** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

November 7th ~ { continued... }

1957 – The final report from a special committee called by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to review the nation’s defense readiness indicates that the United States is falling far behind the Soviets in missile capabilities, and urges a vigorous campaign to build fallout shelters to protect American citizens. The special committee had been called together shortly after the stunning news of the success of the Soviet Sputnik I in October 1957.

1964 – The latest U.S. intelligence analysis claims that Communist forces in South Vietnam now include about 30,000 professional full-time soldiers, many of whom are North Vietnamese. Before this, it was largely reported that the war was merely an internal insurgent movement in South Vietnam opposed to the government in Saigon.

1972 – Richard Nixon defeats Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) and is re-elected President of the United States. With only 55 percent of the electorate voting, the lowest turnout since 1948, Nixon carried all states but Massachusetts, taking 97 percent of the electoral votes.

1973 – Congress overrode President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval. The act requires the president to inform Congress within forty-eight hours of military action in a hostile area. Forces must be removed within sixty to ninety days unless Congress approves of the action or declares war. The resolution was prompted by the aggressive actions of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon without congressional approval or a declaration of war during the Vietnam War.

1983 – A bomb exploded in a public corridor near the Senate Republican Cloak Room, detonated at around 2300 EST with a time- delay device. The explosion damaged a wood-paneled conference room near the Senate Chamber and the offices of Senator Robert Byrd. No one was injured. A group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit claimed responsibility, saying it was done in response to U.S. military action in Grenada. Three women pleaded guilty in the attack and were sentenced to prison for five to 20 years.

1996 – NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a mission to map the surface of the Red Planet. It went into orbit around Mars in 2001.

1997 – In a rising war of words, the Clinton administration warned it was considering military options, including a cruise missile strike, if Iraq carried out its threat to shoot down U.N. surveillance planes.

1997 – In Iraq, Saddam Hussein rejected the efforts of UN envoys to resolve the dispute over weapons inspections.

1998 – The shuttle Discovery landed in Cape Canaveral, Fla. After 9 days in space. 77-year-old John Glenn returned to Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery, visibly weak but elated after the mission.

2000 – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country’s largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

2000 – In US elections Al Gore conceded to George Bush and then retracted his concession based on an early prediction of the vote in Florida, which was reversed as too close to call.

2001 – The Bush administration targeted Osama bin Laden’s multimillion-dollar financial networks, closing businesses in four states, detaining U.S. suspects and urging allies to help choke off money supplies in 40 nations. Federal agents raided 2 money transfer organizations, Al Barakaat and Al Taqwa that included 10 locations in 4 states.

2001 – Small numbers of US forces prepared to enter southern Afghanistan for special missions.

2002 – In his first news conference since the midterm elections, President Bush, charting an agenda for the new Republican Congress, said that homeland security came first and that an economic-recovery plan with new tax cuts would wait until the next year.

2003 – The US and Russia signed an agreement under which Russia would retrieve, within the next 5 to 10 years, uranium from research reactors in 17 countries.

2003 – In Tikrit, Iraq, an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed, apparently shot down by insurgents, killing all six U.S. soldiers aboard. 2 other soldiers were killed near Mosul.

2004 – The Iraqi government declared a 60-day state of emergency throughout most of the country, as US and Iraqi forces prepared for an all-out assault on rebels in Fallujah.

2007 – Space Shuttle Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center, ending STS-120, a 15-day mission to the International Space Station

November 8th ~

1731 – The first circulating library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia, was founded by Benjamin Franklin.

1861 – Union Captain Charles Wilkes of the sloop San Jacinto seized Confederate commissioners John Slidell and James M. Mason from the British mail ship Trent. Lincoln’s response to uproar: “One war at a time.” The incident turned into a major diplomatic crisis between Great Britain and the United States until the diplomats were released nearly two months later.

1864 – Northern voters overwhelmingly endorse the leadership and policies of President Lincoln when they elect him to a second term. With his reelection, the fate of the Confederacy was sealed and any hope for a negotiated settlement vanished. In 1864, Lincoln faced many challenges to his presidency. The war was now in its fourth year, and many were questioning if the South could ever be fully conquered militarily. General Ulysses S. Grant mounted a massive campaign in the spring of that year to finally defeat the Confederate army of General Robert E. Lee, but after sustaining horrifying losses at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, the Yankees bogged down around Petersburg. As the fall approached, Grant seemed no closer to defeating Lee than his predecessors. In the West, General William T. Sherman was planted outside of Atlanta, but he could not take that city. Some of the Radical Republicans were unhappy with Lincoln’s conciliatory plan for reconstruction of the South. And many Northerners had never been happy with Lincoln’s 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, which converted the war from one of reunion to a crusade to destroy slavery. Weariness with the war fueled calls for a compromise with the seceded states.

The Democrats nominated George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. McClellan was widely regarded as brilliant in organizing and training the army, but he had failed to defeat Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Virginia. He and Lincoln quarreled constantly during his tenure as general in chief of the army, and Lincoln replaced him when McClellan failed to pursue Lee into Virginia after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. In the months leading up to the election, the military situation changed dramatically. While Grant remained stalled at Petersburg, Mobile Bay fell to the Federal navy in August, Sherman captured Atlanta in September, and General Philip Sheridan secured Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in October.

On election day, Lincoln carried all but three states (Kentucky, New Jersey, and Deleware), and won 55 percent of the vote. He won 212 electoral votes to McCellan’s 21. Most significant, 78 percent of the Union troops voted for their commander in chief, including 71 percent of McClellan’s old command, the Army of the Potomac.

Perhaps most important was the fact that the election was held at all. Before World War II, no country had ever held elections during military emergencies. Lincoln himself said, “We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” Five months after Lincoln’s reelection, the collapse of the Confederacy was complete.

1864 – Rear Admiral Farragut, writing Secretary Welles, expressed his deeply held conviction that effective seapower was not dependent so much on a particular kind of ship or a specific gun but rather on the officers and men who manned them.

1889 – Montana became the 41st state. The state’s name is derived from the Spanish word montaña (mountain). Montana has several nicknames, although none official, including “Big Sky Country” and “The Treasure State”, and slogans that include “Land of the Shining Mountains” and more recently “The Last Best Place”. The land in Montana east of the continental divide was part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Subsequent to the Lewis and Clark Expedition American, British and French fur traders operated in both east and western portions of Montana. Until the Oregon Treaty (1846), land west of the continental divide was disputed between the British and U.S. and was known as the Oregon Country. The first permanent settlement in what today is Montana was St. Mary’s (1841) near present day Stevensville.

1892 – Former President Cleveland beat incumbent Benjamin Harrison and became the first (and, to date, only) president to win non-consecutive terms in the White House. Benjamin Harrison, the sitting president, did not enjoy the Republican Party’s unified backing at the convention in 1892. The president had offended the political bosses by his forays into civil service reform as well as a large segment of the general public by his staunch support of the McKinley Tariff. Even Harrison’s cabinet found his personality icy and unappealing. Despite support for rivals James G. Blaine and William McKinley, Harrison managed to secure renomination on the first ballot.

1898 – The Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only instance of an attempted coup d’état in American history. The Wilmington Coup d’Etat of 1898, also known as the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina starting on November 10, 1898 and continued for several days. It is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. The event is credited as ushering in an era of severe racial segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. Laura Edwards wrote in Democracy Betrayed (2000), “What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole.”

Originally described by whites as a race riot (suggesting blacks were at fault), the events are now classified as a coup d’etat, as white Democratic insurgents overthrew the legitimately elected local government. A mob of nearly 2000 men attacked the only black newspaper in the state, and persons and property in black neighborhoods, killing an estimated 15 to more than 60 victims. Two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, two-thirds of which was white, Democratic Party white supremacists illegally seized power and overturned the elected government. Led by Alfred Waddell, who was defeated in 1878 as the congressional incumbent by Daniel L. Russell (elected governor in 1896), more than 2000 white men participated in an attack on the black newspaper, Daily Record, burning down the building. They ran officials and community leaders out of the city, and killed many blacks in widespread attacks, especially destroying the Brooklyn neighborhood. They took photographs of each other during the events. The Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) and federal Naval Reserves, ordered to quell the riot, became involved, using rapid-fire weapons and killing several black men in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Both black and white residents later appealed for help after the coup to President William McKinley, but his administration did not respond, as Governor Russell had not requested aid. After the riot, more than 2,100 blacks left the city permanently, having to abandon their businesses and properties, turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city.

1904 – Theodore Roosevelt (R), vice-president under McKinley, was elected president. He defeated Alton B. Parker (D). Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley, who was assassinated in September 1901. Roosevelt became the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination in 1904. However, a disgruntled segment of the party voiced their view that Roosevelt’s actions were too liberal. They favored instead the nomination of Mark Hanna. Hanna had advised Roosevelt for a few months after the assassination, but then lost influence in the administration. His death in 1904 probably averted a heated contest over what direction the Republican Party would take. With the contender gone, the convention nominated Roosevelt by acclamation.

November 8th ~ { continued... }

1916 – United States ship U. S.S. Columbian sunk by German submarine near Cape Finisterre.

1918 – Marshal Foch receives German armistice delegates at Rethondes (four miles from Compiegne), refuses request for provisional armistice, terms of armistice to be accepted or refused by 11 am on 11 November.

1923 – Adolf Hitler, president of the far-right Nazi Party, launches the Beer Hall Putsch, his first attempt at seizing control of the German government. After World War I, the victorious allies demanded billions of dollars in war reparations from Germany. Efforts by Germany’s democratic government to comply hurt the country’s economy and led to severe inflation. The German mark, which at the beginning of 1921 was valued at five marks per dollar, fell to a disastrous four billion marks per dollar in 1923.

Meanwhile, the ranks of the nationalist Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party’s bitter hatred of the democratic government, leftist politics, and German Jews. In early November 1923, the government resumed war-reparation payments, and the Nazis decided to strike. Hitler planned a coup against the state government of Bavaria, which he hoped would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the central, democratic government in Berlin.

On the evening of November 8, Nazi forces under Hermann Goering surrounded the Munich beer hall where Bavarian government officials were meeting with local business leaders. A moment later, Hitler burst in with a group of Nazi storm troopers, discharged his pistol into the air, and declared that “the national revolution has begun.” Threatened at gunpoint, the Bavarian leaders reluctantly agreed to support Hitler’s new regime. In the early morning of November 9, however, the Bavarian leaders repudiated their coerced support of Hitler and ordered a rapid suppression of the Nazis.

At dawn, government troops surrounded the main Nazi force occupying the War Ministry building. A desperate Hitler responded by leading a march toward the center of Munich in a last-ditch effort to rally support. Near the War Ministry building, 3,000 Nazi marchers came face to face with 100 armed policemen. Shots were exchanged, and 16 Nazis and three policemen were killed. Hermann Goering was shot in the groin, and Hitler suffered a dislocated elbow but managed to escape. Three days later, Hitler was arrested. Convicted of treason, he was given the minimum sentence of five years in prison. He was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress and spent his time writing his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and working on his oratorical skills. Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute Hitler’s sentence, and he was released after serving only nine months.

In the late 1920s, Hitler reorganized the Nazi Party as a fanatical mass movement that was able to gain a majority in the Reichstag in 1932. By 1934, Hitler was the sole master of a nation intent on war and genocide.

1932 – New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover for the presidency. Roosevelt became the 32nd president with about 87% of the Electoral College. Roosevelt came into the Democratic convention in Chicago as the front runner. His main opposition was Alfred Smith. Roosevelt secured the nomination on the third ballot. Roosevelt ignored tradition by coming to Chicago to personally accept the nomination.

1933 – In 1933, the United States was struggling through the Depression. The major economic indices were sagging and the unemployment rolls seemed to be growing fatter by the day. With winter looming on the horizon, President Roosevelt and Henry Hopkins, one of the architects of the New Deal, moved to offer relief. They unveiled the Civil Works Administration (CWA), a program designed to secure temporary work for people who would otherwise have to endure a winter of unemployment. The CWA provided a mix of white and blue-collar jobs that promised to pay normal wages for a limited schedule of work.

1939 – On the 16th anniversary of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, a bomb explodes just after Hitler has finished giving a speech. He was unharmed. Hitler had made an annual ritual on the anniversary of his infamous 1923 coup attempt, (Hitler’s first grab at power that ended in his arrest and the virtual annihilation of his National Socialist party), of regaling his followers with his vision of the Fatherland’s future. On this day, he had been addressing the Old Guard party members, those disciples and soldiers who had been loyal to Hitler and his fascist party since the earliest days of its inception. Just 12 minutes after Hitler had left the hall, along with important Nazi leaders who had accompanied him, a bomb exploded, which had been secreted in a pillar behind the speaker’s platform. Seven people were killed and 63 were wounded.

The next day, the Nazi Party official paper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, squarely placed the blame on British secret agents, even implicating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain himself. This work of propaganda was an attempt to stir up hatred for the British and whip the German people into a frenzy for war. But the inner-Nazi Party members knew better-they knew the assassination attempt was most probably the work of a German anti-Nazi military conspiracy.In an ingenious scheme to shift blame, while getting closer to the actual conspirators, Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo chief, sent a subordinate, Walter Schellenberg, to Holland to make contact with British intelligence agents. The pretext of the meeting was to secure assurances from the British that in the event of an anti-Nazi coup, the British would support the new regime. The British agents were eager to gain whatever inside information they could about the rumored anti-Hitler movement within the German military; Schellenberg, posing as “Major Schaemmel,” was after whatever information British intelligence may have had on such a conspiracy within the German military ranks. But Himmler wanted more than talk-he wanted the British agents themselves.

So on November 9, SS soldiers in Holland kidnapped, with Schellenberg’s help, two British agents, Payne Best and R.H. Stevens, stuffing them into a Buick and driving them across the border into Germany. Himmler now proudly announced to the German public that he had captured the British conspirators. The man who actually planted the bomb at their behest was declared to be Georg Elser, a German communist who made his living as a carpenter. While it seems certain that Elser did plant the bomb, who the instigators were-German military or British intelligence-remains unclear. All three “official” conspirators spent the war in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (Elser was murdered by the Gestapo on April 16, 1945-so he could never tell his story). Hitler dared not risk a public trial, as there were just too many holes in the “official” story.

November 8th ~ { continued...}

1942 – Operation Torch. The Allies land in French North Africa. There are three main task forces: The Western Task Force, commanded by General Patton, is comprised of 35,000 troops. It is supported by naval forces under Admiral Hewitt (two battleships, one fleet carrier, four escort carriers and numerous cruisers and destroyers); the Central Task Force, commanded by General Fredendall is comprised of 39,000 American troops. Commodore Toubridge commands its naval support force (two escort carriers and many smaller ships); the Eastern Task Force, contains 52 warships and 33,000 soldiers, led by General Ryder and Admiral Burroughs. The British contingent, 87th Division is supported by Admiral Syfret commanding British Force H, comprised of three battleships, three fleet carriers and a strong force of cruisers and destroyers.

1944 – 1st Lt. Edward R. “Buddy” Haydon, 357th Fighter Group killed Major Walter Nowotny, commander of Kommando Nowotny, flying the Me-262 jet fighter. This event almost caused Hitler to kill the jet fighter program.

1945 – In the wake of World War II, America needed to convert its economy back to peacetime conditions. The passage of the Revenue Act of 1945 on November 8 was a key step in rolling back the heavy taxes which had been implemented to help wage the war. Along with cutting $6 billion in taxes, the Revenue Act initiated an extensive post-war revision of the nation’s entire tax system.

1950 – During the Korean conflict the first all-jet air combat took place over Korea as U.S. Air Force Lieut. Russell J. Brown, piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shot down two North Korean MiG-15s. It lasted about 30 seconds.

1950 – President Harry Truman lifted the ban on bombing within five miles of the Yalu River, and the bridges at Sinuiju were struck. Seventy-nine B-29s along with naval aircraft carried out the mission.

1950 – The Korean Service Medal was authorized by Executive Order 10179. Some 1.7 million U.S. service members were eventually awarded this medal for service in Korea and its contiguous waters between June 27, 1950, to July 27, 1954.

1956 – Navy Stratolab balloon (LCDRs Malcolm D. Ross and M. Lee Lewis) betters world height record soaring to 76,000 feet over Black Hills, SD, on flight to gather meteorological, cosmic ray, and other scientific data.

1960 – Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy was elected 35th president by 118,550 popular votes. He defeated Richard Nixon in the US presidential elections. Popular legend later held that the political machine of Richard Daley in Chicago provided the necessary votes for Kennedy to win Illinois (27 electoral votes) and the elections. The Electoral College result was 303 to 219.

1974 – Charges were dropped against eight Ohio National Guardsmen for their role in the deaths of four anti-war protestors at Kent State University. A federal grand jury had indicted 8 National Guardsmen for the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings.

1988 – Republican Vice President George Bush was elected the 41st president. He defeated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Vice President Bush recovered from an early third place showing in the Iowa’s Caucuses, behind Senator Dole and Reverend Pat Robertson, to force all his opponents to withdraw from the race. He thus was unopposed at the Republican convention in New Orleans.

The only major issue at the convention was his decision to have Senator Quayle be his running mate, a decision that was widely criticized. Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts quickly became the front-runner after Gary Hart withdrew do to allegations of sexual improprieties, and Mario Cuomo of New York refused to run. One by one, Dukakis’ opponents withdrew, until only Jesse Jackson was left when the convention took place in Atlanta. Dukakis won on the first ballot after receiving 2,876 votes as opposed to Jackson 1218. Dukakis chose Senator Loyd Benson of Texas as his running mate. When the campaign began Governor Dukakis held a clear lead over Vice President Bush.

The Republicans successfully attacked Dukakis in a number of ways. One of the most notable was an attack on Dukakis surrounding the furlough release of Willie Horton an African American convicted of murder who was released on a weekend furlough from prison while Dukakis was governor. Bush stated ” don’t let murders out on vacation to terrorize innocent people…Dukakis owes the people an explanation of why he supported this outrageous program”. The Republicans then went on to sponsor a series of television ads with picutres of Horton and the crime scenes claiming that it was Dukakis who had let that happen. The fact that the program was started by Dukakis’s Republican predecessor and that while President Reagan had been governor of California it had been instituted there was not mentioned. This and other attack ads were very effective and Bush won by a large margin.

1990 – In Iraq Saddam Hussein fired his army chief and threatened to destroy the Arabian peninsula.

1992 – Volunteers began reading aloud the 58,183 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., as part of a tribute marking the 10th anniversary of the monument.

1995 – Retired General Colin Powell embraced the Republican Party, but said he would not run for president or any other political office in 1996 because it was “a calling that I do not yet hear.”

1998 – Four Navy fliers were lost at sea and presumed dead after their EA-6B Prowler struck an S-3 Viking aircraft on the carrier Enterprise during nighttime landing practice off of Virginia. 2 crewmen landed safely on the deck.

1999 – Former President Bush was honored in Germany for his role in the fall of the Berlin Wall ten years earlier.

November 8th ~ {continued...}

2000 – A statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. 19,000 votes were reported disqualified in West Palm Beach. Early that day, Vice President Al Gore telephoned Texas Gov. George W. Bush to concede, but called back about an hour later to retract his concession.

2000 – Saudi Arabia opened its border with Iraq and signed export contracts to nearly $600 million under exceptions to US sanctions.

2001 – In a prime-time address, President called on Americans to defy acts of terror by strengthening their communities, comforting their neighbors and remaining vigilant in the face of further threats.

2001 – U.S. jets struck Taliban targets across northern Afghanistan and fierce fighting was reported around the Taliban-held city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

2002 – President Bush said the new resolution presented the Iraqi regime “with a final test.”

2002 – The UN Security Council unanimously approved a tough new Iraq resolution, aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences.” Iraq has until Nov. 15 to accept its terms and pledge to comply. Iraq has until Dec. 8 to provide weapons inspectors and the Security Council with a complete declaration of all aspects of its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. Weapons inspectors have until Dec. 23 to resume their work in Iraq. Weapons inspectors are to report to the Security Council 60 days after the start of their work. If inspectors resume their work on Dec. 23, the latest they would be able to report to the council would be Feb. 21, 2003.

2003 – In Iraq insurgents killed two US paratroopers and wounded another west of Baghdad. In Tikrit US F-16s battered suspected targets. 5 Iraqis were killed and 16 taken custody in “Operation Ivy Cyclone.”

2004 – In Iraq some 10,000 US and Iraqi troops fought their way into the western outskirts of Fallujah. A car bomb hit a civilian convoy belonging to coalition forces on the main highway to Baghdad’s airport.

2004 – U.S. Federal District Judge James Robertson rules that the system of tribunals set up by the United States military to try and sentence prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay is illegal.

2006 – Amid criticism, Donald Rumsfeld resigns as Secretary of Defense. The President will later announce the selection of former Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates to succeed Rumsfeld.

2014 – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “Caliph” of ISIS is critically wounded during an US airstrike at al-Qaim.

2014 – North Korea releases American detainees Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller.

November 9th ~

1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1764 – Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to British forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet. Mary Campbell (later Mary Campbell Willford) was an American colonial settler, taken captive as a child by Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Later rescued, she is believed to have been the first white child to travel to the Western Reserve.

1780 – In the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter. The Battle of Fishdam Ford was an attempted surprise attack by British forces under the command of Major James Wemyss against an encampment of Patriot militia around 1 am, late in the American Revolutionary War. Wemyss was wounded and captured in the attack, which failed because of heightened security in Sumter’s camp and because Wemyss did not wait until dawn to begin the attack.

1822 – The Action of 9 November 1822 between USS Alligator and a squadron of pirate schooners off the coast of Cuba. Fifteen leagues from Matanzas, Cuba, a large band of pirates captured several vessels and held them for ransom. Upon hearing of the pirate attacks, the Alligator under Lieutenant William Howard Allen rushed to the scene to rescue the vessels and seize the pirates. Upon arriving at the bay where the pirates were said to be, USS Alligator dispatched boats to engage the enemy vessels, as the water was too shallow for the American warship to engage them herself. With Allen personally commanding one of the boats, the Americans assaulted the piratical schooner Revenge. Although the Americans were able to force the pirates into abandoning Revenge, the buccaneers managed to fight their way out of the bay and inflict heavy casualties among the Americans, including Allen. With their commander mortally wounded, the Americans ceased pursuit of the pirates but managed to recover the vessels that had been held in the bay.

1862 – General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Union Army of the Potomac following the removal of George B. McClellan.

1875 – Indian Inspector E.C. Watkins submits a report to Washington, D.C., stating that hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians associated with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are hostile to the United States. In so doing, Watkins set into motion a series of events that led to the Battle of the Little Big Born in Montana the following year.

1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1906 – On the first foreign trip by a U.S. president, President Theodore Roosevelt departs the United States for Panama aboard the battleship Louisiana. The visit came three years after Roosevelt gave tacit U.S. military support to the Panamanian revolt against Colombian rule.

1918 – The abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II is announced. He goes into exile in the Netherlands the next day. The victorious powers request, halfheartedly, that he be tried as a war criminal. A member of the chancellor’s cabinet, Philipp Scheidmann, announces the creation of a republic. A new government and chancellor, Friedrich Ebert, are appointed the next day. Germany will remain politically unstable, with various left and right wing factions vying for control.

1921 – USS Olympia arrives at the Washington Navy Yard from France carrying the body of the Unknown Soldier for internment at Arlington National Cemetery.

1923 – In Munich, armed policeman and troops loyal to Germany’s democratic government crush the Beer Hall Putsch, the first attempt by the Nazi Party at seizing control of the German government.

1925 – German Nazis formed the SS (Schutzstaffel- elite special forces).

1935 – Japanese troops invaded Shanghai, China.

1938 – This day saw the organized destruction of Jewish businesses and homes in Munich, as well as the beating and murder of Jewish men, women, and children. It was an exercise in terror that would be called “Kristallnacht,” or “the Night of Broken Glass,” because of the cost of broken glass in looted Jewish shops–5 million marks ($1,250,000).

1940 – Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.

1944 – The 455-foot Red Oak Victory ship was launched from Richmond, Ca. It was named after an Iowa town with the highest number of casualties per capita in WW II. The Victory ships were successors of the Liberty ships.

1945 – FBI agents staked out a house in Berkeley, Ca., to watch George Eltenton, a suspected Soviet spy. In 1946 Eltenton admitted that he had tried to obtain secret data on Berkeley’s radiation lab. Eltenton moved to Britain in 1947.

1950 – In first engagement between MIG-15 and F9F jets (USS Philippine Sea), LCDR William T. Amen (VF-111) shoots down a MIG and becomes first Navy pilot to shoot down a jet aircraft. Corporal Harry J. LaVene, a tail gunner on a RB-29 over Sinuiju, became the first aerial gunner to shoot down a MiG-15.

1967 – NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched Apollo 4 into orbit from Cape Kennedy with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was the largest operational launch vehicle ever produced. Standing over 363 feet high with its Apollo Spacecraft payload, it produced over 7.5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.

1979 – In a nuclear false alarm, the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.

1980 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared holy war against Iran.

1989 – East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters.

1997 – In Lansdowne, Pa., some 200 people picketed in front of the home of Jonas Stelmokas (81) to protest delays to his deportation. He was accused of being a former member of the Lithuanian police force that helped Nazis kill Jews during WW II.

1999 – With fireworks, concerts and a huge party at the landmark Brandenburg Gate, Germany celebrated the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

2000 – William Leonard Pickard (55) and Clyde Apperson (45) of California were indicted by a grand jury in Kansas City for running a massive LSD laboratory inside a decommissioned nuclear missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

2001 – The Battle of Mazar-e Sharif may also mark the last use of hoseback mounted tactics by US troops. US Special Forces operators, blending modern and ancient, rode with Northern Alliance allies while using modern communications to direct air support.

2001 – A Pakistani newspaper published a Nov 7 interview with Osama bin Laden in which he claimed to have chemical and nuclear weapons.

2002 – President Bush said in his radio address that Saddam Hussein faced a final test to surrender weapons of mass destruction.

2004 – Iraqi authorities imposed the first nighttime curfew in more than a year on Baghdad and surrounding areas. US Army and Marine units thrust through the center of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, fighting bands of guerrillas in the streets and conducting house-to-house searches on the second day of a major offensive.

2012 – Two Iranian Revolutionary Guard fighter jets fire on an unmanned American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone in international airspace near Kuwait.

2012 – CIA Director David Petraeus submits his resignation to President Barack Obama, citing an extramarital affair he had.CIA Director David Petraeus submits his resignation to President Barack Obama, citing an extramarital affair he had.

2013 – The United States Navy christened the USS Gerald R. Ford – the $15.5 billion aircraft carrier is the most technologically advanced ship ever built.

November 10th ~

1674 – The Dutch formally ceded New Netherlands (NY) to English as provision of the Treaty of Westminster at the End of the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

1702 – English colonists under the command of James Moore besiege Spanish St. Augustine during Queen Anne’s War. The Siege of St. Augustine was an action in Queen Anne’s War during November and December 1702. It was conducted by English provincial forces from the Province of Carolina and their native allies, under the command of Carolina’s governor James Moore, against the Spanish colonial fortress of Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, in Spanish Florida. After destroying coastal Spanish communities north of St. Augustine, Moore’s forces arrived at St. Augustine and immediately began siege operations. The Spanish governor, Joseph de Zúñiga y Zérda, had advance warning of their arrival, and withdrew civilians and food supplies into the fortress, and also sent messengers to nearby Spanish and French communities for relief. The English guns did little damage to the fortress walls, prompting Governor Moore to send an appeal to Jamaica for larger guns. The Spanish calls for relief were successful; a fleet sent from Havana, Cuba landed troops nearby on 29 December. Moore lifted the siege the next day, and was forced to burn many of his boats before retreating to Charles Town in disgrace.

1775 – During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passes a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps. Serving on land and at sea, the original U.S. Marines distinguished themselves in a number of important operations during the Revolutionary War. The first Marine landing on a hostile shore occurred when a force of Marines under Captain Samuel Nicholas captured New Province Island in the Bahamas from the British in March 1776. Nicholas was the first commissioned officer in the Continental Marines and is celebrated as the first Marine commandant. After American independence was achieved in 1783, the Continental Navy was demobilized and its Marines disbanded. In the next decade, however, increasing conflict at sea with Revolutionary France led the U.S. Congress to establish formally the U.S. Navy in May 1798.
Two months later, on July 11, President John Adams signed the bill establishing the U.S. Marine Corps as a permanent military force under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy. U.S. Marines saw action in the so-called Quasi-War with France and then fought against the Barbary pirates of North Africa during the first years of the 19th century. Since then, Marines have participated in all the wars of the United States and in most cases were the first soldiers to fight. In all, Marines have executed more than 300 landings on foreign shores. Today, there are more than 200,000 active-duty and reserve Marines, divided into three divisions stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Camp Pendleton, California; and Okinawa, Japan. Each division has one or more expeditionary units, ready to launch major operations anywhere in the world on two weeks’ notice. Marines expeditionary units are self-sufficient, with their own tanks, artillery, and air forces. The motto of the service is Semper Fidelis, meaning “Always Faithful” in Latin.

1782 – In the last battle of the American Revolution, George Rodgers Clark attacked Indians and Loyalists at Chillicothe, in Ohio Territory.

1808 – In a decision that would eventually make them one of the wealthiest surviving Indian nations, the Osage Indians agree to abandon their lands in Missouri and Arkansas in exchange for a reservation in Oklahoma. The Osage were the largest tribe of the Southern Sioux Indians occupying what would later become the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. When the first Anglo explorers and settlers moved into this region, they encountered a sophisticated society of Native Americans who lived in more or less permanent villages made of sturdy earthen and log lodges. The Osage-like the related Quapaw, Ponca, Omaha, and Kansa peoples-hunted buffalo and wild game like the Plains Indians, but they also raised crops to supplement their diets. Although the Southern Sioux warred among themselves almost constantly, Americans found it much easier to understand and negotiate with these more sedentary tribes than with the nomadic Northern Sioux. American negotiators convinced the Osage to abandon their traditional lands and peacefully move to a reservation in southern Kansas in 1810. When American settlers began to covet the Osage reservation in Kansas, the tribe agreed to yet another move, relocating to what is now Osage County, Oklahoma, in 1872.
Such constant pressure from American settlers to push Native Americans off valuable lands and onto marginal reservations was all too common throughout the history of western settlement. Most Indian tribes were devastated by these relocations, including some of the Southern Sioux tribes like the Kansa, whose population of 1,700 was reduced to only 194 following their disastrous relocation to a 250,000-acre reservation in Kansas. The Osage, though, proved unusually successful in adapting to the demands of living in a world dominated by Anglo-Americans, thanks in part to the fortunate presence of large reserves of oil and gas on their Oklahoma reservation. In concert with their effective management of grazing contracts to Anglos, the Osage amassed enormous wealth during the twentieth century from their oil and gas deposits, eventually becoming the wealthiest tribe in North America.

1865 – Henry Wirz, a Swiss immigrant and the commander of Andersonville prison in Georgia, is hanged for the murder of soldiers incarcerated at his prison. He commanded a prison in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; escorted prisoners around the Confederacy; handled exchanges with the Union; and was wounded in a stagecoach accident. After returning to duty, he traveled to Europe and likely delivered messages to Confederate envoys. When Wirz arrived back in the Confederacy in early 1864 he was assigned the responsibility for Andersonville prison. While both sides incarcerated prisoners under horrible conditions, Andersonville deserves special mention for the inhumane circumstances under which its inmates were kept.
A stockade held thousands of men inside a barren and polluted patch of ground. Barracks were planned but never built; the men slept in makeshift housing, called “shebangs,” constructed from scrap wood and blankets that offered little protection from the elements. A small stream flowed through the compound and provided water for the Union soldiers, but this became a cesspool of disease and human waste. Erosion caused by the prisoners turned the stream into a huge swamp. The prison was designed to hold 10,000 men but the Confederates had packed it with more than 31,000 inmates by August 1864. Wirz oversaw an operation in which nearly a third of its 46,000 inmates died. On the scaffold, Wirz said to the officer in charge, “I know what orders are, Major. I am being hanged for obeying them.” He was found guilty on October 24 and sentenced to die on November 10. Wirz was the only person executed for crimes committed during the war.

1910 – The date of Thomas A. Davis’ opening of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy.

1915 – Great fire at Bethlehem Steel Co., German incendiaries suspected.

1918 – Retired German Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands.

1918 – The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C.) that said on November 11, 1918, all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.

1919 – The American Legion held its first national convention, in Minneapolis.

1928 – Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan. Two years after the death of his father, Michinomiya Hirohito is enthroned as the 124th Japanese monarch in an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C.

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1939 – The US consulate advises Americans to leave the Netherlands.

1941 – Churchill promised to join the U.S. “within the hour” in the event of war with Japan.

1942 – German troops occupy Vichy France, which had previously been free of an Axis military presence. Since July 1940, upon being invaded and defeated by Nazi German forces, the autonomous French state had been split into two regions. One was occupied by German troops, and the other was unoccupied, governed by a more or less puppet regime centered in Vichy, a spa region about 200 miles southeast of Paris, and led by Gen. Philippe Petain, a World War I hero.

1944 – The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.

1951 – Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, N.J., called his counterpart in Alameda, California.

1951 – At Panmunjom, the U.N. Command proposed that the demarcation line should be that of the line of contact at the time of the signing of the armistice.

1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.

1954 – Lt. Col. John Strapp traveled 632 MPH in a rocket sled.

1964 – At a news conference, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara says that the United States has no plans to send combat troops into Vietnam. When asked whether the United States intended to increase its activities in Vietnam, he replied, “Wait and see.” By 1969, more than 500,000 American troops were in South Vietnam.

1972 – Three black men successfully hijack a DC-9 from Birmingham to Cuba with $10 million and 10 parachutes. They are still fugitives. The copilot is wounded. Two are sentenced in Cuba to 20 years, one to 15 years. They threaten to crash the plane into the Oak Ridge nuclear installation. At McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, the FBI shoots out the tires. The plane finally lands on a foam-covered runway in Havana.

1975 – PLO leader Yasser Arafat addressed the UN in NYC.

1982 – The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened .

1982 – After 18 years as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev dies. His death signaled the end of a period of Soviet history marked by both stability and stagnation.

1983 – Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0.

1986 – President Ronald Reagan refused to reveal details of the Iran arms sale.

1989 – Workers began punching a hole in the Berlin Wall, a day after East Germany abolished its border restrictions.

1997 – A jury in Fairfax, Va., convicted Mir Aimal Kasi of one count of capital murder, one count of first-degree murder and eight additional charges stemming from a shooting attack outside CIA headquarters in January 1993.

1997 – The U-2 surveillance flights over Iraq were resumed by the UN. The plane flew out of range of Iraqi gunners.

1998 – The US military moved warships into the Persian Gulf in anticipation of a possible attack on Iraq over cancellation of weapons inspections.

2000 – The battle over Florida’s disputed presidential election continued, with George W. Bush’s camp pressing Al Gore to concede without pursuing multiple recounts, and Democrats pressing ahead with protests, determined to find enough votes to erase Bush’s razor-thin lead in initial counting. An unofficial tally gave Bush a 327-vote lead.

2001 – President Bush made his 1st address to the UN. He warned that all nations were possible targets of terrorism and urged them to join with the United States in a campaign to prevent more attacks.

2001 – Traces of anthrax were reported in offices of the Hart and Longworth government buildings in Washington DC.

2002 – Bush administration officials promised “zero-tolerance” if Saddam Hussein refused to comply with international calls to disarm.

2002 – U.S. warplanes flying from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf struck missile sites in southern Iraq in response to hostile acts.

2003 – A top Iranian official said that his country had suspended its enrichment of uranium and sent a letter to the IAEA accepting additional inspections of its nuclear facilities.

2006 – The National Museum of the Marine Corps is opened and dedicated by U.S. President George W. Bush and announces that Marine Corporal Jason Dunham will receive the Medal of Honor in Quantico, Virginia.

2006 – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft records a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn which is the first time such an event has been observed on another planet.

2008 – Over five months after landing on Mars, NASA declares the Phoenix mission concluded after communications with the lander were lost.

2011 – Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs of the United States Army is convicted of murder in relation to the Maywand District killings in Afghanistan.

November 11th ~

VETERANS DAY

Feast Day of St. Martin of Tours, Patron Saint of Chaplains and Logisticians: When Sulpicius Severus first met Martin of Tours he was stunned. Not only did the bishop offer him hospitality at his residence — a monk’s cell in the wilderness instead of a palace — but Martin washed Sulpicius’ hands before dinner and his feet in the evening. But Sulpicius was just the kind of person Martin showed the greatest honor to — a humble man without any rank or privilege. People of nobility and position were turned away from his abbey by chalk cliffs, out of fear of the temptation to pride. From that visit, Sulpicius became Martin’s disciple, friend, and biographer. Little is known of many of the saints who died in the early years of Christianity but thanks to Sulpicius, who wrote his first biography of Martin before the saint died and who talked to most of the people involved in his life, we have a priceless record of Martin’s life.

1620 – The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the Separatists, sometimes referred to as the “Saints”, fleeing from religious persecution by King James of England. They traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620 along with adventurers, tradesmen, and servants, most of whom were referred to, by the Separatists as “Strangers”. The Mayflower Compact was signed aboard ship by most adult men. The Pilgrims used the Julian Calendar, also known as Old Style dates, which, at that time, was ten days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Signing the covenant were 41 of the ship’s 101 passengers, while the Mayflower was anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor within the hook at the northern tip of Cape Cod.

1778 – Iroquois Indians and Torries, led by William Butler, massacred 40 inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y. The Cherry Valley massacre was an attack by British and Iroquois forces on a fort and the village of Cherry Valley in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War. It has been described as one of the most horrific frontier massacres of the war. A mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Seneca and Mohawks descended on Cherry Valley, whose defenders, despite warnings, were unprepared for the attack. During the raid, the Seneca in particular targeted non-combatants, and reports state that 30 such individuals were slain, in addition to a number of armed defenders. The raiders were under the overall command of Walter Butler, who exercised little authority over the Indians on the expedition.

1813 – In the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, British and Canadian forces defeat a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign. The Battle of Crysler’s Farm, also known as the Battle of Crysler’s Field, was fought on 11 November 1813, during the War of 1812. The name Chrysler’s Farm is sometimes used for the engagement, but Crysler is the proper spelling.

1831 – Nat Turner was hanged and skinned in Southampton county, Va. Hysteria surrounded this rebellion and over 200 slaves, some as far away as North Carolina, were murdered by whites in fear of a generalized uprising. A martyr to the anti-slavery cause, Turner’s actions had the adverse effect of virtually ending all abolitionist activities in the south before the Civil War.

1839 – The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.

1861 – Thaddeus Lowe made balloon observation of Confederate forces from Balloon- Boat G.W. Parke Custis anchored in Potomac River.

1864 – Sherman’s troops destroyed Rome, Georgia and continued on toward Atlanta.

1864 – Commander Henry K. Davenport, U.S.S. Lancaster, captured Confederates on board steamer Salvador, bound from Panama to California, after having been informed that they intended to seize the ship at sea and convert her into a raider. Salvador’s captain had warned naval authorities at Panama Bay that the attempt was to be made, and Davenport and his men arranged to search the baggage of the passengers after the vessel passed the territorial limits of Panama. The search revealed guns and ammunition, along with a commission from Secretary Mallory for the capture; the Confederates were promptly taken into custody. This daring party, led by Acting Master Thomas E. Hogg, CSN, was one of many attempting to seize Union steamers and convert them into commerce raiders, especially with a view toward capturing the gold shipments from California. Union warships usually convoyed the California ships to prevent their capture.

1865 – Dr. Mary Edward Walker, 1st Army female surgeon, was awarded Medal of Honor by Pres. Andrew Johnson for her work as a field doctor for outstanding service at the Battle of Bull Run, at the Battle of Chickamauga, as a Confederate prisoner of war in Richmond, Va., and at the Battle of Atlanta.

1870 – Navy expedition to explore the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, southern Mexico, commanded by CAPT Robert W. Shufeldt, enters the Coatzacoalcos River to begin a survey for possible interoceanic canal. Support provided by USS Kansas and USS Mayflower.

1885 – George Smith Patton, one of the great American generals of World War II, is born in San Gabriel, California. Patton came from a family with a long history of military service. After studying at West Point, he served as a tank officer in World War I, and his experience in that conflict, along with his extensive military study, led him to become an advocate of the crucial importance of the tank in future warfare. After the American entrance into World War II, Patton was placed in command of an important U.S. tank division and played a key role in the Allied invasion of French North Africa in 1942. In 1943, Patton led the U.S. Seventh Army in its assault on Sicily and won fame for out-commanding Montgomery during the so-called Race to Messina.

Although Patton was one of the ablest American commanders in World War II, he was also one of the most controversial. He presented himself as a modern-day cavalryman, designed his own uniform, and was known to make eccentric claims that he was a direct descent from great military leaders of the past through reincarnation. During the Sicilian campaign, Patton generated considerable controversy when he accused a hospitalized U.S. soldier suffering from battle fatigue of cowardice and then personally struck him across the face. The famously profane general was forced to issue a public apology and was reprimanded by General Dwight Eisenhower. However, when it was time for the invasion of Western Europe, Eisenhower could find no general as formidable as Patton, and the general was again granted an important military post.

In 1944, Patton commanded the U.S. Third Army in the invasion of France, and in December of that year his expertise in military movement and tank warfare helped crush the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes. During one of his many successful campaigns, General Patton was said to have declared, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” On December 21, 1945, he died in a hospital in Germany from injuries sustained in an automobile accident near Mannheim.

1889 – Washington became the 42nd state of the US. Washington is located north of Oregon, west of Idaho, and south of the Canadian province of British Columbia on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Named after George Washington, the first President of the United States, the state was made out of the western part of the Washington Territory which had been ceded by Britain in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty as a settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute. It was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889. Although its official, unambiguous name is “The State of Washington,” the state’s name is often reversed and referred to as “Washington state” to the chagrin of many natives. This is meant to distinguish it from Washington, D.C., also named for George Washington. Another nickname is “the Evergreen State.” Its largest city is Seattle, situated in the west, followed by Spokane, located in the east, and its capital is Olympia.

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1909 – Construction began on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

1918 – At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends.

At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiýgne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.
On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.

On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany. For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France. The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris.

By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front–the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium–the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.

In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany.

In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918. World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict–the Treaty of Versailles of 1919–forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.

1919 – The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Centralia Massacre, also known as the Armistice Day Riot, was a violent and bloody incident that occurred during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day.
This conflict between the American Legion and workers who were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or “Wobblies”) resulted in six deaths, additional wounded, multiple prison terms, and an ongoing and especially bitter dispute over the motivations and events that precipitated the massacre. It was the culmination of years of bad blood between members of the local Legion and members of the IWW. Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion, as well as a large number of IWW members, some also war veterans. The ramifications of this event included a trial that attracted national media attention, notoriety that contributed to the Red Scare of 1919–20, the creation of a powerful martyr for the IWW, a monument to one side of the battle and a mural for the other, a formal tribute to the fallen Legionnaires by President Warren G. Harding, and a deep-rooted enmity between the local American Legion and the Wobblies that persists into the 21st century.

1920– Lenah S. Higbee becomes the first woman to be awarded the Navy Cross. It was awarded for her World War I service.

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1921 – Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding. Two days before, an unknown American soldier, who had fallen somewhere on a World War I battlefield, arrived at the nation’s capital from a military cemetery in France.

On Armistice Day, in the presence of President Harding and other government, military, and international dignitaries, the unknown soldier was buried with highest honors beside the Memorial Amphitheater. As the soldier was lowered to his final resting place, a two-inch layer of soil brought from France was placed below his coffin so that he might rest forever atop the earth on which he died. The Tomb of the Unknowns is considered the most hallowed grave at Arlington Cemetery, America’s most sacred military cemetery.

The tombstone itself, designed by sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones, was not completed until 1932, when it was unveiled bearing the description “Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier Known but to God.” The World War I unknown was later joined by the unidentified remains of soldiers from America’s other major 20th century wars and the tomb was put under permanent guard by special military sentinels.

In 1998, a Vietnam War unknown, who was buried at the tomb for 14 years, was disinterred from the Tomb after DNA testing indicated his identity. Air Force Lieutenant Michael Blassie was returned to his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, and was buried with military honors, including an F-15 jet “missing man” flyover and a lone bugler sounding taps.

1922 – Kurt Vonnegut, American author who wrote “Slaughterhouse Five,” was born. Vonnegut was a World War II soldier who witnessed the firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended Cornell and joined the Air Force during World War II. He was captured by Germans and held in Dresden, where he was forced to dig out dead and charred bodies in the aftermath of the city’s bombing. After the war, he studied anthropology at the University of Chicago and later wrote journalism and public relations material.

Vonnegut’s other novels, including Cat’s Cradle (1963), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Galapagos (1985), and others, did not generate as much controversy as Slaughterhouse-Five. His experimental writing style, combining the real, the absurd, the satiric, and the fanciful, attracted attention and made his books popular. Vonnegut is also a gifted graphic artist whose satirical sketches appear in some of his later novels, including Breakfast of Champions.

1940 – Willys unveiled the “Jeep.” The invitation to submit bids was sent to 135 U.S. automobile manufacturers to produce 70 vehicles; the small Bantam company managed to meet the deadline delivering the pilot model in September 23, 1940. Although it was 730 lbs. overweight it was judged good. Willys-Overland submitted crude sketches of their vehicle and underbid Bantam, although they could not meet the 75 day delivery period; after adding penalties for this the Bantam proposal was lower and this company received an order to produce 70 Model 60 or MKII. Willys Overland submited two units of its pilot model, the Quad, on this day; this had many of the features from the Bantam as did another prototype from Ford, who delivered two of its Pigmy in November 23.

Both Willys-Overland and Ford were given free access to Bantam’s prototype and blueprints, which goes a long way to explain the similarities. With all three prototypes satisfactory, the Army decided to order 1500 of each for field evaluation, with deliveries to begin in early 1941; each of the prototypes should suffer alterations to remedy deficiencies brought out by the testing. The modified versions were the Bantam 40 BRC, the Willys MA and the Ford GP (G for Government, P for 80″ wheelbase).

In July 1941 the War Department decided to adopt one single model; Willys was selected because it bid lower than the others but the MA had to be redesigned in view of the experience gained with the tests. The redesigned model was named MB by Willys but the contracts to manufacture the vehicle went both to Willys and Ford, where it was named GPW (the W was added to refer to the Willys motor). Meanwhile, about 1000 Bantam 40 BRCs were built for the Russian Army.

1942 – Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37. In September 1940, Congress, by wide margins in both houses, passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, and the first peacetime draft was imposed in the history of the United States. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one month later. There were some 20 million eligible young men-50 percent were rejected the very first year, either for health reasons or because 20 percent of those who registered were illiterate.

But by November 1942, with the United States now a participant in the war, and not merely a neutral bystander, the draft ages had to be expanded; men 18 to 37 were now eligible. Blacks were passed over for the draft because of racist assumptions about their abilities and the viability of a mixed-race military. But this changed in 1943, when a “quota” was imposed, meant to limit the numbers of blacks drafted to reflect their numbers in the overall population, roughly 10.6 percent of the whole. Initially, blacks were restricted to “labor units,” but this too ended as the war progressed, when they were finally used in combat. By war’s end, approximately 34 million men had registered; 10 million had been inducted into the military.

1944 – Private Eddie Slovik was convicted of desertion and sentenced to death for refusing to join his unit in the European Theater of Operations.

1944 – Aircraft from 8 carriers of US Task Force 38 attack a Japanese convoy off Leyte, near Ormoc. Four destroyers, 1 minesweeper and 5 transports (carrying nearly 10,000 troops) are sunk.

1944 – An American cruiser and destroyer task force, commanded by Admiral Smith, shells the island of Iwo Jima during the night.

1944 – In China, Japanese forces capture the Allied airbases at Kweilin and Liuchow. American forces have rendered the base at Liuchow unusable prior to withdrawing.

1954 – November 11 designated as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all U.S. wars.

1966 – Gemini 12 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., with astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr.

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1967 – Three U.S. prisoners of war, two of them African American, are released by the Viet Cong in a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The three men were turned over to Tom Hayden, a “new left” antiwar activist. U.S. officials in Saigon said that the released prisoners had been “brainwashed,” but the State Department denied it. The Viet Cong said that the release was a response to antiwar protests in the U.S. and a gesture towards the “courageous struggle” of blacks in the United States.

1967 - In Vietnam, the Americal (formerly Task Force Oregon) and 1st Cavalry Divisions combine to form Operation Wheeler/Wallowa in Quang Nam and Quang Tin Provinces, I Corps. The purpose of the operation was to relieve enemy pressure and to reinforce the III Marine Amphibious Force in the area, thus permitting Marines to be deployed further north. The operation lasted more than 12 months and resulted in 10,000 enemy casualties.

1968 – U.S. joint-service Operation Commando Hunt is launched. This operation was designed to interdict Communist routes of infiltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. The aerial campaign involved a series of intensive air operations by U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft and lasted until April 1972. During the course of the operation, nearly 3 million tons of bombs fell on Laos. While Communist infiltration was slowed by this campaign, it was not seriously disrupted. Commando Hunt was ultimately considered a failure.

1972 – The massive Long Binh military base, once the largest U.S. installation outside the continental United States, is handed over to the South Vietnamese. This logistical complex, which had been constructed on the outskirts of Bien Hoa near the outskirts of Saigon, included numerous ammunition depots, supply depots, and other logistics installations. It served as the headquarters for U.S. Army Vietnam, 1st Logistical Command, and several other related activities. The handing-over of the base effectively marked the end–after seven years–of direct U.S. participation in the war. After the Long Binh base was turned over, about 29,000 U.S. soldiers remained in South Vietnam, most them advisors with South Vietnamese units, or helicopter crewmen, and maintenance, supply, and office staff.

1978 – Veteran’s Day, originally know as Armistice Day, became a national holiday in 1938. It was changed back by Congress in this year to this day rather than the 4th Monday of October, which had been set in 1968.

1981 – Commissioning of first Trident-class Nuclear Powered Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine, USS Ohio (SSBN-726).

1992 – By letter, Russian President Boris Yeltsin told U.S. senators that Americans had been held in prison camps after World War II and some were “summarily executed,” but that others were still living in his country voluntarily.

1993 – A bronze statue honoring the more than 11,000 American women who had served in the Vietnam War was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1996 – Phan Thi Kim Phuc laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. John Plummer, Vietnam era helicopter pilot, met with Phan Thi Kim at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington in reconciliation. Phan Thi Kim had suffered severe napalm burns after a napalm bombing of her village in June 1972.

1998 – President Clinton ordered warships, planes and troops to the Persian Gulf as he laid out his case for a possible attack on Iraq. Iraq, meanwhile, showed no sign of backing down on its refusal to deal with U.N. weapons inspectors.

2000 – President Clinton led groundbreaking ceremonies in Washington DC for the National WW II Memorial.

2001 – A Pakistani newspaper (Ausaf) published the second part of an interview in which Osama bin Laden was quoted as saying he had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks in the United States, and declared he would never allow himself to be captured.

2002 – Iraqi lawmakers denounced a new UN resolution on weapons inspections as dishonest, provocative and worthy of rejection. But the Iraqi parliament said it ultimately would trust whatever President Saddam Hussein decided.

2003 – The Kurdish guerrilla group that battled the Turkish army for some 15 years announced that it was dissolving itself and was planning to form a new group that would likely would pursue Kurdish rights through negotiations. The Kurdistan Workers Party changed its name to the Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan, or KADEK, last year.

2010 – Iceland opens an inquiry as it emerges that its citizens may be being spied on by the United States embassy. This follows similar investigations into possible illegal U.S. activities in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, with possibly hundreds of Norwegians being monitored and Sweden describing the matter as “very serious”.

November 12th ~

1439 – Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.

1602 – The Vizcaino expedition held Mass on the feast day of San Diego de Alcala. He named the California landing port after the saint.

1861 – U.S.S. Fingal (later C.S.S. Atlanta ), purchased in England, entered Savannah laden with military supplies– the first ship to run the blockade solely on Confederate government account.

1863 – Confederate General James Longstreet arrived at Loudon, Tennessee to assist the attack on Union General Ambrose Burnside’s troops at Knoxville.

1864 – Union General William T. Sherman orders the business district of Atlanta destroyed before he embarks on his famous March to the Sea. When Sherman captured Atlanta in early September 1864, he knew that he could not remain there for long. His tenuous supply line ran from Nashville, Tennessee, through Chattanooga, then one hundred miles through mountainous northern Georgia. The army he had just defeated, the Army of Tennessee, was still in the area and its leader, John Bell Hood, swung around Atlanta to try to damage Sherman’s lifeline. Of even greater concern was the Confederate cavalry of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a brilliant commander who could strike quickly against the railroads and river transports on which Sherman relied.

During the fall, Sherman conceived of a plan to split his enormous army. He sent part of it, commanded by General George Thomas, back toward Nashville to deal with Hood while he prepared to take the rest of the troops across Georgia. Through October, Sherman built up a massive cache of supplies in Atlanta. He then ordered a systematic destruction of Atlanta to prevent the Confederates from recovering anything once the Yankees had abandoned the city. By one estimate, 37 percent of the city was ruined. This was the same policy Sherman would apply to the rest of Georgia as he marched to Savannah. Before leaving on November 15, Sherman’s forces had burned the industrial district of Atlanta and left little but a smoking shell.

1867 – After more than a decade of ineffective military campaigns and infamous atrocities, a conference begins at Fort Laramie to discuss alternative solutions to the “Indian problem” and to initiate peace negotiations with the Sioux. The United States had been fighting periodic battles with Sioux and Cheyenne tribes since the 1854. That year, the Grattan Massacre inspired loud calls for revenge, though largely unjustified, against the Plains Indians. Full-scale war erupted on the plains in 1864, leading to vicious fighting and the inexcusable Sand Creek Massacre, during which Colorado militiamen killed 105 Cheyenne women and children who were living peacefully at their winter camp. By 1867, the cost of the war against the Plains Indians, the Army’s failure to achieve decisive results, and news of atrocities like those at Sand Creek turned the American public and U.S. Congress against the Army’s aggressive military solution to the “Indian problem.”

1912 – Robert Scott’s diary and dead body were found in Antarctica.

1912 – LT Theodore Ellyson makes first successful launching of an airplane (A-3) by catapult at the Washington Navy Yard.

1923 – Adolf Hitler was arrested for his Nov 8 attempted German coup.

1927 – Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

1942 – The World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. A large American convoy carrying supplies and reinforcements retreats upon the approach of a large Japanese naval force. The Japanese carry out air attacks on the American land positions as well as their shipping.

1943 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt embarks on USS Iowa (BB-61) to go to the Allied conferences at Teheran, Iran, and Cairo, Egypt.

1943 – The Japanese carrier aircraft stationed at Rabaul on New Britain are withdrawn. Of the 173 planes committed, 121 have been lost, with many pilots.

1948 – An international war crimes tribunal in Tokyo passes death sentences on seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as premier of Japan from 1941 to 1944. Eight days before, the trial ended after 30 months with all 25 Japanese defendants being found guilty of breaching the laws and customs of war.

1960 – Discoverer XVII was launched into orbit from California’s Vandenberg AFB. The Discoverer Program (1959-1962) was a ruse to conceal the Corona Program, a series of photoreconnaissance spy satellites. Corona was the first photoreconnaissance program, and a precursor of the military and civilian space imaging programs of today.

1969 – The US Army admitted to the 1968 Vietnam massacre of civilians at My Lai and announced an investigation of Lt William Calley for massacre of civilians at the Vietnamese village on March 16, 1968.

1971 – President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972, as the deadline for the withdrawal of an additional 45,000 U.S. troops.

1979 – President Carter announced an immediate halt to all imports of Iranian oil and freezes Iranian assets in US.

1980 – The U.S. space probe Voyager 1 came within 77,000 miles of Saturn. More than three years after its launch, the U.S. planetary probe Voyager 1 edges within 77,000 miles of Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system. The photos, beamed 950 million miles back to California, stunned scientists. The high-resolution images showed a world that seemed to confound all known laws of physics. Saturn had not six, but hundreds of rings. The rings appeared to dance, buckle, and interlock in ways never thought possible.

1982 – Space shuttle Columbia launched for its first operational flight. The crew successfully used a remote manipulator arm.

1985 – The Unabomber mailed a pipe bomb to Prof. James V. McConnell of Ann Arbor, Mich. Two people were injured 3 days later when the package was opened, but not McConnell. McConnell and research assistant Nick Suing were injured when the bomb exploded.

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.

1991 – Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev told a news conference he’d been warned by President George H.W. Bush and other U.S. officials that a revolt was brewing before hard-liners staged their coup, but that he had discounted their information.

1991 – President George H. W. Bush extends the initial mobilization of all Reserve Component units called in support of Operation Desert Shield from 90-days to 180-days (soon to be increased to 360-days) as the mission changes from defending Saudi Arabia from Iraqi invasion to compelling the Iraqi Army to withdraw from Kuwait.

1995 – The space shuttle “Atlantis” blasted off on a mission to dock with the Russian space station “Mir.”

1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

2000 – In Florida Palm Beach election officials decided to recount all county votes, some 425,000, by hand.

2001 – Taliban forces fled Kabul under cover of darkness. Northern Alliance forces arrived the following afternoon, encountering a group of about twenty fighters hiding in the city’s park. This group was killed in a 15-minute gun battle. After these forces were neutralized, Kabul was in the hands of coalition forces.

2002 – An Arab TV station broadcast an audiotape of Osama bin Laden, a voice that U.S. counter terrorism officials said is probably authentic.

2003 – Imelda Ortiz, a former Mexican consul to Lebanon, was arrested on charges of helping a smuggling ring move Arab migrants into the United States from Mexico. Federal agents over the previous 2 days arrested alleged ring leader Salim Boughader Mucharrafille along with alleged collaborators Melissa Ataja Valdez and Orlando Alfaro, in Tijuana.

November 13th ~

1775– U.S. forces under Gen. Richard Montgomery captured Montreal. This was a two-pronged attack on Canada, with the goal of capturing Quebec entrusted to Benedict Arnold, who was leading a force through a hurricane ravaged Maine wilderness.

1776 – Captain John Paul Jones in Alfred with brig Providence captures British transport Mellish, carrying winter uniforms later used by Washington’s troops.

1789 – George Washington, inaugurated as the first president of the United States in April, returns to Washington at the end of his first presidential tour. For four weeks, Washington traveled by stagecoach through New England, visiting all the northern states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution. Washington, the great Revolutionary War hero and first leader of the new republic, was greeted by enthusiastic crowds wherever he went. The group traveled as far north as Kittering, Maine, which was still a part of Massachusetts at the time. Two years later, President Washington embarked on his first presidential visit to the southern states, making a 1,887-mile round-trip journey from his estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

1806– Pike’s Peak was discovered, but not climbed, by Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike during an expedition to locate the source of the Mississippi. Explorations by Lt. Zebulon Pike and Kit Carson mapped out much of the state.

1809– John A.B. Dahlgren, US Union Lt Admiral and inventor (Civil War Dahlgren Cannon), was born. He was born in Philadelphia, PA, and when he turned 16 he joined the U.S. Navy as a midshipman. After many years at sea he was assigned to the navy’s ordnance bureau at Washington, D.C. in 1847. By the end of the Civil War, John Dahlgren, now a rear admiral, was responsible for the development and design of 12-pounder boat howitzers in several weight classifications (small, medium, and light), 20- and 24-pounder howitzers (some, including the 12-pounders, were rifled); 30-, 32-, 50-, 80-, and 150-pounder rifles; and 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, 13-, 15-, and 20-inch rifles.

1835– Texans officially proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star Republic, after its flag, until its admission to the Union in 1845.

1851 – The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle.

1860– South Carolina’s legislature called a special convention to discuss secession from the Union.

1878– New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace offered amnesty to many participants of the Lincoln County War, but not to gunfighter Billy the Kid.

1941 – The United States Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1935 to allow American merchant ships access to war zones, thereby putting U.S. vessels in the line of fire.

1942 – Off the coast of Guadalcanal, a Japanese convoy of 11 transports carrying 11,000 men and equipment escorted by Admiral Tanaka’s “Tokyo Express” approaches the island. American Admiral Callaghan, commanding a force of five cruisers and eight destroyers plots an interception course. In an action lasting about half an hour, two Japanese cruisers are sunk and almost all other vessels suffer damage. The Americans lose two cruisers and four destroyers. The Japanese transport convoy turns back. Later in the day, the battleship Hiei, already badly damaged, is torpedoed by American aircraft and scuttled.

1942 – Loss of USS Juneau (CL-52) during Battle of Guadalcanal results in loss of Five Sullivan Brothers. In the aftermath of Juneau’s loss, the Navy notified Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Sullivan of Waterloo, Iowa, that all five of their sons were missing in action. Two of the brothers had served previous four-year enlistments in the Navy and so, when all five brothers enlisted together on 3 January 1942, the Navy was the obvious choice. They had also insisted on serving together on the same ship. Although the accepted Navy policy was to separate family members, the brothers had persisted and their request was approved.

It was later learned, through survivors’ accounts, that four of the brothers died in the initial explosion. The fifth, George Thomas, despite being wounded the night before, made it onto a raft where he survived for five days before succumbing either to wounds and exhaustion or a shark attack. The brothers received the Purple Heart Medal posthumously and were entitled to the American Defense Service Medal, Fleet Clasp; Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four engagement stars and the World War II Victory Medal. They had also earned the Good Conduct Medal.

1944 – The Coast Guard-manned frigate USS Rockford, in concert with the Navy minesweeper USS Ardent, attacked and sank the Japanese Navy submarine I-12 mid-way between Hawaii and California. There were no survivors. In sinking I-12, Ardent and Rockford unwittingly avenged the atrocity I-12 had perpetrated on 30 October 1944 when, after sinking the Liberty Ship John A. Johnson, the submarine had rammed and sunk the lifeboats and rafts and then machine-gunned the 70 survivors.

1944 – German U-978 sinks 3 Liberty ships in the English Channel.

1957 – First firing of Regulus II bombardment missile

November 13th ~ { continued... }

1967 – President Lyndon Johnson is briefed on the situation in Vietnam by Gen. William Westmoreland, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and Robert W. Komer, the head of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program. They painted an optimistic picture that led Johnson to state on television on November 17 that, while much remained to be done, “We are inflicting greater losses than we’re taking…We are making progress.” Such pronouncements haunted President Johnson and his advisers only two months later, when the communists launched a massive offensive during the Tet New Year holiday in January 1968.

1971– The U.S. space probe Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars. NASA’s Mariner 9 circled Mars and revealed dried beds of rivers that flowed billions of years ago.

1982– Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials. The designer of the memorial was Maya Lin, a Yale University architecture student who entered a nationwide competition to create a design for the monument.

1990 – President George H. W. Bush extends the initial mobilization of all Reserve Component units called in support of Operation Desert Shield from 90-days to 180-days (soon to be increased to 360-days) as the mission changes from defending Saudi Arabia from Iraqi invasion to compelling the Iraqi Army to withdraw from Kuwait. Along with this announcement came his decision to send an additional 200,000 troops (all branches) to the Southwest Asia theater.

1993 – GIs kill a Somali armed with a grenade launcher near the Embassy Compound.

1995– A car bomb killed 7 people, including five Americans, and injured about 60 at a military training facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

1996– Sgt. Loren B. Taylor, a drill sergeant who’d had sex with three women recruits at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., was given five months in prison and a bad-conduct discharge in the first sentencing of the burgeoning Army sex scandal.

1997– Iraq expelled 6 Americans on a UN weapons inspection team. The United Nations decided to withdraw all weapons inspectors from Iraq after Saddam Hussein ordered Americans on the U.N. team out.

1999– The Navy recovered the cockpit voice recorder from Egypt Air Flight 990, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean October 31st with the loss of all 217 people aboard.

2000– Two US F-16 military jets collided over waters off of northern Japan. One pilot was rescued and the other was missing.

2001– President Bush issued an order to try int’l. terrorists by a special military tribunal.

2001– President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the White House, where they pledged to slash Cold War-era nuclear arsenals by two-thirds but remained at odds over American plans to develop a missile defense shield.

2001– Eight foreign aid workers, two Americans, two Australians and four Germans, held captive in Afghanistan for three months were freed from a prison by anti-Taliban fighters.

2001– An anthrax tainted letter was received by a pediatrician in Santiago. It was postmarked from Switzerland and marked for return to Florida. It was actually mailed from NY through a NY-based subsidiary of the Swiss Post office. The letter was later believed to have been contaminated in a lab.

2001– Spanish police arrested 11 people with suspected links to Osama bin Laden.

2001 – Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, possibly including bin Laden, were concentrating in Tora Bora, 50 kilometers (31 mi) southwest of Jalalabad. Nearly 2,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters fortified themselves in positions within bunkers and caves.

2001 – In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.

2002– Iraq accepted a tough new U.N. resolution that will return U.N. weapons inspectors to the country after nearly four years.

2002– Philippine Muslim gunmen linked to the al Qaeda network have demanded a ransom of 16 million pesos ($300,000) for their seven Indonesian and Filipino hostages kidnapped in June and August.

2003– Pres. Bush said the US wants Iraqis to take more responsibility for governing their troubled country and said coalition forces are determined to prevail over terrorists.

2009 – NASA claims to have discovered water after the LCROSS satellite crashes near the South Pole of the Moon.

2013 – One World Trade Center becomes the tallest building in the United States.

November 14th ~

1846 – Naval forces capture Tampico, Mexico. This will be a staging point for the coming action against Vera Cruz.

1862 – President Lincoln approves of General Ambrose Burnside’s plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. This was an ill-fated move, as it led to the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, in which the Army of the Potomac was dealt one of its worst defeats at the hands of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

1863 – General Nathan Bedford Forrest was assigned to command West Tennessee.

1881 – Charles J. Guiteau went on trial for assassinating President Garfield. Guiteau was convicted and hanged the following year.

1908 – Joseph McCarthy was born. He became an anti-Communist Senator from Wisconsin who gave the name “McCarthyism” to his communist witch-hunts.

1910 – Civilian Eugene Ely, was the first to take off in an airplane from the deck of a ship, USS Birmingham (CL-2) . He flew from the Birmingham at Hampton Roads to Norfolk. It was a Curtiss plane flown by Eugene Ely, a company exhibition pilot, that made the first successful takeoff from a Navy ship.

1921 – The Cherokee Indians asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres of land in Texas.

1935 – President Roosevelt proclaimed the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth. Manuel Luis Quezon was sworn in as the first Filipino president, as the Commonwealth of Philippines was inaugurated.

1942 – Off the coast of Guadalcanal, Admiral Tanaka turns south with his destroyers and transports and comes under heavy air attack from both Henderson Field and planes from the USS Enterprise. Seven of the transports and two warships are lost. He continues his advance throughout the night and manages to sail his remaining transports to Tassafaronga. However, more of the Japanese troops are killed by air attack while disembarking.

Meanwhile, the second battle of Guadalcanal gets underway shortly before midnight. The Japanese covering force supporting the convoy, led by Admiral Kondo ( with the battleship Kirishima, four cruisers and nine destroyers), encounters US Task Force 64, under the command of Admiral Lee ( with the battleships Washington and South Dakota and four destroyers). The battle begins with damage to the South Dakota. It is forced from the battle. A seven minute burst of fire from the USS Washington sinks the Kirishima. Control of the seas around Guadalcanal is passing to the Americans. Supply problems are mounting for the Japanese, who will now be forced to make considerable use of submarines to transport supplies. Already many of the Japanese troops are ill and hungry.

1943 – An American torpedo was mistakenly fired at the U.S. battleship Iowa, which was carrying President Roosevelt and his joint chiefs to the Tehran conference; the torpedo exploded harmlessly in the Iowa’s wake.

1944 – Carrier aircraft attack Japanese shipping in Philippines sinking five ships and damaging one.

1951 – United States and Yugoslavia signed a military aid pact. In a surprising turn of events, President Harry Truman asks Congress for U.S. military and economic aid for the communist nation of Yugoslavia. The action was part of the U.S. policy to drive a deeper wedge between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

1960 – President Dwight Eisenhower ordered U.S. naval units into the Caribbean after Guatemala and Nicaragua charged Castro with starting uprisings.

1960 – OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), formed.

1961 – President Kennedy increased the number of American advisors in Vietnam from 1,000 to 16,000.

1965 – In the first major engagement of the war between regular U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, elements of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fight a pitched battle with Communist main-force units in the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands. On this morning, Lt. Col. Harold G. Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry conducted a heliborne assault into Landing Zone X-Ray near the Chu Pong hills. Around noon, the North Vietnamese 33rd Regiment attacked the U.S. troopers. The fight continued all day and into the night. American soldiers received support from nearby artillery units and tactical air strikes.

The next morning, the North Vietnamese 66th Regiment joined the attack against the U.S. unit. The fighting was bitter, but the tactical air strikes and artillery support took their toll on the enemy and enabled the 1st Cavalry troopers to hold on against repeated assaults. At around noon, two reinforcing companies arrived and Colonel Moore put them to good use to assist his beleaguered soldiers.
By the third day of the battle, the Americans had gained the upper hand. The three-day battle resulted in 834 North Vietnamese soldiers confirmed killed, and another 1,000 communist casualties were assumed. In a related action during the same battle, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was ambushed by North Vietnamese forces as it moved overland to Landing Zone Albany. Of the 500 men in the original column, 150 were killed and only 84 were able to return to immediate duty; Company C suffered 93 percent casualties, half of them deaths. Despite these numbers, senior American officials in Saigon declared the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley a great victory.

The battle was extremely important because it was the first significant contact between U.S. troops and North Vietnamese forces. The action demonstrated that the North Vietnamese were prepared to stand and fight major battles even though they might take serious casualties. Senior American military leaders concluded that U.S. forces could wreak significant damage on the communists in such battles–this tactic lead to a war of attrition as the U.S. forces tried to wear the communists down. The North Vietnamese also learned a valuable lesson during the battle: by keeping their combat troops physically close to U.S. positions, U.S. troops could not use artillery or air strikes without risking injury to American troops. This style of fighting became the North Vietnamese practice for the rest of the war.

1967 – Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth, commander of the 3rd Marine Division, is killed when the helicopter in which he is travelling is shot down. He was the most senior U.S. officer to be killed in action in the war to date.

1969 – Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the moon, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr.; Richard F. Gordon, Jr.; and Alan L. Bean aboard. President Richard Nixon viewed the liftoff from Pad A at Cape Canaveral. He was the first president to attend the liftoff of a manned space flight. Thirty-six seconds after takeoff, lightning struck the ascending Saturn 5 launch rocket, which tripped the circuit breakers in the command module and caused a power failure. Fortunately, the launching rocket continued up normally, and within a few minutes power was restored in the spacecraft.

On November 19, the landing module Intrepid made a precision landing on the northwest rim of the moon’s Ocean of Storms. About five hours later, astronauts Conrad and Bean became the third and fourth humans to walk on the surface of the moon. During the next 32 hours, the two astronauts made two lunar walks, where they collected lunar samples and investigated the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, an unmanned U.S. probe that soft-landed on the moon in 1967. On November 24, Apollo 12 successfully returned to Earth, splashing down only three miles from one of its retrieval ships, the USS Hornet.

November 14th ~ { continued... }

1971 – Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars. Mariner 9 (Mariner Mars ’71 / Mariner-I) was an unmanned NASA space probe that contributed greatly to the exploration of Mars and was part of the Mariner program. Mariner 9 was launched toward Mars on May 30, 1971 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet — only narrowly beating the Soviet’s Mars 2 and Mars 3, which both arrived within a month. After months of dust storms it managed to send back clear pictures of the surface. Mariner 9 returned 7329 images over the course of its mission, which concluded in October 1972.

1972 –One week after his re-election, President Richard Nixon extends to South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu his “absolute assurance” that the United States will “take swift and severe retaliatory action” if Hanoi violates the pending cease-fire once it is in place. Thieu responded with a list of 69 amendments that he wanted added to the peace agreement being worked out in Paris. Nixon instructed Henry Kissinger to present Le Duc Tho, the senior North Vietnamese negotiator in Paris, with Thieu’s amendments. Kissinger protested that the changes were “preposterous” and might destroy chances for the treaty. Despite Kissinger’s concerns, the indication that the peace accords were near completion resulted in the Dow Jones closing above 1,000 for first time. In the end, however, Kissinger was correct and the peace talks became deadlocked and were not resumed until after Nixon ordered the December bombing of North Vietnam.

1979 – US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.

1984 – The Space Shuttle Discovery crew rescued a second satellite.

1986 – White House acknowledges CIA role in secretly shipping weapons to Iran.

1987 – A bomb hidden in a box of chocolates exploded in the lobby of Beirut’s American University Hospital, killing seven people, including the woman who was carrying it.

1989 – The U.S. Navy, alarmed over a recent string of serious accidents, ordered an unprecedented 48-hour stand-down.

1990 – President Bush told congressional leaders he had no immediate plans to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

1990 – PSU 302, staffed by Coast Guard reservists from Cleveland, Ohio, arrived in the Persian Gulf in support of operation Desert Shield. They were stationed in Bahrain.

1991 – U.S. and British authorities announced indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

1993 – Residents of Puerto Rico voted in a plebiscite to maintain the island’s existing U.S. commonwealth status, derailing the efforts of those favoring statehood.

1997 – A jury in Fairfax, Va., decided that Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kasi should get the death penalty for gunning down two CIA employees outside agency headquarters. Kasi was sentenced to death in January 1998.

1999 – UN sanctions against Afghanistan went into effect following the Taliban refusal to turn over Osama bin Laden. Int’l. flights were banned and overseas assets were frozen.

2001 – Pres. Bush welcomed Pres. Putin to his Prairie Chapel Ranch. They continued their talks a day after the two leaders agreed at the White House to reduce their countries’ nuclear stockpiles.

2001 – The rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan accelerated with the Islamic militia losing control of Jalalabad in the east, once-loyal Pashtun tribesmen joining in the revolt in the south, and many of their fighters fleeing into the mountains to evade U.S. airstrikes.

2001 – A Special Forces team was inserted north of Kandahar, near the village of Tarin Kowt. There, they linked up with Hamid Karzai and a small number of his followers. Karzai, a charismatic Pashtun tribal leader born near Kandahar, was both pro-western and anti-Taliban, a rare combination. As such, he was vital to U.S. plans for establishing an anti-Taliban front in the region.

2001 – United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1378 which included “Condemning the Taliban for allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base for the export of terrorism by the al-Qaeda network and other terrorist groups and for providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and others associated with them, and in this context supporting the efforts of the Afghan people to replace the Taliban regime”.

2002 – Pakistani Aimal Khan Kasi was put to death by injection at a prison in Jarratt, Va., for the slayings of two CIA employees in 1993.

2002 – Diplomats from the United States, European Union, South Korea and Japan decided to cut off the shipments of oil to North Korea in response to its violation of a 1994 nuclear agreement.

2003 – Near Tikrit, Iraq, an Apache helicopter attacked and killed 7 people believed to have been preparing a rocket attack on a US base.

2008 – General Ann E. Dunwoody becomes the first female four-star general in the history of the United States Army.

November 15th ~

1763 – Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began surveying Mason-Dixon Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

1777 – After 16 months of debate, the Continental Congress, sitting in its temporary capital of York, Pennsylvania, agrees to adopt the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. In 1781, with the Revolutionary War still raging, the last of the 13 states ratified the agreement. In 1777, Patriot leaders, stinging from British oppression, were reluctant to establish any form of government that might infringe on the right of individual states to govern their own affairs.

The Articles of Confederation provided for only a loose federation of American states. Congress was a single house, with each state having one vote, and a president would be elected to chair the assembly. Although Congress did not have the right to levy taxes, it did have authority over foreign affairs and could regulate a national army and declare war and peace. Amendments to the Articles required approval from all 13 states.

On March 2, 1781, following final ratification by the 13th state, the Articles of Confederation became the law of the land. By 1786, defects in the Articles were apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce, and the United States was in danger of breaking apart. In 1787, Congress endorsed a plan to draft a new constitution that would establish a more centralized and effective government. On March 4, 1789, the modern United States was established when the U.S. Constitution formally replaced the Articles of Confederation.

1805 – Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their party reached the mouth of the Columbia River, completing their trek to the Pacific.

1806 – Approaching the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains during his second exploratory expedition, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike spots a distant mountain peak that looks “like a small blue cloud.” The mountain was later named Pike’s Peak in his honor. Pike’s explorations of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory of the United States began before the nation’s first western explorers, Lewis and Clark, had returned from their own expedition up the Missouri River.

1862 – President Lincoln, with Secretaries Seward and Chase, drove to the Washington Navy Yard to view the trial of the Hyde rocket. Captain Dahlgren joined the group for the experiment. Though a defective rocket accidentally exploded, the President escaped injury.

1864 – Union General William T. Sherman begins his expedition across Georgia by torching the industrial section of Atlanta and pulling away from his supply lines. For the next six weeks, Sherman’s army destroyed most of Georgia before capturing the Confederate seaport of Savannah, Georgia.

1919 – The US Senate 1st invoked cloture to end a filibuster over the Versailles Treaty. Cloture is the only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes.

1920 – Forty-one nations opened the first League of Nations session in Geneva.

1937 – The 1st US congressional session in air-conditioned chambers took place.

1939 – President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1940 – The first 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under peacetime conscription.

1940 – US flying boats begin patrols from bases in Bermuda.

1942 – Although U.S. lost several ships in Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Naval Force under Rear Admiral Willlis Lee, USS Washington (BB-56), turns back Japanese transports trying to reinforce Guadalcanal. The Japanese never again try to send large naval forces to Guadalcanal.

1944 – A number of senior armed forces commanders are promoted to the new ranks of General of the Army and Admiral of the Fleet. The new ranks are identified by a five star insignia.

1957 – US sentenced Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel to 30 years and $3,000 fine. William Fischer, better known as Rudolf Abel, was one of the top Soviet spies during the Cold War. In 1948 he entered the United States and immediately began to set up networks of informants. Abel was primarily in charge of atomic spy operations and worked closely with Cohens and the Rosenbergs, all of whom were prominent spies. Abel had contacts within Los Alamos, a nuclear testing facility. Abel’s espionage likely had a huge impact on the Soviet nuclear program. Abel also set up large sabotage networks throughout the US and Latin America.

The FBI finally arrested Abel in June of 1957, largely due to information provided by Reino Hayhanen, a Soviet defector. The US sentenced Abel to thirty years in prison. Abel was released in 1960, in exchange for the release of American spy Gary Powers, who was shot down over the Soviet Union. Abel was possibly the most important Soviet spy during the Cold War and his espionage had a great impact on both the US and USSR.

1957 – In a long and rambling interview with an American reporter, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claims that the Soviet Union has missile superiority over the United States and challenges America to a missile “shooting match” to prove his assertion. The interview further fueled fears in the United States that the nation was falling perilously behind the Soviets in the arms race.

November 15th ~ { continued...}

1960 – The first submarine with nuclear missiles, the USS George Washington, took to sea from Charleston, South Carolina.

1962 – Cuba threatened to down U.S. planes on reconnaissance flights over its territory.

1966 – The flight of Gemini 12 ended successfully as astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Junior splashed down safely in the Atlantic. Primary object was rendezvous and docking and to evaluate EVA. Secondary objective included: Tethered vehicle operation, perform 14 experiments, rendezvous and dock in 3rd revolution, demonstrate automatic reentry, perform docked maneuvers, practice docking, conduct system tests and to park Gemini Agena target vehicle GATV-12 in 555.6 km (300nm) orbit.

1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.

1969 – The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.

1971 – Intel releases the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.

1979 – A package bomb aboard a commercial flight from Chicago exploded and forced an emergency landing at Dulles Airport. It was later attributed to the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.

1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.

1990 – The space shuttle “Atlantis” was launched on a secret military mission. Launch originally scheduled for July 1990. However, liquid hydrogen leak found on orbiter Columbia during STS-35 countdown prompted three precautionary tanking tests on Atlantis at pad June 29, July 13 and July 25. Tests confirmed hydrogen fuel leak on external tank side of external tank/orbiter 17-inch quick disconnect umbilical. Launch reset for November 15 due to payload problems. Liftoff occurred during classified launch window lying within launch period extending from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. EST, November 15, 1990.

2001 – Investigators in Florida said anthrax was found throughout the 68,000-square-foot America Media building in Boca Raton, where the 1st case was identified.

2001 – Two al-Qaeda computers were acquired by a Wall Street journalist in Kabul for $1,100 following US bombing. They were found to contain over 1,750 text and video files of al Qaeda activities including weapons programs. One file contained the names of 170 al Qaeda members.

2001 – The U.S. was able to track and kill al-Qaeda’s number three, Mohammed Atef with a bomb at his Kabul home, along with his guard Abu Ali al-Yafi’i and six others.

2002 – The FBI warned that al-Qaida may be planning a “spectacular” terrorist attack intended to damage the U.S. economy and inflict large-scale casualties.

2003 – Two US Army Black Hawk helicopters collided under fire and crashed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least 17 soldiers.

2003 – In Iraq insurgents and looters overran US bases in Samara when soldiers left in an effort to let Iraqis handle security.

2007 – The United States Treasury freezes all assets of the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization, claiming that it acts as a “front to facilitate fundraising” for the Tamil Tigers.

2008 – Mission STS-126 commences with the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour. The spacecraft will deliver equipment required to increase the crew capacity of the International Space Station from three to six members.

November 16th ~

1676 – 1st colonial prison was organized at Nantucket Mass.

1766 – Indians surrendered to British in Indian War of Chief Pontiac. By 1763, the British had control of much of northeastern North America. Most of the Indians were displeased by their treatment from the British. The main concern of the Indians was the continued settlement of people along the western frontier, which in 1763, included Ohio. Chief Pontiac began organizing many Indian tribes together to rebel against the British. Pontiac’s message of united Indian resistance was accepted among many groups, including the Delawares, Hurons, Illinois, Kickapoos, Miamis, Potawatomies, Senecas, Shawnees, Ottawas, and Chippewas. After a final council in 1763, warfare began. Pontiac’s goal was to drive the British back to the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains.

1776 – During the Revolutionary War, Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries lay siege to Fort Washington on Long Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside, but by the afternoon the Americans were overwhelmed, and the garrison commander, Colonel Robert Magaw, surrendered. Three thousand Americans were taken prisoner, and valuable ammunition and supplies were lost to the Hessians. Two weeks earlier, William Demont had deserted from the Fifth Pennsylvania Battalion and given British intelligence agents information about the Patriot defense of New York, including information about the location and defense of Fort Washington. Demont was the first traitor to the Patriot cause, and his treason contributed significantly to Knyphausen’s victory.

1776 – Margaret Corbin and her husband, crews one of two cannons in defense of Fort Washington and 600 other defenders. When her husband falls, Margaret takes his place at his cannon and continues firing until she is seriously wounded. She later becomes first woman in U.S. history to receive a pension from Congress for military service.

1776 – First salute to an American flag (Grand Union flag) flying from Continental Navy ship Andrew Doria, by Dutch fort at St. Eustatius, West Indies.

1798 – Kentucky became the 1st state to nullify an act of Congress. The Kentucky Resolution was passed in opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts by the Kentucky legislature, written by Thomas Jefferson. The resolutions declared that the Constitution only established an agreement and that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it; should the federal government assume such powers, its acts under them would be void. It was the right of the states to decide as to the constitutionality of such acts. The resolutions were submitted to other states for approval but with no real result. Their importance lies in that they were later considered to be the first statements of the States’ Rights theory, and led to the concept of nullification. They were also useful later to the Confederate side of the American Civil War, which used the ideas presented in these documents as justification for seceding.

1798 – The British boarded the U.S. frigate Baltimore and impressed a number of crewmen as alleged deserters, a practice which contributed to the War of 1812.

1813 – The British announced a blockade of Long Island Sound, leaving only the New England coast open to shipping.

1821 – Missouri Indian trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sells his goods at an enormous profit, and makes plans to return the next year over the route that will become known as the Santa Fe Trail.

1846 – Major General Zachary Taylor took Saltillo, Mexico.

1861 – Confederate Secretary of the Navy Mallory advertised for plans and bids for building four seagoing ironclads capable of carrying four heavy guns each.

1863 – At the Battle of Campbell’s Station, Ten., Confederates under General James Longstreet fail to defeat a Union force under General Ambrose Burnside near Knoxville, Tennessee.

1863 – U.S.S. Monongahela, Commander Strong, escorted Army transports and covered the landing of more than a thousand troops on Mustang Island, Aransas Pass, Texas. Monongahela’s sailors manned a battery of two howitzers ashore, and the ship shelled Confederate works until the out-numbered defenders surrendered. General Banks wrote in high praise of the “great assistance” rendered by Monongahela during this successful operation.

1902 – A cartoon appeared in the Washington Star, prompting the Teddy Bear Craze, after President Teddy Roosevelt refused to kill a captive bear tied up for him to shoot during a hunting trip to Mississippi.

1907 – Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years.

1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens.