March 28th ~ {continued...}

1986 – The U.S. Senate passed a $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.

1990 – British customs officials announced they had foiled an attempt to supply Iraq with 40 American-made devices for triggering nuclear weapons, following an 18-month investigation by U.S. and British authorities.

1991 – Fire seriously damaged the US Embassy in Moscow.

1993 – The last A-6E Intruder departed from Marine Corps service. Marine All Weather Attack Squadron 332 transferred the last Marine A-6E to St. Augustine, Florida, and prepared for the squadron’s transition to the F/A-18D and eventual movement from Cherry Point to Beaufort, South Carolina.

1996 – Congress passed the line-item veto, giving the president power to cut government spending by scrapping specific programs.

1996 – The space shuttle Atlantis astronauts said goodbye to the crew of Russia’s space station Mir and then flew away, leaving Shannon Lucid behind for a five-month stay in orbit.

1997 – The UN Security Council agreed to send a multinational force to Albania to protect the delivery of humanitarian aid.

1998 – It was reported that the US government conducted a series of “sub-critical” underground explosions involving radioactive plutonium in a sealed chamber 960 feet below ground at the Los Alamos National Lab.

1999 – NATO broadened its attacks on Yugoslavia to target Serb military forces in Kosovo in the fifth straight night of airstrikes. UN officials reported that some 500,000 ethnic Albanians had fled Kosovo. NATO officials raised the possibility of using ground troops in Yugoslavia as low-level strikes against tanks began. It was feared that anger over the war would spill over to Bosnia.

2000 – Jordan with US intelligence help indicted 28 followers of Osama bin Laden for plotting attacks against American tourists in December.

2002 – A US diplomat, reportedly the CIA station chief, was pulled from Belgrade following accusations that he was receiving military secrets.

2002 – US Air Force Staff Sergeant Timothy Woodland was convicted in a Japanese court and sentenced to nearly three years in prison for raping a woman on the southern island of Okinawa.

2002 – A US Navy helicopter crashed on Split Mountain in the Sequoia National Forest and 2 crew members were killed.

2002 – In Pakistan police in Faisalabad and Lahore seized over 40 suspects in the Islamabad bombing. At least 2 suspects were killed in Faisalabad. Abu Zubaydah, a top al Qaeda commander, was among those arrested.

2003 – In the 10th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom the biggest bombs dropped on Baghdad so far, two 4,700-pound “bunker busters,” struck a communications tower. In the south, Iraqi fighters defending the besieged city of Basra fired on hundreds of civilians trying to flee. The British supply ship Sir Galahad docked at the port of Umm Qasr. The Bush administration said fighting might not be over for months.

2003 – The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan for a year.

2004 – U.S. overseer of Iraq, Paul Bremer, ordered the 60-day closure of Al-Hawza, a newspaper published by Muqtada al-Sadr’s group, on the charges of inciting violence against the occupation. The next day thousands of Iraqis rallied outside the offices of Al-Hawza in support of the newspaper.

2009 – Space Shuttle Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, United States. STS-119 (ISS assembly flight 15A) was a space shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) which was flown by Space Shuttle Discovery during March 2009. It delivered and assembled the fourth starboard Integrated Truss Segment (S6), and the fourth set of solar arrays and batteries to the station.

2012 – The United States suspends planned food aid to North Korea, after the latter plans to launch a rocket next month.

March 29th ~

1638 – The first permanent white settlement in Delaware was established. Swedish Lutherans who came to Delaware were the first to build log cabins in America. The first English colonists did not know how to build houses from logs but those who lived in the forests of Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland did. German pioneers who settled in Pennsylvania built the first log cabins there in the early 1700s. The Scots-Irish immigrants who settled in the Appalachian highlands after 1720 made the widest use of log cabins and by the time of the American Revolution, log cabins were the mainstay among settlers all along the western frontier.

1790 – John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States (1841-1845), was born in Charles City County, Va. He was also the first vice-president to succeed to office on the death of a president.

1806 – The Great National Pike, also known as the Cumberland Road, became the first highway funded by the national treasury. Built between 1806 and 1840, the Great National Pike stretched from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. On this day the first appropriation of $30,000 was made by congressional act. Eventually over $6 million was appropriated for the highway. In 1856, control over the road was turned over to the states through which it ran. Roads would be left to the devices of the states almost exclusively until the dawn of the automobile. Henry Ford and other leaders of the automotive industry were instrumental in encouraging the federal funding of national highways.

1814 – In the Battle at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, Andrew Jackson beat the Creek Indians.

1847 – Some 12,000 US forces led by General Winfield Scott occupied the city of Vera Cruz after Mexican defenders capitulated. The Battle of Veracruz was a 20-day siege of the key Mexican beachhead seaport of Veracruz, during the Mexican-American War. It began with the first large-scale amphibious assault conducted by United States military forces, and ended with the surrender and occupation of the city. U.S. forces then marched inland to Mexico City.

1864 – Union General Steele’s troops reached Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

1864 – The low level of the Red River continued to hinder Rear Admiral Porter’s efforts to get his gun boats above the rapids at Alexandria for the assault on Shreveport. He reported: “After a great deal of labor and two and a half days’ hard work, we succeeded in getting the Eastport over the rocks on the falls, hauling her over by main force. . . . ‘ All the Army transports maneuvered safely above the rapids, but hospital ship Woodford was battered against the rocks and sank. Porter added: “I shall only be able to take up I part of the force I brought with me, and leave the river guarded all the way through.”

1865 – Battle of Quaker Road, Va.

1865 – The final campaign of the war begins in Virginia when Union troops of General Ulysses S. Grant move against the Confederate trenches around Petersburg. General Robert E. Lee’s outnumbered Rebels were soon forced to evacuate the city and begin a desperate race west. Eleven months before, Grant moved his army across the Rapidan River in northern Virginia and began the bloodiest campaign of the war. For six weeks, Lee and Grant fought along an arc that swung east of the Confederate capital at Richmond. They fought some of the conflict’s bloodiest battles at Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor before they settled into trenches for a siege of Petersburg, 25 miles south of Richmond. The trenches eventually stretched all the way back to Richmond, and for ten months the armies glowered at each other across a no man’s land.

Periodically, Grant launched attacks against sections of the Rebel defenses, but Lee’s men managed to fend them off. Time was running out for Lee, though. His army was dwindling in size to about 55,000, while Grant’s continued to grow–the Army of the Potomac now had more than 125,000 men ready for service. On March 25, Lee attempted to split the Union lines when he attacked Fort Stedman, a stronghold along the Yankee trenches. His army was beaten back, and he lost nearly 5,000 men. Grant seized the initiative, sending 12,000 men past the Confederates’ left flank and threatening to cut Lee’s escape route from Petersburg. Fighting broke out there, several miles southwest of the city.

In a downpour, General Grant launched his wide swinging move to the southwest of Petersburg to roll up Lee’s flank. Ever concerned about his lifeline on the James River, he wrote Rear Admiral Porter: “In view of the possibility of the enemy attempting to come to City Point, or by crossing the Appomattox at Broadway Landing, getting to Bermuda Hundred during the absence of the greater part of the army, I would respectfully request that you direct one or two gunboats to lay in the Appomattox, near the pontoon bridge, and two in the James River, near the mouth of Bailey’s Creek, the first stream below City Point emptying into the James.” Porter complied with double measure, sending not one or two but several ships to Grant’s assistance.

Lee’s men could not arrest the Federal advance. Two days later, the Yankees struck at Five Forks, soundly defeating the Rebels and leaving Lee no alternative. He pulled his forces from their trenches and raced west, followed by Grant. It was a race that even the great Lee could not win. He surrendered his army on April 9 at Appomattox Court House.

March 29th ~ {continued...}

1867 – The United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.

1867 – Congress approved the Lincoln Memorial.

1893 – US Congressman James Blount arrived in Hawaii to investigate the change in government. He later reported to Congress that annexation to the US was being forced and that the people of Hawaii supported their queen.

1898 – Lieutenants David Jarvis and Ellsworth P. Bertholf and Surgeon Dr. Samuel J. Call of the USRC Bear reached Point Barrow after a 2,000 mile “mush” from Nunivak Island that first started on 17 December 1897, driving reindeer as food for 97 starving whalers caught in the Arctic ice. This “Overland Rescue” was heralded by the press and at the request of President William McKinley, Congress issued special gold medals in their honor.

1903 – A regular news service began between New York and London on Marconi’s wireless.

1912 – Revolutionaries from various areas of Mexico began to challenge the new government, and an offensive was launched in March 1912 by Orozco, who accused Madero of abandoning the principles of the Plan of San Luis Potosí. Orozco was defeated, however, by Victoriano Huerta, the unscrupulous commander of the federal forces. To protect the embassy staff, the U.S. sent rifles to the Mexican ambassador in Mexico City and readied U.S. ships to transport troops to fight the rebels.

1917 – Marines garrisoned St. Croix to deny harbor to German submarines.

1918 – US pilot Edward Rickenbacker scores his first air victory. By the end of the war he will be acknowledged as his country’s top ace with 26 kills.

1941 – The North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement goes into effect at 03:00 local time. Usually referred to as NARBA, the treaty set out an international band plan and interference rules for medium wave AM broadcasting in North America. NARBA accommodated much of the U.S. band plan of 1928, with accommodation to Canada and Mexico.

1943 – World War II meat, butter and cheese rationing began.

1945 – The US 7th Army captures Mannheim and Heidelberg.

1945 – There are American landings in the northwest of the island Negros near Bacolod. The landing force, part of the US 185th Infantry Regiment, encounters heavy Japanese resistance on the island.

1945 – US naval forces, including TF58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. Japanese Kamikaze and submarine attacks continue.

March 29th ~ {continued...}

1945 – General George S. Patton’s 3rd Army captures Frankfurt, as “Old Blood and Guts” continues his march east. Frankfurt am Main, literally “On the Main” River, in western Germany, was the mid-19th century capital of Germany (it was annexed by Prussia in 1866, ending its status as a free city). Once integrated into a united German nation, it developed into a significant industrial city-and hence a prime target for Allied bombing during the war. That bombing began as early as July 1941, during a series of British air raids against the Nazis.

In March 1944, Frankfurt suffered extraordinary damage during a raid that saw 27,000 tons of bombs dropped on Germany in a single month. Consequently, Frankfurt’s medieval Old Town was virtually destroyed (although it would be rebuilt in the postwar period-replete with modern office buildings). In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton broke through the German lines of the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne, relieving its valiant defenders. Patton then pushed the Germans east. Patton’s goal was to cross the Rhine, even if not a single bridge was left standing over which to do it.

As Patton reached the banks of the river on March 22, 1945, he found that one bridge — the Ludendorff Bridge, located in the little town of Remagen — had not been destroyed. American troops had already made a crossing on March 7 — a signal moment in the war and in history, as an enemy army had not crossed the Rhine since Napoleon accomplished the feat in 1805.

Patton grandly made his crossing, and from the bridgehead created there, Old Blood and Guts and his 3rd Army headed east and captured Frankfurt on the 29th. Patton then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets. Patton was, not unexpectedly, livid.

1950 – Police frantically search Grand Central Station in New York City for a bomb after receiving a threatening note. The bomb was found and taken care of by the bomb squad. In the next few months, five more bombs were found at landmark sites around New York, including the Public Library and the Grand Hotel. Authorities realized that this new wave of terrorist acts was the work of the Mad Bomber. New York’s first experience with the so-called Mad Bomber was on November 16, 1940, when a pipe bomb was left in the Edison building with a note that read, “Con Edison crooks, this is for you.”

More bombs were recovered in 1941, each more powerful than the last, until the Mad Bomber sent a note in December stating, “I will make no more bomb units for the duration of the war.” He went on to say that Con Edison, New York’s electric utility company, would be brought to justice in due time. The patriotic Mad Bomber made good on his promise, although he did periodically send threatening notes to the press. After his flurry of activity in 1950, the Mad Bomber was silent until a bomb injured two people at Radio City Music Hall in 1954. In 1955, the Mad Bomber hit Grand Central Station, Macy’s and the RCA building. A bomb that injured seven on the Staten Island Ferry showed that his bomb making ability was advancing.

The police had no luck finding the Mad Bomber, but an investigative team working for Con Ed finally tracked him down. Looking through their employment records, they found that George Peter Metesky had been a disgruntled ex-employee since an accident in 1931. Metesky was enraged that Con Ed refused to pay disability benefits and resorted to terrorism as his revenge. Metesky, a rather mild-mannered man, was found living with his sisters in Connecticut. He was sent to a mental institution in April 1957 where he stayed until his release in 1973. As he left, he was reported to have said, “I don’t look like a Mad Bomber, do I?”

March 29th ~ {continued...}

1951 – In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. The conviction of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950.

British authorities, with assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information to the Soviet Union. Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and began a series of accusations. Fuchs confessed that American Harry Gold had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs passed along his information. American authorities captured Gold, who thereupon pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Gold claimed Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs.

Upon his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies who controlled the entire operation. Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950. By present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast.

It began on March 6, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by March 29. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold. Gold supported Greenglass’s accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent.

This testimony sealed Julius’s fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme. The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 19, 1953 in Sing Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end. The Rosenberg case garnered worldwide attention. Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold War hysteria that was sweeping America. The French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called their execution a “legal lynching.”

Others pointed out that even if the Rosenbergs did pass secrets along to the Soviets during World War II, Russia had been an ally, not an enemy, of the United States at the time. Those who supported the verdict insisted that the couple got what they deserved for endangering national security by giving top-secret information on a devastating weapon to communists.

1951 – The Chinese rejected MacArthur’s offer for a truce in Korea.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel George L. Jones, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 30th ace of the Korean War.

1954 – Carrier aircraft began reconnaissance near Dien Bien Phu, Indochina.

1960 – Launch of first fully integrated Fleet Ballistic Missile from USS Observation Island.

1961 – The 23rd amendment, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president, was ratified.

1962 – Cuba opened the trial of the Bay of Pigs invaders.

1964 – The U.S. planned to add $50 million a year for aid to South Vietnam.

March 29th ~ {continued...}

1971 – Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the 1968 My Lai massacre. Calley ended up spending three years under house arrest.

1973 – Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining, admitted, American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam.

In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops.

By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history. During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War.

The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks. In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men.

Richard Nixon, the new U.S. president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and elsewhere.

Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced. In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the U.S. government.

Even before the last American troops departed on March 29, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War.

On April 30, 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, “You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated.” The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost 58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

1973 – Operation Barrel Roll, a covert US bombing campaign in Laos to stop communist infiltration of South Vietnam, ends.

1973 – As part of the Accords, Hanoi releases the last 67 of its acknowledged American prisoners of war, bringing the total number released to 591.

March 29th ~ {continued...}

1974 – The unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 10, launched by NASA in November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury, sending back close-up images of a celestial body usually obscured because of its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus eight weeks before but only for the purpose of using Venus’ gravity to whip it toward the closest planet to the sun. In three flybys of Mercury between 1974 and 1975, the NASA spacecraft took detailed images of the planet and succeeded in mapping about 35 percent of its heavily cratered, moonlike surface.

Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system and completes its solar orbit in only 88 earth days. Data sent back by Mariner 10 discounted a previously held theory that the planet does not spin on its axis; in fact, the planet has a very slow rotational period that stretches over 58 earth days. Mercury is a waterless, airless world that alternately bakes and freezes as it slowly rotates. Highly inhospitable, Mercury’s surface temperature varies from 800 degrees Fahrenheit when facing the sun to -279 degrees when facing away. The planet has no known satellites. Mariner 10 is the only human-created spacecraft to have visited Mercury to date.

1974 – Eight Ohio National Guardsmen were indicted on charges stemming from the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University. The guardsmen were later acquitted.

1975 – Evacuation of Danang by sea began.

1985 – The Nantucket I was decommissioned, the last lightship in service with the Coast Guard. This ended 164 years of continuous lightship service by the Government. Nantucket I was the last of the U.S. lightships and the last of the Nantucket Shoals lightships that watched over that specific area since June of 1854. Launched as WLV-612 in 1950 at Baltimore, the ship has stood watch as the light vessel for San Francisco and Blunts Reef in California, at Portland, Oregon, and finally at Nantucket Shoals. The CGC Nantucket I also served as a “less-than-speedy” law enforcement vessel off Florida for a time.

1988 – US Congress discontinued aid to Nicaraguan contras.

1991 – General H. Norman Schwarzkopf publicly apologized to President Bush for questioning his judgment about calling a cease-fire in the Gulf War.

1995 – The House of Representatives rejected, 227-204, a constitutional amendment placing term limits on lawmakers. The rejected proposal would have limited terms to 12 years in the House and Senate.

1999 – It was reported that the US government knowingly risked the lives of thousands of workers over the last 50 years by allowing them to be exposed to dangerous levels of beryllium, a metal critical to the military.

March 29th ~ {continued...}

1999 – Albania and Macedonia appealed for help as thousands of refugees fled Kosovo on the 6th day of bombing. NATO said Serbs were targeting ethnic Albanian leadership for executions and the US accused Milosevic of “crimes against humanity.”

1999 – In Montenegro Pres. Milo Djukanovic made a plea for an end to NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. The country reported that over 30,000 refugees had taken asylum there.

2002 – At Fort Irwin, Ca., a mortar round exploded prematurely and 3 soldiers were killed.

2002 – Iraq expressed interest in resuming relations with Kuwait.

2002 – It was reported that Russia had announced plans to build a nuclear plant for North Korea.

2003 – President Bush sought to marshal the nation’s resolve to withstand more casualties, saying further sacrifice must be expected.

2003 – In the 11th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom a suicide bomber driving a taxi killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint near Najaf, Iraq. US jets destroyed a building in Basra where paramilitary fighters were meeting and 200 were reported killed.

2003 – Two US special forces soldiers were killed and another wounded in an ambush in southern Afghanistan. Fighting there killed four Taliban with 6 captured.

2003 – A low-flying Iraqi missile avoided the detection of US defense systems and landed just off the coast of Kuwait City, shattering windows at the seaside Souq Sharq shopping mall.

2004 – President Bush hosted a White House ceremony to welcome Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia into the NATO alliance.

2010 – Nine members of the Hutaree militia, a militia movement group adhering to the ideology of the Christian Patriot movement, based near Adrian, Michigan, are arrested in the United States on allegations of a plot to kill policemen then to attack the funerals, in preparation for a war against all levels of American government. The name “Hutaree” appears to be a neologism; the group’s web site says that it means “Christian warriors”. The prosecution said this was to have involved killing a police officer and attacking the funeral with bombs. The presiding judge dismissed these charges. Three members pled guilty to possessing a machine gun and were sentenced to time served.

2013 – North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un orders preparations for strategic rocket strikes on the US mainland at an overnight meeting with top army commanders, in response to the use of nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth Bombers in joint US-South Korea military drills.

March 30th ~

1769 – Following the example of the Philadelphia merchants, Baltimore merchants join the non-importation movement by banning the purchase of English goods until the repeal of the Townshend Acts.

1775 – King George III endorses the New England Restraining Act, which forbids the New England colonies from trading with any other countries except England after 1 July, and also bans them from fishing in the North Atlantic after 20 July. On 13 April the provisions of the act will also be applied to Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia when Parliament hears that these colonies have ratified the Continental Association.

1820 – A group of New England missionaries arrives on the Hawaiian Islands, to be greeted by King Kamehameha II.

1822 – Congress combined East and West Florida into the Florida Territory. The Territory of Florida was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed until March 3, 1845, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Florida. Originally the Spanish territory of La Florida, and later the provinces of East and West Florida, it was ceded to the United States as part of the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty. It was governed by the Florida Territorial Council.

1825 – Confederate General Samuel Maxey is born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky. Maxey served in the West and led Native Americans troops in Indian Territory. Maxey attended West Point and graduated in 1846, second to last in a class of 59. He was sent immediately to fight in the Mexican War. Although he did well there and fought at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, Maxey resigned his commission after the war to study law in Kentucky. In 1857, he moved to Texas and became active in politics. When the war began, he raised a regiment, the 9th Texas Infantry, and took his unit to fight in Mississippi. Maxey was promoted to brigadier general in March 1862 and his force participated in the Vicksburg campaign before aiding in the defense of Port Hudson, Louisiana. He was fortunate to avoid capture when those locations fell into Union hands, and Maxey was shipped to assist in the Confederate siege of Chattanooga in September 1863.

While there, Maxey received a promotion to commander of Indian Territory. In 1864, he worked to recruit and train members of the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw tribes. On April 18, 1864, troops under Maxey’s command attacked a Union wagon train at Poison Springs, Arkansas. They routed the federal force, which was led by the 1st Kansas Colored Regiment. Maxey’s men proceeded to kill all black soldiers who were wounded or captured. After the war, Maxey continued to support his Native American friends when he served in the U.S. Senate and was an outspoken advocate of Indian rights. He died in 1895.

1855 – In territorial Kansas’ first election, some 5,000 so-called “Border Ruffians” invade the territory from western Missouri and force the election of a pro-slavery legislature. Although the number of votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters in the territory, Kansas Governor Andrew Reeder reluctantly approved the election to prevent further bloodshed. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave.

A few months after pro-slavery forces defrauded Kansas’ first election, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown. In May 1856, Border Ruffians sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and in retaliation a small Free State force under John Brown massacred five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in “Bleeding Kansas,” as it became popularly known. In 1861, the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the outbreak of full-scale civil war in America.

March 30th ~ {continued...}

1858 – Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patented the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.

1864 – A boat expedition under the command of Acting Master James M. Williams, U.S.S. Commodore Barney, with a detachment of sailors under the command of Acting Master Charles B. Wilder, U.S.S. Minnesota, ascended Chuckatuck Creek late at night seeking to capture a party of Confederate troops reported to be in that vicinity. After landing at Cherry Grove, Virginia, shortly before dawn, the sailors silently surrounded the Confederate headquarters and took 20 prisoners.

1867 – The United States government put the finishing touches on the deal to purchase that “large stump of ice,” better known as Alaska. The acquisition, brokered in absolute secrecy by Secretary of State William Seward, saw the U.S. pay Alaska’s owner, Russia $7.2 million, or roughly two cents per acre of land. Though Alaska was the first bit of property ever relinquished by Russia, some American officials sneered at the seemingly barren new state. In certain circles, the deal was derisively known as “Seward’s Folly.”

However, Alaska promised a few bright benefits for the U.S. Along with freeing another piece of the continent from the grip of monarchy, America’s newest state was flush with furs and fish. Rather than establishing a formal government in the territory, President Andrew Johnson reasoned that Alaska’s economic activities placed it under the charge of the Treasury Department, which regulated the fur and fish trades. In effect, Johnsons decision created a government monopoly and planted the seeds for conflict in Alaska’s not too distant future.

1870 – The 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, passed.

1870 – Texas was the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

1891 – Arthur Herrington, American engineer and manufacturer; developed the World War II jeep, was born in Coddenham, East Suffolk, England. Immigrating to the United States with his family at the age of five, Herrington grew up in Madison, N.J., and was educated at the Stevens Preparatory School and Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. He was first employed by the Harley-Davidson Motor Company of Milwaukee. After World War I he was given a reserve commission in the Army and was retained as a consultant while returning to his civilian occupation.

In France, Herrington had been impressed by the problems of conventional-drive vehicles in off-the-road maneuvering. He experimented with and designed a series of trucks with four- and six-wheel drives, which he built in association with the Marmon Motor Car Company of Indianapolis, Ind. These vehicles aided Allied troops during World War II; but none equaled the success and popularity of the smallest of the line, the quarter-ton jeep (apparently from the letters GP, for “general purpose”) reconnaissance car, noted for its outstanding stamina, versatility, power, and maneuverability.

1915 – Wilson protests the British blockade of German ports. His concern is for US shipping and neutral vessels destined for neutral ports. However, since most of these vessels are carrying cargoes which will ultimately find their way to Germany, Britain refuses to budge.

March 30th ~ {continued...}

1940 – Japan establishes its own government in conquered Nanking, the former capital of Nationalist China. In 1937, Japan drummed up a rationale for war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China (claiming Chinese troops attacked Japanese troops on maneuvers in a so-called “autonomous” region of China) and invaded northeastern China, bombing Shanghai and carving out a new state, Manchukuo. Money and supplies poured into Free China from the United States, Britain, and France, until the Burma Road, which permitted free passage of goods into China from the West, was closed after a Japanese invasion of Indochina.

Making matters more difficult, Chiang was forced to fight on two fronts: one against the Japanese (with U.S. help in the person of Gen. Joseph Stillwell, Chiang’s chief of staff), and another against his ongoing political nemesis, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung. (Although the United States advised concentrating on the Japanese first as the pre-eminent threat, Chiang was slow to listen.) The Japanese proceeded to prosecute a war of terror in Manchukuo. With the capture of Nanking (formerly the Nationalist Chinese capital, which was now relocated to Chungking) by the Central China Front Army in December 1937, atrocities virtually unparalleled commenced.

The army, under orders of its commander, Gen. Matsui Iwane, carried out the mass execution of more than 50,000 civilians, as well as tens of thousands of rapes. Nanking and surrounding areas were burned and looted, with one-third of its buildings utterly destroyed. The “Rape of Nanking” galvanized Western animus against the Japanese. On March 30, 1940, Nanking was declared by the Japanese to be the center of a new Chinese government, a regime controlled by Wang Ching-wei, a defector from the Nationalist cause and now a Japanese puppet.

1941 – The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.

1942 – Coast Guard was designated as a service of the Navy to be administered by the Commandant of Coast Guard under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, similar to the administration of the Marine Corps.

1942 – The Joint Chiefs divide the Pacific into two command spheres. Admiral Nimitz is appointed Commander in Chief of the Pacific Ocean zone and General MacArthur, the Commander in Chief of the Southwest Pacific. This demarcation will lead to friction when planning the reconquest of the east.

1944 – The U.S. fleet attacked Palau, near the Philippines. First use of torpedo squadrons from carriers to drop aerial mines (Palau Harbor).

1944 – US forces occupy Pityilu Island to the north of Manus Island. There is little Japanese resistance.

1945 – The US 1st Army advances north out of its salient around Marburg and reaches and crosses the Eder River. US 3rd Army is attempting to strike east and north toward Gotha and Kassel.

1945 – In American air raids on the northern ports, the German cruiser Koln and 14 U-boats are sunk.

1945 – US naval forces, including TF58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. A Japanese Kamikaze plane badly damages the cruiser USS Indianapolis. Unsuccessful submarine attacks continue.

1945 – A Soviet cable was intercepted that referred to an agent named Ales, later suspected of being Alger Hiss. The intercepted cables were classified as part of the “Venona Project” released in 1996. The US began releasing the coded Venona cables in 1995. They implicated 349 US citizens and residents as Soviet helpers.

1946 – The Allies seized 1,000 Nazis who were attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.

1950 – President Truman denounced Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.

March 30th ~ {continued...}

1951 – The heaviest air attack of the war was staged by 38 B-29’s on twin bridges over the Yalu River at Sinuiju, dropping some 280 tons of bombs. Escorting F-80s and F-86s engaged enemy MiG-15 jets, destroying three and damaging six.

1952 – A fire completely destroyed the headquarters of the 7th Cavalry Regiment at Camp Crawford, Japan. Many of the regiment’s souvenirs, some dating back to the time of Custer, were lost in the blaze.

1952 – Chou En-Lai, Foreign Minister, Peoples’ Republic of China, suggested that POWs not desiring repatriation might be placed in the temporary custody of a neutral nation until negotiations determined their final status. Prior to this proposal the communists had insisted on the repatriation of all POWs. Their new flexibility on this issue provided an opportunity to resume truce negotiations.

1965 – A bomb explodes in a car parked in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, virtually destroying the building and killing 19 Vietnamese, 2 Americans, and 1 Filipino; 183 others were injured. Congress quickly appropriated $1 million to reconstruct the embassy. Although some U.S. military leaders advocated special retaliatory raids on North Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson refused.

1966 – The 7th Marine Regiment terminated Operation Indiana in Vietnam.

1972 – A major coordinated communist offensive opens with the heaviest military action since the sieges of Allied bases at Con Thien and Khe Sanh in 1968. Committing almost their entire army to the offensive, the North Vietnamese launched a massive three-pronged attack into South Vietnam. Four North Vietnamese divisions attacked directly across the Demilitarized Zone in Quang Tri province.

Thirty-five South Vietnamese soldiers died in the initial attack and hundreds of civilians and soldiers were wounded. Following the initial assault in Quang Tri province, the North Vietnamese launched two more major attacks: at An Loc in Binh Long Province, 60 miles north of Saigon; and at Kontum in the Central Highlands. With the three attacks, the North Vietnamese committed 500 tanks and 150,000 men, as well as thousands of Viet Cong, supported by heavy rocket and artillery fire.

After initial successes, especially against the newly formed South Vietnamese 3rd Division in Quang Tri, the North Vietnamese attack was stopped cold by the combination of defending South Vietnamese divisions (along with their U.S. advisers) and massive American airpower. Estimates placed the North Vietnamese losses at more than 100,000 and at least one-half of their tanks and large caliber artillery.

1975 – As the North Vietnamese forces moved toward Saigon, desperate South Vietnamese soldiers mobbed rescue jets.

March 30th ~ {continued...}

1981 – President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr. The president had just finished addressing a labor meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel and was walking with his entourage to his limousine when Hinckley, standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three of his attendants. White House Press Secretary James Brady was shot in the head and critically wounded, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy was shot in the side, and District of Columbia policeman Thomas Delahaney was shot in the neck.

After firing the shots, Hinckley was overpowered and pinned against a wall, and President Reagan, apparently unaware that he’d been shot, was shoved into his limousine by a Secret Service agent and rushed to the hospital. The president was shot in the left lung, and the .22 caliber bullet just missed his heart. In an impressive feat for a 70-year-old man with a collapsed lung, he walked into George Washington University Hospital under his own power. As he was treated and prepared for surgery, he was in good spirits and quipped to his wife, Nancy, ”Honey, I forgot to duck,” and to his surgeons, “Please tell me you’re Republicans.” Reagan’s surgery lasted two hours, and he was listed in stable and good condition afterward. The next day, the president resumed some of his executive duties and signed a piece of legislation from his hospital bed.

On April 11, he returned to the White House. Reagan’s popularity soared after the assassination attempt, and at the end of April he was given a hero’s welcome by Congress. In August, this same Congress passed his controversial economic program, with several Democrats breaking ranks to back Reagan’s plan. By this time, Reagan claimed to be fully recovered from the assassination attempt. In private, however, he would continue to feel the effects of the nearly fatal gunshot wound for years.

Of the victims of the assassination attempt, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and D.C. policeman Thomas Delahaney eventually recovered. James Brady, who nearly died after being shot in the eye, suffered permanent brain damage. He later became an advocate of gun control, and in 1993 Congress passed the “Brady Bill,” which established a five-day waiting period and background checks for prospective gun buyers. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law.

After being arrested on March 30, 1981, 25-year-old John Hinckley was booked on federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president. He had previously been arrested in Tennessee on weapons charges. In June 1982, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In the trial, Hinckley’s defense attorneys argued that their client was ill with narcissistic personality disorder, citing medical evidence, and had a pathological obsession with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which the main character attempts to assassinate a fictional senator.

His lawyers claimed that Hinckley saw the movie more than a dozen times, was obsessed with the lead actress, Jodie Foster, and had attempted to reenact the events of the film in his own life. Thus the movie, not Hinckley, they argued, was the actual planning force behind the events that occurred on March 30, 1981. The verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity” aroused widespread public criticism, and many were shocked that a would-be presidential assassin could avoid been held accountable for his crime.

However, because of his obvious threat to society, he was placed in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a mental institution. In the late 1990s, Hinckley’s attorney began arguing that his mental illness was in remission and thus had a right to return to a normal life. Beginning in August 1999, he was allowed supervised day trips off the hospital grounds and later was allowed to visit his parents once a week unsupervised. The Secret Service voluntarily monitors him during these outings.

March 30th ~ {continued...}

1982 – Space Shuttle program: STS-3 Mission is completed with the landing of Columbia at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

1994 – The Clinton administration announced it was lifting virtually all export controls on non-military products to China and the former Soviet bloc.

1996 – The space shuttle Atlantis narrowly avoided having to make an emergency landing when its cargo bay doors wouldn’t open at first to release built-up heat.

1999 – Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic insisted that NATO attacks stop before he moved toward peace, declaring his forces ready to fight “to the very end.” The US called the offer “woefully inadequate.” NATO moved to step up the air war and Serbian forces continued unopposed in Kosovo as refugees streamed out. NATO answered with new resolve to wreck his military with a relentless air assault.

2000 – The United Nations Security Council votes to allow Iraq to import $1.2 billion in spare parts and other equipment for its oil industry this year under the “oil-for-food” program. This is an increase from the previous $600 million annual value allowed.

2002 – The United States joined other U.N. Security Council members in adopting a resolution calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, where Yasser Arafat headquarters was under siege.

2003 – In the 12th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom an Iraqi general, captured by British forces in southern Iraq, was pressed to provide information. A British TV correspondent covering the war in Iraq died after apparently falling from a hotel roof.

2004 – Philippine officials reported the arrest of 4 Muslim extremists in the brutal al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group. They were found with a stash of TNT targeted for terror attacks on trains and shopping malls in the Philippine capital. A suspected Muslim extremist told police interrogators he planted TNT in a television set on a ferry that caught fire last month, killing more than 100 people.

2005 – Fred Korematsu (86), who’d challenged the World War II internment policy that sent Japanese-Americans to detention camps, died in Larkspur, California.

2005 – Under heavy protection, First Lady Laura Bush visited the capital of Afghanistan, where she talked with Afghan women freed from Taliban repression and urged greater rights.

March 31st ~

1774 – In response to the continuing rebelliousness of the Massachusetts colony, an angry parliament passes a series of Coercive Acts. The first of these is the Boston Port Bill, to go into force June 1. The port bill forbids any shipping or trade in Boston harbor except for that involving military supplies and certain approved cargoes of food and fuel. The bill also provides for the stationing of customs officials at Salem rather than Boston. If Massachusetts reimburses customs for the duties owed and the costs of the Boston Tea Party, only then will the port be opened to all maritime traffic.

1777 – A young Abigail Adams encouraged her husband John to give women voting privileges in the new American government. She wrote to her husband on March 31, 1777, while he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention: “I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous to them than were your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” Twenty years later her husband was a candidate in America’s first real election.

1801 – Lt Col Commandant William W. Burrows rode with president Thomas Jefferson to look for “a proper place to fix the Marine Barracks on.” President Jefferson was a personal friend of the Commandant, and deeply interested in the welfare of the Corps and accompanied Burrows on horseback on the morning of 31 March. They chose a square in Southeast Washington, bounded by 8th and 9th streets, and a & I streets, because it lay near the Navy Yard and was within easy marching distance of the Capitol.

1814 – In a message to Congress, President Madison recommends the repeal of the Embargo and Non-Importation Acts. This legislation has failed to achieve its purpose, and the repeal is supported by New England, despite the newly developing industries that have been protected by the acts.

1854 – In Tokyo, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan. In July 1853, Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with a squadron of four U.S. vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but eventually they accepted letters from U.S. President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it was declared closed to foreigners in 1683. After giving Japan time to consider the establishment of external relations, Perry returned to Tokyo in March 1854, and on March 31 signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened Japan to trade with the United States, and thus the West.

In April 1860, the first Japanese diplomats to visit a foreign power reached Washington, D.C., and remained in the U.S. capital for several weeks discussing expansion of trade with the United States. Perry’s great achievement was widely recognized at the time. Perhaps there is no better praise for this naval veteran of 45 years’ service than the collective memorial sent by the American merchants at Canton to the Commodore in Sept. 1854 on his return trip to the U.S.: “You have conquered the obstinate will of man and, by overturning the cherished policy of an empire, have brought an estranged but culturated people into the family of nations. You have done this without violence, and the world has looked on with admiration to see the barriers of prejudice fall before the flag of our country without the firing of a shot.”

March 31st ~ {continued...}

1862 – Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces took place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.

1863 – Confederate troops opened a sustained attack and siege of the Union position at Washington, North Carolina. The assaulting forces erected numerous batteries along the Pamlico River in an effort to check the Union Navy. Nonetheless, the senior naval officer, Commander Daven-port, moved quickly to aid the beleaguered Union soldiers. He dispatched all but two gunboats guarding New Bern to Washington and left only one at Plymouth, before the attack was broken up on 16 April, the warships’ heavy gunfire support swung the balance in stopping the Con-federates. In addition, small boats transported desperately needed ammunition to the troops and ultimately it was the waterborne supplies reaching the garrison that induced the Confederates to withdraw.

1865 – The final offensive of the Army of the Potomac gathers steam when Union General Phil Sheridan moves against the left flank of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The limited action set the stage for the Battle of Five Forks on April 1st. This engagement took place at the end of the Petersburg line. For 10 months, the Union had laid siege to Lee’s army at Petersburg, but the trenches stretched all the way to Richmond, 25 miles north of Petersburg. Lee’s thinning army attacked Fort Stedman on March 25th in a futile attempt to break the siege, but the Union line held.

On March 29, General Ulysses S. Grant, General-in-Chief of the Union Army and the field commander around Petersburg, began moving his men past the western end of Lee’s line. Torrential rains almost delayed the move. Grant planned to send Sheridan against the Confederates on March 31st, but called off the operation. Sheridan would not be denied a chance to fight, though. “I am ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things!” he told his officers. They encouraged him to meet with Grant, who consented to begin the move. Near Dinwiddie Court House, Sheridan advanced but was driven back by General George Pickett’s division. Pickett was alerted to the Union advance, and during the night of March 31st, he pulled his men back to Five Forks. This set the stage for a major strike by Sheridan on April 1st, when the Yankees crushed the Rebel flank and forced Lee to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg.

1870 – Following its ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, the 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” One day after it was adopted, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote under the authority of the 15th Amendment.

In 1867, the Republican-dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, dividing the South into five military districts and outlining how new governments based on universal manhood suffrage were to be established. With the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, a politically mobilized African-American community joined with white allies in the Southern states to elect the Republican Party to power, which brought about radical changes across the South.

By late 1870, all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, and most were controlled by the Republican Party, thanks to the support of African-American voters. In the same year, Hiram Rhoades Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, became the first African American ever to sit in Congress. Although African-American Republicans never obtained political office in proportion to their overwhelming electoral majority, Revels and a dozen other African-American men served in Congress during Reconstruction, more than 600 served in state legislatures, and many more held local offices.

However, in the late 1870s, the Southern Republican Party vanished with the end of Reconstruction, and Southern state governments effectively nullified the 14th and 15th Amendments, stripping Southern African Americans of the right to vote. It would be nearly a century before the nation would again attempt to establish equal rights for African Americans in the South.

March 31st ~ {continued...}

1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces. The Capture of Malolos, alternately known as the Battle of Malolos, occurred on Bulacan, during the Philippine-American War. General Arthur MacArthur, Jr.’s division advanced to Malolos along the Manila–Dagupan Railway. By March 30, American forces were advancing on Malolos. Meanwhile, the Aguinaldo government had moved its seat from Malolos to San Isidro, Nueva Ecija.

1916 – General Pershing and his army routed Pancho Villa’s army in Mexico.

1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.

1918 – Daylight Savings Time went into effect throughout the U.S. for the first time.

1933 – Congress authorized the Civilian Conservation Corps in an attempt to relieve rampant unemployment. The US unemployment rate had reached 25%. In its nine years of existence, the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps had a total of 2.9 million men aged 18 to 25 enrolled. The program was designed to provide jobs for young men in the national forests, conservation programs and national road construction. Enacted as one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s first New Deal programs, it lasted until World War II. At its high point in September 1935, the CCC had 2,514 work camps across the U.S. with 502,000 men enrolled.

1943 – An American battalion occupies positions around Morobe at the mouth of the Waria River.

1945 – The U.S. and Britain barred a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from entering the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.

1945 – US naval forces, including Task Force 58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. Japanese Kamikaze and submarine attacks continue.

1945 – A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.

1948 – Congress passed a $6.2 billion foreign aid bill, the Marshall Aid Act, to rehabilitate war-torn Europe.

1951 – Operation RIPPER was officially terminated as Eighth Army fought its way back to the 38th parallel.

1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.

1952 – The Kimpo Provisional Regiment was organized by and within the U.S. 1st Marine Division for the defense of the Kimpo peninsula.1958 – US Navy formed the atomic sub division.

1958 – Moscow declared a halt on all atomic tests and asked other nations to follow.

1965 – US ordered the 1st combat troops to Vietnam.

March 31st ~ {continued...}

1965 – Responding to questions from reporters about the situation in Vietnam, President Johnson says, “I know of no far-reaching strategy that is being suggested or promulgated.” Early in the month, Johnson had sent 3,500 Marines to Da Nang to secure the U.S. airbase there. These troops were ostensibly there only for defensive purposes, but Johnson, despite his protestations to the contrary, was already considering giving the authorization for the U.S. troops to go from defensive to offensive tactics. This was a sensitive area, since such an authorization could (and did) lead to escalation in the war and a subsequent increase in the American commitment to it.

1967 – President Lyndon Johnson signed the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.

1968 – In a televised speech to the nation, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces a partial halt of bombing missions over North Vietnam and proposes peace talks. He said he had ordered “unilaterally” a halt to air and naval bombardments of North Vietnam “except in the area north of the Demilitarized Zone, where the continuing enemy build-up directly threatens Allied forward positions.” He also stated that he was sending 13,500 more troops to Vietnam and would request further defense expenditures–$2.5 billion in fiscal year 1968 and $2.6 billion in fiscal year 1969–to finance recent troop build-ups, re-equip the South Vietnamese Army, and meet “responsibilities in Korea.” In closing, Johnson shocked the nation with an announcement that all but conceded that his own presidency had become another wartime casualty: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

1970 – The U.S. forces in Vietnam downed a MIG-21, the first since September 1968.

1970 – Explorer 1, the first US satellite, launched in 1958, re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.

1971 – Poseidon (C-3) missile becomes operational when USS James Madison began her 3rd patrol carrying 16 tactical Poseidon missiles.

1972 – After firing more than 5,000 rockets, artillery, and mortar shells on 12 South Vietnamese positions just below the Demilitarized Zone, the North Vietnamese Army launches ground assaults against South Vietnamese positions in Quang Tri Province. The attacks were thrown back, with 87 North Vietnamese killed. South Vietnamese fire bases Fuller, Mai Loc, Holcomb, Pioneer, and two smaller bases near the Demilitarized Zone were abandoned as the North Vietnamese pushed the defenders back toward their rear bases.

At the same time, attacks against three bases west of Saigon forced the South Vietnamese to abandon six outposts along the Cambodian border. These were a continuation of the opening attacks of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, a major coordinated communist offensive initiated on March 30. Committing almost their entire army to the offensive, the North Vietnamese launched a massive three-pronged attack. In the initial attack, four North Vietnamese divisions attacked directly across the Demilitarized Zone into Quang Tri province. Following the assault in Quang Tri province, the North Vietnamese launched two more major attacks: at An Loc in Binh Long Province, 60 miles north of Saigon, and at Kontum in the Central Highlands.

With the three attacks, the North Vietnamese had committed 500 tanks and 150,000 regular troops (as well as thousands of Viet Cong) supported by heavy rocket and artillery fire. After initial successes, especially against the newly formed South Vietnamese 3rd Division in Quang Tri, the North Vietnamese attack was stopped cold by the combination of defending South Vietnamese divisions (along with their U.S. advisers) and massive American airpower. Estimates placed the North Vietnamese losses at more than 100,000 and at least one-half of their tanks and large caliber artillery.

March 31st ~ {continued...}

1980 – Iranian officials say American hostages may be handed over to government by militants holding U.S. embassy, as militant leaders meet with President Bani-Sadr.

1991 – The Warsaw Pact spent the last day of its existence as a military alliance.

1992 – The U.N. Security Council voted to ban flights and arms sales to Libya, branding it a terrorist state for shielding six men accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and a French airliner.

1992 – USS Missouri (BB-63), the last active American battleship is decommissioned. USS Missouri (BB-63) (“Mighty Mo” or “Big Mo”) is a United States Navy Iowa-class battleship and was the third ship of the U.S. Navy to be named in honor of the US state of Missouri. Missouri was the last battleship commissioned by the United States and was the site of the surrender of the Empire of Japan which ended World War II. Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944.

In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the “Mothball Fleet”), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991.

Missouri received a total of 11 battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf, and was finally decommissioned on 31 March 1992, but remained on the Naval Vessel Register until her name was struck in January 1995. In 1998, she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1993 – The U.N. Security Council increased international pressure on Bosnian Serbs, authorizing NATO warplanes to shoot down aircraft that violated a ban on flights over Bosnia.

1995 – President Clinton briefly visited Haiti, where he declared the U.S. mission to restore democracy there a “remarkable success.”

1995 – Coast Guard Communication Area Master Station Atlantic sent a final message by Morse Code and then signed off, officially ending more than 100 years of telegraph communication.

1998 – The UN Security Council imposed a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia to press Milosevic to grant ethnic Albanians concessions in Kosovo.

1999 – Three peacekeeping US soldiers were captured by Serb forces near the Yugoslav-Macedonia border. Sgt. James Stone (25), Spec. Steven Gonzales (21) and Sgt. Andrew Ramirez (24) were shown on Serbian TV and were released more than a month later. Azen Syla, founder of the KLA, said that his guerrilla supply lines from Albania were cut off when the bombing began. Yugoslav soldiers herded ethnic Albanians onto trains bound for the Macedonian border as NATO bombing continued for the 8th day.

March 31st ~ {continued...}

1999 – NATO bombs destroyed the Sloboda household utilities plant in Cacak, Serbia. It had employed some 5,000 people. Allied leaders said they would bomb government buildings in Belgrade.

1999 – On Serbian TV Ibrahim Rugova appealed for an end to NATO bombings. He had recently been quoted by a German magazine that chaos would result if NATO does not send in ground troops immediately. Serbs put Rugova under house arrest and ordered him to appear on TV.

2000 – The UN Security Council decided to let Iraq spend more money to repair its oil industry—an investment intended to boost the amount of food and medicine Baghdad could buy through the UN humanitarian program.

2001 – In Serbia commandos stormed the residence of Slobodan Milosevic and attempted to arrest him as the US deadline for cooperation with the UN War Crimes tribunal approached. But a defiant Milosevic rejected a warrant, reportedly telling police he wouldn’t “go to jail alive.”

2002 – Serbia’s government, faced with a midnight suspension of US aid, issued arrest warrants against 4 former Milosevic associates.

2003 – In the 13th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US-led troops fought pitched battles with Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard within 50 miles of the capital. B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers struck communication and command centers in Baghdad, and cruise missiles set Iraq’s Information Ministry ablaze. Casualties from the war to date US total: 40 dead, 7 captured, 18 missing; British total: 25 dead. Of 8,000 precision bombs dropped since the war began, 3,000 fell in the last 3 days. Port operations at Umm Qasr looked to be delayed for weeks.

2003 – NBC said it severed its relations with reporter Peter Arnett after he told Iraqi television that the US war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed. Arnett was quickly hired by London’s Daily Mirror.

2003 – In Macedonia the EU began its first military operation by taking over peacekeeping duties from NATO.

2004 – The US Navy closed Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, its last base in Puerto Rico. It was transferred to a special naval agency that will coordinate the closing process. The base had been used for 6 decades to keep watch over the Caribbean.

2004 – The highly-publicized killing and mutilation of four Blackwater private military contractors takes place. Five days before American troops withdrew from Fallujah after intense fighting on March 26, 2004 (at which point Fallujah had already been declared insurgent-occupied) killed one Marine. The troops retreated to the city’s outskirts. The four independent contractors were guarding food shipments for a U.S. base on the outskirts of Fallujah, Iraq, when they took a wrong turn and entered the city. They were killed in a grenade attack by suspected insurgents, and their corpses were mutilated by cheering crowds.

2004 – The US suspended $26 million in aid to Serbia for refusal to give up war crimes fugitives.

2005 – A US presidential commission reported that US intelligence agencies were wrong in their prewar assessment of Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

April 1st ~

1621 – At the Plymouth settlement in present-day Massachusetts, the leaders of the Plymouth colonists, acting on behalf of King James I, make a defensive alliance with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags. The agreement, in which both parties promised to not “doe hurt” to one another, was the first treaty between a Native American tribe and a group of American colonists. According to the treaty, if a Wampanoag broke the peace, he would be sent to Plymouth for punishment; if a colonist broke the law, he would likewise be sent to the Wampanoags.

In November 1620, the Mayflower arrived in the New World, carrying 101 English settlers, commonly known as the pilgrims. The majority of the pilgrims were Puritan Separatists, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they believed violated the biblical precepts of true Christians. After coming to anchor in what is today Provincetown harbor in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts, a party of armed men under the command of Captain Myles Standish was sent to explore the immediate area and find a location suitable for settlement.

In December, the explorers went ashore in Plymouth, where they found cleared fields and plentiful running water; a few days later the Mayflower came to anchor in Plymouth harbor, and settlement began. The first direct contact with a Native American was made in March 1621, and soon after, Chief Massasoit paid a visit to the settlement. After an exchange of greetings and gifts, the two peoples signed a peace treaty that lasted for more than 50 years.

1778 – Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans businessman, created the “$” symbol.

1789 – The U.S. House of Representatives held its first full meeting, in New York City. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first House Speaker.

1823 – Simon Bolivar Buckner (died 1914), Lt. Gen. (Confederate Army), was born.

1853 – Cincinnati became the first U.S. city to pay its firefighters a regular salary.

1826 – Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.

1833 – The Convention of 1833, a political gathering of settlers in Mexican Texas to help draft a series of petitions to the Mexican government, begins in San Felipe de Austin.

1863 – First wartime conscription law went into effect in the U.S.

April 1st ~ {continued...}

1865 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, is closed when Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant collapse the end of Lee’s lines around Petersburg. The Confederates suffer heavy casualties, and the battle triggered Lee’s retreat from Petersburg as the two armies began a race that would end a week later at Appomattox Court House. For nearly a year, Grant had laid siege to Lee’s army in an elaborate network of trenches that ran from Petersburg to the Confederate capital at Richmond, 25 miles north. Lee’s hungry army slowly dwindled through the winter of 1864-65 as Grant’s army swelled with well-fed reinforcements.

On March 25th, Lee attacked part of the Union trenches at Fort Stedman in a desperate attempt to break the siege and split Grant’s force. When that attack failed, Grant began mobilizing his forces along the entire 40-mile front. Southwest of Petersburg, Grant sent General Philip Sheridan against Lee’s right flank. Sheridan moved forward on March 31, but the tough Confederates halted his advance. Sheridan moved troops to cut the railroad that ran from the southwest into Petersburg, but the focus of the battle became Five Forks, a road intersection that provided the key to Lee’s supply line. Lee instructed his commander there, General George Pickett, to “Hold Five Forks at all hazards.”

On April 1st, Sheridan’s men slammed into Pickett’s troops. Pickett had his force poorly positioned, and he was taking a long lunch with his staff when the attack occurred. General Governor K. Warren’s V Corps supported Sheridan, and the 27,000 Yankee troops soon crushed Pickett’s command of 10,000. The Union lost 1,000 casualties, but nearly 5,000 of Pickett’s men were killed, wounded, or captured. During the battle, Sheridan, with the approval of Grant, removed Warren from command despite Warren’s effective deployment of his troops. It appears that a long-simmering feud between the two was the cause, but Warren was not officially cleared of any wrongdoing by a court of inquiry until 1882.

The vital intersection was in Union hands, and Lee’s supply line was cut. Grant now attacked all along the Petersburg-Richmond front and Lee evacuated the cities. The two armies began a race west, but Lee could not outrun Grant. The Confederate leader surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9th.

1865 – Worn down by the stresses of his office, Florida Governor John Milton commits suicide at his plantation, Sylvania. Milton was a capable governor who valiantly defended his state and supplied provisions to the Confederacy, but by the end of the war much of Florida was occupied by Union forces and the state’s finances were depleted. Just before his death, Milton addressed the Florida legislature and said that Yankees “have developed a character so odious that death would be preferable to reunion with them.” Milton was 57 when he put a pistol to his head.

1884 – Florence Blanchfield, an American nurse who was the first woman to become a fully ranked officer of the U.S. Army, was born. She was the first woman to receive a commission in the Regular Army. In making the presentation of her commission in a ceremony in 1947, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower paid tribute to the heroism of the Army nurses.

The War Department credited Colonel Blanchfield, who at the time had spent 30 years in the Army Nurse Corps, with being “largely instrumental in securing full military rank for nurses.” She marshaled her arguments for “full” rather than “relative” rank at hearings before a succession of Congressional committees. Full rank was won on a temporary basis in July, 1944, and was made permanent by the Army and Navy Nurse Corps Law of April 16, 1947.

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1893 – Navy General Order 409 of 25 February 1893 establishes the rank of Chief Petty Officer as of this date.

1917 – In Baltimore some 4,000 pro-war demonstrators stormed a meeting of the American League Against Militarism and threatened to hang the participants that included Stanford Univ. Chancellor David Starr Jordan.

1924 – Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for “Beer Hall Putsch.” Gen Ludendorff was acquitted for leading the botched Nazi’s “Beer Hall Putsch” in the German state of Bavaria.

1935 – General Electric Co. announces the first radio tube made of metal. Metal tubes were smaller and lighter than the glass vacuum tubes used in earlier radios and they improved short-wave radio reception. Radio had started to catch on as an entertainment medium in the 1920s, and its popularity grew until the rise of television in the early 1940s.

1941 – US Navy took over Treasure Island in SF Bay.

1942 – First Naval Air Transportation Service (NATS) squadron for Pacific operations commissioned.

1942 – The Japanese resume major attack on the Bataan Peninsula. The American and Philippine troops have 24,000 of their men ill due to short rations (1/4 of normal ration size) and tropical diseases.

1943 – The Italian blockade-runner Pietro Orseolo is attacked off the coast of Spain by British Beaufort and Beaufighter torpedo bombers. Escorting German destroyers shoot down 5 of the aircraft. After dark, the US submarine Shad hits the ship with a torpedo, causing substantial damage.

1944 – US aircraft from Task Force 58 (Admiral Spruance) attack Woleai Island. In three days of attacks about 130,000 tons of Japanese shipping has been sunk as well as 7 small warships. American forces have lost 26 planes and claim 150 Japanese airplanes shot down.

1944 – Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen.

1944 – US forces occupy Ndrilo and Koniniat in the Admiralties.

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1945 – On Okinawa, American forces launch Operation Iceberg, the invasion of Okinawa. Two corps of the US 10th Army (General Buckner) land in the area of Hagushi, in the southwest of the island. US Task Force 51 (Admiral Turner) provides the 1,200 transports and landing ships including seven Coast Guard-manned transports, 29 LSTs, the cutters Bibb and Woodbine, and 12 LCI(L)s, with over 450,000 Army and Marine Corps personnel embarked.

The troops landed are from US 3rd Amphibious Corps (Geiger) with US 6th and 1st Marine Divisions, on the left or northern flank, and 24th Corps (Hodge) with US 7th and 96th Infantry Divisions, on the right or southern flank. On land, US forces encounter almost no resistance on the first day and establish a beachhead three miles deep and nine miles wide. (Okinawa is 70 miles long and a maximum of 10 miles wide.) Kadena and Yontan airfields are captured.

Japanese forces on the island, consisting of the 130,000 troops of the Japanese 32nd Army (General Ushijima), are entrenched in concealed positions and caves, mostly to the south of the American landing area along the Shuri Line. (There are also 450,000 civilians on the island.) At sea, US TF58 and TF54 as well as the British Pacific Fleet conduct air and naval bombardments. Japanese conventional and Kamikaze air strikes hit the battleship USS West Virginia, and the carrier, HMS Indomitable, along with eight other ships.

1945 – The US 1st and 9th Armies link up at Lippstadt, cutting off the German forces in the Ruhr which consist of 325,000 men mostly from German 15th Army and 5th Panzer Army of German Army Group B (Field Marshal Model). Other elements of US 1st Army capture Paderborn while US 9th Army units take Hamm. To the north, forces of British 2nd Army have crossed the Mitteland Canal near Munster and are advancing to Osnabruck.

1945 – The US 158th Regiment (General MacNider) lands at Legaspi in the southeast of Luzon and takes the town and nearby airfield. Elsewhere on Luzon American forces are beginning to advance toward the southeast of Manila after much hard fighting against the Japanese forces of the Shimbu Group (General Yokoyama). Forces of the Japanese 14th Army (General Yamashita), in the north of the island, have also engaged by American and Filipino forces.

1948 – Soviet troops stop U.S. and British military trains traveling through the Russian zone of occupation in Germany and demand that they be allowed to search the trains. British and U.S. officials refused the Soviet demand, and the problems associated with the Soviet, British, and U.S. occupation of Germany grew steadily more serious in the following months.

Soviet and U.S. differences over the post-World War II fate of Germany began even before the war ended in 1945. The Soviets were determined that Germany would never again pose a military threat to Russia and they also demanded huge postwar reparations. The United States shared the Soviet concern about German rearmament, but as the Cold War began to develop, American officials realized that a revitalized Germany might act as a bulwark against possible Soviet expansion into Western Europe.

When Germany surrendered in 1945, it was divided into British, American, Russian (and, eventually, French) zones of occupation. Berlin was located within the Russian sector, but the city itself was also divided into occupation zones. As it became clear during 1946 and 1947 that the United States, acting with the British and French, were determined to economically revitalize and militarily rearm Western Germany, tensions with the Soviet Union began to mount.

On April 1, 1948, Soviet troops began stopping U.S. and British military trains traveling through the Russian sector to and from Berlin. Both the British and American governments responded with indignant letters of reproach to the Soviet Union. Eventually, the stoppages ceased, but in June 1948 the Soviets began a full-scale blockade of all ground travel to and from the U.S.-British-French sectors of Berlin. Thus began the Berlin Blockade, which was only broken when U.S. aircraft carried out the amazing task of flying and dropping supplies into Berlin. Germany remained a major Cold War battlefield throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

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1951 – U.N. forces again crossed the 38th Parallel in Korea.

1952 – Air Force Colonel Francis S. Gabreski, flying his F-86 Sabre “Gabby” out of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the eighth ace of the Korean War and the third ranking U.S. ace of all time. Colonel Gabreski achieved a total of 37.5 aerial victories, including five in Korea. Air Force F-86 Sabres scored their second greatest victory of the war, shooting down 10 MiGs confirmed with two others probable.

1954 – U.S. Air Force Academy was founded in Colorado. President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing the establishment of an Air Force Academy, similar to West Point and Annapolis. On July 11, 1955, the first class was sworn in at Lowry Air Force Base. The academy moved to a permanent site near Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1958.

1960 – The first weather satellite, TIROS 1, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

1960 – France exploded 2 atom bombs in the Sahara Desert.

1964 – Former Vice-President Richard Nixon begins a three day visit to Vietnam during which he sharply criticizes US policies for “compromises and improvisations,” calling for continued aid and promising to make this an issue in the upcoming US Presidential race.

1965 – 17 non-aligned nations appeal to the UN, the US, Britain, the Soviets, North and South Vietnam and other bodies in a call for a “peaceful solution through negotiations.” President Johnson formally responds on 8 April that the US agrees with the goals, but cannot negotiate until North Vietnam ceases its aggression.

1965 – President Johnson agrees to send more US ground forces to Vietnam and to allow them to take offensive action. Public statements do not mention this change in policy.

1966 – The command, US Naval Forces Vietnam established.

1966 – The Vietcong set off a 200 pound bomb at a Saigon hotel housing US troops. The building is heavily damaged. Three US and 4 South Vietnamese troops are killed.

1967 – Helicopter squadron HAL 3 activated at Vung Tau.

1967 – The Coast Guard ended its 177-year association in the Treasury Department to enter the newly-created Department of Transportation when President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 167-81. The Coast Guard was the largest agency in the new department.

1968 – Operation Pegasus/Lam Son 207 begins. A two week joint combined operation between US 1st Air Cavalry, Marines and four ARVN airborne battalions. The goal is to relieve the Marines besieged at Khe' San.

1969 – Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announces that B-52 bomber raids in Vietnam will be decreased by 10% as a result in cuts in next year’s defense budget.

1969 – The Vietcong’s Liberation News Agency claims that their offensive has shattered General Creighton Abrams’ strategies following the 1968 Tet Offensive.