February 2nd ~ {continued...}

1951 – The French Battalion, attached to the 2nd Infantry Division’s 23rd Infantry Regimental Combat Team, met the communist counterattack and stabilized the U.N. position north of Yoju.

1951 – The minesweeper USS Partridge hit a mine off Sokcho, just north of the 38th parallel, and sank within 10 minutes with a loss of 10 killed or missing and six severely wounded.

1954 – President Eisenhower reported the 1952 detonation of 1st Hydrogen bomb.

1962 – The first U.S. Air Force plane is lost in South Vietnam. The C-123 aircraft crashed while spraying defoliant on a Viet Cong ambush site. The aircraft was part of Operation Ranch Hand, a technological area-denial technique designed to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong. U.S. personnel dumped an estimated 19 million gallons of defoliating herbicides over 10-20 percent of Vietnam and parts of Laos from 1962 to 1971.

Agent Orange–so named from the color of its metal containers–was the most frequently used. The operation succeeded in killing vegetation but not in stopping the Viet Cong. The use of these agents was controversial, both during and after the war, because of questions about long-term ecological impacts and the effect on humans who handled or were sprayed by the chemicals.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Vietnam veterans began to cite the herbicides, especially Agent Orange, as the cause of health problems ranging from skin rashes to cancer and birth defects in their children. Similar problems, including an abnormally high incidence of miscarriages and congenital malformations, have been reported among the Vietnamese people who lived in the areas where the defoliate agents were used.

1964 – G.I. Joe debuted as a popular American toy.

1971 – The Apollo XIV astronauts confirmed that they would attempt a lunar landing.

1974 – The F-16 Fighting Falcon flies for the first time. The General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft. Over 4,500 aircraft have been built since production was approved. Although no longer being purchased by the U.S. Air Force, improved versions are still being built for export customers.

The Fighting Falcon has key features including a frameless bubble canopy for better visibility, side-mounted control stick to ease control while maneuvering, a seat reclined 30 degrees to reduce the effect of G-forces on the pilot, and the first use of a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire flight control system helps to make it a nimble aircraft. The F-16 has an internal M61 Vulcan cannon and 11 locations for mounting weapons and other mission equipment.

The F-16’s official name is “Fighting Falcon”, but “Viper” is commonly used by its pilots, due to a perceived resemblance to a viper snake as well as the Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper starfighter.

In addition to active duty U.S. Air Force, Air Force Reserve Command, and Air National Guard units, the aircraft is also used by the USAF aerial demonstration team, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, and as an adversary/aggressor aircraft by the United States Navy. The F-16 has also been procured to serve in the air forces of 25 other nations.

1977 – Radio Shack officially began creating the TRS-80 computer.

February 2nd ~ {continued...}

1980 – Details of ABSCAM, an FBI operation to uncover political corruption in the government, are released to the public. Thirty-one public officials were targeted for investigation, including Representative John Murphy of New York, five other representatives, and Harrison Williams, a Republican senator of New Jersey. In the operation, FBI agents posed as representatives of Abdul Enterprises, Ltd., a fictional business owned by an Arab sheik. Under FBI video surveillance, the agents met with the officials and offered them money or other considerations in exchange for special favors, such as the approval of government contracts for companies in which the sheik had invested.

Senator Williams, and Representatives Murphy, Michael J. Myers, Richard Kelly, and John W. Jenrette Jr., were ultimately convicted of bribery and corruption. All but Richard Kelly, who had his conviction overturned in 1982 on the basis that the FBI had unlawfully entrapped him, left Congress. John Murphy, whose term ended in 1981, was saved the fate of expulsion suffered by Williams and Myers. John Jenrette resigned in 1980.

1988 – In a speech that three major television networks declined to broadcast live, President Reagan pressed his case for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989 – The last Soviet armored column leaves Kabul.

1992 – The U.S. Coast Guard shipped home 250 more Haitian refugees from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, a day after repatriating a shipload of about 150 Haitians.

1994 – High Level Technical Talks in Baghdad. Fourth round of talks between IAEA, UNSCOM & Iraq.

1998 – UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan recommended that the Security Council more than double the amount of oil Iraq is allowed to sell.

1998 – Russia announced that an envoy in Baghdad received concessions from Saddam Hussein on UN weapons inspections. US Sec. Albright failed to get permission from Saudi Arabia for US use of air bases to launch air strikes against Iraq. France, Turkey, Jordan, the Arab League and Yasser Arafat said they would send envoys to Baghdad to avert a possible US military strike.

1999 – In Iraq US pilots operated under broader rules of attack and targeted a newly assembled missile site.

2002 – The Bush administration approved a $700 million grant to help rebuild lower Manhattan devastated by the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.

2002 – In Pakistan police arrested 2 people in Karachi linked to the Jan 23 kidnapping of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

2004 – A white powder containing Ricin, a deadly poison, was discovered in a mail room near the office of US Senate majority leader Bill Frist.

2004 – Pakistan said Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of its nuclear program, has acknowledged in a written statement that he sent sensitive technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea to aid their atomic programs.

2005 – A former secret U.S. military investigative report on Guantanamo Bay is revealed to conclude there is no evidence of systemic detainee abuse but cited several cases of questionable physical force documented on videotape.

2006 – Venezuela expelled U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Correa, a military attaché at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, on suspicion of espionage.

2011 – NASA’s Kepler Mission announces the discovery of a planetary system of six planets circulating the star Kepler-11.

2013 – Former United States Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and another man are killed at a shooting range near Glen Rose, Somervell County, Texas.

February 3rd ~

1690 – Massachusetts authorized the first official paper currency to be ever used in the Western Hemisphere. Until 1690, the North American colonies had dealt primarily in coinage. Silver and gold were rather rare, so colonists generally used unofficial coins, or “decrepit coppers.” Boston-based silversmiths John Hull and Robert Sanderson did operate their own mint between 1652 and 1682, issuing silver shillings and three and sixpence pieces, but save for a few ill-fated experiments, paper money was hardly tried or used.

Faced with an immediate need to pay expenses relating to a military action against Canada during King William’s War, on December 10, 1690 the General Court authorized the issuing of £7,000 in public paper currency. This was the first public paper money issued in the history of Western civilization. Previously all currency had an intrinsic value of gold, silver or copper, much like the value of commodity items used for bartering. Now for the first time, the money itself had no intrinsic value other than the value of the paper on which it was printed. Rather, the value of the money came from the fact that it was backed by the colony. It was legislated as being equivalent to the denomination printed on the bill and would be accepted as the equivalent of hard currency by the colony.

Within a few months it was further legislated that the paper money would be accepted by the government for tax payments at a 5% premium and that on demand bills could be turned into the treasury for the equivalent in hard currency, if the colony had such hard currency available. At first Massachusetts notes were accepted at par with specie, which was predominately the Spanish American silver 8 reales, called a Spanish “dollar” by the colonists. In Massachusetts the Spanish dollar was valued at 6 shillings. In 1690 for every 6s of paper money one could obtain a Spanish silver dollar. As more paper money was put into circulation individuals would no longer accept the paper as equal to specie.

Thus began the usual problem of paper currency, or fiat money, inflation, and the usual response, revaluation, and all in response to the usual cause, the need to pay for a war. By 1737 so much paper money was in circulation it took 22s6d in paper money to equal a Spanish dollar. To rectify this problem the Commonwealth decided to revalue its paper money. Starting with the issue of February 4, 1737 Massachusetts introduced a new series of notes, called New Tenor money, that was legislated to have three times the value of equivalent denomination notes from earlier emissions. However, as more notes were printed inflation continued and the value of both types of notes continued to drop. Once again, another adjustment to the currency was legislated.

For the issue of January 15, 1742 the notes were to have four times the value of equivalent denomination notes from Old Tenor emissions. At this time the emissions from 1737-1740 became known as Middle Tenor or Three Fold Tenor, while the 1742 and later emissions became known as New Tenor (or four fold Tenor). In effect Massachusetts had three different types of currency circulating at once; in 1742 a Spanish dollar was valued at 24s9d in Old Tenor bills, 8s3ds in Middle Tenor bills or 6s2d in New Tenor notes. Unfortunately inflation continued so that by 1749 a Spanish dollar was valued at 45s in Old tenor bills, 15s in Middle tenor bills or 11s3d in New Tenor notes. As individuals might make a purchase using all three varieties it was essential for merchants to know the current inflation rates and to keep a conversion chart handy (various charts were printed for this purpose)!

The real resolution finally came in 1751 with the mandatory redemption of all notes and a return to hard money. There would be no further emission of paper in Massachusetts until the “Soldier’s notes” emission of May 25, 1775 printed by Paul Revere to pay the soldiers who were soon to fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 16th.

1779 – Colonial forces lead by General William Moultrie successfully defend Port Royal, South Carolina, against a British attack. The British approached and tried to force the Americans to leave Beaufort, Moultrie was waiting with 300 militia, 20 Continentals, and 3 cannon. The Americans repulsed their attack in less than an hour. The Americans had to fight in the open while the British had some cover from the woods. The Americans knocked out one of the British guns and erased the British advantage early in the battle. The Americans had run out of ammunition and Moultrie ordered a retreat.

At the same time, he learned that the British were also retreating. He then countermanded his retreat order and told his mounted troops to advance upon the retreating British. The British were able to escape by boat to Savannah and Moultrie moved his force south to rejoin General Benjamin Lincoln. British losses were heavy and they soon retreated to their ships. The American victory discouraged the British Army from taking any further action into South Carolina for 3 months.

February 3rd ~ {continued...}

1781 – In furtherance of a blockade during the American War of Independence, British forces seize the island Sint Eustatius. British army and naval forces under General John Vaughan and Admiral George Rodney seized the Dutch-owned Caribbean island. The capture was controversial in Britain, as it was alleged that Vaughan and Rodney had used the opportunity to enrich themselves and had neglected more important military duties. The island was subsequently taken by Dutch-allied French forces in late 1781, ending the British occupation.

1783 – Spain recognizes the independence of the United States. Sweden and Denmark will follow before the end of the month and Russia will recognize the new nation in July.

1801 – Treaty of peace with France ratified ending Quasi-War with France, in which the Revenue Marine had rendered outstanding service.

1809 – The Territory of Illinois was created from organized incorporated territory of the United States. The territory existed as such until December 3, 1818, when the southern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Illinois. Its capital was the former French village of Kaskakia. The area was earlier known as “Illinois Country” while under French control, first as part of French Canada and then as part of French Louisiana. The British gained authority over the region with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, marking the end of the French and Indian War.

During the American Revolutionary War, Colonel George Rogers Clark took possession of the entire Illinois Country for Virginia, which established the “County of Illinois” to exercise nominal governance over the area. Virginia later ceded nearly all of its claims to land north of the Ohio River to the Federal government of the United States in order to satisfy objections of land-locked states. The area became part of the United States’ Northwest Territory (from July 13, 1787 until July 4, 1800), and then part of the Indiana Territory as Ohio prepared to become a state.

1811 – Horace Greeley, abolitionist newspaper editor, was born in Amherst, New Hampshire. He popularized the phrase “Go west, young man.” Greeley, who began his journalism career at The New Yorker, founded The New York Tribune in 1841 with support from powerful political friends. Under Greeley’s direction, The Tribune took a strong stand against slavery, the South and slave owners in the years leading up to the Civil War. The Tribune and Greeley also crusaded against liquor, gambling, prostitution and capital punishment. One of the founders of the Republican Party, Greeley was also an eccentric who dabbled in many of the fads of his day. The phrase was spoken to Josiah Grinell, who went west to Iowa, became a Congregational minister and founded Grinell College.

1852 – Marines landed at Buenos Aires, Argentina, to protect American lives.

1863 – U.S.S. Lexington, Fairplay, St. Clair, Brilliant, Robb, and Silver Lake, under Lieutenant Commander Fitch, supported Army troops at Fort Donelson and repulsed a Confederate attack at that point. Proceeding up the Cumberland River on convoy duty from Smithfield, Kentucky, Fitch’s squadron met steamer Wild Cat coming down river some 24 miles below Dover, Tennessee, bearing a mes-sage from Colonel Abner C. Harding, commanding at Donelson, which reported that he was being assaulted in force by Confederate troops. Fitch pushed his squadron “on up with all possible speed” and arrived in the evening to find the defending troops “out of ammunition and entirely surrounded by the rebels in overwhelming numbers, but still holding them in check.”

Not expecting the presence of the gunboats, the Confederates had taken a position which enabled the mobile force afloat to rake them effectively with a telling fire from the guns. “The rebels were so much taken by surprise,” Fitch reported, “that they did not even fire a shot, but immediately commenced retreating. So well directed was our fire on them that they could not even carry off a caisson that they had captured from our forces, but were compelled to abandon it, after two fruitless attempts to destroy it by fire.” Fitch then stationed his vessels to prevent the return of the Southern forces.

February 3rd ~ {continued...}

1864 – U.S.S. Petrel, Marmora, Exchange, and Romeo, under Lieutenant Commander Owen, silenced Confederate batteries at Liverpool, Mississippi, on the Yazoo River, as naval forces began an expedition to prevent Southerners from harassing Major General W. T. Sherman’s expedition to Meridian, Mississippi. In the next two weeks, Owen’s light-draft gunboats pushed up the Yazoo Rivet as far as Greenwood, Mississippi, engaging Confederate troops en route. Confederates destroyed steamer Sharp to prevent her capture before the Union naval force turned back. ‘This move,” Rear Admiral Porter later reported to Secretary Welles,” has had the effect of driving the guerrillas away from the Mississippi River, as they are fearful it is intended to cut them off.”

1865 – President Lincoln meets with a delegation of Confederate officials to discuss a possible peace agreement. Lincoln refuses to grant the delegation any concessions, and the president departs for the north. New York Tribune editor and abolitionist Horace Greeley provided the impetus for the conference when he contacted Francis Blair, a Maryland aristocrat and presidential adviser. Greeley suggested that Blair was the “right man” to open discussions with the Confederates to end the war. Blair sought permission from Lincoln to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and he did so twice in January 1865. Blair suggested to Davis that an armistice be forged and the two sides turn their attention to removing the French-supported regime of Maximilian in Mexico. This plan would help cool tensions between North and South by providing a common enemy, he believed.

Meanwhile, the situation was becoming progressively worse for the Confederates in the winter of 1864 and 1865. In January, Union troops captured Fort Fisher and effectively closed Wilmington, North Carolina, the last major port open to blockade runners. Davis conferred with his vice president, Alexander Stephens, and Stephens recommended that a peace commission be appointed to explore a possible armistice. Davis sent Stephens and two others to meet with Lincoln at Hampton Roads, Virginia. The meeting convened on February 3. Stephens asked if there was any way to stop the war and Lincoln replied that the only way was “for those who were resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance.” The delegation underestimated Lincoln’s resolve to make the end of slavery a necessary condition for any peace. The president also insisted on immediate reunification and the laying down of Confederate arms before anything else was discussed.

In short, the Union was in such an advantageous position that Lincoln did not need to concede any issues to the Confederates. Robert M.T. Hunter, one of the delegation, commented that Lincoln was offering little except the unconditional surrender of the South. After less than five hours, the conference ended and the delegation left with no concessions. The war continued for more than two months.

1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to citizens regardless of race. The third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.

1887 – US Congress created the Electoral Count Act to avoid disputed national elections.

1904 – Colombian troops clashed with U.S. Marines in Panama.

1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment, which authorized the federal income tax, was ratified, just a month before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as president. The notion of an income tax, though perhaps not palatable to all Americans, was hardly a novelty. The U.S. government levied an income tax during the Civil War, and although it was allowed to lapse after the war, it was deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1881.

In 1894, legislators went after the tax again and passed a graduated income tax as part of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act. This time, however, the high court reversed course and deemed the tax unconstitutional on the grounds that the legislation, rather than providing for the redistribution of funds to the states, focused narrowly on one portion of the country. Undeterred, pro-tax forces drafted and gained passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1909.

The government was not shy about deploying the Sixteenth Amendment and implemented the first graduated income tax later in the same year as part of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act. Underwood-Simmons, one of Wilson’s key early initiatives, slashed import duties as a means of promoting free trade and boosting the nation’s industrial efforts. In turn, the tax was viewed as a necessary means of recouping some of the funds that the government would lose as a result of the tariff reform.

February 3rd ~ {continued...}

1917 – The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. A German submarine sank the U.S. liner Housatonic off coast of Sicily.

1919 – League of Nations held its 1st meeting in Paris.

1920 – The Allies demanded that 890 German military leaders stand trial for war crimes.

1924 – Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, dies in Washington, D.C., at the age of 67. In 1912, Governor Wilson of New Jersey was elected president in a landslide Democratic victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The focal point of President Wilson’s first term in office was the outbreak of World War I and his efforts to find a peaceful end to the conflict while maintaining U.S. neutrality.

In 1916, he was narrowly reelected president at the end of a close race against Charles Evans Hughes, his Republican challenger. In 1917, the renewal of German submarine warfare against neutral American ships, and the “Zimmerman Note,” which revealed a secret alliance proposal by Germany to Mexico, forced Wilson to push for America’s entry into the war. At the war’s end, President Wilson traveled to France, where he headed the American delegation to the peace conference seeking an official end to the conflict.

At Versailles, Wilson was the only Allied leader who foresaw the future difficulty that might arise from forcing punitive peace terms on an economically ruined Germany. He also successfully advocated the creation of the League of Nations as a means of maintaining peace in the postwar world. In November 1920, President Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at Versailles. In the autumn of 1919, while campaigning in the United States to win approval for the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations, Wilson suffered a severe stroke that paralyzed his left side and caused significant brain damage.

This illness likely contributed to Wilson’s uncharacteristic failure to reach a compromise with the American opponents to the European agreements, and in November the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or the League of Nations. During his last year in office, there is evidence that Wilson’s second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, may have served as acting president for the debilitated and bed-ridden president who often communicated through her.

In March 1921, Wilson’s term expired, and he retired with his wife to Washington, D.C., where he lived until his death on February 3, 1924. Two days later, he was buried in Washington’s National Cathedral, the first president to be laid to rest in the nation’s capital.

1943 – On Guadalcanal the Americans consolidate their front running inland from Tassafaronga. US patrols penetrate much closer to Cape Esperance.

1943 – The U.S. transport ship “Dorchester,” which was carrying troops to Greenland, sank after being hit by a torpedo. Four Army chaplains gave their life belts to four other men, and went down with the ship. The torpedoing of the transport Dorchester off the coast of Greenland saw CGC Comanche and Escanaba respond.

The crew of Escanaba used a new rescue technique when pulling survivors from the water. This “retriever” technique used swimmers clad in wet suits to swim to victims in the water and secure a line to them so they could be hauled onto the ship. Although Escanaba saved 133 men (one died later) and Comanche saved 97, over 600 men were lost, including the famous “Four Chaplains”.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German forces commanded by General Mackensen begin limited attacks against the British 1st Division salient around Campoleone. To the south, the New Zealand Corps (General Freyberg) joins the US 5th Army order of battle. It is being deployed near Cassino.

February 3rd ~ {continued...}

1944 – American forces invade and take control of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations. The Marshalls, east of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the “Japanese Mandated Islands” as determined by the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles, which concluded the First World War, stipulated certain islands formerly controlled by Germany–including the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas (except Guam)–had to be ceded to the Japanese, though “overseen” by the League.

But the Japanese withdrew from the League in 1933 and began transforming the Mandated Islands into military bases. Non-Japanese, including Christian missionaries, were kept from the islands as naval and air bases–meant to threaten shipping lanes between Australia and Hawaii–were constructed. During the Second World War, these islands, as well as others in the vicinity, became targets of Allied attacks. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign began with the Gilbert Islands, south of the Mandated Islands; U.S. forces conquered the Gilberts in November 1943.

Next on the agenda was Operation Flintlock, a plan to capture the Marshall Islands. Adm. Raymond Spruance led the 5th Fleet from Pearl Harbor on January 22, 1944, to the Marshalls, with the goal of getting 53,000 assault troops ashore two islets: Roi and Namur. Meanwhile, using the Gilberts as an air base, American planes bombed the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, which was located on Kwajalein, an atoll that was part of the Marshall cluster of atolls, islets, and reefs. By January 31, Kwajalein was devastated. Repeated carrier- and land-based air raids destroyed every Japanese airplane on the Marshalls. By February 3, U.S. infantry overran Roi and Namur atolls. The Marshalls were then effectively in American hands–with the loss of only 400 American lives.

1944 – General George C. Marshall, in a memorandum to President Roosevelt dated February 3, 1944, wrote: ‘The fact that the ground troops, Infantry in particular, lead miserable lives of extreme discomfort and are the ones who must close in personal combat with the enemy, makes the maintenance of their morale of great importance. The award of the Air Medal have had an adverse reaction on the ground troops, particularly the Infantry Riflemen who are now suffering the heaviest losses, air or ground, in the Army, and enduring the greatest hardships.’ The Air Medal had been adopted two years earlier to raise airmen’s morale.

1945 – French and American units complete the capture of Colmar. All formations of French 1st Army are now making good progress in this sector. The other Allied armies keep up the pressure on the Germans all along the front.

1945 – On Luzon in the Tagaytay Ridge area, the uncommitted regiment of the US 11th Airborne Division is dropped to help the advance of the other regiments. The fighting north of Manila also continues.

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

1945 – As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin.

1950 – Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British scientist who helped developed the atomic bomb, is arrested in Great Britain for passing top-secret information about the bomb to the Soviet Union. The arrest of Fuchs led authorities to several other individuals involved in a spy ring, culminating with the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their subsequent execution. Fuchs and his family fled Germany in 1933 to avoid Nazi persecution and came to Great Britain, where Fuchs earned his doctorate in physics.

During World War II, British authorities were aware of the leftist leanings of both Fuchs and his father. However, Fuchs was eventually invited to participate in the British program to develop an atomic bomb (the project named “Tube Alloys”) because of his expertise. At some point after the project began, Soviet agents contacted Fuchs and he began to pass information about British progress to them. Late in 1943, Fuchs was among a group of British scientists brought to America to work on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop an atomic bomb. Fuchs continued his clandestine meetings with Soviet agents. When the war ended, Fuchs returned to Great Britain and continued his work on the British atomic bomb project.

Fuchs’ arrest in 1950 came after a routine security check of Fuchs’ father, who had moved to communist East Germany in 1949. While the check was underway, British authorities received information from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation that decoded Soviet messages in their possession indicated Fuchs was a Russian spy. On February 3, officers from Scotland Yard arrested Fuchs and charged him with violating the Official Secrets Act. Fuchs eventually admitted his role and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released in 1959 and spent his remaining years living with his father in East Germany.

Fuchs’ capture set off a chain of arrests. Harry Gold, whom Fuchs implicated as the middleman between himself and Soviet agents, was arrested in the United States. Gold thereupon informed on David Greenglass, one of Fuchs’ co-workers on the Manhattan Project. After his apprehension, Greenglass implicated his sister-in-law and her husband, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. They were arrested in New York in July 1950, found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, and executed at Sing Sing Prison in June 1953.

February 3rd ~ {continued...}

1953 – Carrier aircraft blasted western Korea from Chinnampo to Haeju while the cruisers USS Toledo and Rochester and the destroyers USS Kidd and Chevalier engaged targets in the Kosong area.

1961 – The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a “Doomsday Plane” is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States’ bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC’s command post.

1962 – President John F. Kennedy banned all trade with Cuba except for food & drugs.

1970 – The Senate Foreign Relations Committee opens hearings on the conduct of the war by the Nixon administration. Senator Charles Goodell (R-New York) said that Vietnamization (President Richard Nixon’s program to transfer war responsibility to the South Vietnamese) had been a “great public relations success.” Taking exception with Senator Goodell’s assessment, Senators Harold Hughes (D-Iowa), Thomas Eagleton (D-Missouri), and Alan Cranston (D-California) testified in support of a Senate resolution calling for the termination of the American commitment to South Vietnam unless the Saigon government took steps to broaden its cabinet, stop press censorship, and release political prisoners.

1984 – STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger. STS-41-B was the tenth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the fourth flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It launched on February 3, 1984, and landed on February 11 after deploying two communications satellites. It was also notable for including the first untethered spacewalk.

1988 – The U.S. House of Representatives handed President Reagan a major defeat, rejecting his request for at least $36.25 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

1988 – The Air Force Arial Achievement Medal, was established by the Secretary of the Air Force. It is awarded by the Department of the Air Force to U.S. military and civilian personnel for sustained meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight. The achievements must be accomplished with distinction above and beyond that normally expected of professional airmen.

1991 – US military officials confirmed that seven of eleven Marines who were killed in combat on January 30th died from “friendly fire.”

1994 – Nearly two decades after the fall of Saigon, U.S. President Bill Clinton announces the lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam, citing the cooperation of Vietnam’s communist government in helping the United States locate the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War. Despite the lifting of the embargo, high tariffs remained on Vietnamese exports pending the country’s qualification as a “most favored nation,” a U.S. trade-status designation that Vietnam might earn after broadening its program of free-market reforms.

In July 1995, the Clinton administration established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam. In making the decision, Clinton was advised by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, an ex-Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. Brushing aside criticism of Clinton’s decision by some Republicans, McCain asserted that it was time for America to normalize relations with its old enemy. Five years later, in November 2000, President Clinton became the first president to visit Vietnam since Richard Nixon’s 1969 trip to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

1994 – The space shuttle Discovery lifted off, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a U.S. spacecraft.

1995 – Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. STS-63 was the second mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried out the first rendezvous of the American Space Shuttle with Russia’s space station Mir. Known as the ‘Near-Mir’ mission, the flight used Space Shuttle Discovery.

1996 – Sergeant First Class Donald A. Dugan, 38, became the first US soldier killed while on duty in Bosnia when a piece of ammunition exploded in his hands.

February 3rd ~ {continued...}

1997 – The Army announced that a retired female sergeant major had accused Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney of sexual assault and harassment. McKinney, who was accused of sexual misconduct by six women, faced court-martial, but was acquitted of 18 charges of pressuring enlisted women for sex. He received a reprimand and reduction in rank.

1998 – A US surveillance aircraft cut a ski cable in Italy and caused the death of 20 skiers in a gondola cable car running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis. The EA-6B aircraft was normally used for patrols over Bosnia and was only slightly damaged. Lt. Col. Steven Watters was later relieved of command for telling crew members of a related squadron to destroy evidence in the investigation.

The pilot did not have Italian military maps that identified the ski lift. Four crewmen were later charged by the Marine Corps with negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty. The pilot and navigator faced trial for manslaughter. Pilot Richard J. Ashby was acquitted of all charges in 1999. Navigator Joseph Schweitzer was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide charges. Schweitzer later pleaded guilty to obstruction and conspiracy charges for destroying a videotape made during the flight.

The tape indicated that the plane had been flying upside down. Schweitzer was sentenced to dismissal from the Marine Corps. Capt. Ashby (32) was found guilty of obstruction of justice and conspiracy in May, 1999 and was sentenced to 6 months in prison and dismissed from the Marine Corps. Families of the victims settled for $2 million apiece in 2000.

1999 – The Clinton administration told Congress a NATO-led peacekeeping force could be needed in Kosovo for three to five years and might include up to 4,000 American troops.

1999 – In Kosovo members of the KLA demanded that peace talks include a guaranteed vote for independence.

2000 – The US Navy in the Straits of Hormuz took control of a Russian tanker, Volgoneft-147, on suspicion that it was smuggling oil from Iraq in violation of US sanctions. Tests showed the oil came from Iraq and it was forced to discharge the oil in Oman.

2003 – It was reported that the US and Britain had mapped out a strategy to limit arms inspections in Iraq to no more than 6 more weeks.

2003 – A new British report said Iraqi security agents have bugged every room and telephone of the UN weapons inspectors based in Baghdad and have hidden documents in Iraqi hospitals, mosques and homes.

2004 – US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said that a white powder found in his office tested positive for ricin, forcing closure of Senate office buildings and close scrutiny of congressional mail.

2005 – An Afghan passenger jet carrying 104 people disappeared from radar screens during a snowstorm near the mountain-ringed capital. NATO helicopters found the wreckage of 2 days later. There were no survivors.

2005 – An interim UN report zeroed in on the chief of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, saying Saddam Hussein’s regime awarded oil allocations in his name to a trading company between 1998 and 2001.

2006 – Jamal al-Bedawi, who masterminded the USS Cole bombing, and Fawaz al-Rabeiee, who planned the 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg, escape from a prison in Yemen along with 22 other prisoners, 12 of whom were convicted members of Al-Qaida.

2006 – The United States expels Venezuelan diplomat Jeny Figueredo Frias in retaliation for yesterday’s expulsion of suspected US spy John Correa from Venezuela. A State Department spokesman described the move as part of “tit-for-tat diplomatic games”.

2009 – Suspected Taliban militants suspend NATO supply lines by destroying a bridge on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

2010 – NASA and Cornell University have given up attempting to move the Spirit rover, currently stuck in sand near Home Plate, Gusev crater on the planet Mars, and are converting it into a stationary outpost. Its twin rover, Opportunity, remains mobile on Mars.

2012 – Major General Michael Linnington orders a court martial for US Private Bradley Manning responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks.

February 4th ~

786 – Harun al-Rashid succeeded his older brother the Abbasid Caliph al-Hadi as Caliph of Baghdad.

1747 – Tadeusz Kosciusko, patriot, American Revolution hero (built West Point), was born in Poland.

1777 – George Washington appoints Nathaniel Sackett as spymaster over what will become the Culper Ring of spies. During the American War of Independence the Culper ring was assigned to obtain intelligence on the plans of the British enemy forces in New York. His work involved the recruitment of agents and informers, behind the enemy lines, if necessary paid from a purse of $500 sanctioned by Washington.

Nathaniel was recommended to General Washington by William Duer, a Continental Congressman, with whom Nathaniel served on the New York committee for detecting and defeating conspiracies. Taking his instructions personally from Washington, Nathaniel set up an intelligence-gathering network in the New York area. He was soon reporting information gathered in the field to Duer and through him to Washington. The Culpers were extremely successful, the more so for having to develop tradecraft as they went, with an intricate arrangement of dead drops and codes.

1779 – John Paul Jones takes command of Bonhomme Richard. Bonhomme Richard, formerly Duc de Duras, was a warship in the Continental Navy. She was originally an East Indiaman, a merchant ship built in France for the French East India Company in 1765, for service between France and the Orient. She was placed at the disposal of John Paul Jones, who renamed the vessel in honor of Benjamin Franklin, by King Louis XVI of France as a result of a loan to the United States by French shipping magnate, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray.

1783 – Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, the United States of America.

1787 – In an attack on Shays’ insurgents at Petersham, Massachusetts, General Benjamin Lincoln captures 150 rebels and forces Shays to flee for Vermont. By the end of the month, the uprising has been completely suppressed. In March the Massachusetts legislature offers a pardon to all except Shays, Luke Day and two other leaders. Shays will be pardoned on 13 June, 1788.

This rebellion has the effect of causing the state legislature to avoid direct taxation, to lower court costs, and to exempt household necessities and workmen’s tools from the debt process. Shays’ Rebellion is also an important factor in influencing the creation of a new federal constitution, since the states have seen how essentially powerless they are to prevent such incidents of violence.

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1789 – George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors. John Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice president. The electors, who represented 10 of the 11 states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both four weeks before the election.

According to Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, the states appointed a number of presidential electors equal to the “number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress.” Each elector voted for two people, at least one of whom did not live in their state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes was elected president, and the next-in-line, vice president. (In 1804, this practice was changed by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which ordered separate ballots for the office of president and vice president.) New York–though it was to be the seat of the new United States government–failed to choose its eight presidential electors in time for the vote on February 4, 1789. Two electors each from Virginia and Maryland were delayed by weather and did not vote.

In addition, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would have had seven and three electors respectively, had not ratified the Constitution and so could not vote. That the remaining 69 unanimously chose Washington to lead the new U.S. government was a surprise to no one. As commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War, he had led his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers to victory over one of the world’s great powers. After the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Washington rejected with abhorrence a suggestion by one of his officers that he use his preeminence to assume a military dictatorship. He would not subvert the very principles for which so many Americans had fought and died, he replied, and soon after, he surrendered his military commission to the Continental Congress and retired to his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.

When the Articles of Convention proved ineffectual, and the fledging republic teetered on the verge of collapse, Washington again answered his country’s call and traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to preside over the Constitutional Convention. Although he favored the creation of a strong central government, as president of the convention he maintained impartiality in the public debates. Outside the convention hall, however, he made his views known, and his weight of character did much to bring the proceedings to a close.

The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and on September 17, 1787, the document was signed. The next day, Washington started for home, hoping that, his duty to his country again served, he could live out the rest of his days in privacy. However, a crisis soon arose when the Constitution fell short of its necessary ratification by nine states. Washington threw himself into the ratification debate, and a compromise agreement was made in which the remaining states would ratify the document in exchange for passage of the constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights.

Government by the United States began on March 4, 1789. In April, Congress sent word to George Washington that he had unanimously won the presidency. He borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New York. On April 30, he came across the Hudson River in a specially built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowed cheered after he took the oath of office.

The president then retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” The evening celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons. As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad.

Of his presidency, he said, “I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term. In 1797, he finally began his long-awaited retirement at Mount Vernon.

He died on December 14, 1799. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1822 – Free American Blacks settled Liberia, West Africa. The first group of colonists landed in Liberia and founded Monrovia, the colony’s capital city, named in honor of President James Monroe.

1859 – U.S. signs “Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation” with Paraguay at Asuncion after the revenue cutter Harriet Lane, as part of a US Navy expedition, forces the opening of the Paraguay and Parana Rivers. During the 1850s, Carlos Antonio Lopez, dictator of the small, landlocked, South American country of Paraguay, was a thorn in the side of the United States government.

In 1853, Lopez refused to ratify a commercial and navigational treaty with the United States, and began confiscating the property of American citizens resident in Paraguay. Because of a dispute with Britain, Lopez closed Paraguayan waters to foreign warships. In February 1855, Paraguayan soldiers fired upon an American ship engaged in a scientific survey of the Parana River, killing one American crew member. Nearly three years after the incident, and with a second scientific expedition in preparation, President James Buchanan decided that a show of force was necessary to bring about a redress of the situation.

In his first annual message to Congress of December 1857, Buchanan requested funding for a military expedition to Paraguay. With a Congressional allocation of $10,000, a naval squadron of 19 vessels, 200 guns, and 2500 sailors and marines under the command of Commodore William B. Shubrick embarked for Paraguay in the early winter of 1858. It was the largest military expedition in the peacetime history of the United States to that date. Harper’s Weekly emphasized the importance of the mission’s demand that American citizens in Paraguay be granted the same rights and protections that Paraguayan citizens in the United States were accorded.

After landing at Montevideo, Uruguay, the American force began the 1000-mile journey up the Parana River to the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion. This was one of the major news stories in Harper’s Weekly during the spring of 1859. The newspaper provided illustrations, portraits, maps, letters from participants, and reports from a special correspondent. The situation was dramatized by the news that the 2500 Americans were preparing to face 15,000 of the best troops in South America. Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, formally apologized for the shooting incident of 1855, compensated the family and employer of the slain sailor, and signed a treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States.

1861 – The Confederate State of America is open for business when the Provisional Congress convenes in Montgomery, Alabama. The official record read: “Be it remembered that on the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the Capitol of the State of Alabama, in the city of Montgomery, at the hour of noon, there assembled certain deputies and delegates from the several independent South State of North America…”

The first order of business was drafting a constitution. They used the U.S. Constitution as a model, and most of it was taken verbatim. It took just four days to hammer out a tentative document to govern the new nation. The president was limited to one six-year term. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the word “slave” was used and the institution protected in all states and any territories to be added later. Importation of slaves was prohibited, as this would alienate European nations and would detract from the profitable “internal slave trade” in the South.

Other components of the constitution were designed to enhance the power of the states–governmental money for internal improvements was banned and the president was given a line-item veto on appropriations bills. The Congress then turned its attention to selecting a president. The delegates settled on Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate who was the U.S. Secretary of War in the 1850s and a senator from Mississippi.

1861 – The Apache Wars begin. A group of unidentified Indians stole cattle and kidnapped the stepson of the rancher John Ward near Sonoita, Arizona, Arizona. Ward sought redress from the nearby American army. Lieutenant George N. Bascom was dispatched and Ward accompanied the detail. Bascom set out to meet with Cochise near Apache Pass and the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach station to secure the cattle and Ward’s son. Cochise was unaware of the incident, but he offered to seek those responsible. Dissatisfied, Bascom accused Cochise of having been involved. He took Cochise and his group of family members under arrest in the negotiating tent. Angered, Cochise slashed his way from the tent and escaped.

After further failed negotiations, Cochise took a member of the stage coach station hostage after an exchange of gunfire. With Bascom unwilling to exchange prisoners, Cochise and his party killed the members of a passing Mexican wagon train. The Apache killed and ritually mutilated nine Mexicans, and took three whites captive, but killed them later. They were unsuccessful in attempting an ambush of a Butterfield Overland stagecoach. With negotiations between Cochise and Bascom at an impasse, Bascom sent for reinforcements. Cochise killed the remaining four captives from the Butterfield Station and abandoned negotiations.

Upon the advice of military surgeon, Dr. Bernard Irwin, Bascom hanged the Apache hostages in his custody. The retaliatory executions became known as the Bascom Affair; they initiated another eleven years of open warfare between the varying groups of Apache and the United States settlers, the U.S. Army and the Confederate Army.

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1862 – Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, gallant defender of Fort Henry, informed General John B. Floyd: “Gunboats and transports in Tennessee River. Enemy landing in force 5 miles below Fort Henry.” After initiating the debarkation of troops below Fort Henry, Flag Officer Foote, in U.S.S. Cincinnati with General Grant on board, took the four ironclad gunboats that he had been able to man up the Tennessee for reconnoitering, and exchanged shots with the Confederate gunners.

Torpedoes, planted in the river but torn loose by the flooding waters, floated by. Foote had some fished out for inspection. He and Grant went aft to watch the disassembling of one. According to a reminiscence, suddenly there was a strange hiss. The deck was rapidly cleared. Grant beat Foote to the top of the ladder. When Foote asked the General about his hurry, Grant replied that ”the Army did not believe in letting the Navy get ahead of it.”

1865 – Belatedly, Robert E. Lee is named Commander in Chief of the Confederate Army. Lee knows as well as anyone that the cause is now hopeless.

1865 – A boat expedition under Lieutenant Commander Cushing, U.S.S. Monticello, proceeded up Little River, South Carolina, placing the small town of All Saints Parish under guard and capturing a number of Confederate soldiers. On the 5th Cushing destroyed some $15,000 worth of cotton.

1868 – Marines landed at Osaka, Japan, to protect foreign nationals.

1899 – After an exchange of gunfire, fighting broke out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War (also referred to as the Philippine Insurrection of 1899). American soldiers patrolling in Santa Mesa opened fire on Filipino soldiers near a bridge over the San Juan River.

1915 – Germans decreed British waters part of war zone; all ships were to be sunk without warning.

1938 – Hitler seized control of German army and put Nazis in key posts.

1941 – The United Service Organization, a civilian agency, is founded. The organization was formed to offer support for U.S. service members and their families, and sent many actors, musicians, and other performers to entertain the troops. In 1948, the original USO was disbanded, but formed again the following year, and still exists today, providing recreation, entertainment, children’s programs and other services to U.S. military families. Bob Hope made annual trips to entertain overseas troops from World War II through Desert Storm in 1991.

1942 – Dutch and American ships attacking in the Makassar Straits are repelled by Japanese aircraft. Two American cruisers are damaged in the fighting.

1943 – On Guadalcanal, about 5000 more Japanese troops are evacuated by a squadron (led by Admiral Koyanagi) consisting of one cruiser and 22 destroyers. Four of the ships are damaged. Meanwhile, the US 147th Regiment advances west of Tassafaronga.

1944 – Organized Japanese resistance in the Kwajalein Atoll ends. Most of the 8700 Japanese garrison commanded by Admiral Akiyama have been killed. Only 265 are captured, many are Korean laborers or wounded. The Americans have deployed 41,000 troops of whom 370 have been killed in action and 1500 wounded.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German attacks force the British 1st Division to fall back. Meanwhile, to the south, the forces of US 5th Army continue offensive operations. The US 34th Division gains ground near Point 593 and Point 445 as well as attacking Colle Sant’Angelo.

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1944 – President Roosevelt authorized the Bronze Star Medal by Executive Order 9419 dated 4 February 1944, retroactive to 7 December 1941. This authorization was announced in War Department Bulletin No. 3, dated 10 February 1944. The Executive Order was amended by President Kennedy, per Executive Order 11046 dated 24 August 1962, to expand the authorization to include those serving with friendly forces.

1945 – The Yalta Conference begins. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin and their senior military and political advisors meet to discuss the postwar order and the war with Japan. Yalta is a recently liberated Crimean resort. While a number of important agreements were reached at the conference, tensions over European issues-particularly the fate of Poland-foreshadowed the crumbling of the Grand Alliance that had developed between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union during World War II and hinted at the Cold War to come.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin each arrived with their own agendas for the conference. For Stalin, postwar economic assistance for Russia, and U.S. and British recognition of a Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe were the main objectives. Churchill had the protection of the British Empire foremost in his mind, but also wanted to clarify the postwar status of Germany. Roosevelt’s goals included consensus on establishment of the United Nations and gaining Soviet agreement to enter the war against Japan once Hitler had been defeated. None of them left Yalta completely satisfied.

There was no definite determination of financial aid for Russia. Many issues pertaining to Germany were deferred for further discussion. As for the United Nations, Stalin wanted all 16 Soviet republics represented in the General Assembly, but settled for three (the Soviet Union as a whole, Belorussia, and the Ukraine). However, the Soviets did agree to join in the war against Japan 90 days after Hitler’s Germany was defeated. It was over the issue of the postwar status of Poland, however, that the animosity and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union that would characterize the Cold War were most readily apparent. Soviet troops were already in control of Poland, a procommunist provisional government had already been established, and Stalin was adamant that Russia’s interests in that nation be recognized.

The United States and Great Britain believed that the London-based noncommunist Polish government-in-exile was most representative of the Polish people. The final agreement merely declared that a “more broadly based” government should be established in Poland. Free elections to determine Poland’s future were called for sometime in the future. Many U.S. officials were disgusted with the agreement, which they believed condemned Poland to a communist future. Roosevelt, however, felt that he could do no more at the moment, since the Soviet army was occupying Poland.

As the Cold War became a reality in the years that followed the Yalta Conference, many critics of Roosevelt’s foreign policy accused him of “selling out” at the meeting and naively letting Stalin have his way. It seems doubtful, however, that Roosevelt had much choice. He was able to secure Russian participation in the war against Japan (Russia declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945), established the basic principles of the United Nations, and did as much as possible to settle the Poland issue.

With World War II still raging, his primary interest was in maintaining the Grand Alliance. He believed that troublesome political issues could be postponed and solved after the war. Unfortunately, Roosevelt never got that chance–almost exactly two months after the end of the conference, Roosevelt suffered a stroke and died.

1945 – The Allies announce that all German forces have been expelled from Belgium. US 1st and 3rd Army units are attacking toward the Roer River around Duren.

1945 – On Luzon, advance units of the US 1st Cavalry Division reach the outskirts of Manila from the north while units of 11th Airborne Division approach from the south. Yamashita has not ordered his forces to defend the city but the 20,000 Japanese troops under the local naval commander in the city are prepared to fight to the end.

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

1959 – Keel laying of USS Enterprise, 1st nuclear powered aircraft carrier, at Newport News, VA.

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1962 – The first U.S. helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. It was one of 15 helicopters ferrying South Vietnamese Army troops into battle near the village of Hong My in the Mekong Delta. The first U.S. helicopter unit had arrived in South Vietnam aboard the ferry carrier USNS Core on December 11, 1961. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.

1964 – The federal government put an end to one of the nation’s more shameful bits of legislation by authorizing the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which effectively outlawed the poll tax. The tax stemmed back to the 1880s, when members of the burgeoning Populist party began to build a potentially potent coalition of African American and lower class white voters in the South. Across the region, planters, merchants, and industrialists moved to preserve their power and pushed for the passage of a deliberately prohibitive poll tax.

The legislation, adopted by a host of Southern states, proved all too effective, as scores of African-Americans, as well as the “poorer sort” of whites, simply could not afford to pay the tax and thus lost the right to vote. However, thanks in large part to the efforts of Senator Spessard L. Holland of Florida, the once recalcitrant Congress slowly came around to the cause of outlawing the tax and passed the Twenty-fourth Amendment. On January 23, 1964, the amended was ratified by the South Dakota legislature, giving it the three-fourth majority necessary to make it the law of the land.

1965 – Mc George Bundy, American Special Assistant for National Security, arrives in Saigon for talks with U.S. Ambassador General Maxwell Taylor. Two days later Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin arrived in Hanoi. There was worldwide speculation that their visits were linked–that the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to pressure their “clients” into negotiations–but this was denied by all the principals.

Bundy, in fact, was there to confer with Ambassador Taylor on the best way to deal with the political situation. And although Kosygin publicly proclaimed continued Soviet support for North Vietnam and the communist war, a Soviet participant in the talks later described the North Vietnamese as “a bunch of stubborn bastards.”

1966 – Senate Foreign Relations Committee began televised hearings on the Vietnam War.

1967 – Lunar Orbiter 3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13 on its mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft.

1969 – Al-Fatah-leader Yasser Arafat officially took over as chairman of PLO.

1971 – National Guard was mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington, NC.

1971 – Moonwalk by CAPT Alan B. Shepherd, Jr. USN, Commander of Apollo 14 and CDR Edgar D. Mitchell, USN Lunar Module Pilot. During the 9 day mission, 94 lbs of lunar material was collected and Shepard became the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon.

1972 – A force of 824 soldiers, the last of Thailand’s 12,000 troops serving in South Vietnam, departs. The Thai contingent, which had first arrived in country in the fall of 1967, had been part of the Free World Military Forces, an effort by President Lyndon B. Johnson to enlist allies for the United States and South Vietnam.

By securing support from other nations, Johnson hoped to build an international consensus behind his policies in Vietnam. The effort was also known as the “many flags” program. In all, 44 countries responded to Johnson plea for military aid to South Vietnam, but only Australia, New Zealand, Korea, and Thailand provided combat troops. In the end, the program never achieved the widespread international support that Johnson sought.

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1974 – Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of publishing billionaire William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, apartment. Stephen Weed, Hearst’s fiancý, was beaten unconscious by the two abductors. Soon, a ransom demand came from the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical activist group led by Donald DeFreeze. DeFreeze had formed the SLA in 1973 after he escaped from prison.

On November 6, 1973, the SLA shot and killed Marcus Foster, Oakland’s superintendent of schools, with bullets laced with cyanide. Less than a month before Hearst’s kidnapping, an SLA bomb-making factory was discovered by the police. The SLA instructed William Hearst to distribute $70 million in food to the poor in Oakland to have Patty released. The Black Muslims, Malcolm X’s former organization, were chosen to manage the food distribution, which turned into a riot when more than 10,000 people showed up and fought for the food.

However, DeFreeze and the SLA did not release Patty. The Hearst story took a strange and unexpected turn two months after the abduction, when the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. The surveillance cameras clearly showed that Patty Hearst was one of the machine gun-toting robbers. Soon after followed a taped message from the SLA in which Hearst claimed that she had voluntarily joined the SLA and was now to be known as “Tania.”

On May 17, 1974, police were tipped that the SLA leaders were at a Los Angeles home. With 400 police and FBI agents outside the house, a tremendous gun battle broke out. The overwhelming firepower of the police eventually caused a fire to break out. DeFreeze and five other SLA members died in the fire. However, Hearst was not inside the house. She was not found until September 1975. Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape, isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA.

Prosecutors believed that she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst’s sentence after she had served two years. Hearst is currently seeking a pardon.

1982 – President Reagan announced a plan to eliminate all medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

February 4th ~ {continued...}

1982 – The Attorney General, William Smith, declared at a press conference that Operation Tiburon was “the most successful international marijuana interdiction effort to date.” The operation began in November, 1980, and accounted for the seizure of 95 vessels. It was a combined operation that included elements of the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service and various state and local law enforcement agencies.

1991 – Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani offered to hold talks with Iraq and the United States in an attempt to mediate an end to the Gulf War.

2002 – The CIA believed that it killed a top al Qaeda official with a Hellfire missile, Predator aerial drone, near Zawar Kili, Afghanistan. 7 al Qaeda members were killed.

2002 – In Afghanistan northern militia factions agreed to withdraw from Mazar-e-Sharif and create a new joint security force.

2003 – President George H.W. Bush visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he led a tribute to the lost crew of the shuttle Columbia and rededicated the nation to space travel.

2003 – A rare television interview with Saddam Hussein aired in which the Iraqi leader charged that US claims of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in his country were a pretext to seize Iraq’s oil fields.

2003 – The North Atlantic Council decided to extend Operation Active Endeavour to include escorting non-military ships traveling through the Strait of Gibraltar to maintain security in the area and to secure the safe transit of designated Allied ships.

2005 – The UN vowed to discipline two officials implicated in a report that detailed conflicts of interest and flawed management in the U.N. oil-for-food program. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will discipline Benon Sevan and another UN official, Joseph Stephanides, who may have “tainted” bidding for an oil-for-food contract.

2005 – Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz announced that 15,000 U.S. troops whose tours of duty had been extended in order to provide election security would be pulled out of Iraq by the next month.

2008 – United States district court judge Florence-Marie Cooper rules that President George W. Bush cannot exempt the United States Navy from complying with environmental laws banning sonar training. Later in the year, the US Supreme Court overturns this ruling.

2012 – The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan estimates that civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan rose to a record level in 2011 of 3021 with insurgents responsible for most of the deaths.

February 5th ~

1631 – Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island and an important American religious leader, arrives in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England. Williams, a Puritan, worked as a teacher before serving briefly as a colorful pastor at Plymouth and then at Salem. Within a few years of his arrival, he alarmed the Puritan oligarchy of Massachusetts by speaking out against the right of civil authorities to punish religious dissension and to confiscate Indian land.

In October 1635, he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court. After leaving Massachusetts, Williams, with the assistance of the Narragansett tribe, established a settlement at the junction of two rivers near Narragansett Bay, located in present-day Rhode Island. He declared the settlement open to all those seeking freedom of conscience and the removal of the church from civil matters, and many dissatisfied Puritans came.

Taking the success of the venture as a sign from God, Williams named the community “Providence.” Among those who found a haven in the religious and political refuge of the Rhode Island Colony were Anne Hutchinson–like Williams, exiled from Massachusetts for religious reasons–some of the first Jews to settle in North America, and the Quakers. In Providence, Roger Williams also founded the first Baptist church in America and edited the first dictionary of Native American languages.

1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1723 – John Witherspoon, Declaration of Independence signer, was born.

1783 – Sweden recognized the independence of the United States.

1840 – Hiram Stevens Maxim (d.1916), inventor of the automatic single-barrel rifle, was born in Sangerville, Maine. He invented the hair-curling iron, and patented such items as a mousetrap, a locomotive headlight, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments for lamps, and an automatic sprinkling system.

1847 – General Taylor has growing disagreements with President Polk and believes he must protect himself politically and militarily. He defends his views and actions in a New York newspaper on 22 January and then disobeys orders to communicate with General Scott and moves west.

1864 – Federal forces occupied Jackson, Mississippi.

1865 – Union and Confederate forces around Petersburg, Virginia, begin a three-day battle that produces 3,000 casualties but ends with no significant advantage for either side. Dabney’s Mill was another attempt by Union General Ulysses S. Grant to break the siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia.

In 1864, Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee pounded each other as they wheeled south around the cities. After a month of heavy battling that produced the highest casualty rates of the war, Grant and Lee settled into trenches around Petersburg. These lines eventually stretched 25 miles to Richmond, and the stalemate continued for 10 months. Periodically, Grant mounted offensives either to break through Lee’s lines or envelope the ends.

In June, August, and October, these moves failed to extricate the Confederates from their trenches. Now, Grant sent cavalry under General David Gregg to capture a road that carried supplies from Hicksford, Virginia, into Petersburg. On February 5, Gregg moved and captured a few wagons along his objective, the Boydton Plank Road. He found little else, so he pulled back toward the rest of the Union army. Yankee infantry under General Gouverneur K. Warren also moved forward and probed the area at the end of the Confederate’s Petersburg line.

The Rebels responded by moving troops into the area. Skirmishes erupted that evening and the fighting continued for two more days as each side maneuvered for an advantage. The fighting surged back and forth around Dabney’s Mill, but the Yankees were never able to penetrate the Confederate lines. The Union suffered 2,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, while the Confederates lost about 1,000. The battle did extend the Petersburg line a few miles to further stretch Lee’s thin lines, but the stalemate continued for six more weeks before Grant’s forces finally sent Lee racing west with the remnants of his army.

The chase ended in April when Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.

February 5th ~ {continued...}

1900 – The United States and Great Britain signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the United States the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it.

1904 – The American occupation of Cuba ended.

1917 – With more than a two-thirds majority, Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passes the Immigration Act. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or agreements with the United States, such as the Philippines.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States received a majority of the world’s immigrants, with 1.3 million immigrants passing through New York’s Ellis Island in 1907 alone. Various restrictions had been applied against immigrants since the 1890s, but most of those seeking entrance into the United States were accepted. However, in 1894, the Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston and subsequently petitioned the U.S. government to legislate that immigrants be required to demonstrate literacy in some language before being accepted. The organization hoped to quell the recent surge of lower-class immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Congress passed a literacy bill in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it.

In early 1917, with America’s entrance into World War I three months away, xenophobia was at a new high, and a bill restricting immigration was passed over President Wilson’s veto. Subsequent immigration to the United States sharply declined, and, in 1924 a law was passed requiring immigrant inspection in countries of origin, leading to the closure of Ellis Island and other major immigrant processing centers. Between 1892 and 1924, some 16 million people successfully immigrated to the United States to seek a better life.

1918 – The 1st Marine Replacement Battalion sailed for France in WW I.

1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military. His unit, the 1st Aero Squadron had not yet begun combat operations. Thompson visited a French unit with a fellow member of the 1st Aero Squadron and both were invited to fly as gunner-bombardiers with the French on a bombing raid over Saarbrücken, Germany.

After they had dropped their bombs, the squadron was attacked by Albatros D.III fighters. Thompson shot down one of them. This was the first aerial victory by any member of the U.S. military. He was awarded the Croix de guerre with Palm for the action.

1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1940 – The US Maritime Commission announces that Britain and France are buying 113,000 tons of old American cargo ships.

1942 – The United States declares war on Thailand.

1942 – The British RAF drops 1.4 million copies of 2 American leaflets, describing scale of the US arms program, over 8 French cities and towns.

1945 – The German pocket near Colmar is cut in two by a link between French units and part of the US 21st Corps. Farther north, US 1st Army extends its attacks, led by US 5th Corps, toward the Roer aiming to take the Schwammenauel Dam.

February 5th ~ {continued...}

1945 – The US forces close in tighter around Manila. The US 11th Corps has completed its attack across the Bataan Peninsula.

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

1947 – The Soviet Union and Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over Japanese Pacific Isles.

1951 – Operation ROUNDUP, an advance by X Corps, began. This attack in the central front was directed against the enemy’s II and V Corps with friendly forces converging on Hongchon from the east and west.

1953 – The American Iron and Steel Institution announced that U.S. steel concerns had produced 117,500,000 short tons of steel during the past year. The years following World War II were a heady time for the American steel industry. Long suffering from the effects of the Great Depression, the industry was revived by the war, as the nation’s factories were given the responsibility of building the “great arsenal of democracy.”

Although the close of the World War II seemingly threatened the industry’s resurgence, the government, motivated by the emergence of the Cold War as well as economic concerns, decided to maintain full-scale military production. The manufacturing sector, including the steel industry, steamed ahead at full-pace, churning out items at a record clip. The steel industry kept rolling through the early 1950s.

1958 – In the Tybee Island B-47 crash the United States Air Force lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 nuclear bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, United States. During a practice exercise, the B-47 bomber carrying the bomb collided in midair with an F-86 fighter plane.

To protect the aircrew from a possible detonation in the event of a crash, the bomb was jettisoned. Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost somewhere in Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island.

1960 – The South Vietnamese government requests that Washington double U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG-Vietnam) strength from 342 to 685. The advisory group was formed on November 1, 1955 to provide military assistance to South Vietnam. It had replaced U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group Indochina (MAAG-Indochina), which had been providing military assistance to “the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina” (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) in accordance with President Harry S. Truman’s order of June 27, 1950.

MAAG-Vietnam had U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps elements that provided advice and assistance to the South Vietnamese Ministry of Defense, Joint General Staff and corps and division commanders, as well as to training centers and province and district headquarters. In May 1964, MAAG-Vietnam was disbanded and its personnel and responsibilities absorbed by the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), which had been established in Saigon two years earlier.

1968 – U.S. troops divided Viet Cong at Hue while the Saigon government claimed they would arm loyal citizens.

February 5th ~ {continued...}

1971 – Moonwalk by CAPT Alan B. Shepherd, Jr. USN, Commander of Apollo 14 and CDR Edgar D. Mitchell, USN Lunar Module Pilot. During the 9 day mission, 94 lbs of lunar material was collected and Shepard became the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon.

1972 – It was reported that the United States had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1972 – US airlines began mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage.

1973 – Services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for Army Lt. Col. William B. Nolde, the last American soldier killed before the Vietnam cease-fire.

1974 – Patty Hearst was kidnapped at gunpoint by a white woman and two black men.

1975 – North Vietnamese Gen. Van Tien Dung departs for South Vietnam to take command of communist forces in preparation for a new offensive. In December 1974, the North Vietnamese 7th Division and the newly formed 3rd Division attacked Phuoc Long Province, north of Saigon. This attack represented an escalation in the “cease-fire war” that started shortly after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. The North Vietnamese wanted to see how Saigon and Washington would react to a major attack so close to Saigon. President Richard Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford, had promised to come to the aid of South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese launched a major new offensive.

With Nixon’s Watergate resignation and Ford facing an increasingly hostile Congress, Hanoi was essentially conducting a “test” attack to see if the United States would honor its commitment to Saigon. The attack was much more successful than the North Vietnamese anticipated: the South Vietnamese soldiers fought poorly and the United States did nothing. Emboldened by their success, the North Vietnamese decided to launch a major offensive against the South Vietnamese.

“Campaign 275” began on March 1, 1975. The North Vietnamese forces quickly overran the South Vietnamese and the United States failed to provide the promised support. Saigon fell on April 30 and the South Vietnamese government officially surrendered.

1976 – An outbreak of Swine Flu begins at Ft. Dix, NJ. David Lewis, an Army private said he felt tired and weak, then left his sick bed to go on a forced run, collapsed, was revived by his Sergeant only to die a few days later and four of his fellow soldiers were additionally hospitalized. Two weeks after his death, health officials announced that swine flu was the cause of death and that this strain of flu appeared to be closely related to the strain involved in the 1918 flu pandemic.

Alarmed public-health officials decided that action must be taken to head off another major pandemic, and they urged President Gerald Ford that every person in the U.S. be vaccinated for the disease’ despite prior knowledge that one version of the vaccine could cause neurological damage. The vaccination program, enacted at a cost of $135 million, was plagued by delays and public relations problems.

However, Centers for Disease Control vaccination efforts achieved unprecedented distribution results, with more than 40 million Americans immunized between October and December that year. The first vaccinations were given on approximately October 1, the government suspended the immunization program on December 16 after reports of at least 54 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome across ten states. Approximately 24% of the population had been vaccinated by the time the program was canceled.

February 5th ~ {continued...}

1981 – A military jury in North Carolina convicted Marine Pvt. 1st Class Robert Garwood of collaborating with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

1983 – Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie expelled from Bolivia, was brought to trial in Lyon, France. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

1988 – Two federal grand juries in Florida announce indictments of Panama military strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega and 16 associates on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. Noriega, the de facto dictator of Panama since 1983, was charged with smuggling marijuana into the United States, laundering millions of U.S. dollars, and assisting Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel in trafficking cocaine to America. The Panamanian leader denied the charges and threatened expulsion of the 10,000 U.S. service personnel and their families stationed around the Panama Canal.

Noriega’s criminal trial began in 1991, and he pleaded innocent. On April 9, 1992, he was found guilty on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, marking the first time in history that a U.S. jury had convicted a foreign leader of criminal charges. He was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

1989 – In an important move signaling the close of the nearly decade-long Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the last Russian troops withdraw from the capital city of Kabul. Less than two weeks later, all Soviet troops departed Afghanistan entirely, ending what many observers referred to as Russia’s “Vietnam.”

Soviet armed forces entered Afghanistan in December 1979 to support that nation’s pro-Soviet communist government in its battles with Muslim rebels. Almost immediately, the Soviet Union found itself mired in a rapidly escalating conflict. Afghan rebels put up unexpectedly stiff resistance to the Russian intervention. Soon, thousands of Soviet troops were fighting a bloody, costly, and ultimately frustrating battle to end the Afghan resistance.

By the time the Soviets started to withdraw in early 1989, over 13,000 Russian soldiers were dead and over 22,000 had been wounded. The Soviet Union also suffered from a very negative diplomatic response from the United States–President Jimmy Carter put a hold on arms negotiations, asked for economic sanctions, and pressed for an American boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. By 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the manpower and financial drains imposed by Afghanistan were unacceptable and indicated that Soviet troops would shortly begin their withdrawal.

The Soviet Union was in the midst of tremendous internal political and economic instability at the time, and Gorbachev’s action in regards to Afghanistan was yet another indication that Soviet power was on the wane. In less than three years, Gorbachev had resigned and the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.

For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the death and destruction. The Afghan rebels, who had been armed to the teeth by U.S. aid, simply turned their attention to political and religious rivals within the country. Civil war continued to wrack the nation.

1991 – President Bush announced he was sending Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Gulf war zone to assess how the US-led offensive was progressing.

February 5th ~ {continued...}

1992 – The House of Representatives authorized an investigation into whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to delay release of the American hostages. The task force investigating the “October Surprise” allegations later said it found no credible evidence of such a conspiracy.

1998 – Pres. Clinton ordered 2,000 Marines to the Persian Gulf and met with PM Tony Blair of Britain to discuss the possible use of force against Iraq.

1998 – Democratic fundraiser Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie pleaded innocent in Washington to charges he’d raised illegal donations to buy influence in high places. Trie pleaded guilty in May 1999 to a felony count and a misdemeanor and was sentenced later that year to four months’ home detention and three years’ probation.

2001 – Four disciples of Osama bin Laden went on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The four were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2002 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., indicted John Walker Lindh on 10 charges, alleging he was trained by Osama bin Laden’s network and then conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans.

2002 – In Pakistan 2 men associated with the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl were arrested in a Karachi suburb. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (28), Islamic militant, turned himself in to Ejah Shah, the home secretary in Punjab province.

2002 – US officials announced plans to train and arm Colombian troops to protect the key Cano Limon oil pipeline.

2003 – Secretary of State Colin Powell, made his case that Iraq had defied all demands that it disarm. He presented tape recordings, satellite photos and statements from informants that he said was “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.

2003 – North Korea said that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their operation “on a normal footing.”

2003 – US military officials say that the USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Arabian Sea on the weekend, putting a third US aircraft carrier battle group within striking distance of Iraq.

2004 – CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged that US spy agencies may have over-estimated Iraq’s illicit weapons capabilities.

2004 – NASA restored communications with the Mars Spirit rover.

2004 – U.S. and Iraqi forces captured more than 100 suspected guerrillas in raids across the country, arresting one of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chiefs and another Iraqi believed involved in a suicide bombing the month before.

2004 – Pakistan’s Pres. Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan after Kahn absolved Islamabad of selling nuclear secrets to Iran.

2007 – Space Shuttle astronaut and Navy Commander Lisa Nowak is arrested in Florida for attempted kidnapping of U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who was romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelein. Nowak was released on bail, and initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included attempted kidnapping, burglary with assault, and battery.

Her assignment to the space agency as an astronaut was terminated by NASA effective March 8, 2007. On November 10, 2009, Nowak agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery.

February 6th ~

1778 – During the American War for Independence, representatives from the United States and France sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the United States as an independent nation and encouraged trade between France and the America, while the Treaty of Alliance provided for a military alliance against Great Britain, stipulating that the absolute independence of the United States be recognized as a condition for peace and that France will be permitted to conquer the British West Indies.

With the treaties, the first entered into by the U.S. government, the Bourbon monarchy of France formalized its commitment to assist the American colonies in their struggle against France’s old rival, Great Britain. The eagerness of the French to help the United States was motivated both by an appreciation of the American revolutionaries’ democratic ideals and by bitterness at having lost most of their American empire to the British at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars in 1763.

In 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to a diplomatic commission to secure a formal alliance with France. Covert French aid began filtering into the colonies soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, but it was not until the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that the French became convinced that the Americans were worth backing in a formal treaty.

On February 6, 1778, the treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them. One month later, war between Britain and France formally began when a British squadron fired on two French ships. During the American Revolution, French naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which culminated in the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. It was the first alliance treaty for the fledgling U.S. government and the last until the 1949 NATO pact.

1778 – England declared war on France.

1778 – Continental Marines helped defend Charleston from the British.

1788 – Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1802 – Congress empowers President Jefferson to arm United States ships in order that they may protect themselves against the Tripoli pirates.

1815 – The state of New Jersey issued the first American railroad charter to John Stevens, who proposed a rail link between Trenton and New Brunswick. The line, however, was never built.

1832 – Battle of Quallah Batto, Sumatra. On Feb. 7 1831, the merchant ship Friendship was attacked in Sumatra by pirates who killed 3 of the ship’s crew and plundered her cargo. The USS Potomiac, disguised as a merchant man, was dispatched on a punitive raid. On Feb. 4 1832 she arrived at Quallah Batto. A landing party of Marines and sailors attacked one fort, carried it and proceeded inland to reduce the remaining two forts.

The first was stiffly defended until Marine Lt. Edson finally seized the drawbridge and gained entrance for the assaulting troops. All the defenders were either killed or retreated into the surrounding jungle. The Marines then assisted in the assault on the remaining position. Shortly thereafter, the remaining pirates escaped into the jungle with the Marines in pursuit. After inflicting casualties upon the sea rovers, the Marines and sailors withdrew to the ships which began shelling the remaining strong point until it’s surrender.

1838 – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

1861 – The 1st meeting of Provisional Congress of Confederate States of America.

February 6th ~ {continued...}

1862 – General Ulysses S. Grant provides the first major Union victory of the war when he captures Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Ten days later, he captured Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, which gave the Yankees control of northern Tennessee and paved the way for the occupation of Nashville.

1863 – Union General S.F. Heintzelman is put in charge of the Federal Department of Washington.

1865 – Confederate General John Pegram is killed at the Battle of Dabney’s Mill, Virginia. Pegram graduated from West Point in 1854, 10th in a class of 46. He served in various posts in the west before resigning his commission at the start of the Civil War. Pegram then received an appointment as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army. Sent to fight in western Virginia during the summer of 1861, he was captured by General George McClellan’s men at the Battle of Rich Mountain. Pegram was exchanged in April 1862 and sent to serve with General Pierre G. T. Beauregard in Mississippi. He fought in Tennessee and Kentucky and earned a promotion to brigadier general.

After the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, Pegram was transferred to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, but recovered to fight with General Jubal Early during the Shenandoah Valley campaign in the summer of 1864. That fall, he was sent to defend his native city of Petersburg. On January 19, Pegram married Hetty Cary, a prominent Richmond socialite who many called the “handsomest women in the Southland.” Even in the gloom of the ongoing siege, the ceremony was a grand affair attended by nearly all of the high-ranking Confederates, including President Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina. The bride, commented onlookers, was a vision of beauty and one said that the “happy gleam of her beautiful brown eyes seemed to defy all sorrow.” Just three weeks later, Pegram’s body was returned to the same church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, and his young widow knelt beside his coffin as the minister who married them presided over the dashing general’s funeral.

1869 – Harper’s Weekly published the 1st picture of Uncle Sam with chin whiskers.

1899 – The Spanish-American War ends. After a protracted struggle between imperialists and anti-imperialists, the Senate ratifies the Treaty of Paris , 57 to 27. The argument for ratification is lead by Henry Cabot Lodge who contends that it will enhance national prestige, prevent foreign annexation of the formerly Spanish possession of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, and constitute economic, strategic and “civilizing” advantages.

The case against ratification is that it is contrary to US tradition to acquire territory outside the continental area; that people of alien races will not be easily assimilated into the American way of life; that the treaty is against the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine and will weaken the American belief in self-government. Anti-imperialists also contend that “the Constitution follows the flag,” but imperialists argue that the people of these new acquisitions, even while being nationals, are not automatically endowed with the privileges of US citizenship. This sets the stage for a series of Supreme Court cases known collectively as the Insular Cases that have never fully settled the issues.

1900 – President McKinley appointed W.H. Taft commissioner to report on the Philippines.

1908 – Bids for the Army’s first airplane considered by the Board of Ordnance and Fortification. Of 24 presented two were approved on Feb 8th by the Secretary of War. Army aviation will be born as a part of the Signal Corps.

1911 – Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan went on to become a film actor, governor of California (1967-1975) and the 40th president of the United States (1981-1989) and was credited with ending the Cold War.