April 25th ~

1781 – General Nathanael Greene engaged British forces at Hobkirk’s Hill, South Carolina, and was forced to retreat.

1819 – The Revenue cutter Active captured the pirate vessel Irresistible in the Chesapeake Bay.

1846 – With the Thornton Affair, open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican–American War. The Thornton Affair, also known as the Thornton Skirmish, Thornton’s Defeat, or Rancho Carricitos was a battle in 1846 between the military forces of the United States and Mexico twenty miles west along the Rio Grande from Zachary Taylor’s camp along the Rio Grande. The much larger Mexican force completely defeated the Americans in the opening of hostilities, and was the primary justification for U.S. President James K. Polk’s call to Congress to declare war.

Although the United States had annexed Texas, both the US and Mexico claimed the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Polk had ordered Taylor’s Army of Occupation to the Rio Grande early in 1846 soon after Mexican President Mariano Paredes declared in his inaugural address to uphold the integrity of Mexican territory to the Sabine River.

Taylor received two reports on April 24th of Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande, the first crossing below his camp, the other a crossing upriver. Taylor ordered Captain Croghan Ker to investigate downriver and Captain Seth B. Thornton with two Dragoon companies to investigate upriver. Ker found nothing but Thornton rode into an ambush and his 80 man force was quickly overwhelmed by Torrejon’s 1600, resulting in the capture of those not immediately killed.

Thornton’s guide brought news of the hostilities to Taylor and was followed by a cart from Torrejon containing the six wounded, Torrejon stating he could not care for them. Upon learning of the incident, President Polk asked for a Declaration of War before a joint session of the United States Congress, and summed up his justification for war by famously stating:

“The cup of forbearance had been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del Norte [Rio Grande]. But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war.”

On May 13th, 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico, despite the Mexican government’s position that Thornton had crossed the border into Mexican Texas, which Mexico maintained began south of the Nueces River (the historical border of the province of Texas).

1854 – The Gadsden Purchase was ratified in the US.

1862 – Flag Officer Farragut’s fleet, having silenced Confederate batteries at Chalmette en route, anchored before New Orleans. High water in the river allowed the ships’ guns to dominate the city over the levee top. Captain Bailey went ashore to demand the surrender. The Common Council of New Orleans resolved that: “. . . having been advised by the military authorities that the city is indefensible, [we] declare that no resistance will be made to the forces of the United States.” Loss of New Orleans, the largest and wealthiest seaport in the South, was a critical blow to the Confederacy.

With the rapid capitulation of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the delta of the Mississippi was open to the water-borne movement of Union forces which were free to steam river to join those coming south in the great pincer which would sever the Confederacy. “Thus, reported Secretary of the Navy Welles, ”the great southern depot of the trade of the immense central valley of the Union was once more opened to commercial intercourse and the emporium of that wealthy region was restored to national authority; the mouth of the Mississippi was under our control and an outlet for the great West to the ocean was secured.”

April 25th ~ {continued...}

1864 – For the second time in a week, a Confederate force captures a Union wagon train trying to supply the Federal force at Camden, Arkansas. This time, the loss forced Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw back to Little Rock. Steele captured Camden on April 15 as he moved southwest towards Shreveport, Louisiana. This was part of a larger Union operation in the region. General Nathaniel Banks moved up the Red River into northwest Louisiana on a planned invasion of Texas, but he was turned back at the Battle of Mansfield on April 8th. Steele was to pinch Confederate forces around Shreveport with a move from central Arkansas.

After taking Camden, Steele sent 1,100 men west to capture a store of corn. That force was badly defeated by a Confederate detachment at the Battle of Poison Springs on April 18. Now, with provisions dwindling, Steele sent another wagon train northeast from Camden towards Pine Bluff to fetch supplies. Lieutenant Colonel Francis Drake and 1,700 troops accompanied the 240 wagons that left Camden on April 22. Three hundred runaway slaves traveled along as well. Three days later, Confederate troops under General James Fagan pounced on Drake’s command near Mark’s Mills. They came from two sides, and Drake was wounded and captured early in the battle along with 1,400 of his troops. The Confederates lost 41 killed and 108 wounded, but they captured the entire wagon train.

Tragically, the Rebels followed up their victory much as they had at Poison Springs on April 18, where they massacred captured black soldiers. At Mark’s Mills, at least half of the runaways were killed in cold blood. Even one of the Confederate officers admitted in his report that “No orders, threat, or commands could restrain the men from vengeance on the Negroes…” Steele’s army was now in dangerous territory. With Confederate forces lurking all around Camden and with supplies running low, Steele retreated to Little Rock, leaving southern Arkansas under Rebel control. Drake survived his wounds and later became governor of Iowa. Drake University in Des Moines now bears his name.

1864 – After facing defeat in the Red River Campaign, Union General Nathaniel Bank returned to Alexandria, Louisiana.

1865 – Four of the five Lincoln assassination suspects arrested on the 17th were imprisoned on the monitors U.S.S. Montauk and Saugus which had been prepared for this purpose on the 15th and were anchored off the Washington Navy Yard in the Anacostia River.

Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was taken into custody at the boarding house she operated after it was learned that her son was a close friend of John Wilkes Booth and that the actor was a frequent visitor at the boarding house. Mrs. Surratt was jailed in the Carroll Annex of Old Capitol Prison. Lewis Paine was also taken into custody when he came to Mrs. Surratt’s house during her arrest. Edward Spangler, stagehand at the Ford Theater and Booth’s aide, along with Michael O’Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, close associates of Booth during the months leading up to the assassination, were also caught up in the dragnet.

O’Laughlin and Paine, after overnight imprisonment in the Old Capitol Prison, were transferred to the monitors at the Navy Yard. They were joined by Arnold on the 19th and Spangler on the 24th. George A. Atzerodt, the would-be assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Ernest Hartman Richter, at whose home Atzerodt was captured, were brought on board the ships on the 20th. Joao Celestino, Portuguese sea captain who had been heard to say on the 14th that Seward ought to be assassinated, was transferred from Old Capitol Prison to Montauk on the 25th.

The last of the eight conspiracy suspects to be incarcerated on board the monitors was David E. Herold. The prisoners were kept below decks under heavy guard and were manacled with both wrist and leg irons. In addition, their heads were covered with canvas hoods the interior of which were fitted with cotton pads that tightly covered the prisoners’ eyes and ears. The hoods contained two small openings to permit breathing and the consumption of food. An added security measure was taken with Paine by attaching a ball and chain to each ankle.

April 25th ~ {continued...}

1898 – The United States formally declared war on Spain. The US House passed the declaration 311 to 6. After the Maine was destroyed on 15 February, newspaper publishers Hearst and Pulitzer decided that the Spanish were to blame, and they publicized this theory as fact in their New York City papers using sensationalistic and astonishing accounts of “atrocities” committed by the Spanish in Cuba by using headlines in their newspapers, such as “Spanish Murderers” and “Remember The Maine”. Their press exaggerated what was happening and how the Spanish were treating the Cuban prisoners. The stories were based on factual accounts, but most of the time, the articles that were published were embellished and written with incendiary language causing emotional and often heated responses among readers.

A common myth states, that Randolph Hurst responding to the opinion of his illustrator, Frederic Remington, that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities, said: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” This new “yellow journalism” was, however, uncommon outside New York City, and historians no longer consider it the major force shaping the national mood. Public opinion nationwide did demand immediate action, overwhelming the efforts of President McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, and the business community to find a negotiated solution.

A speech delivered by Republican Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont on March 17, 1898 thoroughly analyzed the situation, concluding that war was the only answer. The speech helped provide one final push for the United States to declare war. Many in the business and religious communities which had until then opposed war, switched sides, leaving McKinley and Speaker Reed almost alone in their resistance to a war.

On April 11, McKinley ended his resistance and asked Congress for authority to send American troops to Cuba to end the civil war there, knowing that Congress would force a war. On April 19, while Congress was considering joint resolutions supporting Cuban independence, Republican Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado proposed the Teller Amendment to ensure that the U.S. would not establish permanent control over Cuba after the war. The amendment, disclaiming any intention to annex Cuba, passed the Senate 42 to 35; the House concurred the same day, 311 to 6. The amended resolution demanded Spanish withdrawal and authorized the President to use as much military force as he thought necessary to help Cuba gain independence from Spain.

President McKinley signed the joint resolution on April 20, 1898, and the ultimatum was sent to Spain. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21st. On the same day, the U.S. Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Spain declared war on April 23rd. On April 25, Congress declared that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain had existed since April 21st, the day the blockade of Cuba had begun.

The Navy was ready, but the Army was not well-prepared for the war and made radical changes in plans and quickly purchased supplies. In the spring of 1898, the strength of the Regular U.S. Army was just 28,000 men. The Army wanted 50,000 new men but received over 220,000, through volunteers and the mobilization of state National Guard units.

1913 – The formal charter of the Marine Corps Association was established.

1914 – First combat observation mission by Navy plane, at Veracruz, Mexico.

April 25th ~ {continued...}

1943 – American bombers raid an airfield around Bari, Italy in the south.

1945 – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.

1945 – Liberation Day (Italy): The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement. The puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini is captured after trying to escape. This day was set as a public holiday to celebrate the Liberation of Italy.

1945 – Delegates from some 50 countries met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations. Charles Easton Rothwell (d.1987) headed the 500-member group that helped establish the UN Charter.

1945 – Soviet forces complete the encirclement of Berlin near Ketzin. The 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian froms continue to attack, from the east and south, into the city. South of the capital, elements of 1st Ukrainian Front advancing toward the Elbe River, link up with American units at Torgau.

Meanwhile, in East Prussia, Pillau is taken. (Since early in the year, about 140,000 wounded and 40,000 refugees have been evacuated to the west from Pillau.) A few German troops continue to hold out at the tip of the Samland Peninsula. US 3rd Army crosses the Danube near Regensburg and assault the city.

1945 – American planes strike Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, nominally the Skoda Works.

1945 – Clandestine Radio 1212, used to hoax Nazi Germany, made its final transmission.

1951 – Eighth Army was pushed back 20 miles. The volunteer battalion from Belgium and Luxembourg was cut off but fought its way to safety after a 20-hour siege. Members of the battalion had high praise for the support provided by U.S. Marine Corsairs.

1953 – Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories.

1954 – UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill rejects the US proposed Radford Plan, initially conceived of as a nuclear strike but negotiated down to a massive US air strike against the Viet Minh in response to the fall of Dienbienphu. Churchill states, “What we are being asked to do is assist in misleading the Congress into approving a military operation which would be in itself ineffective, and might well bring the world to the verge of a major war.”

1957 – The 1st experimental sodium nuclear reactor operated.

April 25th ~ {continued...}

1960 – First submerged circumnavigation of the Earth was completed by a Triton submarine. Operation Sandblast was the code name for the first submerged circumnavigation of the world executed by the United States Navy nuclear-powered radar picket submarine USS Triton (SSRN-586) in 1960 while under the command of Captain Edward L. Beach, USN.

The New York Times described Triton ’​s submerged circumnavigation of the Earth as “a triumph of human prowess and engineering skill, a feat which the United States Navy can rank as one of its bright victories in man’s ultimate conquest of the seas.” The actual circumnavigation took place between 24 February and 25 April 1960, covering 26,723 nautical miles (49,491 km; 30,752 mi) over 60 days and 21 hours.

Operation Sandblast used the St. Peter and Paul Rocks, located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean near the Equator, as the starting point and terminus for the circumnavigation. During the course of the circumnavigation, Triton crossed the Equator four times while maintaining an average speed of advance (SOA) of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).

Triton ’​s overall navigational track during Operation Sandblast generally followed the same course for the first circumnavigation of the world led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan between 1519-1522. The initial impetus for Operation Sandblast was to enhance American technological and scientific prestige prior to the May 1960 Paris Summit between U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Additionally, Operation Sandblast provided a high-profile public demonstration of the capability of U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarines to carry out long-range submerged operations independent of external support and undetected by hostile forces, presaging the initial deployment of the U.S Navy’s Polaris ballistic missile submarines later in 1960.

Finally, Operation Sandblast gathered extensive oceanographic, hydrographic, gravimetric, geophysical, and psychological data during Triton ’​s circumnavigation. Although official celebrations for Operation Sandblast were cancelled following the diplomatic furor arising from the shooting down of a CIA U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in early May 1960, the Triton did receive the Presidential Unit Citation with a special clasp in the form of a golden replica of the globe in recognition of the successful completion of its mission, and Captain Beach received the Legion of Merit for his role as Triton ’​s commanding officer.

In 1961, Beach received the Magellanic Premium, the United States’ oldest and most prestigious scientific award, from the American Philosophical Society in “recognition of his navigation of the U.S. submarine Triton around the globe.”

1961 – Robert Noyce patented the integrated circuit.

1961 – Mercury-Atlas rocket lifted off with an electronic mannequin. An unmanned Mercury test exploded on launch pad.

1962 – U.S. Ranger spacecraft crash landed on the Moon.

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Gen. William Westmoreland will replace Gen. Paul Harkins as head of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as of June 20. The assignment would put Westmoreland in charge of all American military forces in Vietnam. One of the war’s most controversial figures, General Westmoreland was given many honors when the fighting was going well, but when the war turned sour, many Americans saw him as a cause of U.S. problems in Vietnam.

Negative feeling about Westmoreland grew particularly strong following the Tet Offensive of 1968, when he had requested a large number of additional troops for deployment to Vietnam. On March 22, 1968, President Johnson announced that Westmoreland would depart South Vietnam to take on the post of Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced him as the senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam.

April 25th ~ {continued...}

1972 – Hanoi’s 320th Division drives 5,000 South Vietnamese troops into retreat and traps about 2,500 others in a border outpost northwest of Kontum in the Central Highlands. This was part of the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, also known as the “Easter Offensive,” which included an invasion by 120,000 North Vietnamese troops.

The offensive was based on three objectives: Quang Tri in the north, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc in the south–just 65 miles north of Saigon. If successful, the attack at Kontum would effectively cut South Vietnam in two across the Central Highlands, giving North Vietnam control of the northern half of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese defenders were able to hold out and prevent this from happening.

1975 – Fearing impending coup, President Thieu flees Saigon following his resignation and transfer of authority to Vice President Tran Van Huong.

1976 – All-Vietnam elections are held for a new National Assembly. 249 deputies are elected from the North and 243 from the South with 6 seats of the total 492 reserved for minorities.

1982 – In accordance with Camp David agreements, Israel completed the Sinai withdrawal. Ariel Sharon, as defense minister, directed the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Sinai Peninsula. Nearly 5,000 residents and many more sympathizers were dragged off roofs and bundled onto buses.

1983 – The Pioneer 10 spacecraft crossed Pluto’s orbit, speeding on its endless voyage through the Milky Way.

1988 – NASA launched space vehicle S-211.

1990 – The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. The space telescope, conceived in the 1940s, designed in the 1970s, and built in the 1980s, was designed to give astronomers an unparalleled view of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. Initially, Hubble’s operators suffered a setback when a lens aberration was discovered, but a repair mission by space-walking astronauts in December 1993 successfully fixed the problem, and Hubble began sending back its first breathtaking images of the universe. Free of atmospheric distortions, Hubble has a resolution 10 times that of ground-based observatories. About the size of a bus, the telescope is solar-powered and orbits Earth once every 97 minutes. Among its many astronomical achievements, Hubble has been used to record a comet’s collision with Jupiter, provide a direct look at the surface of Pluto, view distant galaxies, gas clouds, and black holes, and see billions of years into the universe’s past.

1991 – The White House threatened to “take whatever steps are necessary” should Iraq fail to meet a deadline for withdrawing its security forces from the refugee zone in northern Iraq.

1999 – On the third and final day of their Washington summit, NATO leaders promised military protection and economic aid to Yugoslavia’s neighbors for standing with the West against Slobodan Milosevic. Pres. Yeltsin called Pres. Clinton to search for a solution to Kosovo.

1999 – NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia destroyed the last bridge in Novi Sad along with other targets in northern and central Serbia. The KLA staged a new conference in Kukes and pleaded anew for a battlefield alliance with NATO.

1999 – In Iraq US warplanes struck air defense sites in the northern no fly zone after being threatened by radar.

2000 – Royal Dutch Shell agrees to pay a $2 million fine for transporting smuggled Iraqi oil aboard a Russian tanker. Defence Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon states that Shell appeared to have acquired the Iraqi oil unwittingly, and would therefore be allowed to keep the cargo. The fine will go into a United Nations fund for the enforcement of sanctions.

2001 – In unusually blunt terms, President Bush warned China that an attack on Taiwan could provoke a U.S. military response.

2003 – Nuclear talks in Beijing ended after U.S. officials said North Korea claimed to have nuclear weapons and might test, export or use them.

2003 – Farouk Hijazi, who once helped run Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service and was linked to al-Qaida, was delivered by Syria to US forces.

April 26th ~

1607 – Ships under the command of Capt. Christopher Newport sought shelter in Chesapeake Bay. The forced landing led to the founding of Jamestown on the James River, the first English settlement. An expedition of English colonists, including Capt. John Smith, went ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

1655 – Dutch West Indies Co. denied Peter Stuyvesant’s desire to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam.

1718 – Esek Hopkins, first U.S. commander-in-chief, was born.

1777 – Sybil Ludington (16) rode from NY to Ct rallying her father’s militia.

1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and former Consul to Tunis, William Eaton. The Battle of Derne was the decisive victory of a mercenary army led by a detachment of United States Marines and United States Army soldiers against the forces of Ottoman Tripolitania during the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded land battle the United States fought overseas. U.S. forces and mercenaries marched for 600 miles (970 km) through the desert to attack Derne.

1827 – Charles Edward Hovey, Bvt Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1856 – Some 20 settlers of Honey Lake Valley, California, met at the cabin of Isaac Roop and formed “the independent Territory of Nataqua.” They named the cabin Fort Defiance, chose Peter Lassen as their surveyor and selected Susanville, named after Roop’s daughter, as the territorial capital.

1862 – Fort Macon, North Carolina, surrendered to combined land-sea forces under Commander Lock¬wood and Brigadier General John G. Parke. U.S.S. Daylight, State of Georgia, Chippewa, and Gemsbok heavily bombarded the fort; blockade runners Alliance and Gondar were captured after the fort’s surrender.

1865 – Confederate General Joseph Johnston officially surrenders his army to General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina. After the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s force on April 9th, Johnston’s army was the last hope of the Confederacy.

1865 – John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, made their way across the Anacostia River and headed toward southern Maryland. The pair stopped at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s home, and Mudd treated Booth’s leg. This earned Mudd a life sentence in prison when he was implicated as part of the conspiracy, but the sentence was later commuted.

Booth found refuge for several days at the home of Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent, before securing a boat to row across the Potomac to Virginia. After receiving aid from several Confederate sympathizers, Booth’s luck finally ran out.

The countryside was swarming with military units looking for Booth, although few shared information since there was a $20,000 reward. While staying at the farm of Richard Garrett, Federal troops arrived on their search but soon rode on. The unsuspecting Garrett allowed his suspicious guests to sleep in his barn, but he instructed his son to lock the barn from the outside to prevent the strangers from stealing his horses.

A tip led the Union soldiers back to the Garrett farm, where they discovered Booth and Herold in the barn. Herold came out, but Booth refused. The building was set on fire to flush Booth, but he was shot while still inside. He lived for three hours before gazing at his hands, muttering “Useless, useless,” as he died. He was secretly buried in the floor of the Old Penitentiary in Washington.

April 26th ~ {continued...}

1898 – Morrill, Hudson, and Hamilton, formerly Revenue Cutters and recently armed for service in the Mosquito Fleet, passed through Hampton Roads and after asking formal permission of the Commodore, proceeded to Key West. From that point they joint the Cuban blockading fleet.

1915 – The government of Italy agrees to side with the Entente against it’s former ally Austria-Hungary and has been promised substantial territorial gains in the event of victory. Austria-Hungary rapidly moves to reinforce it’s border with Italy from the Eastern Front and Serbia.

1921 – The first weather news was aired by station WEW in St. Louis, Mo.

1937 – During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force, the Luftwaffe, and the principles of Blitzkreig, on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a small rural city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared non-belligerence in the conflict. With Franco’s approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica.

For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days. The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica aroused world opinion and became a symbol of fascist brutality. Unfortunately, by 1942, all major participants in World War II had adopted the bombing innovations developed by the Nazis at Guernica, and by the war’s end, in 1945, millions of innocent civilians had perished under Allied and Axis air raids.

1943 – An American squadron under the command of Admiral McMorris bombards the Japanese held harbors on Attu Island.

1943 – New plans are approved for the Solomon Islands operatoins (code named “Cartwheel”). Admiral Halsey’s South Pacific Area forces are to advance through New Georgia and Bougainville. MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area is to continue its advance northwest along the coast of New Guinea until he and Halsey can link up to isolate the Japanese bases at Rabaul and Kavieng.

1944 – The American beachheads at Tanahmerah Bay and Humboldt Bay are linked up. Australian forces, to the east, capture Alexishafen, west of Madang.

1945 – US 3rd Army units take Regensburg while other elements enter Austria. In the south, the French 1st Army reaches Lake Constance.

1945 – US 5th Army units head north from Verona toward the Brenner Pass and west toward Milan. The British 8th Army has crossed the Adige River and moves northeast toward Venice and Trieste.

1945 – There is a further American landing on Negros, this time by units of the Americal Division in the southwest of the island. The troops advance well inland before encountering Japanese resistance.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 24th Corps attacks the along the Japanese held Maeda Escarpment (Shuri Line). American armor reaches the reverse slope.

1945 – Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army are liberated in Baguio City and they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

April 26th ~ {continued...}

1952 – US minesweeper “Hobson” rammed the aircraft carrier “Wasp,” and 176 were killed when the minesweeper sank.

1952 – Air Force Major William H. Wescott, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, scored his fifth aerial victory to become the 12th ace of the Korean War. His F-86 Sabre “Lady Francis/Michigan Center” was also used by Colonel “Gabby” Gabreski for one of his victories.

1954 – In an effort to resolve several problems in Asia, including the war between the French and Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina, representatives from the world’s powers meet in Geneva. The conference marked a turning point in the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, France, and Great Britain came together in April 1954 to try to resolve several problems related to Asia.

One of the most troubling concerns was the long and bloody battle between Vietnamese nationalist forces, under the leadership of the communist Ho Chi Minh, and the French, who were intent on continuing colonial control over Vietnam. Since 1946 the two sides had been hammering away at each other.

By 1954, however, the French were tiring of the long and inclusive war that was draining both the national treasury and public patience. The United States had been supporting the French out of concern that a victory for Ho’s forces would be the first step in communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia. When America refused France’s requests for more direct intervention in the war, the French announced that they were including the Vietnam question in the agenda for the Geneva Conference. Discussions on the Vietnam issue started at the conference just as France suffered its worst military defeat of the war, when Vietnamese forces captured the French base at Dien Bien Phu.

In July 1954, the Geneva Agreements were signed. As part of the agreement, the French agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Vietnam. Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections within two years to choose a president and reunite the country. During that two-year period, no foreign troops could enter Vietnam. Ho reluctantly signed off on the agreement though he believed that it cheated him out of the spoils of his victory. The non-communist puppet government set up by the French in southern Vietnam refused to sign, but without French support this was of little concern at the time. The United States also refused to sign, but did commit itself to abide by the agreement.

Privately, U.S. officials felt that the Geneva Agreements, if allowed to be put into action, were a disaster. They were convinced that national elections in Vietnam would result in an overwhelming victory for Ho, the man who had defeated the French colonialists. The U.S. government scrambled to develop a policy that would, at the least, save southern Vietnam from the communists. Within a year, the United States had helped establish a new anti-communist government in South Vietnam and began giving it financial and military assistance, the first fateful steps toward even greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

1961 – President Kennedy meets with the National Security Council to decide whether to send troops into Laos. Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell L. Gilpatric recommends quick expansion of Vietnam’s forces by 40,000 to prevent an invasion of South Vietnam from Laos, as well as an increase of two 1600 man US trainers and 400 Special Forces troops with a counterinsurgency tasking.

1962 – NASA’s Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. Ranger 4 was a spacecraft of the Ranger program designed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to crashing upon the Moon, to rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon, to collect gamma-ray data in flight, to study radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, and to continue testing of the Ranger program for development of lunar and interplanetary spacecraft.

An onboard computer failure caused failure of the deployment of the solar panels and navigation systems; as a result the spacecraft crashed on the far side of the Moon without returning any scientific data. It was the first U.S. spacecraft to reach another celestial body.

1965 – Secretary McNamara reports that although the air raids against North Vietnam have ‘slowed down the movement of men and materiel…infiltration of both arms and personnel into South Vietnam has increased. McNamara, however, refuses to answer questions on increasing troop strength. The war is now costing the nation about $1.5 billion per year.

April 26th ~ {continued...}

1965 – A Lou Harris poll shows that about 57% of Americans support Johnson’s handling of the war.

1965 – 20,000 Cambodian students attack the US Embassy there and tear down the US flag in protest.

1967 – US planes from Thailand attack a five-span bridge four miles north of Hanoi to sever rail links to Communist China.

1968 – The United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a one-megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”

1971 – The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. These figures were a direct result of President Richard Nixon’s new “Vietnamization” strategy, which he had announced at the Midway Conference in June 1969.

This strategy was a three-pronged program to disengage the United States from the war in Vietnam. The program required that efforts be increased to improve the combat capability of the South Vietnamese armed forces so that they could assume responsibility for the war against the North Vietnamese. Then, as the South Vietnamese became more capable, U.S. forces would be withdrawn from South Vietnam. At the same time, U.S. negotiators would continue to try to reach a negotiated settlement to the war with the communists at the Paris peace talks.

The announcement represented a significant change in the nature of the U.S. commitment to the war. The first U.S. soldiers were withdrawn in the fall of 1969 and the withdrawals continued periodically through 1972. Simultaneously, the U.S. increased the advisory effort and provided massive amounts of new equipment and weapons to the South Vietnamese. When the North Vietnamese launched the massive “Easter Offensive” invasion in spring 1972, the South Vietnamese wavered, but eventually rallied with U.S. support and prevailed over the North Vietnamese. Nixon proclaimed that the South Vietnamese victory validated his strategy.

1971 – In Washington D.C., heretofore peaceful anti-war protests of the past five days, change character as militant leaders from Vietnam Veterans Against the War take over. Tactics change to aggressive ‘people’s lobbying,’ with the avowed purpose of ‘shutting down the government,’ primarily by clogging traffic. 5000 Washington police, backed by 12000 troops outmaneuver them.

April 26th ~ {continued...}

1972 – President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. Nixon emphasized that while U.S. ground troops were being withdrawn, sea and air support for the South Vietnamese would continue. In fact, the U.S. Navy doubled the number of its fighting ships off Vietnam.

1980 – Following an unsuccessful attempt by the United States to rescue U.S. Embassy hostages in Iran, the Tehran government announced that captives were being scattered to thwart any future effort.

1999 – President Milosevic met with Red Cross Pres. Cornelio Sommuraga and said the Red Cross may return to Kosovo and “go anywhere.” Sommuraga met briefly with the 3 captive Americans and said they were ok.

2001 – A US federal judge ruled that military exercises could resume on Vieques Island. Puerto Ricans mobilized for mass demonstrations.

2001 – A group led by Larry Silverstein, a NYC developer, and Westfield America Inc., signed a 99-year lease on the 11-million square-foot WTC complex from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

2003 – In Iraq attackers fired into an ammunition dump guarded by Americans on Baghdad’s southeastern outskirts, setting off thunderous explosions that killed at least six Iraqis and wounded four. As many as 40 were thought killed.

2003 – Russia launched a Soyuz rocket with a 2-man crew, American astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, to keep the space station operating while Shuttle flights are suspended.

2004 – In Baghdad, Iraq, an explosion leveled part of a building as American troops searched it for suspected production of “chemical munitions.” 2 soldiers were killed and 5 wounded in the blast. In a Fallujah suburb 1 Marine was killed along with 8 insurgents.

2010 – Former dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega is extradited from the United States to France.

April 27th ~

1677 – Colonel Jeffreys became the governor of Virginia.

1773 – The British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and thus granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the so-called Boston Tea Party with about 60 members of the radical Sons of Liberty.

On December 16th, 1773, the Patriots boarded the British ships disguised as Mohawk Indians and dumped the tea chests, valued at ₤18,000, into the water. Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in the following year. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

1777 – At the Battle of Ridgefield, a British invasion force engages and defeats Continental Army regulars and militia irregulars at Ridgefield, Connecticut. The Battle of Ridgefield was a battle and a series of skirmishes between American and British forces during the American Revolutionary War. The main battle was fought in the village and more skirmishing occurred the next day between Ridgefield and the coastline near modern Westport, Connecticut.

On April 25th, 1777 a British force under the command of the Royal Governor of the Province of New York, Major General William Tryon landed between Fairfield and Norwalk (in what is now Westport), and marched from there to Danbury. There they destroyed Continental Army supplies after chasing off a small garrison of troops. When word of the British troop movements spread, Connecticut militia leaders sprang into action. Major General David Wooster, Brigadier General Gold S. Silliman, and Brigadier General Benedict Arnold raised a combined force of roughly 700 Continental Army regular and irregular local militia forces to oppose the British, but could not reach Danbury in time to prevent the destruction of the supplies. Instead, they set out to harass the British on their return to the coast.

The company led by General Wooster twice attacked Tryon’s rear guard during their march south on April 27. In the second encounter, Wooster was mortally wounded; he died five days later. The main encounter then took place at Ridgefield, where several hundred militia under Arnold’s command confronted the British and were driven away in a running battle down the town’s main street, but not before inflicting casualties on the British. Additional militia forces arrived, and the next day they continued to harass the British as they returned to Compo Beach, where the fleet awaited them. Arnold regrouped the militia and some artillery to make a stand against the British near their landing site, but his position was flanked and his force scattered by artillery fire and a bayonet charge.

The expedition was a tactical success for the British forces, but their actions in pursuing the raid galvanized Patriot support in Connecticut. While the British again made raids on Connecticut’s coastal communities (including a second raiding expedition by Tryon in 1779 and a 1781 raid led by Arnold after his defection to the British side), they made no more raids that penetrated far into the countryside.

April 27th ~ {continued...}

1805 – After marching 500 miles from Egypt, U.S. agent William Eaton leads a small force of U.S. Marines and Berber mercenaries against the Tripolitan port city of Derna. The Marines and Berbers were on a mission to depose Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States.

The First Barbary War had begun four years earlier, when U.S. President Thomas Jefferson ordered U.S. Navy vessels to the Mediterranean Sea in protest of continuing raids against U.S. ships by pirates from the Barbary states–Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripolitania. American sailors were often abducted along with the captured booty and ransomed back to the United States at an exorbitant price. After two years of minor confrontations, sustained action began in June 1803, when a small U.S. expeditionary force attacked Tripoli harbor in present-day Libya.

In April 1805, a major American victory came during the Derna campaign, which was undertaken by U.S. land forces in North Africa. Supported by the heavy guns of the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, Marines and Arab mercenaries under William Eaton captured Derna and deposed Yusuf Karamanli. Lieutenant Presley O’ Bannon, commanding the Marines, performed so heroically in the battle that Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The phrase “to the shores of Tripoli,” from the official song of the U.S. Marine Corps, also has its origins in the Derna campaign.

1813 – After surviving two dangerous exploratory expeditions into uncharted areas of the West, Zebulon Pike dies during a battle in the War of 1812. By the time he became a general in 1812, Pike had already faced many perilous situations. He joined the army when he was 15, and eventually took various military posts on the American frontier.

In 1805, General James Wilkinson ordered Pike to lead 20 soldiers on a reconnaissance of the upper Mississippi River. Expecting to return before the rivers froze, Pike and his small band departed up the Mississippi in a 70-foot keelboat in early August. Slow progress, however, meant Pike and his men spent a hard winter near present-day Little Falls, Minnesota, before returning the following spring.

Less than three months later, Wilkinson ordered Pike to head west again. This time, Pike and his men explored the headwaters of the Arkansas River, a route that took them into Colorado. There, Pike saw the towering peak that now bears his name, and he made an ill-advised attempt to climb it. Grossly underestimating the height of the mountain and dressed only in thin cotton uniforms, Pike and his men struggled with deep snow and sub-zero temperatures before finally abandoning the ascent.

During this second expedition, Pike also became lost and wandered into Spanish-controlled territory. A Spanish patrol arrested him and took him into custody. Although Pike had indisputably lost his way, he had also hoped the Spanish would capture him so he could see more of their territory. This risky strategy paid off. Failing to recognize they were providing Pike with a golden opportunity to spy on the territory, the Spanish obligingly moved their prisoner first to Santa Fe and then to Chihuahua, before finally releasing him near the U.S. boundary at Louisiana.

Impressed with his daring and his reputation as an efficient officer, the military promoted Pike to brigadier general during the War of 1812. Having survived two perilous journeys into the Far West, Pike was killed on this day in 1813 while leading an attack on British troops in Toronto. He was 34 years old.

April 27th ~ {continued...}

1813 – American troops capture the capital of Upper Canada in the Battle of York (present day Toronto, Canada). The Battle of York was fought in York (present-day Toronto), the capital of the province of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), between United States forces and the British defenders of York during the War of 1812. U.S. forces under Zebulon Pike were able to defeat the defenders of York, comprising a British-led force under the command of Roger Hale Sheaffe, combined with a small group of Ojibway allies.

An American force supported by a naval flotilla landed on the lake shore to the west, defeated the defending British force and captured the fort, town and dockyard. The Americans themselves suffered heavy casualties, including Brigadier General Zebulon Pike who was leading the troops, when the retreating British blew up the fort’s magazine. The American forces subsequently carried out several acts of arson and looting in the town before withdrawing. Though the Americans won a clear victory, it did not have decisive strategic results as York was a less important objective in military terms than Kingston, where the British armed vessels on Lake Ontario were based.

1822 – Ulysses S. Grant, general and 18th U.S. president (1869-1877), was born in Point Pleasant [Hiram], Ohio.

1860 – Thomas J Jackson (the future “Stonewall”) was assigned to command Harpers Ferry.

1861 – President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

1861 – West Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union.

1861 – President Lincoln extended blockade of Confederacy to VA and NC ports.

1861 – US Secretary of the Navy Welles issued order for Union ships to seize Confederate privateers upon the high seas.

1862 – Fort Livingston, Bastian Bay, Louisiana, surrendered to the Navy Boat crew from U.S.S. Kittatinny who raised the United States flag over the fort.

1863 – Battle of Streight’s raid: Tuscumbia to Cedar Bluff, Alabama.

1863 – The Army of the Potomac began marching on Chancellorsville.

1864 – Attempting to reach Alexandria, Union gunboats under Rear Admiral Porter fought a running engagement with Confederate troops and artillery along the Red River. Wooden gunboats U.S.S. Fort Hindman, Acting Lieutenant John Pearce, U.S.S. Cricket, Acting Master Henry Gorringe, U.S.S. Juliet, Acting Master J. S. Watson, and two pump steamers were attacked by a large force while making final preparations to blow up U.S.S. Eastport. The Confederates charged Cricket in an attempt to carry her by boarding, but were driven back by a heavy volley of grape and canister from the gunboats.

Later in the day, near the mouth of the Cane River at Deloach’s Bluff, Louisiana, Southern troops, this time with artillery as well as muskets, again struck Porter’s ships, wreaking havoc. Cricket, the Admiral’s flagship, was hit repeatedly by the batteries, but finally succeeded in rounding a bend in the river downstream and out of range. Pump Steamer Champion No. 3 took a direct hit in her boiler, drifted out of control, and was captured. Juliet’s engine was disabled by Confederate shot, but Champion No. 5, though badly hit, succeeded in towing her upstream out of range.

Fort Hindman covered the withdrawal of the disabled vessels, and the night of April 26th was spent in making urgent repairs. Confederate Major General Richard Taylor, commanding forces along the river, described his plans as follows: ‘My dispositions for the day are to . . . keep up a constant fight with the gunboats, following them with sharpshooters and killing every man who exposes himself.” On 27 April the ships made a second attempt to pass the batteries. Fort Hindman took a shot which partially disabled her steering, and she drifted past the Confederate guns. Champion No. 5 was so damaged that she grounded, was abandoned, and burned.

Juliet succeeded in getting through, but was severely damaged. Ironclad U.S.S. Neosho, Acting Lieutenant Samuel Howard, attempting to assist the embattled gunboats, arrived after the riddled ships had passed the batteries, having endured what Porter later described as “the heaviest fire I ever witnessed.” By day’s end on the 27th, Porter had reassembled his squadron at Alexandria and began to plan means to pass the Red River rapids.

April 27th ~ {continued...}

1865 – The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing 1,700 passengers including many discharged Union soldiers. The Sultana was launched from Cincinnati in 1863. The boat was 260 feet long and had an authorized capacity of 376 passengers and crew. It was soon employed to carry troops and supplies along the lower Mississippi River.

The Sultana left New Orleans on April 21st with 100 passengers. It stopped at Vicksburg, Mississippi, for repair of a leaky boiler. R. G. Taylor, the boilermaker on the ship, advised Captain J. Cass Mason that two sheets on the boiler had to be replaced, but Mason order Taylor to simply patch the plates until the ship reached St. Louis. Mason was part owner of the riverboat, and he and the other owners were anxious to pick up discharged Union prisoners at Vicksburg. The federal government promised to pay $5 for each enlisted man and $10 for each officer delivered to the North. Such a contract could pay huge dividends, and Mason convinced local military authorities to pick up the entire contingent despite the presence of two other steamboats at Vicksburg.

When the Sultana left Vicksburg, it carried 2,100 troops and 200 civilians, more than six times its capacity. On the evening of April 26th, the ship stopped at Memphis before cruising across the river to pick up coal in Arkansas. As it steamed up the river above Memphis, a thunderous explosion tore through the boat. Metal and steam from the boilers killed hundreds, and hundreds more were thrown from the boat into the chilly waters of the river. The Mississippi was already at flood stage, and the “Sultana” had only one lifeboat and a few life preservers. Only 600 people survived the explosion. A board of inquiry later determined the cause to be insufficient water in the boiler–overcrowding was not listed as a cause. The Sultana accident is still the largest maritime disaster in U.S. history.

1877 – President Hayes removed Federal troops from LA. Reconstruction ended.

1897 – Grant’s Tomb was dedicated.

1940 – Himmler orders the construction of Auschwitz concentration camp.

1942 – The 1st convoys of Japanese detainees arrived at the Tanforan detention center south of San Francisco. The assembly center remained in operation for 169 days after which detainees were transferred to relocation camps. Most of the Tanforan detainees were transferred to Abraham, Utah.

1944 – During the night (April 27-28), 3 American LST landing craft, conducting an invasion exercise (Exercise “Tiger”), are torpedoed by German E-boats in Lyme Bay. A total of 638 troops are killed. This incident is kept secret for fear of damaging Anglo-American relations.

1944 – US troops occupy the main airstrip at Hollandia, New Guinea.

1945 – Forces of US 5th Army liberate Genoa, which is already substantially controlled by Italian partisan forces.

1945 – Italian partisans captured Mussolini.

1945 – US forces capture Baguio, on Luzon. Fighting continues in the Bicol Peninsula.

1945 – A squadron of 3 cruisers and 6 destroyers, commanded by Admiral Berkey, make a preparatory bombardment of targets in the Tarakan area in the northeast of the island of Borneo.

1946 – 1st radar installation aboard a commercial ship was installed.

April 27th ~ {continued...}

1951 – Munsan fell to communist forces as the CCF (Chinese Communist Forces) Spring Offensive continued.

1953 – Operation Moolah is initiated by U.S. General Mark W. Clark against Communist pilots in the Korean War. Operation Moolah was a United States Air Force (USAF) effort during the Korean War to obtain through defection a fully capable Soviet MiG-15 jet fighter.

Communist forces introduced the MiG-15 to Korea on November 1, 1950. USAF pilots reported that the performance of the MiG-15 was superior to all United Nations (U.N.) aircraft, including the USAF’s newest plane, the F-86 Sabre. The operation focused on influencing Communist pilots to defect to South Korea with a MiG for a financial reward.

The success of the operation is disputable since no Communist pilot defected before the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. However, on September 21, 1953, North Korean pilot Lieutenant No Kum-Sok flew his MiG-15 to the Kimpo Air Base, South Korea, unaware of Operation Moolah.

1955 – After a meeting with General J. Lawton Collins in Washington, Secretary Dulles reluctantly agrees to replace Diem and cables the embassy in Saigon to find an alternative. CIA Colonel Lansdale, who has already helped foil General Hinh’s coup against Diem by organizing an effective palace guard, rallies to Diem’s side. he presses the embassy to support Diem and takes ‘all measures possible under narrow limits permitted by US policy.’

1959 – US State Dept. announced small arms stored in Canal Zone will be provided to Panamanian forces to repel Cuban invaders.

1960 – The 1st atomic powered electric-drive submarine was launched at Tullibee.

1965 – President Johnson renews his offer of ‘unconditional discussions…with any governments concerned,’ and defends US bombing raids. “Our restraint was viewed as weakness. We could no longer stand by while attacks mounted.”

1966 – After a US Air Force B-57 became reported overdue, the US Coast Guard Eastern Area Commander commenced an intensive air search. The 2-day, large-scale, over water search for the missing aircraft, all of which was coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard, unfortunately, yielded negative results.

1968 – Vice-President Hubert Humphrey announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. In an interview he supports the current US policy of sending troops ‘where required by our own national security.’

1972 – Official Vietnam peace talks, suspended on 23 March, resume in Paris.

1972 – Apollo 16 returned to Earth.

1972 – North Vietnamese troops shatter defenses north of Quang Tri and move to within 2.5 miles of the city. Using Russian-built tanks, they took Dong Ha, 7 miles north of Quang Tri, the next day and continued to tighten their ring around Quang Tri, shelling it heavily. South Vietnamese troops suffered their highest casualties for any week in the war in the bitter fighting. This was the northern-most front of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, launched on March 30 when more than 120,000 North Vietnamese troops invaded South Vietnam.

1975 – Saigon was encircled by North Vietnamese troops.

1978 – Afghanistan President Sardar Mohammed Daoud is overthrown and murdered in a coup led by procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political upheaval in Afghanistan that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later.

1978 – Former United States President Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman is released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.

1981 – Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse.

1989 – In China more than 150,000 students and workers calling for democracy marched, cheered and sang as they took over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

April 27th ~ {continued...}

1989 – President George Bush dedicated the Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Center East, otherwise known as C3I, in south Florida. The facility, manned by Coast Guard and Customs personnel, was designed to give law enforcement agencies instant access to air and marine smuggling information.

1990 – The aperture door of the Hubble Space Telescope was opened by ground controllers as the space shuttle Discovery, which had carried the Hubble into orbit, prepared to return home.

1991 – A group of 250 Kurds became the first refugees to move into a new US-built camp in northern Iraq.

1997 – A Texas militia group, called Republic of Texas, took 2 hostages at the Davis Mountain Resort community in a standoff with 300 police officers. They advocated independence for the state. The hostages were released later the next day in exchange for a jailed comrade, but the standoff continued. Richard McLaren and Robert Otto were later captured, convicted and sentenced to 99 and 50 years in prison.

1998 – A Pentagon panel said remains of the Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery should be exhumed to determine whether they belonged to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, as his family believed. The remains were later positively identified as Blassie’s.

1998 – The UN extended security sanctions against Iraq but agreed to reviews every 60 days. It was earlier reported that Iraq recently had executed 1,500 political prisoners.

1999 – The US Pentagon announced a call for 33,102 reservists for active duty in Kosovo.

2001 – In Puerto Rico the US Navy resumed bombing exercises on Vieques Island where 14 protesters were arrested.

2002 – South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth arrived at the international space station for an eight-day, seven-night cruise that cost him $20 million.

2002 – The last successful telemetry received from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10. 33 minutes of clean data received from a distance of 80.22 AU.

2003 – Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin al-Yasin (6 of clubs), chief Iraqi liaison with UN weapons inspectors, surrendered to US forces.

2003 – The U.S. military arrested the self-anointed mayor of Baghdad, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, reflecting U.S. determination to brook no interlopers in its effort to build a consensus for administering Iraq.

2004 – U.S. troops fought gunbattles with militiamen overnight near the city of Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents.

2005 – In Vietnam, six people are arrested for trying to sell human remains as remains of MIA US soldiers.

2006 – Construction begins on the Freedom Tower in New York City breaking a deadlock between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and private developer Larry Silverstein. The 1,776-foot tower is the centerpiece of the rebuilding effort for the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

2007 – CIA arrested a senior al-Qaeda operative, Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, and transferred him to the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Hadi was a key paramilitary commander in Afghanistan during the late 1990s, before taking charge of cross-border attacks against US and coalition troops from 2002 to 2004. He was accused of commanding attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, and of involvement in plots to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

2009 – A low-flying Boeing VC-25, Air Force One, causes momentary panic in New York City, New York, United States. It was intended as a photo opportunity, a showcase of Air Force One alongside the sweep of New York City skyline. Director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, ultimately takes responsibility for approving the mission and failing to notify authorities in New York City. Caldera resigned as a result, on 22nd May 2009.

April 28th ~

1635 – Virginia Governor John Harvey was accused of treason and removed from office.

1758 – James Monroe (d.1831), later secretary of state and the fifth president of the United States (1817-1825), was born in Westmoreland County, Va. He created the Monroe Doctrine, warning Europe not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere.

1760 – French forces besieging Quebec defeated the British in the second battle on the Plains of Abraham.

1788 – Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the constitution.

1810 – Union General Daniel Ullmann is born in Wilmington, Delaware. Ullmann was best known as an advocate for black troops. Ullman was educated at Yale University and practiced law in New York City. He was an active Whig before the party’s collapse around 1850, and he ran for governor of New York on the American, or “Know-Nothing,” ticket in 1854. Ullmann became a colonel in command of the 78th New York regiment when the war began. He was sent to Virginia and served in the Shenandoah Valley, where he was given command of a brigade. He was captured at the Battle of Cedar Mountain and incarcerated at Richmond’s Libby Prison for a month before he was exchanged in October 1862.

Promoted to brigadier general in January 1863, Ullmann was sent to New Orleans to recruit black troops. His efforts were met by much resistance among his fellow officers. Ullmann often complained that his men were given work details and not seriously considered for military duty. He finally got his wish, and his brigade was sent to assist in the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, in May 1863. After Ullmann’s men bravely made several unsuccessful attacks on Port Hudson, one Union officer warned, “We must not discipline them, for if we do, we will have to fight them some day ourselves.” Ullmann spent most of the war at Port Hudson after the Confederates surrendered it in July 1863. After the war, he traveled extensively, and studied literature and science. He died in Nyack, New York, in 1892.

1815 – Andrew Jackson Smith (d.1897), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1818 – President Monroe proclaimed naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

1856 – Yokut Indians repelled an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California.

1862 – Forts Jackson and St. Philip, isolated since being passed by Flag Officer Farragut’s fleet and the fall of New Orleans, surrendered to the Navy; the terms of capitulation were signed on board U.S.S. Harriet Lane, Commander D. D. Porter’s flagship. C.S.S. Louisiana, Defiance, and McRae were destroyed to prevent their capture.

April 28th ~ {continued...}

1864 – Rear Admiral Porter, stranded above the rapids at Alexandria, advised Secretary Welles of the precarious position in which his gunboats found themselves due to the falling water level of the Red River and the withdrawal forced upon Major General Banks: “. . . I find myself blockaded by a fall of 3 feet of water, 3 feet 4 inches being the amount now on the falls; 7 feet being required to get over; no amount of lightening will accomplish the object. . . . In the meantime, the enemy are splitting up into parties of 2,000 and bringing in the artillery . . to blockade points below here. . . . Porter faced the distinct possibility of having to destroy his squadron to prevent its falling into Confederate hands. “. . you may judge of my feelings,” he wrote Welles,” at having to perform so painful a duty.”

Only by the most ingenious planning and the strenuous efforts of thousands of soldiers and sailors was such a disaster avoided. The Admiral summed up the results of “this fatal campaign” which “has upset everything” to date: “It has delayed 10,000 troops of General Sherman, on which he depended to open the State of Missis-sippi; it has drawn General Steele from Arkansas and already given the rebels a foothold in that country; it has forced me to withdraw many light-clad vessels from points on the Mississippi to protect this army.

1897 – The Chickasaw and Choctaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes, become the first to agree to abolish tribal government and communal ownership of land. The other tribes soon followed, finally throwing open all of Indian Territory to white settlement. Representatives of the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes had been negotiating the future of their people with the Dawes Commission since 1893. President Grover Cleveland created the Dawes Commission to realize the goals of the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act. Backers of the Dawes Severalty Act believed Indians would be better able to integrate into mainstream society if they abandoned tribal governments and ownership of land. Instead, every male Indian received a plot of land to own privately. Any tribal land that remained-which in most cases was a substantial amount-would be open to settlement by Anglo-Americans.

Most Native American tribes were forced to abide by the Dawes Severalty Act regardless of their wishes. However, a treaty from 1830 promised the Five Civilized Tribes living in Oklahoma Indian Territory their land for “as long as the grass grows and water runs,” and the Dawes Act did not apply to them. Instead, the Dawes Commission was formed to convince them to adopt its principles voluntarily. At the same time, Congress also threatened to make it harder for the Five Civilized Tribes to maintain their traditional ways of life. The Curtis Act, for example, invalidated the authority of all tribal courts.

Recognizing that they had little hope of maintaining their old ways, in 1897, the Choctaws and Chickasaws became the first to agree voluntarily to abandon tribal government and land ownership. By 1902, the other three tribes-the Cherokees, Seminoles, and Creeks-had followed suit. Despite the sincere humanitarian goals of the Dawes Act and Commission, the ultimate effect was to deprive Indians of most of their landholdings.

Fraud was rampant, and some Indians either did not know they needed to apply for their private acreage or refused to do so in protest. From 1887 to 1934, Indian landholdings declined from 138 million to 47 million acres. Since the Dawes Act was rescinded in 1934, however, tribal ownership and government have again become legal.

1898 – U.S. warships engage Spanish gunboats and shore batteries at Cienfuegos, Cuba.

April 28th ~ {continued...}

1918 – CGC Seneca saves 81 survivors from the torpedoed British naval sloop Cowslip while on convoy route to Gibraltar. Cowslip was attacked by three German U-boats.

1919 – The first jump with an Army Air Corps (rip-cord type) parachute was made by Les Irvin.

1932 – A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans. In 1927, scientists had isolated the yellow fever virus in West Africa. Following this, vaccines were developed in the 1930s. The vaccine 17D was developed by the South African microbiologist Max Theiler at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City. This vaccine was widely used by the U.S. Army during World War II.

1937 – Saddam Hussein, future president of Iraq, was born in the village of al-Oja near the desert town of Tikrit. His invasion of Kuwait prompted the Persian Gulf War. This became a state holiday under Hussein’s rule and was abolished in 2003.

1943 – The German 8th Panzer Regiment counterattacks the British forces that have occupied Djebel Bou Aoukaz. American forces make some gains in “Mousetrap Valley.”

1944 – Fast carrier task force (12 carriers) commence 2 day bombing of Truk.

1944 – American and Japanese forces, moving west from Wewak, engage near Aitape in New Guinea.

1944 – Nine German E-boats attacked US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 946.

1945 – “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options.

Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country. He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side.

Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.

1945 – The US 7th Army captures Augsburg in its advance south toward Austria. Other Allied units are crossing the Elbe River in the north and others are advancing on Munich in the south.

1945 – On Okinawa, fighting along the Shuri Line continues. American forces employ tanks, flame-throwers and artillery in an effort to destroy Japanese defensive positions.

1946 – Allies indicted Hideki Tojo, former premier and war minister of Japan, with 55 counts of war crimes. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East meted out justice to Japanese war criminals at locations throughout Asia.

1952 – The United States occupation of Japan ends as the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified September 8, 1951, comes into force.

April 28th ~ {continued...}

1952 – At his own request, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, was relieved of his post as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1942, General Eisenhower commanded American forces in Great Britain, in 1943, led the invasions of North Africa and Italy, and in 1944, was appointed supreme commander of the Allied invasion of Western Europe.

After the war, he briefly served as president of Columbia University, before returning to military service in 1951 as supreme commander of NATO–a permanent military alliance established in 1949 by the democracies of Western Europe and North America as a safeguard against the threat of Soviet aggression. However, pressure on Eisenhower to run for the U.S. presidency was great, and in April of 1952, he relinquished his NATO command to campaign on the Republican ticket.

In November 1952, “Ike” won a resounding victory in the presidential elections, and in 1956, he was reelected by a landslide.

1955 – The US Embassy is told to burn Dulles’ order of the preceding day. Diem has succeeded in fighting in Saigon, but most of the more than 2000 Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao fighters who withdrew into the Mekong Delta will remerge to continue opposition to Diem as Vietcong.

1956 – Last French combat troops left Vietnam.

1965 – In an effort to forestall what he claims will be a “communist dictatorship” in the Dominican Republic, President Lyndon B. Johnson sends more than 22,000 U.S. troops to restore order on the island nation. Johnson’s action provoked loud protests in Latin America and skepticism among many in the United States. Troubles in the Dominican Republic began in 1961, when long-time dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated. Trujillo had been a brutal leader, but his strong anticommunist stance helped him retain the support of the United States. His death led to the rise of a reformist government headed by Juan Bosch, who was elected president in 1962.

The Dominican military, however, despised Bosch and his liberal policies. Bosch was overthrown in 1963. Political chaos gripped the Dominican Republic as various groups, including the increasingly splintered military, struggled for power. By 1965, forces demanding the reinstatement of Bosch began attacks against the military-controlled government. In the United States government, fear spread that “another Cuba” was in the making in the Dominican Republic; in fact, many officials strongly suspected that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was behind the violence.

On April 28th, more than 22,000 U.S. troops, supported by forces provided by some of the member states of the Organization of American States (a United Nations-like institution for the Western Hemisphere, dominated by the United States) landed in the Dominican Republic. Over the next few weeks they brought an end to the fighting and helped install a conservative, non-military government. President Johnson declared that he had taken action to forestall the establishment of a “communist dictatorship” in the Dominican Republic. As evidence, he provided American reporters with lists of suspected communists in that nation. Even cursory reviews of the list revealed that the evidence was extremely flimsy–some of the people on the list were dead and others could not be considered communists by any stretch of the imagination.

Many Latin American governments and private individuals and organizations condemned the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic as a return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the early-20th century, when U.S. Marines invaded and occupied a number of Latin American nations on the slightest pretexts. In the United States, politicians and citizens who were already skeptical of Johnson’s policy in Vietnam heaped scorn on Johnson’s statements about the “communist danger” in the Dominican Republic. Such criticism would become more and more familiar to the Johnson administration as the U.S. became more deeply involved in the war in Vietnam.

1965 – CIA director John A. McCone sends a personal memo to President Johnson stating his view that unless the United States is willing to further intensify bombing, there is no use in committing more US ground troops.

April 28th ~ {continued...}

1967 – Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army and was stripped of his boxing title.

1967 – General Westmoreland addresses a joint session of Congress and receives a standing ovation, declaring, “Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination, and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggressor.”

1970 – President Richard Nixon gives his formal authorization to commit U.S. combat troops, in cooperation with South Vietnamese units, against communist troop sanctuaries in Cambodia. Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had continually argued for a downsizing of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, were excluded from the decision to use U.S. troops in Cambodia. Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabled Gen. Creighton Abrams, senior U.S. commander in Saigon, informing him of the decision that a “higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam.” Nixon believed that the operation was necessary as a pre-emptive strike to forestall North Vietnamese attacks from Cambodia into South Vietnam as the U.S. forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the fighting.

Nevertheless, three National Security Council staff members and key aides to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger resigned in protest over what amounted to an invasion of Cambodia. When Nixon publicly announced the Cambodian incursion on April 30, it set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations. A protest at Kent State University resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops. Another student rally at Jackson State College in Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.

1972 – The North Vietnamese offensive continues as Fire Base Bastogne, 20 miles west of Hue, falls to the communists. Fire Base Birmingham, 4 miles to the east, was also under heavy attack. As fighting intensified all across the northern province of South Vietnam, much of Hue’s civilian population tried to escape south to Da Nang. Farther south in the Central Highlands, 20,000 North Vietnamese troops converged on Kontum, encircling it and cutting it off. Only 65 miles north of Saigon, An Loc lay under siege and continued to take a pummeling from North Vietnamese artillery, rockets, and ground attacks. To the American command in Saigon, it appeared that South Vietnam was on the verge of total defeat by the North Vietnamese, but the South Vietnamese were able to hold out.

1975 – Operation Frequent Wind evacuation from Vietnam begins.

April 28th ~ {continued...}

1977 – In Stuttgart, West Germany, the lengthy trial of the leaders of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, ends with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe being found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder. Each defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment, Germany’s most severe punishment. The Red Army Faction was founded by ultra-left revolutionaries Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof in 1968. Advocating communist revolution in West Germany, the group employed terrorist tactics against government, military, and corporate leaders in an effort to topple capitalism in their homeland. Baader was imprisoned in 1970 but escaped, and Meinhof was captured in 1972.

In 1976, Baader was recaptured, and Meinhof hanged herself in her cell. During the trial of Baader and his associates, the few Red Army Faction members still at large continued their program of violence and assassination. In 1976, two Baader-Meinhof guerrillas took part in the Palestinian hijacking of an Air France jetliner that ended with the Israeli raid on the Entebbe airport in Uganda. Both Germans were killed. In April 1977, Baader and the others were sentence to life. Six months later, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner to Somalia and demanded the release of imprisoned Red Army Faction members.

On October 17, West German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, releasing the captives and killing the hijackers. The next day, Baader and three others were found shot in their jail cells, presumably suicides. Red Army Faction violence continued until 1992, when the group officially called off its terrorist campaign. It was later discovered that the East German secret police had provided training, supplies, and protection to the Red Army Faction during the 1970s.

1980 – President Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (1917-2002), who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran. The decision to proceed had been spearheaded by Zbigniew Brzeninski.

1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.

1987 – Contra rebels in Nicaragua killed Benjamin Ernest Linder, an American engineer working on a hydroelectric project for the Sandinista government.

1989 – President Bush announced the U.S. and Japan had concluded a deal on joint development of a new Japanese jet fighter, the FSX, despite concerns that U.S. technology secrets would be given away.

1993 – Coast Guard PACAREA LEDETs (Pacific Area Law Enforcement Detachments), operating from the USS Valley Forge and USS Cleveland, boarded the St. Vincent-flagged 225-foot freighter Sea Chariot about 300 miles southwest of Panama. The boarding team discovered bales of cocaine in some of the containers aboard and then seized the vessel. The vessel was escorted through the Panama Canal to Station Miami Beach where a search of the vessel’s containers turned up 11,233 pounds of cocaine.

1993 – The last A-6E Intruder departed from Marine Corps service. Marine All Weather Attack Squadron 332 transferred the last Marine A-6E to St. Augustine, Florida. They then prepared for the squadron’s transition to the F/A-18D and eventual movement from Cherry Point to Beaufort, South Carolina.

1993 – Secretary of Defense Les Aspin issues a directive allowing women to fly fighter aircraft in combat. It only takes the Air Guard three days to bring its first female fighter pilot on board when Major Jackie Parker transfers from the Regular Air Force to New York’s 138th Fighter Squadron on May 1st. Other women will follow her example so that by January 2005 there are ten female fighter pilots flying Air Guard combat aircraft.

April 28th ~ {continued...}

1994 – Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. His wife Rosario also pleaded guilty.

1998 – Despite direct appeals for relief from Iraq’s foreign minister and oil minister, the United Nations Security Council decides to continue economic sanctions on Iraq, imposed in 1990 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The Security Council also announces that it will once again begin reviewing the sanctions every 60 days. The Council suspended60-day reviews in October 1997 after Iraq expelled American members of U.N. weapons inspection teams.

1999 – The US House voted 249-180 that congressional approval would be required to send troops to Yugoslavia. A Democratic resolution supporting NATO air strikes tied 213-213.

1999 – The US announced that it would allow US firms to sell food and medicine to Iran, Sudan and Libya.

2000 – In a sharp repudiation of President Clinton’s policies, the House rejected, on a tie vote of 213-to-213, a measure expressing support for NATO’s five-week-old air campaign against Yugoslavia; the House also voted 249-to-180 to limit the president’s authority to use ground forces in Yugoslavia.

2001 – A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off for the Int’l. Space Station with two cosmonauts and California businessman Dennis Tito (60), who paid some $20 million, for the experience. Tito was the founder of the Wilshire Associates investment firm.

2001 – A LEDET assigned to the USS Rodney M. Davis, with later assistance from the USCGC Active made the largest cocaine seizure in maritime history when they boarded and seized the Belizean F/V Svesda Maru 1,500 miles south of San Diego. The fishing vessel was carrying 26,931 pounds of cocaine.

2003 – US soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at a nighttime demonstration against the American presence there after people shot at them with automatic rifles. The director of the local hospital said 13 people were killed and 75 injured. Amer Mohammed Rashid (6 of spades), known to UN weapons inspectors as the “Missile Man” and ranked 47th on the US most-wanted list of 55 members of Saddam’s inner circle, surrendered.

2003 – The US moved an air operation center from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.

2003 – The United States pledged $4 million to help keep peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast in addition to the $5 million it has already given to ECOWAS.

2003 – On Saddam Hussein’s 66th birthday, some 300 prominent Iraqis met in Baghdad under US direction to convene a national conference to create an interim government.

2003 – The Soyuz space capsule carrying a U.S.-Russian space crew docked with the international space station.

2004 – CBS broadcast photos on “60 Minutes” showing US abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

2004 – In Iraq a series of explosions and gunfire rocked Fallujah in new fighting the day after a heavy battle in which U.S. warplanes and artillery pounded the city in a show of force against Sunni insurgents. Elsewhere 1 US and 2 Ukrainian soldiers were killed.

2004 – The six nations involved in resolving the North Korea nuclear arsenal dispute — the United States, China, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan —scheduled to begin working level talks May 12 in Beijing, China.

2004 – The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution requiring all 191 UN states to pass laws to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.

2006 – U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan becomes the highest-ranking officer to have charges brought against him in connection with the Abu Ghraib abuse.

2011 – U.S. president Barack Obama nominates General David Petraeus, current head of the war on Afghanistan, as his new CIA chief, and names outgoing CIA chief Leon Panetta as head of The Pentagon.

2014 – President Barack Obama calls for an investigation into the situation at the Phoenix VA hospital.

April 29th ~

1781 – British and French ships clash in the Battle of Fort Royal off the coast of Martinique. The Battle of Fort Royal was a naval battle fought off Fort Royal, Martinique in the West Indies during the American War of Independence between fleets of the British Royal Navy and the French Navy. After an engagement lasting four hours, the British squadron under Sir Samuel Hood broke off and retreated. De Grasse offered a desultory chase before seeing the French convoys safely to port.

1814 – USS Peacock captures HMS Epervier.

1856 – During the Tule River War Yokut Indians repelled a second attack by the ‘Petticoat Rangers,’ a band of civilian Indian fighters-some wearing body armor-at Four Creeks, California. The Yokuts lived along the shores of Tulare Lake in the Central Valley, which disappeared by 1900 due to water diversion and farming.

1861 – The Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.

1861 – U.S.S. United States ordered commissioned as the first ship in the Virginia navy by Major General Robert E. Lee, Commander in Chief Military Forces of Virginia.

1862 – 100,000 federal troops prepared to march into Corinth, Miss.

1862 – Expedition under Lieutenant Alexander C. Rhind in U.S.S. E. B. Hale landed and destroyed Confederate battery at Grimball’s, Dawho River, South Carolina, and exchanged fire with field pieces near Slann’s Bluff.

1862 – Union troops officially take possession of New Orleans, completing the occupation that had begun four days earlier. The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico.

In early 1862, the Confederates concentrated their forces in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee to stave off the Yankee invasion. Many of these troops fought at Shiloh on April 6 and 7. Eight Rebel gunboats were dispatched up the great river to stop a Union flotilla above Memphis, leaving only 3,000 militia, two uncompleted ironclads, and a few steamboats to defend New Orleans. The most imposing obstacles for the Union were two forts, Jackson and St. Phillip. In the middle of the night of April 24, Admiral David Farragut led a fleet of 24 gunboats, 19 mortar boats, and 15,000 soldiers large fleet of ships in a daring run past the forts.

Now, the River was open to New Orleans except for the rag-tag Confederate fleet. The mighty Union armada plowed right through, sinking eight ships. At New Orleans, Confederate General Mansfield Lovell surveyed his tiny force and realized that resistance was futile. If he resisted, Lovell told Mayor John Monroe, Farragut would bombard the city and inflict severe damage and casualties. Lovell pulled his troops out of New Orleans and the Yankees began arriving on April 25. The troops could not land until Forts Jackson and St. Phillip were secured.

They surrendered on April 29th, and now New Orleans had no protection. Crowds cursed the Yankees as all Confederate flags in the city were lowered and stars and stripes were raised in their place. The Confederacy lost a major city, and the lower Mississippi soon became a Union highway for 400 miles to Vicksburg, Mississippi.