** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 10:32 am
June 29th ~ {continued...}

1982 – The Soviet Union launched COSPAS I, the first search and rescue satellite ever launched. In combination with later SARSAT satellites, a new multi-agency, international, search and rescue service was made operational.

1991 – President Bush, speaking to reporters in Kennebunkport, Maine, refused to rule out the possibility of renewed military action against Iraq, calling its interference with U-N inspectors “very disturbing.”

1994 – US reopened Guantanamo Naval Base to process refugees.

1995 – The shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth.

1996 – U.S. allies backed President Clinton’s demand that Bosnian Serb leaders indicted for war crimes be forced “out of power and out of influence.”

1999 – In Chechnya Russian security forces freed Herbert Gregg (51), an American missionary kidnapped over 7 months ago. Part of his index finger had bee cut off in an attempt to extort ransom.

2000 – Iraq said US and British warplanes bombed North Rumeila and killed a woman shepherd and injured her husband.

2001 – In Okinawa a woman claimed that she was raped by an American. US Air Force sergeant Timothy B. Woodland was later charged. Sgt. Woodland was handed over to Japanese authorities on July 6th. Woodland was convicted Machr 27th and was sentenced to 32 months in prison.

2002 – Pakistan issued a “most wanted” list of 10 suspected Islamic militants and offered big rewards for their capture in connection with the killing of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl and the bombing of Western targets.

2003 – In Iraq US forces launched a massive operation to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from the ousted regime.

2007 – Four men were indicted on charges with conspiring to “cause death, serious bodily injury and extensive destruction” at New Yourk City’s JFK Airport. On August 6 a judge ordered three of the alleged plotters extradited to the United States. This was an alleged Islamist terrorist plot to blow up a system of jet fuel supply tanks and pipelines that feed fuel to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in Queens, New York.

These pipelines travel throughout the undergrounds of New York City in densely populated areas. The alleged plot was foiled when an undercover law enforcement official was recruited to the homegrown terrorist cell. The suspects are Russell Defreitas, a United States citizen and native of Guyana who was the alleged ringleader and worked for a time at the airport; Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of the Guyanaese National Assembly; Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago; and Abdel Nur, a citizen of Guyana and uncle of former world welterweight boxing champion Andrew “Six Heads” Lewis. Defreitas was a former employee of JFK and was arrested in Brooklyn, New York. Kadir and Ibrahim were arrested in Trinidad on June 3, 2007. Nur surrendered to police two days later in Trinidad.

2009 – U.S. forces withdrew from Baghdad.

2014 – The establishment of a new caliphate was announced, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named as its caliph, and the group formally changed its name to the “Islamic State.” IS’s ideology originates in the branch of modern Islam that aims to return to the early days of Islam, rejecting later “innovations” in the religion which it believes corrupt its original spirit. It condemns later caliphates and the Ottoman empire for deviating from what it calls pure Islam and hence has been attempting to establish its own caliphate.

From its beginnings the establishment of a pure Islamic state has been one of the group’s main goals. According to journalist Sarah Birke, one of the “significant differences” between Al-Nusra Front and ISIS is that ISIS “tends to be more focused on establishing its own rule on conquered territory”. While both groups share the ambition to build an Islamic state, ISIS is “far more ruthless … carrying out sectarian attacks and imposing sharia law immediately”.

ISIS finally achieved its goal on 29 June 2014, when it removed “Iraq and the Levant” from its name, began to refer to itself as the Islamic State, and declared the territory which it occupied in Iraq and Syria a new caliphate. In mid-2014, the group released a video entitled “The End of Sykes–Picot” featuring an English-speaking Chilean national named Abu Safiyya. The video announced the group’s intention to eliminate all modern borders between Islamic Middle Eastern countries; this was a reference to the borders set by the Sykes–Picot Agreement during World War I.
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:51 am
June 30th ~

1815 – USS Peacock takes HMS Nautilus, last action of the War of 1812.

1834 – Congress placed the Marine Corps under Navy jurisdiction.

1862 – The Seven Days’ Battles continues at Glendale (White Oak Swamp), Virginia, as Robert E. Lee has a chance to deal a decisive blow against George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had already won the Seven Days’ Battles, but the Confederates’ attempt to rout McClellan cost many Southern casualties. The Seven Days’ Battles were the climax of McClellan’s Peninsular campaign. For two months, the Union army sailed down Chesapeake Bay and then inched up the James Peninsula.

In late June, the two forces began a series of clashes in which McClellan became unnerved and began to retreat to his base at Harrison’s Landing on the James River. Lee hounded him on the retreat. On June 30, Lee plotted a complex attack on the Yankees as they backed down the peninsula. He hoped to hit the front, flank, and rear of the Union army to create confusion and jam the escape routes. Those attacks did not succeed, as they required precise timing. Lee’s own generals were confused, the attacks developed slowly, and they made only temporary ruptures in the Federal lines. Most disappointing for Lee was the performance of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

Jackson was coming off a brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, but he showed little of his skill during the Seven Days’ Battles. His corps halted at the edge of White Oak Swamp, and he focused his attention on taking a bridge from the Yankees. His officers located fords that would have allowed his men to bypass the bottleneck, but Jackson stayed put. This allowed the Union to move troops from Jackson’s sector of the battlefield to halt a Confederate attack in another area. Lee’s failure at Glendale permitted McClellan’s army to fall back to higher, more defensible locations.

The next day, July 1st, Lee assaulted Malvern Hill and his army suffered tremendous casualties in the face of a withering Union artillery barrage.

1863 – Union and Confederate cavalries clashed at Hanover, Pennsylvania.

1864 – Converted ferryboat U.S.S. Hunchback, Lieutenant Joseph P. Fyffe, supported by single turreted monitor U.S.S. Saugus, Commander Colhoun, bombarded Confederate batteries at Deep Bottom on the James River and caused their eventual removal. Rear Admiral Lee reported: “The importance of holding our position at Deep Bottom is obvious. Without doing so our communications are cut there, and our wooden vessels can not remain above that point, and the monitors would be alone and exposed to the enemy’s light torpedo craft from above and out of Four Mile Creek. The enemy could then plant torpedoes there to prevent the monitors passing by for supplies.”

1865 – Eight alleged conspirators in assassination of Lincoln were found guilty after kangaroo court-martial and brutal treatment by military officers.
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:53 am
June 30th ~ {continued...}

1876 – After a slow two-day march, the wounded soldiers from the Battle of the Little Big Horn reach the steamboat Far West. The Far West had been leased by the U.S. Army for the duration of the 1876 campaign against the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne Indians of the Northern Plains. Under the command of the skilled civilian Captain Grant Marsh, the 190-foot vessel was ideal for navigating the shallow waters of the Upper Missouri River system.

The boat drew only 20 inches of water when fully laden and Marsh managed to steam up the shallow Big Horn River in southern Montana in June 1876. There, the boat became a headquarters for the army’s planned attack on a village of Sioux and Cheyenne they believed were camping on the nearby Little Big Horn River.

On June 28th, Captain Grant and several other men were fishing about a mile from the boat when a young Indian on horseback approached. “He wore an exceedingly dejected countenance,” one man later wrote. By signing and drawing on the ground, the Indian managed to convey that there had been a battle but the men did not understand its outcome.

In fact, the Indian was Curley, one of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s Crow scouts. Three days earlier, he had been the last man to see Custer and his 7th Cavalry battalion before they were wiped out during the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The following day, Grant received a dispatch from General Terry, who had found Custer’s destroyed battalion and the surviving soldiers of the 7th Cavalry. Terry ordered Grant to prepare to evacuate the wounded soldiers. Slowed by the burden of carrying the wounded men, Terry’s force did not arrive until June 30th.

Grant immediately received the 54 wounded soldiers and sped downstream as quickly as possible. With the Far West draped in black and flying her flag at half-mast, Grant delivered the wounded to Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck, North Dakota, at 11:00 p.m. on July 5th. The fast and relatively comfortable transport of the wounded by steam power undoubtedly saved numerous lives. Yet, Grant was also the bearer of bad news. From Fort Abraham Lincoln, General Terry’s report of the disaster was telegraphed all over the country. Soon the entire nation learned that General Custer and more than 200 men had been massacred along the Little Big Horn River.

1882 – Charles Guiteau the assassin of President Garfield was hanged in a Washington jail.
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:54 am
June 30th ~ {continued...}

1934 – In Germany, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler orders a bloody purge of his own political party, assassinating hundreds of Nazis whom he believed had the potential to become political enemies in the future. The leadership of the Nazi Storm Troopers (SA), whose four million members had helped bring Hitler to power in the early 1930s, was especially targeted. Hitler feared that some of his followers had taken his early “National Socialism” propaganda too seriously and thus might compromise his plan to suppress workers’ rights in exchange for German industry making the country war-ready.

In the early 1920s, the ranks of Hitler’s Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party’s bitter hatred of Germany’s democratic government, leftist politics, and Jews. In November 1923, after the German government resumed the payment of war reparations to Britain and France, the Nazis launched the “Beer Hall Putsch”–their first attempt at seizing the German government by force. Hitler hoped that his nationalist revolution in Bavaria would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the government in Berlin.

However, the uprising was immediately suppressed, and Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason. Sent to Landsberg jail, he spent his time dictating his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and working on his oratorical skills. After nine months in prison, political pressure from supporters of the Nazi Party forced his release. During the next few years, Hitler and the other leading Nazis reorganized their party as a fanatical mass movement that was able to gain a majority in the German parliament–the Reichstag–by legal means in 1932.

In the same year, President Paul von Hindenburg defeated a presidential bid by Hitler, but in January 1933 he appointed Hitler chancellor, hoping that the powerful Nazi leader could be brought to heel as a member of the president’s cabinet. However, Hindenburg underestimated Hitler’s political audacity, and one of the new chancellor’s first acts was to use the burning of the Reichstag building as a pretext for calling general elections.

The police, under Nazi Hermann Goering, suppressed much of the party’s opposition before the election, and the Nazis won a bare majority. Shortly after, Hitler took on absolute power through the Enabling Acts. In 1934, Hindenburg died, and the last remnants of Germany’s democratic government were dismantled, leaving Hitler the sole master of a nation intent on war and genocide.

1943 – General Douglas MacArthur launches Operation Cartwheel, a multi-pronged assault on Rabaul and several islands in the Solomon Sea in the South Pacific. The joint effort takes nine months to complete but succeeds in recapturing more Japanese-controlled territory, further eroding their supremacy in the East. The purpose of Cartwheel was to destroy the barrier formation Japan had created in the Bismark Archipelago, a collection of islands east of New Guinea in the Solomon Sea. The Japanese considered this area vital to the protection of their conquests in the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. For the Allies, Rabaul, in New Britain, was the key to winning control of this theater of operations, as it served as the Japanese naval headquarters and main base.

By establishing a “step-by-step” approach to invasion, the Allies unwittingly gave the Japanese time to regroup and establish their next line of defense. The Allies then decided that a new strategy was to be deployed, that of leaving certain islands, or parts thereof, to “wither on the vine,” rather than waste valuable time and manpower in fighting it out for marginal gains. A leapfrogging strategy was then employed by MacArthur, whereby he left in place smaller Japanese strongholds in order to concentrate on “bigger fish.”
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:55 am
June 30th ~ {continued...}

1943 – American forces land on several islands of the New Georgia group. Rendova island is targeted, in particular. All the landings are successful. There is heavy Japanese resistance on Vangunu. The American forces engaged for these landings are principally the 43rd Division (General Hester) with naval support by Task Force 31 (Admiral Turner) and land-based aircraft commanded by Admiral Fitch.

1943 – A mixed Australian and American unit known as McKechnie Force lands at Nassau Bay near Salamaua from Morobe. There is heavy Japanese resistance to the landing.

1944 – German resistance in the Cotentin Peninsula ends. The US 1st Army continues to battle on the approach to St. Lo; the British 2nd Army continues to battle toward Caen. Since D-Day, the Allies have landed 630,000 troops, 600,000 tons of supplies and 177,000 vehicles in the Normandy beachhead. They have suffered 62,000 dead and wounded.

1944 – Elements of US 5th Army are heavily engaged in Cecina. The main advance inland is slowed by a new German defensive line south of Siena and Arezzo.

1944 – The American 5th Amphibious Corps has captured over half of Saipan. Fighting north of Mount Tipo Pale and Mount Tapotchau continues. Death Valley and Purple Heart Ridge are cleared.

1944 – The United States breaks diplomatic relations with Finland.

1945 – On Okinawa, American forces complete mopping-up operations (June 23-30) in which 8,975 Japanese are reported killed and 2902 captured.

1946 – The general World War II demobilization task was completed with all Separation Centers decommissioned, resulting in a reduced Coast Guard personnel to 23,000 officers and enlisted personnel from a wartime peak of about 171,000 on 30 June 1945.

1946 – The U .S. Navy returned the Coast Guard’s eleven air stations to the operational control of the Coast Guard.

1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor in the New York Times on p.46 as a replacement for the vacuum tube. Bell Labs had kept it secret for six months. John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley demonstrated their invention, the transistor, for the first time. John Pierce proposed the name.

1950 – Just three days after the United Nations Security Council voted to provide military assistance to South Korea, President Harry S. Truman orders U.S. armed forces to assist in defending that nation from invading North Korean armies. Truman’s dramatic step marked the official entry of the United States into the Korean War.

Over the next three years, the United States provided at least half of the U.N. ground forces in Korea and the vast majority of the air and sea forces used in the conflict against North Korea and, later, against communist China, which entered the war on the side of North Korea in late 1950. Nearly 55,000 Americans were killed in the war and over 100,000 were wounded. Cost estimates for the war ranged as high as $20 billion. In July 1953, an armistice was signed that ended the fighting and left Korea a divided nation.

1951 – Marine Corps Captain Edwin B. Long scored the first night kill of the Korean War and the first in a F7F Tigercat victory ever by downing a PO-2 near Kimpo.
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:57 am
June 30th ~ {continued...}

1951 – On orders from Washington, General Matthew Ridgeway broadcast that the United Nations was willing to discuss an armistice with North Korea. In 1950, as U.S. Marines tried to fight their way out of a Chinese trap, Korea suffered its worst winter of the century.

1951 – Naval Administration of Marianas Island chain ends.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Buttleman, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 36th and youngest ace of the Korean War, having just turned 24. He accomplished this feat only 12 days after his first kill. (An ace has five kills.) Colonel James K. Johnson, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, qualified as the eighth “double ace” of the war, with 10 total kills.

1955 – The U.S. began funding West Germany’s rearmament.

1957 – The American occupation headquarters in Japan was dissolved.

1958 – Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union, the first new state since 1912.

1958 – The Communists have formed a coordinated command structure in the eastern Mekong Delta. Most of the 37 companies formed in October 1957 are located in the western Mekong Delta.

1960 – US stopped sugar imports from Cuba.

1965 – US forces in Vietnam are assigned to operate under the so-called enclave strategy. The marines are now at Danang, Phubai, and Chulai, and the Army at Vungtau. US forces are expected to defend these coastal areas, leaving ARVN troops to take the offensive in the rest of the country.

1966 – Congressional reaction to the Hanoi-Haiphong air attacks of the previous day ranges from applause to denunciation. In voicing his approval, Senator Richard Russell (R-GA) states that the raid will reduce American casualties. Sixteen Democratic Representatives issue a joint statement declaring that the expanded air strikes commit the US to ‘a profoundly dangerous policy of brinksmanship’ which challenges China. Peking, meanwhile calls the raids a serious escalation of the war, warning that it is prepared for any eventuality.

1967 – The South Vietnamese Armed Forces Council resolves rival claims to the presidency in favor of Nguyen Van Thieu, Chief of State. Former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, who had announced on May 11th that he would run for president, was forced to accept second place on the presidential ticket.

1967 – Several sources report attacks by US planes on foreign ships in Haiphong harbor. The Soviet government charges that a second Russian merchant vessel, Mikhail Frunze, was bombed by US planes in Haiphong on June 29. A protest is delivered to the US embassy in Moscow on June 30th. The North Vietnamese news agency reports that two other foreign ships were also struck.
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 8:59 am
June 30th ~ {continued...}

1970 – The Senate votes 58 to 37 in favor of adopting the Cooper-Church amendment to limit presidential power in Cambodia. The amendment barred funds to retain U.S. troops in Cambodia after July 1st or to supply military advisers, mercenaries, or to conduct “any combat activity in the air above Cambodia in direct support of Cambodian forces” without congressional approval. The amendment represented the first limitation ever passed in the Senate concerning the president’s powers as commander-in-chief during a war situation. The House of Representatives rejected the amendment on July 9th, and it was eventually dropped from the Foreign Military Sales Act.

1970 – In a written report on the U.S. incursion in Cambodia, President Nixon pronounced it a “successful” operation. Nixon ruled out the use of U.S. troops there in the future, suggesting that Cambodia’s defense would be left largely to Cambodia and its allies. Regarding the use of U.S. air power in Cambodia, Nixon stated that the United States would not provide air or logistical support for South Vietnamese forces in Cambodia, but would continue bombing enemy personnel and supply concentrations “with the approval of the Cambodian government.” Nixon noted that more than a year’s supply of weapons and ammunition had been captured and that 11,349 enemy soldiers were killed by Allied forces during the incursion into the area.

1971 – The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Pentagon Papers. On the same day Pres. Nixon told Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to break into the Brookings Institute and bring out files collected on the Vietnam War.

1971 – The 26th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified as Ohio became the 38th state to approve it. The amendment lowered the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. The amendment was authored by Senator Jennings Randolph (d.1998 at 96) of West Virginia.

1971 – In an attempt to knock out Communist rocket emplacements that have been shelling US and South Vietnamese bases south of the DMZ during the past two weeks, 14 US F-4 Phantom fighters hit the North Vietnamese region of the DMZ.

1977 – President Jimmy Carter announced his opposition to the B-1 bomber.

1985 – 39 American hostages from a hijacked TWA jetliner were freed in Beirut after being held for 17 days.

1991 – The federal base-closing commission voted to shut down 17 military bases, including the massive Philadelphia Navy Shipyard, in addition to seven facilities ordered closed two days earlier.

1993 – 13 US helicopters attack a Somali compound.

1998 – A US fighter jet fired a missile at an Iraqi anti-aircraft site after the site’s radar locked on a British warplane.
PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 9:01 am
June 30th ~ {continued...}

1998 – Officials confirmed that the remains of a Vietnam War serviceman buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were identified as those of Air Force pilot Michael J. Blassie.

2001 – NASA launched its 16-foot, 1,800-pound Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to orbit the Sun and to scan the universe for the faint afterglow of Creation by measuring variations in radiation temperature of up to 20 millionths of a degree. In 2003 it allowed scientists to calculate the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years.

2002 – The United States vetoed a resolution extending the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, then agreed to keep the mission alive three more days while the Security Council seeks a way to meet U.S. demands for immunity from a new global war crimes court.

2003 – American troops detained the U.S.-appointed mayor of Najaf, Iraq, accusing him of kidnapping and corruption.

2004 – The Cassini probe entered Saturn’s orbit for 4 years of explorations. Its 4-year mission included a close approach to Saturn’s 3rd moon Iapetus.

2007 – The Battle of Donkey Island was a skirmish that occurred on 30 June and 1 July 2007 between elements of the U.S. Army Task Force 1-77 Armor Regiment, the 2nd Battalion 5th Marines and a numerically superior force of al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgents on the banks of a canal leading from Ramadi to Lake Habbaniyah in the Al-Anbar province of Iraq.

Official reports of the clash indicate that the U.S. force suffered 2 soldiers dead and 11 wounded, while an estimated 32 insurgents were killed (out of an estimated force of 40–70 fighters). The battle was a complete victory for the U.S. forces, which detected and defeated an insurgent force before it could launch a planned assault on Ramadi.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:43 am
July 1st ~

1656 – The 1st Quakers, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, arrived in Boston and were promptly arrested.

1776 – The Continental Congress, sitting as a committee, met on July 1, 1776, to debate a resolution submitted by Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee on June 7. The resolution stated that the United Colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” The committee voted for the motion and, on July 2 in formal session took the final vote for independence.

1777 – British troops departed from their base at the Bouquet river to head toward Ticonderoga, New York.

1797 – Congress passed “An Act providing a Naval Armament,” empowered the President to “cause the said revenue cutters to be employed to defend the seacoast and to repel any hostility to their vessels and commerce, within their jurisdiction, having due regard to the duty of said cutters in the protection of the revenue.” The act also increased the complements of the cutters from ten men to a number “not exceeding 30 marines and seamen.”

1800 – First convoy duty; USS Essex escorts convoy of merchant ships from East Indies to U.S.

1801 – U.S. squadron under Commodore Dale enters Mediterranean to strike Barbary Pirates.

1850 – Naval School at Annapolis renamed Naval Academy.

1851 – Naval Academy adopts four year course of study.

1861 – The US War Department decreed that Kansas and Tennessee were to be canvassed for volunteers.

1862 – Congress gave the green light to the tax-centric Revenue Act. The legislation, which was soon signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, imposed a three-percent tax on people with incomes between $600 to $10,000; and also called for a five-percent levy on people with incomes reaching over $10,000. However, the Revenue Act was perhaps more notable for creating the Bureau of Internal Revenue, a government agency which was charged with collecting the revenue generated by the new taxes.

Though the Revenue Act and its attendant package of taxes were allowed to lapse into legislative oblivion after the Civil War, the Bureau of Internal Revenue eventually came back to haunt America's taxpaying citizens in 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution. Along with sanctioning the income tax, the amendment paved the path for the opening of the Internal Revenue Service, which, in its role as the official clearing house for the nations taxes, proved to be the bureaucratic progeny of the Internal Revenue Service.

1862 – The US Congress outlawed polygamy for the 1st time. The Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, signed by Pres. Lincoln, made polygamy illegal in American territories. It led to the prosecution of over 1300 Mormons. It also granted large tracts of public land to the states with the directive to sell for the support of institutions teaching the mechanical and agricultural arts. It also obligated state male university students to military training. The education initiative resulted in 68 land-grant colleges.

1862 – In day 7 of the 7 Days Battle Union artillery stopped a Confederate attack at Malvern Hill, Virginia. Casualties totaled: US 15,249 and CS 17,583.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:45 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1863 – The largest military conflict in North American history begins this day when Union and Confederate forces collide at Gettysburg. The epic battle lasted three days and resulted in a retreat to Virginia by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Two months prior to Gettysburg, Lee had dealt a stunning defeat to the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville. He then made plans for a Northern invasion in order to relieve pressure on war-weary Virginia and to seize the initiative from the Yankees. His army, numbering about 80,000, began moving on June 3. The Army of the Potomac, commanded by Joseph Hooker and numbering just under 100,000, began moving shortly thereafter, staying between Lee and Washington, D.C.

But on June 28th, frustrated by the Lincoln administration’s restrictions on his autonomy as commander, Hooker resigned and was replaced by George G. Meade. Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac as Lee’s army moved into Pennsylvania.

On the morning of July 1st, advance units of the forces came into contact with one another just outside of Gettysburg. The sound of battle attracted other units, and by noon the conflict was raging. During the first hours of battle, Union General John Reynolds was killed, and the Yankees found that they were outnumbered. The battle lines ran around the northwestern rim of Gettysburg. The Confederates applied pressure all along the Union front, and they slowly drove the Yankees through the town.

By evening, the Federal troops rallied on high ground on the southeastern edge of Gettysburg. As more troops arrived, Meade’s army formed a three-mile long, fishhook-shaped line running from Culp’s Hill on the right flank, along Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, to the base of Little Round Top. The Confederates held Gettysburg, and stretched along a six-mile arc around the Union position. For the next two days, Lee would batter each end of the Union position, and on July 3rd, he would launch Pickett’s charge against the Union center.

1863 – John Fulton Reynolds (42), Union general, died in battle at Gettysburg.

1864 – Battle of Petersburg, VA, began.

1898 – As part of their campaign to capture Spanish-held Santiago de Cuba on the southern coast of Cuba, the U.S. Army Fifth Corps engages Spanish forces at El Caney and San Juan Hill. In May 1898, one month after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, a Spanish fleet docked in the Santiago de Cuba harbor after racing across the Atlantic from Spain. A superior U.S. naval force arrived soon after and blockaded the harbor entrance.

In June, the U.S. Army Fifth Corps landed on Cuba with the aim of marching to Santiago and launching a coordinated land and sea assault on the Spanish stronghold. Included among the U.S. ground troops were the Theodore Roosevelt-led “Rough Riders,” a collection of Western cowboys and Eastern blue bloods officially known as the First U.S. Voluntary Cavalry. The U.S. Army Fifth Corps fought its way to Santiago’s outer defenses, and on July 1st, U.S. General William Shafter ordered an attack on the village of El Caney and San Juan Hill. Shafter hoped to capture El Caney before besieging the fortified heights of San Juan Hill, but the 500 Spanish defenders of the village put up a fierce resistance and held off 10 times their number for most of the day.

Although El Caney was not secure, some 8,000 Americans pressed forward toward San Juan Hill. Hundreds fell under Spanish gunfire before reaching the base of the heights, where the force split up into two flanks to take San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill. The Rough Riders were among the troops in the right flank attacking Kettle Hill. When the order was given by Lieutenant John Miley that “the heights must be taken at all hazards,” the Rough Riders, who had been forced to leave their horses behind because of transportation difficulties, led the charge up the hills.

The Rough Riders and the black soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments were the first up Kettle Hill, and San Juan Hill was taken soon after. From the crest, the Americans found themselves overlooking Santiago, and the next day they began a siege of the city.

On July 3rd, the Spanish fleet was destroyed off Santiago by U.S. warships under Admiral William Sampson, and on July 17th the Spanish surrendered the city–and thus Cuba–to the Americans.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:47 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1907 – World’s 1st air force was established as part of the US Army.

1911 – Trial of first Navy aircraft, Curtiss A-1. The designer, Glenn Curtiss, makes first flight in Navy’s first aircraft, A-1, at Lake Keuka, NY, then prepares LT Theodore G. Ellyson, the first naval aviator, for his two solo flights in A-1.

1916 – Establishment of informal school for officers assigned to submarines at New London, CT.

1917 – Race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, and 40 to 200 were reported killed.

1918 – USS Covington hit without warning by two torpedoes from German Submarine U-86 and sank the next day.

1921 – The Coast Guard’s first air station, located at Morehead City, North Carolina, was closed due to a lack of funding.

1939 – Lighthouse Service of Department of Commerce transferred to Coast Guard under President Franklin Roosevelt’s Reorganization Plan No. 11. Under the President’s Reorganization Plan No. 11, made effective this date by Public Resolution No. 20, approved 7 June 1939, it was provided “that the Bureau of Lighthouses in the Department of Commerce and its functions be transferred to and consolidated with and administered as a part of the Coast Guard.

This consolidation made in the interest of efficiency and economy, will result in the transfer to and consolidation with the Coast Guard of the system of approximately 30,000 aids to navigation (including light vessels and lighthouses) maintained by the Lighthouse Service on the sea and lake coasts of the United States, on the rivers of the United States, and on the coasts of all other territory under the jurisdiction of the United States with the exception of the Philippine Island and Panama Canal proper.” Plans were put into effect, “Providing for a complete integration with the Coast Guard of the personnel of the Lighthouse Service numbering about 5,200, together with the auxiliary organization of 64 buoy tenders, 30 depots, and 17 district offices.”

1940 – Roosevelt signs a further Navy bill providing for the construction of 45 more ships and providing $550,000,000 to finance these and other projects.

1941 – Aircraft from the United States Navy start antisubmarine patrols from bases in Newfoundland.

1941 – Commercial black and white television broadcasting began in the US.

1943 – “Pay-as-you-go” income tax withholding began.

1944 – Elements of the US 5th Army capture Cecina on the west coast while Pomerance falls, further inland, in the advance to Volterra.

1944 – Delegates from 44 countries began meeting at Bretton Woods, N.H., where they agreed to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The US hosted an international conference at Bretton Woods, N.H., to deal with international monetary and financial problems. The talks resulted in the creation of the IMF, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank in 1945.

In 1997 Catherine Caufield wrote “Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations.” The Bretton Woods institutions also include the United nations and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (renamed the World Trade organization). The agreement was a gold exchange standard and only the US was required to convert its currency into gold at a fixed rate, and only foreign central banks were allowed the privilege of redemption.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:49 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1945 – Some 550 B-29 Superfortress bombers — the greatest number yet to be engaged — drop 4000 tons of incendiary bombs on the Kure naval base, Shimonoseki, Ube and Kumanoto, on western Kyushu.

1946 – As a final step in the return of the Coast Guard to the Treasury Department from wartime operation under the Navy Department, the Navy directional control of the following Coast Guard functions was terminated: search and rescue functions, maintenance and operation of ocean weather stations and air-sea navigational aids in the Atlantic, continental United States, Alaska, and Pacific east of Pearl Harbor.

1946 – The United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The energy released by any one of the ten or so major earthquakes every year is about 1,000 times as much as the Bikini atomic bomb.

1947 – State Department official George Kennan, using the pseudonym “Mr. X,” publishes an article entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the July edition of Foreign Affairs. The article focused on Kennan’s call for a policy of containment toward the Soviet Union and established the foundation for much of America’s early Cold War foreign policy. In February 1946, Kennan, then serving as the U.S. charge d’affaires in Moscow, wrote his famous “long telegram” to the Department of State. In the missive, he condemned the communist leadership of the Soviet Union and called on the United States to forcefully resist Russian expansion.

Encouraged by friends and colleagues, Kennan refined the telegram into an article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” and secured its publication in the July edition of Foreign Affairs. Kennan signed the article “Mr. X” to avoid any charge that he was presenting official U.S. government policy, but nearly everyone in the Department of State and White House recognized the piece as Kennan’s work. In the article, Kennan explained that the Soviet Union’s leaders were determined to spread the communist doctrine around the world, but were also extremely patient and pragmatic in pursuing such expansion.

In the “face of superior force,” Kennan said, the Russians would retreat and wait for a more propitious moment. The West, however, should not be lulled into complacency by temporary Soviet setbacks. Soviet foreign policy, Kennan claimed, “is a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal.”

In terms of U.S. foreign policy, Kennan’s advice was clear: “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Kennan’s article created a sensation in the United States, and the term “containment” instantly entered the Cold War lexicon. The administration of President Harry S. Truman embraced Kennan’s philosophy, and in the next few years attempted to “contain” Soviet expansion through a variety of programs, including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Kennan’s star rose quickly in the Department of State and in 1952 he was named U.S. ambassador to Russia.

By the 1960s, with the United States hopelessly mired in the Vietnam War, Kennan began to question some of his own basic assumptions in the “Mr. X” article and became a vocal critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In particular, he criticized U.S. policymakers during the 1950s and 1960s for putting too much emphasis on the military containment of the Soviet Union, rather than on political and economic programs.

1950 – Task Force Smith, two companies of the 24th Infantry Division’s 21st Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith and the first U.S. combat unit in Korea, arrived at Pusan. Major General William F. Dean, the 24th Infantry Division commander, was named commander of all U.S. forces in Korea.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:50 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1951 – North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and Peng Teh-huai, commander of the Chinese “Volunteers,” agreed to begin armistice discussions.

1956 – The Highway Revenue Act of 1956 was put into effect by Congress, outlining a policy of taxation with the aim of creating a fund for the construction of over 42,500 miles of interstate highways over a period of 13 years. The push for a national highway system began many years earlier, when the privately funded construction of the Lincoln Highway begun in 1919.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) did much to set into motion plans for a federally funded highway system, but his efforts were halted by the outbreak of World War II. With the end of the war came America’s industrial boom and a massive increase in automobile registration. Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected president in 1952, had been a supporter of a federally funded highway system ever since, as an Army Lieutenant in 1919, he led a military convoy from San Francisco to New York. His travels through Germany during World War II only increased his desire to replicate Germany’s autobahn system.

Eisenhower’s 1954 State of the Union address made clear his intentions to follow through on his interest. He declared the need to “protect the vital interests of every citizen in a safe, adequate highway system.” It wasn’t until 1956 that Eisenhower saw his vision pass through Congress. The scale of the plan was breathtaking: At a time when the total federal budget approached $71 billion, Eisenhower’s plan called for $50 billion over 13 years for highways.

To pay for the project a system of taxes, relying heavily on the taxation of gasoline, was implemented. Legislation has extended the Interstate Highway Revenue Act three times. Today consumers pay 18.3¢ per gallon on gasoline. Eisenhower thought of the Federal Interstate System as his greatest achievement. Today, revisionists question the solutions offered by our massive labyrinth of highways. Undoubtedly the interstate system changed America and made it what it is today, with suburbs and “edge cities” springing up across the country.

Employment increased, as well as the U.S. gross national product. Still, both state and federal governments struggle to appropriate the funds to expand our national road network and meet the demand of the ever-growing population of car owners. Many economists subscribe to Helen Levitt’s theory that “congestion rises to meet road capacity,” and anti-road activists are citing the loss of productive farmland, the demise of small business, the destruction of the environment, and the “urbanization” of American society. Truly, the grass is always greener on the other side of the highway.

1958 – The new Atlantic merchant vessel [known by the acronym AMVER] position reporting program was established. It was aimed at encouraging domestic and foreign merchant vessels to send voluntary position reports and navigational data to U.S. Coast Guard shore based radio stations and ocean station vessels. Relayed to a ships’ plot center in New York and processed by machine, these data provided updated position information for U.S. Coast Guard rescue coordination centers. The centers could then direct only those vessels which would be of effective aid to craft or persons in distress. This diversion of all merchant ships in a large area became unnecessary.

1960 – USSR shot down a US RB-47 reconnaissance plane.

1962 – Intelligence has been an essential element of Army operations during war as well as during periods of peace. In the past, requirements were met by personnel from the Army Intelligence and Army Security Reserve branches, two-year obligated tour officers, one-tour levies on the various branches, and Regular Army officers in the specialization programs. To meet the Army’s increased requirement for national and tactical intelligence, an Intelligence and Security Branch was established in the Army effective July 1, 1962, by General Orders No. 38, July 3, 1962. On July 1, 1967, the branch was re-designated as Military Intelligence.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:53 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1965 – Undersecretary of State George Ball submits a memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson titled “A Compromise Solution for South Vietnam.” It began bluntly: “The South Vietnamese are losing the war to the Viet Cong. No one can assure you that we can beat the Viet Cong, or even force them to the conference table on our terms, no matter how many hundred thousand white, foreign (U.S.) troops we deploy.” Ball advised that the United States not commit any more troops, restrict the combat role of those already in place, and seek to negotiate a way out of the war.

As Ball was submitting his memo, the U.S. air base at Da Nang came under attack by the Viet Cong for the first time. An enemy demolition team infiltrated the airfield and destroyed three planes and damaged three others. One U.S. airman was killed and three U.S. Marines were wounded. The attack on Da Nang, the increased aggressiveness of the Viet Cong, and the weakness of the Saigon regime convinced Johnson that he had to do something to stop the communists or they would soon take over South Vietnam.

While Ball recommended a negotiated settlement, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara urged the president to “expand promptly and substantially” the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam. Johnson, not wanting to lose South Vietnam to the communists, ultimately accepted McNamara’s recommendation. On July 22nd, he authorized a total of 44 U.S. battalions for commitment in South Vietnam, a decision that led to a massive escalation of the war. There were less than ten U.S. Army and Marine battalions in South Vietnam at this time. Eventually there would be more than 540,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam.

1966 – The U.S. Marines launched Operation Holt in an attempt to finish off a Vietcong battalion in Thua Thien Province in Vietnam.

1966 – U.S. Air Force and Navy jets carry out a series of raids on fuel installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. The Dong Nam fuel dump, 15 miles northeast of Hanoi, with 9 percent of North Vietnam’s storage capacity, was struck on this day. The Do Son petroleum installation, 12 miles southeast of Haiphong, would be attacked on July 3rd. The raids continued for two more days, as petroleum facilities near Haiphong, Thanh Hoa, and Vinh were bombed, and fuel tanks in the Hanoi area were hit. These raids were part of Operation Rolling Thunder, which had begun in March 1965.

The attacks on the North Vietnamese fuel facilities represented a new level of bombing, since these sites had been previously off limits. However, the raids did not have a lasting impact because China and the Soviet Union replaced the destroyed petroleum assets fairly quickly. China reacted to these events by calling the bombings “barbarous and wanton acts that have further freed us from any bounds of restrictions in helping North Vietnam.” The World Council of Churches in Geneva sent a cable to President Lyndon B. Johnson saying that the latest bombing of North Vietnam was causing a “widespread reaction” of “resentment and alarm” among many Christians. Indian mobs protested the air raids on the Hanoi-Haiphong area with violent anti-American demonstrations in Delhi and several other cities.

1968 – The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

1972 – Date of rank of Rear Admiral Samuel Lee Gravely, Jr., who was first U.S. Navy Admiral of African-American descent.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:55 am
July 1st ~ {continued...)

1991 – A 14th Coast Guard District LEDET, all crewmen from the CGC Rush, deployed on board the U.S. Navy’s USS Ingersoll, made history when they seized the St. Vincent-registered M/V Lucky Star for carrying 70 tons of hashish; the largest hashish bust in Coast Guard history to date. The team, led by LTJG Mark Eyler, made the bust 600 miles west of Midway Island.

1991 – A high personnel retention level led the Commandant, ADM J. William Kime, to begin implementing a high-year tenure program, otherwise known as an “up or out” policy to “improve personnel flow and opportunities for advancement.” Two significant points of the program were that they limited enlisted careers to 30 years of active service and established “professional growth points” for pay grades E-4 through E-9, which had to be attained in order to remain on active duty. Up until this time, enlisted members could remain on active duty until age 62 — the only U.S. military work force with that option.

1992 – UNSCOM begins the destruction of large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and production facilities.

1993 – The space shuttle Endeavour returned from a 10-day mission.

1995 – As a result of UNSCOM’s investigations, Iraq admits for the first time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program, but denies weaponization.

1996 – The United States rejects an Iraqi plan for distributing food and medicine under United Nations Security Council Resolution 986. It would allow Saddam Hussein’s government to evade certain sanctions as well as to give it control over distribution of supplies to separatist Kurds in northern Iraq.

1996 – Twelve members of an Arizona anti-government group, the Viper Militia, were charged with plotting to blow up government buildings. The group was infiltrated by Drew Nolan, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

2001 – In China parts of the US spy plane were flown out from Hainan Island.

2002 – Jordan reported that 11 people, including a Palestinian-Jordanian who fled the American bombing on Osama bin Laden’s stronghold in Afghanistan, have been detained in connection with an alleged plot to attack American targets.

2003 – The US planned to suspend $48 million in aid to some 35 countries for failing to meet this day’s deadline for exempting Americans from prosecution before the new UN int’l. war crimes tribunal.

2004 – The US Coast Guard began boarding foreign vessels as int’l. security rules went into effect.

2004 – Historic Afghan elections scheduled for September were delayed because of wrangling among officials and political parties.

2004 – A defiant Saddam Hussein rejected charges of war crimes and genocide in a court appearance, telling a judge “this is all theater, the real criminal is Bush.”

2004 – In Iraq US jets pounded a suspected safehouse of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah.

2006 – A Web-posted message purportedly written by Osama bin Laden urged Somalis to build an Islamic state in the country and warned western states that his al-Qaeda network would fight against them if they intervened there.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:34 am
July 2nd ~

1775 – George Washington arrived in Boston and took over as commander-in-chief of the new Continental Army.

1776 – Congress passed Lee’s resolution that “these united Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States,” and then spent two days over the wording of Jefferson’s document.

1777 – Vermont became the 1st American colony to abolish slavery.

1809 – Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh calls on all Indians to unite and resist. Born around 1768 near Springfield, Ohio, Tecumseh early won notice as a brave warrior. He fought in battles between the Shawnee and the white Kentuckians, who were invading the Ohio River Valley territory. After the Americans won several important battles in the mid-1790s, Tecumseh reluctantly relocated westward but remained an implacable foe of the white men and their ways.

By the early 19th century, many Shawnee and other Ohio Valley Indians were becoming increasingly dependent on trading with the Americans for guns, cloth, and metal goods. Tecumseh spoke out against such dependence and called for a return to traditional Indian ways. He was even more alarmed by the continuing encroachment of white settlers illegally settling on the already diminished government-recognized land holdings of the Shawnee and other tribes. The American government, however, was reluctant to take action against its own citizens to protect the rights of the Ohio Valley Indians.

On this day in 1809, Tecumseh began a concerted campaign to persuade the Indians of the Old Northwest and Deep South to unite and resist. Together, Tecumseh argued, the various tribes had enough strength to stop the whites from taking further land. Heartened by this message of hope, Indians from as far away as Florida and Minnesota heeded Tecumseh’s call. By 1810, he had organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa, and Wyandot nations. For several years, Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region.

In 1811, however, the future president William Henry Harrison led an attack on the confederacy’s base on the Tippecanoe River. At the time, Tecumseh was in the South attempting to convince more tribes to join his movement. Although the battle of Tippecanoe was close, Harrison finally won out and destroyed much of Tecumseh’s army. When the War of 1812 began the following year, Tecumseh immediately marshaled what remained of his army to aid the British.

Commissioned a brigadier general, he proved an effective ally and played a key role in the British capture of Detroit and other battles. When the tide of war turned in the American favor, Tecumseh’s fortunes went down with those of the British. On October 5, 1813, he was killed during Battle of the Thames. His Ohio Valley Confederacy and vision of Indian unity died with him.

1862 – Lincoln signed an act granting land for state agricultural colleges.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:35 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1862 – Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough’s fleet covered the withdrawal of General McClellan’s army after a furious battle with Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee at Malvern Hill. Dependent on the Navy for his movement to Harrison’s Landing, chosen by McClellan at Com-modore J. Rodgers recommendation because it was so situated that gunboats could protect both flanks of his army, the General acknowledged the decisive role played by the Navy in enabling his troops to withdraw with a minimum loss: “Commodore Rodgers placed his gunboats so as to protect our flanks and to command the approaches from Richmond . . . During the whole battle Commodore Rodgers added greatly to the discomfiture of the enemy by throwing shell among his reserve and advancing columns.”

The Washington National Intelligencer of 7 July described the gunboats’ part in the action at Malvern Hill: “About five o’clock in the after-noon the gunboats Galena, Aroostook, and Jacob Bell opened from Turkey Island Bend, in the James River, with shot and shell from their immense guns. The previous roar of field artillery seemed as faint as the rattle of musketry in comparison with these monsters of ordnance that literally shook the water and strained the air. . . . They fired about three times a minute, frequently a broadside at a time, and the immense hull of the Galena careened as she delivered her complement of iron and flame. The fire went on . . . making music to the ears of our tired men. . . . Confederate] ranks seemed slow to close up when the naval thunder had torn them apart. . . During the engagement at White Oak Swamp, too, the Intelligencer reported, the gunboats “are entitled to the most unbounded credit. They came into action just at the right time, and did first rate service.”

The Navy continued to safeguard the supply line until the Army of the Potomac was evacuated to northern Virginia in August, bringing to a close the unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign.

1863 – General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia attacks General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac at both Culp’s Hill and Little Round Top, but fails to move the Yankees from their positions. On the north end of the line, or the Union’s right flank, Confederates from General Richard Ewell’s corps struggled up Culp’s Hill, which was steep and heavily wooded, before being turned back by heavy Union fire.

But the most significant action was on the south end of the Union line. General James Longstreet’s corps launched an attack against the Yankees, but only after a delay that allowed additional Union troops to arrive and position themselves along Cemetery Ridge. Many people later blamed Longstreet for the Confederates’ eventual defeat. Still, the Confederates had a chance to destroy the Union left flank when General Daniel Sickles moved his corps, against Meade’s orders, from their position on the ridge to open ground around the Peach Orchard. This move separated Sickles’ force from the rest of the Union army, and Longstreet attacked.

Although the Confederates were able to take the Peach Orchard, they were repulsed by Yankee opposition at Little Round Top. Some of the fiercest fighting took place on this day, and both armies suffered heavy casualties. Lee’s army regrouped that evening and planned for one last assault against the Union center on July 3rd. That attack, Pickett’s charge, would represent the high tide of Confederate fortunes.

1864 – General Early and Confederate forces reached Winchester.

1864 – Congress passes the Wade-Davis Bill, requiring a majority of a seceded state’s white citizens to take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and guarantee black equality, but President Abraham Lincoln pocket vetoes the harsh plan for dealing with the defeated Confederate states.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:37 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1881 – Only four months into his administration, President James A. Garfield is shot as he walks through a railroad waiting room in Washington, D.C. His assailant, Charles J. Guiteau, was a disgruntled and perhaps insane office seeker who had unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the U.S. consul in Paris. The president was shot in the back and the arm, and Guiteau was arrested. Garfield, mortally ill, was treated in Washington and then taken to the seashore at Elberon, New Jersey, where he attempted to recuperate with his family.

During this time, Vice President Chester A. Arthur served as acting president. On September 19, 1881, after 80 days, President Garfield died of blood poisoning. The following day, Arthur was inaugurated as the 21st president of the United States. Garfield had three funerals: one in Elberon; another in Washington, where his body rested in state in the Capitol for three days; and a third in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was buried. Charles Guiteau’s murder trial began in November, and in January 1882 he was found guilty and sentenced to death. In June 1882, he was hanged at his jail in Washington.

1915 – A bomb planted by a German professor from Harvard University, Erich Muenter, destroys a reception room in the Senate. The Senate had been out of session since the previous March and was not due to reconvene until December, Muenter headed for the Senate Chamber. Finding the chamber doors locked, he decided that the adjacent Senate Reception Room would serve his purposes. He worked quickly, placing his deadly package under the Senate’s telephone switchboard, whose operator had left for the holiday weekend.

After setting the timing mechanism for a few minutes before midnight to minimize casualties, he walked to Union Station and purchased a ticket for the midnight train to New York City. At 20 minutes before midnight, as he watched from the station, a thunderous explosion rocked the Capitol. The blast nearly knocked Capitol police officer Frank Jones from his chair at the Senate wing’s east front entrance. Ten minutes earlier, the lucky Jones had closed a window next to the switchboard.

A 30-year police veteran, the officer harbored a common fear that one day the Capitol dome would fall into the rotunda. For a few frantic moments, he believed that day had come. Jones then entered the Reception Room and observed its devastation—a shattered mirror, broken window glass, smashed chandeliers, and pulverized plaster from the frescoed ceiling. In a letter to the Washington Evening Star, published after the blast, Muenter attempted to explain his outrageous act. Writing under an assumed name, he hoped that the detonation would “make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war. This explosion is an exclamation point in my appeal for peace.”

The former German professor was particularly angry with American financiers who were aiding Great Britain against Germany in World War I, despite this country’s official neutrality in that conflict. Arriving in New York City early the next morning, Muenter headed for the Long Island estate of J. P. Morgan, Jr. Morgan’s company served as Great Britain’s principal U.S. purchasing agent for munitions and other war supplies. When Morgan came to the door, Muenter pulled a pistol, shot him, and fled. The financier’s wounds proved superficial and the gunman was soon captured. In jail, on July 6th, Muenter took his own life.

1923 – Commissioning of Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC.

1926 – The U.S. Army Air Corps was created by Congress.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:39 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1926 – The Distinguished Flying Cross was established in the Air Corps Act (Act of Congress, Public Law No. 446, 69th Congress). This act provided for award “to any person, while serving in any capacity with the Air Corps of the Army of the United States, including the National Guard and the Organized Reserves, or with the United States Navy, since the 6th day of April 1917, has distinguished, or who, after the approval of this Act, distinguishes himself by heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight.”

1926 – An Act of Congress (Public Law 446-69th Congress (44 Stat. 780)) which established the Soldier’s Medal for acts of heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy. The Secretary of War directed that the Quartermaster General prepare and submit appropriate designs of the Soldier’s Medal per letter signed by The Adjutant General dated 11 August 1926.

1937 – CGC Itasca, while conducting re-supply operations in the Central Pacific, made the last-known radio contact with Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan. Itasca later joined the Navy-directed search for the aircraft. The search was finally called off on 17 July with no trace of the aircraft having been found.

1941 – The US authorities very soon know of a Japanese determination to attempt to seize bases in Indonesia even if it should precipitate war through their code-breaking service which has managed to work out the key to the major Japanese diplomatic code and some other minor operational codes. The information gained from the diplomatic code is circulated under the code name Magic.

1943 – The American buildup on Rendova Island continues but the Japanese garrison continues to resist. During the night a Japanese naval force bombards the American positions with little effect.

1943 – The U.S. Army Air Corps 99th Fighter Squadron, the first of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen to see combat, had been based in Africa for four months when they were assigned to escort 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers on a routine mission over Sicilian targets. Lieutenant Charles B. Hall of Brazil, Indiana became the first Tuskegee Airman to score a confirmed kill when he shot down a German fighter plane.

1944 – There are Allied landing on Numfoor Island. About 7100 troops, including elements of the US 168th Infantry Division and Australian forces, under the command of US General Patrick establish a beachhead on the north coast near Kamiri Airfield. There is no Japanese resistance. Admiral Fechteler commands the naval support with US Task Force 74 and TF75 providing escort and a preliminary bombardment. On Biak Island, remnants of the Japanese force continue to resist.

1944 – On Saipan, American forces conduct a general advance. Garapan village is overrun.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:41 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1944 – As part of Operation Gardening, the British and American strategy to lay mines in the Danube River by dropping them from the air, American aircraft also drop bombs and leaflets on German-occupied Budapest. Hungarian oil refineries and storage tanks, important to the German war machine, were destroyed by the American air raid. Along with this fire from the sky, leaflets threatening “punishment” for those responsible for the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz were also dropped on Budapest.

The U.S. government wanted the SS and Hitler to know it was watching. Admiral Miklas Horthy, regent and virtual dictator of Hungary, vehemently anticommunist and afraid of Russian domination, had aligned his country with Hitler, despite the fact that he little admired him. But he, too, demanded that the deportations cease, especially since special pleas had begun pouring in from around the world upon the testimonies of four escaped Auschwitz prisoners about the atrocities there.

Hitler, fearing a Hungarian rebellion, stopped the deportations on July 8th. Horthy would eventually try to extricate himself from the war altogether-only to be kidnapped by Hitler’s agents and consequently forced to abdicate. One day after the deportations stopped, a Swedish businessman, Raoul Wallenberg, having convinced the Swedish Foreign Ministry to send him to the Hungarian capital on a diplomatic passport, arrived in Budapest with 630 visas for Hungarian Jews, prepared to take them to Sweden to save them from further deportations.

1945 – The submarine USS Barb fires rockets on Kaihyo Island, off the east coast of Karafuto (Sakhalin) Island. It is the first American underwater craft to fire rockets in shore bombardment. Meanwhile, Japanese sources report that only 200,000 people remain in Tokyo. All others have been evacuated to safer areas. The Japanese claim that some 5 million civilians have been killed or wounded by American fire-bombs.

1946 – Establishment of VX-3 to evaluate adaptability of helicopters to naval purposes.

1947 – Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov walks out of a meeting with representatives of the British and French governments, signaling the Soviet Union’s rejection of the Marshall Plan. Molotov’s action indicated that Cold War frictions between the United States and Russia were intensifying.

In the following weeks, the Soviet Union pressured its Eastern European allies to reject all Marshall Plan assistance. That pressure was successful and none of the Soviet satellites participated in the Marshall Plan. The Soviet press claimed that the American program was “a plan for interference in the domestic affairs of other countries.” The United States ignored the Soviet action and, in 1948, officially established the Marshall Plan and began providing funds to other European nations.

Publicly, U.S. officials argued that the Soviet stance was another indication that Russia intended to isolate Eastern Europe from the West and enforce its communist and totalitarian doctrines in that region. From the Soviet perspective, however, its refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan indicated its desire to remain free from American “economic imperialism” and domination.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:42 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1947 – An object crashed near Roswell, N.M. The Army Air Force later insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.

1950 – USS Juneau and 2 British ships sink 5 of 6 attacking North Korean torpedo boats and gunboats. This is the only significant naval engagement of the Korean War.

1950 – The Royal Australian Air Force 77 Squadron began flying F-51 Mustang missions in Korea.

1951 – The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division launched Operation DOUGHNUT, a series of attacks directed against hills in the Iron Triangle.

1957 – The Seawolf, the 1st submarine powered by liquid metal cooled reactor, was completed.

1957 – Grayback, the 1st submarine designed to fire guided missiles, was launched.

1959 – Wendy B. Lawrence, USN Lt Commander, astronaut, was born in Jacksonville, Fla.

1961 – Hanoi captures at least three members of Lansdale’s US-trained First Observation Group when their US C-47 aircraft goes down, whether by enemy fire or due to engine trouble remains unknown.

1964 – At a joint news conference, Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois) and House Republican leader Charles Halleck (Indiana) say that the Vietnam War will be a campaign issue because “Johnson’s indecision has made it one.” President Lyndon B. Johnson had assumed office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Kennedy had supported Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam, who was assassinated during a coup just before Kennedy was killed.

The deaths of both Diem and Kennedy provided an opportunity for the new administration to undertake a reassessment of U.S. policy toward Vietnam, but this was not done. Johnson, who desperately wanted to push a set of social reforms called the Great Society, was instead forced to focus on the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam. Caught in a dilemma, he later wrote: “If I…let the communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere in the entire globe.” Faced with having to do something about Vietnam, Johnson vacillated as he and his advisers attempted to devise a viable course of action.

The situation changed in August 1964 when North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers off the coast of North Vietnam. What became known as the Tonkin Gulf incident led to the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which passed 416 to 0 in the House, and 88 to 2 in the Senate. This resolution, which gave the president approval to “take all necessary measures to repel an armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression,” provided the legal basis for President Johnson to initiate a major commitment of U.S. troops to South Vietnam, which ultimately totaled more than 540,000 by 1968.

1967 – The U.S. Marine Corps launched Operation Buffalo in response to the North Vietnamese Army’s efforts to seize the Marine base at Con Thien.

1967 – During Operation Bear Claw, Seventh Fleet Amphibious Force conducts helicopter assault 12 miles inland at Con Thien.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:44 am
July 2nd ~ {continued...}

1993 – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, some of whose followers were accused in the bombing of the World Trade Center, surrendered to immigration officials in New York City.

1996 – US federal officials announced the arrest of 12 members of a militia unit, called Viper Militia, that had planned to bomb government offices in the Phoenix area. On Dec 19 two members pleaded guilty to explosives and weapons charges. On Dec 27 three more members pleaded guilty.

1997 – The US began a round of underground nuclear weapons-related tests in Nevada.

1997 – A federal judge in New York ruled that the military policy, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” is unconstitutional and only serves to cater to the biases of many heterosexuals.

1998 – Apologizing to viewers and Vietnam veterans for “serious faults” in its reporting, Cable News Network retracted a story alleging U.S. commandos had used nerve gas to kill American defectors during the war.

2002 – Philippine Vice President Teofisto Guingona resigned as foreign minister, settling but perhaps not ending a public row with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo over U.S. military exercises in the south of the country.

2014 – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the new Islamic State, said that Muslims should unite to capture Rome in order to “own the world”. He called on Muslims the world over to unite behind him as their leader.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:08 pm
July 3rd ~

1775 – On Cambridge common in Massachusetts, George Washington rides out in front of the American troops gathered there, draws his sword, and formally takes command of the Continental Army. Washington, a prominent Virginia planter and veteran of the French and Indian War, was appointed commander in chief by the Continental Congress two weeks before. In serving the American colonies in their war for independence, he declined to accept payment for his services beyond reimbursement of future expenses.

George Washington was born in 1732 to a farm family in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His first direct military experience came as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia colonial militia in 1754, when he led a small expedition against the French in the Ohio River valley on behalf of the governor of Virginia. Two years later, Washington took command of the defenses of the western Virginian frontier during the French and Indian War. After the war’s fighting moved elsewhere, he resigned from his military post, returned to a planter’s life, and took a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses. During the next two decades, Washington openly opposed the escalating British taxation and repression of the American colonies.

In 1774, he represented Virginia at the Continental Congress. After the American Revolution erupted in 1775, Washington was nominated to be commander in chief of the newly established Continental Army. Some in the Continental Congress opposed his appointment, thinking other candidates were better equipped for the post, but he was ultimately chosen because as a Virginian his leadership helped bind the Southern colonies more closely to the rebellion in New England. With his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers, General Washington led an effective war of harassment against British forces in America while encouraging the intervention of the French into the conflict on behalf of the colonists.

On October 19, 1781, with the surrender of British General Charles Lord Cornwallis’ massive British army at Yorktown, Virginia, General Washington had defeated one of the most powerful nations on earth. After the war, the victorious general retired to his estate at Mount Vernon, but in 1787 he heeded his nation’s call and returned to politics to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and in February 1789 Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the United States. 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 un-trodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term. He died in 1799.

1778 – The Wyoming Massacre occurred during the American Revolution in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. As part of a British campaign against settlers in the frontier during the war, 360 American settlers, including women and children, were killed at an outpost called Wintermoot’s Fort after they were drawn out of the protection of the fort and ambushed.

1844 – Ambassador Caleb Cushing successfully negotiated a commercial treaty with China that opened five Chinese ports to U.S. merchants and protected the rights of American citizens in China.

1861 – US Colonel Jackson received his CSA commission as brigadier general.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:09 pm
July 3rd ~ {continued...}

1863 – Troops under Confederate General George Pickett begin a massive attack against the center of the Union lines at Gettysburg on the climactic third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the largest engagement of the war. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia encountered George Meade’s Army of the Potomac in Pennsylvania and battered the Yankees for two days. The day before Pickett’s charge, the Confederates had hammered each flank of the Union line but could not break through.

Now, on July 3rd, Lee decided to attack the Union center, stationed on Cemetery Ridge, after making another unsuccessful attempt on the Union right flank at Culp’s Hill in the morning. The majority of the force consisted of Pickett’s division, but there were other units represented among the 15,000 attackers. After a long Confederate artillery bombardment, the Rebel force moved through the open field and up the slight rise of Cemetery Ridge. But by the time they reached the Union line, the attack had been broken into many small units, and they were unable to penetrate the Yankee center.

The failed attack effectively ended the battle of Gettysburg. On July 4th, Lee began to withdraw his forces to Virginia. The casualties for both armies were staggering. Lee lost 28,000 of his 75,000 soldiers, and Union losses stood at over 22,000. It was the last time Lee threatened Northern territory.

1863 – Major General Grant and Lieutenant General Pemberton, CSA, the gallant and tireless commander of the Vicksburg defenses, arranged an armistice to negotiate the terms of capitulation of the citadel. Only with the cessation of hostilities did the activity of the fleet under Rear Admiral Porter come to a halt off Vicksburg.

1863 – Battle of Donaldsonville, LA.

1864 – Battle of Chattahoochee River, GA, began and lasted until July 9th.

1864 – At Harpers Ferry, WV, Federals evacuated in face of Early’s advance.

1890 – Idaho, the last of the 50 states to be explored by whites, is admitted to the union. Exploration of the North American continent mostly proceeded inward from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and northward from Spanish Mexico. Therefore, the rugged territory that would become Idaho long remained untouched by Spanish, French, British, and American trappers and explorers. Even as late as 1805, Idaho Indians like the Shoshone had never encountered a white man.

That changed with the arrival of the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the summer of 1805. Searching for a route over the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, Lewis and Clark traveled through Idaho with the aid of the Shoshone Indians and their horses. British fur traders and trappers followed a few years later, as did missionaries and a few hardy settlers. As with many remote western states, large-scale settlement began only after gold was discovered.

Thousands of miners rushed into Idaho when word of a major gold strike came in September 1860. Merchants and farmers followed, eager to make their fortunes “mining the miners.” By 1880, Idaho boasted a population of 32,610. In the southern section of the territory, many settlers were Mormons who had been dispatched from Salt Lake City to found new colonies.

Increasingly, Idaho territory became divided between a Mormon-dominated south and an anti-Mormon north. In the mid-1880s, anti-Mormon Republicans used widespread public antipathy toward the Mormon practice of polygamy to pass legislation denying the predominantly Democratic Mormons the vote. With the Democratic Mormon vote disarmed, Idaho became a Republican-dominated territory.

National Republicans eager to increase their influence in the U.S. Congress began to push for Idaho statehood in 1888. The following year, the Idaho territorial legislature approved a strongly anti-Mormon constitution. The U.S. Congress approved the document on this day in 1890, and Idaho became the 43rd state in the Union.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:11 pm
July 3rd ~ {continued...}

1898 – The Spanish cruisers Cristóbal Colón, Almirante Oquendo, Vizcaya and Infanta Maria Teresa, and two torpedo-boat destroyers, lay bottled up in Santiago Harbor, with seven American ships maintaining a blockade just outside. Without warning, the Spanish squadron attempted to break out, and the Americans attacked, sinking one torpedo boat and immediately running the other aground. The Americans gave chase to Oquendo, Vizcaya and Colón. After a brief battle, all the Spanish warships were overtaken, with only two American causalities, both from the U.S. armored cruiser Brooklyn.

1903 – The first cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila. Teddy Roosevelt placed the atoll of Midway Island under Navy supervision. The Commercial Pacific Cable Co. (later AT&T) set cable across the Pacific via Midway Island and the first around the world message was sent. The message took 9 minutes to circle the globe.

1905 – An Executive Order extended the jurisdiction of the Lighthouse Service to the noncontiguous territory of the American Samoan Island.

1915 – US military forces occupied Haiti, and remained until 1934.

1927 – Ensign Charles L. Duke, in command of CG-2327, boarded the rumrunner Greypoint in New York harbor and single-handedly captured the vessel, its 22-man crew, and its cargo of illegal liquor.

1930 – Congress created the U.S. Veterans Administration.

1943 – During the day, the Australians link up with the Americans from the Nassau Bay landing force in the Bitoi River region.

1943 – On New Georgia, American forces land at Zanana, about 8 miles east of Munda. There is no Japanese resistance and the beachhead is quickly consolidated.

1944 – Forces of the US 1st Army launch an offensive drive south from the Cotentin Peninsula with the objective of reaching a line from Coutances to St. Lo. The difficult terrain and poor weather contribute to a limited advance during the day toward St. Jean de Daye and La Haye du Puits. German forces resist.

1944 – Troops of the French Expeditionary Corps (part of US 5th Army) capture Siena. Other elements of the 5th Army reach Rosignano. Forces of the British 8th Army take Cortona.

1945 – The first American occupation troops arrive in Berlin. Meanwhile, Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, nominated by Hitler in 1940 to be Gauleiter of Britain, is captured by Allied troops.

1945 – American B-29 bombers attack Himeji, on Honshu, and the towns of Takamatsu, Tokushima and Kochi, on Shikoku Island, to the south of Honshu.

1947 – Soviet Union didn’t partake in the Marshall Plan.

1950 – USS Valley Forge and HMS Triumph participate in first carrier action of Korean Conflict. VF-51 aircraft (Valley Forge) shoot down 2 North Korean aircraft. The action is first combat test of F9F Panther and AD Skyraider.

1950 – Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Leonard H. Plog, flying a F9F Panther jet fighter, shot down a Yak-9P, claiming the first U.S. Navy aerial victory of the Korean War.
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