** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:45 am
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.”
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:47 am
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.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:49 am
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.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:51 am
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.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:53 am
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.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:55 am
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.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:57 am
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.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:53 am
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.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:21 pm
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.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:23 pm
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.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:28 pm
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.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:30 pm
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.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:32 pm
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.
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:05 am
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.
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:07 am
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.
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:09 am
February 6th ~ {continued...}

1916 – Germany admitted full liability for Lusitania incident and recognized the United State’s right to claim indemnity.

1919 – The 1st day of 5-day Seattle general strike, the first general strike in America, took effect. During this period Washington was a center for the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the “Wobblies.” Their agitation led to the Centralia massacre and the Everett massacre.

1922 – The Nine-Power Treaty is signed at the Washington Conference, endorsing the Open Door Policy with China, and forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years. The US, UK, France, Italy & Japan signed the Washington naval arms limitation.

1929 – Germany accepted Kellogg-Briand pact.

1933 – The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. The Lame-Duck Amendment changed the inauguration date of congressmen from March 4 to January 3. Moving back the inauguration date for newly-elected congressmen reduced the time that defeated members, or “lame ducks,” remain in office.

1942 – Japanese reinforcements land on Luzon. In the Bataan peninsula there is a lessening of the fighting.

1942 – The first meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, as defined by the Arcadia Conference, takes place. (Note: In military usage, the term “joint” refers to operations by multiple services of one nation and “combined” refers to operations by multiple nations.)

1943 – The American command in Europe and North Africa is restructured. General Andrews is appointed to the new European Theater Command and General Eisenhower remains in command in North Africa.

1944 – Forces of US 5th Army continue fighting in the hills north of Cassino.

1944 – Kwajalein Island in the Central Pacific fell to U.S. Army troops.

1945 – Units of US 4th Corps from US 5th Army take Gallicano in a brief offensive designed to improve the Allied positions on either side of the Serchio Valley.

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).

1952 – The carrier USS Philippine Sea returned to Korean waters for its second tour of duty.

1959 – The United States successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral.

1959 – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1963 – The United States reported that all Soviet offensive arms are out of Cuba.

1964 – Cuba blocked the water supply to Guantanamo Naval Base in rebuke of the United State’s seizure of four Cuban fishing boats and fines on Cuban fishermen near Florida. The US imposed water rationing and built desalination plants in response.

1968 – Two reduced Marine battalions, the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines with two companies, and 2d Battalion, 5th Marines with three, recaptured Hue’s hospital, jail, and provincial headquarters. It would take three more weeks of intense house to house fighting, and nearly a thousand Marines killed and wounded, before the imperial city was secured.

1973 – In accordance with the agreement at the Paris Peace Talks, Navy Task Force 78 begins Operation End Sweep, the mine clearance of North Vietnamese waters of mines laid in 1972.
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:15 am
February 6th ~ {continued...}

1973 – Supervisors from the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), delegated to oversee the cease-fire, start to take up their positions. The cease-fire had gone into effect as a provision of the Paris Peace Accords. The ICCS included representatives from Canada, Poland, Hungary, and Indonesia, and was supposed to supervise the cease-fire.

However, the ICCS had no enforcement powers and had extreme difficulty in settling the many quarrels that quickly arose. In the end, the ICCS proved incapable of enforcing the provisions of the Accords and was largely ineffectual. Consequently, renewed fighting between the South and North Vietnamese broke out after only a brief lull and continued for the next two years, until the North Vietnamese successfully launched their final offensive in 1975 and South Vietnam surrendered.

1974 – US House of Reps began determining grounds for the impeachment of President Nixon.

1975 – President Gerald Ford asked Congress for $497 million in aid to Cambodia.

1985 – In his State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan defines some of the key concepts of his foreign policy, establishing what comes to be known as the “Reagan Doctrine.” The doctrine served as the foundation for the Reagan administration’s support of “freedom fighters” around the globe. Reagan began his foreign policy comments with the dramatic pronouncement that, “Freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few; it is the universal right of all God’s children.” America’s “mission” was to “nourish and defend freedom and democracy.”

More specifically, Reagan declared that, “We must stand by our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives-on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua-to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.” He concluded, “Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.” With these words, the Reagan administration laid the foundation for its program of military assistance to “freedom fighters.” In action, this policy translated into covertly supporting the Contras in their attacks on the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua; the Afghan rebels in their fight against the Soviet occupiers; and anticommunist Angolan forces embroiled in that nation’s civil war.

President Reagan continued to defend his actions throughout his two terms in office. During his farewell address in 1989, he claimed success in weakening the Sandinista government, forcing the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan, and bringing an end to the conflict in Angola. Domestic critics, however, decried his actions, claiming that the support of so-called “freedom fighters” resulted only in prolonging and escalating bloody conflicts and in U.S. support of repressive and undemocratic elements in each of the respective nations.

1994 – A day after a mortar shell killed 68 people in a Sarajevo marketplace, President Clinton called for a United Nations probe. NATO threatened air strikes if Serbs failed to pull weapons back from around the city. They moved their weapons and brought a temporary respite.

1995 – The space shuttle Discovery flew to within 37 feet of the Russian space station Mir in the first rendezvous of its kind in two decades.

1997 – Miami strip club owner of “Porky’s,” Ludwig “Tarzan” Fainberg, was charged with trying to broker the sale of a Russian nuclear submarine to Columbian drug barons. He had already purchased 6 Russian helicopters for drug traffickers.

1998 – President Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

1998 – Two US warplanes collided in the Persian Gulf and one of the pilots was killed.

1998 – Iraq rejects key parts of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s proposal to increase the amount of oil Iraq is permitted to sell under the U.N.’s oil-for-food program from $2.14 billion to $5.2 billion.
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:17 am
February 6th ~ {continued...}

1999 – The Stardust spacecraft lifted off aboard a Delta II rocket for its 7-year journey to gather particles from the Wild-2 comet.

1999 – Talks began in Rambouillet, France in an attempt to find a Kosovo peace settlement.

2001 – A trade tribunal ordered the US to allow Mexican trucks to cross the border following a NAFTA arbitration process.

2002 – A federal judge ordered John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” held without bail pending trial.

2003 – Edging closer to war, President Bush declared “the game is over” for Saddam Hussein and urged skeptical allies to join in disarming Iraq.

2003 – Belgium asked the European Union to call an emergency meeting to discuss a peaceful way out of the Iraq crisis.

2003 – Pre-emptive attacks on North Korea’s nuclear facilities would trigger a “total war,” the communist state warned after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld labeled the North’s government a “terrorist regime.”

2003 – Turkey’s parliament voted to allow U.S. troops to renovate Turkish bases for use in a possible war with Iraq.

2003 – US Secretary of State Colin Powell presents tape recordings, satellite photos and informants’ statements to the UN, which he says constitute “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.

2003 – The US military says it has activated nearly 17,000 more reserve troops, bringing the total number of reservists on active duty to more than 111,000.

2004 – President Bush created a bipartisan commission to investigate the quality of intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq. Conclusions were set for March, 2005.

2007 – Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) begins. It is the military operation conducted by the United States and partner nations in the Sahara/Sahel region of Africa, consisting of counterterrorism efforts and policing of arms and drug trafficking across central Africa. The goal of the missions is to drive terrorist threats away from the continent of Europe, thus, south and east of the Sahara. Joint Task Force Aztec Silence (JTF Aztec Silence) is the combined arms organization assigned to implement the missions and meet the goals of OEF-TS.

The JTF has been part of United States European Command (EUCOM). As of September 2007, with the announcement of the new United States Africa Command, the mission will fall under the responsibility of Africa Command. The Congress approved $500 million for the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) over six years to support countries involved in counterterrorism against alleged threats of Al Qaeda operating in African countries, primarily Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, and Morocco. This program builds upon the former Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), which concluded in December 2004 and focused on weapon and drug trafficking, as well as counterterrorism.

2007 – A Distributed Denial of Service attack, aimed at the global backbone of top level domain name servers, began at 10 AM UTC and lasted twenty-four hours. At least two of the root servers (G-ROOT and L-ROOT) reportedly “suffered badly” while two others (F-ROOT and M-ROOT) “experienced heavy traffic”. The latter two servers largely contained the damage by distributing requests to other root server instances with any cast addressing.

ICANN published a formal analysis shortly after the event. On February 8, 2007 it was announced by Network World that “if the United States found itself under a major cyber attack aimed at undermining the nation’s critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the President, to launch an actual bombing of an attack source or a cyber counterattack.”

2007 – United States President George W. Bush approves a Pentagon plan for establishing a new command center in Africa. The United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM or AFRICOM) will become one of nine Unified Combatant Commands of the United States Armed Forces, headquartered at Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany. It is responsible for U.S. military operations and military relations with 53 African nations – an area of responsibility (AOR) covering all of Africa except Egypt, which is within the area of responsibility of the United States Central Command.

2009 – Russia’s government will allow the U.S. Armed Forces to ship nonlethal equipment to Afghanistan through Russian territory.

2009 – The USS Port Royal runs aground off Hawaii. USS Port Royal (CG-73) is a United States Navy Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser. At 9 pm Port Royal ran aground about a half-mile south of the Honolulu International Airport’s Reef Runway. The ship had just come out of a dry dock after undergoing maintenance and was undergoing her first sea trials. No one was injured in the incident and no fuel was spilled. On 9 February 2009, Port Royal was pulled off the rock and sand shoal at around 2 a.m. No one was injured during the recovery effort. Captain John Carroll was relieved of his duties and, along with the ship’s executive officer and three other sailors, subsequently disciplined for dereliction of duty and improperly hazarding a vessel.

2012 – As a consequence of the deteriorating conditions in Syria, the United States closes its embassy in Damascus.
PostPosted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:17 am
February 7th ~

1774 – The special investigative commission reports to the English Privy Council that the Massachusetts petition calling for the dismissal of Governor hutchinson and provincial secretary Andrew Oliver is based on false charges. For his role in the matter, having sent letters belonging to Governor Hutchinson to Boston where they were publicly read (and which played a role in fomenting the Boston Tea Party) by Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin was removed from his office as Deputy Postmaster General for America.

1795 – The 11th Amendment to US Constitution was ratified. The Eleventh Amendment, which was the first Constitutional amendment after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, was adopted following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793). In Chisholm, the Court ruled that federal courts had the authority to hear cases in law and equity brought by private citizens against states and that states did not enjoy sovereign immunity from suits made by citizens of other states in federal court. Thus, the amendment clarified Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which gave diversity jurisdiction to the judiciary to hear cases “between a state and citizens of another state.”

1799 – In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, federal marshals arrest John Fries, the leader of a taxpayer’s rebellion. Fires had raised a force of several hundred men in Bucks, Montgomery and Northampton counties in order to protest the direct federal tax implemented by the acts of July 9 and 14, 1798 to raise revenue for the anticipated war with France. Tried twice, Fries will be convicted of treason both times. Although sentenced to death, he will be pardoned by President Adams.

1800 – USS Essex becomes first U.S. Navy vessel to cross the Equator.

1815 – The Board of Naval Commissioners, a group of senior officers, is established to oversee the operation and maintenance of the Navy, under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy.

1832 – 250 Marines defeated Malay pirates in Sumatra, Indonesia.

1861 – The Choctaw Nation declares its allegiance to the Confederacy.

1862 – One day after the fall of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of Rebel forces in the west, orders 15,000 reinforcements to Fort Donelson. This fort lay on the Cumberland River just a few miles from Fort Henry. Johnston’s decision turned out to be a mistake, as many of the troops were captured when the Fort Donelson fell to the Yankees on February 16. During the fall and winter of 1861 to 1862, the Union army and navy penetrated through Kentucky and into Tennessee.

Led by General Ulysses S. Grant, the Yankees were gaining crucial advantages by controlling parts of the major rivers in the upper South. Johnston sought to stop the bleeding of lost Confederate territory by strengthening the garrison inside Fort Donelson. In retrospect, his mistake was in not providing enough support to Donelson. Johnston wanted to buy time so he could gather his forces from eastern Kentucky and Tennessee to Nashville, which lay south and east of Fort Donelson. If Johnston had concentrated his force at Donelson, he would have had a significant advantage over Grant. Instead, Grant surrounded the fort and sent a squadron to attack from the river.

On February 16, the Yankees cut off the fort from the south and forced the surrender of 15,000 Confederates. After the fall of Fort Donelson, Johnston gathered his remaining forces to northern Mississippi. On April 6 at Shiloh, the western armies clashed in one of the most destructive battles of the war. Johnston was killed in the Confederate defeat.

1862 – Roanoke Isle, N.C. seized by Marines and Soldiers in battle with Confederates.
PostPosted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:19 am
February 7th ~ {continued...}

1864 – Union troops commanded by Major General Q A Gilmore occupy Jacksonville, Florida.

1876 – President Grant’s private secretary, Gen. Orville E. Babcock, was acquitted of involvement in the Whiskey Ring. The “Whiskey Ring” was a conspiracy among distillers, revenue collectors, and high federal officials to avoid taxation through fraudulent reports on whiskey production. 230 indictments were secured, but no convictions were made. Grant helped Babcock secure an acquittal for his part in the ring. This affair contributed to the reputation for corruption that Grant’s administrations acquired.

1886 – Riots amounting to a small war erupt against the Chinese in Seattle, Washington. At least 400 are forcibly ejected from their homes. Federal troops are required to restore order. Harpers Weekly of March 6, 1886th reported these facts: “By a pre-concerted plan, of which neither the law-abiding citizens of the town nor the Chinamen had a hint, a mob invaded the Chinese quarter late Saturday night, forcibly but quietly entered the houses, dragged the occupants from their beds, forced them quickly to pack their personal effects, and marched them to a steamer. The mob was thoughtful enough to provide wagons to convey the baggage of its victims.

Some had money enough to pay their fare to San Francisco, and many did not, but the mob made no distinction. The few policemen that became aware of the wrong-doing had no power and slight willingness to prevent it, and before the sleeping citizens of the town or the county officers knew what was going on, 400 Chinamen were shivering on the dock. The Sheriff ordered the mob to disperse, but the only result of his order was a hastening of the work of expulsion. The captain of the steam-ship admitted all the Chinamen who had bought tickets, but refused to allow the others to go on board. He armed his crew and attached hose to his boilers, and thus assumed the defensive. Not more than 80 of the 400 Chinamen purchased tickets and safety.”

1894 – The US House of Representatives passed a resolution that prevented the sending of US troops to Hawaii to restore Queen Lili’uokalani.

1894 – The Cripple Creek miners’ strike of 1894 was a five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA. It resulted in a victory for the union and was followed in 1903 by the Colorado Labor Wars. It is notable for being the only time in United States history when a state militia was called out (May/June 1894) in support of striking workers. The strike was characterized by firefights and use of dynamite, and ended after a standoff between the Colorado state militia and a private force working for owners of the mines. In the years after the strike, the WFM’s popularity and power increased significantly through the region.

1914 – Pursuant to the Convention for Safety at Sea in London, President Woodrow Wilson directed that the Revenue Cutter Service undertake the task of manning the International Ice Patrol. Henceforth, the Revenue Cutter Service and the Coast Guard, with brief respites during both World Wars, served in this capacity.

1915 – 1st wireless message sent from a moving train to a station was received.

1917 – The British steamer California is sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat.

1928 – The United States signed an arbitration treaty with France.

1930 – In Kowloon a unified Communist Party of Vietnam (Viet nam Cong Sang Dang) is founded under the leadership of Nguyen Ai Quoc. I Hong Kong the Indochinese Communist Party is also born under his leadership

1942 – Presidential order creates the War Shipping Administration which assumed control over all phases of merchant marine activities.
PostPosted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:23 am
February 7th ~ {continued...}

1942 – The federal government ordered passenger car production stopped and converted to wartime purposes. In spite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s exhortation that the U.S. auto industry should become the “great arsenal of democracy,” Detroit’s executives were reluctant to join the war cause. However, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the country mobilized behind the U.S. declaration of war. The government offered automakers guaranteed profits regardless of production costs throughout the war years.

Furthermore, the Office of Production Management allocated $11 billion to the construction of war manufacturing plants that would be sold to the automobile manufacturers at remarkable discounts after the war. What had at first seemed like a burden on the automotive industry became a boon. The production demands placed on the industry and the resources allocated to the individual automobile manufacturers during the war would revolutionize American car making and bring about the Golden Era of the 1950s.

1943 – During a fierce convoy battle near Greenland, the CGC Ingham rescued 33 survivors from the torpedoed troopship SS Henry Mallory while the Bibb rescued 202. Bibb then rescued 33 from the torpedoed Kalliopi.

1943 – The government announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days, limiting each purchaser to three pairs for the remainder of the year.

1943 – On Guadalcanal the US 161st Regiment continues a cautious advance. The Japanese proceed with their evacuation.

1944 – In the Kwajalein Atoll, American forces complete the elimination of isolated Japanese pockets of resistance.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, there are new attacks on the British 1st Division by German forces. The Germans aim for the village of Aprilia and “The Factory” nearby. Meanwhile, the British 56th Division and the US 45th Division arrive at Anzio.

1945 – In the US 5th Corps advance toward the Roer, Schmidt is taken. To the south, US 3rd Army units move into Germany east of the Our.

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 – US 76th and 5th Infantry divisions began crossing Sauer.

1947 – Arabs and Jews rejected a British proposal to split Palestine.

1948 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley. Eisenhower will become President of Columbia University.

1950 – The United States and Great Britain extend de jure recognition to the Bao Dai regime. Vietnam is now effectively split between a communist-influenced north and an anti-communist south.

1950 – Senator Joe McCarthy claimed “communists” in US Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

1955 – Seventh Fleet ships begin evacuation of Chinese nationalists from Tachen Islands

1962 – President Kennedy began the blockade of Cuba and bans all Cuban imports and exports.
PostPosted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:25 am
February 7th ~ {continued...}

1965 – As part of Operation Flaming Dart, 49 U.S. Navy jets from the 7th Fleet carriers Coral Sea and Hancock drop bombs and rockets on the barracks and staging areas at Dong Hoi, a guerrilla training camp in North Vietnam. Escorted by U.S. jets, a follow-up raid by South Vietnamese planes bombed a North Vietnamese military communications center. These strikes were in retaliation for communist attacks on the U.S. installation at Camp Holloway and the adjacent Pleiku airfield in the Central Highlands, which killed eight U.S. servicemen, wounded 109, and destroyed or damaged 20 aircraft.

Even before the attack, presidential advisors John T. McNaughton and McGeorge Bundy had favored bombing North Vietnam. After the attack in the Central Highlands, they strongly urged President Johnson to order the retaliatory raids. Johnson agreed and gave the order to commence Operation Flaming Dart, hoping that a quick and effective retaliation would persuade the North Vietnamese to cease their attacks in South Vietnam. Bundy, who had just returned from Vietnam, defended the air raids as “right and necessary.”

Senate Majority Leader Mansfield (D-Montana) and GOP leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois) supported the president’s decision, but Senators Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) attacked the action as a dangerous escalation of the war. The retaliatory raids did not have the desired effect. On February 10, the Viet Cong struck again, this time at an American installation in Qui Nhon, killing 23 Americans. Johnson quickly ordered another retaliatory strike, Flaming Dart II.

1968 – North Vietnamese used 11 Soviet-built light tanks to overrun the U.S. Special Forces camp at Lang Vei at the end of an 18-hour long siege.

1971 – Operation Dewey Canyon II ends, but U.S. units continue to provide support for South Vietnamese army operations in Laos. Operation Dewey Canyon II began on January 30 as the initial phase of Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos that was to commence on February 8th.

The purpose of the South Vietnamese operation was to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, advance to Tchepone in Laos, and destroy the North Vietnamese supply dumps in the area. In Dewey Canyon II, the vanguard of the U.S. 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, an armored cavalry/engineer task force, cleared the road from Vandegrift Combat Base (southwest of Cam Lo in the region south of the DMZ) along highway Route 9 toward Khe Sanh. The area was cleared so that 20,000 South Vietnamese troops could reoccupy 1,000 square miles of territory in northwest South Vietnam and mass at the Laotian border in preparation for the invasion of Laos.

In accordance with a U.S. congressional ban, U.S. ground forces were not to enter Laos. Instead, the only direct U.S. support permitted was long-range cross-border artillery fire, fixed-wind air strikes, and 2,600 helicopters to airlift Saigon troops and supplies.

1974 – The island nation of Grenada won independence from Britain.

1984 – While in orbit 170 miles above Earth, Navy Captain Bruce McCandless becomes the first human being to fly untethered in space when he exits the U.S. space shuttle Challenger and maneuvers freely, using a bulky white rocket pack of his own design. McCandless orbited Earth in tangent with the shuttle at speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour and flew up to 320 feet away from the Challenger.

After an hour and a half testing and flying the jet-powered backpack and admiring Earth, McCandless safely reentered the shuttle. Later that day, Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stewart tried out the rocket pack, which was a device regarded as an important step toward future operations to repair and service orbiting satellites and to assemble and maintain large space stations. It was the fourth orbital mission of the space shuttle Challenger.

1986 – President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvlaier of Haiti is flown to France on a United States jet after fleeing his country.

1990 – The Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party agrees to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70-year long monopoly of political power. The Committee’s decision to allow political challenges to the party’s dominance in Russia was yet another signal of the impending collapse of the Soviet system.

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left for a visit to the Gulf War zone.
PostPosted: Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:27 am
February 7th ~ {continued...}

1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, after two years as a fugitive.

1997 – The Air Force suspended all its flights in restricted training areas on the East Coast after two close calls between National Guard jets and civilian airliners.

1999 – NASA launched the Stardust spacecraft on a mission to chase a comet in hopes of collecting a sample of comet dust.

2001 – The space shuttle Atlantis took off with the Destiny module, a laboratory compartment, for the Int’l. Space Station.

2001 – Turkish government officials state that Turkey aims to import about 80,000 barrels per day of Iraqi Kirkuk crude oil in 2002, an increase over the 50,000 barrels per day imported in 2001. The oil, which is taken into Turkey by truck, is transported by Turkey’s foreign trade under secretariat, for refining by Tupras. The trade is outside of the United Nations oil-for-food program.

2001 – In Washington Robert Pickett (47), an accountant with a history of mental illness, was shot in the leg by a Secret Service agent after brandishing a hand gun outside the White House gates.

2002 – The Bush administration allowed Geneva accords to cover Taliban fighters but not members of al Qaeda.

2003 – President Bush courted the leaders of France and China in an uphill struggle to win U.N. backing for war with Iraq.

2003 – The US moved its terror alert status to orange, the 2nd highest level. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the government had received intelligence information, corroborated by multiple sources, that Osama bin Laden’s terror organization sought to attack Americans at home or abroad during the annual hajj pilgrimage to the holy Saudi city of Mecca.

2003 – The CGC Matagorda, a 110-foot Island Class patrol boat, became the first cutter to begin the Integrated Deep Water System modernization and life extension overhaul when she was decommissioned on 7 February 2003 at the Bollinger Shipyard in Lockport, LA.

2005 – US troops manning a checkpoint found 4 Egyptian technicians who had been kidnapped the previous day in Baghdad, freeing them and arresting some of the abductors.

2005 – UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the head of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq and a senior official who dealt with contracts, following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct.

2006 – Mounir El Motassadeq, a member of the Hamburg cell led by Mohamed Atta, is ordered an early release by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The Berlin court rules there is an absence of proof in the government’s case that Motassadeq was informed about the 9/11 terrorist plot.

2008 – Space Shuttle Atlantis launches successfully on its STS-122 mission. STS-122 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS), flown by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. STS-122 marked the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS, and the 121st space shuttle flight since STS-1. The mission was also referred to as ISS-1E by the ISS program.

The primary objective of STS-122 was to deliver the European Columbus science laboratory, built by the European Space Agency (ESA), to the station. It also returned Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Daniel M. Tani to Earth. Tani was replaced on Expedition 16 by Léopold Eyharts, a French Flight Engineer representing ESA. After Atlantis’ landing, the orbiter was prepared for STS-125, the final servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.

2008 – British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri will be extradited to the United States to face terror charges.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 11:51 am
February 8th ~

1690 – French and Indian forces attack Schnectady, New York during King William’s War. The fate of Schenectady was sealed in the middle of January, 1690, when 114 Frenchmen and 96 Sault and Algonquin Indians, started from Montreal to attack English outpost to the south. It was part of the master plan to fulfill the wishes of French King Louis XIV to “build a new empire in America”.

They came down the frozen ice on Lake Champlain and in about six days, down to a point that is known today as Fort Edward, it was here where they met with the Indian leaders and decided to attack Schenectady instead of Fort Orange. They continued on down and crossed the icy Mohawk. It was then that spies were sent to scout the Stockade and see if it was secured. Seeing the doors open, and no one guarding them, they reported back to their leaders, and the decision was made to attack. During the raid on Schenectady many men, women and children were killed, or taken captive by the French and Indians and marched up into Canada.

1698 – English Major Robert Ingoldesby arrives in New York leading a military force. Jacob Leisler contests on legal grounds the right of Ingoldesby to demand the surrender of the fort occupied by Leisler and his followers. Best known as a leader of a 1689 New York rebellion that came to bear his name, Jacob Leisler was one of late seventeenth-century New York’s most prominent merchants, land developers, and foremost exponent of Reformed religious fundamentalism and Orangist political ideology. He was intimately bound to the social, economic, and political development of New Netherland and New York from 1659, when he was employed as a nineteen-year-old in the Dutch West India Company’s Amsterdam office, until his execution for treason in New York City in May 1691.

In 1689, in the wake of England’s Glorious Revolution, he assumed the role of King William III’s governor of New York. He thereupon implemented a program based on direct popular representation that had, as contemporaries noted, wide impact from the Chesapeake to New England. The following year he called for and hosted English America’s first inter colonial congress and organized the first inter colonial military action independent of British authority.

Leisler’s administration of New York split the province into two distinct camps that were closely aligned with the Regent and Orangist factions in the United Provinces and the Whig and Tory factions in England, the legacy of which, according to some historians, is America’s unique two-party system. Other historians see in Leisler’s assumption of the New York government a forerunner of the American Revolution.

1712 – L. Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America, was born.

1770 – Alexander McDougall, the son of a Scotchman from the Hebrides, a sailor, an ardent Son of Liberty, and afterward a major-general in the Continental Army, is arrested for his authorship of a broadside criticizing the New York assembly. Titled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York,” the broadside was issued in December 1769.

When the obnoxious hand-bill was read before the Assembly by the Speaker, it was moved that the sense of the House should be taken “whether the said paper was not an infamous and scandalous libel.” When the vote was taken, twenty of the pliant Assembly voted that it was so, and only one member voted No. That member was Philip Schuyler. He boldly faced the rising storm, and by his solitary vote rebuked, in a most emphatic manner, the cowardice of those of his compeers who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in former trials.

The assembly then set about ferreting out the author of the broadside. They authorized the lieutenant governor to offer a reward of $500 for the discovery of the offender. Another individual was cited before the House, but was soon discharged. The printer of the broadside, when discovered, was brought to the bar, when the frightened man gave the name of McDougall as the author. He was taken before the House, where he would make no acknowledgment and refused to give bail. He was indicted for libel and cast into prison, where he remained fourteen weeks until arraigned for trial, when he pleaded not guilty, and gave bail.

Several months afterward he was again brought before the House, when he was defended by George Clinton, an active member of that body, who became the first governor of the State of New York. To the question whether he was the author of the hand-bill signed “A Son of Liberty,” McDougall replied, “That as the Grand Jury and the Assembly had declared the paper a libel, he could not answer; that as he was under prosecution in the Supreme Court, he conceived it would be an infraction of justice to punish twice for one offence; but that he would not deny the authority of the House to punish for a breach of privilege when no cognizance was taken of it, in another court.” His answer was declared to be a contempt, and he was again imprisoned, plead not guilty to the charges and is released on bail. This case never reaches the courts, as the colony’s witness dies in the meantime.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:24 pm
February 8th ~ {continued...}

1817 – Richard Stoddert Ewell (d.1872(), Lt Gen (Confederate Army), was born.

1820 – Future Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman is born in Lancaster, Ohio. On March 11, 1862, Halleck was assigned to command the Department of the Mississippi and Major-General U.S. Grant to command the army in the field. The organization and the name given to this army was the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman was placed in command of the Fifth Division of this army.

In July 1862, Sherman was assigned to command the District of Memphis. Later that year Sherman failed to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, but was with Grant in the campaign that finally ended in the capture of that city in July 1863. Sherman was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863.

In the spring of 1864, Sherman was made supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered by Grant to “create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy.” With a grand aggregate of 98,797 troops and 254 cannons, on May 4, 1864, Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign for which he is most (in)famous. Sherman wanted to split the Confederacy, and began planning his March to the Sea. He kept his most seasoned veterans, 60,000 in all and sent the rest of the troops back to Nashville to be under the command of Major-General George Thomas.

With four Corps of troops in two columns, in November 1864, Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea. Prior to leaving from Atlanta, he set fire to munitions factories, railroad yards, clothing mills, and other targets that could be resourceful to the Confederacy. Sherman never intended to burn the whole city, but the fire got out of hand and spread throughout the city. With the four Corps in two columns, Sherman cut a swath 60 miles wide marching towards Savannah, destroying anything that could aid or be resourceful to the enemy.

On December 23, 1864, Sherman sent a telegram to Lincoln stating that he was presenting him the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift. General Joe Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April 17, 1865 at Raleigh, North Carolina. After the war, Sherman was commissioned Lieutenant General in the regular army, and after Grant was elected was promoted to the grade of full general and given command of the entire U. S Army. He retired in 1883.

1837 – The Senate selected Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States. Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16.

1861 – Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Alabama.

1862 – Union General Ambrose Burnside scores a major victory when he captures Roanoke Island in North Carolina. The victory was one of the first major Union victories of the war and it gave the Yankees control of the mouth of Albemarle Sound, a key Confederate bay that allowed the Union to threaten the Rebel capital of Richmond from the south. During the war’s first winter, Union strategists focused their efforts on capturing coastal defenses to deny the Confederates sea outlets.

In August 1861, the Yankees took two key forts on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, paving the way for the campaign against Roanoke Island. On January 11, 1862, Burnside took a force of 15,000 and a flotilla of 80 ships down to the Outer Banks. The expeditionary force arrived at Hatteras Inlet on January 13, but poor weather delayed an attack for three weeks.

On February 7, Burnside landed 10,000 on the island. They were met by about 2,500 Confederates. Burnside attacked, and his force overwhelmed the outer defenses of the island. Confederate commander Colonel Henry Shaw retreated to the north end of the island but had no chance to escape. Shaw surrendered the entire force. The Yankees suffered 37 men killed and 214 wounded, while the Confederates lost 23 men killed and 62 wounded before the surrender. The Union now controlled a vital section of the coast. The victory came two days after Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry in northern Tennessee, and, for the first time in the war, the North had reason for optimism.

1863 – Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attacked a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.

1865 – Martin Robinson Delany became the 1st black major in US army.
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