January 18th ~ {continued...}

2000 – A US test missile fired from the Marshall Islands failed to shoot down a mock warhead fired from a California air base. In a blow to the Pentagon’s push to develop a national missile defense by 2005, officials announced that a prototype missile interceptor had roared into space in search of a mock warhead over the Pacific, but had failed to hit it.

2002 – US forces took 6 terrorism suspects, held since October, from Bosnia after local courts ruled that there was too little evidence to hold them. The suspects included Bensayah Belkacem, a key European al Qaeda lieutenant.

2002 – Five Colombian police officers died while protecting a downed UH-1N helicopter. The US helicopter was destroyed to keep it out of rebel hands.

2003 – CGC Walnut departed from her homeport in Honolulu, Hawaii and began her 10,000 mile transit to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This 45 day transit was completed as quickly as possible with brief stops for fuel and food along the way in Guam, Singapore, Kuwait. The cutter deployed with an oil spill recovery system in the event the regime of Saddam Hussein committed any acts of environmental terrorism.

When those threats did not materialize, the cutter then conducted maritime interception operations enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions, participated in the search for two downed United Kingdom helicopters, and patrolled and provided assistance to captured Iraqi offshore oil terminals being secured by Coast Guard port security personnel. The cutter’s crew completely replaced 30 buoys and repaired an additional five along the 41-mile Khawr Abd Allah Waterway. This ATON mission vastly improved the navigational safety of the waterway for humanitarian aid, commercial, and military vessels sailing to the port and was a critical step to economic recovery for the people of Iraq.

2004 – Pakistani agents arrested seven al-Qaida suspects and confiscated weapons during a raid in the southern city of Karachi.

2007 – Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggests that if the United States better armed the Iraqi armed forces, they would be able to dramatically draw back U.S. troops “in three to six months”.

2014 – The United States will officially recognize Somalia’s new government and officially open diplomatic relations with Somalia for the first time since the Battle of Mogadishu.

2014 – NASA scientists beam a picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft orbiting the Moon, marking a first in laser communication.

January 19th ~

1760 – Cherokees unsuccessfully attack Fort Prince George in South Carolina to rescue tribe members held hostage by Governor Lyttleton. Lyttleton took the hostages as assurance of compliance with a peace treaty concluded in December 1759. Frustrated, the Cherokees turn to raids on southwest frontier settlements.

1770 – In an attempt to prevent the posting of broadsides by British soldiers stationed in New York, the Sons of Liberty, led by Alexander McDougall, engage in a skirmish with soldiers on Golden Hill. Along with the Boston Massacre and the Gaspée Affair, the event was one of the early violent incidents in what would become the American Revolution. During the imperial crisis with Britain in the 1760s, the Sons of Liberty (or “Liberty Boys”) in New York City sometimes erected “Liberty poles” to symbolize their displeasure with British authorities.

The first such pole was put up in City Hall Park on May 21, 1766, in celebration of the repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act. After the New York Assembly finally voted to comply with the Quartering Act in December 1769, Alexander McDougall issued an anonymous broadside entitled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York”. In response, on January 17, 1770, British soldiers sawed down a Liberty pole. The “red coats” also posted their own handbills which attacked the Sons of Liberty as “the real enemies of society” who “thought their freedom depended on a piece of wood”.

On January 19, 1770, six weeks before the Boston Massacre, Isaac Sears and others tried to stop some soldiers from posting handbills. Sears captured some of the soldiers and marched his captives towards the mayor’s office, while the rest of the British soldiers ran to the barracks to sound the alarm. A crowd of townsfolk arrived along with a score of soldiers. The soldiers were surrounded and badly outnumbered. Another squad of soldiers arrived and the officer gave the order “Soldiers, draw your bayonets and cut your way through them.” More soldiers arrived and a group of officers arrived to disperse the soldiers before the situation got totally out of hand. Several of the soldiers were badly bruised and one a had a serious wound. Some of the townsfolk were wounded and one had been fatally stabbed.

1807 – The strong, healthy boy born to “Light Horse Harry” and Ann Carter Lee was the last Lee born at Stratford to survive to maturity. Though he spent fewer than four years there, his later boyhood visits left an impression that he carried throughout his life. As sometimes happens in distinguished families, one member seems to fall heir to the best qualities of the previous generations and none of the flaws. So it was with Robert Edward Lee.

Robert Lee’s choice of a military career was dictated by financial necessity. There was no money left to send him to Harvard, where his older brother Charles Carter studied. Such circumstances led him to an appointment to West Point Military Academy. Robert, who led the Cadet Corps in 1829, graduated second in his class. In four years he received not a single demerit, and he became one of the most popular cadets in his class. When he returned as the Academy’s superintendent years later, he won the same affectionate respect from the cadets for his compassion, sense of fairness and strong moral leadership.

On June 30, 1831, while serving as Second Lieutenant of Engineers at Fort Monroe, Virginia, he married Mary Ann Randolph Custis of Arlington. Mary was the only daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and the adopted grandson of George Washington. Robert E. Lee shared his father’s reverence for the memory of the General and that bond with the Father of our Country served as an inspiration throughout Lee’s life. The couple moved into Arlington, the Custis house across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., which would later become Arlington National Cemetery.

At the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846, Robert was ordered to Mexico as a supervisor of road construction. His skills as a cavalryman in reconnaissance, however, soon captured the attention of General Winfield Scott, who came to rely on Robert for his sharp military expertise. It was in Mexico that Lee learned the battlefield tactics that would serve him so well in coming years. In spite of his flawless performance as an engineer and his brilliance as an officer, promotion came slowly for Robert Lee. His assignments were lonely and difficult, and he found the separation from his family hard to bear. His love of Mary and his ever-increasing brood of children were the center of his life. The opportunity that won him enduring fame was one he would have preferred not to have taken. The Army of the United States had been his life’s work for 32 years, and he had given it his very best.

On April 18, 1861, he was finally offered the reward for his service. On the eve of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, through Secretary Francis Blair, offered him command of the Union Army. There was little doubt as to Lee’s sentiments. He was utterly opposed to secession and considered slavery evil. His views on the United States were equally clear – “no north, no south, no east, no west,” he wrote, “but the broad Union in all its might and strength past and present.” Blair’s offer forced Lee to choose between his strong conviction to see the country united in perpetuity and his responsibility to family, friends and his native Virginia.

A heart-wrenching decision had to be made. After a long night at Arlington, searching for an answer to Blair’s offer, he finally came downstairs to Mary. “Well Mary,” he said calmly, “the question is settled. Here is my letter of resignation.” He could not, he told her, lift his hand against his own people. He had “endeavored to do what he thought was right,” and replied to Blair that “…though opposed to secession and a deprecating war, I could take no part in the invasion of the Southern States.” He resigned his commission and left his much beloved Arlington to “go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native state.”

On June 1, 1862 Robert Edward Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Confederate capital of Richmond. Not until February 1865 was he named Commander in Chief of all Confederate forces, but the leadership throughout the war was undeniably his. His brilliance as a commander is legendary, and military colleges the world over study his campaigns as models of the science of war. That he held out against an army three times the size and a hundred times better equipped was no miracle.

It was the result of leadership by a man of exceptional intelligence, daring, courage and integrity. His men all but worshiped him. He shared their rations, slept in tents as they did, and, most importantly, never asked more of them than he did of himself. Lee’s legendary command of the Confederate forces came to an end at Appomattox, Virginia in April 1865. “There is nothing left for me to do,” he said, “but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.” With the war now over, Lee set an example to all in his refusal to express bitterness. “Abandon your animosities,” he said, “and make your sons Americans.” He then set out to work for a permanent union of the states.

Though his application to regain his citizenship was misplaced and not acted upon until 1975 – more than a century late – Lee worked tirelessly for a strong peace. With some hesitation he accepted the presidency of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and there he strove to equip his students with the character and knowledge he knew would be necessary to restore the war-ravaged South. Lexington became his home, and there he died of heart problems on October 12, 1870. After his death, his name was joined with that of his lifelong hero, and Washington College became Washington and Lee University.

January 19th ~ {continued...}

1840 – During an exploring expedition, Captain Charles Wilkes sights the coast of eastern Antarctica and claims it for the United States. Wilkes’ group had set out in 1838, sailing around South America to the South Pacific and then to Antarctica, where they explored a 1,500-mile stretch of the eastern Antarctic coast that later became known as Wilkes Land.

In 1842, the expedition returned to New York, having circumnavigated the globe. Antarctica was discovered by European and American explorers in the early part of the 19th century, and in February 1821 the first landing on the Antarctic continent was made by American John Davis at Hughes Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. During the next century, many nations, including the United States, made territorial claims to portions of the almost-inhabitable continent. However, during the 1930s, conflicting claims led to international rivalry, and the United States, which led the world in the establishment of scientific bases, enacted an official policy of making no territorial claims while recognizing no other nation’s claims. In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty made Antarctica an international zone, set guidelines for scientific cooperation, and prohibited military operations, nuclear explosions, and the disposal of radioactive waste on the continent.

1847 – Angered by the abusive behavior of American soldiers occupying the city, Mexicans in Taos strike back by murdering the American-born New Mexican governor Charles Bent. The eldest of four brothers who all became prominent frontiersmen, Charles Bent began his involvement with the Wild West in 1822, when he left Virginia at the age of 23 to become a trader for the Missouri Fur Company.

When that company was destroyed by cutthroat competition from John Jacob Astor’s powerful American Fur Company, Bent became a trader on the Santa Fe Trail. Building outlets in the Mexican cities of Santa Fe and New Mexico, and an Indian trading post on the Arkansas River called Bent’s Fort (in modern-day Colorado), Bent and his business partners eventually created the largest mercantile firm in the Southwest. Bent’s financial, political, and personal interests increasingly began to center on Taos, New Mexico.

In the 1830s, he moved there and married Maria Ignacia Jaramillo, a wealthy widow from a prominent Mexican family. Bent’s new wife and his considerable wealth helped him win acceptance among the Mexican political elites, and he became a close associate of the New Mexican governor, Manuel Armijo. However, when war between Mexico and the U.S. broke out in 1846, Bent revealed his true colors by welcoming General Stephen Kearney’s largely bloodless conquest of New Mexico with open arms. Kearney awarded Bent by appointing him to the governorship. Kearney and most of his soldiers then moved on to take California, leaving the new governor to fend for himself, and Bent soon discovered that his behavior had earned him many enemies in Taos.

Many of the Mexican families naturally resented the American conquest of their home, and the Taos Indians had long disliked Bent because of his trade relations with their northern enemies. The small force of American soldiers left behind to maintain order exacerbated the bad feelings by treating the Mexicans with undisguised contempt.

On January 19, 1847, the people of Taos struck back. A violent mob attacked a Taos home that Bent was visiting, murdered his guards, and then killed and scalped Bent. Dragging Bent’s mangled body through the streets of Taos, the mob called for a full-scale rebellion against the American occupation, and by the end of the evening, 15 other Americans had been killed. Those who survived fled to Santa Fe to sound the alarm. Within two weeks, the American Colonel Sterling Price had quelled the rebellion and executed the supposed ringleaders. With the end of the Mexican War in 1848, New Mexico and all the rest of Mexico’s old northern frontier became the American Southwest.

1861 – Georgia became the 5th state to secede from the Union.

1862 – Union General George Thomas defeats Confederates commanded by George Crittenden in southern Kentucky. The battle, also called Mill Springs or Beech Grove, secured Union control of the region and resulted in the death of Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer.

January 19th ~ {continued...}

1883 – The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.

1920 – The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.

1943 – Two US cruisers and four destroyers bombard the Aleutian island of Attu.

1946 – Staged jointly by the USCG and USN, the first public demonstration of LORAN was held at Floyd Bennett Field in New York. Loran was originally developed to provide radio navigation service for U.S. coastal waters and was later expanded to include complete coverage of the continental U.S. as well as most of Alaska. Today twenty-four U.S. Loran-C stations work in partnership with Canadian and Russian stations to provide coverage in Canadian waters and in the Bering Sea. Loran-C provides better than 0.25 nautical mile absolute accuracy for suitably equipped users within the published areas.

1946 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals. Also known as the Tokyo Trials, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, or simply the Tribunal, was convened on April 29, 1946, to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of war crimes.

“Class A” crimes were reserved for those who participated in a joint conspiracy to start and wage war, and were brought against those in the highest decision-making bodies; “Class B” crimes were reserved for those who committed “conventional” atrocities or crimes against humanity; “Class C” crimes were reserved for those in “the planning, ordering, authorization, or failure to prevent such transgressions at higher levels in the command structure”.

Twenty-eight Japanese military and political leaders were charged with Class A crimes, and more than 5,700 Japanese nationals were charged with Class B and C crimes, mostly entailing prisoner abuse. China held 13 tribunals of its own, resulting in 504 convictions and 149 executions.

1951 – Far East Air Forces launched a thirteen-day intensive air campaign, by fighters, light bombers, and medium bombers, to restrict to a trickle the supplies and reinforcements reaching enemy forces in the field.

1952 – The U.S. Navy hospital ship Repose departed Korean waters after the longest tour of duty for any such vessel during the Korean War — nearly one and one-half years.

1960 – The US signs a mutual defense treaty with Japan. Protests in Tokyo cause President Eisenhower to cancel a planned trip to Japan.

1961 – Outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautions incoming President John F. Kennedy that Laos is “the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia,” and might even require the direct intervention of U.S. combat troops. Fearing that the fall of Laos to the communist Pathet Lao forces might have a domino effect in Southeast Asia, President Kennedy sent a carrier task force to the Gulf of Siam in April 1961. However, he decided not to intervene in Laos with U.S. troops and in June 1961, he sent representatives to Geneva to work out a solution to the crisis.

In 1962, an agreement was signed that called for the neutrality of Laos and set up a coalition government to run the country. By this time, Kennedy had turned his attention to South Vietnam, where a growing insurgency threatened to topple the pro-western government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy had already sent combat advisers to the South Vietnamese army and this commitment expanded over time. By the time Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, he had overseen the assignment of over 17,000 U.S. advisers to South Vietnam.

1968 – Cambodia charges that the United States and South Vietnam have crossed the border and killed three Cambodians.

1968 – “Sky Soldiers” from the 173rd Airborne Brigade begin Operation McLain with a reconnaissance-in-force operation in the Central Highlands. The purpose of this operation was to find and destroy the communist base camps in the area in order to promote better security for the province. The operation ended on January 31, 1970, with 1,042 enemy casualties.

1977 – President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D’Aquino (a.k.a. “Tokyo Rose”).

January 19th ~ {continued...}

1980 – President Jimmy Carter announces the United States boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow.

1981 – The United States and Iran signed an agreement in Algiers paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months.

1986 – The first IBM PC computer virus is released into the wild. A boot sector virus dubbed (c)Brain, it was created by the Farooq Alvi Brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, reportedly to deter piracy of the software they had written.

1991 – During the Gulf War, Israel’s anti-missile force was boosted by additional Patriot missile batteries and U-S crews. A second Iraqi missile attack caused 29 injuries in Tel Aviv. Allied forces began bombarding Iraq’s elite Republican Guard.

1993 – The first American combat troops flew home from their humanitarian mission in Somalia.

1993 – Iraq agrees to allow UNSCOM flights in Iraq. Iraq had refused to allow UNSCOM to use its own aircraft in Iraq. Also, Iraq began incursions into the demilitarized zone with Kuwait, and increases its military activity in the no-fly zones. The U.N. Security Council states that Iraq’s actions were an “unacceptable and material” breach of Resolution 687 and warns Iraq of “serious consequences.” Shortly thereafter, the United States, UK, and France launch air raids on southern Iraq.

1998 – The US and China signed an accord designed to avoid naval and air conflicts at sea.

1999 – In Serbia Gen’l. Wesley Clark and Gen’l. Klaus Naumann met with Pres. Milosevic and threatened him with NATO airstrikes due to the massacre of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

2001 – In Afghanistan UN sanctions began following a 30-day deadline for the handover of Osama bin Laden. The sanctions coincided with the worst drought in 30 years.

2002 – A US CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter crashed in Afghanistan after take off from Bagram air base. Marines Dwight Morgan and Walter Cohee III were killed.

2003 – Colombian AUC gunmen kidnapped three Americans (Robert Y. Pelton, Mark Wedeven and Megan A. Smaker) just north of the Colombian border in Panama. The writer and 2 hikers were released Jan 23rd.

2003 – Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, the chief UN arms inspectors, sat down for urgent talks with Iraqi officials.

2003 – The United States offers Saddam Hussein immunity from prosecution if he leaves Iraq. US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld says in a television interview: “If to avoid a war, I would…recommend that some provision be made so that the senior leadership in that country [Iraq] and their families could be provided haven in some other country.”

2006 – The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto. New Horizons is a NASA space probe launched to study the dwarf planet Pluto, its moons and one or two Kuiper Belt objects, depending on which are in position to be explored. Part of the New Frontiers program, the mission was approved in 2001 following the cancellation of the Pluto Fast Flyby and Pluto Kuiper Express.

The mission profile was proposed by a team led by principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute. After several delays on the launch site, New Horizons was launched on 19 January 2006 from Cape Canaveral. Launched directly into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with an Earth-relative velocity of about 16.26 km/s (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph), it set the record for the highest velocity of a human-made object from Earth. New Horizons should perform a flyby of the Pluto system on 14 July 2015.

2006 – Al Jazeera airs an audiotape from Osama bin Laden saying al-Qaeda is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a “long-term truce” to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

2010 – Scores of United States Navy troops land near the Haitian presidential palace, bringing food, water, and equipment following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that had devastated Haiti on January 12th.

2013 – NASA’s Curiosity rover finds calcium deposits on Mars similar to those seen on Earth when water circulates in cracks and rock fractures.

January 20th ~

1781 – In Pompton , New Jersey, troops mutiny. They are suppressed on January 27 by General Robert Howe’s 600-man force sent by Washington. Two leaders of the mutiny are executed.

1783 – The fighting of the Revolutionary War ended. Britain signed peace agreements with France and Spain, who allied against it in the American War of Independence. The peace agreement between the US and England will not go into effect until England and France reach a settlement.

1861 – Fort on Ship Island, Mississippi, seized by Confederates; Ship Island was a key base for operations in the Gulf of Mexico and at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

1863 – Union General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac begins an offensive against General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia that quickly bogs down as several days of heavy rain turn the roads of Virginia into a muddy quagmire. The campaign was abandoned three days later.

The Union army was still reeling from the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862. Burnside’s force suffered more than 13,000 casualties as it assaulted Lee’s troops along hills above Fredericksburg. Lee suffered only 5,000 casualties, making Fredericksburg one of the most one-sided engagements in the eastern theater of operations. Morale was very low among the Yankees that winter.

Now, Burnside sought to raise morale and seize the initiative from Lee. His plan was to swing around Lee’s left flank and draw the Confederates away from their defenses and into the open. Speed was essential to the operation. January had been a dry month to that point, but as soon as the Federals began to move, a drizzle turned into a downpour that last for four days.

Logistical problems delayed the laying of a pontoon bridge across the Rappahannock River, and a huge traffic jam snarled the army’s progress. In one day, the 5th New York moved only a mile and a half. The roads became unnavigable, and conflicting orders caused two corps to march across each others’ paths. Horses, wagons, and cannon were stuck in mud, and the element of surprise was lost. Jeering Confederates taunted the Yankees with shouts and signs that read “Burnside’s Army Stuck in the Mud.” Burnside tried to lift spirits by issuing liquor to the soldiers on January 22nd, but this only compounded the problems. Drunken troops began brawling, and entire regiments fought one another.

The operation was a complete fiasco, and on January 23 Burnside gave up his attempt to, in his words, “strike a great and mortal blow to the rebellion.” The campaign was considered so disastrous that Burnside was removed as commander of the army on January 25th.

1887 – The U.S. Senate approved an agreement to lease Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a naval base.

1899 – The Philippine Commission is appointed by President McKinley. It is headed by Jacob G. Schurman who will suggest US rule of the islands until the Philippinos are ready for self-government. The move will prevent annexation by Germany which has moved its navy nearby. It will also make the US a major power in the Pacific, brining it into conflict with Japan.

1903 – Theordore Roosevelt issues Executive Order placing Midway Islands under jurisdiction of the Navy Department. The Midway Islands consist of a circular atoll, 6 miles in diameter, enclosing two islands. Lying about 1,150 miles west-northwest of Hawaii, the islands were first explored by Captain N. C. Brooks on July 5, 1859, in the name of the United States. The atoll was formally declared a U.S. possession in 1867, and in 1903 Theodore Roosevelt made it a naval reservation.

The island was renamed “Midway” by the U.S. Navy in recognition of its geographic location on the route between California and Japan. Air traffic across the Pacific increased the island’s importance in the mid-1930s; the San Francisco–Manila mail route included a regular stop on Midway. Its military importance was soon recognized, and the navy began building an air and submarine base there in 1940.

1905 – The United States and the Dominican Republic sign a protocol giving the United States control of the Dominican Republic’s international debts. The US fears that European creditors will use the debt as justification for occupation of the Caribbean republic. As much as 90% of receipts have been stolen by corrupt public officials, leading to the crisis.

1914 – School for naval air training opens in Pensacola, Florida.

January 20th ~ {continued...}

1940 – The USA protests to Britain over the detention of its ships in Gibraltar.

1942 – Top Nazis met at Grossen-Wannsee, outside Berlin, and there formulated the infamous “Final Solution” to the Jewish question. Chaired by SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the one-day conference was designed to address the Nazi efforts at removing the Jews. The 15 top-ranking men of the German Reich agreed upon a blueprint for the extermination of Europe’s Jews. Their “final solution” called for exterminating Europe’s Jews.

Until this time, the plan had been to deport all Jews to the island of Madagascar off Africa, but by 1942 this plan was rejected in favor of transporting Jews to the east where the able-bodied would become slave laborers for the Reich. SS chief Heinrich Himmler would be in charge. Those unfit to work would be, the conference minutes noted, “appropriately dealt with.” This phrase was left unexplained, but there was no doubt of its sinister meaning. After approving genocide as Nazi policy, the conference attendees adjourned for lunch. The minutes were taken by Adolf Eichmann.

1942 – Japanese aircraft from four carries make major attacks on Rabaul.

1943 – Japanese resistance on Mount Austen, Guadalcanal weakens. The garrison at the Gifu strongpoint has taken heavy losses from artillery.

1944 – Allied forces in Italy begin unsuccessful operations to cross the Rapido River and seize Cassino. At 20:00 36th US Division attempts to cross the Rapido river with two Infantry Regiments after an artillery barrage program. However, because of heavy German retaliatory fire only about 2 companies get across the river on the 141st Regiment’s front. On the other (143rd) Regiment’s front no troops get across at all.

1945 – The Allies signed a truce with the Hungarians.

1946 – By Executive Order, President Truman creates the Central Intelligence Group, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.

1949 – Point Four Program a program for economic aid to poor countries announced by United States President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address for a full term as President.

1951 – After weeks of almost unbroken absence, MiGs appeared again over Korea, resulting on this date in the first encounter between USAF F-84s and CCF MiG-15s.

1952 – The 40th Infantry Division, California Army National Guard, arrived in Korea.

1954 – The CIA built a tunnel from west Berlin to East Berlin to tap Soviet and East German communications.

1972 – In continued efforts to disrupt an anticipated communist offensive, a contingent of more than 10,000 South Vietnamese troops begin a sweep 45 miles northwest of Saigon to find and destroy enemy forces.

There was much speculation that the North Vietnamese would launch such an offensive around the Tet (Chinese New Year) holiday. Although the communists did not attack during the Tet holiday in early February, in March they launched a massive invasion involving more than 150,000 main force troops and large amounts of tanks and artillery pieces. The battles raged throughout South Vietnam into the fall and resulted in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

1981 – Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president as 52 American hostages boarded a plane in Tehran and headed toward freedom. Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

January 20th ~ {continued...}

1991 – During the Gulf War, Iraqi missiles were shot down by U-S Patriot rockets as they approached Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Iraqi television showed interviews with seven downed allied pilots, three of them Americans.

1994 – Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to attend classes at The Citadel in South Carolina. She joined the cadet corps in August 1995, under court order, but soon dropped out, citing isolation and stress.

1999 – NATO moved forces within striking distance of Yugoslavia and warned Belgrade to stop its repression in Kosovo.

1999 – The U.N. releases more than $81 million to Iraq to buy equipment to increase its supply of electricity. Iraq, which suffers frequent power shortages, as power plants fail and electrical demand rises, applied to buy the necessary generating equipment in 1998, when the “Oil-for-Food” program was expanded to allow Iraq to begin rebuilding its crumbling public services. U.N. trade sanctions and a more limited oil sales program had earlier prevented the Iraqis from replacing the old equipment.

2001 – IAEA inspectors conduct inspections in Iraq which verified presence of nuclear material.

2003 – Secretary of State Colin Powell, faced with stiff resistance and calls to go slow, bluntly told the U.N. Security Council that the United Nations “must not shrink” from its responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

2003 – The chief UN arms inspectors and Iraqi officials agreed on practical steps to greater Iraqi cooperation in the UN disarmament program, including Baghdad’s encouragement of weapons scientists to submit to private UN interviews.

2003 – British defense secretary Geoff Hoon announces the deployment of 26,000 troops to the Gulf. The force includes more than 100 Challenger 2 battle tanks, 150 armored personnel carriers, and an air assault brigade, including 1,400 paratroopers. It is bigger than Britain’s contribution at the start of the 1991 Gulf war.

2003 – US military officials announce that they are sending a force of about 37,000 soldiers to the Persian Gulf region. This takes the number of US troops ordered to deploy to around 125,000.

2005 – U.S. President George W. Bush is sworn in for his second term, with a pledge to seek “freedom in all the world”.

2005 – Mars rover Opportunity uses its spectrometers to prove that Heat Shield Rock is a meteorite, the first to be found on another planet.

2006 – At 4 o’clock UTC NASA’s Pluto probe New Horizons crossed the orbit of the Moon, eight hours and thirty-five minutes after launch. This is a new Earth-to-Moon-distance flight record.

2006 – Three former workers at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio are indicted for repeatedly falsifying inspection reports and other information to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The plant’s owner, FirstEnergy Corporation, accepts a plea bargain and $28 million in fines in lieu of criminal prosecution.

2009 – Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th and first African-American President of the United States.

2011 – The largest rocket ever launched from the U.S. West Coast blasted off on Thursday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying a top secret satellite into orbit. The Delta IV Heavy rocket stood 23 stories tall, and its engines produced 2 million pounds of thrust, according to the 30th Space Wing of the U.S. Air Force. Blasting off at 1:10 p.m. Pacific time from Space Launch Complex-6 at Vandenberg in California, the rocket carried a payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

2011 – United States Congress blocks President of the United States Barack Obama’s attempts to close the prison for detainees of the War on Terror at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

2013 – The second inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the United States takes place in the Blue Room of the White House.

2013 – A NASA spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, provides new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet’s early evolution.

2014 – The United States rejects the invitation of Iran by the United Nations in peace talks involving Syria.

2014 – Certain sanctions against Iran are lifted by the European Union and the United States through a nuclear deal.

2014 – Kenneth Bae, an American prisoner in North Korea, releases a message to the United States for help.

January 21st ~

1642 – Director of the New Netherlands colony, Willem Kieft, calls for a meeting of the Twelve (family representatives) to organize a military response to the increasing raids of the Hudson River Valley Tribe. This tribe is reacting to pressure from the growing Iroqois to the north and increasing European settlement in the south.

1785 – Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa and Wyandot tribes signed a treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.

1824 – Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate General, is born. Next to Robert E. Lee himself, Thomas J. Jackson is the most revered of all Confederate commanders. A graduate of West Point (1846), he had served in the artillery in the Mexican War, earning two brevets, before resigning to accept a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute. Thought strange by the cadets, he earned “Tom Fool Jackson” and “Old Blue Light” as nicknames.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he was commissioned a colonel in the Virginia forces and dispatched to Harpers Ferry where he was active in organizing the raw recruits until relieved by Joe Johnston. Leaving Harpers Ferry, his brigade moved with Johnston to join Beauregard at Manassas. In the fight at 1st Bull Run they were so distinguished that both the brigade and its commander were dubbed “Stonewall” by General Barnard Bee. (However, Bee may have been complaining that Jackson was not coming to his support). The 1st Brigade was the only Confederate brigade to have its nickname become its official designation.

That fall Jackson was given command of the Valley with a promotion to major general. That winter he launched a dismal campaign into the western part of the state that resulted in a long feud with General William Loring and caused Jackson to submit his resignation, which he was talked out of. In March he launched an attack on what he thought was a Union rear guard at Kernstown. Faulty intelligence from his cavalry chief, Turner Ashby, led to a defeat. A religious man, Jackson always regretted having fought on a Sunday. But the defeat had the desired result, halting reinforcements being sent to McClellan’s army from the Valley.

In May Jackson defeated Fremont’s advance at McDowell and later that month launched a brilliant campaign that kept several Union commanders in the area off balance. He won victories at Front Royal, 1st Winchester, Cross Keys, and Port Republic. He then joined Lee in the defense of Richmond but displayed a lack of vigor during the Seven Days. Detached from Lee, he swung off to the north to face John Pope’s army and after a slipshod battle at Cedar Mountain, slipped behind Pope and captured his Manassas junction supply base. He then hid along an incomplete branch railroad and awaited Lee and Longstreet. Attacked before they arrived, he held on until Longstreet could launch a devastating attack which brought a second Bull Run victory.

In the invasion of Maryland, Jackson was detached to capture Harpers Ferry and was afterwards distinguished at Antietam with Lee. He was promoted after this and given command of the now-official 2nd Corps. It had been known as a wing or command before this. He was disappointed with the victory at Fredericksburg because it could not be followed up. In his greatest day he led his corps around the Union right flank at Chancellorsville and routed the 11th Corps. Reconnoitering that night, he was returning to his own lines when he was mortally wounded by some of his own men. Following the amputation of his arm, he died eight days later on May 10, 1863, from pneumonia.

Lee wrote of him with deep feeling: ” He has lost his left arm; but I have lost my right arm.” A superb commander, he had several faults. Personnel problems haunted him, as in the feuds with Loring and with Garnett after Kernstown. His choices for promotion were often not first rate. He did not give his subordinates enough latitude, which denied them the training for higher positions under Lee’s loose command style. This was especially devastating in the case of his immediate successor, Richard Ewell. Although he was sometimes balky when in a subordinate position, Jackson was supreme on his own hook. Stonewall Jackson is buried in Lexington, Virginia.

1861 – U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and four (five) other Southern senators made emotional farewell speeches. Just weeks after his home state of Mississippi seceded from the Union, Davis prepared to leave Washington, D.C., and the country he had served as a soldier, cabinet member and member of Congress. One more time, Davis enumerated the reasons why the South felt secession was its only recourse: “…when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which…threatens to be destructive to our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence….” Davis then apologized to any senators he may have offended, and finished his address by saying, “…it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu.”

1863 – Two Confederate ships drive away two Union ships as the Rebels recapture Sabine Pass, Texas, and open an important port for the Confederacy.

January 21st ~ {continued...}

1903 – The US and Columbia sign the Hay-Herran Treaty, giving the US a 99 year lease and sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone.

1912 – US troops begin the occupation of Tiensin, China to protect US interests and the US diplomatic legation. They will cooperate with troops from Japan, Germany, England, Russia and others to protect the International Quarter.

1919 – The German Krupp plant began producing guns under the U.S. armistice terms.

1930 – An international arms meeting opened in London. The London Naval Conference, hosted by Britain, sought to establish naval disarmament and review the Washington Treaty of 1922, which limited tonnage of new battleships. After three months of meetings, representatives from Britain, the United States and Japan signed a treaty limiting battleship tonnage based on ratios between the nations. Italy and France declined to sign. A second naval conference in December 1935 did little to promote further disarmament and, by the beginning of World War II, Germany, Japan and the United States had all begun building battleships well over the limit of 35,000 tons stipulated by the original Washington Treaty.

1940 – Britain rejects American protests concerning the examination of mail carried aboard US merchant ships.

1941 – The United States lifted the ban on arms to the Soviet Union.

1942 – In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward. While the British benefited from radio-intercept-derived Ultra information, the Germans enjoyed an even speedier intelligence source.

1942 – General Stilwell is nominated as Chief of Staff to Chaing Kai-shek.

1943 – A Nazi daylight air raid kills 34 in a London school. When the anticipated invasion of Britain failed to materialize in 1940, Londoners relaxed, but soon they faced a frightening new threat.

1943 – The Casablanca Directive is issued to the US and British strategic bombing forces in Europe by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. It sets out priorities for the continuing Allied attacks. Most of the reasoning is in line with the precision bombing ideas of the US leadership. As yet the US air forces have too few resources to carry out the full scheme and RAF Bomber Command will continue its area of bombing policy, in line with the vies of its Commander in Chief Sir Arthur Harris.

1943 – The Japanese resistance at Snananada and Giruwa on New Guinea is now almost completely overcome. The US troops and Australians begin mopping up.

1944 – Forces chosen for the Anzio landing set sail from Naples.

1950 – In the conclusion to one of the most spectacular trials in U.S. history, former State Department official Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury. He was convicted of having perjured himself in regards to testimony about his alleged involvement in a Soviet spy ring before and during World War II. Hiss served nearly four years in jail, but steadfastly protested his innocence during and after his incarceration.

1951 – Communist troops force the UN army out of Inchon, Korea after a 12-hour attack.

1951 – Large numbers of MiG-15s attacked USAF jets, shooting down one F-80 and one F-84. Lt. Col. William E. Bertram of the 27th FEG shot down a MiG-15 to score the first USAF aerial victory by an F-84 Thunder Jet.

1953 – Aircraft from three carriers continue relentless assaults against communist supply buildups near Hungnam and Wonsan. Meanwhile, Air Force F-86 Sabre jets downed seven MiGs and damaged three others in a trio of engagements.

January 21st ~ {continued...}

1954 – Launching of Nautilus, first nuclear submarine, at Groton, CT. Construction of NAUTILUS was made possible by the successful development of a nuclear propulsion plant by a group of scientists and engineers at the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission, under the leadership of Captain Hyman G. Rickover, USN. In July of 1951 Congress authorized construction of the world’s first nuclear powered submarine.

On December 12th of that year, the Navy Department announced that she would be the sixth ship of the fleet to bear the name NAUTILUS. Her keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman at the Electric Boat Shipyard in Groton, Connecticut on June 14, 1952. After nearly 18 months of construction, NAUTILUS was launched with First Lady Mamie Eisenhower breaking the traditional bottle of champagne across NAUTILUS’ bow as she slid down the ways into the Thames River.

Eight months later, on September 30, 1954, NAUTILUS became the first commissioned nuclear powered ship in the United States Navy. On the morning of January 17, 1955, at 11 am EST, NAUTILUS’ first Commanding Officer, Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson, USN, ordered all lines cast off and signaled the memorable and historic message, “Underway On Nuclear Power.”

Over the next several years, NAUTILUS shattered all submerged speed and distance records. On July 23, 1958, NAUTILUS departed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii under top secret orders to conduct “Operation Sunshine,” the first crossing of the north pole by a ship. At 11:15 pm on August 3, 1958, NAUTILUS’ second Commanding Officer, Commander William R. Anderson, USN, announced to his crew “For the world, Our Country, and the Navy – the North Pole.” With 116 men aboard, NAUTILUS had accomplished the “impossible,” reaching the geographic North Pole–90 degrees north.

In May 1959, NAUTILUS entered Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine for her first complete overhaul–the first of any nuclear powered ship–and the replacement of her second fuel core. Upon completion of her overhaul in August 1960, NAUTILUS departed for a period of refresher training, then deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to become the first nuclear powered submarine assigned to the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Over the next six years, NAUTILUS participated in several fleet exercises while steaming over 200,000 miles. In the spring of 1966, she again entered the record books when she logged her 300,000th mile underway.

During the following 12 years, NAUTILUS was involved in a variety of developmental testing programs while continuing to serve alongside many of the more modern nuclear powered submarines she had preceded. In the spring of 1979, NAUTILUS set out from Groton, Connecticut on her final voyage. She reached Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California on May 26, 1979–her last day underway. She was decommissioned on March 3, 1980 after a career spanning 25 years and almost half a million miles steamed.

In recognition of her pioneering role in the practical use of nuclear power, NAUTILUS was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior on May 20, 1982. Following an extensive historic ship conversion at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, NAUTILUS was towed to Groton, Connecticut arriving on July 6, 1985. On April 11, 1986, eighty-six years to the day after the birth of the Submarine Force, Historic Ship NAUTILUS, joined by the Submarine Force Museum, opened to the public as the first and finest exhibit of it’s kind in the world, providing an exciting, visible link between yesterday’s Submarine Force and the Submarine Force of tomorrow.

1960 – Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board. The Little Joe 1B was a Launch Escape System test of the Mercury spacecraft, conducted as part of the U.S. Mercury program. The spacecraft was recovered by a Marine helicopter and returned to Wallops Island within about 45 minutes. Miss Sam was one of many monkeys used in space travel research.

1961 – USS George Washington completes first operational voyage of fleet ballistic missile submarine staying submerged 66 days.

1968 – One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins at Khe Sanh, 14 miles below the DMZ and six miles from the Laotian border. Seized and activated by the U.S. Marines a year earlier, the base, which had been an old French outpost, was used as a staging area for forward patrols and was a potential launch point for contemplated future operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.

The battle began on this date with a brisk firefight involving the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines and a North Vietnamese battalion entrenched between two hills northwest of the base. The next day North Vietnamese forces overran the village of Khe Sanh and North Vietnamese long-range artillery opened fire on the base itself, hitting its main ammunition dump and detonating 1,500 tons of explosives. An incessant barrage kept Khe Sanh’s Marine defenders, which included three battalions from the 26th Marines, elements of the 9th Marine Regiment, and the South Vietnamese 37th Ranger Battalion, pinned down in their trenches and bunkers.

Because the base had to be resupplied by air, the American high command was reluctant to put in any more troops and drafted a battle plan calling for massive artillery and air strikes. During the 66-day siege, U.S. planes, dropping 5,000 bombs daily, exploded the equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs in the area. The relief of Khe Sanh, called Operation Pegasus, began in early April as the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) and a South Vietnamese battalion approached the base from the east and south, while the Marines pushed westward to re-open Route 9.

The siege was finally lifted on April 6 when the cavalrymen linked up with the 9th Marines south of the Khe Sanh airstrip. In a final clash a week later, the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines drove enemy forces from Hill 881 North. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, contended that Khe Sanh played a vital blocking role at the western end of the DMZ, and asserted that if the base had fallen, North Vietnamese forces could have outflanked Marine defenses along the buffer zone. Various statements in the North Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper suggested that Hanoi saw the battle as an opportunity to re-enact its famous victory at Dien Bien Phu, when the communists had defeated the French in a climactic decisive battle that effectively ended the war between France and the Viet Minh.

There has been much controversy over the battle at Khe Sanh, as both sides claimed victory. The North Vietnamese, although they failed to take the base, claimed that they had tied down a lot of U.S. combat assets that could have been used elsewhere in South Vietnam. This is true, but the North Vietnamese failed to achieve the decisive victory at Khe Sanh that they had won against the French. For their part, the Americans claimed victory because they had held the base against the North Vietnamese onslaught. It was a costly battle for both sides.

The official casualty count for the Battle of Khe Sanh was 205 Marines killed in action and over 1,600 wounded (this figure did not include the American and South Vietnamese soldiers killed in other battles in the region). The U.S. military headquarters in Saigon estimated that the North Vietnamese lost between 10,000 and 15,000 men in the fighting at Khe Sanh.

January 21st ~ {continued...}

1968 – B-52 airplane loaded with hydrogen bombs crashed at North Star Bay, Greenland near Thule Air Base, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. One of the four bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup operation is complete.

1969 – USCGC Point Banks while on patrol south of Cam Rahn Bay received a call for help from a 9-man ARVN detachment trapped by two Vietcong platoons. Petty Officers Willis Goff and Larry Villareal took a 14-foot Boston whaler ashore to rescue the ARVN troops. In the face of heavy automatic weapons fire, all 9 men were evacuated in two trips. For their actions Goff and Villareal were each awarded the Silver Star for their actions. The citation stated, “The nine men would have met almost certain death or capture without the assistance of the two Coast Guardsmen.”

1970 – U.S. planes conduct widespread bombing raids in North Vietnam.

1977 – President Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders as long as they had not been involved in violent acts.

1991 – Iraq announced it had scattered prisoners of war at targeted areas; President Bush denounced Iraq’s treatment of POW’s, and said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would be held responsible. CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, CBS News London bureau chief Peter Bluff, a cameraman and soundman were captured by Iraqi forces; they were released almost six weeks later.

1993 – Two U.S. warplanes bombed a defense site in northern Iraq after radar was turned on them.

1999 – In one of the largest drug busts in American history, the United States Coast Guard intercepts a ship with over 4,300 kilograms (9,500 lb) of cocaine on board.

2002 – Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US would contribute $297 million for Afghan reconstruction over the coming year during a conference on Afghan reconstruction in Tokyo. Int’l. donors pledged over $4.5 billion over 5 years.

2003 – Colombian rebels in Arauca state kidnapped an American photographer and a British reporter, the first time foreign journalists were abducted in Colombia’s four-decade-long civil war. Scott Dalton and Ruth Morris were freed Feb 1st.

2003 – In Kuwait American contract worker Michael Rene Pouliat (46) was killed by gunman in an ambush near Camp Doha. Another worker was wounded. Saudi border guards arrested a Kuwaiti suspect the next day.

2003 – NATO blocked a US request to begin preparations for a military backup in the event of war with Iraq.

2003 – The United States issues a detailed report, Apparatus of Lies which seeks to expose what it calls Iraq’s “brutal record of deceit” from 1990 until the present.

2004 – NASA’s MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies in the management of its flash memory and is fixed remotely from Earth on 6 February.

2006 – The USS Winston S. Churchill, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, captured a vessel operating off the Somali coast whose crew were suspected of piracy.

2007 – In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc lifts its boycott of the Iraqi political process and rejoins the government.

2009 – United States President Barack Obama halts the trials of detainees at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base’s detention camp.

2010 – The United States sends an additional 2,000 troops to Haiti to help with earthquake relief efforts.

2013 – The public portion of Barack Obama’s second inauguration takes place at nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., a day after he was officially sworn into office in the White House for his second term as President of the United States.

2013 – NASA’s Kepler space telescope is placed in a precautionary 10-day safe mode after engineers noticed a problem with the instrument’s orientation mechanism.

January 22nd ~

1690 – At Onandaga, New York, the Iroquois Nation renews its allegiance to the English crown.

1807 – President Thomas Jefferson exposed a plot by Aaron Burr to form a new republic in the Southwest. In the course of the New York gubernatorial campaign of 1804, Alexander Hamilton had made derogatory remarks about Burr, who responded with a challenge. On July 11 the two men exchanged shots at Weehawken, N.J., and Hamilton was mortally wounded. A fugitive from the law in both New York and New Jersey, Burr fled to Philadelphia, where he and Jonathan Dayton, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey, developed the grandiose scheme that was to prove Burr’s downfall. Just what the plans were and whether they were treasonous are uncertain, for Burr told different stories to different people.

In its most ambitious form the scheme envisaged a vast empire in the West and South, based on the conquest of Mexico and the separation of the trans-Appalachian states from the Union. This much Burr told the British minister, of whom he asked financial and naval aid. Burr then proceeded to Washington to finish his term as vice president. Jefferson received him cordially, for Burr as vice president was to preside over the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, and the President wanted a conviction. The Chase impeachment failed, but Burr’s conduct of the trial was a model of decorum and impartiality. The trial and the vice-presidential term concluded, Burr returned to his schemes. He made a personal reconnaissance of the West in the spring of 1805.

It probably was on this trip that he first met Harman Blennerhassett, an Irish expatriate who lived in feudal splendor on an island in the Ohio River. He also visited James Wilkinson, now governor of the Louisiana Territory, and several other government dignitaries. Burr next acquired title to more than a million acres of land in Orleans Territory, the settlement of which thereafter became his ostensible purpose. Funds were supplied by his son-in-law, Joseph Alston, and by Blennerhassett. By the summer of 1806, boats, supplies, and men were being procured, mainly at Blennerhassett Island. Satisfied, Burr and some 60 followers set out to join Wilkinson near Natchez, Miss. Coded letters from Burr and Dayton already were on the way to Wilkinson alerting him to be ready to move on Mexico. The preparations openly being made seemed too extensive for the avowed purpose, giving substance to rumors that approached the truth.

To protect himself, Burr demanded an investigation. With young Henry Clay as his attorney, he twice was cleared of any treasonable intent. At this point, however, General Wilkinson decided to betray his friend. He wrote to the president, who issued a proclamation calling for the arrest of the conspirators. Burr learned of it on Jan. 10, 1807, as he entered Orleans Territory, then saw a newspaper transcript of his coded letter to Wilkinson. He surrendered to civil authorities at Natchez, but jumped bail and fled toward Spanish Florida.

1813 – During the War of 1812, British forces under Henry Proctor defeat a U.S. contingent planning an attack on Fort Detroit. The task of taking back Fort Detroit, which had been lost to the British, fell to General William Henry Harrison. His plan was to gather an army near the rapids of the Maumee River, and from there, to move against Detroit. While building an armed encampment, his subordinate, Brigadier General James Winchester, learned that a small garrison of British and Indians guarded provisions for the Fort Malden near the village of Raison River. There were also reports that the British planned to destroy the pro-American village. Winchester had orders from General Harrison to stay at his camp until the full army was assembled and ready to move on Detroit, but he felt he had to act immediately.

On 21 January he sent seven hundred men toward the Raison River under Colonel William Lewis, who defeated the British and Indians there and then sent back to Winchester asking for reinforcements to hold the place. Winchester sent three hundred regulars under Colonel Samuel Wells, and also proceeded by carriage himself. Upon arrival, Wells, pointed out to Winchester that the troops were in a highly exposed position, and recommended that scouts be sent out to learn what the British were doing. Winchester decided that the next day would be time enough to take care of these things, and went off to stay in the comfortable home of one of the community leaders, more than a mile away from his soldiers. That night, Colonel Henry Proctor, who had succeeded General Brock as the British commander at Detroit, led six hundred soldiers and six hundred Indians against the Americans, attacking before dawn. Well’s regulars formed behind a picket fence were able to kill or wound 185 of the attackers.

The American militia, however, was taken by surprise in the open and quickly overcome. Winchester was captured By Chief Roundhead, and taken before Colonel Proctor. The British commander persuaded Winchester to order his regulars to surrender, supposedly to avoid a massacre by the Indians. The fighting over, Proctor withdrew to Fort Malden, taking his prisoners with him, except for sixty four wounded Americans he left at Raison River, intending to send sleds to get them the next day. That night the Indians returned and massacred thirty of the wounded men.

1814 – In the Creek Indian War, Tennessee militia forces are repulsed at Emuckfaw. The militia will also suffer defeats at Enotachopo Creek on 24 January and at Calibee Creek on January 27th.

January 22nd ~ {continued...}

1863 – In an attempt to out flank Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, General Ambrose Burnside leads his army on a march to north Frederickburg, but foul weather bogs his army down in what will become known as “Mud March.” “The auspicious moment seems to have arrived to strike a great and mortal blow to the rebellion, and to gain that decisive victory which is due to the country.” so announced Gen. Ambrose Burnside to his Union Army of the Potomac on the morning of January 20, 1863, as he started out on another great drive to beat Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and capture the Rebel capitol of Richmond, VA.

Burnside’s battered soldiers had had but five weeks to recover from their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredricksburg, but the government demanded action. The Union and Confederate armies still faced each other across the Rappahannock River at Fredricksburg, and Burnside’s plan was to quickly cross the river above Lee’s left and assail that flank of the Confederate position. The Union soldiers and their great wagon trains of pontoon boats, artillery, and supplies made a good start clearing their camp and moving up the river. Then the sky started clouding, and by mid-afternoon a slow drizzle had begun. By nightfall a steady, relentless rain was falling, not to stop for days. The next morning the great mule-drawn wagons carrying the pontoons churned the road into a quagmire. The wagons sank to their hubs; the artillery sank until only the muzzles were out of the mud. The exhausted horses floundered, as did the men, as each slippery step through the ooze sucked at their shoes and weighed them down. “The whole country was a river of mud,” wrote one soldier. “The roads were rivers of deep mire, and the heavy rain had made the ground a vast mortar bed.” Whole regiments and triple teams of mules hitched to the wagons and guns failed to move them. Still the rain came down in torrents.

By noon the next day, Burnside’s plans to maneuver past Lee’s Rebel army were hopelessly stalled, and his own army was exhausted, wet, and cold. Burnside had no choice but to abandon the movement and order his soldiers back to their camps across from Fredricksburg. Across the river, the Confederate pickets watching the struggling Union army with amusement. Some put up a large sign on the riverbank that said “Burnside’s Army Stuck in the Mud” and another that said “This way to Richmond.”

1879 – American soldiers badly beat Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife and his people as they make a desperate bid for freedom. In doing so, the soldiers effectively crushed the so-called Dull Knife Outbreak. A leading chief of the Northern Cheyenne, Dull Knife (sometimes called Morning Star) had long urged peace with the powerful Anglo-Americans invading his homeland in the Powder River country of modern-day Wyoming and Montana. However, the 1864 massacre of more than 200 peaceful Cheyenne Indians by Colorado militiamen at Sand Creek, Colorado, led Dull Knife to question whether the Anglo-Americans could ever be trusted. He reluctantly led his people into a war he suspected they could never win.

In 1876, many of Dull Knife’s people fought along side Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull at their victorious battle at Little Bighorn, though the chief himself apparently did not participate. During the winter after Little Bighorn, Dull Knife and his people camped along the headwaters of the Powder River in Wyoming, where they fell victim to the army’s winter campaign for revenge. In November, General Ranald Mackenzie’s expeditionary force discovered the village and attacked. Dull Knife lost many of his people, and along with several other Indian leaders, reluctantly surrendered the following spring.

In 1877, the military relocated Dull Knife and his followers far away from their Wyoming homeland to the large Indian Territory on the southern plains (in present-day Kansas and Oklahoma). No longer able to practice their traditional hunts, the band was largely dependent on meager government provisions. Beset by hunger, homesickness, and disease, Dull Knife and his people rebelled after one year. In September 1878, they joined another band to make an epic march back to their Wyoming homeland.

Although Dull Knife publicly announced his peaceful intentions, the government regarded the fleeing Indians as renegades, and soldiers from bases scattered throughout the Plains attacked the Indians in an unsuccessful effort to turn them back. Arriving at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, near their Wyoming homeland, Dull Knife and his people surrendered to the government in the hopes they would be allowed to stay in the territory. To their dismay, administrators instead threatened to hold the band captive at Fort Robinson until they would agree to return south to the Indian Territory. Unwilling to give up when his goal was so close, in early January, Dull Knife led about 100 of his people in one final desperate break for freedom. Soldiers from Fort Robinson chased after the already weak and starving band of men, women, and children, and on January 22nd, they attacked and killed at least 30 people, including several in the immediate family of Dull Knife.

Badly bloodied, most of the survivors returned to Fort Robinson and accepted their fate. Dull Knife managed to escape, and he eventually found shelter with Chief Red Cloud on the Sioux reservation in Nebraska. Permitted to remain on the reservation, Dull Knife died four years later, deeply bitter towards the Anglo-Americans he had once hoped to live with peacefully. The same year, the government finally allowed the Northern Cheyenne to move to a permanent reservation on the Tongue River in Montana near their traditional homeland. At last, Dull Knife’s people had come home, but their great chief had not lived to join them.

January 22nd ~ {continued...}

1917 – President Woodrow Wilson calls on all the combatant nations fighting in World War I, to agree to ‘peace without victory.’ The British and French reject the offer, finding some of the demands made by Germany unacceptable.

1925 – 2nd Expeditionary Force organized at Cavite, Philippine Islands, for duty at Shanghai, China to protect American lives.

1927 – Confederate General John A. McCausland dies in Mason, West Virginia. He lived for over 50 years after the war and remained an unreconstructed rebel at the time of his death. Nicknamed “Tiger John,” McCausland was born to Irish immigrants in St. Louis and moved to Virginia as an adolescent. He attended the Virginia Military Institute and graduated in 1857. When the war began, he organized an artillery regiment and formed the 36th Virginia from the western part of the state. Now a colonel, McCausland spent most of the war in the mountainous region of western Virginia.

On May 9, 1864, McCausland distinguished himself at the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain. For the victory, he was promoted to brigadier general. Two bold actions defined McCausland’s career. First, in June 1864, he drove a larger Union force commanded by General David Hunter from Lynchburg, Virginia, earning him the undying gratitude of the city. He then joined General Jubal Early’s invasion of Maryland in July. Early dispatched McCausland and his cavalry to Hagerstown to exact a $200,000 ransom from city officials. McCausland rode into Hagerstown and delivered his hand-written note to authorities. Unfortunately, he accidentally omitted a zero–only $20,000 was secured.

McCausland then moved on to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and pulled his second notorious feat–he tried to extort more than $500,000 from Chambersburg, and he burned the city when he did not receive the money. McCausland joined General Robert E. Lee for the Confederates’ last desperate attempt to escape in early 1865. He broke through the Union lines near Appomattox and surrendered later at Charleston, West Virginia, after many Rebels had laid down their arms.

After the war, McCausland, facing an indictment for the burning of Chambersburg, fled to Canada, Britain, and then Mexico. He returned to the U.S. in 1868 after he was told that he would not be prosecuted for his war crimes. He settled on a farm in West Virginia and lived as a recluse for the rest of his life. He stubbornly defended the Confederate cause until his death. He died 13 months before Felix Robertson, the last surviving Confederate general.

1939 – A Nazi order erases the old officer caste, tying the army directly to the Party.

1943 – Axis forces pull out of Tripoli for Tunisia, destroying port facilities as they leave.

1943 – US attacks on Guadalcanal are renewed and begin to make progress, especially toward Kokumbona. The Japanese fight well, but US air, artillery and naval bombardment make it futile.

1943 – The last Japanese are cleared from Papua, New Guinea by Allied forces. The Japanese have lost about 7000 killed in this campaign, the Allies, half that.

January 22nd ~ {continued...}

1944 – U.S. troops under Major General John P. Lucas make an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome. Following the successful Allied landings at Calabria, Taranto, and Salerno in early September 1943 and the unconditional surrender of Italy that same month, German forces begun a slow, fighting withdrawal to the north and settled into the ‘Gustav Line’, a formidable and sophisticated defensive belt of interlocking positions on the high ground along the peninsula’s narrowest point.

Between October 1943 and January 1944 the Allies launched numerous costly attacks against well-entrenched enemy forces at this line. Because of this, the Allies initiated a larger assault south of Rome that could outflank the Gustav Line: Operation SHINGLE. During the early morning hours of 22 January 1944, troops of the Fifth Army swarmed ashore on a fifteen-mile stretch of Italian beach near the prewar resort towns of Anzio and Nettuno. The landings were carried out so flawlessly and German resistance was so light that British and American units gained their first day’s objectives by noon. More to the east the key to defeating the Gustav line lay in the small town of Cassino lying on the river Rapido dominated by the historic Benedictine monastery atop the 1,693 foot massif of Monte Cassino itself. Only after four months with three battles the mountain only fell into Allied hands on May 18th.

At Anzio, Allied troops only were able to break out around May 25th. Rome was entered by Clark’s Fifth Army on the 4th June. The Anzio Campaign was controversial, the operation clearly failed in its immediate objectives of outflanking the Gustav Line, restoring mobility to the Italian campaign, and speeding the capture of Rome. Allied forces were quickly pinned down and contained within a small beachhead, and they were effectively rendered incapable of conducting any sort of major offensive action for four months pending the advance of Fifth Army forces to the south. Anzio failed to be the panacea the Allies sought. As General Lucas steadfastly maintained that under the circumstances the small Anzio force accomplished all that could have been realistically expected. Lucas’ critics charge, however, that a more aggressive and imaginative commander, such as a Patton or Truscott, could have obtained the desired goals by an immediate, bold offensive from the beachhead. Lucas was overly cautious, spent valuable time digging in, and allowed the Germans to prepare countermeasures to ensure that an operation conceived as a daring Allied offensive behind enemy lines became a long, costly campaign of attrition.

Yet the campaign did accomplish several goals. The presence of a significant Allied force behind the German Gustav Line, uncomfortably close to Rome, represented a constant threat. The Germans could not ignore Anzio and were forced into a response, thereby surrendering the initiative in Italy to the Allies. The 135,000 troops of the Fourteenth Army surrounding Anzio could not be moved elsewhere, nor could they be used to make the already formidable Gustav Line virtually impregnable. The Anzio beachhead thus guaranteed that the already steady drain of scarce German troop reserves, equipment, and materiel would continue unabated, ultimately enabling the 15th Army Group to break through in the south. But the success was costly.

1946 – Creation of the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the CIA.

1951 – I and IX Corps launched a limited attack to probe the communist positions in preparation for Operation THUNDERBOLT, a reconnaissance-in-force intended to provide Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgway with more intelligence about enemy capabilities to assist the United Nation’s drive back to the 38th Parallel. Another goal of Thunderbolt was to destroy as many enemy troops as feasible. To meet the second objective Ridgway employed the “meat grinder” strategy for the first time. That consisted of using the Eighth Army’s large artillery resources to lay down a huge barrage ahead of advancing units. The technique required controlling the advance from phase point to phase point, and maneuver commanders had little room for initiative. However, the goal was to kill more enemy soldiers while minimizing casualties among Americans and other U.N. allies. It was also intended to speed up the attrition of Chinese forces in South Korea.

1953 – The 18th FBW withdrew its remaining F-51 Mustangs from combat and prepared to transition to Sabres, thus ending the use of USAF single engine, propeller-driven aircraft in offensive combat in the Korean War. Peking radio announced the capture of Colonel Arnold and his surviving crewmembers, three having perished when the B-29 went down on January 13. The communists did not release Colonel Arnold until 1956.

1957 – The New York City “Mad Bomber”, George P. Metesky, WWI Marine Corps veteran, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and is charged with planting more than 30 bombs.

1964 – U.S. Joint Chiefs foresee larger U.S. commitment: The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff inform Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that they “are wholly in favor of executing the covert actions against North Vietnam.” President Johnson had recently approved Oplan 34A, provocative operations to be conducted by South Vietnamese forces (supported by the United States) to gather intelligence and conduct sabotage to destabilize the North Vietnamese regime. Actual operations would begin in February and involve raids by South Vietnamese commandos operating under American orders against North Vietnamese coastal and island installations.

Although American forces were not directly involved in the actual raids, U.S. Navy ships were on station to conduct electronic surveillance and monitor North Vietnamese defense responses under another program called Operation De Soto. Although the Joint Chiefs agreed with the president’s decision on these operations, they further advocated even stronger measures, advising McNamara: “… We believe, however, that it would be idle to conclude that these efforts will have a decisive effect on the communist determination to support the insurgency, and it is our view that we must therefore be prepared fully to undertake a much higher level of activity.”

Among their recommendations were “aerial bombing of key North Vietnamese targets,” and “commitment of additional U.S. forces, as necessary, in support of the combat actions within South Vietnam.” President Johnson at first resisted this advice, but in less than a year, U.S. airplanes were bombing North Vietnam, and shortly thereafter the first U.S. combat troops began arriving in South Vietnam.

January 22nd ~ {continued...}

1968 – Operating in the two northernmost military regions, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) launches two major operations. In the first operation, conducted by the 1st Cavalry Division in Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces, south of the Demilitarized Zone, “First Team” units launched Operation Jeb Stuart. This operation was a large-scale reinforcement of the Marines in the area and focused on clearing enemy Base Areas 101 and 114. Jeb Stuart was terminated on March 31 with enemy casualties listed at 3,268; U.S. casualties were 291 killed in action and 1,735 wounded. On the same day that Jeb Stuart was launched, other 1st Cavalry units launched Operation Pershing II in the coastal lowlands in Binh Dinh Province. This operation, designed to clear enemy forces from the area, lasted until February 29th.

1968 – Apollo 5 lifts off carrying the first Lunar module into space. Apollo 5 was the first unmanned flight of the Apollo Lunar Module (LM), which would later carry astronauts to the lunar surface. It lifted off on January 22, 1968, with a Saturn IB rocket on an Earth-orbital flight.

1968 – Operation Igloo White, a US electronic surveillance system to stop communist infiltration into South Vietnam begins installation. Operation Igloo White was a covert United States joint military electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War.

These missions were carried out by the 553rd Reconnaissance Wing (553 RW), a U.S. Air Force unit flying modified EC-121R Warning Star aircraft, and Observation Squadron SIXTY-SEVEN (VO-67), a specialized U.S. Navy unit flying highly modified OP-2E Neptune[1] aircraft. This state-of-the-art operation utilized electronic sensors, computers, and communications relay aircraft in an attempt to automate intelligence collection. The system would then assist in the direction of strike aircraft to their targets. The objective of those attacks was the logistical system of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that snaked through southeastern Laos and was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Road to the North Vietnamese).

1969 – Operation Dewey Canyon, perhaps the most successful high-mobility regimental-size action of the Vietnam War, began in the A Shau/Da Krong Valleys when the 9th Marines, commanded by Colonel Robert H. Barrow, and supporting artillery were lifted from Quang Tri. By 18 March the enemy’s base area had been cleared out, 1617 enemy dead had been counted, and more than 500 tons of weapons and ammunition unearthed.

1971 – Communist forces shell Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the first time.

1973 – The crew of Apollo 17, Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, addresses a joint session of Congress after the completion of the final Apollo moon landing mission.

1982 – In a revival of the diplomacy “linkages” that were made famous by Henry Kissinger during the Nixon years, the administration of President Ronald Reagan announces that further progress on arms talks will be linked to a reduction of Soviet oppression in Poland. The U.S. ploy was but one more piece of the increasingly complex jigsaw puzzle of nuclear arms reduction. Faced with a growing anti-nuke movement in the United States and abroad, and having drawn criticism for some off-the-cuff remarks about “winning” a nuclear war, President Reagan called for negotiations on reducing intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe.

These talks began in November 1981 but quickly bogged down as both the U.S. and Soviet negotiators charged each other with acting in bad faith. Almost immediately, both nations began to increase their nuclear arsenals in Europe. Some speculated that neither side was truly seeking arms control, and the reaction of building up arms as a result caused a firestorm of protest in several western European nations. Perhaps in an effort to divert attention from the failed talks, the Reagan administration in January 1982 linked further arms negotiations to Soviet actions in Poland, indicating that the U.S. would not engage in further talks until Soviet repression in Poland was eased.

In that nation, the Soviet-backed communist government imposed martial law in late 1981 in an effort to destroy the growing Solidarity movement among Poland’s labor unions. Claiming that arms reduction talks could not be “insulated from other events,” the Reagan administration declared, “The continuing repression of the Polish people-in which Soviet responsibility is clear-obviously constitutes a major setback to the prospects for constructive East-West relations.”

It was unclear whether the U.S. stance had any direct impact on the ongoing INF talks. Domestic U.S. political opposition to any arms control agreement with the Soviets, combined with intense mutual distrust between the Soviet Union and the United States during much of the Reagan administration, were much more important factors in the delay in finally securing an agreement. The INF agreement did eventually get signed in 1987, when new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev broke the ice for more fruitful talks.

January 22nd ~ {continued...}

1990 – Robert Tappan Morris is convicted of releasing the 1988 Internet Computer worm.

1991 – Iraq fired six Scud missiles into Saudi Arabia; all were either intercepted, or fell into unpopulated areas. However, in Tel Aviv, a Scud eluded the Patriot missile defense system and struck the city, resulting in three deaths.

1992 – STS-42 was a Space Shuttle Discovery mission with the Spacelab module. Liftoff was originally scheduled for 8:45 EST (13:45 UTC), but the launch was delayed due to weather constraints. Discovery successfully lifted off an hour later at 9:52 EST (14:52 UTC). The main goal of the mission was to study the effects of microgravity on a variety of organisms. The shuttle landed at 8:07 PST (16:07 UTC) on 30 January 1992 on Runway 22, Edwards Air Force Base, California.

2000 – Iraq reaches an agreement on the continuation of oil supplies to Jordan. Under the agreement, Iraq will give Jordan $300 million worth of crude oil in 2000 free of charge, and Jordan will pay a maximum of $19 per barrel for any additional volumes imported.

2002 – US officials reported that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a former head of al Qaeda training in Afghanistan, had provided information on an alleged plot to blow up the US Embassy in Yemen a week earlier.

2003 – Bill Maudlin (b.1921), WW-II era cartoonist, died in Newport Beach, Ca. In 1945 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his war cartoons and later authored “Up Front,” a collection of cartoons and an essay on war.

2003 – France and Germany joined forces to prevent any U.S.-led war on Iraq. Countering blunt talk of war by the Bush administration, France and Germany defiantly stated they were committed to a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.

2004 – NASA said it lost contact with the Mars spirit rover.

2010 – Former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel James Fondren is sentenced to three years in prison for providing classified documents to Chinese spy Tai Shen Kuo.

2012 – A U.S. drone strike occurred near Mogadishu killing British al-Qaeda operative Bilal el-Berjawi.

January 23rd ~

1730 – Joseph Hewes, US merchant (Declaration of Independence signer), was born.

1737 – John Hancock (d.1793), American statesman, was born.

1775 – The Georgia Colony adopts a revised version of the Continental Association which mandates a nonimportation policy and a trade embargo against Britain to force a repeal of the Coercive Acts of 1774.

1800 – Edward Rutledge (50), US attorney (signed Declaration of Independence), died.

1845 – US Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The law was signed by President John Tyler.

1855 –John Moses Browning, sometimes referred to as the “father of modern firearms,” is born in Ogden, Utah. Many of the guns manufactured by companies whose names evoke the history of the American West-Winchester, Colt, Remington, and Savage-were actually based on John Browning’s designs.

The son of a talented gunsmith, John Browning began experimenting with his own gun designs as a young man. When he was 24 years old, he received his first patent, for a rifle that Winchester manufactured as its Single Shot Model 1885. Impressed by the young man’s inventiveness, Winchester asked Browning if he could design a lever-action-repeating shotgun. Browning could and did, but his efforts convinced him that a pump-action mechanism would work better, and he patented his first pump model shotgun in 1888.

Fundamentally, all of Browning’s manually-operated repeating rifle and shotgun designs were aimed at improving one thing: the speed and reliability with which gun users could fire multiple rounds-whether shooting at game birds or other people. Lever and pump actions allowed the operator to fire a round, operate the lever or pump to quickly eject the spent shell, insert a new cartridge, and then fire again in seconds.

By the late 1880s, Browning had perfected the manual repeating weapon; to make guns that fired any faster, he would somehow have to eliminate the need for slow human beings to actually work the mechanisms. But what force could replace that of the operator moving a lever or pump? Browning discovered the answer during a local shooting competition when he noticed that reeds between a man firing and his target were violently blown aside by gases escaping from the gun muzzle. He decided to try using the force of that escaping gas to automatically work the repeating mechanism. Browning began experimenting with his idea in 1889.

Three years later, he received a patent for the first crude fully automatic weapon that captured the gases at the muzzle and used them to power a mechanism that automatically reloaded the next bullet. In subsequent years, Browning refined his automatic weapon design. When U.S. soldiers went to Europe during WWI, many of them carried Browning Automatic Rifles, as well as Browning’s deadly machine guns. During a career spanning more than five decades, Browning’s guns went from being the classic weapons of the American West to deadly tools of world war carnage. Amazingly, since Browning’s death in 1926, there have been no further fundamental changes in the modern firearm industry.

1863 – Confederate General John Bell Hood is officially removed as commander of the Army of Tennessee. He had requested the removal a few weeks before; the action closed a sad chapter in the history of the Army of Tennessee. A Kentucky native, Hood attended West Point and graduated in 1853. He served in the frontier army until the outbreak of the Civil War.

Hood resigned his commission and became a colonel commanding the 4th Texas Infantry. Hood’s unit was sent to the Army of Northern Virginia, where it fought during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862. Hood, now a brigadier general, built a reputation as an aggressive field commander. He distinguished himself during the Seven Days’ battle in June, and was given command of a division. His counterattack at Antietam in September may have saved Robert E. Lee’s army from total destruction. After being severely wounded at Gettysburg in July 1863, Hood was transferred to the Army of Tennessee. He was soon wounded again, losing a leg at Chickamauga in September. Hood was promoted to corps commander for the Atlanta campaign of 1864, and was elevated to commander of the army upon the removal of Joseph Johnston in July.

Over the next five months, Hood presided over the near destruction of that great Confederate army. He unsuccessfully attacked General William T. Sherman’s army three times near Atlanta, relinquished the city after a month-long siege, then took his army back to Tennessee in the fall to draw Sherman away from the deep South. Sherman dispatched part of his army to Tennessee, and Hood lost two disastrous battles at Franklin and Nashville in November and December 1864. There were about 65,000 soldiers in the Army of Tennessee when Hood assumed command in July. On January 1, a generous assessment would count 18,000 men in the army. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was no longer a viable fighting force.

January 23rd ~ {continued...}

1865 – Battle of City Point, VA (James River, Trent’s Reach). The Confederate James River squadron sortied from Richmond in hopes of disrupting Grant’s supply line and raising the siege of Petersburg. The result was almost a non-battle, as the squadron had a comic propensity to run aground as they came down the river. One ship would run aground; another ship would come up to help and ground itself in the process, etc. The delays in getting back underway forfeited the advantage of surprise, allowing the dilatory Union squadron commander to come up and, in combination with shore batteries, chase the Confederates back up the river.

1870 – 173 Blackfoot, including 140 women and children, were killed in Montana by US Army. Declaring he did not care whether or not it was the rebellious band of Indians he had been searching for, Colonel Eugene Baker orders his men to attack a sleeping camp of peaceful Blackfeet along the Marias River in northern Montana.

The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named Owl Child of stealing some of his horses; he punished the proud brave with a brutal whipping. In retribution, Owl Child and several allies murdered Clarke and his son at their home near Helena, and then fled north to join a band of rebellious Blackfeet under the leadership of Mountain Chief. Outraged and frightened, Montanans demanded that Owl Child and his followers be punished, and the government responded by ordering the forces garrisoned under Major Eugene Baker at Fort Ellis (near modern-day Bozeman, Montana) to strike back.

Strengthening his cavalry units with two infantry groups from Fort Shaw near Great Falls, Baker led his troops out into sub-zero winter weather and headed north in search of Mountain Chief’s band. Soldiers later reported that Baker drank a great deal throughout the march. On January 22, Baker discovered an Indian village along the Marias River, and, postponing his attack until the following morning, spent the evening drinking heavily.

At daybreak on the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker ordered his men to surround the camp in preparation for attack. As the darkness faded, Baker’s scout, Joe Kipp, recognized that the painted designs on the buffalo-skin lodges were those of a peaceful band of Blackfeet led by Heavy Runner. Mountain Chief and Owl Child, Kipp quickly realized, must have gotten wind of the approaching soldiers and moved their winter camp elsewhere. Kipp rushed to tell Baker that they had the wrong Indians, but Baker reportedly replied, “That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them.” Baker then ordered a sergeant to shoot Kipp if he tried to warn the sleeping camp of Blackfeet and gave the command to attack. Baker’s soldiers began blindly firing into the village, catching the peaceful Indians utterly unaware and defenseless.

By the time the brutal attack was over, Baker and his men had, by the best estimate, murdered 37 men, 90 women, and 50 children. Knocking down lodges with frightened survivors inside, the soldiers set them on fire, burnt some of the Blackfeet alive, and then burned the band’s meager supplies of food for the winter. Baker initially captured about 140 women and children as prisoners to take back to Fort Ellis, but when he discovered many were ill with smallpox, he abandoned them to face the deadly winter without food or shelter. When word of the Baker Massacre (now known as the Marias Massacre) reached the east, many Americans were outraged.

One angry congressman denounced Baker, saying “civilization shudders at horrors like this.” Baker’s superiors, however, supported his actions, as did the people of Montana, with one journalist calling Baker’s critics “namby-pamby, sniffling old maid sentimentalists.” Neither Baker nor his men faced a court martial or any other disciplinary actions. However, the public outrage over the massacre did derail the growing movement to transfer control of Indian affairs from the Department of Interior to the War Department–President Ulysses S. Grant decreed that henceforth all Indian agents would be civilians rather than soldiers.

1909 – RMS Republic, a passenger ship of the White Star Line, becomes the first ship to use the CQD distress signal after colliding with another ship, the SS Florida, off the Massachusetts coastline, an event that kills six people. The Republic sinks the next day. Florida came about to rescue Republic’s complement, and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service cutter Gresham responded to the distress signal as well. Passengers were distributed between the two ships, with Florida taking the bulk of them, but with 900 Italian immigrants already on board, this left the ship dangerously overloaded.

The White Star liner Baltic, commanded by Captain J. B. Ranson, also responded to the CQD call, but due to the persistent fog, it was not until the evening that Baltic was able to locate the drifting Republic. Once on-scene, the rescued passengers were transferred from Gresham and Florida to Baltic. Because of the damage to Florida, that ship’s immigrant passengers were also transferred to Baltic, but a riot nearly broke out when they had to wait until first-class Republic passengers were transferred. Once everyone was on board, Baltic sailed for New York.

January 23rd ~ {continued...}

1920 – The Dutch government refused demands from the victorious Allies to hand over Kaiser Wilhelm II, the dethroned German monarch who had fled to the Netherlands.

1940 – Britain and France warn that they will attack German shipping encountered by their navies in the Pan-American neutral zone.

1941 – Charles A. Lindbergh, a national hero since his nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Lend-Lease policy-and suggests that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Hitler. Lindbergh was born in 1902 in Detroit. His father was a member of the House of Representatives. Lindbergh’s interest in aviation led him to flying school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and later brought him work running stunt-flying tours and as an airmail pilot.

While regularly flying a route from St. Louis to Chicago, he decided to try to become the first pilot to fly alone nonstop from New York to Paris. He obtained the necessary financial backing from a group of businessmen, and on May 21, 1927, after a flight that lasted slightly over 33 hours, Lindbergh landed his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in Paris. He won worldwide fame along with his $25,000 prize.

In March 1932, Lindbergh made headlines again, but this time because of the kidnapping of his two-year-old son. The baby was later found dead, and the man convicted of the crime, Bruno Hauptmann, was executed. To flee unwanted publicity, Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow, daughter of U.S. ambassador Dwight Morrow, moved to Europe. During the mid-1930s, Lindbergh became familiar with German advances in aviation and warned his U.S. counterparts of Germany’s growing air superiority. But Lindbergh also became enamored of much of the German national “revitalization” he encountered, and allowed himself to be decorated by Hitler’s government, which drew tremendous criticism back home.

Upon Lindbergh’s return to the States, he agitated for neutrality with Germany, and testified before Congress in opposition to the Lend-Lease policy, which offered cash and military aid to countries friendly to the United States in their war effort against the Axis powers. His public denunciation of “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration” as instigators of American intervention in the war, as well as comments that smacked of anti-Semitism, lost him the support of other isolationists.

When, in 1941, President Roosevelt denounced Lindbergh publicly, the aviator resigned from the Air Corps Reserve. He eventually contributed to the war effort, though, flying 50 combat missions over the Pacific. His participation in the war, along with his promotion to brigadier general of the Air Force Reserve in 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a popular Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Spirit of St. Louis,, and a movie based on his exploits all worked to redeem him in the public’s eyes.

1942 – Japanese troops land at Rabaul in New Britain, at Balikpapan in Borneo, near Kavieng on New Ireland and on Bougainville in the Solomons.

1943 – On Guadalcanal, American forces begin to make rapid gains because of the Japanese withdrawal toward the Cape Esperance positions. The Americans fail to realize the significance. The Gifu strongpoint falls.

1943 – World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua.

1944 – There are now about 50,000 Allied troops concentrated in the Anzio beachhead. General Lucas commands. German resistance is light but the Allied forces advance slowly. Meanwhile, Kesselring believes it is possible to maintain the Gustav Line defenses at the same time as containing the Anzio landings. The commander of the German 10th Army, von Vietinghoff favors a withdrawal from the southern defensive line. The German High Command allots German reserves from France, northern Italy and the Balkans as well as the German 14th Army headquarters to organize defenses around Anzio. Within a week a total of 8 German divisions are concentrated in the area.

January 23rd ~ {continued...}

1945 – In the Philippines, elements of US 14th Corps take Bamban in their continuing southward attacks and almost reach Clark Field.

1945 – St. Vith falls to the attack of tank units from US 18th Corps. The German forces are falling back over the River Our from throughout the Ardennes salient but are losing heavily to Allied air attacks.

1948 – The Soviets refused UN entry into North Korea to administer elections. The surrender of Japan was inevitable after the United States dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima in August of 1945. Stalin was waiting for just such an opportunity where the Soviets could enter the war against Japan while incurring minimal loss, and so it was no surprise when he declared war against Japan after the U.S. dropped the second atom bomb.

Upon Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945, Soviet military forces swept through Manchuria and North Korea taking over Japanese control over these provinces. The United States reacted in alarm when she realized the potential danger of having the strategic Korean peninsula controlled by communist forces. President Truman proposed a joint occupation of Korea by the two powers where the Soviets would occupied the territory north of the 38 parallel, while the U.S. would control the area south of the line. Initially, it was the intention of both sides to establish a stable and unified Korea in order to withdraw their military forces from the area.

However, neither the Soviet Union or the U.S. wanted the peninsula to fall into the other’s hand. In short, the Soviets and the U.S. desired to withdraw their military and resources out of Korea, but they also wanted to leave behind a nation that was favorable to each’s ideology; the Soviets desired a Communist Korea whereas the U.S. wanted a democratic nation to be established. And so the roots of division were laid from the very onset of Korea’s liberation.

During the period of civil turmoil of 1945- 1946, there were many different leftist factions vying for power. It was during this time that the Soviets helped establish Kim Il Sung, a product of the Soviet military machine, as the leading political figure in the north. In the south an entirely different story unfolded. During this time, a Korean patriot named Syngman Rhee began to acquire political power among the conservative elitists in South Korea. His dogmatic advocacy for Korea’s full independence often caused friction between him and U.S. officials. But due to Rhee’s strong stance against communism, and because of his commitment to maintaining civil order during these turbulent times, the US had no other choice but to give support to Rhee.

Therefore, with U.S. support and the use of strong arm tactics, Syngman Rhee eventually positioned himself has the dominant political leader in South Korea by 1947. Although two different political governments had emerged in Korea by 1947, the fact that they were still only provisional governments gave the korean people hope for a possible unification. Up until this time, nationalists from both the North and South continued their efforts to negotiate a unification treaty, however, irreconcilable differences between the U.S. and the Soviet Union prevented any such goal.

Eventually, the U.S. concluded that the chasm that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in establishing a unified Korea was insurmountable and so they pressured the United Nations to allow for a general election in Korea. Suspicious of foul play by the U.S., the Soviets refused to allow the election to be held in North Korea.

1951 – Thirty-three F-84s of the U.S. Air Force’s 27th Fighter-Escort Wing engaged 30 MiG-15s in a dogfight over the skies of Sinuiju. In less than a minute Captains Allen McGuire and William Slaughter each destroyed a MiG while First Lieutenant Jacob Kratt scored two kills, the first double MiG kill of the war.

1951 – U.S. First Marine Division elements attacked guerrilla concentrations in the vicinity of Andong.

1953 – The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing flew the last F-51 Mustang mission of the war.

January 23rd ~ {continued...}

1960 – The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 35,797 feet in the Pacific Ocean. Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe, which with her crew of two reached a record maximum depth of about 35,797 feet, in the deepest known part of the Earth’s oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific. On 23 January 1960, Jacques Piccard (son of the boat’s designer Auguste Piccard) and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh achieved the goal of Project Nekton. Trieste was the first manned vessel to have reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep.

1964 – The 24th amendment to the Constitution, eliminating the poll tax in federal elections, was ratified.

1968 – The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo is seized by North Korean naval vessels and charged with spying and violating North Korean territorial waters. Negotiations to free the 83-man crew of the U.S. ship dragged on for nearly a year, damaging the credibility of and confidence in the foreign policy of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. The capture of the ship and internment of its crew by North Korea was loudly protested by the Johnson administration.

The U.S. government vehemently denied that North Korea’s territorial waters had been violated and argued the ship was merely performing routine intelligence gathering duties in the Sea of Japan. Some U.S. officials, including Johnson himself, were convinced that the seizure was part of a larger communist-bloc offensive, since exactly one week later, communist forces in South Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive, the largest attack of the Vietnam War. Despite this, however, the Johnson administration took a restrained stance toward the incident. Fully occupied with the Tet Offensive, Johnson resorted to quieter diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in North Korea.

In December 1968, the commander of the Pueblo, Capt. Lloyd Bucher, grudgingly signed a confession indicating that his ship was spying on North Korea prior to its capture. With this propaganda victory in hand, the North Koreans turned the crew and captain (including one crewman who had died) over to the United States. The Pueblo incident was a blow to the Johnson administration’s credibility, as the president seemed powerless to free the captured crew and ship.

Combined with the public’s perception–in the wake of the Tet Offensive–that the Vietnam War was being lost, the Pueblo incident resulted in a serious faltering of Johnson’s popularity with the American people. The crewmen’s reports about their horrific treatment at the hands of the North Koreans during their 11 months in captivity further incensed American citizens, many of whom believed that Johnson should have taken more aggressive action to free the captive Americans.

1969 – NASA unveiled a moon-landing craft.

1973 – President Nixon announces that Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, have initialled a peace agreement in Paris “to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.” Kissinger and Tho had been conducting secret negotiations since 1969.

After the South Vietnamese had blunted the massive North Vietnamese invasion launched in the spring of 1972, Kissinger and the North Vietnamese had finally made some progress on reaching a negotiated end to the war. However, a recalcitrant South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu had inserted several demands into to the negotiations that caused the North Vietnamese negotiators to walk out of the talks with Kissinger on December 13.

President Nixon issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.” The North Vietnamese rejected Nixon’s demand and the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. This operation was the most concentrated air offensive of the war. During the 11 days of the attack, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties dropped roughly 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong.

On December 28, after 11 days of intensive bombing, the North Vietnamese agreed to return to the talks. When the negotiators met again in early January, they quickly worked out a settlement. Under the terms of the agreement, which became known as the Paris Peace Accords, a cease-fire would begin at 8 a.m., January 28, Saigon time (7 p.m., January 27, Eastern Standard Time). In addition, all prisoners of war were to be released within 60 days and in turn, all U.S. and other foreign troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam within 60 days.

With respect to the political situation in South Vietnam, the Accords called for a National Council of Reconciliation and Concord, with representatives from both South Vietnamese sides (Saigon and the National Liberation Front) to oversee negotiations and organize elections for a new government. The actual document was entitled “An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam” and it was formally signed on January 27th.

January 23rd ~ {continued...}

1986 – U.S. began maneuvers off the Libyan coast. Following Libyan involvement in murderous attacks at the El Al counters at the Vienna and Rome airports in 1985, and after a considerable portion of Libya’s involvement in international terrorism had become public knowledge, U.S. President Reagan, in January 1986, ordered all economic ties with Libya severed and Libyan assets in the U.S. frozen. Reagan also called upon other countries to join the economic boycott against Libya. U.S. concentrated troops from the Sixth Fleet in the Gulf of Sidra opposite Libya. A series of terrorist attacks will lead the U.S. to take retaliatory military action in April 1986, American planes will attack government and military installations in Benghazi and Tripoli.

1991 – After some 12,000 sorties in the Gulf War, General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said allied forces had achieved air superiority, and would focus air fire on Iraqi ground forces around Kuwait.

1991 – Iraqi military forces deliberately create a huge oil spill in the Persian Gulf, the largest oil spill on record. U.S. officials term the spill an act of “environmental terrorism.”

1996 – The US Army disclosed that it had 30,000 tons of chemical weapons stored in Utah, Alabama, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, Colorado and Oregon.

1998 – A judge in Fairfax, Va., sentenced Mir Aimal Kasi to death for an assault rifle attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 that killed two men and wounded three other people. Kasi was executed November 2002.

1999 – US jets attacked 2 Iraqi surface-to-air missile batteries after encountering anti-aircraft fire and MiG jets in the southern no-fly zone.

2002 – US authorities raised the reward for information leading to the arrest of the anthrax perpetrator to $2.5 million.

2002 – US soldiers captured 27 Taliban fighters in Hazar Qadam, north of Kandahar. Gov. Jan Muhammad Khan later said that 60 people were killed and denied that any were Taliban or al Qaeda fighters. US military later acknowledged that some of the dead may have been allies. The captives were released Feb 6 and reported that they had been beaten and abused.

2002 – John Walker Lindh, a U.S.-born Taliban fighter, was returned to the United States to face criminal charges that he’d conspired to kill fellow Americans.

2002 – Daniel Pearl, Wall Street Journal reporter, was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, by the “National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty.” A deadline to kill him was extended a day pending 4 demands that included: the return of Pakistanis in Cuba; access to lawyers for Pakistani detainees in the US; the return of a former Taliban ambassador; and the release of F-16 jets purchased by Pakistan in the 1980s. Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh became the chief suspect. Pearl was later murdered.

2003 – In Texas 2 military helicopters collided and 4 marine reservists were killed.

2003 – The government of Kuwait said a Kuwaiti had confessed to the Jan. 21 shootings of two U.S. defense workers in Kuwait.

2003 – Final communication between Earth and Pioneer 10. Pioneer 10 (originally designated Pioneer F), an American space probe, weighing 258 kilograms, completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. This space exploration project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and the space probe was manufactured by TRW.

Pioneer 10 was assembled around a hexagonal bus with a 2.74 meter diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna, and the spacecraft was spin stabilized around the axis of the antenna. Its electric power was supplied by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators that provided a combined 155 watts at launch. Pioneer 10 was launched on March 3, 1972, by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt.

Photography of Jupiter began November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 km, and a total of about 500 images were transmitted. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 km. During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere. Radio communications were lost with Pioneer 10 because of the loss of electric power for its radio transmitter, with the probe at a distance of 12 billion kilometers (80 AU) from Earth.

2004 – US District Judge in LA, Aubrey Collins, ruled that a part of the Patriot Act, that makes it a crime to give expert advice to foreign terrorist organizations, was unconstitutional.

2004 – It was reported that Halliburton told the Pentagon that 2 employees took kickbacks at up to $6 million from a Kuwaiti-based company for supplying US troops in Iraq.

2004 – The World Economic Forum began in Davos, Switzerland. The war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism dominated the Forum as the US appealed for cooperation on both issues and the U.N. chief warned that an overly narrow focus could worsen global tensions.

2005 – In the ongoing dispute between the United States and Venezuela, the US tried to veto a sale of Embraer airplanes to Venezuela. Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim branded the US attempted veto as “indefensible nonsense”. The US recently failed to block a large sale of Spanish military equipment to Venezuela.

2007 – In the State of the Union Address, Bush announced “deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq”.

2013 – The United States Armed Forces overturns its ban on women serving in combat, reversing a 1994 rule, and potentially clearing the way for women to serve in front-line units and elite commando forces.

January 24th ~ {continued...}

661 – Ali ibn Abu Talib, caliph of Islam (656-61), was murdered. Caliph Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed, was assassinated and his followers (Shiites) broke from the majority Muslim group.

1639 – Representatives from three Connecticut towns banded together to write the Fundamental Orders, the first constitution in the New World.

1712 – Frederick II (d.1786), Frederick the Great, the Hohenzollern King of Prussia (1740-1786), was born. He was noted for his social reforms and leading Prussia in military victories. Among his military innovations was the professional General Staff. A model that would be adopted by all modern militaries.

1732 – Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais, French dramatist, was born. He was best remembered for his plays “Barber of Civil” and “Marriage of Figaro.” He was a conduit for French gold and arms to American Revolution, persecuted by mob during French Rev. “It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.”

1776 – Colonel Henry Knox arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the 43 British Cannon and 16 mortars captured by Ethan Allen at Fort Ticonderoga. These artillery have been transported cross-country through the wilderness.

1826 – The US signs the Treaty or Washington with the Creek Tribe, granting them the right to stay on their lands for two years.

1847 – 1,500 New Mexican Indians and Mexicans were defeated by US Colonel Price.

1848 – A millwright named James Marshall discovers gold along the banks of Sutter’s Creek in California, forever changing the course of history in the American West. A tributary to the South Fork of the American River in the Sacramento Valley east of San Francisco, Sutter’s Creek was named for a Swiss immigrant who came to Mexican California in 1839. John Augustus Sutter became a citizen of Mexico and won a grant of nearly 50,000 acres in the lush Sacramento Valley, where he hoped to create a thriving colony. He built a sturdy fort that became the center of his first town, New Helvetia, and purchased farming implements, livestock, and a cannon to defend his tiny empire.

Copying the methods of the Spanish missions, Sutter induced the local Indians to do all the work on his farms and ranches, often treating them as little more than slaves. Workers who dared leave his empire without permission were often brought back by armed posses to face brutal whippings or even execution. In the 1840s, Sutter’s Fort became the first stopping-off point for overland Anglo-American emigrants coming to California to build farms and ranches. Though sworn to protect the Mexican province from falling under the control of the growing number of Americans, Sutter recognized that his future wealth and influence lay with these Anglo settlers.

With the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, he threw his support to the Americans, who emerged victorious in the fall of 1847. With the war over and California securely in the hands of the United States, Sutter hired the millwright James Marshall to build a sawmill along the South Fork of the American River in January 1848. In order to redirect the flow of water to the mill’s waterwheel, Marshall supervised the excavation of a shallow millrace. On the morning of January 24, 1848, Marshall was looking over the freshly cut millrace when a sparkle of light in the dark earth caught his eye. Looking more closely, Marshall found that much of the millrace was speckled with what appeared to be small flakes of gold, and he rushed to tell Sutter. After an assayer confirmed that the flakes were indeed gold, Sutter quietly set about gathering up as much of the gold as he could, hoping to keep the discovery a secret.

However, word soon leaked out and, within months, the largest gold rush in the world had begun. Ironically, the California gold rush was a disaster for Sutter. Though it brought thousands of men to California, the prospectors had no interest in joining Sutter’s despotic agricultural community. Instead, they overran Sutter’s property, slaughtered his herds for food, and trampled his fields. By 1852, New Helvetia was ruined, and Sutter was nearly wiped out. Until his death in 1880, he spent his time unsuccessfully petitioning the government to compensate him for the losses he suffered as a result of the gold rush he unintentionally ignited.