** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

January 26th ~ {continued...}

1904 – The emperor of Addis Ababa, Abyssinia, decorated Marine Captain G. C. Thorpe for escorting diplomats 500 miles through the desert.

1911 – Glenn Curtiss piloted the 1st successful hydroplane in San Diego to and from the battleship USS Pennsylvania.

1913 – The body of John Paul Jones is laid in its final resting place in the Chapel of Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD.

1939 – During the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona, the Republican capital of Spain, falls to the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco. In 1931, King Alfonso XIII approved elections to decide the government of Spain, and voters overwhelmingly chose to abolish the monarchy in favor of a liberal republic. Alfonso subsequently went into exile, and the Second Republic, initially dominated by middle-class liberals and moderate socialists, was proclaimed.

During the first five years of the republic, organized labor and leftist radicals forced widespread liberal reforms as independence-minded Spanish regions such as Catalonia and the Basque provinces achieved virtual autonomy. The landed aristocracy, the church, and a large military clique increasingly employed violence in their opposition to the Second Republic, and in July 1936, General Francisco Franco led a right-wing army revolt in Morocco, which prompted the division of Spain into two key camps: the Nationalists and the Republicans. Franco’s Nationalist forces rapidly overran much of the Republican-controlled areas in central and northern Spain, and Catalonia became a key Republican stronghold.

During 1937, Franco unified the Nationalist forces under the command of the Falange, Spain’s fascist party, while the Republicans fell under the sway of the communists. Germany and Italy aided Franco with an abundance of planes, tanks, and arms, while the Soviet Union aided the Republican side. In addition, small numbers of communists and other radicals from France, the USSR, America, and elsewhere formed the International Brigades to aid the Republican cause.

The most significant contribution of these foreign units was the successful defense of Madrid until the end of the war. In June 1938, the Nationalists drove to the Mediterranean Sea and cut the Republicans’ territory in two. Later in the year, Franco mounted a major offensive against Catalonia. In January 1939, its capital, Barcelona, was captured, and soon after the rest of Catalonia fell. With their cause all but lost, the Republicans attempted to negotiate a peace, but Franco refused.
On March 28, 1939, the victorious Nationalists entered Madrid, and the bloody Spanish Civil War came to an end. Up to a million lives were lost in the conflict, the most devastating in Spanish history.

1940 - The American-Japanese Treaty of Navigation and Commerce is allowed to lapse because the US government refuses to negotiate in protest against Japanese aggression in China.

1942 – The first American expeditionary force to go to Europe during World War II went ashore in Northern Ireland.

1942 – The Board of Inquiry established to investigate Pearl Harbor find Admiral Kimmel, (then Commander in Chief, US Fleet) and General Short (then Commander in Chief, Hawaii Department) guilty of dereliction of duty. Both have already been dismissed.

1943 – The first OSS (Office of Strategic Services) agent parachutes behind Japanese lines in Burma. OSS’s Detachment 101 came perhaps the closest to realizing General William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s original vision of “strategic” support to regular combat operations. Under the initial leadership of “the most dangerous colonel,” Carl Eifler, Detachment 101 took time to develop its capabilities and relationships with native guides and agents.

Within a year, however, the Detachment and its thousands of cooperating Kachin tribesmen were gleaning valuable intelligence from jungle sites behind Japanese lines. With barely 120 Americans at any one time, the unit eventually recruited almost 11,000 native Kachins to fight the Japanese occupiers. When Allied troops invaded Burma in 1944, Detachment 101 teams advanced well ahead of the combat formations, gathering intelligence, sowing rumors, sabotaging key installations, rescuing downed Allied fliers, and snuffing out isolated Japanese positions. Detachment 101 received the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation for its service in the 1945 offensive that liberated Rangoon.

1944 – The forces of US 5th Army continue their offensive. The Free French Corps captures Colle Belvedere and advance toward Monte Abate. The US 2nd Corps establishes a bridgehead over the Rapido River.

1944 – On New Britain, there is a heavy bombing raid on the Japanese base at Rabaul, by US aircraft. Many Japanese planes are claimed to be shot down.

1945 – Units of US 3rd Army in the Ardennes have now crossed the Clerf River in several areas and are attacking all along the front of US 3rd and 12th Corps.

January 26th ~ {continued...}

1945 – American Lt. Audie Murphy, is wounded in France. Born the son of Texas sharecroppers on June 20, 1924, Murphy served three years of active duty, beginning as a private, rising to the rank of staff sergeant, and finally winning a battlefield commission to 2nd lieutenant. He was wounded three times, fought in nine major campaigns across Europe, and was credited with killing 241 Germans. He won 37 medals and decorations, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star (with oak leaf cluster), the Legion of Merit, and the Croix de Guerre (with palm).

The battle that won Murphy the Medal of Honor, and which ended his active duty, occurred during the last stages of the Allied victory over the Germans in France. Murphy acted as cover for infantrymen during a last desperate German tank attack. Climbing atop an abandoned U.S. tank destroyer, he took control of its .50-caliber machine gun and killed 50 Germans, stopping the advance but suffering a leg wound in the process. Upon returning to the States, Murphy was invited to Hollywood by Jimmy Cagney, who saw the war hero’s picture on the cover of Life magazine.

By 1950, Murphy won an acting contract with Universal Pictures. In his most famous role, he played himself in the monumentally successful To Hell and Back. Perhaps as interesting as his film career was his public admission that he suffered severe depression from post traumatic stress syndrome, also called battle fatigue, and became addicted to sleeping pills as a result. This had long been a taboo subject for veterans. Murphy died in a plane crash while on a business trip in 1971. He was 46.

1949 – USS Norton Sound, first guided-missile ship, launches first guided missile, Loon.

1951 – U.S. warships bombarded Inchon for the second time during the war. The first was during the initial allied invasion, Sept. 15, 1950.

1951 – Far East Air Forces flew its first C-47 “control aircraft”, loaded with enough communications equipment to connect by radio all T-6 Mosquitoes, tactical air control parties, and the Tactical Air Control Center. This was the harbinger of today’s warning and control aircraft.

1952 – A rescue helicopter, behind enemy lines near the coastline of the Yellow Sea, received small arms fire while rescuing an F-84 pilot, Capt. A.T.Thawley.

1953 – Surface ships blasted coastal targets as the USS Missouri completed a 46-hour bombardment of Songjin.

1953 – The last F4U Corsair rolled off the Chance Vought Aircraft Company production line. Despite the dawning of the jet age, this World War II fighter remained in production due to its vital close-air support role in the Korean War. Almost 12,000 Corsairs were produced in various models.

1954 – The Senate consents to a defense treaty between the US and South Korea.

1962 – The United States launched Ranger 3 to land scientific instruments on the moon, but the probe missed its target by some 22,000 miles.

1970 – U.S. Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. spends his 2,000th day in captivity in Southeast Asia. First taken prisoner when his plane was shot down on August 5, 1964, he became the longest-held POW in U.S. history. Alvarez was downed over Hon Gai during the first bombing raids against North Vietnam in retaliation for the disputed attack on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

Alvarez was released in 1973 after spending over eight years in captivity, the first six months as the only American prisoner in North Vietnam. From the first day of his captivity, he was shackled, isolated, nearly starved, and brutally tortured. Although he was among the more junior-rank prisoners of war, his courageous conduct under horrendous conditions and treatment helped establish the model emulated by the many other POWs that later joined him. After retirement from the Navy, he served as deputy director of the Peace Corps and deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration during the Reagan administration.

1972 – Radio Hanoi announces North Vietnam’s rejection of the latest U.S. peace proposal. Revealing more details of the secret Paris peace talks, Henry Kissinger responds publicly, condemning the North Vietnamese announcement and criticizing Hanoi’s nine-point counter-proposal, which had been submitted during the secret talks. Kissinger took exception with the communist insistence on the end of all U.S. support for the South Vietnamese government. The communists maintained that “withdrawal” meant not only withdrawal of U.S. troops, but also the removal of all U.S. equipment, aid, and arms in the possession of the South Vietnamese army. Kissinger asserted that the abrupt removal of all U.S. aid would guarantee the collapse of the Saigon regime. With the peace talks at a virtual impasse, the North Vietnamese leadership decided to launch a massive invasion of South Vietnam in March 1972.

January 26th ~ {continued...}

1980 – At the request of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. Olympic Committee votes to ask the International Olympic Committee to cancel or move the upcoming Moscow Olympics. The action was in response to the Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan the previous month.

1990 – Attorneys for Manuel Noriega challenged the jurisdiction of U.S. courts to try the deposed Panamanian leader on drug-trafficking charges, and said Noriega should be declared a prisoner of war.

1991 – Upon receiving a request from the Saudi government, the Bush Administration determined that the Coast Guard would head an interagency team that will assist the Saudi government in an oil spill assessment and plan for a clean-up operation.

1993 – A Marine is KIA by sniper fire in Mogadishu.

1999 – Some 700 US troops were ordered by NATO to be pulled from Bosnia in a 10% force reduction.

1999 – US jets again fired on air-defense sites in Iraq and Pres. Clinton approved more aggressive rules of engagement.

2000 – The U.N. Security Council reaches agreement on the appointment of Hans Blix of Sweden, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA), to lead UNMOVIC.

2001 – President Bush renewed his pledge to build a missile defense system and to reduce the nuclear arsenal.

2002 – IAEA inspectors in Iraq verified presence of nuclear material.

2003 – Secretary of State Colin Powell, citing Iraq’s lack of cooperation with U.N. inspectors, said he’d lost faith in the inspectors’ ability to conduct a definitive search for banned weapons programs.

2004 – President Hamid Karzai signed Afghanistan’s new constitution into law, putting into force a charter meant to reunite his war-shattered nation.

2005 – A US military transport helicopter crashed in bad weather in Iraq’s western desert, killing 31 people, all believed to be Marines.

2005 – After being incarcerated without trial for almost three years, the four British detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar, are free to go home, having been released without charge by the UK government.

2015 – The U.S. Secret Service recovers a flying drone from the lawn at the White House.

2015 – The US FBI arrests three alleged Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spies working in the United States. The three men sought secrets about US economic plans and proposed sanctions against Moscow.

2015 – The US Eastern District Court of Virginia convicts a disgruntled former CIA officer, Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, of leaking secrets to a reporter. All nine charges he faced stem from a secret CIA mission to derail Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

January 27th ~

1776 – Henry Knox’s “noble train of artillery” arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Knox Expedition, was an expedition led by Continental Army Colonel Henry Knox to transport heavy weaponry that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga to the Continental Army camps outside Boston, Massachusetts during the winter of 1775–1776.

Knox went to Ticonderoga in November 1775, and, over the course of 3 winter months, moved 60 tons of cannons and other armaments by boat, horse and ox-drawn sledges, and manpower, along poor-quality roads, across two semi-frozen rivers, and through the forests and swamps of the lightly inhabited Berkshires to the Boston area.

Historian Victor Brooks has called Knox’s exploit “one of the most stupendous feats of logistics” of the entire American War of Independence. The route by which Knox moved the weaponry is now known as the Henry Knox Trail, and the states of New York and Massachusetts have erected markers along the route.

1778 – Marines landed at New Providence, Bahamas; the American flag flew over foreign soil for the first time. The first American soldiers sent forth from the fledgling nation’s shores were a detachment of Marines. That amphibious raid–the first in what remains today a Marine specialty–aimed to seize guns and gunpowder from a British fort.

1787 – General Benjamin Lincoln arrives in Springfield Massachusetts and moves on to drive Shays’ rebels northward.

1814 – Congress authorizes a United States Army of 62,773 men. To this time the effective strength of the army had been about 11,000 regulars. Secretary of War John Armstrong divides the US into nine military districts and he will go on to remove such ineffectual leaders form command as General James Wilkenson and General Wade Hampton for their part in their failure to take Montreal.

1823 – President James Monroe appointed 1st US ambassadors to South America.

1825 – Congress approved Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the “Trail of Tears.”

1837 – Marines fought in the Battle of Hatchee-Lustee (Muskogee for “Black Creek”), which is today Reedy Creek, Florida. A combined force under General Jesup of Army and Marines attacked a large Seminole village and captured or drove off the inhabitants.

1862 – President Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1, ordering all land and sea forces to advance on February 22, 1862. This bold move sent a message to his commanders that the president was tired of excuses and delays in seizing the offensive against Confederate forces. The unusual order was the product of a number of factors. Lincoln had a new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who replaced the hopelessly corrupt Simon Cameron. Lincoln was much more comfortable with Stanton. The president had also been brushing up on his readings in military strategy. Lincoln felt that if enough force were brought to bear on the Confederates simultaneously, the Confederates would break. This was a simple plan that ignored a host of other factors, but Lincoln felt that if the Confederates “…weakened one to strengthen another,” the Union could step in and “seize and hold the one weakened.”

The primary reason for the order, however, was General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac in the east. McClellan had a deep contempt for Lincoln that had become increasingly apparent since Lincoln appointed McClellan in July 1861. McClellan had shown great reluctance to reveal his plans to the president, and he exhibited no signs of moving his army in the near future. Lincoln wanted to convey a sense of urgency to all the military leaders, and it worked in the West. Union armies in Tennessee began to move, and General Ulysses S. Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, respectively.

McClellan, however, did not respond. Lincoln’s order called for strict accountability for each commander who did not follow the order, but the president had to handle McClellan carefully. Because McClellan had the backing of many Democrats and he had whipped the Army of the Potomac into fine fighting shape over the winter, Lincoln had to give McClellan a chance to command in the field.

January 27th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Ironclad U.S.S. Montauk, Commander John L. Worden, and U.S.S. Seneca, Wissahickon, Dawn, and mortar schooner C. P. Williams engaged Confederate batteries at Fort McAllister, Georgia, on the Ogeechee River.

Worden was acting under orders from Rear Admiral Du Pont to test the new ironclads; though McAllister was an important objective itself, Du Pont was primarily readying his forces for the spring assault on Charleston-for the success of which the Department relied greatly on the monitor class vessels. Worden, unable to proceed within close range of the fort because of formidable sunken obstructions which “from appearances” were “protected by torpedoes,” engaged for four hours before withdrawing.

1865 – After dark, a launch commanded by Acting Ensign Thomas Morgan from U.S.S. Eutaw proceeded up the James River past the obstructions at Trent’s Reach and captured C.S.S. Scorpion. The torpedo boat had run aground during the Confederate attempt to steam downriver on the 23rd and 24th and had been abandoned after Union mortar fire destroyed C.S.S. Drewry which was similarly stranded nearby. Morgan reported: “Finding her hard aground, I immediately proceeded to get her afloat and succeeded in doing so, and re passed the obstruction on my return to the fleet about 10:30 p.m.”

Scorpion was found to be little damaged by the explosion of Drewry, contrary to Confederate estimates, and Chief Engineer Alexander Henderson, who examined her, reported approvingly: ‘she has fair speed for a boat of her kind, and is well adapted for the purpose for which she was built.” Scorpion was reported to be 46 feet in length, 6 feet 3 inches beam, and 3 feet 9 inches in depth.

1880 – Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

1900 – Hyman Rickover, American admiral the “Father of the Nuclear Navy” was born in Makow, Russia (now Poland). He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1906. He served on active duty with the United States Navy for more than 63 years, receiving exemptions from the mandatory retirement age due to his critical service in the building of the United States Navy’s nuclear surface and submarine force. He died at home in Arlington, Virginia, on July 8, 1986 and was buried in Section 5 at Arlington National Cemetery.

1900 – Foreign diplomats in Peking fear revolt and demanded that the Imperial Government discipline the Boxer Rebels.

1926 – The Senate adopts a resolution permitting the US to join the World Court of International justice, which is to be given jurisdiction over all international problems brought before it by member nations. The resolution contains five reservations. Four are accepted without question, but the fifth, pertaining to advisory opinions from the Court relating to a dispute in which the US is involved, the US will not compromise. Over the next ten years attempts to come to an agreement will fail. The US, being neither a member of the League of Nations, nor the World Court, will, nevertheless, participate in a number of international conferences and deliberations.

1935 – The League of Nations majority favored depriving Japan of mandates.

1939 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the sale of U.S. war planes to France.

1939 – First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a World War II American fighter aircraft built by Lockheed. Developed to a United States Army Air Corps requirement, the P-38 had distinctive twin booms and a single, central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament.

Named “fork-tailed devil” by the Luftwaffe and “two planes, one pilot” by the Japanese, the P-38 was used in a number of roles, including dive bombing, level bombing, ground-attack, night fighting, photo reconnaissance missions, and extensively as a long-range escort fighter when equipped with drop tanks under its wings.
The P-38 was used most successfully in the Pacific Theater of Operations and the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations as the mount of America’s top aces, Richard Bong (40 victories) and Thomas McGuire (38 victories). In the South West Pacific theater, the P-38 was the primary long-range fighter of United States Army Air Forces until the appearance of large numbers of P-51D Mustangs toward the end of the war.

The P-38 was unusually quiet for a fighter, the exhaust muffled by the turbo-superchargers. The P-38 was the only American fighter aircraft in production throughout American involvement in the war, from Pearl Harbor to Victory over Japan Day.

January 27th ~ {continued...}

1940 – The American transport City of Flint, which had been impounded by Germany, arrives back at her home port following her adventures in the Baltic.

1941 – The United States and Great Britain begin high-level military talks in Washington. They agree to a strategy for war known as the ABC-1 plan. It calls for first concentrating on defeating Germany, then taking on Japan.

1942 – USS Gudgeon is first US sub to sink enemy submarine in action, Japanese I-173.

1943 – 8th Air Force bombers, dispatched from their bases in England, fly the first American bombing raid against the Germans, targeting the Wilhelmshaven port. Of 64 planes participating in the raid, 53 reached their target and managed to shoot down 22 German planes-and lost only three planes in return.
The 8th Air Force was activated in February 1942 as a heavy bomber force based in England. Its B-17 Flying Fortresses, capable of sustaining heavy damage while continuing to fly, and its B-24 Liberators, long-range bombers, became famous for precision bombing raids, the premier example being the raid on Wilhelmshaven. Commanded at the time by Brig. Gen. Newton Longfellow, the 8th Air Force was amazingly effective and accurate, by the standards of the time, in bombing warehouses and factories in this first air attack against the Axis power.

1944 – US 5th Army continues attacks on the Gustav Line. The British 10th Corps attacks Santa Maria Infante. The US 34th Division (part of 2nd Corps) captures Monte Maiola and Caira to the north of Cassino. The Free French Corps near Monte Abate is pushed by German counterattacks.

1944 – The Cape Gloucester beachhead, on New Britain, is expanded to the northwest by US marine regimental forces.

1944 – The governments of Australia, Britain and the United States protest the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war. They indicate a determination to investigate and punish those responsible.

1945 – Commissioning of USS Higbee (DD-806), first U.S. Navy ship named after a female member of U.S. Navy.

1945 – The Ledo Road to China is finally cleared when Chinese troops from Burma and Yunnan province link up near Mongyu. General Sultan, who leads the British, American and Chinese in the area, has in fact announced the road as open on January 22nd. Sultan’s forces are now moving south toward Mandalay and Lashio by several routes.

1945 – The US 32nd Infantry Division lands at Lingayen Gulf to reinforce the American troops there.

1945 – Troops from US 3rd Army cross the Our River and take Oberhausen. The gains made by the German Ardennes offensive are now almost completely eliminated.

1951 – Forcefully marking the continued importance of the West in the development of nuclear weaponry, the government detonates the first of a series of nuclear bombs at its new Nevada test site. Although much of the West had long lagged behind the rest of the nation in technological and industrial development, the massive World War II project to build the first atomic bomb single-handedly pushed the region into the 20th century.

Code named the Manhattan Project, this ambitious research and development program pumped millions of dollars of federal funds into new western research centers like the bomb building lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico and the fissionable material production center at Hanford, Washington. Ironically, the very conditions that had once impeded western technological development became benefits: lots of wide-open unpopulated federal land where dangerous experiments could be conducted in secret.

After the war ended, the West continued to be the ideal region for Cold War-era nuclear experimentation for the same reasons. In December 1950, the Atomic Energy Commission designated a large swath of unpopulated desert land 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas as the Nevada Proving Ground for atmospheric atomic testing.
On January 27, 1951, the government detonated its first atomic device on the site, resulting in a tremendous explosion, the flash from which was seen as far away as San Francisco. The government continued to conduct atmospheric tests for six more years at the Nevada site. They studied the effects on humans by stationing ground troops as close as 2,500 yards from ground zero and moving them even closer shortly after the detonation.

By 1957, though, the effects of radioactivity on the soldiers and the surrounding population led the government to begin testing bombs underground, and by 1962, all atmospheric testing had ceased. In recent years, the harm caused to soldiers and westerners exposed to radioactivity from the Nevada test site has become a controversial topic. Some critics argue the government waged a “nuclear war on the West,” and maintain that the government knew of the dangers posed to people living near the test site well before the 1957 shift to underground tests. Others, though, point out that the test site has brought billions of dollars into the state and resulted in great economic benefit to Nevada.

1951 – From this period onward, the major strategic concern of the Chinese was to provide its armies with replacements and supplies. They indoctrinated communist soldiers at all echelons in the importance of logistical support. The Chinese 68th Army commander told his subordinates “The achievement of final victory lies in timely food and ammunition supply and successful transportation.”

January 27th ~ {continued...}

1953 – The Combat Cargo Command of the U.S. Air Force transported its 2,000,000th passenger to Korea after two years of operations as the Far East’s military airline.

1959 – NASA selected 110 candidates for the first U.S. space flight.

1962 – Secretary of Defense McNamara forwards a memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Kennedy which urges the deployment of US forces to Vietnam. Recapitulating the domino theory, the Joint Chiefs assert that failure to deploy now will only delay the time when it must be done, and will make the task more difficult.

1965 – Military leaders ousted the civilian government of Tran Van Huong in Saigon.

1967 – A launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral, Florida, kills astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chafee. An investigation indicated that a faulty electrical wire inside the Apollo 1 command module was the probable cause of the fire. The astronauts, the first Americans to die in a spacecraft, had been participating in a simulation of the Apollo 1 launch scheduled for the next month.

The Apollo program was initiated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) following President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 declaration of the goal of landing men on the moon and bringing them safely back to Earth by the end of the decade. The so-called “moon shot” was the largest scientific and technological undertaking in history.

In December 1968, Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to travel to the moon, and on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. walked on the lunar surface. In all, there were 17 Apollo missions and six lunar landings.

1967 – The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.

1973 – The Paris Peace Accords are signed by officials from the United States and North Vietnam, bringing an official end to America’s participation in its most unpopular foreign war. The accords did little, however, to solve the turmoil in Vietnam or to heal the terrible domestic divisions in the United States brought on by its involvement in this Cold War battleground.

Peace negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam had been ongoing since 1968. Richard Nixon was elected president that year, largely on the basis of his promise to find a way to “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Four years later, after the deaths of thousands more American servicemen, South Vietnamese soldiers, North Vietnamese soldiers, and Viet Cong fighters, the Paris Peace Accords were signed, and America’s participation in the struggle in Vietnam came to a close.

On the military side, the accords seemed straightforward enough. A cease-fire was declared, and the United States promised to remove all military forces from South Vietnam within 60 days.

For their part, the North Vietnamese promised to return all American prisoners of war within that same 60-day framework. The nearly 150,000 North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam were allowed to remain after the cease-fire.

The war against communism in Southeast Asia cost over 50,000 U.S. lives and billions of dollars, in addition to countless soldiers wounded in the line of duty. At home, the war seriously fractured the consensus about the Cold War that had been established in the period after World War II–simple appeals to fighting the red threat of communism would no longer be sufficient to move the American nation to commit its prestige, manpower, and money to foreign conflicts.

For Vietnam, the accords meant little. The cease-fire almost immediately collapsed, with recriminations and accusations flying from both sides. In 1975, the North Vietnamese launched a massive military offensive, crushed the South Vietnamese forces, and reunified Vietnam under communist rule.

1975 – A bipartisan Senate investigation of activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is launched by a special congressional committee headed by Senator Frank Church of Idaho. On November 20, the committee released its report, charging both U.S. government agencies with illegal activities. The committee reported that the FBI and the CIA had conducted illegal surveillance of several hundred thousand U.S. citizens.

The CIA was also charged with illegally plotting to assassinate foreign leaders, such as Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile. In 1973, Allende was killed in a coup that the CIA secretly helped organize. The Senate committee also reported that the CIA had maintained a secret stockpile of poisons despite a specific presidential order to destroy the substances.

1977 – Pres. Carter pardoned most Vietnam War draft evaders.

1978 – The State Supreme Court ruled that Nazis can display the Swastika in a march in Skokie, Illinois.

January 27th ~ {continued...}

1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian Caper, the popular name given to the joint covert rescue. The “caper” involved CIA agents (Tony Mendez and a man known as “Julio”) joining the six diplomats to form a fake film crew made up of six Canadians, one Irishman and one Latin American who were finishing scouting for an appropriate location to shoot a scene for the nominal science-fiction film Argo. The ruse was carried off on the morning of Sunday, January 27, 1980, at the Mehrabad Airport in Tehran. The eight Americans successfully boarded a Swissair flight to Zurich and escaped Iran.

1981 – President Reagan greeted the 52 former American hostages released by Iran, telling them during a visit to the White House: “Welcome home.”

1985 – The Cold War couldn’t stop one of the stalwarts of capitalism, Coca-Cola, from setting up shop behind the iron curtain. On January 27, 1985, Coke announced plans to sell its all-American soft drinks in the Soviet Union. With the move, Coke belatedly matched Pepsico, who, twelve years earlier, had begun distributing its colas in the U.S.S.R.

1988 – About 400 Marines and sailors from the 2d Marine Division, 2d Marine Aircraft Wing, and 2d Force Service Support Group deployed for the Persian Gulf. The Contingency Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) CM 2-88 would relieve Contingency MAGTF 1-88 in the volatile Persian Gulf and provide the effective landing force capability to Joint Task Force Middle East.

1991 – Muhammad Siyad Barre, the dictator of the Somali Democratic Republic since 1969, flees Mogadishu as rebels overrun his palace and capture the Somali capital. In 1969, Somalian President Abd-i-rashid Ali Shermarke was assassinated, and a few days later Major General Barre seized power in a military coup. Barre’s government developed strong ties with the USSR and other Soviet-bloc nations during the 1970s but in 1978 lost Soviet support when it invaded Ethiopia to regain pre-colonial Somali territory.

The attack was repelled within a year, but protracted guerrilla warfare continued into the 1980s, bolstered by U.S. support for the Somalis. Several hundred thousand refugees fled to Somalia to escape the conflict, and by the late 1980s economic depression contributed to the outbreak of civil war in Somalia. In early 1991, rebels ousted Barre after intense and bloody fighting, and Ali Mahdi Muhammad of the United Somali Congress took control of Mogadishu and the rest of southern Somalia. The Somali National Movement gained control of the north, the old British Somaliland, and proclaimed it the independent Somaliland Republic.

In 1992, civil war between the two Somalian internal clan-based fighting, and the worst African drought of the century created devastating famine, which threatened one-fourth of the Somali population with starvation. In response, troops from the United States and other U.N. nations occupied Somalia in late 1992 to ensure distribution of food aid and to suppress Somalia’s warring factions. Although many of the U.N.’s temporary humanitarian aims were achieved, the military operation was largely unsuccessful. In 1993, a national cease-fire was signed, but no central government was formed, and fighting erupted again in the same year.

1991 – Upon receiving a request from the Saudi government, the Bush Administration determines that the Coast Guard will head an interagency team that will assist the Saudi government in an oil spill assessment and plan for a clean-up operation.

1992 – Special UNSCOM Mission to secure unconditional acceptance of UNSC resolutions begins.

1994 – The US Senate passed a non-binding resolution, 62-38, calling on the Clinton administration to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.

1998 – President Clinton intensifies U.S. pressure on Iraq to open its suspect weapons sites, warning Saddam Hussein not to “defy the will of the world.”

1999 – The Clinton administration announced a plan to end fighting in Kosovo. It called for NATO air strikes if autonomy to the region is not accepted by Pres. Milosevic.

2000 – The US and China agreed to resume normal military ties.

2000 – In Iraq the execution of 26 political prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison took place. Another 13 political detainees were later reported to have died there in the last 2 months from torture neglect and malnutrition.

2002 – Cheney and Rumsfeld said al Qaeda prisoner status at Guantanamo Bay would not change to POW.

2002 – Hamid Karzai, interim Afghan leader, began a visit to the US and asked Afghan Americans to return and help with reconstruction.

2002 – Iraq admitted an int’l. nuclear-inspection team (IAEA) on a 4-day mission to a site near Baghdad.

2003 – The Bush administration moved toward a military showdown with Iraq and suggested a decision could come as early as next week after UN inspectors credited Iraq with only limited cooperation in the search for weapons. Meanwhile, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix charged that Iraq had never genuinely accepted U.N. resolutions demanding its disarmament and warned that “cooperation on substance” was necessary for a peaceful solution.

2003 – During Operation Mongoose, when a band of fighters were assaulted by U.S. forces at the Adi Ghar cave complex 15 miles (24 km) north of Spin Boldak, 18 rebels were reported killed with no U.S. casualties. The site was suspected to be a base for supplies and fighters coming from Pakistan. The first isolated attacks by relatively large Taliban bands on Afghan targets also appeared around that time.

2004 – Wartime Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic (1991-1992) pleaded guilty to persecution in a plan to ethnically cleanse parts of Croatia of non-Serbs at the outset of the Balkan wars, and expressed “a deep sense of shame” for his crimes. Babic was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

January 28th ~

1791 – Alexander Hamilton provides plans for dollar currency and US Mint. Following the Revolutionary War, the U.S. seemed as though as it would adopt copper as its coin of choice. However, various efforts to produce and standardize copper proved futile. Congress pushed on and, in 1786, signed off on Thomas Jefferson’s proposal for a dollar-driven currency.
Of course, the nation also needed to develop a means for producing this currency and on this day in 1791, Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton stepped before the House to deliver a report on the establishment of a national mint. Hamilton’s work helped pave the way for the authorization of the United States Mint on April 2, 1792.

1825 – George Edward Pickett (d.1875), Major General in the Confederate Army, was born. When blame was being sought for why his ill -fated charge was the final action of the Battle of Gettysburg, and why the Confederacy did not win the three -day battle, George Pickett suggested that “The Union Army might have had something to do with it.” Pickett had been sponsored for West Point by the Illinois congressman, Abraham Lincoln.

1828 – Confederate General Thomas Carmichael Hindman is born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Hindman was raised in Alabama and educated in New York and New Jersey. His family moved to a Mississippi plantation, and he returned from the North to study law. His studies were interrupted by service in the Mexican War, but he was admitted to the Mississippi Bar Association in 1851. He earned a reputation as an avid secessionist long before many southerners held that view. He moved to Arkansas and was elected to Congress in 1858. Hindman’s law partner was Patrick Cleburne, who also became a Confederate General.

When the war began, Hindman raised his own regiment and led it as a colonel. He was soon promoted to general and he raised an army of 18,000 from Arkansas. His tenure as commander in Arkansas was stormy. Hindman declared martial law, imposed price controls, and enforced conscription. After his force was stopped at Prairie Grove in December 1862, Hindman was reassigned to the Army of Tennessee. He fought at Chickamauga and Atlanta, and was wounded twice.

After the surrender, Hindman fled to Mexico and joined a number of Confederates there. Hindman returned to Arkansas in 1868 and dove back into politics. He led a faction that challenged the Republican Party, and, in a pragmatic political maneuver, he began working on a biracial coalition. Hindman was shot as he sat in his living room, most likely by one of his political opponents. He died on September 28, 1868.

1855 – The Panama Railway, which carried thousands of unruly miners to California via the dense jungles of Central America, dispatches its first train across the Isthmus of Panama. Even before the United States took California from Mexico in 1848 as a spoil of war, Americans heading for the West Coast by ship often cut months off their voyage by crossing the isthmus to the Pacific through Nicaragua. When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill early in 1848, the trickle of western emigrants across the narrow ribbon of land turned into a flood.

Before 1855, sea travelers not wishing to endure the long and treacherous passage around the tip of South America would disembark on the East Coast of Nicaragua. They would then proceed by light boat up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua, cross the lake in larger steamers, and complete the final overland leg of the journey via carriages. They traveled on a modern road that deposited them on the West Coast, where they boarded a steamer for San Francisco. Most of the early travelers preferred to cross the isthmus via this safe and well-planned route through Nicaragua rather than through Panama, because the latter was a dense jungle swarming with malarial mosquitoes. A glance at the map, though, showed that Panama was the narrowest barrier between the two oceans and might offer a faster crossing if properly developed.

In 1847, a group of New York financiers organized the Panama Railroad Company to do just that, and in 1850, workers began laying track through Panamanian jungle roughly along the route followed by the present canal. Completed in early 1855, the first train departed from the Atlantic side for the Pacific on January 28. A ship voyage punctuated by a brief train ride across the isthmus now became the fastest and most comfortable means of traveling to California, and tens of thousands of gold-hungry emigrants were soon racing through Panama every year.

The railroad and the California-bound emigrants proved a boon to Panama’s economy, giving rise to the prosperous new city of Colon at the Atlantic terminus, where passengers often complained about the greatly inflated prices for room and board. The Panamanians had their own complaints about the hordes of young men headed for the California gold fields, who often brought an unwelcome taste of the “Wild West” to Central America. Boredom, guns, and alcohol proved a volatile mix among the impatient travelers, and Panamanians resented the arrogant superiority and racism many of them displayed.

The traffic of freight and human beings moving both ways across the isthmus kept the Panama Railway busy until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad was completed in the United States. However, the railway continued to carry a great deal of commercial freight destined for Europe or Asia until the Panama Canal was completed in 1914.

1858 – John Brown organized a plan to raid the Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry.

1878 – The 1st telephone exchange was established at New Haven, Conn.

1885 – Lighthouse Keeper Marcus Hanna of the Cape Elizabeth Light Station saved two men from the wrecked schooner Australia. For this rescue Hanna was awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal. He was also awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Port Hudson in 1863. He is the only person to have ever received both awards.

January 28th ~ {continued...}

1909 – United States troops leave Cuba, ending direct control of that country, with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after being there since the Spanish–American War.

1914 – US Marines with British, French and German units landed in Haiti.

1915 – President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the “Act to Create the Coast Guard,” an act passed by Congress on 20 January 1915 to form the Coast Guard (38 Stat. L., 800). The Coast Guard, however, still considers the date of the founding of the Revenue Cutter Service, 4 August 1790, as its “official” birthday, even though the Lighthouse Service, absorbed in 1939, is even older than that, dating to 7 August 1789.

The Coast Guard is the amalgamation of five Federal agencies. These agencies, the Revenue Cutter Service, the Lighthouse Service, the Steamboat Inspection Service, the Bureau of Navigation, and the Lifesaving Service, were originally independent, but had overlapping authorities and were shuffled around the government. They sometimes received new names, and they were all finally united under the umbrella of the Coast Guard. The multiple missions and responsibilities of the modern Service are directly tied to this diverse heritage and the magnificent achievements of all of these agencies.

1915 – The merchant frigate William P. Frye was stopped by a German cruiser in the South Atlantic off the Brazilian coast and ordered to jettison its cargo. The following day, the German captain noted that the disposal of the wheat had not been completed, so he ordered the ship’s destruction. The sinking of the Frye was the first such loss inflicted on American shipping in World War I.

1917 – American forces are recalled from Mexico after nearly 11 months of fruitless searching for Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had lead a bloody raid against Columbus, New Mexico. In 1914, following the resignation of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa and his former revolutionary ally Venustiano Carranza battled each other in a struggle for succession. By the end of 1915, Villa had been driven north into the mountains, and the U.S. government recognized General Carranza as the president of Mexico.

In January 1916, to protest President Woodrow Wilson’s support for Carranza, Villa executed 16 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel in northern Mexico. Then, on March 9, 1916, Villa led a band of several hundred guerrillas across the border and raided the town of Columbus, killing 17 Americans. U.S. troops pursued the Mexicans, killing 50 on U.S. soil and 70 more in Mexico. On March 15, under orders from President Wilson, U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing launched a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa dead or alive. For the next 11 months, Pershing, like Carranza, failed to capture the elusive revolutionary and Mexican resentment over the U.S. intrusion into their territory led to a diplomatic crisis.

On June 21, the crisis escalated into violence when Mexican government troops attacked Pershing’s forces at Carrizal, Mexico, leaving 17 Americans killed or wounded, and 38 Mexicans dead. In late January 1917, having failed in their mission to capture Villa and under pressure from the Mexican government, the Americans were ordered home. Villa continued his guerrilla activities in northern Mexico until Adolfo de la Huerta took power over the government and drafted a reformist constitution. Villa entered into an amicable agreement with Huerta and agreed to retire from politics. In 1920, the government pardoned Villa, but three years later he was assassinated at Parral.

1923 – The 1st “National Socialist German Workers Party” (NSDAP, aka NAZI) formed in Munich.

1932 – The Japanese attacked Shanghai, China, and declare martial law.

1942 – The 4th Marine Regiment was assigned to support Philippine Scouts on Bataan.

1942 – The Eighth Bomber Command (Later re-designated 8th AF in February 1944) activated as part of the U.S. Army Air Forces at Hunter Field in Savannah, Ga. Brig. Gen. Ira C Eaker took the headquarters to England the next month to prepare for its mission to conduct aerial bombardment mission against Nazi-occupied Europe. During World War 2,under the leadership of such generals as Eaker and Jimmy Doolittle, 8th AF became the greatest air armada in history.

By mid-1944, 8th AF had reached a total strength of more than 200,000 people (it is estimated that more than 350,000 Americans served in 8th AF during the war in Europe). At its peak, 8th AF could dispatch more than 2,000 four-engine bombers and 1,000 fighters on a single mission. For these reasons, 8th AF became known as the “Mighty Eighth”.

1945 – Part of the 717-mile “Burma Road” from Lashio, Burma to Kunming in southwest China is reopened by the Allies, permitting supplies to flow back into China. At the outbreak of war between Japan and China in 1937, when Japan began its occupation of China’s seacoast, China began building a supply route that would enable vital resources to evade the Japanese blockade and flow into China’s interior from outside. It was completed in 1939, and allowed goods to reach China via a supply route that led from the sea to Rangoon, and then by train to Lashio.

When, in April 1942, the Japanese occupied most of Burma, the road from Lashio to China was closed, and the supply line was cut off. The Allies were not able to respond until 1944, when Allied forces in eastern India made their way into northern Burma and were able to begin construction of another supply road that linked Ledo, India, with the part of the original Burma Road still controlled by the Chinese. The Stillwell Road (named for Gen. Joseph Stillwell, American adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, China’s leader) was finally opened on this day in 1945, once again allowing the free transport of supplies into China.

1945 – The US 8th Air Force conducts raids on the Ruhr industrial area and the Rhine with 1000 bombers. Oil plants and bridges are the nominal targets.

1945 – The US 1st Army launches attacks east of St. Vith in the Ardennes.

January 28th ~ {continued...}

1952 – The U.N. Command gave the communists four lists with the names of 132,080 POWs held by the United Nations forces.

1955 – The U.S. Congress passed a bill allowing mobilization of troops if China should attack Taiwan.

1964 – The U.S. State Department angrily accuses the Soviet Union of shooting down an American jet that strayed into East German airspace. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were killed in the incident. The Soviets responded with charges that the flight was a “gross provocation,” and the incident was an ugly reminder of the heightened East-West tensions of the Cold War era. According to the U.S. military, the jet was on a training flight over West Germany and pilots became disoriented by a violent storm that led the plane to veer nearly 100 miles off course.

The Soviet attack on the plane provoked angry protests from the Department of State and various congressional leaders, including Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who charged that the Soviets had intentionally downed the plane “to gain the offensive” in the aggressive Cold War maneuvering. For their part, the Soviets refused to accept U.S. protests and responded that they had “all grounds to believe that this was not an error or mistake…It was a clear intrusion.” Soviet officials also claimed that the plane was ordered to land but refused the instructions.

Shortly after the incident, U.S. officials were allowed to travel to East Germany to recover the bodies and the wreckage. Like numerous other similar Cold War incidents–including the arrest of suspected “spies” and the seizure of ships–this event resulted in heated verbal exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union, but little else. Both nations had bigger issues to contend with: the United States was engaged in the Vietnam War, and the Soviet Union was dealing with a widening split with communist China. The deaths were, however, another reminder that the heated suspicion, heightened tension, and loaded rhetoric of the Cold War did have the potential to erupt into meaningless death and destruction.

1964 – An unarmed USAF T-39 Sabre Liner on a training mission is shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19.

1966 – Operation “Double Eagle.” Largest amphibious landing since Korea. D-Day, 28 January, was a dismal day with low overcast and light rain. Despite the heavy seas, the first wave of Lieutenant Colonel James R. Young’s BLT 3/1 landed at 0700 as planned. Offshore, a destroyer, the USS Barry (DD 933), and a cruiser, the USS Oklahoma City (CLG 5) provided naval gunfire coverage, while eight Douglas A4 Skyhawks from MAG-12 and eight McDonnell F-4B Phantoms from MAG- 11 were on station overhead. The only opposition encountered by the assault troops occur-red late that day. Companies I and M were exposed to occasional small arms fire; one Company I Marine was wounded. Shortly after Lieutenant Colonel Young’s men secured their objectives, five 105mm howitzer-equipped amphibian tractors (IVTH-6 moved ashore to provide artillery support for the infantry battalion. Company B from the 3d Engineer Battalion was also on the beach to establish various points.

1973 – A cease-fire goes into effect at 8 a.m., Saigon time (midnight on January 27, Greenwich Mean Time). When the cease-fire went into effect, Saigon controlled about 75 percent of South Vietnam’s territory and 85 percent of the population. The South Vietnamese Army was well equipped via last-minute deliveries of U.S. weapons and continued to receive U.S. aid after the cease-fire. The CIA estimated North Vietnamese presence in the South at 145,000 men, about the same as the previous year.

The cease-fire began on time, but both sides violated it. South Vietnamese forces continued to take back villages occupied by communists in the two days before the cease-fire deadline and the communists tried to capture additional territory. Each side held that military operations were justified by the other side’s violations of the cease-fire. What resulted was an almost endless chain of retaliations.

During the period between the initiation of the cease-fire and the end of 1973, there were an average of 2,980 combat incidents per month in South Vietnam. Most of these were low-intensity harassing attacks designed to wear down the South Vietnamese forces, but the North Vietnamese intensified their efforts in the Central Highlands in September when they attacked government positions with tanks west of Pleiku. As a result of these post-cease-fire actions, about 25,000 South Vietnamese were killed in battle in 1973, while communist losses in South Vietnam were estimated at 45,000.

1975 – President Gerald Ford asks Congress for an additional $522 million in military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia. He revealed that North Vietnam now had 289,000 troops in South Vietnam, and tanks, heavy artillery, and antiaircraft weapons “by the hundreds.” Ford succeeded Richard Nixon when he resigned the presidency in August 1974. Despite his wishes to honor Nixon’s promise to come to the aid of South Vietnam, he was faced with a hostile Congress who refused to appropriate military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia; both countries fell to the communists later in the year.

1980 – The CGC Blackthorn sank in Tampa Bay after colliding with the tanker Capricorn. 23 Coast Guard personnel were killed in the tragedy.

1982 – Italian anti -terrorism forces rescued U.S. Brigadier General James L. Dozier, 42 days after he had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades.

January 28th ~ {continued...}

1986 – At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger’s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems.

Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors. In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth.

When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.

In the aftermath of the explosion, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the explosion was caused by the failure of an “O-ring” seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive explosion.

As a result of the explosion, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle. In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station. To date, there have been more than 100 space shuttle flights.

1991 – The US military reported that more than 60 Iraqi fighter -bombers had taken refuge in Iran, where they were impounded by the Iranian government.

1991 – Iraqi troops attack Khafji, in Saudi Arabia, and are defeated by Coalition forces.

1999 – NATO allies warned Pres. Milosevic that they were ready to use immediate force, and Britain and France said they were prepared to send in ground troops to enforce a peace settlement in Kosovo.

1997 – The official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reports that Iraq has exported a total of 11.5 million barrels of crude oil from its Persian Gulf terminal of Mina al Bakr since it began selling oil under the United Nations’ oil-for-food deal in December 1996.

1997 – The Clinton Administration refutes news reports that Iraq is threatening its neighbors, but restates the U.S. willingness to act if Iraq does become aggressive. The statement is in reaction to speculation following reports that Saddam Hussein’s wife has been placed under house arrest and his son risks losing a leg to gangrene in the wake of a previous assassination attempt.

1999 – From Iraq a UN official reported that hoof -and -mouth disease had crippled 1 million sheep and cattle in the country and that 50,000 kids and calves had died from the viral disease. The vaccine supply was exhausted due to the 1993 destruction of a vaccine laboratory by the UN commission.

2002 – Hamid Karzai became the first Afghan leader to visit Washington in 39 years; President George W. Bush promised a “lasting partnership” with Afghanistan.

2002 – US forces and Afghan militiamen attacked and killed 6 al Qaeda gunmen, who had been holed up at the Mir Wais Hospital in Kandahar.

2002 – At a meeting of the United Nations Security Council’s committee on Iraq trade sanctions, Britain requests a formal “clarification” from Security Council member Syria on allegations that Iraqi crude oil is flowing through a pipeline to Syria and being exported, or at least substituted in Syrian refineries allowing for more Syrian crude oil exports, in violation of United Nations sanctions. Analysts have placed the amount of crude oil being sent from Iraq to Syria at between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels per day.

2003 – US and Afghan forces battled rebels aligned with renegade leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the largest -scale fighting in 10 months. 18 enemy fighters were killed in 2 days of fighting. Norwegian F -16s participated in bombing enemy targets.

2003 – DoD submitted a request for Coast Guard forces in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The Commandant, ADM Thomas Collins, approved that request and ordered the deployment of eight 110-foot patrol boats, crews, and support units. The cutters were CGCs: Wrangell, Adak, Aquidneck, Baranof, Grand Isle, Bainbridge Island, Pea Island, and Knight Island.

2003 – Hans Blix reports to the UN Security Council on the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq, 60 days after they began. The 15-page report states that although Iraq had been quite co-operative, there was an absence of full transparency including the deliberate concealment of documents. The report also states that inspectors have evidence that Iraq produced thousands of liters of anthrax in the 1990s and that the deadly bacteria “might still exist”. It also says that Iraq may have lied about the amount if VX nerve gas it has produced, and that it has failed to account for 6500 chemical bombs.

2005 – Iraq battened down for the 1st free balloting in half a century, imposing a 7 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and closing Baghdad Int’l Airport. Iraqis overseas began three days of voting in 14 nations.

2005 – Authorities in Iraq said they have arrested three close associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

2013 – American fighter aircraft F-16 flying out of Aviano Air Base loses radio contact and crashes in the Adriatic Sea.

2015 – The US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James picks the Boeing 747-8 for the next replacement of Air Force One.

2015 – A federal judge in Albuquerque, New Mexico sentences an ex-Los Alamos physicist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, who pleaded guilty in 2013 to offering to spy on the US to help Venezuela develop a nuclear weapon, to five years imprisonment.

January 29th ~

1677 – Royal Commissioners John Berry and Francis Moryson come to Jamestown Virginia to conduct an inquiry into the rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon’s Rebellion can be attributed to a myriad of causes, all of which led to dissent in the Virginia colony. Economic problems, such as declining tobacco prices, growing commercial competition from Maryland and the Carolinas, an increasingly restricted English market, and the rising prices from English manufactured goods (mercantilism) caused problems for the Virginians. There were heavy English losses in the latest series of naval wars with the Dutch and, closer to home, there were many problems caused by weather. Hailstorms, floods, dry spells, and hurricanes rocked the colony all in the course of a year and had a damaging effect on the colonists.

These difficulties encouraged the colonists to find a scapegoat against whom they could vent their frustrations and place the blame for their misfortunes. The colonists found their scapegoat in the form of the local Indians. The trouble began in July 1675 with a raid by the Doeg Indians on the plantation of Thomas Mathews, located in the Northern Neck section of Virginia near the Potomac River. Several of the Doegs were killed in the raid, which began in a dispute over the nonpayment of some items Mathews had apparently obtained from the tribe. The situation became critical when, in a retaliatory strike by the colonists, they attacked the wrong Indians, the Susquehanaugs, which caused large scale Indian raids to begin.

To stave off future attacks and to bring the situation under control, Governor Berkeley ordered an investigation into the matter. He set up what was to be a disastrous meeting between the parties, which resulted in the murders of several tribal chiefs. Throughout the crisis, Berkeley continually pleaded for restraint from the colonists. Some, including Bacon, refused to listen. Nathaniel Bacon disregarded the Governor’s direct orders by seizing some friendly Appomattox Indians for “allegedly” stealing corn. Berkeley reprimanded him, which caused the disgruntled Virginians to wonder which man had taken the right action. It was here the battle lines were about to be drawn.

Governor Sir William Berkeley, seventy when the crisis began, was a veteran of the English Civil Wars, a frontier Indian fighter, a King’s favorite in his first term as Governor in the 1640’s, and a playwright and scholar. His name and reputation as Governor of Virginia were well respected. Berkeley’s antagonist, young Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., was actually Berkeley’s cousin by marriage. Lady Berkeley, Frances Culpeper, was Bacon’s cousin.

Bacon was a troublemaker and schemer whose father sent him to Virginia in the hope that he would mature. Although disdainful of labor, Bacon was intelligent and eloquent. Upon Bacon’s arrival, Berkeley treated his young cousin with respect and friendship, giving him both a substantial land grant and a seat on the council in 1675. A further problem was Berkeley’s attempt to find a compromise. Berkeley’s policy was to preserve the friendship and loyalty of the subject Indians while assuring the settlers that they were not hostile.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

To meet his first objective, the Governor relieved the local Indians of their powder and ammunition. To deal with the second objective, Berkeley called the “Long Assembly” in March 1676. Despite being judged corrupt, the assembly declared war on all “bad” Indians and set up a strong defensive zone around Virginia with a definite chain of command. The Indian wars which resulted from this directive led to the high taxes to pay the army and to the general discontent in the colony for having to shoulder that burden.

The Long Assembly was accused of corruption because of its ruling regarding trade with the Indians. Not coincidentally, most of the favored traders were friends of Berkeley. Regular traders, some of whom had been trading independently with the local Indians for generations, were no longer allowed to trade individually. A government commission was established to monitor trading among those specially chosen and to make sure the Indians were not receiving any arms and ammunition. Bacon, one of the traders adversely affected by the Governor’s order, accused Berkeley publicly of playing favorites. Bacon was also resentful because Berkeley had denied him a commission as a leader in the local militia.

Bacon became the elected “General” of a group of local volunteer Indian fighters, because he promised to bear the cost of the campaigns. After Bacon drove the Pamunkeys from their nearby lands in his first action, Berkeley exercised one of the few instances of control over the situation that he was to have, by riding to Bacon’s headquarters at Henrico with 300 “well armed” gentlemen. Upon Berkeley’s arrival, Bacon fled into the forest with 200 men in search of a place more to his liking for a meeting. Berkeley then issued two petitions declaring Bacon a rebel and pardoning Bacon’s men if they went home peacefully. Bacon would then be relieved of the council seat that he had won for his actions that year, but he was to be given a fair trial for his disobedience.

Bacon did not, at this time, comply with the Governor’s orders. Instead he next attacked the camp of the friendly Occaneecheee Indians on the Roanoke River (the border between Virginia and North Carolina), and took their store of beaver pelts. In the face of a brewing catastrophe, Berkeley, to keep the peace, was willing to forget that Bacon was not authorized to take the law into his own hands. Berkeley agreed to pardon Bacon if he turned himself in, so he could be sent to England and tried before King Charles II. It was the House of Burgesses, however, who refused this alternative, insisting that Bacon must acknowledge his errors and beg the Governor’s forgiveness. Ironically, at the same time, Bacon was then elected to the Burgesses by supportive local land owners sympathetic to his Indian campaigns.

Bacon, by virtue of this election, attended the landmark Assembly of June 1676. It was during this session that he was mistakenly credited with the political reforms that came from this meeting. The reforms were prompted by the population, cutting through all class lines. Most of the reform laws dealt with reconstructing the colony’s voting regulations, enabling freemen to vote, and limiting the number of years a person could hold certain offices in the colony.

Most of these laws were already on the books for consideration well before Bacon was elected to the Burgesses. Bacon’s only cause was his campaign against the Indians. Upon his arrival for the June Assembly, Bacon was captured, taken before Berkeley and council and was made to apologize for his previous actions. Berkeley immediately pardoned Bacon and allowed him to take his seat in the assembly.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

At this time, the council still had no idea how much support was growing in defense of Bacon. The full awareness of that support hit home when Bacon suddenly left the Burgesses in the midst of heated debate over Indian problems. He returned with his forces to surround the statehouse. Once again Bacon demanded his commission, but Berkeley called his bluff and demanded that Bacon shoot him. Bacon refused. Berkeley granted Bacon’s previous volunteer commission but Bacon refused it and demanded that he be made General of all forces against the Indians, which Berkeley emphatically refused and walked away. Tensions ran high as the screaming Bacon and his men surrounded the statehouse, threatening to shoot several on looking Burgesses if Bacon was not given his commission.

Finally after several agonizing moments, Berkeley gave in to Bacon’s demands for campaigns against the Indians without government interference. With Berkeley’s authority in shambles, Bacon’s brief tenure as leader of the rebellion began. Even in the midst of these unprecedented triumphs, however, Bacon was not without his mistakes. He allowed Berkeley to leave Jamestown in the aftermath of a surprise Indian attack on a nearby settlement. He also confiscated supplies from Gloucester and left them vulnerable to possible Indian attacks. Shortly after the immediate crisis subsided, Berkeley briefly retired to his home at Green Springs and washed his hands of the entire mess. Nathaniel Bacon dominated Jamestown from July through September 1676.

During this time, Berkeley did come out of his lethargy and attempt a coup, but support for Bacon was still too strong and Berkeley was forced to flee to Accomack County on the Eastern Shore. Feeling that it would make his triumph complete, Bacon issued his “Declaration of the People” on July 30, 1676 which stated that Berkeley was corrupt, played favorites and protected the Indians for his own selfish purposes. Bacon also issued his oath which required the swearer to promise his loyalty to Bacon in any manner necessary (i.e., armed service, supplies, verbal support). Even this tight reign could not keep the tide from changing again. Bacon’s fleet was first and finally secretly infiltrated by Berkeley’s men and finally captured. This was to be the turning point in the conflict, because Berkeley was once again strong enough to retake Jamestown.

Bacon then followed his sinking fortunes to Jamestown and saw it heavily fortified. He made several attempts at a siege, during which he kidnapped the wives of several of Berkeley’s biggest supporters, including Mrs. Nathaniel Bacon Sr., and placed them upon the ramparts of his siege fortifications while he dug his position. Infuriated, Bacon burned Jamestown to the ground on September 19, 1676. (He did save many valuable records in the statehouse.) By now his luck had clearly run out with this extreme measure and he began to have trouble controlling his men’s conduct as well as keeping his popular support. Few people responded to Bacon’s appeal to capture Berkeley who had since returned to the Eastern Shore for safety reasons.

On October 26th, 1676, Bacon abruptly died of the “Bloodie Flux” and “Lousey Disease” (body lice). It is possible his soldiers burned his contaminated body because it was never found. (His death inspired this little ditty; Bacon is Dead I am sorry at my hart That lice and flux should take the hangman’s part”.) Shortly after Bacon’s death, Berkeley regained complete control and hung the major leaders of the rebellion. He also seized rebel property without the benefit of a trial. All in all, twenty-three persons were hanged for their part in the rebellion. Later after an investigating committee from England issued its report to King Charles II, Berkeley was relieved of the Governorship and returned to England where he died in July 1677.

January 29th ~ {continued...}

1737 – Thomas Paine, political essayist, was born. He wrote “The Rights of Man” and “The Age of Reason.” Thomas Paine was born on the twenty-ninth of January 1737 at Thetford, Norfolk in England, as a son of a Quaker. After a short basic education, he started to work, at first for his father, later as an officer of the excise. During this occupation Thomas Paine was an unsuccessful man, and was twice dismissed from his post.

In 1774, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who advised him to emigrate to America, giving him letters of recommendation. Paine landed at Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. Starting over as a publicist, he first published his African Slavery in America, in the spring of 1775, criticizing slavery in America as being unjust and inhumane. At this time he also had become co-editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine On arriving in Philadelphia, Paine had sensed the rise of tension, and the spirit of rebellion, that had steadily mounted in the Colonies after the Boston Tea Party and when the fighting had started, in April 1775, with the battles of Lexington and Concord. In Paine’s view the Colonies had all the right to revolt against a government that imposed taxes on them but which did not give them the right of representation in the Parliament at Westminster. But he went even further: for him there was no reason for the Colonies to stay dependent on England.

On January 10, 1776 Paine formulated his ideas on American Independence in his pamphlet Common Sense. In his Common Sense, Paine states that sooner or later independence from England must come, because America had lost touch with the mother country. In his words, all the arguments for separation of England are based on nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments and common sense. Government was necessary evil that could only become safe when it was representative and altered by frequent elections. The function of government in society ought to be only regulating and therefore as simple as possible.

Not surprisingly, but nevertheless remarkable was his call for a declaration of independence. Due to the many copies sold (500.000) Paine’s influence on the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 is eminent. Another sign of his great influence is the number of loyalist reactions to Common Sense. During the War of Independence Paine volunteered in the Continental Army and started with the writing of his highly influential sixteen American Crisis papers, which he published between 1776 and 1783.

In 1777 he became Secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in Congress, but already in 1779 he was forced to resign because he had disclosed secret information. In the following nine years he worked as a clerk at the Pennsylvania Assembly and published several of his writings. In 1787 Thomas Paine left for England, initially to raise funds for the building of a bridge he had designed, but after the outbreak of the French Revolution he became deeply involved in it.

Between March 1791 and February 1792 he published numerous editions of his Rights of Man, in which he defended the French Revolution against the attacks by Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. But it was more then a defense of the French Revolution: An analysis of the roots of the discontent in Europe, which he laid in arbitrary government, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and war. The book being banned in England because it opposed to monarchy, Paine failed to be arrested because he was already on his way to France, having been elected in the National Convention.

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Though a true republican, he was imprisoned in 1793 under Robespierre, because he had voted against the execution of the dethroned king Louis XVI. During his imprisonment the publication of his Age of Reason started. Age of Reason was written in praise of the achievements of the Age of Enlightenment, and it was on this book that he was accused of being an atheist. After his release he stayed in France until 1802, when he sailed back to America, after an invitation by Thomas Jefferson who had met him before when he was minister in Paris and who admired him.

Back in the United States he earned that he was seen as a great infidel, or simply forgotten for what he had done for America. He continued his critical writings, for instance against the Federalists and on religious superstition. After his death in New York City on June 8, 1809 the newspapers read: He had lived long, did some good and much harm, which time judged to be an unworthy epitaph.

1779 – Augusta, Georgia is captured by a British force led by Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell. In the autumn of 1778, General Prevost, who was in command of some British regulars, Tories and Indians, in East Florida, sent from St. Augustine two expeditions into Florida. One of these made an extensive raid, carrying off negro slaves, grain, horses, and horned cattle; destroying crops and burning the village of Midway; the other appeared before the fort at Sunbury, and demanded its surrender. Colonel Mackintosh, the commander of the garrison, said, “Come and take it,” when the invaders retreated. These incursions caused General Robert Howe to lead an expedition against St. Augustine.

On the banks of the St. Mary’s River, a malarias disease swept away a quarter of his men. After a little skirmishing, he led the survivors back to Savannah, and these composed the handful of dispirited men who confronted Campbell at Brewton’s Hill. The expulsion of Howe from Savannah was soon followed by the arrival of Prevost, who came up from Florida, captured the fort at Sunbury on the way (January 9, 1779), and assumed the chief command of the British troops in the South. The combined forces of Prevost and Campbell numbered about three thousand men. In the meantime General Benjamin Lincoln of Massachusetts, appointed in September to the chief command of the patriot troops in the Southern States, had arrived in South Carolina, and on the 6th of January (1779), made his headquarters at Purysburg, twenty-five miles above Savannah.

There he began the formation of an army to oppose the British invasion. It was composed of the remnants of Howe’s troops, some Continental regiments, and some raw recruits. Campbell, elated by his easy victory, began the work of subjugation with a strong hand. He promised protection to the inhabitants provided all their able-bodied men would “support the royal government with their arms.” They had the alternative to fight their own countrymen or fly to the interior uplands or into South Carolina. Howe’s captive troops, who refused to take up arms for the king, were thrust into loathsome prison-ships, where many perished with disease.

It was evident that the war was to be waged without mercy, and this conviction gave strength to the determined patriots in the field, for they were fighting for their lives and the welfare of those whom they loved most dearly. Prevost sent Campbell up the Georgia side of the Savannah, to Augusta, with about two thousand men, for the purpose of encouraging the Tories, opening communication with the Creek Indians in the west, and subduing the Whigs into passiveness.

1820 – Ten years after mental illness forced him to retire from public life, King George III, the British king who lost the American colonies, dies at the age of 82. In 1760, 20-year-old George succeeded his grandfather, George II, as king of Great Britain and Ireland. Although he hoped to govern more directly than his predecessor had, King George III was unable to find a minister he could trust, until 1770, when he appointed Lord North as his chief minister. Lord North proved able to manage Parliament and willing to follow royal leadership, but George’s policy of coercion against the American colonists led to the outbreak of the American War for Independence. The subsequent loss of England’s most profitable colonies contributed to growing opposition to the king, but in 1784 his appointment as prime minister, William Pitt (the younger), succeeded in winning a majority in Parliament.

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1834 – The banks of the Potomac River erupted in violence, as workers on the then-unfinished Chesapeake and Ohio Canal rioted after a planned strike was brutally extinguished. Never exactly a fast friend of indecision or conciliatory action, President Andrew Jackson swiftly called on Secretary of War Lewis Cass to send Federal troops in to quell the workers.

While this was an eventful moment for the nation it marked the first, though hardly the last time Federal troops were deployed to settle a labor “dispute” it was just another roadblock in the troubled history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Originally conceived as a transit and trade friendly route between the Midwest and Atlantic seaports, the canal was periodically delayed by fiscal woes, stiff competition from the Erie Canal, as well as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

When construction began in 1828, the canal was designed to reach Pittsburgh; by the time the project was abandoned in 1850, the waterway reached Cumberland. Flooding forced the close of the canal in 1924; it was bought by the U.S. government in 1938 and transformed into a national historic park in 1971.

1843 – William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States (1897-1901), was born in Niles, Ohio. McKinley was the last Civil War veteran to serve as President of the United States. He had served with the 23rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteers, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major. He saw action at South Mountain, Antietam, Winchester and Cedar Creek. For a time he served on Rutherford B. Hayes’ staff. McKinley was elected the 25th president in 1896. He led the country in the Spanish-American War. He died in Buffalo, New York, on September 14, 1901, after being shot by an anarchist assassin on September 6th.

1850 – Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.

1861 – The territory of Kansas is admitted into the Union as the 34th state, or the 28th state if the secession of eight Southern states over the previous six weeks is taken into account. Kansas, deeply divided over the issue of slavery, was granted statehood as a free state in a gesture of support for Kansas’ militant anti-slavery forces, which had been in armed conflict with pro-slavery groups since Kansas became a territory in 1854. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce.

The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas’ first election proved a violent affair, as more than 5,000 so-called Border Ruffians invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, appointed territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown.

During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in “Bleeding Kansas,” as it became popularly known. The territory’s admittance into the Union in January 1861 only increased tension, but just three and a half months later the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the full-scale outbreak of the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Kansas suffered the highest rate of fatal casualties of any Union state, largely because of its great internal divisions over the issue of slavery.

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1861 – Secretaries of the Navy and War ordered that the Marines and troops on board U.S.S Brooklyn, Captain Walker, en route Pensacola, not be landed to reinforce Fort Pickens unless that work was taken under attack by the Confederates.

1863 – The Bear River Massacre, or the Battle of Bear River and the Massacre at Boa Ogoi, took place in present-day Idaho. The United States Army attacked Shoshone gathered at the confluence of the Bear River and Beaver Creek in what was then southeastern Washington Territory. The site is located near the present-day city of Preston in Franklin County, Idaho. Colonel Patrick Edward Connor led a detachment of California Volunteers as part of the Bear River Expedition against Shoshone Chief Bear Hunter.

1865 – William Quantrill and his Confederate raiders attack Danville, Kentucky. Quantrill is killed in the raid. William Clarke Quantrill came to Kansas as a young man in 1858. Two years later he acheived a measure of notoriety by engineering a scheme with four free-state men to liberate the slaves of a Missouri farmer; however, Quantrill warned the farmer before the raid occurred, and three of the Kansas men were killed in the ambush.

Quantrill adapted well to the ruthless chaos that Civil War brought to the Southwest, and until 1864 was the most popular and powerful leader of the various bands of Border Ruffians that pillaged the area. While he and the men who followed him had more in common with the Confederate than the Union cause, they were by no means enlisted soldiers. They terrorized the Kansas countryside almost entirely for profit: to rob the citizens and loot the towns.

In addition, the innumerable atrocities committed on both sides made the guerilla armies convenient vehicles to carry out personal vengeance. The climax of Quantrill’s guerilla career came on August 21, 1863, when he led a force of 450 raiders into Lawrence, Kansas, a stronghold of pro-Union support and the home of Senator James H. Lane, whose leading role in the struggle for free-soil in Kansas had made him a public enemy to pro-slavery forces in Missouri. Lane managed to escape, racing through a cornfield in his nightshirt, but Quantrill and his men killed 183 men and boys, dragging some from their homes to murder them in front of their families, and set the torch to much of the city.

The Lawrence Massacre led to swift retribution, as Union troops forced the residents of four Missouri border counties onto the open prairie while Jayhawkers looted and burned everything they left behind. Quantrill and his raiders took part in the Confederate retaliation for this atrocity, but when Union forces drove the Confederates back, Quantrill fled to Texas. His guerrilla band broke up into several smaller units, including one headed by his vicious lieutenant, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, known for wearing a necklace of Yankee scalps into battle.

1877 – A highly partisan Electoral Commission, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, was established by Congress to settle the issue of Democrat Samuel Tilden for president against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Under the terms of the Tilden-Hayes Election Compromise, Hayes became president and the Republicans agreed to remove the last Federal troops from Southern territory, ending Reconstruction. On election night, 1776, it was clear that Tilden had won the popular vote, but it was also clear that votes in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon were fraudulent because of voter intimidation. Republicans knew that if the electoral votes from these four states were thrown out, Hayes would win. The country hovered near civil war as both Democrats and Republicans claimed victory. Illustrator Thomas Nast drew his cartoon, ”Tilden or Blood,” showing the Democrats threatening violence.

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1885 – The Senate decides not to ratify the 1884 treaty which authorizes the building of a canal across Nicaragua. The canal issue is plagued with doubt and indecision. Americans are still reluctant to shoulder responsibilities outside the continental domain. The Federal Government is not yet a clearly define entity, people still being more closely identified with their states.

Gradually a change is taking place and some people see far enough to make preparations for predictable circumstances. Secretary of the Navy Whitney has brought his prestige to bear on building a steel navy. Commodore Stephen Bleeker has founded a navy training school and Secretary of State Blaine is slowly turning the nation’s attention to events in Hawaii, the Philippines, Korea, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Haiti.

1886 – 1st successful gasoline-driven car was patented by Karl Benz in Karlsruhe.

1914 – U.S. Marines land in Haiti to protect U.S. consulate.

1918 – The Supreme Allied Council met at Versailles.

1919 – 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Its enforcement was authorized by the National Prohibition Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act on 28 October 1919. The Coast Guard had been tasked with the prevention of the maritime importation of illegal alcohol. This led to the largest increase in the size and responsibilities of the service to date.

1941 – Secret staff talks begin between British and American representatives. The talks will continue until March 27th. They produce conclusions code named ABC1 which state that Allied policy in the event of war with Germany and Japan should be to put the defeat of Germany first. The talks mark an important stage in the development of cooperation between the US and Britain. As well as their important decisions they accustom the staffs to working with each other.

1942 – US Task Force 18, under the command of Admiral Giffen, is attacked by Japanese aircraft off Rennel Island while providing covering escort to a supply operation to Guadalcanal. The heavy cruiser Chicago is sunk.

1942 – Britain and the USSR secure an agreement with Iran that offers the Iran protection while creating a “Persian corridor” for the Allies-a supply route from the West to Russia. Early in the war, Iran collaborated with Germany by exporting grain to the Axis power in exchange for technicians. But the Allies viewed Iran as a valuable source of oil and conveniently situated as a route for shipping Western war material east to the USSR. On August 25, 1941, both Allied powers invaded Iran (which Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred to call “Persia,” so there would be no confusion between “Iran” and “Iraq”), the Soviets from the north and the Brits from the south. In four days, the Allies effectively controlled Iran.

1943 – Beginning of the 2 day battle of Rennell Island after which U.S. transports reached Guadalcanal. By 23 January, US aerial reconnaissance had reported a large number of Japanese transports , freighters and destroyers at Rabaul, and Buin and carriers and battleships milling around Ontong Java, North of Guadalcanal. These were preparations for the final Japanese evacuation of Guadalcanal. Halsey, however, interpreted this activity as preparations for another major Japanese reinforcement effort.

In an attempt to lure the Japanese into another naval battle Halsey sent up 4 fully loaded transports along with strong covering forces, from Efate and Numea, to reinforce the US garrison on Guadalcanal. Among the covering force were six US cruisers including the USS Chicago, the only heavy cruiser to survive the battle of Savo Island, 5 1/2 month earlier. In the twilight of Jan 29, at 1945 hours, 50 miles north of Rennell Island, Japanese torpedo laden Bettys from Munda successfully attacked the supporting group and the Chicago was struck and went dead in the water.

Placed under tow she was heading slowly SE on the afternoon of the 30th when 9 Bettys once again caught up with her a few miles east of Rennell Island. At 1600 4 torpedoes struck home into Chicago's already damaged starboard side. She sank in 20 minutes. This Battle of Rennell Island was the last of seven naval battles in the Guadalcanal Campaign.