April 29th ~ {continued...}

1863 – May Union Army and Navy expedition feigned an attack on Confederate batteries at Haynes’ Bluff on the Yazoo River. The force consisted of U.S.S. Tyler, Choctaw, DeKalb, Signal, Romeo, Linden, Petrel, Black Hawk, and 3 mortar boats under Lieutenant Commander Breese and 10 large transports carrying troops under command of Major General W. T. Sherman. The feint was made to prevent Confederates from reinforcing Grand Gulf. On the 29th the expedition proceeded as far as Chickasaw Bayou.

As the force departed on the morning of the 30th, Petrel, remained at Old River on station; the remaining vessels moved up the Yazoo with Choctaw and DeKalb opening fire on the main works at Drumgould’s Bluff and Tyler and Black Hawk opening on the fieldworks and batteries. Though instructed not to conduct an actual assault, the feint was so vigorously prosecuted that Choctaw, Lieutenant Commander Ramsay, was struck 53 times by Confederate guns. The soldiers were landed and “marched up toward Haynes’ Bluff on the only roadway, the levee, making quite a display, and threatening one also.” Naval gunfire supported the soldiers throughout the demonstration, which lasted through 1 May.

The evening of the 1st, the expedition returned to the mouth of the Yazoo. Porter reported to Secretary Welles: ”The plan succeeded admirably, though the vessels were more exposed than the occasion called for; still as they met with no casualties, with the exception of the hulls, it mattered but little.”

1864 – Major General Taylor, CSA, seeking to take full advantage of the vulnerable position of Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboats above the Alexandria rapids sought “to convert one of the captured transports into a fire ship to burn the fleet now crowded above the upper falls.” This date, however, Union Army and Navy commanders accepted a daring plan proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey to raise the water level of the Red River and enable the vessels to pass the treacherous rapids. Bailey’s proposal was to construct a large dam of logs and debris across the river to back up water level to a minimum depth of seven feet. The dams would be broken and the ships would ride the crest of the rushing waters to safety.

Work on the dam commenced early the next day. Porter later wrote: “This proposition looked like madness, and the best engineers ridiculed it, but Colonel Bailey was so sanguine of success that I requested General Banks to have it done . . . two or three regiments of Maine men were set to work felling trees. . . . every man seemed to be working with a vigor seldom seen equalled. . . . These falls are about a mile in length, filled with rugged rocks, over which at the present stage of water it seemed to be impossible to make a channel.”

1864 – An expedition up the Rappahannock River including boats from U.S.S. Yankee, Acting Lieutenant Edward Hooker, and U.S.S. Fuchsia, assisted by U.S.S. Freeborn and Tulip, engaged Confederate cavalry and destroyed a camp under construction at Carter’s Creek, Virginia.

1865 – Acting Master W. C. Coulson, commanding U.S.S. Moose on the Cumberland River, led a surprise attack on a Confederate raiding party, numbering about 200 troops from Brigadier General Abraham Buford’s command. The raiders under the command of a Major Hopkins, were crossing the Cumberland River to sack and burn Eddyville, Kentucky. Coulson sank two troop laden boats with battery gunfire and then put a landing party ashore which engaged the remaining Con-federates. The landing force dispersed the detachment after killing or wounding 20 men, taking 6 captives, and capturing 22 horses.

April 29th ~ {continued...}

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

1918 – America’s WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scored his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall. He eventually racked up 26 victories before the end of the war.

1942 – Despite a desperate defense, the Japanese take Lashio, terminus of the Burma Road. All supplies to China must now go by air as China has been cut off by land. General Alexander decides to remove his troops to new position in the Chinwin and Irrawaddy Valley.

1942 – On Mindanao, Filipino resistance continues but they are pushed back from their positions when the invading Japanese receive reinforcements and greater air support. The Japanese continue to bomb the remaining American troops who have retreated to Corregidor.

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

1945 – U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division. Established five weeks after Adolf Hitler took power as German chancellor in 1933, Dachau was situated on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich. During its first year, the camp held about 5,000 political prisoners, consisting primarily of German communists, Social Democrats, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. During the next few years, the number of prisoners grew dramatically, and other groups were interned at Dachau, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, and repeat criminals.

Beginning in 1938, Jews began to comprise a major portion of camp internees. Prisoners at Dachau were used as forced laborers, initially in the construction and expansion of the camp and later for German armaments production. The camp served as the training center for SS concentration camp guards and was a model for other Nazi concentration camps. Dachau was also the first Nazi camp to use prisoners as human guinea pigs in medical experiments.

At Dachau, Nazi scientists tested the effects of freezing and changes to atmospheric pressure on inmates, infected them with malaria and tuberculosis and treated them with experimental drugs, and forced them to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding. Hundreds of prisoners died or were crippled as a result of these experiments. Thousands of inmates died or were executed at Dachau, and thousands more were transferred to a Nazi extermination center near Linz, Austria, when they became too sick or weak to work.

In 1944, to increase war production, the main camp was supplemented by dozens of satellite camps established near armaments factories in southern Germany and Austria. These camps were administered by the main camp and collectively called Dachau. With the advance of Allied forces against Germany in April 1945, the Germans transferred prisoners from concentration camps near the front to Dachau, leading to a general deterioration of conditions and typhus epidemics. On April 27th, 1945, approximately 7,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to begin a death march from Dachau to Tegernsee, far to the south. The next day, many of the SS guards abandoned the camp.

On April 29th, the Dachau main camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry after a brief battle with the camp’s remaining guards. As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated. Some of the American troops who liberated Dachau were so appalled by conditions at the camp that they machine-gunned at least two groups of captured German guards. It is officially reported that 30 SS guards were killed in this fashion, but conspiracy theorists have alleged that more than 10 times that number were executed by the American liberators.

The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp. In the course of Dachau’s history, at least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp, and 90,000 through the subcamps. Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates perished at Dachau and its subcamps, but countless more were shipped to extermination camps elsewhere.

April 29th ~ {continued...}

1945 – The unofficial surrender of German forces in Italy is signed at Caserta. The German representatives are present here because of a secret negotiation between the head of the OSS mission in Switzerland, Allan Dulles, and SS General Wolff. These talks have been going on since much earlier in the year, but because of their clandestine nature, the German representatives at Caserta cannot guarantee that the surrender will be ratified by Vietinghoff, commanding German forces in Italy.

1945 – Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the following day. Eva Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple was married only hours before they both committed suicide.

1945 – The US 185th Regiment (General Brush) lands near Padan Point with naval support by a destroyer force commanded by Admiral Struble. There is little Japanese resistance.

1945 – The last convoy battle of the Second World War begins as 14 German U-boats attack convoy RA-66 which consists of 24 ships with an escort including 2 escort carriers, 1 cruiser, 9 destroyers and 13 other ships.

1946 – Also on this day in 1946, Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, is indicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found guilty of war crimes.

1948 – Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force authorized a medal pendant to be established for the Commendation Ribbon. The design was approved by both Secretaries on 8 July 1948 and on 20 March 1950, the Secretary of the Navy approved the Navy Commendation Ribbon, and authorized use of the same pendant with a different ribbon on 6 April 1950.

DA General Order No. 10 renamed the Commendation Ribbon with Medal Pendant to the Army Commendation Medal. President Kennedy, in a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense authorized the award of the Army Commendation Medal to members of the Armed Forces of friendly foreign nations who, after 1 June 1962, distinguished themselves by an act of heroic, extraordinary achievement, or meritorious service.

1950 – In response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s charge that former State Department consultant and university professor Owen Lattimore was a top Soviet spy in the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state deny that Lattimore had any influence on U.S. foreign policy. The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the “red scare” in the United States.

1953 – Marine Corps Colonel Katherine A. Towle, Director of Women Marines, became the first woman line officer to retire from U.S. military service upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 55.

1954 – At a press conference, President Eisenhower denies US plans for massive air strikes or other intervention in Vietnam. “You certainly cannot hope…for a completely satisfactory answer with the Communists. The most you can work out is a practical way of getting along.”

1957 – The 1st military nuclear power plant was dedicated at Fort Belvoir, Va.

April 29th ~ {continued...}

1966 – An article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda assets that the television program Batman is brainwashing American children into becoming ‘murderers’ in Vietnam.

1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.

1970 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launch a limited “incursion” into Cambodia. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. The operation began with South Vietnamese forces attacking into the “Parrot’s Beak” area of Cambodia that projects into South Vietnam above the Mekong Delta. During the first two days, an 8,000-man South Vietnamese task force, including two infantry divisions, four ranger battalions, and four armored cavalry squadrons, killed 84 communist soldiers while suffering 16 dead and 157 wounded.

The second stage of the campaign began on May 2 with a series of joint U.S.-South Vietnamese operations. These operations were aimed at clearing communist sanctuaries located in the densely vegetated “Fishhook” area of Cambodia (across the border from South Vietnam, immediately north of Tay Ninh Province and west of Binh Long Province, 70 miles from Saigon). The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with the South Vietnamese 3rd Airborne Brigade, killed 3,190 communists in the action and captured massive amounts of war booty, including 2,000 individual and crew-served weapons, 300 trucks, and 40 tons of foodstuffs.

By the time all U.S. ground forces had departed Cambodia on June 30, the Allied forces had discovered and captured or destroyed 10 times more enemy supplies and equipment than they had captured inside South Vietnam during the entire previous year. Many intelligence analysts at the time believed that the Cambodian incursion dealt a stunning blow to the communists, driving main force units away from the border and damaging their morale, and in the process buying as much as a year for South Vietnam’s survival. However, the incursion gave the antiwar movement in the United States a new rallying point.

News of the incursion set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops and another at Jackson State in Mississippi that resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion also angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.

1974 – President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of some secretly made White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

1975 – Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation on record, begins removing the last Americans from Saigon. The North Vietnamese had launched their final offensive in March 1975 and the South Vietnamese forces had fallen back before their rapid advance, losing Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Xuan Loc in quick succession. With the North Vietnamese attacking the outskirts of Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the commencement of Frequent Wind.

In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore. Cpl. Charles McMahon, Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge, USMC, were the last U.S. military personnel killed in action in Vietnam, when shrapnel from a North Vietnamese rocket struck them as they were guarding Tan Son Nhut Airbase during the evacuation. At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the rook of the embassy and headed out to sea.

Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled). The Vietnam War was over.

April 29th ~ {continued...}

1990 – The space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a mission which included deploying the Hubble Space Telescope.

1990 – Wrecking cranes began tearing down Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate.

1991 – US troops continued airlifting Iraqi refugees from a camp in southern Iraq to Saudi Arabia.

1992 – Deadly rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. White truck driver Reginald Denny was beaten by a mob in south Central LA angered by the acquittal of 4 police officers caught on video tape in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Three days of violence ensued with 55 people killed, 2,300 injured and an estimated $1 billion [$717 million] in property damages.

Rioters tore through the city following the not guilty verdicts on state charges for Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Stacey C. Koon and officer Laurence M. Powell for beating Rodney King. 1093 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Of these, 764 retail stores were owned by Koreans. The US Congress later authorized $1 billion to revitalize south central Los Angeles.

1992 – The CGC Storis’ 3-inch/.50 caliber main battery was removed from the cutter. It was the last 3-inch/.50 caliber gun in service aboard any U.S. warship. The 3-inch/.50 was a dual-purpose weapon (surface and anti-aircraft) that had been in U.S. service since the 1930s. It was shipped to Curtis Bay where is was made inoperable and was then donated as a lawn ornament to a VFW club.

1997 – Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.

1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.

1998 – The US and European powers decided to impose new sanctions and agreed to freeze the assets of Yugoslavia.

1999 – The US decided to sell an early-warning radar system to Taiwan.

1999 – US planes bombed sites in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq after being attacked by missiles and anti-aircraft fire. Iraq said 20 civilians were injured in Mosul and 4 in separate attacks in the south.

1999 – NATO jets struck Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade and the federal interior ministry. A telecommunications tower was hit and knocked Serbian TV off the air.

1999 – In Bulgaria an errant NATO HARM missile hit a home in Gorna Banya on the outskirts of Sofia. There were no casualties.

2000 – Iraq’s oil ministry states that it expects to export more than $8.5 billion of oil in the current six-month phase of the United Nations “oil-for-food” program.

2001 – NASA scientists reported that they had contacted the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, launched in 1972, after 8 months of no communication.

2001 – China offered to allow US officials to inspect the US Navy spy plane on Hainan Island.

2002 – US forces in Afghanistan engaged al Qaeda fighters near the Pakistan border and killed 4.

2002 – The 1st 20 of some 2000 US soldiers landed in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

2002 – Britain decided to treat al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as prisoners of war and turn them over to the interim Afghan government.

2003 – The US said it would withdraw all combat forces from Saudi Arabia.

2003 – Pakistani police arrested six men linked to al-Qaeda, including a Yemeni man, Tawfiq Attash Khallad (Waleed bin Attash), wanted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole.

2004 – A national monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public in Washington DC. Official dedication was set for May 29th.

2004 – U.S. Marines announced an agreement to end a bloody, nearly month long siege of Fallujah, saying American forces will pull back and allow an all-Iraqi force commanded by one of Saddam Hussein’s generals to take over security.

2006 – United States-Iran relations continue to deteriorate after US officials called Iran one of the world’s most active sponsors of terrorism, as IAEA reveals that Tehran has successfully enriched uranium and is racing ahead with its nuclear program. Iran says it does not “give a damn” about the verdict from the IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei and what it might lead to.

2008 – Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) started their operations with an attack on the Taliban-held town of Garmsir. The operation was in conjunction with British troops of the 16 Air Assault Brigade.[5] They met almost no resistance, because the Taliban had already observed in the previous days the movements of the Marines before the operation and expected an assault so withdrew to take up positions a few kilometers outside the town.[6] For the next few days there was no contact between the US Marines and the Taliban.

2010 – The United States Coast Guard begins a controlled burn to remove oil spilled in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

April 30th ~

1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

1494 – Christopher Columbus arrived in Guantanamo Bay on his 2nd voyage to the Americas.

1629 – John Endecott became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1789 – In New York City, George Washington, the great military leader of the American Revolution, is inaugurated as the first president of the United States. In February 1789, all 69 presidential electors unanimously chose Washington to be the first U.S. president.

In March, the new U.S. constitution officially took effect, and in April Congress formally sent word to Washington that he had won the presidency. He borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New York. On April 30th, he came across the Hudson River in a specially built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowd cheered after he took the oath of office. The president then retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

The evening celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons. As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, “I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, made good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny.

In 1792, he was unanimously re-elected but four years later refused a third term. In 1797, he finally began a long-awaited retirement at his estate in Virginia. He died two years later. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

1798 – Congress established the Department of the Navy on this date in 1798, however, the United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress established on 13 October 1775 by authorizing the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in America. In 1972 Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt authorized recognition of the 13 October 1775 date as the Navy’s “official” birthday.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1803 – During the early moments of the nineteenth century, the United States government wheeled and dealt its way into what is generally regarded as the “greatest land bargain” in the nation’s history, the Louisiana Purchase.

The deal, which was dated April 30th, 1803, though it was in fact signed on May 2nd, had been in the works since the spring of 1802. It was then that President Thomas Jefferson had learned of Spain’s decision to quietly transfer Spanish Louisiana to the French; fearful of the strategic and commercial implications of the Spanish swap, Jefferson ordered Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister in Paris, to broker a deal with the French either for a slice of land on the lower Mississippi or a “guarantee” of unmolested transport for U.S. ships. Negotiations dragged on for months, but took a crucial turn when Spanish and U.S. trade relations collapsed in the fall of 1802. With Spain now barring American merchant ships from transferring goods at the port in New Orleans, Jefferson set his sights on purchasing a far larger chunk of land.

In early 1803, James Monroe headed to Paris to broker Jefferson’s deal. With France teetering on the brink of war with Great Britain, and mindful not only of the fiscal repercussions of such a conflict, but of the possibility of a renewed U.S.-English alliance, Napoleon’s negotiators acceded to a deal to sell the whole of Louisiana. All told, the Louisiana Purchase cost the U.S. $15 million: $11.25 million was earmarked for the land deal, while the remaining $3.75 million covered France’s outstanding debts to America. Thus, for the prime price of 3 cents an acre, the United States bought 828,000-square miles of land, which effectively doubled the size of the young nation.

1812 – The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana. Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its capital is Baton Rouge. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties.

Much of the state’s lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp. The two “Deltas” are located in Monroe, the parish seat of Ouachita Parish, Shreveport, the parish seat of Caddo Parish, and Alexandria, the parish seat of Rapides Parish, for the small Delta, and Monroe, Lake Charles, and New Orleans for the large Delta. They are referred to as Deltas because they form a perfect triangle shape when the points are lined up. These contain a rich southern biota; typical examples include birds such as ibis and egrets. There are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape, and has produced extensive areas of longleaf pine forest and wet savannas. These support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of orchids and carnivorous plants.

Some Louisiana urban environments have a multicultural, multilingual heritage, being so strongly influenced by a mixture of 18th-century French, Spanish, Native American, and African cultures that they are considered to be exceptional in the US. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the current Louisiana State had been both a French colony and a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African slaves as laborers in the 18th century. Many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture.

In the post-Civil War environment, Anglo-Americans increased the pressure for Anglicization, and in 1915, English was made the only official language of the state. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other southern state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized, and four that have not yet received recognition.

1818 – Congress authorized use of “land and naval forces of the United States to compel any foreign ship to depart United States in all cases in which, by the laws of nations or the treaties of the United States, they ought not to remain within the United States.” This was the basis of neutrality enforcement.

1832 – All commissions of naval officers in Revenue Cutter Service revoked. Vacancies filled by promotion for first time.

1860 – Navajo Indians attacked Fort Defiance (Canby).

1861 – President Lincoln ordered Federal Troops to evacuate Indian Territory.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Major General Grant ferried his troops across the Mississippi River at Bruinsburg to commence the work of isolating Vicksburg from reinforcements.

1864 – Work began on the Dams along the Red River which would allow Union General Nathaniel Banks’ troops to sail over the rapids above Alexandria, Louisiana.

1864 – Union troops under General Frederick Steele fight off a Confederate army under General Edmund Kirby Smith as the Yankees retreat towards Little Rock, Arkansas. Jenkin’s Ferry came at the end of a major Union offensive in Arkansas. While a Federal force under General Nathaniel Banks moved up the Red River in Louisiana towards Shreveport, Steele led his troops from Little Rock into southwestern Arkansas. The combined effort promised to secure northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas for the Union before the armies moved west to invade Texas.

In April, however, the plans ran afoul when Banks was defeated at Mansfield, Louisiana, and Steele found himself dangerously low on supplies. Steele occupied Camden, Arkansas, on April 15. Over the next ten days, Steele lost more than 400 supply wagons and 2,500 troops at the Battles of Poison Springs and Mark’s Mills. Now, Steele was surrounded by hostile armies and running low on food. He headed back to Little Rock with Smith in hot pursuit. A heavy rain began to fall, lasting for nearly a day and bringing Steele’s retreat to a grinding halt.

At Jenkin’s Ferry on April 30th, Smith attacked Steele as the Yankees were trying to cross the flooded Saline River. General Samuel Rice directed the Union defense, and his men held off a series of Rebel attacks before Rice was mortally wounded. Fighting in knee-deep water, the Confederates could not penetrate the Union lines. Steele was able to remove his force across the Saline River. He destroyed the pontoon bridge and left Smith on the other side of the river before escaping to Little Rock. The Union suffered 700 men killed, wounded, and missing out of 4,000, while the Confederates lost about 1,000 out of 8,000.

Some of the Rebel dead included wounded troops who were killed by members of the 2nd Kansas Colored regiment, exacting a measure of revenge for dozens of comrades from the 1st Kansas Colored murdered on the battlefield at Poison Springs. When it was over, Smith and the Confederates controlled the field but they had failed to destroy Steele’s army.

1865 – General Sherman’s “Haines’s Bluff” at Snyder’s Mill, Virginia.

1865 – The eight suspects in the Lincoln assassination plot who had been imprisoned on monitors U.S.S. Montauk and Saugus were transferred to the Arsenal Penitentiary, located in the compound of what is today Fort McNair. This was also the site of their trial by a military tribunal which returned its verdict on 30 June 1865.

Three of the eight, along with Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, were hanged in the prison yard of the penitentiary on 7 July-Lewis Paine who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Secretary of State Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by Booth to murder Vice President Johnson; and David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city. Michael O’Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, boyhood friends of Booth and conspirators in the actor’s earlier plans to abduct President Lincoln and in his later plans to assassinate the government’s top officials, were sentenced to life in prison.

Another accomplice, Edward Spangler, stagehand at the Ford Theater was sentenced to six years in prison. The remaining two of the eight who had been incarcerated on the monitors-Ernest Hartman Richter, a cousin of Atzerodt, and Joao Celestino, a Portuguese sea captain were released without being brought to trial.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1871 – Apaches in Arizona surrendered to white and Mexican adventurers; 144 died. The Camp Grant massacre was an attack on Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches who surrendered to the United States Army at Camp Grant, Arizona, along the San Pedro River. The massacre led to a series of battles and campaigns fought between the Americans, the Apache, and their Yavapai allies, which continued into 1875, the most notable being General George Crook’s Tonto Basin Campaign of 1872 and 1873.

On the afternoon of April 28th, six Americans, 48 Mexicans, and 92 O’odham gathered along Rillito Creek and set off on a march to Aravaipa Canyon; one of the Americans was William S. Oury, the brother of Granville Henderson Oury. At dawn on Sunday, April 30, they surrounded the Apache camp. The O’odham were the main fighters, while the Americans and Mexicans picked off Apaches who tried to escape. Most of the Apache men were off hunting in the mountains. All but eight of the corpses were women and children. Twenty-nine children had been captured and were sold into slavery in Mexico by the Tohono O’odham and the Mexicans themselves. A total of 144 Aravaipas and Pinals had been killed and mutilated, nearly all of them scalped.

Lieutenant Whitman searched for the wounded, found only one woman, buried the bodies, and dispatched interpreters into the mountains to find the Apache men and assure them his soldiers had not participated in the “vile transaction”. The following evening, the surviving Aravaipas began trickling back to Camp Grant. Within a week of the slaughter, a local businessman, William Hopkins Tonge, wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs stating, “The Indians at the time of the massacre being so taken by surprise and considering themselves perfectly safe with scarcely any arms, those that could get away ran for the mountains.”

He was the first person to refer to what had taken place as a massacre. The military and the Eastern press called it a massacre, so President Grant informed Governor A.P.K. Safford that if the perpetrators were not brought to trial, he would place Arizona under martial law. In October 1871, a Tucson grand jury indicted 100 of the assailants with 108 counts of murder. The trial, two months later, focused solely on Apache depredations; it took the jury just 19 minutes to pronounce a verdict of not guilty.

Western Apache groups soon left their farms and gathering places near Tucson in fear of subsequent attacks. As pioneer families arrived and settled in the area, Apaches were never able to regain hold of much of their ancestral lands in the San Pedro River Valley. Many groups of Apaches joined up with the Yavapais in Tonto Basin, and from there, a guerilla war began which lasted until 1875.

1875 – The first Gold Life Saving Medal ever awarded was presented to Captain Lucien M. Clemens of the U.S. Life-Saving Service in Marblehead, Ohio, who was captain of one of the first life saving stations on the Great Lakes. Medals were also given to his brothers, Al and Hubbard. They rescued six crew and a female cook from the sinking schooner Consuelo in an open rowboat.

1889 – Washington’s inauguration became the first U.S. national holiday.

1894 – Coxey’s Army reaches Washington, D.C. to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893. Coxey’s Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time.

Officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, its nickname came from its leader and was more enduring. It was the first significant popular protest march on Washington and the expression “Enough food to feed Coxey’s Army” originates from this march.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1900 – Hawaii was organized as a U.S. territory. After William McKinley won the presidential election in 1896, Hawaii’s annexation to the U.S. was part of the agenda. McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaiʻi. He met with three annexationists from Hawaii: Lorrin Thurston, Francis March Hatch and William Ansel Kinney. After negotiations, in June 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaii. The treaty was never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Instead, despite the opposition of a majority of Native Hawaiians, the Newlands Resolution was used to annex the Republic to the United States and it became the Territory of Hawaii.

The Newlands Resolution was passed by the House June 15, 1898, by a vote of 209 to 91, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21. In 1900, Hawaii was granted self-governance and retained ʻIolani Palace as the territorial capitol building. Despite several attempts to become a state, Hawaii remained a territory for sixty years. Plantation owners and key capitalists, who maintained control through financial institutions, or “factors”, known as the “Big Five”, found territorial status convenient, enabling them to continue importing cheap foreign labor; such immigration was prohibited in various states.

1943 – As part of a deception plan for the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky), the British submarine Seraph releases a corpse into the sea off the Spanish port of Huelva hoping it will be picked up and the papers carried passed on to the Germans. The body purports to be that of a Major Martin of the Royal Marines and he is carrying letters from General Nye, Vice-Chief of the British General Staff, and Admiral Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, to Eisenhower, Alexander and Cunningham referring to Allied plans for an invasion of Greece. The Germans do receive the information and it contributes to their lack of appreciation of the true Allied strategy.

1943 – The Germans retake Djebel Bou Aoukaz, Tunisia. Farther north, the Americans gain a foothold on Hill 609.

1944 – The 8th and 9th US Army Air Forces and Royal Air Force Bomber Command began to fly sorties into France and the Low Countries in preparation for the Allied Expeditionary Force landing on June 6th.

1944 – US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) raids the Japanese base at Truk for a second day. Over the two days, the Japanese lose 93 aircraft out of a total 104 while the Americans lose 35 planes. Meanwhile, American Admiral Oldendorf leads a force of 9 cruisers and 8 destroyers to bombard targets in the Sawatan Islands, southeast of Truk.

1945 – US troops attacked at the Elbe.

1945 – Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on this day in 1945, as his “1,000-year” Reich collapses above him. Hitler had repaired to his bunker on January 16, after deciding to remain in Berlin for the last great siege of the war.

Fifty-five feet under the chancellery (Hitler’s headquarters as chancellor), the shelter contained 18 small rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. He left only rarely (once to decorate a squadron of Hitler Youth) and spent most of his time micromanaging what was left of German defenses and entertaining such guests as Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. At his side were Eva Braun, whom he married only two days before their double suicide, and his dog, an Alsatian named Blondi. Warned by officers that the Russians were only a day or so from overtaking the chancellery and urged to escape to Berchtesgarden, a small town in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler owned a home, the dictator instead chose suicide.

It is believed that both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules (which had been tested for their efficacy on his “beloved” dog and her pups). For good measure, he shot himself with his service pistol. The bodies of Hitler and Eva were cremated in the chancellery garden by the bunker survivors (as per Der Fuhrer’s orders) and reportedly later recovered in part by Russian troops. A German court finally officially declared Hitler dead, but not until 1956.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese counterattacks and infiltration attempts along the Shuri Line area are defeated. There is heavy fighting in the Maeda and Kochi Ridge positions. The US 1st Marine and 77th Divisions replace the US 27th and 96th Divisions in the line.

1945 – The preparatory bombardment of targets in the Tarakan area in the northeast of the island of Borneo continues. A small American landing force goes ashore on the island of Sadan.

1951 – U.N. Forces, having withdrawn to a new defense line, halted the Chinese offensive north of Seoul and the Han River.

1951 – Far East Air Forces accumulated 1,277 sorties, the largest number to date. Fifth Air Force accounted for a record breaking 960 of them.

1952 – The destroyers USS Maddox and Laffey participated in the most protracted gun duel of the Korean War as the engaged enemy shore batteries in Wonsan Harbor. Heavy coastal artillery fire was received, but neither of the two U.S. ships was damaged.

1964 – Secretary of State Rusk flies to Ottawa, Canada, to make secret arrangements with J. Blair Seaborn, Canada’s new representative on the International Control Commission. Seaborn has a scheduled visit to Hanoi in June and Rusk asks him to convey to the North Vietnamese Government and offer of US economic aid if it calls off its forces and support for the Vietcong.

1965 – The Joint Chiefs present a detailed plan for deploying 48,000 US and 5250 third-country troops in Vietnam. This is more than the numbers agreed to in the earlier Honoloulu conference.

1968 – The US embassy releases a report that during the Tet Offensive in Hue, the NVA and Vietcong executed more than 1000 civilians and buried them in mass graves. 19 such grave sites have recently been uncovered.

1968 – U.S. Marines attacked a division of North Vietnamese in the village of Dai Do.

1969 – US troops in Vietnam peaked at 543,000. Over 33,000 had already been killed.

1969 – Prince Sihanouk withdraws his assent to the resumption of diplomatic relations with the US over the US stand on the status of a group of offshore islands, including Dao Phu Duoc, claimed by both Cambodia and South Vietnam.

1970 – President Nixon makes a nationally televised speech to announce his decision to send US troops into Cambodia to destroy Communist sanctuaries and supply bases. The announced objective is the “Fishhook area,” 50 miles northwest to Saigon, which is believed to be a ‘key control center” for the enemy and its ‘headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam.’

Nixon denies an intent to occupy Cambodian territory. Nixon argues that ‘plaintive diplomatic protests’ no longer are sufficient since they would only destroy American credibility in the areas of the world ‘where only the power of the United States deters aggression.’ Nixon warns that ‘if, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.’

1972 – The North Vietnamese launched an invasion of the South.

1973 – President Nixon announced the resignations of his aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1975 – By dawn, communist forces move into Saigon, where they meet only sporadic resistance. The South Vietnamese forces had collapsed under the rapid advancement of the North Vietnamese. The most recent fighting had begun in December 1974, when the North Vietnamese had launched a major attack against the lightly defended province of Phuoc Long, located due north of Saigon along the Cambodian border, overrunning the provincial capital at Phuoc Binh on January 6, 1975.

Despite previous presidential promises to provide aid in such a scenario, the United States did nothing. By this time, Nixon had resigned from office and his successor, Gerald Ford, was unable to convince a hostile Congress to make good on Nixon’s earlier promises to rescue Saigon from communist takeover. This situation emboldened the North Vietnamese, who launched a new campaign in March 1975. The South Vietnamese forces fell back in total disarray, and once again, the United States did nothing.

The South Vietnamese abandoned Pleiku and Kontum in the Highlands with very little fighting. Then Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang fell to the communist onslaught. The North Vietnamese continued to attack south along the coast toward Saigon, defeating the South Vietnamese forces at each encounter. The South Vietnamese 18th Division had fought a valiant battle at Xuan Loc, just to the east of Saigon, destroying three North Vietnamese divisions in the process. However, it proved to be the last battle in the defense of the Republic of South Vietnam.

The South Vietnamese forces held out against the attackers until they ran out of tactical air support and weapons, finally abandoning Xuan Loc to the communists on April 21st. Having crushed the last major organized opposition before Saigon, the North Vietnamese got into position for the final assault. In Saigon, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned and transferred authority to Vice President Tran Van Huong before fleeing the city on April 25th. By April 27th, the North Vietnamese had completely encircled Saigon and began to maneuver for a complete takeover.

When they attacked at dawn on April 30th, they met little resistance. North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace and the war came to an end. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over after Tran Van Huong spent only one day in power. Tin explained to Minh, “You have nothing to fear. Between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy. The war for our country is over.”

1988 – General Manuel Noriega, waving a machete, vowed at a rally to keep fighting U.S. efforts to oust him as Panama’s military ruler.

1990 – Hostage Frank Reed was released by his captives in Lebanon, the second American freed in eight days.

1992 – As rioting in Los Angeles entered its second day, President Bush condemned the violence and said the Justice Department would intensify its investigation of police conduct in the beating of Rodney King.

1995 – President Clinton announced he would end U.S. trade and investment with Iran, denouncing the Tehran government as “inspiration and paymaster to terrorists.”

1998 – The US Senate approved the expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

1999 – The US State Dept. annual report on terrorism listed Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria as sponsoring terrorism groups.

April 30th ~ {continued...}

1999 – NATO undertook over 600 sorties and strikes in Montenegro and Kosovo reportedly killed 13 people.

1999 – In Belgrade, Serbia, a 5.5 earthquake struck. Later in the day Jesse Jackson met with the 3 captured Americans and planned to meet with Pres. Milosevic for their release. In an interview Pres. Milosevic pronounced that his countrymen were willing to died to defend their rights.

2001 – The Soyuz-32, carrying California businessman, multimillionaire Dennis Tito and 2 Russian astronauts, Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin, docked with the Int’l. Space Station. The Soyuz landed in the Kazak steppe on May 6th.

2002 – Striking new images from the upgraded Hubble Space Telescope were unveiled.

2002 – A US grand jury indicted Colombia’s rebel FARC army and 6 of its members on charges of murdering 3 Americans.

2002 – North Korea accepted a US invitation on talks to curb its missile program and military exports.

2003 – The U.S. Navy withdrew from its disputed Vieques bombing range in Puerto Rico, prompting celebrations by islanders.

2003 – Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalqam said his government accepted responsibility for the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

2004 – In Indonesia hundreds of protesters clashed with police as officers re-arrested Abu Bakar Bashir (66), a Muslim cleric accused of heading an al-Qaeda-linked terror network. Muslims and Christians with homemade bombs and military-issue weapons clashed in the eastern city of Ambon, leaving 15 wounded and scores of houses in flames.

2004 – Iraqi troops led by Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh (49), one of Saddam Hussein’s generals, replaced U.S. Marines and raised the Iraqi flag at the entrance to Fallujah under a plan to end the month long siege of the city. A suicide car bomb on the outskirts killed two Americans and wounded six. Saleh was replaced May 3 by Muhammad Latif, a former Iraqi intelligence officer.

2004 – U.S. troops and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a three-day truce in negotiations to end the standoff at Najaf.

2009 – The United Kingdom formally ended combat operations. Prime Minister Gordon Brown characterized the operation in Iraq as a “success story” because of UK troops’ efforts. Britain handed control of Basra to the United States Armed Forces.

2011 – Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, imprisoned by the United States on charges of disclosing government information to the general public, is found competent to stand trial by a “panel of experts.”

2013 – NASA extends its contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency, paying $424 million for the RKA to deliver and receive astronauts shuttled to the International Space Station thru 2016.

2014 – Top officials at the Phoenix VA falsely deny the existence of a secret appointment waiting list.

May 1st ~

1486 – Christopher Columbus convinced Queen Isabella to fund expedition to the West Indies.

1528 – The Spanish Narvaez expedition began an inland march to Florida with some 300 men and 40 horses.

1562 – The 1st French colonists in the US, a 5-vessel Huguenot expedition led by Jean Ribault, landed in Florida. He continued north and established a colony named Charlesfort at Parris Island, NC.

1778 – The Battle of Crooked Billet begins in Hatboro, Pennsylvania. The Battle of Crooked Billet was a battle in the Philadelphia campaign of the American Revolutionary War fought near the Crooked Billet Tavern (present-day Hatboro, Pennsylvania). In the skirmish action, British forces under the command of Major John Graves Simcoe launched a surprise attack against Brigadier General John Lacey and three regiments of Pennsylvania militia, who were literally caught sleeping. The British inflicted significant damage, and Lacey and his forces were forced to retreat into neighboring Bucks County.

The British troops arrived at Crooked Billet at daybreak. Simcoe had planned a “pincer”-type attack, with his troops attacking from the north and east, and Abercromby’s troops from the south and west. Lacey’s pickets, in place to warn against any type of threat, noticed the British troops, but failed to fire off a warning shot for fear of being killed or captured. Neilsen sent a runner back to the camp to raise the alarm, but he never arrived. Surprised and outnumbered, the militia were soon routed and forced to retreat into Warminster. As a result of this engagement, the American forces lost ten wagons full of much-needed supplies, and Lacey had almost 20% of his force killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Lieutenant Nielson, the officer in charge of the pickets, was court-martialed and cashiered from the militia for disobeying orders.

1785 – Kamehameha I, the king of Hawaiʻi, defeats Kalanikūpule and establishes the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The Battle of Nuʻuanu, fought on the southern part of the island of Oʻahu, was a key battle in the final days of King Kamehameha I’s wars to unify the Hawaiian Islands. It is known in the Hawaiian language as Kalelekaʻanae, which means “the leaping mullet”, and refers to a number of Oahu warriors driven off the cliff in the final phase of the battle.

The Battle of Nuʻuanu began when Kamehameha’s forces landed on the southeastern portion of Oʻahu near Waiʻalae and Waikiki. After spending several days gathering supplies and scouting Kalanikupule’s positions, Kamehameha’s army advanced westward, encountering Kalanikupule’s first line of defense near the Punchbowl Crater. Splitting his army into two, Kamehameha sent one half in a flanking maneuver around the crater and the other straight at Kalanikupule. Pressed from both sides, the Oʻahu forces retreated to Kalanikupule’s next line of defense near Laʻimi. While Kamehameha pursued, he secretly detached a portion of his army to clear the surrounding heights of the Nuʻuanu Valley of Kalanikupule’s cannons. Kamehameha also brought up his own cannons to shell Laʻimi.

During this part of the battle, both Kalanikupule and Kaiana were wounded, Kaiana fatally. With its leadership in chaos, the Oʻahu army slowly fell back north through the Nuʻuanu Valley to the cliffs at Nuʻuanu Pali. Caught between the Hawaiian Army and a 1000-foot drop, over 400 Oʻahu warriors either jumped or were pushed over the edge of the Pali (cliff). In 1898 construction workers working on the Pali road discovered 800 skulls which were believed to be the remains of the warriors that fell to their deaths from the cliff above.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1810 – During the early 1800s, the United States’ relations with both England and France were particularly chilly. American merchant ships had become ensnared in the Napoleonic Wars, prompting Congress and President Thomas Jefferson to take economic action against the British and French governments. However, their decision to seal off trade with Europe proved to be a bad misstep: the embargo caused most domestic merchants to suffer, while some French traders in fact prospered. Legislators moved to rectify the situation by passing the Non-Intercourse Act (1809), which renewed trade relations between America and Europe, save for Britain and France.

However, America soon reopened the waters to trade with its recalcitrant partners. First, in the spring of 1809, President James Madison lifted the embargo against England; then, on this day in 1810, Congress passed Macon’s Bill No. 2, which granted Madison the power to resume trade with England and France. The legislation, which also gave Madison the leeway to slam shut the door to trade with either nation, was hardly a hit at home or abroad: Federalist forces lambasted Macon’s Bill, while the French viewed it as a clear demonstration of America’s pro-British leanings. The hostilities hardly abated and, a few short years later, Madison sailed the nation into the War of 1812.

1844 – Samuel Morse sent the 1st telegraphic message.

1857 – William Walker, conqueror of Nicaragua, surrendered to US Navy.

1863 – Confederate congress passed a resolution to kill black Union soldiers.

1863 – Confederate “National Flag” replaced “Stars & Bars.”

1863 – Battle of Chancellorsville begins in Virginia. Earlier in the year, General Joseph Hooker led the Army of the Potomac into Virginia to confront Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Hooker had recently replaced Ambrose Burnside, who presided over the Army of the Potomac for one calamitous campaign the previous December: The Battle of Fredericksburg, in which the Yankees amassed over 14,000 casualties to the Rebels’ 5,000.

After spending the spring retooling and uplifting the sinking morale of his army, Hooker advanced toward the Confederate army, possessing perhaps the greatest advantage over Lee that any Union commander had during the war. His force numbered some 115,000 men, while Lee had just 60,000 present for service. Absent from the Confederate army were two divisions under General James Longstreet, which were performing detached service in southern Virginia. Hooker had a strategically sound plan. He intended to avoid the Confederate trenches that protected a long stretch of the Rappahannock River around Fredericksburg. Placing two-thirds of his forces in front of Fredericksburg to feign a frontal assault and keep the Confederates occupied, he marched the rest of his army up the river, crossed the Rappahannock, and began to move behind Lee’s army.

The well-executed plan placed the Army of Northern Virginia in grave danger. But Lee’s tactical brilliance and gambler’s intuition saved him. He split his force, leaving 10,000 troops under Jubal Early to hold the Federals at bay in Fredericksburg, and then marched the rest of his army west to meet the bulk of Hooker’s force. Conflict erupted on May 1 when the two armies met in an open area beyond the Wilderness, the tangled forest just west of the tiny burgh of Chancellorsville. Surprisingly, Hooker ordered his forces to fall back into defensive positions after only limited combat, effectively giving the initiative to Lee.

Despite the fact that his army far outnumbered Lee’s, and had the Confederates clamped between two substantial forces, Hooker went on the defensive. In the following days, Lee executed his most daring battle plan. He split his army again, sending Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson further west around the Union’s right flank. The crushing attack snapped the Union army and sent Hooker in retreat to Washington and, perhaps more than any other event during the war, cemented Lee’s invincibility in the eyes of both sides.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1863 – As requested by Secretary Mallory, the Confederate Congress enacted legislation “To create a Provisional Navy of the Confederate States.” The object of the act, as explained by Captain Semmes, was . . . without interfering with the rank of the officers in the Regular Navy, to cull out from the navy list, younger and more active men, and put them in the Provisional Navy, with increased rank.

The Regular Navy became, thus, a kind of retired list, and the Secretary of the Navy was enabled to accomplish his object of bringing forward younger officers for active service, without wounding the feelings of the older officers, by promoting their juniors over their heads, on the same list.” At this time the Confederate Congress also provided that: ”. . . all persons serving in the land forces of the Confederate States who shall desire to be transferred to the naval service, and whose transfer as seamen or ordinary seamen shall be applied for by the Secretary of the Navy, shall be transferred from the land to the naval service. . . . The Confederate Navy suffered from an acute shortage of seamen. Mallory complained that the law was not complied with, and that hundreds of men had applied for naval duty but were not transferred.

1864 – Wooden side-wheelers U.S.S. Morse, Lieutenant Commander Babcock, and U.S.S. General Putnam, Acting Master Hugh H. Savage, convoyed 2,500 Army troops up the York River to West Point, Virginia, where the soldiers were landed under the ships’ guns and occupied the town. Another side-wheel steamer, U.S.S. Shawsheen, Acting Master Henry A. Phelon, joined the naval forces later in the day and operated with General Putnam in the Pamunkey River “for covering our troops and resisting any attack which might be made by the enemy.”

Morse patrolled the Mattapony River where, Babcock reported, “my guns would sweep the whole plain before the entrenchments.” Army movements, as Rear Admiral Lee had observed of an earlier plan by Major General Benjamin F. Butler, required “a powerful cooperating naval force to cover his landing, protect his position, and keep open his communications.”

1865 – In Charleston, SC, some 10,000 people paraded to a mass grave site of Union soldiers at a former race track. This was likely the 1st large-scale US Memorial Day event.

1866 – The Memphis Race Riots begin. In three days time, 46 blacks and two whites were killed. Reports of the atrocities influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Memphis riots of 1866 were the violent events that ran until May 3 in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by political, social and racial tensions following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Reconstruction. After a shooting altercation between white policemen and black soldiers recently mustered out of the Union Army, mobs of white civilians and policemen rampaged through black neighborhoods and the houses of freedmen, attacking and killing men, women and children.

Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day. A subsequent report by a joint Congressional Committee detailed the carnage, with blacks suffering most of the injuries and deaths: 46 blacks and 2 whites were killed, 75 blacks injured, over 100 black persons robbed, 5 black women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools burned in the black community. Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000, also suffered mostly by blacks. Many blacks fled the city permanently; by 1870, their population had fallen by one quarter compared to 1865. Public attention following the riots and reports of the atrocities, together with the New Orleans riot in July, strengthened the case made by Radical Republicans in U.S. Congress.

The events influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant full citizenship to freedmen, as well as passage of the Reconstruction Act to establish military districts and oversight in certain states. Investigation of the riot suggested specific causes related to competition for housing, work and social space between Irish immigrants and their descendants, and the freedmen. The white gentry also sought to drive freed people out of Memphis and back onto plantations where their labor could be exploited. Through violent terrorism, the white community at large sought to force blacks to respect white supremacy as the time of fully legal slavery was nearing its end.

1867 – Reconstruction in the South began with black voter registration.

1875 – 238 members of “Whiskey Ring” were accused of anti-US activities.

1877 – President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1894 – Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, arrives in Washington, D.C. Coxey’s Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time.

Officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, its nickname came from its leader and was more enduring. It was the first significant popular protest march on Washington and the expression “Enough food to feed Coxey’s Army” originates from this march.

The purpose of the march was to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893 and to lobby for the government to create jobs which would involve building roads and other public works improvements, with workers paid in paper currency which would expand the currency in circulation, consistent with populist ideology. The march originated with 100 men in Massillon, Ohio, on March 25, 1894, passing through Pittsburgh, Becks Run and Homestead, Pennsylvania, in April.

1896 – Mark Clark, American general, was born. He commanded the Fifth Army in Italy during World War II.

1898 – At Manila Bay in the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the Spanish-American War. Nearly 400 Spanish sailors were killed and 10 Spanish warships wrecked or captured at the cost of only six Americans wounded. The Spanish-American War had its origins in the rebellion against Spanish rule that began in Cuba in 1895. The repressive measures that Spain took to suppress the guerrilla war, such as herding Cuba’s rural population into disease-ridden garrison towns, were graphically portrayed in U.S. newspapers and enflamed public opinion.

In January 1898, violence in Havana led U.S. authorities to order the battleship USS Maine to the city’s port to protect American citizens. On February 15th, a massive explosion of unknown origin sank the Maine in the Havana harbor, killing 260 of the 400 American crewmembers aboard. An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March, without much evidence, that the ship was blown up by a mine but did not directly place the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible, however, and called for a declaration of war. In April, the U.S. Congress prepared for war, adopting joint congressional resolutions demanding a Spanish withdrawal from Cuba and authorizing President William McKinley to use force.

On April 23rd, President McKinley asked for 125,000 volunteers to fight against Spain. The next day, Spain issued a declaration of war. The United States declared war on April 25. U.S. Commodore George Dewey, in command of the seven-warship U.S. Asiatic Squadron anchored north of Hong Kong, was ordered to “capture or destroy” the Spanish Pacific fleet, which was known to be in the coastal waters of the Spanish-controlled Philippines.

On April 30th, Dewey’s lookouts caught sight of Luzon, the main Philippine island. That night, under cover of darkness and with the lights aboard the U.S. warships extinguished, the squadron slipped by the defensive guns of Corregidor Island and into Manila Bay. After dawn rose, the Americans located the Spanish fleet: 10 out-of-date warships anchored off the Cavite naval station. The U.S. fleet, in comparison, was well armed and well staffed, largely due to the efforts of the energetic assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who had also selected Dewey for the command of the Asiatic Squadron.

At 5:41 a.m., at a range of 5,400 yards from the enemy, Commodore Dewey turned to the captain of his flagship, the Olympia, and said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” Two hours later, the Spanish fleet was decimated, and Dewey ordered a pause in the fighting. He met with his captains and ordered the crews a second breakfast. The four surviving Spanish vessels, trapped in the little harbor at Cavite, refused to surrender, and at 11:15 a.m. fighting resumed. At 12:30 p.m., a signal was sent from the gunboat USS Petrel to Dewey’s flagship: “The enemy has surrendered.”

Dewey’s decisive victory cleared the way for the U.S. occupation of Manila in August and the eventual transfer of the Philippines from Spanish to American control. In Cuba, Spanish forces likewise crumbled in the face of superior U.S. forces, and on August 12th an armistice was signed between Spain and the United States.

In December, the Treaty of Paris officially ended the brief Spanish-American War. The once-proud Spanish empire was virtually dissolved, and the United States gained its first overseas empire. Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded to the United States, the Philippines were bought for $20 million, and Cuba became a U.S. protectorate. Philippine insurgents who fought against Spanish rule during the war immediately turned their guns against the new occupiers, and 10 times more U.S. troops died suppressing the Philippines than in defeating Spain.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1898 – USRC McCulloch fought under Commodore George Dewey at the Battle of Manila Bay. Revenue Captain Daniel B. Hodgson recommended retired at full pay as reward of merit.

1915 – The luxury liner Lusitania left New York Harbor for a voyage to Europe. There were warnings by the German government in NYC newspapers that it regarded the refurbished liner a battle target. She was sunk by a German U-boat six days later.

1915 – A German submarine. U-30, torpedoed the U.S. ship Gulflight I. The American 5,189 ton tanker Gulflight, was built by the New York Shipbuilding Co. of Camden, New Jersey for the Gulf Refining Company (a predecessor of Gulf Oil). It was launched on 8 August 1914. The ship became famous when it was torpedoed early in World War I and became the center of a diplomatic incident which moved the United States closer to war with Germany.

The ship survived the attack but was eventually sunk in 1942 by torpedo attack in World War II. Of the 38 crew, there were three fatalities. The captain had suffered a heart attack and two crew members were reported lost when they jumped overboard after the torpedo hit. She was the first American ship to be torpedoed during World War I, although another ship, the Cushing, had been bombed shortly before, again by mistake because no American markings could be seen from what was then a somewhat novel air attack.

The German government apologized for attacking Gulflight, but refused to change its strategy of unrestricted submarine warfare. A report by the British admiralty into the attack concluded that the German commander had behaved properly according to “Cruiser rules” defined in international law. A merchant ship under escort by military vessels forfeited any right to be warned before being attacked, so the patrol ships had made Gulflight a legitimate target by taking her under escort.

As an American ship, the submarine would not have attacked had he seen her nationality, but apart from an ordinary flag Gulflight was not carrying any additional markings painted on the hull to make clear her nationality, which other ships were then doing. The report also suggested that the tanker being stopped and then slowed down by the accompanying patrol had made her an accessible target. The Admiralty report was not published at the time and official comment did not explain the circumstances.

1921 – The first radio fog signals in the United States were placed in commission on Ambrose Lightship, Fire Island Lightship, and Sea Girt Light Station, NJ.

1925 – Malcolm Scott Carpenter, astronaut (Mercury 7-Aurora 7), was born in Boulder, Colorado.

1927 – Adolf Hitler held the first Nazi meeting in Berlin.

1934 – The Philippine legislature accepted a U.S. proposal for independence.

1937 – President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.

1943 – LT Akers demonstrates blind landing system for Carrier aviation at College Park, MD in OJ-2 aircraft.

1943 – US forces complete the occupation of Hill 609 in “Mousetrap Valley.” The Axis defenses in Tunisia hold American attempts to advance further.

1943 – Food rationing began in US.

1944 – An American force of 7 battleships and 11 destroyers, commanded by Admiral Lee, bombards Ponape. The carriers of Task Group 58.1 (Admiral Clark) provide cover for the operation.

1944 – The Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, the 1st jet bomber, made its first flight.

1945 – Hamburg radio announces that Hitler is dead and that Donitz is the second Fuhrer of the Reich. A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”. The Soviet flag is raised over the Reich Chancellery, by order of Stalin. Donitz himself broadcasts, announcing that “it is my duty to save the German people from destruction by Bolshevists.” Meanwhile, in Berlin, Goebbels and his wife commit suicide after poisoning their six children.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1945 – US Vice Admiral Barbey lands Australian troops on Tarakan Island, Borneo, supported by naval gunfire.

1945 – The US 1st and 9th Armies are firmly established along the line of the Elbe and Mulde rivers. They have been forbidden to advance farther into the zone designated for Soviet occupation. To the south, the US 7th Army presses on into Austria.

1947 – Radar for commercial and private planes was 1st demonstrated.

1948 – The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed. The border between North and South Korea was sealed when Kim Il Sung established his communist regime.

1950 – Guam is organized as a United States commonwealth.

1951 – USS Princeton aircraft attack Hwachon Dam using aerial torpedoes, only use of this weapon in Korean War. They knocked out two floodgates.

1951 – The first phase of the Chinese offensive was halted north of Seoul.

1952 – Marines took part in an atomic explosion training in Nevada.

1960 – An American U-2 spy plane is shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month. The U-2 spy plane was the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, and it was a sophisticated technological marvel.

Traveling at altitudes of up to 70,000 feet, the aircraft was equipped with state-of-the-art photography equipment that could, the CIA boasted, take high-resolution pictures of headlines in Russian newspapers as it flew overhead. Flights over the Soviet Union began in mid-1956. The CIA assured President Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess anti-aircraft weapons sophisticated enough to shoot down the high-altitude planes.

On May 1st, 1960, a U-2 flight piloted by Francis Gary Powers disappeared while on a flight over Russia. The CIA reassured the president that, even if the plane had been shot down, it was equipped with self-destruct mechanisms that would render any wreckage unrecognizable and the pilot was instructed to kill himself in such a situation. Based on this information, the U.S. government issued a cover statement indicating that a weather plane had veered off course and supposedly crashed somewhere in the Soviet Union. With no small degree of pleasure, Khrushchev pulled off one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War by producing not only the mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2, but also the captured pilot-very much alive.

A chagrined Eisenhower had to publicly admit that it was indeed a U.S. spy plane. On May 16, a major summit between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France began in Paris. Issues to be discussed included the status of Berlin and nuclear arms control. As the meeting opened, Khrushchev launched into a tirade against the United States and Eisenhower and then stormed out of the summit. The meeting collapsed immediately and the summit was called off. Eisenhower considered the “stupid U-2 mess” one of the worst debacles of his presidency. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was released in 1962 in exchange for a captured Soviet spy.

1961 – The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation and abolishes elections.

1964 – The 1st BASIC program ran on a computer at Dartmouth.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1967 – Secretary of State Dean Rusk charges that the North Vietnamese have rejected 28 peace proposals presented by the US and other nations. Rusk asserts that the US acceptance of these proposals and their rejection by Hanoi ‘throw a light…upon the question of who is interested in peace and who is trying to absorb a neighbor by force.’

1968 – In the second day of battle, U.S. Marines, with the support of naval fire, continued their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.

1969 – The 9th US Marine Regiment begins a two and a half month operation called Virginia Ridge in northern Quangtri Province along the DMZ.

1970 – Protests erupt in Seattle, following the announcement by U.S. President Richard Nixon that U.S. Forces in Vietnam would pursue enemy troops into Cambodia, a neutral country.

1971 – Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) takes over operation of U.S. passenger rail service. Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed into law, the Rail Passenger Service Act. Proponents of the bill, led by the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP), sought government funding to assure the continuation of passenger trains. They conceived the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (NRPC), a hybrid public-private entity that would receive taxpayer funding and assume operation of intercity passenger trains.

The original working brand name for NRPC was Railpax, but shortly before the company started operating it was changed to Amtrak. Any railroad operating intercity passenger service could contract with the NRPC, thereby joining the national system. Participating railroads bought into the NRPC using a formula based on their recent intercity passenger losses. The purchase price could be satisfied either by cash or rolling stock; in exchange, the railroads received NRPC common stock. Any participating railroad was freed of the obligation to operate intercity passenger service after May 1st, 1971, except for those services chosen by the Department of Transportation (DOT) as part of a “basic system” of service and paid for by NRPC using its federal funds.

Railroads that chose not to join the NRPC system were required to continue operating their existing passenger service until 1975 and thenceforth had to pursue the customary ICC approval process for any discontinuance or alteration to the service. Nearly everyone involved expected the experiment to be short-lived. The Nixon administration and many Washington insiders viewed the NRPC as a politically expedient way for the President and Congress to give passenger trains a “last hurrah” as demanded by the public. They expected Amtrak to quietly disappear as public interest waned.

Proponents also hoped that government intervention would be brief, but their view was that Amtrak would soon support itself. Neither view has proved correct. Government subsidy has allowed Amtrak to continue in operation longer than critics imagined. Financial results have made a return to private operation infeasible.

1972 – North Vietnamese troops capture Quang Tri City, the first provincial capital taken during their ongoing offensive. The fall of the city effectively gave the communists control of the entire province of Quang Tri. As the North Vietnamese prepared to continue their attack to the south, 80 percent of Hue’s population–already swollen by 300,000 refugees–fled to Da Nang to get out of the way. Farther south along the coast, three districts of Binh Dinh Province also fell, leaving about one-third of the province under communist control. These attacks were part of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive (later called the “Easter Offensive”), a massive invasion by North Vietnamese forces designed to strike the blow that would win them the war.

1975 – The coalition government in Laos formed a year ago is close to collapse. The North Vietnam supported Pathet Lao continues to fight rightist factions. Demonstrations by students and others are increasingly aimed at US buildings and operations.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

1980 – As the Mariel Boatlift continued, 11 Navy ships begin operations assisting Coast Guard in rescuing Cuban refugees fleeing Cuba in overcrowded boats.

1981 – Senator Harrison A. Williams Junior (D- NJ) was convicted in New York of charges related to the FBI’s “ABSCAM” probe.

1985 – US president Reagan ended embargo against Nicaragua.

1991 – The government of Angola and US-backed guerrillas initialed agreements ending their civil war.

1992 – On the third day of the Los Angeles riots, beaten motorist Rodney King appeared in public to appeal for calm, asking, “Can we all get along?” President Bush delivered a nationally broadcast address in which he vowed to “use whatever force is necessary” to restore order.

1995 – A seminar of international chemical weapons experts convened by UNSCOM concludes that Iraq has not adequately disclosed its past chemical weapons programs.

1997 – In its regular 60-day review, the United Nations Security Council votes again to maintain sanctions on Iraq. This is the37th review since sanctions were first imposed in 1990. This vote, however, does not affect the humanitarian oil sales.

1999 – The Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule flown by Gus Grissom, which sank in 1961, was found 300 miles offshore from Cape Canaveral in waters 3 miles deep.

1999 – President Milosevic ordered the release of 3 captive Americans following the appeal of Rev. Jesse Jackson.

1999 – A NATO strike on a bridge in Kosovo, 12 miles north of Pristina, hit a civilian bus and killed between 34 and 60 people including 15 children.

2000 – The US government began allowing civilian GPS receivers to pick up more accurate satellite signals. The sport of geocaching began 2 days later.

2000 – A US State Dept. annual report on efforts to combat terrorism listed Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors for terrorism. The report indicated a shift from the Middle East to South Asia with Afghanistan and Pakistan listed as threatening.

2000 – In Puerto Rico 2 US warships arrived off the coast of Vieques and some 50 protestors braced for the arrival of federal agents.

2001 – President Bush committed the US to a missile defense shield. He also presented his case for withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

May 1st ~ {continued...}

2001 – The space shuttle Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mohave Desert following the installation of the billion-dollar robot arm on the Int’l. Space Station.

2002 – China’s VP Hu Jintao met with Pres. Bush. Jintao said the Taiwan issue could hurt relations and defended China’s record on human rights. They agreed to resume military exchanges.

2003 – President Bush, standing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Navy aircraft carrier in San Diego, announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Bush landed on the carrier in a Navy S-3B jet and spoke below a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”

2003 – Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld visited Afghanistan and declared most of the nation secure. He said the 9,000 US soldiers there were engaged mainly in reconstruction.

2003 – The US Navy withdrew from Vieques Island, Costa Rica.

2003 – Three top members of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regimewere captured: Mizban Khadr Hadi (military commander), Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish (director of the Office of Military Industrialization and a deputy prime minister in charge of arms procurement), and Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf (a Kurd who served as one of two ceremonial vice presidents).

2003 – The Terrorist Threat Integration Center begins operations.

2004 – In Iraq US top commander Lt. Gen. Sanchez notified 6 officers of his intent to issue a memorandum of reprimand for the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

2004 – Suspected militants sprayed gunfire inside an oil contractor’s Saudi office, killing at least six people — including two Americans and three other Westerners — and wounding dozens. Police killed four brothers in a shootout after a car chase in which the attackers reportedly dragged the naked body of one victim behind their getaway car.

2007 – First Silver Star Service Banner Day (SSSBD) sponsored by The Silver Star Families of America (SSFOA). SSFOA is a service banner organization dedicated to supporting and assisting our wounded, ill, injured and dying active duty and veterans and their families of ALL branches of service from ALL wars.

May 1st is meant to be a day set aside to honor their service and sacrifice; to bring remembrance to those so deserving of our thanks. Since 2007, SSSBD has been observed by all 50 states (including over 3,000 cities, towns and counties), the District of Columbia and Guam. The day has also been endorsed by Resolutions in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as by the POTUS.

2010 – The Times Square car bombing attempt was a planned terrorist attack which was foiled when two street vendors discovered a car bomb and alerted a New York City Police Department (NYPD) patrolman to the threat after they spotted smoke coming from a vehicle. The bomb had been ignited, but failed to explode, and was disarmed before it caused any casualties.

Two days later, federal agents arrested Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistan-born resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who had become a U.S. citizen in April 2009. He was arrested after he had boarded Emirates Flight 202 to Dubai at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He admitted attempting the car bombing and said that he had trained at a Pakistani terrorist training camp, according to U.S. officials. United States Attorney General Eric Holder said that Shahzad’s intent had been “to kill Americans”.

Shahzad was charged in federal court in Manhattan on May 4th with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and other federal crimes related to explosives. More than a dozen people were arrested by Pakistani officials in connection with the plot. Holder said the Pakistani Taliban directed the attack and may have financed it.

On October 5, 2010, Shahzad was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to a 10-count indictment in June, including charges of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting an act of terrorism.

2011 – Barack Obama announces that Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has been killed by United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Due to the time difference between the United States and Pakistan, bin Laden was actually killed on May 2nd.

2014 – Shinseki places the director of the Phoenix VA and two aides on administrative leave pending the investigation into the veterans’ deaths.

May 2nd ~

1497 – John Cabot departed for North America.

1670 – King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company, made up of the group of French explorers who opened the lucrative North American fur trade to London merchants. The charter conferred on them not only a trading monopoly but also effective control over the vast region surrounding North America’s Hudson Bay. Although contested by other English traders and the French in the region, the Hudson’s Bay Company was highly successful in exploiting what would become eastern Canada.

During the 18th century, the company gained an advantage over the French in the area but was also strongly criticized in Britain for its repeated failures to find a northwest passage out of Hudson Bay. After France’s loss of Canada at the end of the French and Indian Wars, new competition developed with the establishment of the North West Company by Montreal merchants and Scottish traders. As both companies attempted to dominate fur potentials in central and western Canada, violence sometimes erupted, and in 1821 the two companies were amalgamated under the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The united company ruled a vast territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and under the governorship of Sir George Simpson from 1821 to 1856, reached the peak of its fortunes. After Canada was granted dominion status in 1867, the company lost its monopoly on the fur trade, but it had diversified its business ventures and remained Canada’s largest corporation through the 1920s.

1776 – France and Spain agreed to donate arms to American rebels.

1792 – The Second Congress (1791-93) enacted the first Militia Act of 1792, which defined the authority of the President as Commander in Chief, to call out the militia.

1861 – General Winfield Scott wrote to President Lincoln suggesting a cordon capable of enveloping the seceded states and noted that “the transportation of men and all supplies by water is about a fifth of the land cost, besides the immense saving of time.” On the next day Scott elaborated further to General George McClellan: “We rely greatly on the sure operation of a complete blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf ports soon to commence. In connection with such blockade, we propose a powerful movement down the Mississippi to the ocean, with a cordon of posts at proper points . . . the object being to clear out and keep open this great line of communication in connection with the strict blockade of the seaboard, so as to envelop the insurgent States and bring them to terms with less bloodshed than by any other plan.”

The heart of the celebrated Anaconda Plan which would strangle the Confederacy on all sides was control of the sea and inland waterways by the Union Navy; the strategy of victory was (a) strengthen the blockade, (b) split the Confederacy along the line of the Mississippi River, and (c) support land operations by amphibious assault, gunfire. and transport.

1862 – Confederate forces evacuate Yorktown during the Peninsular campaign.

May 2nd ~ {continued...}

1863 – Stonewall Jackson administers a devastating defeat to the Army of the Potomac and is wounded by friendly fire. In one of the most stunning upsets of the war, a vastly outnumbered Army of Northern Virginia sent the Army of the Potomac, commanded by General Joseph Hooker, back to Washington in defeat. Hooker, who headed for Lee’s army confident and numerically superior, had sent part of his force to encounter Lee’s troops at Fredericksburg the day before, while the rest swung west to approach Lee from the rear.

Meanwhile, Lee had left part of his army at Fredericksburg and had taken the rest of his troops to confront Hooker near Chancellorsville. When the armies collided on May 1, Hooker withdrew into a defensive posture. Sensing Hooker’s trepidation, Lee sent Jackson along with 28,000 troops on a swift, 14-mile march around the Union right flank. Splitting his army into three parts in the face of the mighty Army of the Potomac was a bold move, but it paid huge dividends for the Confederates.

Although Union scouts detected the movement as Jackson swung southward, Hooker misinterpreted the maneuver as a retreat. When Jackson’s troops swung back north and into the thick woods west of Hooker’s army, Union pickets reported a possible buildup; but their warnings fell on deaf ears. In the evening of May 2nd, Union soldiers from General Oliver Otis Howard’s 11th Corps were casually cooking their supper and playing cards when waves of forest animals charged from the woods. Behind them were Jackson’s attacking troops. The Federal flank crumbled as Howard’s men were driven back some two miles before stopping the Rebel advance.

Despite the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Union forces soon gained the upper hand in the war in the eastern theater. Scouting in front of the lines as they returned in the dark, Jackson and his aides were fired upon by their own troops. Jackson’s arm was amputated the next morning, and he never recovered. He died from complications a week later, leaving Lee without his most able lieutenant.

1865 – President Johnson offered a $100,000 reward for the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1890 – The Oklahoma Territory was organized.

1926 – US military “intervened” in Nicaragua.

1942 – Admiral Chester J. Nimitz, convinced that the Japanese would attack Midway Island, visited the island to review its readiness.

1942 – The Japanese begin the concentration of forces for what will become the battle of the Coral Sea. Their objective is to occupy Port Moresby. Admiral Takagi commands a covering force including the aircraft carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku. Admiral Goto commands the naval support force for the landing, including the carrier Shoho and four heavy cruisers. Admiral Inouye is in command of the main invasion force concentrated at Rabaul.

American code breaking allows Admiral Nimitz to concentrate Allied forces to oppose the Japanese forces. Initially these forces include only Admiral Fletcher’s Task Force 17 with the carrier Yorktown. Later Task Force 11 (Admiral Fitch) with the aircraft carrier Lexington and Task force 44 (Admiral Crace) with Australian and American cruisers.

May 2nd ~ {continued...}

1945 – At noon the German surrender becomes effective. The long, difficult and controversial campaign in Italy is over. Allied forces reach Trieste, Milan and Turin during the course of the day, while others are advancing north toward Brenner Pass where they will link up with US 7th Army forces from the north. Approximately 1 million German soldiers lay down their arms as the terms of the German unconditional surrender, signed at Caserta on April 29th, come into effect.

Many Germans surrender to Japanese American soldiers. Among the American tank crews that entered the northern Italian town of Biella was an all-Nisei (second-generation) infantry battalion, composed of Japanese Americans from Hawaii. Early that same day, Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov accepts the surrender of the German capital. The Red Army takes 134,000 German soldiers prisoner.

1945 – The US 14th Corps units advancing west along the Bicol Peninsula of Luzon link up, near Naga, with units from the Legaspi area that have moved east. On this part of the island, Japanese forces have now been scattered.

1945 – The Soviet Union announces the capture of Berlin and Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building.

1946 – Marines from Treasure Island Marine Barracks, under the command of Warrant Officer Charles L. Buckner, aided in suppressing the three-day prison riot at Alcatraz Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay. WO Buckner, a veteran of the Bougainville and Guam campaigns, ably led his force of Marines without suffering a single casualty.

The Battle of Alcatraz, which lasted until May 4th, was the result of an unsuccessful escape attempt at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Two guards—William A. Miller and Harold Stites—were killed along with three of the inmates. Eleven guards and one convict were also injured. Two of the surviving convicts were later executed for their roles.

1952 – The communists rejected U.N. proposals over questions of voluntary repatriation and proposed to withdraw the nomination of the Soviet Union from the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission if the U.N. Command agreed the forcible repatriation of 132,000 prisoners in exchange for 12,000 held by the communists. Admiral C. Turner Joy, chief UNC delegate at the armistice negotiations, rejected the proposal on behalf of the U.N. Command.

1964 – An explosion of a charge assumed to have been placed by Viet Cong terrorists sinks the USNS Card at its dock in Saigon. No one was injured and the ship was eventually raised and repaired. The Card, an escort carrier being used as an aircraft and helicopter ferry, had arrived in Saigon on April 30th.

1965 – A Peking radio broadcast charges that the USSR has joined the “US aggressors” in a “peace negotiation swindle.” Reportedly the Soviets are backing some kind of peace conference before the total withdrawal of US forces.

1966 – In a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce, Defense Secretary McNamara reports that North Vietnmese infiltration of the South is up to 4500 men a month–three times the 1965 level.

1967 – Communist MiG bases at Kep, 37 miles northeast of Hanoi, are bombed. Pilots report heavy damage.

1968 – The U.S. Army attacked Nhi Ha in South Vietnam and began a fourteen-day battle to wrestle it away from Vietnamese Communists.