in Rheims France. American Glenn Curtiss won.

1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California. Ishi (c. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the last member of the Yahi, a group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Widely acclaimed in his time as the “last wild Indian” in America, Ishi lived most of his life completely outside modern culture. At about 49 years of age he emerged from “the wild” near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak, known to Ishi as Wa ganu p’a.

Ishi means “man” in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man because it was rude to ask someone’s name in the Yahi culture. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me,” meaning that no Yahi had ever spoken his name. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.

1915 – Navy salvage divers raise F-4, first U.S. submarine sunk in an accident.

1916 – Congress passes act for expansion of Navy but most ships not completed until after World War I.

1916 – Congress created the US Naval Reserve.

1916 – The Marine Corps Reserve was founded.

1916 – Congress authorized Treasury to establish ten Coast Guard air stations but appropriated only $7000 for an instructor and assistant. Appropriation for their construction and for planes was not made until 1924.

1922 – The first radio advertisement is broadcast on WEAF-AM in New York City for the Queensboro Corporation, advertising an apartment complex.

1942 – The American Red Cross announced that Japan had refused to allow safe conduct for the passage of ships with supplies for American prisoners of war.

1944 – Pennsylvania’s 28th Infantry Division leads the American contingent in the “Liberation Day” parade down the Champs Elysees as Paris explodes with joy after the Germans withdraw from the city. The Allies, who had landed in Normandy on June 6th, had spent more than six weeks fighting through the Norman hedgerows before finally breaking out on the French Plain and headed for Paris. The 28th was one of four Guard infantry divisions to see combat in Normandy.

1945 – The American battleship USS Missouri anchors in Tokyo Bay.

1945 – Gen MacArthur was named the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan.

1945 – Secret Army and Navy reports of official enquiries into the raid on Pearl Harbor are made public. The blame is placed on a lack of preparedness, confusion and a breakdown of inter-service coordination. Former Secretary of State Hull, General Marshall and Admiral Stark are criticized. President Truman objects to the findings on Hull and Marshall.

1946 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is decommissioned. She was the second United States Navy ship to be named after the 36th state, was the lead ship of the two Nevada-class battleships; her sister ship was Oklahoma. Launched in 1914, the Nevada was a leap forward in dreadnought technology; four of her new features would be included on almost every subsequent US battleship: triple gun turrets, oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the “all or nothing” armor principle. These features made Nevada the first US Navy “super-dreadnought”. Nevada served in both World Wars: during the last few months of World War I, Nevada was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to protect the supply convoys that were sailing to and from Great Britain. In World War II, she was one of the battleships trapped when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She was the only battleship to get underway during the attack, making the ship “the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning” for the United States. Still, she was hit by one torpedo and at least six bombs while steaming away from Battleship Row, forcing her to be beached. Subsequently salvaged and modernized at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Nevada served as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in four amphibious assaults: the Normandy Landings and the invasions of Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
At the end of World War II, the Navy decided that Nevada was too old to be retained, so they assigned her to be a target ship in the atomic experiments that were going to be conducted at Bikini Atoll in July 1946 (Operation Crossroads). After being hit by the blast from the first atomic bomb, Able, she was still afloat but heavily damaged and radioactive. She was decommissioned on 29 August 1946 and sunk during naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948.

1949 – The USSR successfully detonated its first atomic bomb at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. It was a copy of the Fat Man bomb and had a yield of 21 kilotons known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1952 – In the largest bombing raid of the Korean War, 1,403 planes of the Far East Air Force bombed Pyongyang, North Korea.

1958 – Air Force Academy opened in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1962 – A US U-2 flight saw SAM launch pads in Cuba.

1965 – Gemini 5, carrying astronauts Gordon Cooper and Charles (“Pete”) Conrad, splashed down in the Atlantic after eight days in space.

1990 – A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared in a television interview that America could not defeat Iraq, saying, “I do not beg before anyone.”

2005 – Hurricane Katrina made a second landfall near Empire, Buras and Boothville, Louisiana after first previously striking Southeast Florida on 25 August. The rescue and response effort was one of the largest in Coast Guard history, involving units from every district, saving 24,135 lives and conducting 9,409 evacuations.

2007 – United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.

August 30th ~

1645 – Dutch & Indians signed peace treaty in New Amsterdam (New York).

1682 – William Penn left England to sail to New World. He took along an insurance policy.

1780 – General Benedict Arnold betrayed the US when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. Arnold whose name has become synonymous with traitor fled to England after the botched conspiracy. His co-conspirator, British spy Major John Andre, was hanged.

1781 – The French fleet of 24 ships under Comte de Grasse arrived in the Chesapeake Bay to aid the American Revolution. The fleet defeated British under Admiral Graves at battle of Chesapeake Capes.

1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.

1813 – Marines aboard the USS President helped capture the HMS brig Shannon.

1813 – Creek Indians massacred over 500 whites at Fort Mims Alabama.

1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen

1861 – Union General John Fremont declared martial law throughout Missouri and made his own emancipation proclamation to free slaves in the state. President Lincoln overruled the general.

1862 – Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va. Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell fought at the Second Battle of Manassas, which was also a Union defeat (the Union army in this case was commanded by Maj. Gen. John Pope). McDowell was then relieved of his command until he was sent to command the Department of the Pacific in 1864, where he finished the war.

1862 – U.S.S. Passaic launched at Greenpoint, New York. A newspaper reporter observed: “A fleet of monsters has been created, volcanoes in a nutshell, breathing under water, fighting under shelter, steered with mirrors, driven by vapor, running anywhere, retreating from nothing. These floating carriages bear immense ordnance, perfected by new processes, and easily worked by new and simple devices.

1879 – John Bell Hood, confederate general (lost Atlanta, along with arm and leg), died at 48 of Yellow Fever in a New Orleans epidemic.

1880 – Diablo, a chief of the Cibecue Apache, is killed during a battle with a competing band of Indians.

1913 – Navy tests Sperry gyroscopic stabilizer (automatic pilot).

1918 – The First Army of General John Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force moves into position around the German-held St. Mihiel salient to the southeast of Verdun along the Meuse River. Together with the French II Colonial Corps, the First Army will launch an attack on the position in mid-September.

1929 – Near New London, CT, 26 officers and men test Momsen lung to exit submerged USS S-4.

1945 – American and British forces land in the Tokyo area. The US 11th Airborne Division flies in to Atsugi airfield, while the US 4th Marine Regiment of the US 6th Marine Division lands in the naval base at Yokosuka. Meanwhile, the American cruiser USS San Juan starts to evacuate Allied prisoners of war detained in the Japanese home islands.

1945 – Gen. Douglas MacArthur lands in Japan to oversee the formal surrender ceremony and to organize the postwar Japanese government.

1945 – A proclamation to the German people is signed today formally announcing the establishment of the Allied Control Council and its assumption of supreme authority in Germany.

1945 – A pale green Super Six coupe rolled off the Hudson Company’s assembly line, the first post-World War II car to be produced by the auto manufacturer. Like all other U.S. auto manufacturers, Hudson had halted production of civilian cars in order to produce armaments during the war. The Super Six boasted the first modern, high-compression L-head motor, though it garnered its name from the original Hudson-manufactured engine produced in 1916. The name stayed, though the engines became more sophisticated.

1950 – The USAF organized Detachment F of the 3rd Rescue Squadron in Korea and equipped it with Sikorsky H-5 helicopters.

1952 – Captain Leonard W. Lilley of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing scored his first aerial victory. He went on to become an F-86 Sabre ace.

1961 – Two Cuban frigates fire on a Naval Reserve aircraft on a training mission over international waters.

1963 – Two months after signing an agreement to establish a 24-hour-a-day “hot line” between Moscow and Washington, the system goes into effect. The hot line was supposed to help speed communication between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union and help prevent the possibility of an accidental war. In June 1963, American and Russian representatives agreed to establish a so-called “hot line” between Moscow and Washington.
The agreement came just months after the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, in which the United States and Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict. It was hoped that speedier and more secure communications between the two nuclear superpowers would forestall such crises in the future. In August 1963, the system was ready to be tested. American teletype machines had been installed in the Kremlin to receive messages from Washington; Soviet teletypes were installed in the Pentagon. (Contrary to popular belief, the hot line in the United States is in the Pentagon, not the White House.)

1968 – In what a later official government report would call a “police riot” the four-day Democratic National Convention and all of it’s accompanying violence and mayhem comes to close as 668 people are arrested and 111 are injured mostly by police overreaction. It’s 1968 and the war in Vietnam is going so badly that President Lyndon Johnson announced in March he would not run again for office. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, seen by many as supporting Johnson’s policies, is the Democratic nominee for the general election.

1983 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission. It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m. The Challenger spent six days in space, during which time Bluford and his four fellow crew members launched a communications satellite for the government of India, made contact with an errant communications satellite, conducted scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s robotic arm.

1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

1987 – A redesigned space shuttle booster, created in the wake of the Challenger disaster, roared into life in its first full-scale test-firing near Brigham City, Utah.

1993 – 50 Rangers stage a raid in search of Mohammad Farrah Aidid, Warlord in Somalia.

1994 – Lockheed and Martin Marietta inked the paperwork on a merger that created one of the world’s largest aerospace/defense companies. The newly formed Lockheed Martin Corporation had a taste for mergers, and continued to acquire other companies, including Loral and Unisys Defense.

1996 – The United States presents evidence to the U.N. Sanctions Committee that Iran is complicit in the smuggling of petroleum products from Iraq through the Persian Gulf. According to U.S. allegations, Iran uses barges and small ships to carry oil products from southern Iraq into Iranian territorial waters. Shipping documents then are forged to show that the cargo is of Iranian origin.

2001 – U.S. warplanes launch strikes against Iraqi “military targets” after Iraq claims that it has shot down a U.S. spy plane. The U.S. strike also comes at a time when Iraq appears to be improving its air defence system, including longer-range surface to air missiles.

2003 – In Operation Mountain Viper, the United States Army and the Afghan National Army (nearly 1000 in number) worked together into early September, 2003, to uncover hundreds of suspected Taliban rebels dug into the mountains of Daychopan district, Zabul province, Afghanistan. The Operation killed an estimated 124 militants. Five Afghan Army personnel were killed and seven were injured. One U.S. soldier died in an accidental fall.

August 31st ~

1756 – The British at Fort William Henry, New England, surrendered to Louis Montcalm of France.

1777 – Samuel Mason, a captain in command of Fort Henry on the Ohio frontier, survives a devastating Indian attack only to become one of the young nation’s first western desperados. Mason recovered from his wounds and continued to command Fort Henry for several years. Following the end of the war, though, he seems to have fallen on hard times. Repeatedly accused of being a thief, he moved farther west into the lawless frontier of the young American nation. By 1797, he had become a pirate on the Mississippi River, preying on boatmen who moved valuable goods up and down the river. He also reportedly took to robbing travelers along the Natchez Trace (or trail) in Tennessee, often with the assistance of his four sons and several other vicious men.

1778 – British killed 17 Stockbridge Indians in Bronx during Revolution.

1803 – Captain Meriwether Lewis left Pittsburgh to meet up with Captain William Clark and begin their trek to the Pacific Ocean.

1819 – The cutters Alabama and Louisiana captured the privateer Bravo in the Gulf of Mexico. The master, Jean Le Farges — a lieutenant of Jean Lafitte — was later hanged from the Louisiana’s yardarm on the Mississippi River. The cutters then sailed for Patterson’s Town on Breton Island to destroy the notorious pirates’ den there.

1835 – Angry mob in Charleston, South Carolina, seized U-S mail containing abolitionist literature and burned it in public.

1842 – US Naval Observatory was authorized by an act of Congress.

1864 – At the Democratic convention in Chicago, General George B. McClellan was nominated for president. McClellan ran on a Copperhead platform climing the war had been a failure and was hopelessly lost. Only a peace with honor allowing the Southern states their independence could save the North from ruin. This was a scant 8 months before the end of the war.

1864 – General William T. Sherman launches the attack that finally secures Atlanta, Georgia, for the Union, and seals the fate of Confederate General John Bell Hood’s army, which is forced to evacuate the area. The Battle of Jonesboro was the culmination of a four-month campaign by Sherman to capture Atlanta. He had spent the summer driving his army down the 100-mile corridor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, against a Confederate force led by General Joseph Johnston. General Hood, who replaced Johnston in July on the outskirts of Atlanta, proceeded to attack Sherman in an attempt to drive him northward. However, these attacks failed, and by August 1 the armies had settled into a siege. In late August, Sherman swung his army south of Atlanta to cut the main rail line supplying the Rebel army. Confederate General William Hardee’s corps moved to block Sherman at Jonesboro, and attacked the Union troops on August 31, but the Rebels were thrown back with staggering losses. The entrenched Yankees lost just 178 men, while the Confederates lost nearly 2,000. On September 1, Sherman attacked Hardee. Though the Confederates held, Sherman successfully cut the rail line and effectively trapped the Rebels. Hardee had to abandon his position, and Hood had no choice but to withdraw from Atlanta. The fall of Atlanta was instrumental in securing the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in the fall.

1865 – The US Federal government estimated the American Civil War had cost about eight-billion dollars. Human costs have been estimated at more than one-million killed or wounded.

1920 – The first radio news program is broadcast by 8MK (WWJ today) in Detroit, Michigan. It was primary election day, and it was announced that the returns — local, state and congressional — would be sent to the public that night by means of the radio.

1935 – President Roosevelt signed the first Neutrality Act, an act prohibiting the export of U.S. arms to belligerents.

1939 – At noon, despite threats of British and French intervention, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs an order to attack Poland, and German forces move to the frontier. That evening, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead German prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of the alleged Polish attack, which Nazi propagandists publicized as an unforgivable act of aggression. At dawn the next morning, 58 German army divisions invaded Poland all across the 1,750-mile frontier. Hitler expected appeasement from Britain and France–the same nations that had given Czechoslovakia away to German conquest in 1938 with their signing of the Munich Pact. However, neither country would allow Hitler’s new violation of Europe’s borders, and Germany was presented with an ultimatum: Withdraw by September 3 or face war with the Western democracies. At 11:15 a.m. on September 3, a few minutes after the expiration of the British ultimatum, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared on national radio to announce solemnly that Britain was at war with Germany. Australia, New Zealand, and India immediately followed suit. Later that afternoon, the French ultimatum expired, and at 5:00 p.m. France declared war on Germany. The European phase of World War II began.

1940 – US National Guard assembled. They will be mobilized for 1 year, extended to 2, to train and assist in war games to test new tactics.

1940 – 56 U-boats were sunk during this month (268,000 ton).

1942 – The Battle of Guadalcanal. Japanese General Kawaguchi lands 1200 troops on the island.

1942 – 3rd Marines leave San Diego bound for American Samoa.

1943 – American carrier based aircraft strike Marcus island. The Independence, Essex and Yorktown are involved. These ships are part of the newly formed Fast Carrier Task Force.

1943 – Commissioning of USS Harmon (DE-678), first Navy ship named for an African American Sailor.

1944 – A US B-24-J bomber crashed into Maoer Mountain in China after having completed its bombing mission over the port of Takao in Taiwan. All 10 men onboard were killed. The wreckage was not discovered until Oct, 1996.

1945 – General MacArthur establishes the supreme allied command at the main port of Tokyo, as the first foreigner to take charge of Japan in 1000 years.

1945 – The remaining Japanese troops in the Philippines formally surrender.

1945 – The Japanese garrison on Marcus Island surrenders to the American Admiral Whiting.

1945 – Field Marshal Brauchitsch and Field Marshal von Manstein are arrested by Allied authorities. Meanwhile, the civilian population is in flux. Germans who fled the bombing of their cities are going home to stake their claim on whatever remains of their property. One in five persons in the western zone of Germay is a refugee. There are also Germans driven out of Poland and Silesia as well as other parts of eastern Europe.

1949 – Six of the 16 surviving Union veterans of the Civil War attended the last-ever encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1950 – Far East Air Force B-29s completed air strikes on the docks and railway yards at Songjin and the industrial factory at Chinnampo. From Aug. 28-31, aircraft dropped 326 tons of bombs on Songjin and 284 tons on Chinnampo.

1951 – The former enemies of the world war reconvened in San Francisco to finalize negotiations on the peace treaty to formally end WW II. Japan agreed to pay the Int’l. Red Cross about $15 per POW while the allies agreed not to bring charges against it.

1951 – The last United Nations Command offensive of the war occurred when the 1st Marine Division began its assault against the Punchbowl and from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3. The 2nd Infantry Division seized Bloody Ridge at a cost of 2,700 casualties.

1954 – Under terms of the Geneva Agreement, a flow of almost one million refugees from North to South Vietnam begins.

1961 – A concrete wall replaced the barbed wire fence that separated East and West Germany, it would be called the "Berlin Wall".

1962 – Last flight of Navy airship made at NAS Lakehurst, NJ.

1965 – President Johnson signs into law a bill making it illegal to destroy or mutilate a U.S. draft card, with penalties of up to five years and a $10,000 fine.

1990 – East & West Germany signed a treaty to join legal & political.

1995 – NATO planes and UN artillery blasted Serb targets in Bosnia for a 2nd day in response to the market attack in Serajevo.

1996 – More than 100 members of the Iraqi National Congress in Irbil were captured by Iraqi secret police and apparently executed.

2002 – Kuwait will buy 16 attack helicopters from Boeing in a deal worth $886 million. Defense Minister Sheik Jaber Mubarak Al Hamad and U.S. Ambassador Richard Jones signed the deal.

2004 – A video purporting to show the methodical, grisly killings of 12 Nepalese construction workers kidnapped in Iraq was posted on a Web site linked to a militant group operating in Iraq.

2010 – Gen. Ray Odierno was replaced by Gen. Lloyd Austin as Commander of US forces in Iraq.

September 1st ~

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon led an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon’s Rebellion came in response to the governor’s repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.

1752 – The Liberty Bell arrived in Philadelphia.

1772 – Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa formed in California. Father Junipero Serra held the 1st Mass at San Luis Obispo. He left Father Jose Cavalier the task of building the state’s 5th mission.

1774 – The Powder Alarm was a major popular reaction to the removal of gunpowder from a magazine by British soldiers under orders from General Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In response to this action, amid rumors that blood had been shed, alarm spread through the countryside as far as Connecticut and beyond, and American Patriots sprang into action, fearing that war was at hand. Thousands of militiamen began streaming toward Boston and Cambridge, and mob action forced Loyalists and some government officials to flee to the protection of the British Army. Although it proved to be a false alarm, the Powder Alarm caused political and military leaders to proceed more carefully in the days ahead, and essentially provided a “dress rehearsal” for the Battles of Lexington and Concord seven and a half months later. Furthermore, actions on both sides to control weaponry, gunpowder, and other military supplies became more contentious, as the British sought to bring military stores more directly under their control, and the Patriot colonists sought to acquire them for their own use.

1781 – French fleet traps British fleet at Yorktown, VA.

1807 – Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He was acquitted on the grounds that, though he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of the law governing treason. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe.

1821 – William Becknell led a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.

1849 – California Constitutional Convention was held in Monterey.

1858 – The 1st transatlantic cable failed after less than 1 month.

1861 – Ulysses Grant assumed command of Federal forces at Cape Girardeau, MI.

1861 – Lincoln received news late at night from Secretary of the Navy Welles of Flag Officer Stringham’s victory at Hatteras Inlet, in the initial Army- Navy expedition of the war. Coming shortly after the defeat at Bull Run, it electrified the North and greatly raised morale.

1862 – A federal tax was levied on tobacco, especially that grown in Confederate states.

1862 – Following his brilliant victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run two days earlier, Confederate General Robert E. Lee strikes retreating Union forces at Chantilly, Virginia, and drives them away in the middle of an intense thunderstorm. Although his army routed the Yankee forces of General John Pope at Bull Run, Lee was not satisfied. By attacking the retreating Federals, Lee hoped to push them back into Washington, D.C., and achieve a decisive victory by destroying the Union army. The Bull Run battlefield lay 25 miles east of the capital, allowing Lee room to send General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s corps on a quick march to cut off part of the Union retreat before reaching the defenses of the capital.

1864 – With Union General William T. Sherman threatening to cut his only escape route, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuates Atlanta, Georgia, at the climax of a four-month campaign by Sherman to capture the vital Rebel supply center.

1918 – US troops landed in Vladivostok, Siberia, and stayed until 1920.

1925 – Navy CDR John Rodgers and crew of 4 in PN-9 run out of fuel on first San Francisco to Hawaii flight. Landing at sea, they rigged a sail and set sail for Hawaii.

1939 – At 0445 hours German forces invade Poland without a declaration of war. The operation is code named Fall Weiss (Plan White). The Germans allot 52 divisions for the invasion (some 1.5 million men), including the 6 armored divisions and all their motorized units. Of the divisions left to defend against an Anglo-French front, only about 10 are regarded by the Germans as being fit for any kind of action. General Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, is in command of the campaign. Bock leads Army Group North, consisting of the 4th Army (Kuchler) and 3rd Army (Kluge); Rundstedt leads Army Group South, consisting of 8th Army (Balskowitz), 10th Army (Reichenau) and 14th Army (List). Air support comes from two Air Fleets, commanded by Kesselring and Lohr, which have around 1,600 aircraft. Army Group South, advancing from Silesia, is to provide the main German attacks. The 8th Army on the left is to move toward Poznan, the principal thrust is to be delivered by 10th Army which is to advance in the center to the Vistula River between Warsaw and Sandomierz, while 14th Army on the right moves toward Krakow and the Carpathian flank. The 4th Army from East Prussia is to move south toward Warsaw and the line to the Bug River to the east; 3rd Army is to cross the Polish Corridor and join 4th Army in moving south. The Poles have 23 regular infantry divisions prepared with 7 more assembling, 1 weak armored division and an inadequate supply of artillery. They also have a considerable force of cavalry. The reserve units were only called up on August 30th and are not ready for combat. In the air, almost all the 500 Polish planes are obsolete and prove unable to blunt the impact of the German attack. During the day, the Luftwaffe launches air strikes on Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow.

1940 – Gen. George C. Marshall was sworn in as chief of staff of US Army.

1942 – First Seabee unit to serve in a combat area, the 6th Naval Construction Battalion, arrives on Guadalcanal.

1942 – A federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans as well as Japanese nationals.

1942 – Joseph C. Jenkins was given a temporary promotion to warrant officer (Boatswain); becoming the first African-American warrant officer in the Coast Guard.

1942 – The Coast Guard transferred responsibility for running the merchant marine training programs to the War Shipping Administration.

1944 – General Eisenhower establishes his headquarters in France as Commander in Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Forces.

1944 – CGC Northland captured the crew of a scuttled Nazi supply trawler off Greenland. They had been attempting to establish a weather station on the coast of Greenland.

1945 – Americans received word of Japan’s formal surrender that ended World War II. Because of the time difference, it was Sept. 2 in Tokyo Bay, where the ceremony took place.

1945 – USS Benevolence (AH-13) evacuates civilian internees from 2 internment camps near Tokyo, Japan.

1950 – US Company C, 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, was almost completely annihilated as North Korean divisions opened an assault on UN lines on the Naktong River. Only Company C and other elements of the 2nd Infantry Division stood in the path.

1950 – US Air Force Captain Iven C. Kincheloe, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, claimed his fifth air-to-air victory in his F-86 Sabre “Ivan” to become the 10th ace of the Korean War. Kincheloe accounted for four MiGs in six days.

1961 – The Soviet Union ended a moratorium on atomic testing with an above-ground nuclear explosion in central Asia.

1966 – In a speech before 100,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, President Charles de Gaulle of France denounces U.S. policy in Vietnam and urges the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia.

1969 – A coup in Libya overthrew the monarchy of King Idris and brought Moammar Gadhafi to power. Gadhafi emerged as leader of the revolutionary government and ordered the closure of a U.S. Air Force base.

1969 – The 1st Marine Regiment was presented the Presidential Unit Citation for Operation Hue City (Vietnam).

1970 – The U.S. Senate rejects the McGovern-Hatfield amendment by a vote of 55-39. This legislation, proposed by Senators George McGovern of South Dakota and Mark Hatfield of Oregon, would have set a deadline of December 31, 1971, for complete withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).

1976 – NASA launched its space vehicle S-197.

1977 – The 1st TRS-80 Model I computer was sold.

1977 – Bobby C. Wilks became the first African American in the Coast Guard to reach the rank of captain.

1979 – Pioneer 11 made the 1st fly-by of Saturn and discovered new moon rings. Ring F of Saturn was discovered by Lonny Baker at NASA’s Ames Research Center from data sent by Pioneer 11.

1982 – The United States Air Force Space Command is established. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) is a major command of the United States Air Force, with its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.

1983 – Soviet jet fighters intercept a Korean Airlines passenger flight in Russian airspace and shoot the plane down, killing all on board. The incident dramatically increased tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines (KAL) flight 007 was on the last leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul, with a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. As it approached its final destination, the plane began to veer far off its normal course. In just a short time, the plane flew into Russian airspace and crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula, where some top-secret Soviet military installations were known to be located. The Soviets sent two fighters to intercept the plane. According to tapes of the conversations between the fighter pilots and Soviet ground control, the fighters quickly located the KAL flight and tried to make contact with the passenger jet. Failing to receive a response, one of the fighters fired a heat-seeking missile. KAL 007 was hit and plummeted into the Sea of Japan. All 269 people on board were killed.

2000 – Pres. Clinton put the anti-missile national defense system on hold and passed the decision for moving the project forward to his successor.

2004 – Accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins said he will surrender to the US to face charges that have dogged him since he vanished from his unit in South Korea nearly 40 years.

2004 – The U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Iran has announced plans to turn tons of uranium into a substance that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

2008 – CGC Dallas visited the port of Sevastopol, Ukraine during a historic voyage through the Black Sea that included delivering relief supplies to Georgia.

2008 – The U.S. military hands control of Al Anbar Governorate over to the Iraqi government.

2010 – The name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is replaced by “Operation New Dawn”.

September 2nd ~

1776 – The Hurricane of Independence makes landfall. Between this day and 9 September it will kill exactly 4,170 people from North Carolina to Nova Scotia.

1789 – Although the United States Treasury Department was founded on September 2, 1789, its roots can be traced back to the American Revolution. Back in 1775, the Revolutionary leaders were groping with ways to fund the war. Their solution–issuing cash that doubled as redeemable “bills of credit”–raised enough capital to fuel the Revolution. However, the war notes also led to the country’s first debt. The Continental Congress attempted to reign in the economy, even forming a pre-Constitutional version of the Treasury. Neither this move, nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which enabled the U.S. to seek loans from foreign countries, proved effective. The debt kept mounting, while war notes rapidly deflated in value. With the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the Government established a permanent Treasury Department in hopes of quelling the debt. President Washington named his former “aide-de-camp,” Alexander Hamilton, to head the new office. The former New York lawyer and staunch Federalist stepped in as Secretary of the Treasury on September 11. Hamilton soon outlined a practical plan for reviving the nation’s ailing economy: the Government would pay back its $75 million war debt and thus repair its badly damaged public credit.

1859 – A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service.

1862 – President Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope’s disaster at Second Bull Run on August 29 and 30. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his army transferred to Pope’s Army of Virginia after his failure to capture Richmond during the Seven Days’ Battles in June 1862. Pope, who had one chance to prove his leadership at Second Bull Run against Confederate General Robert E. Lee, failed miserably and retreated to Washington. He had not received any help from McClellan, who sat nearby in Alexandria and refused to go to Pope’s aid.

1864 – The forces of Union General William T. Sherman march into Atlanta, Georgia—one day after the Confederates evacuate the city.

1864 – Small, 8-gun paddle-wheeler U.S.S. Naiad, Acting Master Keene, engaged Confederate battery near Rowe’s Landing, Louisiana, and, after a brisk exchange, silenced it.

1885 – 150 white miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, brutally attack their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town. The miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had been struggling to unionize and strike for better working conditions for years.

1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.

1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred is awarded the first Eagle Scout award of the Boy Scouts of America.

1918 – Navy ships and crews assist earthquake victims of Yokohama and Tokyo, Japan.

1944 – Navy pilot George Herbert Walker Bush was shot down by Japanese forces as he completed a bombing run over the Bonin Islands. Bush was rescued by the crew of the U.S. submarine Finback; his two crew members, however, died.

1945 – Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic” and set for November 1945. The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties.

1945 – Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!” and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho’s dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality.

1948 – Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian passenger on a space mission, was born in Boston, Mass. During that 1986 mission, she and the six other crew members on the space shuttle Challenger perished in an explosion shortly after launch.

1951 – The 2nd Infantry Division attacked enemy positions on Bloody Ridge.

1951 – Twenty-two F-86 Sabre jets clashed with 40 MiG-15s in a 30-minute dogfight over the skies between Sinuiju and Pyongyang. The air battle resulted in the destruction of four MiGs.

1956 – Tennessee National Guardsmen halted rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-Americans to schools in Clinton.

1958 – United States Air Force C-130A-II is shot down by fighters over Yerevan in Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a SIGINT mission. All crew members are killed.

1969 – President Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam dies of a heart attack in Hanoi.

1970 – NASA announces the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19.

1972 – Phuc Yen, 10 miles north of Hanoi, and one of the largest air bases in North Vietnam, is smashed by U.S. fighter-bombers. During the attack, a MiG was shot down, bringing the total to 47 enemy aircraft shot down since the beginning of the North Vietnamese offensive. At this point in the war, 18 U.S. planes had been shot down by MiGs.

1993 – The United States and Russia formally ended decades of competition in space by agreeing to a joint venture to build a space station.

1996 – The US launched cruise missiles at selected air defense targets in Iraq to discourage Sadam Hussein’s military moves against a Kurd faction.

1997 – The US demanded exemptions to a proposed global ban on land mines at an int’l meeting in Oslo, Norway. The exemptions were for mines on the Korean peninsula and for certain types of mines.

1999 – NATO and UN officials agreed to the formation of a civilian emergency force in Kosovo from the remnants of the KLA.

2002 – Hans Blix rejects the Iraqi request that he travel to Baghdad for technical talks, saying he would not do so until Saddam Hussein approved the return of weapons inspectors.

2004 – Kidnappers handed over two French journalists in Iraq to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group. A militant group in Iraq said it had killed three Turkish captives. Gunmen ambushed an Associated Press driver, riddling his car with bullets and killing him near his home in Baghdad.

2004 – The UN Security Council narrowly approved a U.S.-backed resolution aimed at pressuring Lebanon to reject a second term for its pro-Syrian president and calling for an immediate withdrawal of all foreign forces.

2005 – The NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission robotic Spirit rover sends back a partial panoramic view from the top of “Husband Hill” at Gusev Crater on Mars.

2012 – U.S. special operations personnel temporarily halt the training of all Afghan army and police recruits while a full background check of 27,000 people is ongoing. 45 NATO troops have been killed this year in so-called green-on-blue attacks.

2014 – ISIS releases an Internet video showing the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff.

2014 – The United States sends an additional 250 US troops to protect American personnel.

September 3rd ~

1609 – Henry Hudson discovered the island of Manhattan.

1709 – The 1st major group of Swiss and German colonists reached the Carolinas.

1752 – The Gregorian Adjustment to the calendar was put into effect in Great Britain and the American colonies followed. At this point in time 11 days needed to be accounted for and Sept. 2 was selected to be followed by Sept. 14. People rioted thinking the government stole 11 days of their lives.

1777 – The American flag is flown in battle for the first time, during a Revolutionary War skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge, Maryland. Patriot General William Maxwell ordered the stars and strips banner raised as a detachment of his infantry and cavalry met an advance guard of British and Hessian troops. The rebels were defeated and forced to retreat to General George Washington’s main force near Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania. Three months before, on June 14, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” The national flag, which became known as the “Stars and Stripes,” was based on the “Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white stripes.

On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes. As instructed by Congress, the U.S. flag was flown from all public buildings across the country. In the years after the first Flag Day, several states continued to observe the anniversary, and in 1949 Congress officially designated June 14 as Flag Day, a national day of observance.

1782 – As a token of gratitude for French aid during American Revolution, the U.S. gives America (first ship-of-the-line built by U.S.) to France to replace a French ship lost in Boston.

1783 – The Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain officially ended the Revolutionary War. The Treaty of 1783, which formally ended the American Revolution, is also known as the Definitive Treaty of Peace, the Peace of Paris and the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States. The treaty bears the signatures of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay.

1783 – Mackinac Island, Michigan, passed into US hands following the Paris Peace Treaty.

1812 – A war party of Native Americans (mostly Shawnee, but including some Delaware and Potawatomis) made a surprise attack on the village of Pigeon Roost, Indiana, coordinated with attacks on Fort Harrison (near Terre Haute, Indiana) and Fort Wayne the same month. Twenty-four settlers, including fifteen children, were massacred. Two children were kidnapped. Only four of the Indian attackers were killed.

1826 – USS Vincennes left NY to become 1st warship to circumnavigate globe.

1838 – Future abolitionist Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery.

1855 – General William Harney and 700 soldiers take revenge for the Grattan Massacre with a brutal attack on a Sioux village in Nebraska that left 100 men, women, and children dead. The path to Harney’s bloody revenge began a year before near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, when a brash young lieutenant named John Grattan and 30 of his men were killed while attempting to arrest a Teton Sioux brave accused of shooting a white man’s cow.

1861 – Confederate General Leonidas Polk commits a major political blunder by marching his troops into Columbus, Kentucky—negating Kentucky’s avowed neutrality and causing the Unionist legislature to invite the U.S. government to drive the invaders away. Kentucky was heavily divided prior to the war. Although slavery was prevalent in the state, nationalism was strong and Unionists prevented the calling of a convention to consider secession after the firing on Fort Sumter in April.

1885 – First classes at U.S. Naval War College begin.

1908 – Orville Wright began two weeks of flight trials that impressed onlookers with his complete control of his new Type A Military Flyer. In addition to setting an altitude record of 310 feet and an endurance record of more than one hour, he had carried aloft the first military observer, Lieutenant Frank Lahm.

1918 – The United States recognized the nation of Czechoslovakia.

1918 – Five soldiers were hanged for alleged participation in the Houston riot of 1917.

1925 – The dirigible “Shenandoah” crashed near Caldwell Ohio, 13 die. The 682-foot Shenandoah, built by the U.S. Navy in 1923, broke apart in mid-air, killing 14 persons aboard.

1926 – Marines served at Shanghai, China, and aboard ship during the Yangtze Service Campaign, from September 3rd, 1926 to October 21st, 1927.

1939 – In response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany. The first casualty of that declaration was not German-but the British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30 submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent. There were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom lost their lives. Of those, 28 were Americans, but President Roosevelt was unfazed by the tragedy, declaring that no one was to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields.” The United States would remain neutral. As for Britain’s response, it was initially no more than the dropping of anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets-13 tons of them-over Germany. They would begin bombing German ships on September 4, suffering significant losses. They were also working under orders not to harm German civilians. The German military, of course, had no such restrictions. At this time, 39 of the German fleet of 58 U-boats are at sea. Doenitz, the submarine chief, had hoped for a fleet of 300 before contemplating war with Britain.

1941 – The Japanese are informed that a meeting between Prince Konoye and President Roosevelt cannot take place.

1943 – Italy surrendered. The Allied invasion of Italy begins on the same day that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio sign the Armistice of Cassibile aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Nelson off Malta.

1944 – First combat employment of a missile guided by radio and television takes place when Navy drone Liberator, controlled by Ensign James M. Simpson in a PV, flew to attack German submarine pens on Helgoland Island.

1945 – Japanese surrender Wake Island in ceremony on board USS Levy (DE-162).

1950 – A U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) of 35 men arrives in Saigon to screen French requests for American military aid, assist in the training of South Vietnamese troops, and advise on strategy. President Harry Truman had approved National Security Council (NSC) Memorandum 64 in March 1950, proclaiming that French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) was a key area that could not be allowed to fall to the communists and that the United States would provide support against communist aggression in the area.

1954 – The German U-boat U-505 begins its move from a specially constructed dock to its final site at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

1954 – The US Espionage & Sabotage Act of 1954 signed.

1956 – Tanks were deployed against racist demonstrators in Clinton, Tennessee.

1971 – The Watergate team broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.

1976 – The unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface.

1989 – The United States began shipping a $65 million package of military aircraft and weapons to help Colombia’s war against drug lords.

1995 – Testing Serb will, the United Nations reopened a route to Sarajevo and threatened more air attacks if the rebel stranglehold of the Bosnian capital didn’t end.

1996 – The United States launched 27 cruise missiles at “selected air defense targets” in Iraq as punishment for Iraq’s invasion of Kurdish safe havens.

1999 – NASA temporarily grounded its space shuttle fleet after inspections had uncovered damaged wires that could endanger a mission.

2002 – The US Senate opened debate on legislation creating a new Homeland Security Department.

2002 – Iraq said it was ready to discuss a return of U.N. weapons inspectors, but only in a broader context of ending sanctions and restoring Iraqi sovereignty over all its territory.

2004 – Libya signed an agreement to pay a total of $35 million US in compensation for 168 non-U.S. victims of a 1986 Berlin disco bombing.

2005 – Over 40,000 military personnel will be deployed along the Gulf Coast in the coming week: President George W. Bush orders 7,023 additional active duty forces to the Gulf Coast to add to the 4,000 active duty personnel and 21,000 National Guard troops already in the area. The Pentagon announced an additional 10,000 troop deployment from the National Guard.

2007 – U.S. President George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Iraq and addresses military leaders and the troops, saying that with success, a U.S. Iraq troop cut is possible.

2012 – A car bomb explodes near the U.S. consulate in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least three people and wounding up to 19 others.

September 4th ~

1781 – Mexican Provincial Governor, Felipe de Neve, founded Los Angeles. He founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (Valley of Smokes), originally named Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, who had noticed the beautiful area as they traveled north from San Diego in 1769. 44 Spanish settlers named a tiny village near San Gabriel, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, first an Indian village Yangma, was founded by Spanish decree. 26 of the settlers were of African ancestry.

1807 – Robert Fulton began operating his steamboat.

1862 – Robert E. Lee’s Confederate 50,000-man army invaded Maryland, starting the Antietam Campaign. New York Tribune reporter George Smalley scooped the world with his vivid account of the Battle of Antietam.

1864 – Bread riots took place in Mobile, Alabama.

1864 – An amazing career ends when feared Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan is killed during a Union cavalry raid on the town of Greenville, Tennessee.

1882 – Thomas Edison displayed the first practical electrical lighting system. He successfully turned on the lights in a one square mile area of New York City with the world’s 1st electricity generating plant.

1886 – For almost 30 years he had fought the whites who invaded his homeland, but Geronimo, the wiliest and most dangerous Apache warrior of his time, finally surrenders in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. Known to the Apache as Goyalkla, or “One Who Yawns,” most non-Indians knew him by his Spanish nickname, Geronimo.

1888 – George Eastman received patent #388,850 for his roll-film camera and registered his trademark: “Kodak.” George Eastman introduced the box camera.

1915 – The U.S. military placed Haiti under martial law to quell a rebellion in its capital Port-au-Prince.

1917 – The American expeditionary force in France suffered its first fatalities in World War I.

1923 – Maiden flight of the first U.S. airship, the USS Shenandoah.

1940 – The United States warns the Japanese government against making aggressive moves in Indochina.

1940 – American destroyer Greer becomes the first U.S. vessel fired on in the war when a German sub aims a few torpedoes at it, sparking heightened tensions between Germany and the United States. It was a case of mistaken identity. As the Greer made its way through the North Atlantic, a British patrol bomber spotted a German sub, the U-652. The British bomber alerted the Greer, which responded by tracking the sub. As the American destroyer approached Iceland, the area in which the sub had been spotted, a British aircraft dropped a depth charge into the water, rocking the sub. The U-652, believing the Greer responsible for the charge, fired its torpedoes. They missed. The Greer made it safely to Iceland.

1942 – At Guadalcanal, the Japanese receive additional reinforcements. Off the coast, two older American destroyers utilized as transports are sunk by Japanese destroyers.

1945 – 2,200 Japanese soldiers finally lay down their arms-days after their government had already formally capitulated. Wake Island was one of the islands bombed as part of a wider bombing raid that coincided with the attack on Pearl Harbor. In December of 1941, the Japanese invaded in force, taking the island from American hands, losing 820 men, while the United States lost 120. The United States decided not to retake the island but to cut off the Japanese occupiers from reinforcement, which would mean they would eventually starve.

1945 – The Coast Guard Cutter USCG 83434 became the first and only cutter to host an official surrender ceremony when Imperial Japanese Army Second Lieutenant Kinichi Yamada surrendered the garrison of Aguijan Island on board this Coast Guard 83-footer. Rear Admiral Marshall R. Greer, USN, accepted the surrender for the United States.

1950 – The Mort Walker Beetle Bailey cartoon appeared for the 1st time in syndication.

1950 – The 1st helicopter rescue of American pilot behind enemy lines.

1951 – President Truman addressed the nation from the Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco in the first live, coast-to-coast television broadcast. The broadcast was carried by 94 stations.

1954 – Icebreakers, USS Burton Island (AGB-1) and USCG Northwind, complete first transit of Northwest passage through McClure Strait.

1969 – Radio Hanoi announces the death of Ho Chi Minh, proclaiming that the National Liberation Front will halt military operations in the South for three days, September 8-11, in mourning for Ho.

1989 – The US Air Force launched its last Titan 3 rocket, which reportedly carried a reconnaissance satellite. Since 1964, the Titan 3 had sent more than 200 satellites into space.

1996 – Anti-aircraft fire lit up the skies of Baghdad, hours after the United States fired a new round of cruise missiles into southern Iraq and destroyed an Iraqi radar site. The US again launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi air defense sites. The 2nd launch was deemed a success after the first launch failed to destroy intended targets. The Tomahawks were made by Hughes Aircraft Co. and cost about $1 mil apiece. Kurdish leader Barzani wrote a latter to Sec. of State Christopher Warren and asked that the US mediate. 44 cruise missiles were launched over 2 days plus a rocket from an F-16 fighter.

1998 – In Nevada two Air Force helicopters crashed during training and all 12 people aboard were killed.

2002 – President Bush promised to seek Congress’ approval for “whatever is necessary” to oust Saddam Hussein including using military force.

2002 – In Puerto Rico US Navy security officers fired tear gas at protesters who hurled rocks over a fence during bombing exercises on the island of Vieques.

2004 – Insurgents clashed with American and Iraqi troops in northern Iraq. A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a police academy in the northern city of Kirkuk as hundreds of trainees and civilians were leaving for the day, killing 17 people and wounding 36. Saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline in southern Iraq.

2007 – A bomb plot in Germany was discovered following an extensive nine-month investigation, involving some 300 people, three men were arrested while leaving a rented cottage in the Oberschledorn district of Medebach, Germany where they had stored 700 kg (1,500 lb) of a hydrogen peroxide-based mixture and 26 military-grade detonators and were attempting to build car bombs intended for use against “a disco filled with American sluts”, as well as Ramstein Air Base and the Frankfurt airport. They were convicted and sentenced to jail sentences of 11-12 years.

2009 – The United States eases more restrictions on Cuba, allowing unlimited family visits and telephone exchanges.