February 24th ~ {continued...}

1865 – Captain Henry S. Stellwagen in the U.S.S. Pawnee sent Ensign Allen K. Noyes with the U.S.S. Catalpa and Mingoe up the Peedee River to accept the surrender of the evacuated city of Georgetown. Noyes led a small party ashore and received the surrender of the city from civil authorities while a group of his seamen climbed to the city hall dome and ran up the Stars and Stripes. This action was presently challenged by a group of Confederate horsemen. More sailors were landed. A skirmish ensued in which the bluejackets drove off the mounted guerrillas. Subsequently, the city was garrisoned by five companies of Marines who were in turn relieved by the soldiers on March 1st.

1868 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history.

1885 – Chester Nimitz is born. During World War II, he was in charge of assembling the Pacific force of two million men and 1,000 ships that drove the Japanese back to their homeland. When Admiral Nimitz took over the Pacific Fleet on Dec. 31, 1941, many of its ships lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, sunk by the Japanese in the surprise attack of Dec. 7 on Hawaii. Without haste–Admiral Nimitz always proceeded with care–he directed the deployment of such carriers and cruises as were left, to hold the line until that moment perhaps two years away, when new battleships could be ready. Eight months after announcing on New Year’s Day that 1945 would be a sad year for the Japanese, Admiral Nimitz sat at a table on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri on Sept. 2 to sign the Japanese capitulation.

1895 – Cuban insurgents are supplied with money by US sugar planters in a move designed both to assist overthrow Spanish domination of Cuba and to prevent the insurrectos from burning the sugar plantaions. When the Cubans attack Spanish forces, General Weyler is sent from Spaint o quell the revolt. Rounding up the people he squashes them into reconcentrado camps so that he can more easily go after the guerrillas. Many die in the camps. Sympathy for the Cubans is roused in the US and later fanned by the “yellow journalism” of Hearst and Pulitzer.

1903 – The United States signed its first lease agreement acquiring naval stations at Guantanamo Bay and Bahia Honda in Cuba. In June the payment will be agreed upon, Pres.Roosevelt leased the site for $2,000 in gold a year. The lease was negotiated to implement an act of Congress of the United States approved 2 March 1901. The agreement had been signed by Cuban President Estrada Plama on 19 February. Bahia Honda would be abandoned after 9 years.

February 24th ~ {continued...}

1917 – During World War I, British authorities give Walter H. Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a copy of the “Zimmermann Note,” a coded message from Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign secretary, to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in late January, Zimmermann stated that in the event of war with the United States, Mexico should be asked to enter the conflict as a German ally. In return, Germany promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

After receiving the telegram, Page promptly sent a copy to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who in early March allowed the U.S. State Department to publish the note. The press initially treated the telegram as a hoax, but Arthur Zimmermann himself confirmed its authenticity. The Zimmermann Note helped turn U.S. public opinion, already severely strained by repeated German attacks on U.S. ships, firmly against Germany. On April 2, President Wilson, who had initially sought a peaceful resolution to end World War I, urged the immediate U.S. entrance into the war. Four days later, Congress formally declared war against Germany.

1920 – A fledgling German political party held its first meeting of importance at Hofbrauhaus in Munich; it became known as the Nazi Party, and its chief spokesman was Adolf Hitler.

1933 – League of Nations told the Japanese to pull out of Manchuria.

1942 – The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to the rumored enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late 24 February to early 25 February 1942 over Los Angeles, California. The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after the bombardment of Ellwood on February 23rd.

Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but speaking at a press conference shortly afterward, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called the incident a “false alarm.” Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up. When documenting the incident in 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of “war nerves” likely triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries.

1942 – The Voice of America went on the air for the first time with broadcasts in German. The US State Dept. made William Winter its first Voice of America three months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

1942 – Admiral Halsey on board the USS Enterprise leads task force in a successful attack on Wake Island.

1942 – Some 1,600 Pittsburg, Ca., residents of Italian descent were evacuated. Nationwide some 600,000 of 5 million Italians were undocumented and deemed “enemy aliens” until Oct 12th.

February 24th ~ {continued...}

1944 – Major General Frank Merrill’s guerrilla force, nicknamed “Merrill’s Marauders,” begin a campaign in northern Burma. In August 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to create an American ground unit whose sole purpose would be to engage in a “long-range penetration mission” in Japanese-occupied Burma. This mission would consist of cutting Japanese communications and supply lines and otherwise throwing the enemy’s positions into chaos. It was hoped that this commando force could thus prepare the way for Gen. Joseph Stillwell’s Chinese American Force to reopen the Burma Road, which was closed in April 1942 by the Japanese invaders, and once again allow supplies and war material into China through this route.

Within the military, a type of “Help Wanted” ad was put up with the president’s authority, an appeal for applicants to participate in a “dangerous and hazardous mission.” About 3,000 soldiers volunteered from stateside units to create what was officially called the 5307th Composite Unit, code named “Galahad.” It would go into history as Merrill’s Marauders, after Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill, their commander. Brigadier General Merrill trained his men in the art of guerrilla warfare in the jungles of India, for secrecy’s sake. The commando force was formed into six combat units–Red, White, Blue, Green, Orange, and Khaki–with 400 men in each (the remaining 600 men or so were part of a rear-echelon headquarters that remained in India to coordinate the air-drops of equipment to the men in the field). The Marauders’ mission began with a 1,000-mile walk through dense jungle, without artillery support, into Burma.

On February 24, 1944, they began their Burmese campaign, which, when done, consisted of five major and 30 minor engagements with a far more numerous Japanese enemy. They had to carry their supplies on their backs and on pack mules, and were resupplied only with airdrops in the middle of the jungle. Merrill’s Marauders succeeded in maneuvering behind Japanese forces to cause the disruptions necessary to throw the enemy into confusion.

They were so successful, the Marauders managed even to capture the Myitkyina Airfield in northern Burma. When their mission was completed, all surviving Merrill’s Marauders had to be evacuated to hospitals to be treated for everything from exhaustion and various tropical diseases to malnutrition or A.O.E. (“Accumulation of Everything”).

They were awarded the Distinguished Unit Citation in July 1944, which was re-designated the Presidential Unit Citation in 1966. Every member of the commando force also received the Bronze Star, a very rare distinction for an entire unit. Merrill remained in the Far East and was made an aide to General Stillwell.

1944 – Attacks by the US 5th Army and the British 8th Army continue. The Canadian 1st Corps captures Pontecorvo and elements reach the Melfa River and establish a bridgehead. The US 2nd Corps takes Terracina against heavy opposition from the German 29th Panzergrenadier Division. At Anzio forces of US 6th Corps reach Route 7 near Latina, to the south of German-held Cisterna. Meanwhile, north of Rome, RAF Spitfires shoot down 8 German Fw190 fighter bombers.

1945 – Julich is captured by units of the US 19th Corps as the US 9th Army begins to extend its advance over the Roer River. To the south, the US 1st and 3rd Armies also push forward.

1945 – On Iwo Jima, forces of US 5th Amphibious Corps continue to advance northward and capture part of the island’s second airfield.

1945 – On Luzon, American forces eliminate desperate Japanese resistance in the Intramuros — the old walled quarter of Manila.

February 24th ~ {continued...}

1947 – Franz von Papen was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for war crimes. Pompous scion of an old aristocratic family, he became chancellor of Germany in 1932.

1949 – A V-2 WAC-Corporal was the 1st rocket to outer space. It was fired at White Sands, NM, and reached 400 km.

1951 – Army Major General Bryant E. Moore, commander of IX Corps, died suddenly of a heart attack. Major General O. P. Smith assumed command, becoming the only Marine to command a major Army unit during the Korean War.

1951 – The 315th Air Division dropped a record 333 tons of cargo to front-line troops using 67 C-119 and two C-46 aircraft.

1952 – The U.S. 40th Infantry Division (CAARNG) launched the largest tank raid since the beginning of the Korean War. It was the largest deployment of armor without infantry support in a single engagement during the war.

1955 – Ike Eisenhower met with newspaper publisher Roy Howard and expressed his resistance under pressure to commit American troops to Vietnam. The conversation was recorded on a dictabelt machine that Eisenhower had secretly installed in the president’s office.

1959 – Khrushchev rejected the Western plan for the Big Four meeting on Germany.

1968 – The Tet Offensive ends as U.S. and South Vietnamese troops recapture the ancient capital of Hue from communist forces. Although scattered fighting continued across South Vietnam for another week, the battle for Hue was the last major engagement of the offensive, which saw communist attacks on all of South Vietnam’s major cities. In the aftermath of Tet, public opinion in the United States decisively turned against the Vietnam War.

1968 – Task Force Clearwater established in I Corps.

1972 – Hanoi negotiators walked out of the peace talks in Paris to protest U.S. air raids on North Vietnam.

1977 – President Carter announced US foreign aid would be conditional on human rights.

1982 – President Ronald Reagan announces a new program of economic and military assistance to nations of the Caribbean designed to “prevent the overthrow of the governments in the region” by the “brutal and totalitarian” forces of communism. The Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) was part of the Reagan administration’s effort to curb what it perceived to be the dangerous rise in communist activity in Central America and the Caribbean.

February 24th ~ {continued...}

1983 – A congressional commission released a report condemning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a “grave injustice.”

1984 – Last of U.S. Marines are withdrawn form Lebanon.

1987 – Coast Guard attorney LCDR Robert W. Bruce, Jr., became the first member of the armed forces to argue a case before the Supreme Court in uniform when he represented the Coast Guard in Solorio vs. United States on 24 February 1987.

1989 – A state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who died the month before at age 87.

1991 – After six weeks of intensive bombing against Iraq and its armed forces, U.S.-led coalition forces launch a ground invasion of Kuwait and Iraq. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, its tiny oil-rich neighbor, and within hours had occupied most strategic positions in the country. One week later, Operation Shield, the American defense of Saudi Arabia, began as U.S. forces massed in the Persian Gulf.

Three months later, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if it failed to withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. At 4:30 p.m. EST on January 16, 1991, Operation Desert Storm, a massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq, began as the first fighter aircraft were launched from Saudi Arabia and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. All evening, aircraft from the U.S.-led military coalition pounded targets in and around Baghdad as the world watched the events transpire in television footage transmitted live via satellite from Baghdad and elsewhere.

Operation Desert Storm was conducted by an international coalition under the command of U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf and featured forces from 32 nations, including Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. During the next six weeks, the allied force engaged in a massive air war against Iraq’s military and civil infrastructure, encountering little effective resistance from the Iraqi air force. Iraqi ground forces were also helpless during this stage of the war, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s only significant retaliatory measure was the launching of SCUD missile attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saddam hoped that the missile attacks would provoke Israel, and thus other Arab nations, to enter the conflict; however, at the request of the United States, Israel remained out of the war.

On February 24th, a massive coalition ground offensive began, and Iraq’s outdated and poorly supplied armed forces were rapidly overwhelmed. By the end of the day, the Iraqi army had effectively folded, 10,000 of its troops were held as prisoners, and a U.S. air base had been established deep inside Iraq. After less than four days, Kuwait was liberated, and a majority of Iraq’s armed forces had either been destroyed or had surrendered or retreated to Iraq.

On February 28, U.S. President George Bush declared a cease-fire, and Iraq pledged to honor future coalition and U.N. peace terms. One hundred and twenty-five American soldiers were killed in the Persian Gulf War, with another 21 regarded as missing in action.

1993 – Kismaayo, Somalia Ablaze. 2nd Battalion 87th Infantry engages Somali militias in dozens of firefights: at least 23 Somalis are killed. No US casualties.

1996 – Cuban war planes shot down two unarmed private planes flown by a refugee group in Florida. Cuba claimed the planes violated Cuban airspace. Four men were killed and 3 were US citizens. In 2001 Gerardo Hernandez was convicted of conspiracy in the deaths of the 4 aviators.

2001 – The US Navy and Coast Guard captured 10 men and 8.8 tons of cocaine on a Belize-flagged fishing boat 250 miles west of Acapulco.

February 24th ~ {continued...}

2002 – The U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan says the U.S. would be “unwise” to launch an attack aimed at removing Saddam Hussein.

2003 – The US, Britain and Spain propose a UN resolution declaring that Iraq “has failed to take the final opportunity” to disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction. Australian Prime Minister John Howard backs the resolution, saying that if it was not carried then the credibility of the Security Council would be weakened. Germany, France and Russia present a rival initiative saying that “the military option should be the last resort”.

2003 – Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein via satellite and Hussein proposed a live debate with President Bush. Hussein said he would rather die than leave his country and that he would not destroy its wealth by setting fire to its oil wells in the event of a U.S.-led invasion.

2003 – Turkey’s Cabinet agrees to let US troops use Turkish bases to launch an attack on Iraq in exchange for billions of dollars in US aid. The measure is sent to parliament for approval.

2004 – The 1st charges were filed against 2 detainees in Guantanamo.

2008 – The National Assembly of People’s Power unanimously selects Raúl Castro to succeed his brother Fidel as President of Cuba.

2011 – Final Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery (OV-103). STS-133 (ISS assembly flight ULF5) was the 133rd mission in NASA’s Space Shuttle program; during the mission, Space Shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station. It was Discovery’s 39th and final mission. The mission landed on 9 March 2011. The crew consisted of six American astronauts, all of whom had been on prior spaceflights, headed by Commander Steven Lindsey. The crew joined the long-duration six person crew of Expedition 26, who were already aboard the space station.

About a month before lift-off, one of the original crew members, Tim Kopra, was injured in a bicycle accident. He was replaced by Stephen Bowen. The mission transported several items to the space station, including the Permanent Multipurpose Module Leonardo, which was left permanently docked to one of the station’s ports. The shuttle also carried the third of four ExPRESS Logistics Carriers to the ISS, as well as a humanoid robot called Robonaut. The mission marked both the 133rd flight of the Space Shuttle program and the 39th and final flight of Discovery, with the orbiter completing a cumulative total of a whole year (365 days) in space.

2011 – A Saudi Arabian student, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, is arrested in Texas for allegedly planning a terrorist attack against the Dallas home of former President of the United States George W. Bush as a target as well as New York City and dams in California and Colorado.

2012 – 4 Al-Shabaab fighters, including a white Kenyan and a Moroccan jihadist named Abu Ibrahim, were killed in a drone strike in the K60 area (60 miles south of Mogadishu) of the Lower Shabelle region in southern Somalia.

2014 – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled plans to shrink the US Army to its smallest size since before the US entered World War Two. Outlining his budget plan, the Pentagon chief proposed trimming the active-duty Army to 440,000-450,000 personnel, down from 520,000 currently. Cold War-era Air Force fleets – the U-2 spy plane and the A-10 attack jet – will also be retired.

2015 – Eddie Ray Routh is found guilty of the 2013 murder of United States Navy SEALs’ sniper Chris Kyle and Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield in Texas. Routh is automatically sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

2015 – U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert A. McDonald admits that he lied when he claimed that he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces.

February 25th ~

1642 – Dutch settlers slaughtered lower Hudson Valley Indians in New Netherland, North America, who sought refuge from Mohawk attackers.

1779 – Fort Sackville, originally named Fort Vincennes, was captured by Colonel George Rogers Clark. Col. Clark led a force of some 170 men from Kaskaskia to lay siege to Fort Sackville in January, and received Hamilton‘s surrender on February 25. With the surrender of Fort Sackville, American forces gained effective control of the Old Northwest, thereby affecting the outcome of the Revolutionary War. The fort—which Clark described as “a wretched stockade, surrounded by a dozen wretched cabins called houses”—was located near present-day Vincennes, Indiana.

1781 – American General Nathanael Greene crossed the Dan River on his way to his March 15th confrontation with Lord Charles Cornwallis at Guilford Court House, N.C.

1793 – The department heads of the U.S. government met with President Washington at his Mt. Vernon home for the first Cabinet meeting on record.

1799 – President Adams authorized by Congress to place revenue cutters in the naval establishment.

1811 – Congress authorizes first naval hospital.

1836 – Samuel Colt patented the first revolving barrel multi-shot firearm.

1861 – The Confederate Marine Corps was organized in Richmond, Virginia.

1862 – U.S.S. Monitor commissioned in New York, Lieutenant John L. Worden commanding. Captain Dahlgren described Monitor as ”a mere speck, like a hat on the surface.”

1862 – U.S.S. Cairo, Lieutenant Nathaniel Bryant, arrived at Nashville, convoying seven steam transports with troops under Brigadier General William Nelson, one of two ex-naval officers assigned to duty with the Army. Troops were landed and occupied the Tennessee capital, an important base on the Cumberland River, without opposition. Meanwhile, the demand for the gunboats mounted steadily.

1862 – The U.S. Congress passes the Legal Tender Act, authorizing the use of paper notes to pay the government’s bills. This ended the long-standing policy of using only gold or silver in transactions, and it allowed the government to finance the enormously costly war long after its gold and silver reserves were depleted.

February 25th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Confederates worked feverishly to raise ex-U.S.S. Indianola. C.S.S. Queen of the West was sent up river to Vicksburg to obtain a pump and other materials, but soon was seen returning below Warrenton. She brought news of a large Union “gunboat” passing the Vicksburg batteries and approaching the small Confederate squadron. According to Colonel Wirt Adams, CSA, “All the vessels at once got underway in a panic, and proceeded down the river, abandoning without a word the working party and fieldpieces on the wreck.” He continued: “The Federal vessel did not approach nearer than 2 miles, and appeared very apprehensive of attack.”

After making further fruitless efforts to free Indianola of water, the next evening the working patty fired the heavy 11-inch Dahlgren guns into each other and burned her to the water line. The Union ruse had worked. The “gunboat” was a barge, camouflaged to give the appearance of a formidable vessel of war, that Rear Admiral Porter had floated down river. A Con-federate paper reported bitterly: “The Yankee barge sent down the river last week was reported to be an ironclad gunboat. The authorities, thinking that this monster would retake the India-nola, immediately issued an order to blow her up. . . . It would really seem we had no use for gunboats on the Mississippi, as a coal barge is magnified into a monster, and our authorities immediately order a boat that would have been worth a small army to us-to be blown up.

1865 – General Joseph E. Johnston replaced John Bell Hood as Commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Arthur Fremantle made a breathtaking tour of the Confederacy. Within three months he had met most of the top Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Joseph Johnston and Jefferson Davis.

1865 – C.S.S. Chickamauga was burned and sunk by her own crew in the Cape Fear River just below Indian Wells, North Carolina. The position selected by the Confederates was above Wilmington on the Northwest Fork of the river leading to Fayetteville. The scuttling was intended to obstruct the river and prevent the Union from establishing water communications between the troops occupying Wilmington and General Sherman’s army operating in the interior of the state. The effort proved abortive as the current swept the hulk around parallel to the bank and by 12 March the water link between Wilmington and Fayetteville had been opened. Every river that would float a ship was an artery of strength from the sea for Sherman in his rapid march north.

1885 – US Congress condemned barbed wire around government grounds.

1898 – Continuing his preparation for war, Assistant Secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt sends a highly confidential order to Commodore George Dewey, leader of the Asiatic Squadron, to go to Hong Kong. Dewey is to be prepared to attack the Spanish fleet in the Philippines should war be declared.

February 25th ~ {continued...}

1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment, which effectively paved the path for the United States’ adoption of an income tax, was ratified on this day in 1913, although its roots can be traced back to 1895. That year saw the Supreme Court weigh in with a decision in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co, a case that revolved around the constitutionality of income tax legislation. Though the nation had briefly adopted a like-minded tax during the Civil War, the Court ruled in the Pollock case that the income tax was unconstitutional. The Court deemed a property-based tax on incomes a “direct tax,” which violated the Constitution’s holding that taxes could only be levied if they raised revenues that were commensurate with each state’s population.

However, the intervening years saw the Court gradually move away from its consideration of an income tax as a “direct tax” and instead came to view it as an excise tax “measured by income.” By the time it handed down its ruling on the Sixteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court experienced a full-blown change of heart and judged income taxes as being “inherently” indirect. Although it “conferred no new power of taxation,” the amendment greatly increased the chances that future income tax legislation would make its way into the nation’s law books. Irate legislators attempted to kill the amendment; when the Supreme Court rendered its judgement in 1916, it upheld the legislation and paved the path for the Federal income tax.

1913 – Approval of experimental wind tunnel for Navy.

1925 – Congress empowers Revenue Marine to enforce state quarantine laws.

1933 – The USS Ranger becomes the US’ first aircraft carrier, built to be a carrier. The sixth Ranger (CV 4), the first ship of the Navy to be designed and built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier was laid down 26 September 1931 by Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Newport News, Va.; launched 25 February 1933, sponsored by Mrs. Herbert Hoover; and commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard 4 June 1934, Capt. Arthur L. Bristol in command.

1940 – The American envoy Sumner Welles arrives at the start of his European peace mission.

1942 – Wartime port security delegated to Coast Guard by Executive Order 9074.

1942 – The American, British, Dutch, Australian Command (ABDA) is dissolved. General Wavell again becomes the Commander in Chief, India. The Dutch General Ter Poorten takes command in Java.

1943 – U.S. troops retook the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, where they had been defeated five days before.

1944 – U.S. forces destroyed 135 Japanese planes in Marianas and Guam.

1944 – Sue Sophia Dauser, Superintendent of the Navy’s Nurse Corps is first woman in Navy to receive rank of Captain.

February 25th ~ {continued...}

1944 – In the climax of the “Big Week” bombing campaign, aircraft of the US 8th Air Force (830 bombers) and the US 15th Air Force (150 bombers), with fighter escorts, conduct a daylight raid of the Messerschmitt works at Regensburg and Augsburg. Losses are reported at 30 and 35 bombers, of the 8th and 15th Air Forces respectively, as well as 8 escort fighters. The Americans claim to shoot down 142 German fighters as well as destroying 1000 German fighters on the assembly lines and 1000 more lost to the disruption of production. During the night, RAF Bomber Command attacks Augsburg in a two waves.

1945 – Duren is taken by the US 7th Corps (part of US 1st Army). Other bridgeheads over the Roer River have been captured to north and south of Duren and they are rapidly being extended. To the south, on the right flank of US 3rd Army, crossings over the Saar have also been made near Saarburg.

1945 – On Iwo Jima, the advance of US 5th Amphibious Corps continues but there are heavy losses in the area around the second airfield. The US 3rd Marine Division is committed to the battle.

1945 – Aircraft from the carriers of US Task Force 58 again raid Tokyo. Poor weather conditions hinders the effectiveness of the attacks.

1948 – Under pressure from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, President Eduard Benes allows a communist-dominated government to be organized. Although the Soviet Union did not physically intervene (as it would in 1968), Western observers decried the virtually bloodless communist coup as an example of Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe.

1949 – The US launches the WAC-Corporal at White Sands, New Mexico, achieving a record missile altitude of 250 miles.

1951 – Air attacks on enemy supply lines prevented a superior number of communist ground forces from winning their objectives. Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, Far East Forces Commander, said “Our interdiction from the air of the main enemy resupply lines, plus our continued and systematic destruction of such supply caches as he had been able to build up in his immediate rear areas, not only prevented the Communist from exploiting his initial momentum but also enabled our ground forces to resume the offensive.”

1959 – USS Galveston fires first Talos surface-to-air missile.

1964 – U.S. Air Force launches a satellite employing a US Air Force Atlas/Agena combination from Point Arguello (LC-2-3) in California and from Cape Kennedy in Florida.

February 25th ~ {continued...}

1971 – In both houses of Congress, legislation is initiated to forbid U.S. military support of any South Vietnamese invasion of North Vietnam without congressional approval.

1972 – U.S. troops clash with North Vietnamese forces in a major battle 42 miles east of Saigon, the biggest single U.S. engagement with an enemy force in nearly a year. The five-hour action around a communist bunker line resulted in four dead and 47 wounded, almost half the U.S. weekly casualties.

1986 – In the face of mass demonstrations against his rule, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his entourage are airlifted from the presidential palace in Manila by U.S. helicopters. Elected in 1966, Marcos declared martial law in 1972 in response to leftist violence. In the next year, he assumed dictatorial powers.

Backed by the United States, his regime was marked by misuse of foreign support, repression, and political murders. In 1986, Marcos defrauded the electorate in a presidential election, declaring himself the victor over Corazon Aquino, the wife of an assassinated rival. Aquino also declared herself the rightful winner, and the public rallied behind her. Deserted by his former supporters, Marcos and his wife, Imelda, fled to Hawaii in exile, where they faced investigation on embezzlement charges. He died in 1989.

1988 – The Coast Guard commissioned LT Samone Vasser as a flight officer. She was the first female flight officer in the Coast Guard. She was qualified to serve in the E2C Hawkeye and was assigned to CGAW-1.

1991 – During the Persian Gulf War, 28 Americans were killed when an Iraqi Scud missile hit a U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

1991 – In the most decisive actions of the Gulf War, VII Corps, moving directly east with three heavy divisions abreast, attacked the elite Iraqi Republican Guard units. Late in the afternoon on the twenty-sixth, the VII Corps hit elements of the Tawakalna Division in the battle of 73 Easting.

In quick succession, the 2d ACR, 1st and 3d Armored Divisions, and the 1st Infantry Division smashed through the Tawakalna Division. Overwhelming the enemy with accurate tank fire and assisted by deadly Apache helicopter gunships, the VII Corps hit the Medina Division in the early afternoon of the twenty-seventh. At Medina Ridge, an attempted Iraqi ambush of the 1st Armored Division ended with the destruction of over 300 enemy tanks.

1991 – The Warsaw Pact is declared disbanded.

February 25th ~ {continued...}

1993 – President Clinton ordered the Pentagon to mount an airdrop of relief supplies into Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1996 – A 12-mile tether connecting a half-ton satellite to the space shuttle “Columbia” broke loose as it was almost completely unreeled.

1999 – Cuba cut phone service to AT&T and MCI WorldCom for $19 mil in unpaid bills. The phone companies were withholding payments pending a lawsuit by relatives of 4 Cuban Americans, whose aircraft were shot down in Feb 1996.

2001 – The commander of the U.S. submarine that struck and sank a Japanese trawler off Hawaii expressed his “most sincere regret.” Cmdr. Scott Waddle stopped short of an apology.

2002 – NATO offered Russia a modified membership, with no veto power over political or military policies.

2003 – Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Iraq was showing new signs of real cooperation, but President Bush was dismissive, predicting Saddam Hussein would try to “fool the world one more time.”

2003 – A US Army Black Hawk helicopter on night training crashed in the Kuwaiti desert, killing all four crew members.

2003 – Iraq provided new information about its weapons and reported the discovery of 2 bombs, including one possibly filled with a biological agent.

2003 – The US military says that warplanes have conducted strikes at five missile systems, including four surface-to-surface rocket launchers in the north and south of Iraq.

2003 – 6,000 US Marines have arrived in Kuwait, bringing the Marine force there to nearly full strength.

2003 – The Bush administration has sent supplies of humanitarian aid to the Gulf region to cope with refugees and displaced people.

2011 – The President of the United States Barack Obama announces sanctions against the government of Libya as does the European Union.

2013 – Former United States Surgeon General C. Everett Koop dies at the age of 96.

2014 – The United States administration formally declares that it no longer recognizes Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine’s president as “his actions have undermined his legitimacy”.

February 26th ~

1775 – British forces land at Salem, Massachusetts to capture the colonists’ arsenal. They are repulsed with no casualties.

1793 – Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, submits to the Senate the first list of cutters with stations, officers names, rank and dates of commission.

1846 – Frontiersman-turned-showman William F. ”Buffalo Bill” Cody was born in Scott County, Iowa. His family moved to Kansas in 1854, and after the death of his father three years later he set out to earn the family living, working for supply trains and a freighting company. In 1859 he went to the Colorado gold fields, and in 1860 he rode briefly for the Pony Express.

His adventures on the Western frontier as an army scout and later as a buffalo hunter for railroad construction camps on the Great Plains were the basis for the stories later told about him. Ned Buntline in 1872 persuaded him to appear on the stage, and, except for a brief period of scouting against the Sioux in 1876, he was from that time connected with show business.

In 1883 he organized Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and he toured with it throughout the United States and Europe for many years. Wyoming granted him a stock ranch, on which the town of Cody was laid out. He died in Denver and was buried on Lookout Mt. near Golden, Colo. The exploits attributed to him in the dime novels of Buntline and Prentice Ingraham are only slightly more imaginative than his own autobiography published in 1920.

1860 – White settlers massacred a band of Wiyot Indians at the village of Tuluwat on Indian Island near Eureka, Ca. At least 60 women, children and elders were killed. Bret Harte, newspaper reporter in Arcata, fed the news to newspapers in San Francisco.

1863 – In support of the Union, the Cherokee Indian National Council repeals its ordinance of secession.

1864 – Boat expedition under the command of Acting Master E. C. Weeks, U.S.S. Tahoma, destroyed a large salt works belonging to the Confederate government on Goose Creek, near St. Marks, Florida.

1891 – The 1st buffalo was purchased for Golden Gate Park in SF. A pair of bison, named Benjamin Harrison and Sarah Bernhardt, were settled in Golden Gate Park following reports that only 1000 were left in the US.

1901 – Boxer Rebellion leaders Chi-Hsin (Chi-hsui) and Hsu-Cheng-Yu were publicly executed in Peking.

1903 – Richard J. Gatling (84), US inventor (Gatling Gun), died.

February 26th ~ {continued...}

1917 – President Wilson publicly asks congress for the power to arm merchant ships. Pacifist Senator LaFollette leads a filibuster against the authorizing legislation. “A little group of willful men have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible,” says Wilson angrily. The Senate will adopt a cloture rule to allow a majority vote to terminate debate. The Attorney General, however, finds that the requested powers are inherent in the Presidency and on March 9, Wilson issues the necessary directive.

1932 – Johnny Cash (died 2003) country singer (I Walk The Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Boy Named Sue), was born in Kingsland, Arkansas.

1935 – Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) was 1st demonstrated by Robert Watson-Watt.

1935 – Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs a secret decree authorizing the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe as a third German military service to join the Reich army and navy. In the same decree, Hitler appointed Hermann Goering, a German air hero from World War I and high-ranking Nazi, as commander in chief of the new German air force.

The Versailles Treaty that ended World War I prohibited military aviation in Germany, but a German civilian airline–Lufthansa–was founded in 1926 and provided flight training for the men who would later become Luftwaffe pilots. After coming to power in 1933, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler began to secretly develop a state-of-the-art military air force and appointed Goering as German air minister. (During World War I, Goering commanded the celebrated air squadron in which the great German ace Manfred von Richthofen–“The Red Baron”–served.)

In February 1935, Hitler formally organized the Luftwaffe as a major step in his program of German rearmament. The Luftwaffe was to be uncamouflaged step-by-step so as not to alarm foreign governments, and the size and composition of Luftwaffe units were to remain secret as before. However, in March 1935, Britain announced it was strengthening its Royal Air Force (RAF), and Hitler, not to be outdone, revealed his Luftwaffe, which was rapidly growing into a formidable air force.

As German rearmament moved forward at an alarming rate, Britain and France protested but failed to keep up with German war production. The German air fleet grew dramatically, and the new German fighter–the Me-109–was far more sophisticated than its counterparts in Britain, France, or Russia. The Me-109 was bloodied during the Spanish Civil War; Luftwaffe pilots received combat training as they tried out new aerial attack formations on Spanish towns such as Guernica, which suffered more than 1,000 killed during a brutal bombing by the Luftwaffe in April 1937.

The Luftwaffe was configured to serve as a crucial part of the German blitzkrieg, or “lightning war”–the deadly military strategy developed by General Heinz Guderian. As German panzer divisions burst deep into enemy territory, lethal Luftwaffe dive-bombers would decimate the enemy’s supply and communication lines and cause panic. By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the Luftwaffe had an operational force of 1,000 fighters and 1,050 bombers. First Poland and then Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France fell to the blitzkrieg.

After the surrender of France, Germany turned the Luftwaffe against Britain, hoping to destroy the RAF in preparation for a proposed German landing. However, in the epic air battle known as the Battle of Britain, the outnumbered RAF fliers successfully resisted the Luftwaffe, relying on radar technology, their new, highly maneuverable Spitfire aircraft, bravery, and luck. For every British plane shot down, two German warplanes were destroyed.

In the face of British resistance, Hitler changed strategy in the Battle of Britain, abandoning his invasion plans and attempting to bomb London into submission. However, in this campaign, the Luftwaffe was hampered by its lack of strategic, long-range bombers, and in early 1941 the Battle of Britain ended in failure. Britain had handed the Luftwaffe its first defeat. Later that year, Hitler ordered an invasion of the USSR, which after initial triumphs turned into an unqualified disaster.

As Hitler stubbornly fought to overcome Russia’s bitter resistance, the depleted Luftwaffe steadily lost air superiority over Europe in the face of increasing British and American air attacks. By the time of the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Luftwaffe air fleet was a skeleton of its former self.

February 26th ~ {continued...}

1936 – Japanese military troops marched into Tokyo to conduct a coup and assassinate political leaders. The February 26 Incident (also known as the 2-26 Incident) was an attempted coup d’état in Japan. It was organized by a group of young Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) officers with the goal of purging the government and military leadership of their factional rivals and ideological opponents.

Although the rebels succeeded in assassinating several leading officials (including two former prime ministers) and in occupying the government center of Tokyo, they failed to assassinate Prime Minister Keisuke Okada or secure control of the Imperial Palace. Their supporters in the army made attempts to capitalize on their actions, but divisions within the military, combined with Imperial anger at the coup, meant they were unable to achieve a change of government. Facing overwhelming opposition as the army moved against them, the rebels surrendered on February 29th.

Unlike earlier examples of political violence by young officers, the coup attempt had severe consequences. After a series of closed trials, 19 of the uprising’s leaders were executed for mutiny and another 40 imprisoned. The radical Kōdō-ha faction lost its influence within the army, the period of “government by assassination” came to a close, and the military increased its control over the civilian government.

1938 – The 1st passenger ship was equipped with radar.

1940 – The U.S. Air Defense Command was established at Mitchell Field, Long Island, NY.

1940 – Sumner Welles meets Mussolini and his son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano, the foreign minister.

1942 – Soviet Ambassador Litvinov demands the Allies open a second front. He states that “only by simultaneous offensive operations on two or more of the fronts can Hitler’s armed forces be disposed of.”

1942 – Don Mason, WWII Navy flier, sent the message: “Sighted sub sank same.”

1942 – German battle cruiser Gneisenau was deactivated by bomb.

1942 – Battle of the Java Sea, Allied Naval Force attacks Japanese invasion convoy.

1942 – Werner Heisenberg informed Nazis about uranium project “Wunderwaffen.”

1943 – U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators pound German docks and U-boat lairs at Wilhelmshaven, the chief German naval base on the North Sea until the end of World War II, after which its naval installations were dismantled.

1943 – Elements of 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions (parts of 5th Panzer Army commanded by von Arnim) attack British positions at Medjez el Bab. No progress is made. Rommel intends to concentrate these and other forces for an attack on the British 8th Army before the Mareth Line. Montgomery’s forward units (two divisions) are vulnerable because of a lack of logistical support at the front. They are in their present positions as a diversionary move carried out as part of the response to the earlier fighting at the Kasserine Pass.

February 26th ~ {continued...}

1944 – The source of the Orinoco River is discovered by the crew of a USAAF plane in a mountainous gorge near the Brazilian-Venezuelan border.

1944 – Allied aircraft raid Rabaul, on New Britain, destroying Japanese munitions dumps.

1944 – Sue Dauser was appointed the 1st female US navy captain of nurse corps.

1945 – During the day, US 8th Air Force bombers drop about 3000 tons of bombs on Berlin; some 500,000 incendiaries are among the bombs. The nominal targets are 3 railway stations. A total of 15 bombers and 7 escort fighters are lost. During the night, RAF Mosquito bombers attack Berlin, guided by the light of the fires started during the day.

1945 – An ammunition dump on the Philippine island of Corregidor is blown up by a remnant of the Japanese garrison, causing more American casualties on the eve of U.S. victory there. In May 1942, Corregidor, a small rock island at the mouth of Manila Bay, remained one of the last Allied strongholds in the Philippines after the Japanese victory at Bataan. Constant artillery shelling and aerial bombardment attacks ate away at the American and Filipino defenders. Although still managing to sink many Japanese barges as they approached the northern shores of the island, the Allied troops could not hold the invader off any longer.

General Jonathan Wainwright, commander of the U.S. armed forces in the Philippines, offered to surrender Corregidor to Japanese Gen. Masaharu Homma, but Homma wanted the complete, unconditional capitulation of all American forces throughout the Philippines. Wainwright had little choice given the odds against him and the poor physical condition of his troops–he had already lost 800 men. He surrendered at midnight.

All 11,500 surviving Allied troops were evacuated to a prison stockade in Manila. But the Americans returned to the Philippines in full strength in October 1944, beginning with the recapture of Leyte, the Philippines’ central island. It took 67 days to subdue, with the loss of more than 55,000 Japanese soldiers during the two months of battle, and approximately another 25,000 mopping up pockets of resistance in early 1945. The U.S. forces lost about 3,500.

Following the American victory of Leyte was the return of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the struggle for Luzon and the race for Manila, the Philippine capital. One week into the Allied battle for Luzon, U.S. airborne troops parachuted onto Corregidor to take out the Japanese garrison there, which was believed to be 1,000 strong, but was actually closer to 5,000. Fierce fighting resulted in the deaths of most of the Japanese soldiers, with the survivors left huddling in the Malinta Tunnel for safety.

Ironically, the tunnel, 1,400 feet long and dug deep in the heart of Corregidor, had served as MacArthur’s headquarters and a U.S. supply depot before the American defeat there. MacArthur feared the Japanese soldiers could sit there for months. The garrison had no such intention, though, and ignited a nearby ammunition dump–an act of defiance, and possibly of mass suicide. Most of the Japanese were killed in the explosion, along with 52 Americans. Those Japanese who survived the blast were forced out into the open and decimated by the Americans. Corregidor was officially in American hands by early March.

1945 – The US 1st and 9th Army units are moving rapidly from their bridgeheads over the Our River.

1946 – A race riot in Columbia, TN, killed 2 people and 10 wounded.

February 26th ~ {continued...}

1949 – From Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas, the Lucky Lady II, a B-50 Superfortress, takes off on the first nonstop round-the-world flight. Under the command of Captain James Gallagher, and featuring a crew of 14 men, the aircraft averaged 249 miles per hour on its 23,452-mile trek. The Lucky Lady II was refueled four times in the air by B-29 tanker planes and on March 2 returned to the United States after 94 hours in the air. In December 1986, Voyager, a lightweight propeller plane constructed mainly of plastic, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in Muroc, California, having completed the first global flight without refueling.

1951 – In the US the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of office, was ratified.

1952 – Ten Superfortresses, using radar aiming methods, dropped one-hundred tons of bombs on the Sinhung-dong rail road bridge near Huichon in north central Korea, knocking out two spans.

1955 – G.F. Smith became the 1st aviator to bail out at supersonic speed.

1962 – After becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn told a joint meeting of Congress, “Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run.”

1963 – US helicopters are ordered to shoot first at enemy Soldiers while escorting government troops. Two days before, one US Soldier was killed when Vietcong ground-fire downs two of three US Army H-21 helicopters airlifting government Soldiers about 100 miles north of Saigon.

1965 – The first contingent of South Korean troops arrives in Saigon. Although assigned to non-combat duties, they came under fire on April 3. The South Korean contingent was part of the Free World Military Forces, an effort by President Lyndon B. Johnson to enlist allies for the United States and South Vietnam.

By securing support from other nations, Johnson hoped to build an international consensus behind his policies in Vietnam. The effort was also known as the “many flags” program. By the close of 1969, there were over 47,800 Korean soldiers actively involved in combat operations in South Vietnam. Seoul began to withdraw its troops in February 1972.

1966 – Apollo program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket. AS-201 (or SA-201), was the first unmanned test flight of an entire production Block I Apollo Command/Service Module and the Saturn IB launch vehicle. The spacecraft consisted of the second Block I command module and the first Block I service module. The suborbital flight was a partially successful demonstration of the service propulsion system and the reaction control systems of both modules, and successfully demonstrated the capability of the Command Module’s heat shield to survive re-entry from low Earth orbit.

1968 – Allied troops who had recaptured the imperial capital of Hue from the North Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive discover the first mass graves in Hue. It was discovered that communist troops who had held the city for 25 days had massacred about 2,800 civilians whom they had identified as sympathizers with the government in Saigon. One authority estimated that communists might have killed as many as 5,700 people in Hue.

1970 – Five Marines were arrested on charges of murdering 11 South Vietnamese women and children.

February 26th ~ {continued...}

1973 – First airborne mine sweep in a live minefield took place in the Haiphong, Vietnam ship channel by helicopters from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron Twelve on board USS New Orleans.

1976 – US performed a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.

1977 – The 1st flight of Space Shuttle atop a Boeing 747 took place.

1984 – The last U.S. Marines sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force leave Beirut, the war-torn Lebanese capital where some 250 of the original 800 Marines lost their lives during the problem-plagued 18-month mission.

1987 – The Tower Commission, which probed the Iran-Contra affair, issued its report, which rebuked President Reagan for failing to control his national security staff.

1987 – NASA launched GEOS-H.

1990 – A year after agreeing to free elections, Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government loses at the polls. The elections brought an end to more than a decade of U.S. efforts to unseat the Sandinista government. The Sandinistas came to power when they overthrew long-time dictator Anastacio Somoza in 1979.

1991 – A cease-fire was called by Pres. Bush after 100 hours of ground combat. Following the cease-fire a retreating Iraqi unit stumbled into the Gen. McCaffrey’s 24th infantry division and some 400 Iraqis were reported killed. Army investigations concluded that the Iraqis started the Rumaylah battle.

1991 – Kuwaiti resistance leaders declared themselves in control of their capital, following nearly seven months of Iraqi occupation.

1991 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad Radio that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.

1993 – A bomb explodes in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people died and 1,000 were injured by the powerful blast. The buildings themselves, once the world’s tallest, were nearly toppled by the bomb; an underground restraining wall came precariously close to breaking and allowing the Hudson River to spill into the World Trade Center’s support area. Hours after the explosion, an informant identified a group of Serbians in New York as the culprits.

However, when the FBI conducted surveillance of the gang they found not terrorists but jewel thieves, putting an end to a major diamond-laundering operation. Fortunately, investigators at the bomb scene found a 300-pound section of a van frame that had been at the center of the blast. The van’s vehicle identification number was still visible, leading detectives to the Ryder Rental Agency in Jersey City, New Jersey. Their records indicated that Mohammed Salameh had rented the van and reported it stolen on February 25. Salameh was already in the FBI’s database as a potential terrorist, so agents knew that they had probably found their man. Salameh compounded his mistake by insisting that Ryder return his $400 deposit. When he returned to collect it, the FBI arrested him.

A search of his home and records led to two other suspects. Meanwhile, the owner of a storage facility in Jersey City came forward to say that he had seen four men loading a Ryder van on February 25. When this storage space was checked, they found enough chemicals, including very unstable nitroglycerin, to make another massive bomb. Investigators also found videotapes with instructions on bomb making that led to the arrest of a fourth suspect. Other evidence showed that one of the terrorists had bought hydrogen tanks from AGL Welding Supply in New Jersey. In the wreckage under the World Trade Center, three tanks marked “AGL Welding” were found.

In addition, the terrorists had sent a letter to the New York Times claiming responsibility for the blast. Portions of this letter were found on the hard drive of one of the suspect’s computers. Finally, DNA analysis of saliva on the envelope matched that of the suspect. The wealth of evidence resulted in easy convictions, and each of the men was sentenced to 240 years in prison. Despite the fact that the terrorists did not succeed in destroying the World Trade Center, the bombing remains one of the worst acts of foreign terrorism on U.S. soil.

February 26th ~ {continued...}

1994 – A jury in San Antonio acquitted 11 followers of David Koresh of murder, rejecting claims they had ambushed federal agents; five were convicted of manslaughter.

1995 – The United States and China averted a trade war by signing a comprehensive agreement.

1996 – President Clinton moved to step up economic sanctions on Cuba in response to Cuba’s downing of two unarmed airplanes belonging to the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue.

1998 – The US waived the 2-year-old sanctions against Columbia. Military and economic aid were expected to follow.

2000 – Jose Imperatori, vice consul at the Cuban interests section in Washington, was expelled from the US after he refused to leave voluntarily under charges of spying.

2001 – The UN War Crimes tribunal in the Hague convicted Dario Kordic, a former Bosnian Croat leader, for crimes against humanity in the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. Mario Cerkez (41), a brigade commander of Croatian troops in Bosnia, was also convicted. They had carried out an “ethnic cleansing” campaign in an area they wished to be joined to Croatia.

2001 – Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered the destruction of all statues including the Buddha statues carved into the stone cliffs of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. He called on the Ministry for the promotion of Virtue and the Repression of Vice as well as the Ministry of Culture to destroy all pre-Islamic statues and sanctuaries.

2002 – It was reported that the US has begun providing the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with military aid to counter terrorist threats in the Pankisi Gorge region. Some 100-200 US soldiers were included in the $64 million program to begin in mid-March.

2003 – President Bush, offering new justification for war in Iraq, told a think tank that “ending this direct and growing threat” from Saddam Hussein would pave the way for peace in the Middle East and encourage democracy throughout the Arab world.

2003 – NYC chose an airy spire that stands taller than any other building in the world at a height of 1,776 feet, designed by Daniel Libeskind.

2003 – In a televised interview, Saddam Hussein denies any connections with al-Qaeda and says he will refuse any offer of asylum, vowing to die in Iraq. He also denies his al-Samoud 2 missiles break UN resolutions and refuses to destroy them.

2003 – Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix says his team will need a few months to complete inspections in Iraq, even if Iraq “immediately, actively and unconditionally” co-operates. He also states that it is “not clear whether Iraq really wants to co-operate” at the moment.

2003 – Warplanes taking part in US-British patrols have attacked two air defence cable communications sites in southern Iraq after the Iraqi airforce violated the no-fly zone.

2004 – President Bush tightened U.S. travel restrictions against Cuba.

2004 – The US lifted a long-standing ban on travel to Libya after Moammar Gadhafi’s government affirmed that it was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.

2007 – The International Court of Justice finds Serbia guilty of failing to prevent genocide in the Srebrenica massacre, but clears it of direct responsibility and complicity in a case brought forth by Bosnia and Herzegovina.

2009 – Reversing prior policy, the United States Defense Department allows news agencies to publicize photographs of the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2013 – Chuck Hagel is confirmed by the Senate as the United States Secretary of Defense.

2015 – “Jihadi John”, an ISIL terrorist featured in many beheading videos, is identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born man who lived in the United Kingdom and was on a terrorism watch list.

February 27th ~

1775 – Parliament endorses the conciliation plan of Lord North, which calls for the abolition of all regulatory taxes on the American colonies and provides for the colonies to raise their own revenues for the common defense and the administrative costs of government and the judiciary.

1776 – A colonial force of North Carolina patriots resoundingly defeats a detachment of Scottish Loyalists at Moore’s Creek Bridge near Wilmington. The battle ended Royal Governor Josiah Martin’s hopes of regaining control of the colony for the British crown. In addition, this first decisive Patriot victory of the Revolutionary War raised morale for Patriots throughout the colonies. The Loyalist defeat ended British plans for an invasionary force to land in Brunswick, North Carolina.

1782 – In England, the House of Commons votes against waging any further war in America. On 5 March, Parliament enacts legislation empowering the English Crown to negotiate peace with the United States.

1801 – The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.

1823 – William Buel Franklin (d.1903), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1827 – Richard W. Johnson (d.1897), Bvt Major General (Union Army), was born.

1862 – Delayed one day by a lack of ammunition for her guns, U.S.S. Monitor, Lieutenant Worden, departed the New York Navy Yard for sea, but was compelled to turn back to the Yard because of steering failure. The same day at Norfolk, Flag Officer Forrest, CSN, commanding the Navy Yard, reported that want of gun powder, too, was delaying the readiness of Virginia to begin operations against the Union blockading ships.1864 – The 6th and last day of battle at Dalton, Georgia, (about 600 casualties).

1864 – The first Union prisoners begin arriving at Andersonville prison, which was still under construction in southern Georgia. Andersonville became synonymous with death as nearly a quarter of its inmates died in captivity. Henry Wirz, commandant at Andersonville, was executed after the war for the brutality and mistreatment committed under his command.

The prison, officially called Camp Sumter, became necessary after the prisoner exchange system between North and South collapsed in 1863 over disagreements about the handling of black soldiers. The stockade at Andersonville was hastily constructed using slave labor, and it was located in the Georgia woods near a railroad but safely away from the front lines. Enclosing 16 acres of land, the tall palisade was supposed to include wooden barracks but the inflated price of lumber delayed construction, and the Yankee soldiers imprisoned there lived under open skies, protected only by makeshift shanties called “shebangs,” constructed from scraps of wood and blankets. A stream initially provided fresh water, but within a few months human waste had contaminated the creek.

The prison was built to hold 10,000 men, but within six months more than three times that number were incarcerated there. The creek banks eroded to create a swamp, which occupied more than one-fifth of the compound. Rations were inadequate, and at times half of the population was reported ill. Some guards brutalized the inmates and there was violence between factions of prisoners. Andersonville was the worst among many terrible Civil War prisons, both Union and Confederate. Wirz paid the price for the inhumanity of Andersonville–he was the only person executed in the aftermath of the Civil War.

February 27th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Confederate raider William Quantrill and his bushwackers attacked Hickman, Kentucky, shooting women and children.

1865 – A Civil War skirmish took place near Sturgeon, Missouri.

1897 – Great Britain agrees to U.S. arbitration in a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana, defusing a dangerous U.S.-British diplomatic crisis.In 1841, gold was discovered in eastern British Guiana, intensifying a long-standing boundary dispute between Britain and Venezuela. In 1887, Venezuela accused Britain of pushing settlements farther into the contested area and cut diplomatic ties with Great Britain.

In 1895, Britain refused to submit the quarrel to U.S. arbitration, which provoked a belligerent reaction from U.S. President Grover Cleveland’s administration. In July 1895, Secretary of State Richard Olney, invoking a new and broader interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, demanded U.S. arbitration on the basis that any quarrel in the Western Hemisphere directly affected American interests and thus the United States had a right to intercede.

1925 – Hitler resurrected the NSDAP (Nazi) political party in Munich.

1931 – Congress overrides President Herbert Hoover’s veto of the Bonus Loan Bill which allows veterans to obtain cash loans of up to 50% of the value of the veterans’ bonus certificates they had been issued in 1924.

1933 – Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis blamed the Communists and used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties and increasing their power. Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian Communist, was one of the accused plotters, but was acquitted. After WW II Dimitrov became the 1st premier of communist Bulgaria.

1942 – The U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the Langley, is sunk by Japanese warplanes (with a little help from U.S. destroyers), and all of its 32 aircraft are lost. The Langley was launched in 1912 as the naval collier (coal transport ship) Jupiter. After World War I, the Jupiter was converted into the Navy’s first aircraft carrier and rechristened the Langley, after aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpoint Langley. It was also the Navy’s first electrically propelled ship, capable of speeds of 15 knots.

On October 17, 1922, Lt. Virgil C. Griffin piloted the first plane, a VE-7-SF, launched from the Langley’s decks. Although planes had taken off from ships before, it was nevertheless a historic moment. After 1937, the Langley lost the forward 40 percent of her flight deck as part of a conversion to seaplane tender, a mobile base for squadrons of patrol bombers.

On December 8, 1941, the Langley was part of the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked. She immediately set sail for Australia, arriving on New Year’s Day, 1942. On February 22, commanded by Robert P. McConnell, the Langley, carrying 32 Warhawk fighters, left as part of a convoy to aid the Allies in their battle against the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies.

On February 27, the Langley parted company from the convoy and headed straight for the port at Tjilatjap, Java. About 74 miles south of Java, the carrier met up with two U.S. escort destroyers when nine Japanese twin-engine bombers attacked. Although the Langley had requested a fighter escort from Java for cover, none could be spared. The first two Japanese bomber runs missed their target, as they were flying too high, but the Langley’s luck ran out the third time around and it was hit three times, setting the planes on her flight deck aflame. The carrier began to list.

Commander McConnell lost his ability to navigate the ship. McConnell ordered the Langley abandoned, and the escort destroyers were able to take his crew to safety. Of the 300 crewmen, only 16 were lost. The destroyers then to sank the Langley before the Japanese were able to capture it.

February 27th ~ {continued...}

1942 – By the last week of February Java was the only significant Dutch island remaining in Allied hands. To the battered and demoralized defenders, there was no doubt the Japanese were coming and coming soon. In fact two invasion convoys were already at sea – one from the East and one from the West. On the 25th a Dutch Catalina spotted the Eastern Invasion Fleet. Consequently, the defender’s Eastern Strike Force was reinforced on February 26th by a Royal Navy contingent from the Western Force.

On this day the first and only conference was held between the captains and staff of the Eastern Strike Force, sortied that night to spend it and the following morning fruitlessly sweeping the north coast of eastern Java and Madura and adjacent waters north to Bawean Island, one hundred miles due north of Surabaya. Unfortunately, they were searching just a little too far south and they did not receive word of a high-level strike carried out by B-17s on the Eastern Invasion Force that day.

1944 – There are American air strikes on Momote and Lorengau in preparation for a reconnaissance in force. The troops to be employed in the operation are embarking in Oro Bay.

1945 – On Iwo Jima, the carriers of TF53 again add their support to the ships aiding the attacks of US 5th Amphibious Corps. The American objective is the elimination of three Japanese positions overlooking the second airfield on the island, however, the marines fail to dislodge the Japanese defenders.

1945 – Units of US 7th Corps (part of US 1st Army) cross the Erth River at Modrath, about 10 km from Cologne. Farther south, two corps of US 3rd Army are converging on Trier.

1948 – The Federal Trade Commission issued a restraining order, preventing the Willys-Overland Company from representing that it had developed the Jeep. Willys-Overland did, in fact, end up producing the Army vehicle that would come to be known as the Jeep; but it was the Bantam Motor Company that first presented the innovative design to the Army.

1951 – The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.

1952 – The destroyer USS Shelton sustained three hits from shore batteries. Eleven sailors are wounded, three seriously.

1953 – F-84 Thunderjets raided North Korean base on Yalu River. A year after leaving West Point, Lt. Joe Kingston was en route to Korea, where he, like a lot of others, found himself retreating and advancing in a single day.

1953 – The USCGC Coos Bay, on Ocean Station Echo, about half-way between Bermuda and the Azores, rescued the entire crew of 10 from the US Navy patrol plane that was forced to ditch in the Atlantic Ocean.

1962 – South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem survives another coup attempt when Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilots Lieutenants Pham Phu Quoc and Nguyen Van Cu try to kill him and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu by bombing and strafing the presidential palace. Lieutenant Quoc was arrested after his fighter-bomber crash-landed near Saigon. Lieutenant Cu fled to Cambodia, where he remained until November 1963. The attack confirmed Diem’s conviction that his main adversaries were domestic.

1963 – The USSR said that 10,000 troops would remain in Cuba.

February 27th ~ {continued...}

1965 – The U.S. State Department releases a 14,000-word report entitled “Aggression from the North–The Record of North Vietnam’s Campaign to Conquer South Vietnam.” Citing “massive evidence,” including testimony of North Vietnamese soldiers who had defected or been captured in South Vietnam, the document claimed that nearly 20,000 Viet Cong military and technical personnel had entered South Vietnam through the “infiltration pipeline” from the North. The report maintained that the infiltrators remained under military command from Hanoi.

The Johnson administration was making the case that the war in Vietnam was not an internal insurgency, but rather an invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnamese forces. This approach was a calculated ploy by President Lyndon Johnson, who realized that he would have a hard time convincing the American public that the United States should get involved in a civil war–acting to stop the spread of communism by invading North Vietnamese would provide a much better justification for increased U.S. involvement in the conflict.

1968 – CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite‘s commentary on the progress of the Vietnam War solidified President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s decision not to seek reelection in 1968. Cronkite, who had been at Hue in the midst of the Tet Offensive earlier in February, said: “Who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities? I‘m not sure.”

He concluded: “It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out…will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” Johnson called the commentary a “turning point,” saying that if he had “lost Cronkite,” he‘d “lost Mr. Average Citizen.” On March 31, Johnson announced he would not seek reelection.

1969 – Communist forces shell 30 military installations and nine towns in South Vietnam, in what becomes known as the “Post-Tet Offensive.” U.S. sources in Saigon put American losses in this latest offensive at between 250 and 300, compared with enemy casualties totaling 5,300. South Vietnamese officials report 200 civilians killed and 12,700 made homeless.

1972 – As the concluding act of President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to communist China, the president and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai issue a joint statement summarizing their agreements (and disagreements) of the past week. The “Shanghai Communique” set into motion the slow process of the normalization of relations between the two former Cold War enemies.

1973 – On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, some 200 Sioux Native Americans, led by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupy Wounded Knee, the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. The AIM members, some of them armed, took 11 residents of the historic Oglala Sioux settlement hostage as local authorities and federal agents descended on the reservation.

1973 – First airborne mine sweep in a live minefield took place in the Haiphong, Vietnam ship channel by helicopters from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron Twelve on board USS New Orleans.

1976 – The final meeting between Mao Tse Tung and Richard Nixon took place.

1986 – The United States Senate allows its debates to be televised on a trial basis.

1991 – XVIII Airborne Corps prepared to continue its advance east toward A1 Basrah.

1997 – A jury in Fayetteville, N.C., convicted former Army paratrooper James N. Burmeister of murdering a black couple so he could get a skinhead tattoo. He was later sentenced to life in prison.

1998 – The World Court ruled that it has the authority to decide on the location of a trial for the 2 Libyans accused of blowing up a jet over Lockerbee, Scotland in 1988.

February 27th ~ {continued...}

2000 – Jose Imperatori, the Cuban diplomat expelled from the US for spying, took refuge in the Cuban embassy in Ottawa.

2000 – In Germany 3 teenagers of American soldiers hurled large stones off a pedestrian bridge in Darmstadt and killed Sandra Ottman (20) and Karin Rothermel (41). The 3 teens were convicted of murder and sentenced up to 8 ½ years in prison.

2002 – Operation Enduring Freedom – Pankisi Gorge (OEF-G) in the Former Soviet Republic of Georgia, begins. The Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP) was an American-sponsored 18-month, $64-million plan designed to increase the capabilities of the Georgian armed forces as part of the Global War on Terrorism. The U.S. would sent approximately two hundred United States Army Special Forces soldiers to Georgia to train Georgian troops.

This program implemented President Bush’s decision to respond to the Government of Georgia’s request for assistance to enhance its counter-terrorism capabilities and addressed the situation in the Pankisi Gorge. (It had allegedly often been used as a base for transit, training and shipments of arms and financing by Chechen rebels and Islamic militants, many of whom followed Ruslan Gelayev.) The US funded the GTEP to train Georgian Armed Forces (12th “Commando” Light Infantry Battalion, 16th Mountain-Infantry Batalion, 13th “Shavnabada” Light Infantry Battalion, 11th Light Infantry Battalion, Mechanized company, and small numbers of Interior Ministry troops and border guards.)

Although GTEP formally came to a close in April 2004, the US military assistance program with Georgia continues, and is now known as the Georgia Sustainment and Stability Operations Program. Part of this program has involved preparing Georgian units for operations with the US led Multinational Force Iraq. The program ended in September 2007.

2003 – The Bush administration lowered the terror alert threat to code yellow.

2003 – Iraq agreed in principle to destroy its Al Samoud Two missiles, two days before a U.N. deadline.

2003 – The USCGC Dallas was ordered to deploy overseas to support Operation Enduring Freedom and to prepare for future contingencies. She was underway on patrol when she received the order from the Atlantic Area commander to sail overseas to the Mediterranean. Dallas deployed with an HH-65B Dolphin helicopter and 7-member aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City, New Jersey.

2004 – The Coast Guard repatriated 531 Haitian migrants to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after they were rescued in the Windward Pass. The migrants were from 13 boats stopped since 21 February 2004. The repatriations were completed by three cutters. The crew of the USCGC Valiant transported 290 migrants, the crew of the USCGC Vigilant delivered another 241, and the USCGC Nantucket escorted the cutters for safety and security. The migrants were turned over to the Haitian coast guard.

2005 – Iraqi security forces reported the capture of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and former adviser. Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, the 6 of diamonds, was No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. Syria captured al-Hassan and 29 other fugitives and handed them over to Iraqi security.

2007 – A suicide attack at Bagram Air Base while Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney is visiting kills 23, but the Vice President is not injured. The Taliban claims responsibility, and declares that Cheney was their intended target.

2007 – A hail storm damages the Space Shuttle Atlantis, delaying the STS-117 launch originally scheduled for March 15th.

2009 – United States President Barack Obama gave a speech at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in the US state of North Carolina announcing that the US combat mission in Iraq would end by 31 August 2010. A “transitional force” of up to 50,000 troops tasked with training the Iraqi Security Forces, conducting counterterrorism operations, and providing general support may remain until the end of 2011, the president added.

2009 – A nationwide “Chicago Tea Party” occurred across the United States, where protesters say government spending is out of control.

February 28th ~

1610 – The Virginia Company takes further steps to instituting absolutist rule when it appoints Thomas West, Lord Delaware, as the first lord-governor and captain-general of the Virginia colony. The broad political and military powers granted to Lord Delaware reflect the growing English concern with placing the colony on a sound footing in terms of both political and economic organization.

1704 – Indians attacked Deerfield, Mass., killing 40 and kidnapping 100.

1708 – A slave revolt in Newton, Long Island, NY, left 11 dead.

1786 – In answer to the November 30, 1785 demand of John Adams, the British respond that they will not vacate their American military garrisons along the northwest frontier—including Detroit, Michilimackinac, Niagra, and Oswego—until the Americans carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Paris with regard to the treatment of Loyalists and the collection of debts.

1844 – A 12-inch gun aboard the USS Princeton exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas W. Gilmer and several others.

1847 – Colonel Alexander Doniphan and his ragtag Missouri Mounted Volunteers rode to victory at the Battle of Sacramento during the Mexican War.

1848 – The House of Representatives and the Senate, acting on the proposal of President-elect Polk, adopt a joint resolution for the annexation of Texas. This is essentially a procedure to bypass requirement of a two-thirds vote of the Senate alone to ratify a treaty. The resolution also authorizes the President to negotiate a new treaty with Texas, one that could be approved by either procedure, but the President does not immediately exercise this choice.

1861 – With the region’s population booming because of the Pike’s Peak gold rush, Congress creates the new Territory of Colorado. When the United States acquired it after the Mexican War ended in 1848, the land that would one day become Colorado was nearly unpopulated by Anglo settlers. Ute, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and other Indians had occupied the land for centuries, but the Europeans who had made sporadic appearances there since the 17th century never stayed for long. It was not until 1851 that the first permanent non-Indian settlement was established, in the San Luis Valley.

As with many other western regions, though, the lure of gold launched the first major Anglo invasion. In July 1858, a band of prospectors working streambeds near modern-day Denver found tiny flecks of gold in their pans. Since the gold-bearing streams were located in the foothills not far from the massive mountain named for the explorer Zebulon Pike, the subsequent influx of hopeful miners was termed the Pike’s Peak gold rush. By the spring of 1859, an estimated 50,000 gold seekers had reached this latest of a long series of American El Dorados.

As the first gold-bearing streams to be discovered played out, prospectors moved westward into the rugged slopes of the Rocky Mountains in search of new finds. Wherever sizeable deposits were discovered, ramshackle mining camps like Central City, Nevadaville, and Black Hawk appeared, sometimes almost overnight. Meanwhile, out on the flat plains at the edge of the mountains, Denver became the central supply town for the miners. Although few miners came to Colorado planning to stay long, they were eager to establish some semblance of “law and order” in the region in order to protect their property rights and gold dust.

Far from the seats of eastern government, the miners and townspeople cobbled together their own simple governments, usually revolving around a miners’ court that regulated claims. Technically lacking in any genuine legal foundation, the miners’ courts did maintain the minimal order needed for the mineral exploitation of the territory to continue. The unreliable mining operations soon gave way to larger, highly capitalized and relatively permanent lode mining operations. The pioneers recognized that the vast mineral resources of the Rockies could form the foundation of a thriving new state, but the people settling there needed a more formal system of laws and government.

The Congressional designation of new western states and territories had been bogged down for several years as southern and northern politicians fought over whether slavery would be permitted in the new western regions. By 1861, the South had seceded, clearing the way for the northern politicians to begin creating free-labor states. On this day in 1861, Congress combined pieces of Nebraska, Kansas, Utah, and New Mexico to make a large rectangle of land it designated Colorado Territory.