March 10th ~ {continued...}

1993 – Authorities announced the arrest of Nidal Ayyad, a second suspect in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

1996 – Secretary of State Warren Christopher, accusing China of “reckless” provocations against Taiwan, said on NBC that US warships would move closer to Taiwan.

1997 – The White House and the FBI clashed in a rare public quarrel after President Clinton said he should have been alerted when the bureau told national security officials that the Chinese government might be trying to influence U.S. elections.

1997 – Vietnam agreed to repay the US millions of dollars in debts incurred by the former South Vietnam. The debts were currently worth $140 million.

1998 – U.S. Air Force and Navy personnel in the Persian Gulf received vaccinations against anthrax.

1998 – In South Carolina the FBI received a videotape made by Daniel Rudolph, brother of abortion clinic bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph, in which he amputated his left hand with a circular saw.

1999 – In Serbia Pres. Milosevic met with Richard Holbrooke and stood firm against NATO troops in his country.

2002 – Operation Anaconda continues. In Afghanistan, U.S. troops have been working to reduce a pocket of al-Qaeda resistance for the past 24 hours. No senior al Qaeda leaders have been captured at this point.

2003 – Facing almost certain defeat, the United States and Britain delayed a vote in the U.N. Security Council to give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm.

2003 – The US military says US and British warplanes have attacked several communications sites in Iraq after Iraqi forces fired a missile at coalition aircraft.

2004 – U.S. Marines shot and killed at least two Haitians in overnight gun battles.

2005 – Iraq’s main Shiite party and a Kurdish bloc reached a deal that sets the stage for a new government to be formed when the National Assembly convenes next week.

2005 – Pakistan’s information minister acknowledged that Abdul Qadeer Khan, a rogue scientist at the heart of an international nuclear black market investigation, gave centrifuges to Iran, but insisted the government had nothing to do with the transfer.

2006 – The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit. The US$720 million spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission is managed by the JPL, at California Institute of Technology, La Cañada Flintridge, California, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. It was launched August 12, 2005, and attained Martian orbit on March 10, 2006.

In November 2006, after five months of aerobraking, it entered its final science orbit and began its primary science phase. As MRO entered orbit it joined five other active spacecraft which were either in orbit or on the planet surface: Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express, Mars Odyssey, and two Mars Exploration Rovers; at the time a record for the most operational spacecraft in the immediate vicinity of Mars. MRO contains a host of scientific instruments such as cameras, spectrometers, and radar, which are used to analyze the landforms, stratigraphy, minerals, and ice of Mars. It paves the way for future spacecraft by monitoring Mars’ daily weather and surface conditions, studying potential landing sites, and hosting a new telecommunications system. MRO’s telecommunications system will transfer more data back to Earth than all previous interplanetary missions combined, and MRO will serve as a highly capable relay satellite for future missions.

2015 – The Wikimedia Foundation and eight other organisations file a lawsuit in the state of Maryland, US against the National Security Agency and the United States Department of Justice regarding the NSA’s mass surveillance program. The Wikimedia Foundation is the owner and parent company of Wikipedia.

2015 – An Army helicopter crashed during a foggy night training exercise at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle leaving seven Marines and four United States Army soldiers dead.

March 11th ~

1731 – Robert Treat Paine, Declaration of Independence signer, was born. Robert Treat Paine (March 11, 1731 – May 11, 1814) was a Massachusetts lawyer and politician, and a representative of Massachusetts to the Continental Congress. He served as the state’s first attorney general, and served as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state’s highest court.

1778 – Marines participated the action when the Continental Navy frigate BOSTON, enroute to France, sighted, engaged, and captured the British merchant ship MARTHA. As the drum of the BOSTON beat to arms, John Adams seized a musket and joined the Marines on deck until the frigate’s captain, Samuel Tucker, sent him below for safety.

1783 – George Washington forbids the unauthorized meeting of officers called for in the anonymous Newburgh Address and suggests a regular meeting of officers to discuss grievances to be held March 15th.

1811 – Ned Ludd led a group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization. Members of the organized bands of craftsmen who rioted against automation in 19th century England were known as Luddites and also “Ludds.” The movement, reputedly named after Ned Ludd, began near Nottingham as craftsman destroyed textile machinery that was eliminating their jobs. By the following year, Luddites were active in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Leicestershire.

Although the Luddites opposed violence towards people (a position which allowed for a modicum of public support), government crackdowns included mass shootings, hangings and deportation to the colonies. It took 14,000 British soldiers to quell the rebellion. The movement effectively died in 1813 apart from a brief resurgence of Luddite sentiment in 1816 following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

1813 – President Madison formally accepts the offer of Czar Alexander to mediate between Great Britain and the United States. The British, however, reject the Czar’s offer.

1824 – The U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A lifelong friend and trusted aide of Ulysses S. Grant, Ely Parker rose to the top in two worlds, that of his native Seneca Indian tribe and the white man’s world at large. He went on to become the first Indian to lead the Bureau.

1853 – Marines from the USS Cyane landed at San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua to protect American lives and interests during political disturbances. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the North American millionaire, recognizing the potential value of a canal route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, felt that the best site for such a canal was across Nicaragua. He began transporting people (especially those prospecting for gold in the western U.S.) across Nicaragua using stagecoach and boats in 1851.

1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America. The constitution resembled the Constitution of the United States, even repeating much of its language, but was actually more comparable to the Articles of Confederation–the initial post-Revolutionary War U.S. constitution–in its delegation of extensive powers to the states. The constitution also contained substantial differences from the U.S. Constitution in its protection of slavery, which was “recognized and protected” in slave states and territories.

However, in congruence with U.S. policy since the beginning of the 19th century, the foreign slave trade was prohibited. The constitution provided for six-year terms for the president and vice president, and the president was ineligible for successive terms. Although a presidential item veto was granted, the power of the central Confederate government was sharply limited by its dependence on state consent for the use of any funds and resources. Although Britain and France both briefly considered entering the Civil War on the side of the South, the Confederate States of America, which survived until April 1865, never won foreign recognition as an independent government.

March 11th ~ {continued...}

1862 – Landing party from U.S.S. Wabash, Commander C. R. P. Rodgers, occupied St. Augustine, Florida, which had been evacuated by Confederate troops in the face of the naval threat.

1862 – Two Confederate gunboats under construction at the head of Pensacola Bay were burned by Confederate military authorities to prevent their falling into Northern hands in the event of the anticipated move against Pensacola by Union naval forces.

1862 – President Lincoln issues War Order No. 3, a measure making several changes at the top of the Union command structure. He created three departments, placing Henry Halleck in charge of the west, John C. Fremont in command of troops in the Appalachian region, and George McClellan in the east. The most significant change in the order removed McClellan from his post as General-in-Chief of all Union armies, though McClellan retained command of the Army of the Potomac, the most important Union force. He had assumed leadership of that army after it was defeated at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. He quickly installed an efficient command structure and began training an effective fighting force.

Three months later, Lincoln elevated McClellan to General-in-Chief. The relationship between Lincoln and his commanding officer, however, was strained at best and contentious at worst. The arrogant McClellan was contemptuous of the president and he often ignored Lincoln’s communications or kept information from him. McClellan was stretched thin as General-in-Chief, and even he recognized this fact. He was bothered by the demotion, but he wrote to Lincoln that he would “work just as cheerfully as ever before, and…no consideration of self will in any manner interfere with the discharge of my public duties.”

For McClellan, this was a rare show of grace and deference towards Lincoln. The move allowed McClellan to spend more time planning his upcoming campaign against the Confederate capital at Richmond. For a time, there was no General-in-Chief, and the three regional commanders reported to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The post did not stay empty for long, though, as Halleck was elevated to General-in-Chief five months later.

1863 – Union troops under General Ulysses S. Grant gave up their preparations to take Vicksburg after failing to pass Fort Pemberton, north of Vicksburg.

1863 – A naval engagement occurred between the CSS Alabama and the USS Hatteras. CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built for the Confederacy in 1862 by John Laird Sons and Company, Liverpool, England. Launched as Enrica, it was fitted out as a cruiser and commissioned 24 August 1862 as CSS Alabama. Under Captain Raphael Semmes, Alabama spent the next two months capturing and burning ships in the North Atlantic and intercepting American grain ships bound for Europe. Continuing the path of destruction through the West Indies, Alabama sank USS Hatteras along the Texas coast and captured her crew.

1865 – General Sherman and his forces occupied Fayetteville, N.C. The Civil War was in its final weeks when a strong 60,000-man force, under the command of Union General William T. Sherman, marched in through the Carolinas, capturing town after town. They overcame the Confederate soldiers led by General Joseph E. Johnston. The Union Army captured and destroyed the Confederate arsenal, a building where weapons were made and stored, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

1865 – Lieutenant Commander George W. Young, senior officer present off Wilmington, led a naval force consisting of U.S.S. Eolus and boat crews from U.S.S. Maratanza, Lenapee, and Nyack up the Cape Fear River to Fayetteville. The expedition rendezvoused with General Sherman’s army.

March 11th ~ {continued...}

1867 – Acquiescing to the will of Congress, President Andrew Johnson appoints commanders for the five military districts carved out by the First Reconstruction Act; 20,000 troops, including black militia, are sent South. Under their protection over 70,000 blacks and 6,000 whites are registered to vote. Many of the whites are landless people who have been prevented from voting in previous years. Coalitions of blacks and southern whites, “scalawags” as they are called, elect representatives sensitive to their needs. With the army also come thousands of northerners , some to help and some to help themselves. These become know as “carpetbaggers” since many seem to have all of their possession in large cheap bags, often made of carpet. In spite of corruption that plays a large part in the post-war years, much food, shelter and technical help will be provided.

1916 – USS Nevada (BB-36) is commissioned as the first US Navy “super-dreadnought”. USS Nevada (BB-36), the second United States Navy ship to be named after the 36th state, was the lead ship of the two Nevada-class battleships; her sister ship was Oklahoma. Launched in 1914, the Nevada was a leap forward in dreadnought technology; four of her new features would be included on almost every subsequent US battleship: triple gun turrets, oil in place of coal for fuel, geared steam turbines for greater range, and the “all or nothing” armor principle. These features made Nevada the first US Navy “super-dreadnought”.

Nevada served in both World Wars: during the last few months of World War I, Nevada was based in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to protect the supply convoys that were sailing to and from Great Britain. In World War II, she was one of the battleships trapped when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She was the only battleship to get underway during the attack, making the ship “the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal and depressing morning” for the United States. Still, she was hit by one torpedo and at least six bombs while steaming away from Battleship Row, forcing her to be beached.

Subsequently salvaged and modernized at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Nevada served as a convoy escort in the Atlantic and as a fire-support ship in four amphibious assaults: the Normandy Landings and the invasions of Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. At the end of World War II, the Navy decided that Nevada was too old to be retained, so they assigned her to be a target ship in the atomic experiments that were going to be conducted at Bikini Atoll in July 1946 (Operation Crossroads).

After being hit by the blast from the first atomic bomb, Able, she was still afloat but heavily damaged and radioactive. She was decommissioned on 29 August 1946 and sunk during naval gunfire practice on 31 July 1948.

1918 – The first case of Spanish flu occurs, the start of a devastating worldwide pandemic.

1940 – The government lifts its arms embargo to allow Britain and France to buy some P40 fighter planes.

1941 – The Lend-Lease Bill becomes law when signed by President Roosevelt. Important amendments have been made by Congress. A time limit has been placed on the operation of the act (until June 1943), but a motion originally passed in the House forbidding US warships to give convoy protection to foreign ships has been defeated. Also to be allowed are transfers of ships to other countries solely on the presidential authority without reference to Congress.

Lend-Lease is not an entirely disinterested act. Britain is compelled to go on paying cash for as long as this is possible (meaning British assets in the US must be sold below their true value) and it is forbidden to export anything containing materials supplied under Lend-Lease, nor can items wholly produced in Britain be exported if equivalent items are being supplied under Lend-Lease.

March 11th ~ {continued...}

1941 – Lend-Lease and the Coast Guard: All 10 Lake-class cutters were transferred to the Royal Navy under the program. Two were lost in action against German forces. These 250-foot cutters had been designed by the Coast Guard and featured a slightly raked stem and a cruiser stern. Their innovative turbine-electric drive power plant was developed by Coast Guard Captain Quincy B. Newman. These were the first ships to have alternating current, synchronous motor for propulsion–the whole ship ran off the main turbine. The auxiliary generators were tied into the main generator electrically, after sufficient speed was attained. At that point, no steam was required to drive the turbines on the auxiliary generators. The propulsion plant achieved remarkable efficiency.

1942 – After struggling against great odds to save the Philippines from Japanese conquest, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur abandons the island fortress of Corregidor under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt. Left behind at Corregidor and on the Bataan Peninsula were 90,000 American and Filipino troops, who, lacking food, supplies, and support, would soon succumb to the Japanese offensive. After leaving Corregidor, MacArthur and his family traveled by boat 560 miles to the Philippine island of Mindanao, braving mines, rough seas, and the Japanese Navy. At the end of the hair-raising 35-hour journey, MacArthur told the boat commander, John D. Bulkeley, “You’ve taken me out of the jaws of death, and I won’t forget it.”

On March 17, the general and his family boarded a B-17 Flying Fortress for Northern Australia. He then took another aircraft and a long train ride down to Melbourne. During this journey, he was informed that there were far fewer Allied troops in Australia than he had hoped. Relief of his forces trapped in the Philippines would not be forthcoming. Deeply disappointed, he issued a statement to the press in which he promised his men and the people of the Philippines, “I shall return.” The promise would become his mantra during the next two and a half years, and he would repeat it often in public appearances. For his valiant defense of the Philippines, MacArthur was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and celebrated as “America’s First Soldier.”

Put in command of Allied forces in the Southwestern Pacific, his first duty was conducting the defense of Australia. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Bataan fell in April, and the 70,000 American and Filipino soldiers captured there were forced to undertake a death march in which at least 7,000 perished. Then, in May, Corregidor surrendered, and 15,000 more Americans and Filipinos were captured. The Philippines–MacArthur’s adopted home–were lost, and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had no immediate plans for their liberation. After the U.S. victory at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, most Allied resources in the Pacific went to U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz, who as commander of the Pacific Fleet planned a more direct route to Japan than via the Philippines.

Unperturbed, MacArthur launched a major offensive in New Guinea, winning a string of victories with his limited forces. By September 1944, he was poised to launch an invasion of the Philippines, but he needed the support of Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet. After a period of indecision about whether to invade the Philippines or Formosa, the Joint Chiefs put their support behind MacArthur’s plan, which logistically could be carried out sooner than a Formosa invasion.

On October 20, 1944, a few hours after his troops landed, MacArthur waded ashore onto the Philippine island of Leyte. That day, he made a radio broadcast in which he declared, “People of the Philippines, I have returned!” In January 1945, his forces invaded the main Philippine island of Luzon. In February, Japanese forces at Bataan were cut off, and Corregidor was captured. Manila, the Philippine capital, fell in March, and in June MacArthur announced his offensive operations on Luzon to be at an end; although scattered Japanese resistance continued until the end of the war in August. Only one-third of the men MacArthur left behind on March 11, 1942, survived to see his return. “I’m a little late,” he told them, “but we finally came.”

1942 – 1st deportation train left Paris for the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

1942 – American General Stillwell takes command of the Chinese 5th and 6th Armies (actually size of European army divisions). His first action is to concentrate forces around Mandalay and in the Shan States.

1943 – The Americans extend the Lend-Lease agreements by one year. The value of the agreements, up to the end of February 1943, is reported to be $9,632,000,000.

March 11th ~ {continued...}

1944 – In central Burma, Chindit forces are disrupting Japanese communications with their forces facing American General Stilwell’s Sino-American forces.

1944 – Reconnaissance forces land on Manus Island and Butjo Luo, where the Japanese garrison resists.

1945 – The American carrier, Randolph, is damaged in a Japanese Kamikaze attack on the Pacific Fleet base at Ulithi Atoll.

1951 – The first 51 U.S. Korean War dead left Yokohama for burial in the United States.

1953 – F.M. Adams became the 1st US commissioned woman army doctor.

1954 – The U.S. Army charged that Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, had exerted pressure to obtain favored treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former consultant to the subcommittee. The confrontation culminated in the famous Senate Army-McCarthy hearings.

1958 – A B-47 bomber accidentally drops a nuclear weapon over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The conventional explosive trigger detonates, leaving a crater 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep.

1960 – Pioneer 5 was launched into solar orbit between Earth & Venus.

1965 – Market Time patrols begin off South Vietnam coast. The American navy began inspecting Vietnamese junks in hopes of ending arms smuggling to the South.

1967 – U.S. 1st Infantry Division troops engage in one of the heaviest battles of Operation Junction City. The fierce fighting resulted in 210 reported North Vietnamese casualties. Operation Junction City was an effort to smash the communist stronghold in Tay Ninh Province and surrounding areas along the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. The purpose of the operation was to drive the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops away from populated areas and into the open, where superior American firepower could be more effectively used.

Junction City was the largest operation of the war to date, involving more than 25,000 troops. The first day’s operation was supported by 575 aircraft sorties, a record number for a single day in South Vietnam. The operation was marked by one of the largest airmobile assaults in history when 240 troop-carrying helicopters descended on the battlefield. In one of the few airborne operations of the war, 778 “Sky Soldiers” parachuted into the Junction City area of operations 28 miles north of Tay Ninh City. There were 2,728 enemy casualties by the end of the operation on March 17th.

1973 – An FBI agent was shot at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.

1977 – More than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.

1980 – UN commission leaves Iran without having seen US hostages.

1982 – Protesting his innocence, Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr., D-N.J., resigned after 23 years in the Senate, rather than face expulsion in the wake of his ABSCAM conviction.

March 11th ~ {continued...}

1992 – Members of the U.N. Security Council accused Iraq of playing a game of “cheat and retreat” from its promises to disarm and respect its people’s human rights. Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz lashed back, saying his country was complying with Gulf War cease-fire resolutions.

1993 – North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in a harsh rebuff of Western demands to open suspected nuclear weapons development sites for inspection. It later suspended its withdrawal.

1999 – The US Rodman naval base in Panama was transferred to Panama.

1999 – The House voted 219-191 to conditionally support President Clinton’s plan to send U.S. troops to Kosovo if a peace agreement was reached.

2002 – President Bush outlines a “second stage of the war on terror” in an address that marked the 6-months since the Sep 11 terrorist attacks.

2002 – It was reported that the US CIA and State Dept. was interviewing former Iraqi generals for a possible overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

2003 – A US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Fort Drum, NY, and 11 of 13 soldiers were killed.

2003 – Kofi Annan said military action against Iraq without support of the UN security council would be out of conformity with the UN charter. The US and Britain considered a short extension past March 17, but rejected a 45-day deadline backed by 6 council members.

2003 – UN observers leave positions in Iraq’s demilitarised zone near Kuwait.

2003 – The US military reports that US warplanes have bombed a mobile radar for a surface-to-air missile system in Iraq’s western desert.

2003 – Iraq destroyed more Al Samoud 2 missiles raising the total destroyed to 52 of some 100.

2004 – In Madrid, Spain, a series of bombs hidden in backpacks exploded in quick succession at 3 stations, blowing apart four commuter trains and killing 202 people and wounding over 1,450. Spanish leaders were quick to accuse Basque terrorists but a shadowy group claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaida. The toll was later adjusted to 190 dead.

2008 – Admiral William Fallon resigns as Commander of the U.S. Central Command due to reports in Esquire Magazine of disagreement with President George W. Bush over the administration’s policy with Iran.

2008 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour launches from Kennedy Space Center carrying the crew of STS-123, the Japanese Experiment Module, and Dextre. The ship will rendezvous with the International Space Station.

2012 – United States Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales murdered sixteen civilians and wounded six others in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Nine of his victims were children, and eleven of the dead were from the same family. Some of the corpses were partially burned. Bales was taken into custody later that morning when he told authorities, “I did it”. On August 23, 2013, a jury at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Fort Lewis, Washington sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

March 12 ~

1664 – The Duke of York obtains a grant that gives him authority over all lands between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers. This land grant includes all Dutch holdings in North America.

1676 – Indians attack Plymouth, Massachusetts.

1690 – In the face of the French and Indian threat, the New Hampshire colony votes to re-annex itself to Massachusetts.

1755 – The 1st steam engine in America was installed to pump water from a mine.

1773 – Following the example of Massachusetts, the Virginia House of Burgesses delegates an 11-member correspondence committee. The committee included Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee and was to oversee communication with the other colonies in the common expression of their grievances with England.

1777 – Since George Washington has effectively cleared all but easternmost New Jersey of British forces, the Continental Congress returns to Philadelphia from Baltimore, where it reconvenes.

1783 – Major John Armstrong issues the second anonymous Newburgh Address, which suggests that Washington himself supports the claims of the discontented officers.

1808 – The Third Embargo Act is passed by Congress, reinforcing the earlier two Embargo Acts. By the end of 1808, contrary to President Jefferson’s expectations, the Embargo Acts will nearly destroy the US shipping industry, as well as impose severe economic hardships on the New England states, which depend on trade in large amounts of perishable goods and manufactured goods. The Embargo Acts also lead to the virtual demise of small New England ports such as Newburyport, MA and New Haven, CT.

The Southern states are not as seriously affected because their staple exports; cotton, wheat, and tobacco, can be stored for long periods of time. Nor does the embargo achieve its ultimate goal of causing the British to cease their policy of harassing US commercial shipping.

1824 – Marines of the Boston Barracks quelled a Massachusetts State Prison riot. Inmates rioted and holed up in the mess hall with a guard as hostage, Marines from the Boston barracks came to help. Major RD Wainwright led 30 Marines into the mess hall to confront 283 armed and determined prisoners. Wainwright ordered his men to cock and level their muskets. “You must leave this hall,” he told the inmates. “I give you three minutes to decide. If at the end of that time a man remains, he will be shot dead. I speak no more.” In two and a half minutes, “the hall was cleared as if by magic.”

1860 – US Congress accepted the Pre-emption Bill. It provided free land in West for colonists.1862 – Landing party under Lieutenant Thomas H. Stevens of U.S.S. Ottawa occupied Jacksonville, Florida, without opposition.

1862 – Union troops occupy Winchester, Virginia, after its evacuation by the Confederates commanded by Stonewall Jackson. Winchester will change hands 54 times during the course of the war.

1863 – President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address.

1863 – The Battle of Raymond, Mississippi was fought.

March 12th ~ {continued...}

1864 – One of the biggest military fiascos of the war begins as a combined Union force of infantry and riverboats begins moving up the Red River in Louisiana. The month-long campaign was poorly managed and achieved none of the objectives set forth by Union commanders. The campaign had several strategic goals. The Union hoped to capture everything along the Red River in Louisiana and continue into Texas. President Lincoln hoped to send a symbolic warning to France, which had set up a puppet government in Mexico and seemed to have designs on territorial expansion. Finally, the expedition could also capture cotton-producing regions, a product in short supply in the North.

The plan called for Admiral David Dixon Porter to take a flotilla of 20 gunboats up the Red River while General Nathaniel Banks led 27,000 men along the western shore of the river. Porter’s squadron entered the river on March 12. Two days later, Fort Derussy fell to the Yankees and the ships moved upriver and captured Alexandria. So far, the expedition was going well, but Banks was moving too slowly. He arrived two weeks after Porter took Alexandria, and he continued to plod towards Shreveport. Banks traveled nearly 20 miles from the Red River, too far for the gunboats to offer any protection.

On April 8, Banks’ command was attacked and routed by General Richard Taylor, son of former president Zachary Taylor. They fought again the next day, but this time the Yankees held off the Rebel pursuit. The intimidated Banks elected to retreat back down the river before reaching Shreveport. Porter’s ships followed, but the Red River was unusually low and the ships were stuck above some rapids near Alexandria. It appeared that the ships would have to be destroyed to keep them from falling into Confederate hands, but Lt. Colonel Joseph Bailey of Wisconsin, an engineer with a logging background, supervised several thousand soldiers in constructing a series of wing dams that raised the water level enough for the ships to pass. The expedition was deemed a failure–it drew Union strength away from other parts of the South and the group never reached Texas.

1865 – At the request of Brigadier General Schofield, Acting Master H. Walton Grinnell, leading a detachment of four sailors, succeeded in delivering important Army dispatches to General Sherman near Fayetteville. Grinnell and his men began their trip on the 4th in a dugout from Wilmington. About 12 miles up the Cape Fear River, after passing through the Confederate pickets undetected, the men left the boat and commenced a tedious and difficult march towards Fayetteville. Near Whiteville, Grinnell impressed horses and led a daring dash through the Confederate lines. Shortly thereafter, the group made contact with the rear scouts of Sherman’s forces, successfully completing what Grinnell termed “this rather novel naval scout.” Naval support, no matter what form it took, was essential to General Sherman’s movements.

1912 – Juliette Gordon Low organized the Girl Guides, the first Girl Scouts troop in America, at the 1848 Andrew Low House in Savannah, Ga. The US Congress chartered the Girl Scouts in 1950.

1912 – Capt. Albert Berry performed the 1st parachute jump from an airplane.

1917 – The US merchant ship Algonquin is sunk without warning. All American merchant ships are to be armed in war zones.

1918 – WW I Marines landed at Scapa Flow, Great Britain.

1933 – Eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first “fireside chat,” or national radio address. The subject of the broadcast was the reopening of the banks, closed by presidential order the week before to stop a recent surge in mass withdrawal of U.S. savings. Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase “fireside chat” to describe Roosevelt’s frequent radio broadcasts, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people.

Roosevelt’s down-to-earth broadcasts served as a great reassurance to the many Americans who felt alienated from the U.S. government during the hard times of the Great Depression. They also contributed to President Roosevelt’s tremendous popularity among ordinary Americans, leading to his record three reelections despite the often fervent opposition to his policies from the business community and other quarters.

March 12th ~ {continued...}

1938 – German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany. Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, learning of the conspiracy, met with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the hopes of reasserting his country’s independence but was instead bullied into naming several top Austrian Nazis to his cabinet. On March 9th, Schuschnigg called a national vote to resolve the question of Anschluss, or “annexation,” once and for all.

Before the plebiscite could take place, however, Schuschnigg gave in to pressure from Hitler and resigned on March 11th. In his resignation address, under coercion from the Nazis, he pleaded with Austrian forces not to resist a German “advance” into the country. The next day, March 12th, Hitler accompanied German troops into Austria, where enthusiastic crowds met them. Hitler appointed a new Nazi government, and on March 13th the Anschluss was proclaimed. Austria existed as a federal state of Germany until the end of World War II, when the Allied powers declared the Anschluss void and reestablished an independent Austria. Schuschnigg, who had been imprisoned soon after resigning, was released in 1945.

1941 – President Roosevelt presents an Appropriations Bill for Lend-Lease to Congress for $7,000,000,000.

1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt designates Admiral Ernest J. King to serve as the Chief of Naval Operations, as well as the Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet to which he was appointed on 30 December 1941.

1942 – On New Caledonia, American troops land to garrison the island. These forces include the first operational “Seabees.”

1944 – On Bougainville, Japanese attacks continue. US forces continue to hold.

1944 – A small American force lands on Hauwei Island. The Japanese garrison, led by Colonel Ezaki, resists.

1944 – Americans occupy Wotho Atoll. There is no Japanese garrison.

1945 – There is heavy fighting in the Remagen bridgehead where elements of the German 7th Army are counterattacking.

1947 – In a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations.

1951 – Communist troops were driven out of Seoul.

1952 – Ten B-29s struck the Sinchang-ni choke point, ten miles east of Sunchon, with ninety-one tons of high explosives, rendering the point unpassable.

1955 – Effective this date, all foreign and domestic ships were required to give 24-hour advance notice to the local U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port before entering U.S. ports. This order was designed to improve the U .S. Coast Guard’s port security program without “material inconvenience” to shipping.

1956 – In first overseas deployment of Navy missile squadron, VA-83 left on USS Intrepid.

March 12th ~ {continued...}

1959 – The House joined the Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii. 1963 – US House granted former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship.

1965 – The beginning of the US Navy’s Operation Market Time to interdict resupply of Communist forces in South Vietnam by river and coastal routes. The initiation of this campaign led to the Navy’s request for USCG vessels and crews to participate in riverine and coastal patrols during the Vietnam War.

1968 – A Miami-bound flight was commandeered to Cuba.

1970 – US lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

1972 – The last remnants of the First Australian Task Force withdraw from Vietnam.

1980 – Greek TV airs films of American hostages in Tehran recently undergoing medical exams. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski tells National Press Club the U.S. has right to take alternative action if peaceful negotiations with Iran fail.

1982 – PLO chief Yasser Arafat appeared on “Nightline.”

1990 – Vice President Quayle met in Santiago, Chile, with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who promised to peacefully relinquish power to Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate who had won Nicaragua’s presidential election.

1992 – The U.N. Security Council stood firm in its demand that Iraq comply totally with Gulf War cease-fire resolutions, rebuffing an appeal for leniency from Saddam Hussein’s special envoy, deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.

1999 – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic formally joined NATO in a ceremony at Independence, Mo., where Pres. Truman announced in 1949 the formation of the Atlantic alliance for defense against the Soviet bloc.

2001 – A US Navy fighter dropped an errant 500-pound bomb in Kuwait that hit an observation post and killed five Americans and one New Zealander. Cmdr. David Zimmerman was later reprimanded and relieved of command.

2001 – Yugoslavia and Nato agreed to use their forces to squeeze Albanian rebels from separate flanks as the rebels signed a cease-fire.

2002 – The Bush administration announced a 5-color code system to alert Americans on the danger level posed by terrorists.

2003 – In Afghanistan an ambush on a US convoy prompted aircraft fire that killed 5 enemy fighters.

2003 – The US Air Force tests for the first time its Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) a 9,450kg munition which is the biggest conventional bomb in the US arsenal.

2003 – A spokesman for the UN weapons inspectors tells reporters that Iraq has destroyed three more al-Samoud missiles.

2003 – Coalition aircraft enforcing a no-fly zone over southern Iraq bombed three underground military communication sites and a mobile radar for a surface-to-air missile system.

2003 – The British government puts forward six tests that the Iraqi president will have to pass to avoid war.

2007 – Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley resigns as the Surgeon General of the United States Army over the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal.

2011 – United States aid worker Alan Gross is sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban jail, ostensibly for working to undermine the Government of Cuba.

March 13th ~

1660 – A statute was passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.

1677 – Massachusetts gained title to Maine for $6,000.

1777 – Congress ordered its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army.

1781 – Astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, which he named ‘Georgium Sidus,’ in honor of George III. He initially though it was a comet. It is the 7th planet from the sun and revolves around the sun every 84.02 years. It is 14.6 time the size of Earth and has five satellites. The planet Uranus is a gas giant like Jupiter and Saturn and is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The third largest planet, Uranus orbits the sun once every 84 earth years and is the only planet to spin perpendicular to its solar orbital plane. In January 1986, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 visited the planet, discovering 10 additional moons to the five already known, and a system of faint rings around the gas giant.

1836 – Less than a week after the disastrous defeat of Texas rebels at the Alamo, the newly commissioned Texan General Sam Houston begins a series of strategic retreats to buy time to train his ill-prepared army. Revolutionary Texans had only formally announced their independence from Mexico 11 days earlier. On March 6, 1836, the separatists chose Sam Houston to be the commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army. Houston immediately departed for Gonzales, Texas, where the main force of the revolutionary army was stationed. When he arrived, he found that the Texan army consisted of 374 poorly dressed and ill-equipped men. Most had no guns or military experience, and they had only two days of rations. Houston had little time to dwell on the situation, because he learned that the Mexican general Santa Anna was staging a siege of the Alamo in San Antonio.

Before Houston could prepare his troops to rush to aid the defenders, however, word arrived that Santa Anna had wiped them out on March 6. Scouts reported that Santa Anna’s troops were heading east toward Gonzales. Unprepared to confront the Mexican army with his poorly trained force, Houston began a series of strategic retreats designed to give him enough time to whip his army into fighting shape. Houston’s decision to retreat won him little but scorn from the Texas rebels. His troops and officers were eager to engage the Mexicans, and they chafed at Houston’s insistence on learning proper field maneuvers. Houston wisely continued to organize, train, and equip his troops so they would be prepared to meet Santa Anna’s army.

Finally, after nearly a month of falling back, Houston ordered his men to turn around and head south to meet Santa Anna’s forces. On April 21, Houston led his 783 troops in an attack on Santa Anna’s force of nearly twice that number near the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River. With the famous cry, “Remember the Alamo,” the Texans stormed the surprised Mexican forces. After a brief attempt at defense, the Mexican soldiers broke into a disorganized retreat, allowing the Texans to isolate and slaughter them.

In a stunning victory, Houston’s army succeeded in killing or capturing nearly the entire Mexican force, including General Santa Anna, who was taken prisoner. Only two Texans were killed and 30 wounded. Fearful of execution, Santa Anna signed an order calling for the immediate withdrawal of all Mexican troops from Texas soil. The Mexicans never again seriously threatened the independence of the Lone Star Republic.

1852 – The first appearance of the character Uncle Sam in the weekly comic publication “Diogenes, His Lantern.”

March 13th ~ {continued...}

1862 – Major General John P. McCown, CSA, ordered the evacuation of Confederate troops from New Madrid, Missouri, under cover of Flag Officer Hollins’ gunboat squadron consisting of C.S.S. Livingston, Polk, and Pontchartrain.

1863 – RADM Farragut’s squadron of 7 ships forces way up Mississippi River to support Union troops at Vicksburg and Baton Rouge

1865 – In a desperate measure, the Confederate States of America reluctantly approve the use of black troops as the main Rebel armies face long odds against much larger Union armies at this late stage of the war. The situation was bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. The Yankees had captured large swaths of southern territory, General William T. Sherman’s Union army was tearing through the Carolinas, and General Robert E. Lee was trying valiantly to hold the Confederate capital of Richmond against General Ulysses S. Grant’s growing force. Lee and Confederate president Jefferson Davis had only two options. One was for Lee to unite with General Joseph Johnston’s army in the Carolinas and use the combined force to take on Sherman and Grant one at a time.

The other option was to arm slaves, the last source of fresh manpower in the Confederacy. The idea of enlisting blacks had been debated for some time. Arming slaves was essentially a way of setting them free, since they could not realistically be sent back to the plantation after they had fought. General Patrick Cleburne had suggested enlisting slaves a year before, but few in the Confederate leadership considered the proposal, since slavery was the foundation of southern society. One politician asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Another suggested, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” Lee weighed in on the issue and asked the Confederate government for help. “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.”

Lee asked that the slaves be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13th did not stipulate freedom for those who served. The measure did nothing to stop the destruction of the Confederacy. Several thousand blacks were enlisted in the Rebel cause, but they could not begin to balance out the nearly 200,000 blacks that fought for the Union.

1868 – For the first time in U.S. history, the impeachment trial of an American president gets underway in the U.S. Senate. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, stood accused of having violated the controversial Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over his veto in 1867.

On March 13, according to the rules set out in Section 3 of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, the impeachment trial of President Johnson began in the Senate. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presided over the proceedings, which were described as theatrical. On May 16th and again on May 26th, the Senate voted on the charges brought against President Johnson. Both times the vote was 35 for conviction and 19 for acquittal, with seven moderate Republicans joining 12 Democrats in voting against what was a weak case for impeachment.

Because both votes fell short–by one vote–of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Johnson, he was judged not guilty and remained in office. Nevertheless, he chose not to actively seek reelection on the Democratic ticket. In November, Ulysses S. Grant, who supported the Republicans’ Radical Reconstruction policies, was elected president of the United States. In 1875, after two failed bids, Johnson won reelection to Congress as a U.S. senator from Tennessee. He died less than four months after taking office at the age of 66. Fifty-one years later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Tenure of Office Act unconstitutional in its ruling in Myers v. United States.

March 13th ~ {continued...}

1869 – Arkansas legislature passed anti-Klan law.

1884 – Standard Time was adopted throughout the United States.

1885 – President Grover Cleveland wants settlers to stay off of Indian lands in Oklahoma Territory.

1895 – Award of first submarine building contract to John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Co. In 1895, John Philip Holland received the U.S. Navy contract to build a submarine. The Plunger would have been the first submarine destined for service in the U.S. Navy. However, foreseeing her failure because of an overly optimistic set of requirements, he began building another submarine using his own money and plans. This vessel was later christened USS Holland.

This was truly the first successful U.S. submarine in America’s Navy. After some acceptance tests in the Potomac River (she wasn’t certified for the high seas), she was delivered in 1900 and became a model against which all subsequent submarines were compared. She could attain a speed of 7 knots on the surface with her 45 HP gasoline engine and about 5.5 knots submerged on her batteries. Her hardy crew consisted of one officer and five enlisted men.

1901 – Benjamin Harrison (67), 23rd president of the United States (1889-1893), died in Indianapolis.

1911 – Atlantic Landing Force of 688 Marines landed at Guantanamo Bay.

1917 – US authorities announce President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to arm all US merchant ships sailing in areas where German submarines are known to be active.

1930 – The trial of Edward Doheny begins in Washington, D.C.; he is charged with bribing the former Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall to obtain a lease for the Elk hills naval oil reserve; Doheny will be acquitted on March 22nd.

1933 – Banks began to re-open after a holiday declared by President Roosevelt.

1942 – Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps becomes the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army. Flikke entered the Army Nurse Corps during World War I in March 1918 and first served at the U.S. Army General Hospital in Lakewood, New Jersey.

As the nation galvanized to meet the coming demands of World War II, Flikke spearheaded the Army Nurse Corps’ increasingly difficult efforts to recruit, outfit, and assign the greatest number of nurses ever mobilized. One of the more visible and enduring signs of her efforts to attract nurses to military service during the war was the publication of her volume entitled Nurses in Action, The Story of the Army Nurse Corps. In December 1942, Public Law 828 authorized AUS (Army of the United States) commissions in grades from second lieutenant to colonel for Army nurses. Flikke then became the first female colonel in the AUS.

At that time, the title of her position changed from superintendent to chief of the Army Nurse Corps. Simultaneously, Army nurses were given pay equal to officers of comparable grade without dependents. Flikke retired from the Army with a physical disability in June 1943 at age 65.

March 13th ~ {continued...}

1943 – There was a failed assassination attempt on Hitler during the Smolensk-Rastenburg flight. A time-bomb was placed on board Hitler’s personal aircraft by German Army conspirators intending to assassinate the Fuhrer. It failed to explode.

1944 – On Bougainville, US forces mount a counterattack, with armor and air support, and recapture most of the ground lost during the last few days.

1944 – On Hauwei Island, the small US forces overrun the Japanese garrison. Artillery units are landed to support planned operations on Manus Island.

1945 – The 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 9th Marine Regiment attacked through “Cushman’s Pocket,” Iwo Jima. This was the last strongpoint of enemy resistance on the island.

1946 – The end of World War II, and America’s concurrent shift to a peacetime economy, stirred the ever-simmering tension between labor and management. After tightening their belts, and forgoing the right to strike during the war, workers sought higher wages and a better standard of living when the war was won. Business leaders responded by looking to roll back the government and unionýs respective efforts to shape post-war wages and prices. These competing desires were on full display in the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against General Motors (GM) that stretched from November 1945 until March of 1946.

1951 – The communists started to withdraw across all fronts.

1952 – Far East Air Forces flew its 13,000th sortie of the Korean War.

1953 – Colonel Royal N. “The King” Baker, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, achieved his 30th aerial victory and became the fifth ranking ace of the Korean War.

1961 – President John F. Kennedy proposes a 10-year, multibillion-dollar aid program for Latin America.

1963 – Soviet reconnaissance planes fly over Alaskan airspace, becoming the first established Soviet over flight of the US.

1969 – In Vietnam Navy Lt. John Kerry rescued Jim Rassman on the Bay Hap River while under Viet Cong fire.

1969 – The Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the lunar module.

1970 – Cambodia ordered Hanoi and Viet Cong troops to get out.

1974 – The U.S. Senate voted 54-33 to restore the death penalty.

1974 – Arab nations decided to end the oil embargo on the U.S.

1975 – Ban Me Thuot, capital of Darlac Province in the Central Highlands, falls to North Vietnamese troops.

1981 – The U.S. planned to send 15 Green Berets to El Salvador as military advisors.

1989 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a five-day mission.

1990 – President Bush lifted trade sanctions against Nicaragua in a show of support for President-elect Violeta Chamorro.

March 13th ~ {continued...}

1992 – The U.N. Security Council continued to demand that Iraq comply totally with Gulf War cease-fire resolutions, rebuffing an appeal for leniency from Saddam Hussein’s special envoy, deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.

1995 – Two Americans working for U.S. defense contractors in Kuwait, David Daliberti and William Barloon, were seized by Iraq after they strayed across the border; sentenced to eight years in prison, both were freed the following July.

1998 – US Sergeant Major Gene McKinney (47), once the Army’s top enlisted man, was cleared on 18 of 19 charges brought against him by women who said he pressured them for sex. He was convicted for obstruction of justice for trying to persuade his chief accuser to lie. McKinney was reprimanded and demoted by one rank.

1999 – In Zimbabwe three Americans appeared in court on charges of terrorism, espionage and sabotage against President Kabila. They had been tortured and pictures with the names: Gary George Blanchfield, Jona Lamonte-Dixon, and Joseph Pettijohn were displayed. The men were associated with Harvestfield Ministries in Indianapolis.

2000 – In Costa Rica 2 American women were found shot to death near Cabhuita. Emily Howell of Kentucky and Emily Eagen of Michigan were attacked while driving an SUV. A 16-year-old boy was later arrested and 2 other suspects were sought. Jorge Alberto Urbina (19) was arrested Mar 28. The 16-year-old was sentenced to 14 ½ years in prison.

2001 – Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national who was arrested with a carload of explosives just before New Year’s Eve 1999, went on trial in Los Angeles on charges of plotting to bomb Seattle and other U.S. cities during the millennium celebrations. He was convicted of terrorism the following month.

2001 – In Costa Rica Shannon Martin (23), a student from Topeka, Kan., was stabbed to death, after she left a nightclub in Golfito, 100 miles south of San Jose. In 2003 Kattia Cruz, 28, and Luis Alberto Castro, 38, were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the killing.

2002 – Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announces a color-coded warning system that will alert Americans to terror danger levels. Red will be the most severe, followed by orange, yellow, blue and green.

2003 – Forced into a diplomatic retreat, U.S. officials said President Bush might delay a vote on his troubled United Nations resolution or even drop it, and fight Iraq without the international body’s backing.

2004 – In Afghanistan Taliban armed with rockets and heavy machine guns attacked a government office near the Afghan-Pakistan border, sparking a firefight that killed one Afghan soldier and three Taliban.

2015 – NASA reports that scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found a salty ocean lurking beneath the surface of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede.

March 14th ~

1629 – A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1644 – England granted a patent for Providence Plantations (Rhode Island).

1743 – The first recorded town meeting in America was held at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

1776 – The Continental Congress recommends a policy of disarming all loyalist American colonists.

1780 – The Spanish governor of Louisiana, Galvez, captures the port of Mobile.

1794 – Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America’s cotton industry. He paid substantial royalties to Catherine T. Greene and this makes his claim to the invention suspect.

1812 – The US issues the first War Bonds. By the end of 1811, the United States government had tired of seeing the nation’s merchant ships suffer at the hands of the British and French. Having already tried to retaliate through fiscal measures, namely an embargo that only served to hurt U.S. businesses, the government was on the verge of committing its military to what would be later known as the War of 1812. However, scrounging up resources for the war proved to be an issue, leading U.S. President James Madison to call on Congress to provide for means for bolstering the nation’s defenses. On March 14, 1812, legislators heeded Madison’s plea and approved the issue of the very first war bond, worth some eleven million dollars. Over the next three years of the war, Congress would authorize six more war bonds, and also hike tariffs on imports, all in the name of another battle against Great Britain.

1862 – Battle of New Bern, NC. Union forces conquered New Bern, a strategic port and rail hub by joint amphibious attack under Commander Rowan and Brigadier General Burnside. Described by Rowan as “an immense depot of army fixtures and manufactures, of shot and shell Com­mander Rowan, with 13 war vessels and transports carrying 12,000 troops, departed his anchorage at Hatteras Inlet on 12 March, arriving in sight of New Bern that evening.

Landing the troops, including Marines, the following day under the protecting guns of his vessels, Rowan continued close support of the Army advance throughout the day. The American flag was raised over Forts Dixie, Ellis, Thompson, and Lane on 14 Match, the formidable” obstructions in the river including torpedoes were passed by the gunboats, and troops were transported across Trent River to occupy the city.

Union casualties for the battle were 90 killed and 380 wounded, while the Confederates suffered 64 killed, 101 wounded, and 413 captured. The conflict produced a Confederate hero, Colonel Zebulon Vance, who rescued his regiment by using small boats to bypass a bridge set afire by his comrades. Vance was elected governor of the state later that year.

March 14th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Confederate troops launched a surprise night attack against Fort Anderson on the Neuse River, North Carolina. Union gunboats U.S.S. Hunchback, Hetzel, Ceres, and Shawsheen, supported by a revenue cutter and an armed schooner, forced the Confederates to break off their heavy assault and withdraw. Colonel Jonathan S. Belknap, USA, wrote Commander Henry K. Davenport: “Your well-directed fire drove the enemy from the field; covered the landing of the Eighty-fifth New York, sent to the relief of the garrison, and the repulse of the rebel army was complete. Allow me, commodore, in the name of the officers and men of my command, to express my admiration of the promptitude and skill displayed by your command on that occasion The Army is proud of the Navy.”

1863 – Rear Admiral Farragut with his squadron of seven ships attacked the strong Confederate works at Port Hudson, attempting to effect passage. Just before the attack, Farragut held a conference with the commanders on board the flagship and then received word from General Banks that he was in position and ready to begin an attack ashore in support of the passage. The mortars had begun to fire. Shortly after 10 p.m., the fleet was underway, the heavier hips, Hartford, Richmond, and Monongahela to the inboard or fort side of the smaller Albatross, Genesee, and Kineo. Mississippi brought up the rear.

Moving up the river ”in good style,” Hartford, with Albatross lashed alongside, weathered the hail of shot from the batteries. Major General Franklin Gardner, commanding at Port Hudson, noted: She returned our fire boldly.” Passing the lower batteries, the current nearly swung the flagship around and grounded her, “but,” Farragut reported, “backing the Albatross, and going ahead strong on this ship, we at length headed her up the river.” Though able to bring only two guns to bear on the upper batteries, Farragut successfully passed those works. Following the flagship closely, Richmond took a hit in her steam plant, disabling her. “The turning point [in the river] was gained,” Commander Alden reported, “but I soon found, even with the aid of the Genesee, which vessel was lashed alongside, that we could make no headway against the strong current of the river, and suffering much from a galling cross fire of the enemy’s batteries, I was compelled though most reluctantly, to turn back, and by the aid of the Genesee soon anchored out of the range of their guns.”

Next in line, Monongahela ran hard aground under Port Hudson’s lower batteries where she remained for nearly half an hour, taking severe punishment. At least eight shots passed entirely through the ship. The bridge was shot from underneath Captain James P. McKinstry, injuring him and killing three others. With Kineo’s aid, Monongahela was floated and attempted to resume her course upriver. “We were nearly by the principal battery,” Lieutenant Nathaniel W. Thomas, the executive officer wrote, ”when the crank pin of the forward engine was reported heated, and the engine stopped, the chief engineer reporting that he was unable to go ahead.” The ship became unmanageable and drifted downstream, where she anchored out of range of the Confederate guns.

Meanwhile, on board U.S.S. Mississippi, Captain Melancton Smith saw Richmond coming downstream but, because of the heavy smoke of the pitched battle, was unable to sight Monongahela. Thinking she had steamed ahead to close the gap caused by Richmond’s leaving the line ahead formation, he ordered his ship “go ahead fast” to close the supposed gap In doing so, Mississippi ran aground and despite every effort could not be brought off. After being fired in four places, she was abandoned. At 3 a.m., Mississippi was seen floating in flames slowly down river; 22 hours later, she blew up, ”producing an awful concussion which was felt for miles around.”

Lieutenant George Dewey, destined to become hero of Manila Bay in 1898, was First Lieutenant of Mississippi. Thus ended one of the war’s fiercest engagements; only Hartford and Albatross had run the gauntlet.

1903 – The Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty which guaranteed the U.S. the right to build a canal at Panama. It was signed by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and Colombian foreign minister Tomás Herrán on Jan. 22, 1903. The treaty stipulated that the New Panama Canal Company, which held an option on the canal route, might sell its properties to the United States; that Colombia lease a strip of land across the Isthmus of Panama to the United States for construction of a canal; and that the United States pay Colombia $10 million and, after nine years, an annuity of $250,000.

Although it did not give the United States complete governmental control over the proposed canal zone, the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate. The Colombian congress delayed ratification, hoping to increase the price offered by the United States; finally, it rejected the treaty because of dissatisfaction with the financial terms and fear of “Yankee imperialism” and loss of national sovereignty.

March 14th ~ {continued...}

1905 – The first Marine military attaché was appointed to Legation at Peking, China.

1923 – President Harding became the first chief executive to file an income tax report.

1928 – Frank Borman, astronaut (Gemini 7 / Apollo 8) was born in Gary, Indiana.

1934 – Eugene Cernan, American Astronaut who was the last man on the moon, was born.

1939 – As a result of appeasement at the Munich peace conference, the Republic of Czechoslovakia was dissolved and the Sudetenland ceded to Germany, opening the way for complete Nazi occupation.

1942 – The 172-foot tender CGC Acacia was en route from Curacao, Netherlands West Indies to Antigua, British West Indies, when she was sunk by shellfire from the German submarine U-161. The entire crew of Acacia was rescued. She was the only Coast Guard buoy tender sunk by enemy action during the war.

1942 – Large numbers of American troops arrive in Austrailia.

1945 – The US 12th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) launches attacks southeast over the Moselle River, near Koblenz, and US 20th Corps expands its attacks from between Trier and Saarburg. To the north, US 1st Army continues to expand the Remagen bridgehead despite German counterattacks.

1946 – For the first time, U.S. Coast Guard aircraft supplemented the work of the Coast Guard patrol vessels of the International Ice Patrol, scouting for ice and determining the limits of the ice fields from the air.

1947 – The U.S. signed a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.

1947 – Ensign John W. Lee becomes first African American officer commissioned in regular Navy. He was assigned to USS Kearsage.

1950 – The Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of wire service news story in 1949 about the “toughest guys” the FBI wanted to capture. The story drew so much public attention that the “Ten Most Wanted” list was given the okay by J. Edgar Hoover the following year. Since then, over 130 fugitives have been captured after appearing on the list. As of May 1998, 454 fugitives had appeared on the Ten Most Wanted List. The Criminal Investigative Division (CID) of the FBI asks all fifty-six field offices to submit candidates for inclusion on the list.

The CID in association with the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs then proposes finalists for approval of by the FBI’s Deputy Director. The criteria for selection is simple, the criminal must have a lengthy record and current pending charges that make him or her particularly dangerous. And the FBI must believe that the publicity attendant to placement on the list will assist in the apprehension of the fugitive.

Generally, the only way to get off the list is to die or to be captured. There have only been a handful of cases where a fugitive has been removed from the list because they no longer were a particularly dangerous menace to society. Only seven women have appeared on the Ten Most Wanted list. Ruth Eisemann-Schier was the first in 1968.

March 14th ~ {continued...}

1951 – As U.N forces planned to retake Seoul from the enemy, patrols from both the U.S. Army’s 3rd Division and ROK 1st Division crossed the Han River to asses the situation.

1964 – Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald–the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy–is found guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict to be televised in U.S. history. On November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy’s assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.

Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed he was distraught over the president’s assassination. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder. Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy’s murder had caused him to suffer “psychomotor epilepsy” and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to die.

In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial to be held in Wichita Falls, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital. The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy.

Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee’s findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.

1965 – Twenty-four South Vietnamese Air Force planes, led by Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and supported by U.S. jets, bomb the barracks and depots on Con Co (“Tiger”) Island, 20 miles off the coast of North Vietnam. The next day, 100 U.S. Air Force jets and carrier-based bombers struck the ammunition depot at Phu Qui, 100 miles south of Hanoi. This was the second set of raids in Operation Rolling Thunder and the first in which U.S. planes used napalm.

1966 – Establishment of River Squadron Five in Vietnam.

1967 – The body of President Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery.

1968 – CBS TV suspended Radio Free Europe free advertising because RFE didn’t make it clear it was sponsored by the CIA.

1969 – At a news conference, President Richard Nixon says there is no prospect for a U.S. troop reduction in the foreseeable future because of the ongoing enemy offensive. Nixon stated that the prospects for withdrawal would hinge on the level of enemy activity, progress in the Paris peace talks, and the ability of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves. Despite these public comments, Nixon and his advisers were secretly discussing U.S. troop withdrawals.

March 14th ~ {continued...}

1983 – The Coast Guard retired its last HC-131A Samaritan.

1987 – President Reagan, in his Saturday radio address, said he should have listened to Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Sec. Caspar Weinberger when they advised him not to sell arms to Iran.

1989 – In a policy shift, the Bush administration announced an indefinite ban on imports of semi-automatic assault rifles.

1991 – The emir of Kuwait (Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah) returned home after seven months in exile.

1992 – The Associated Press obtained the names of 22 of 24 of the worst offenders in the check overdraft scandal at the House bank; topping the list were former Rep. Tommy Robinson of Arkansas and Rep. Bob Mrazek of New York, both Democrats.

1995 – American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two cosmonauts blasted off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, headed for the Mir space station.

1996 – The US approved arms and equipment for Bosnia. It was the same day that the UN embargo on small arms for the region was lifted. In the following weeks M-16 rifles, machine guns, field phone systems, and military radio equipment arrived in Bosnia.1997 – In Albania chaos and anarchy spread and some 23 people were reported killed across the country. The US and Italy were airlifting citizens out of the country. Near the Macedonian border a $10 million cigarette plant was burned down.

1997 – Operation Gulf Shield begins. This operation is a counterpart to the counter narcotics operation Frontier Shield.

1999 – The Clinton administration conceded the Chinese had gained from technology allegedly stolen from a federal nuclear weapons lab but insisted the government responded decisively; Republicans demanded a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward China.

2002 – A New Jersey federal grand jury indicted Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh for the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

2002 – Yugoslav military forces arrested a US diplomat and Yugoslav general outside Belgrade with accusations of espionage. The diplomat was released after 15 hours. Former Gen. Perisic, deputy Prime minister, was released March 16th.

2003 – Christopher Boyce, whose Cold War spying was immortalized on film in “The Falcon and the Snowman,” was released from a halfway house in San Francisco after about a quarter-century in prison.

2003 – The office of the chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix announces that it has received a report from Iraq containing details of the VX chemical agents it says it destroyed 12 years ago.

2003 – American defense officials say a long-range B1-B bomber aircraft has been used for the first time against Iraqi targets in the no-fly zone in southern Iraq.

2004 – In southeastern Afghanistan U.S.-led troops surprised eight enemy fighters in a cave complex, prompting a gunbattle, which left 3 militiamen killed and 5 others wounded.

2005 – The US government in Operation Community Shield announced the arrests in 7 cities of 103 members of MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha, a street gang rooted in Central America.

March 15th ~

1493 – Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1521 – Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Philippine Islands, where he was killed by natives the following month.

1697 – A band of Abnaki Indians made a raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts. Twenty-seven women and children were killed in the raid. Less than a week from childbed, Hannah Duston was captured along with her infant daughter and a nurse, Mary Neff. Hannah’s husband managed to escape with their seven other children. The baby was brutally killed, and Hannah and Mary were taken northward by their captors. After a march of 100 miles, the party paused at an island (afterward known as Penacook, or Dustin, Island) in the confluence of the Merrimack and Contoocook rivers above the site of present-day Concord, New Hampshire. There the two women were held and told that after a short journey to a further village they would be stripped and scourged. On the island they met Samuel Leonardson, an English boy who had been captured more than a year earlier.

During the night of March 30th, Hannah and the boy secured hatchets and attacked their captors; 10 were killed, 9 of them by Hannah. The three captives then stole a canoe and escaped, but Hannah turned back and scalped the 10 corpses so as to have proof of the exploit. They reached Haverhill safely and on April 21 presented their story to the General Court in Boston, which awarded the sum of 25 pounds to Hannah Duston and half that to each of her companions.

1744 – After signing the Second Family Compact with Spain, France joins the Spanish war against England. Known in the American colonies as King George’s War, and in Europe as the War of the Austrian Succession, this conflict will last until 1748. Hostilities between the French and the English in North America will continue to escalate.

1767 – Andrew Jackson is born in the Garden of the Waxhaws, South Carolina. The son of Irish immigrants, Jackson spent much of his early life in the rough-and-tumble frontier regions of South Carolina and Tennessee. His father died from injuries sustained while lifting a heavy log, and his mother was left with few resources to support the family. Jackson received only a minimal formal education, but he learned a great deal about the practical realities of frontier life by mixing with the rowdy frontiersmen around him.

As a young man, Jackson settled in the still relatively untamed Tennessee area, where he worked as a self-taught lawyer. After playing an important role in winning statehood for Tennessee, Jackson became the state’s first federal congressman. He achieved national recognition during the War of 1812 for his victories over both Indian and British warriors, paving the way for his election to the presidency in 1828. Jackson represented a sharp break from the presidents who preceded him, all of whom had been well-educated men born to privilege.

Americans eager to create a more democratic nation embraced the rough-hewn Jackson as their leader, celebrating him as a representation of the egalitarian spirit of the frontier. Jackson played to these sentiments, although he was no frontiersman in comparison to trailblazers and explorers like Daniel Boone or John Sevier. Still, Jackson was a man who had risen from backwoods poverty to become a successful lawyer, farmer, officer, and politician-a path to success that many average Americans hoped they might follow.

More than any other president, Jackson was associated with westward expansion. A notorious Indian fighter as a young man, Jackson believed that Indians were obstacles to American progress. Once elected president, Jackson supported and vigorously executed the goals of the Removal Act of 1830, which cleared Indians from large areas of the frontier and opened the land to Anglo settlement. Jackson’s election to the presidency also signaled a sharp shift in the American view of frontier inhabitants. Previously seen as slovenly, lazy, and ill-educated troublemakers who interfered with elite plans for an orderly settlement of the West, frontiersmen started to be regarded as the archetypal American hero.

During Jackson’s presidency, Americans embraced a powerful new unifying myth that the nation’s frontier experience would foster democracy, equality, and strength. Throughout his life, and even well after his death in 1845, Jackson symbolized and embodied this new American fascination with the transformative power of the western frontier.

March 15th ~ {continued...}

1781 – In the Battle of Guildford Courthouse, North Carolina, British General Cornwallis achieves a Phyrric victory over the American forces of General Greene and General Morgan. Cornwallis suffers such severe losses that he abandons the campaign to establish British control over the Carolinas. It is the largest, most hotly-contested action of the Revolutionary War’s climactic Southern Campaign. Major General Nathanael Greene and his army of 4,400 Americans contested the British invasion of North Carolina at Guilford Courthouse. Lt. Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, commanded the tough professional force of 1,900 British soldiers. Greene deployed his men into smaller groups to take advantage of the terrain. The Courthouse battle was fierce. The veteran British troops were severely crippled. Cornwallis lost a quarter of his army and almost a third of his officers. Greene lost only six percent of his men. With greatly diminished ranks and depleted supplies, Cornwallis withdrew to the coast, 200 miles away.

1783 – Washington personally addresses the regular meeting of officers at Newburgh, New York, advising moderation and patience, and promising expeditious congressional action on the salary and pension demands of the soldiers. A week later Congress allots the officers a lump sum equaling five years’ pay each.

1820 – As part of the Missouri Compromise between the North and the South, Maine is admitted into the Union as the 23rd state. Administered as a province of Massachusetts since 1647, the entrance of Maine as a free state was agreed to by Southern senators in exchange for the entrance of Missouri as a slave state. In 1604, French explorer Samuel de Champlain visited the coast of Maine and claimed it as part of the French province of Acadia. However, French attempts to settle Maine were thwarted when British forces under Sir Samuel Argall destroyed a colony on Mount Desert Island in 1613. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a leading figure in the Plymouth Company, initiated British settlement in Maine after receiving a grant and royal charter, and upon Gorges’ death in 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed jurisdiction.

Gorges’ heirs disputed this claim until 1677, when Massachusetts agreed to purchase Gorges’ original proprietary rights. As part of Massachusetts, Maine developed early fishing, lumbering, and shipbuilding industries and in 1820 was granted statehood. In the 19th century, the promise of jobs in the timber industry lured many French Canadians to Maine from the Canadian province of Quebec, which borders the state to the west. With 90 percent of Maine still covered by forests, Maine is known as the “Pine Tree State” and is the most sparsely populated state east of the Mississippi River.

1831 – Confederate General Edward Aylesworth Perry is born in Richmond, Massachusetts. The transplanted Yankee led a Florida brigade during the war, and served as governor of the state after the war.

1862 – General John Hunt Morgan began four days of raids near the city of Gallatin, Tenn. “The Yankees will never take me a prisoner again,” vowed Confederate General John Hunt Morgan.

1864 – After ordering ironclads U.S.S. Benton and Essex to remain at Fort De Russy in support of the Army detachment engaged in destroying the works, Rear Admiral Porter convoyed the main body of troops up the Red River toward Alexandria, Louisiana. Porter dispatched U.S.S. East port, Lexington, and Ouachita ahead to try to overtake the Confederate vessels seeking to escape above the Alexandria rapids. The Confederate ships were too far ahead, however, and the Union gunboats arrived at the rapids half an hour behind them. Confederate steamer Countess grounded in her hasty attempt to get upstream and was destroyed by her crew to prevent capture.

1864 – The Red River Campaign: U.S. Navy fleet arrives at Alexandria, Louisiana.

1889 – The Samoan Islands have been in the throes of a civil war since 1878 when the Hayes Administration negotiated a treaty for a US coaling station on Pago Pago. Germany has backed the insurgent forces fighting Samoan King Malietoa, whose rule is backed by the US. The British are watching the conflict but have not taken sides and it appears that Germany and the US may actively go to war directly. The Germans have placed Americans and British on Samoa under military law.

Warships from all three great powers gather in the harbor of Apia to influence the outcome of negotiations between Germany and the US which are deteriorating. On the eve of what seems an unavoidable conflict, a hurricane hits smashing all but one of the warships anchored there to bits. Only the British corvette HMS Calliope escapes to the open sea. The three powers meet again on 29 April and restore King Malietoa, but the retain the power to appoint the presiding judge of the one-man Supreme Court.

March 15th ~ {continued...}

1916 – General Pershing and his 15,000 troops chased Pancho Villa into Mexico. US troops pursued the guerillas, killing 50 on US soil and 70 more in Mexico. General Pershing failed to capture the Villa dead or alive. Villa was assassinated at Parral in 1923.

1916 – The Army Reorganization bill passes the House. The Senate has unanimously voted to bring the Army to full authorized strength. On June 3, the National Defense Act will pass, authorizing a standing Army of 175,000 and incorporates an idea promoted by Douglas MacArthur, the use overseas of the National Guard, intact, which will reach a strength of 450,000. By the end of June the Congress will authorize an appropriation of $128,000,000, the largest military budget to date.

1917 – Czar Nicholas II abdicates. Proposals to replace him with his son Aleksey are rejected by the czar who favors his own brother, Grand Duke Mikhail.

1919 – The American Legion is founded in Paris by 1000 veterans of the American Expeditionary Force who met to discuss transition to civilian life and what veterans could do to help each other adjust and to work together to further the rights of veterans.

1923 – Charles F. Cramer, assistant to Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veterans’ Bureau, commits suicide. He is one of President Hardings inner circle, the so-called Ohio Gang. Another suicide, that of Jesse Smith, close friend of Attorney General Daughtery and an unethical Washington power-broker, occurred after Harding himself had told Smith to get out of Washington. “Colonel” Forbes will soon resign as director of the Veterans’ Bureau.

1930 – The USS Nautilus, the 1st streamlined submarine of US Navy, was launched.

1941 – In an important speech Roosevelt promises that the United States will supply Britain and the Allies “aid until victory” and that there will be an “end to compromise with tyranny.”

1942 – The 172-foot tender CGC Acacia was en route from Curacao, Netherlands West Indies to Antigua, British West Indies, when she was sunk by shellfire from the German submarine U-161. The entire crew of Acacia was rescued. She was the only Coast Guard buoy tender sunk by enemy action during the war.

1943 – The US 7th Fleet is formed to control naval operations around New Guinea.

1944 – Forces of the US 5th Army launches new attacks on Cassino. A preliminary bombardment consisting of 14,000 tons of bombs and 190,000 shells is directed on the town. The New Zealand 2nd Division then attacks with the 4th Indian Division to follow up against the monastery. Armored support is hampered by the rubble created during the bombardment. The German 1st Paratroop Division offers strong resistance. Allied forces make some gains at Castle Hill and Hangman’s Hill.

1944 – On Bougainville, there are renewed attacks by Japanese forces against the American beachhead. US forces hold the effort.

1944 – On Manus Island, elements of the US 7th and 8th Cavalry Divisions land on the north coast, near Lugos Mission. The Americans advance toward Lorengau along two routes.

1945 – The US 7th Army launches attacks in the area around Saarbrucken and Bitche in a joint effort with US 3rd Army to eliminate German forces from the area between the Saar, Moselle and Rhine rivers
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1945 – On Iwo Jima, US 5th Amphibious Corps continues to engage the Japanese forces which are now confined a small area in the northwest of the island.

1945 – Admiral McCrea commands a squadron of American cruisers and destroyers in a bombardment of Matsuwa.

1946 – For the first time, U.S. Coast Guard aircraft supplemented the work of the Coast Guard patrol vessels of the International Ice Patrol, scouting for ice and determining the limits of the ice fields from the air.

March 15th ~ {continued...}

1951 – Eighth Army recaptured Seoul.

1951 – U.S. Navy ships fired on Wonsan for a full seven minutes, killing an estimated 8,000 Chinese troops.

1955 – The U.S. Air Force unveiled a self-guided missile.

1964 – Cambodia was receiving military aid from Communist China.

1965 – Gen. Harold K. Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, reports on his recent visit to Vietnam to President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He admitted that the recent air raids ordered by President Johnson had not affected the course of the war and said he would like to assign an American division to hold coastal enclaves and defend the Central Highlands. General Johnson also advocated creating a four-division force of Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and U.S. troops to patrol the Demilitarized Zone along the border separating North and South Vietnam and Laos.

Nothing ever came of General Johnson’s recommendation on the SEATO troops, but President Johnson ordered the 173rd Airborne Brigade to Vietnam in May 1965 and followed it with the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in September of the same year. These forces, along with the first contingent of U.S. Marines–which had arrived in March–were only the first of a massive American build up. By 1969, there were more than 540,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam.

1966 – Establishment of River Squadron Five in Vietnam.

1973 – President Nixon hints that the United States might intervene again in Vietnam to prevent communist violations of the truce. A cease-fire under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords had gone into effect on January 27, 1973, but was quickly and repeatedly violated by both sides as they jockeyed for control of territory in South Vietnam. Very quickly, both sides resumed heavy fighting in what came to be called the “cease-fire war.” Nixon had been instrumental in convincing the reluctant South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to sign the peace treaty, promising him repeatedly that, “We will respond with full force should the settlements be violated by North Vietnam.”

As the fighting continued throughout 1973 and into 1974, Thieu appealed to Nixon to make good on his promises. For his part, Nixon was increasingly embroiled in the developing Watergate scandal, and resigned from office in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, was unable to persuade a hostile Congress to provide the promised support to South Vietnam. The United States did nothing when the North Vietnamese launched their final offensive in the spring of 1975. South Vietnam was defeated in less than 55 days, surrendering unconditionally to the North Vietnamese on April 30th.

1980 – The Penobscot Indians settle a claim for land taken in a violation of the Indian Non-intercourse Act of 1790.

1980 – Masked terrorists believed to be Puerto Rican nationalists raid Carter campaign headquarters in Chicago and Bush campaign headquarters in New York City.