January 7th ~ { continued...}

1942 – The World War II siege of Bataan began in the Philippines.

1943 – On Guadalcanal, fresh American troops mount an assault on Mount Austen.

1943 – A Japanese convoy lands supplies and reinforcements at Lea, New Guinea despite air attacks.

1944 – The U.S. Air Force announces the production of the first jet-fighter, Bell P-59 Airacomet. Development of the P-59, America’s first jet-propelled airplane, was ordered personally by General H. H. Arnold on September 4, 1941. The project was conducted under the utmost secrecy, with Bell building the airplane and General Electric the engine.

The first P-59 was completed in mid-1942 and on October 1, 1942, it made its initial flight at Muroc Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force Base), California. One year later, the airplane was ordered into production, to be powered by I-14 and I-16 engines, improved versions of the original I-A. Bell will produce 66 P-59s. Although the airplane’s performance was not spectacular and it never got into combat, the P-59 provided training for AAF personnel and invaluable data for subsequent development of higher performance jet airplanes.

1944 – British and American elements of the US 5th Army capture Monte Chiaia and Monte Porchia. San Vittore is also taken.

1945 – U.S. Air Ace Major Thomas B. McGuire, Jr. is killed in the Pacific.

1945 – British Gen. Bernard Montgomery gives a press conference in which he all but claims complete credit for saving the Allied cause in the Battle of the Bulge. He was almost removed from his command because of the resulting American outcry. On December 16, 1944, the Germans attempted to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge (so-called because the Germans, in pushing through the American defensive line, created a “bulge” around the area of the Ardennes forest) was the largest battle fought on the Western front. The German assault came in early morning at the weakest part of the Allied line, an 80-mile stretch of poorly protected, hilly forest that the Allies believed was too difficult to traverse, and therefore an unlikely location for a German offensive. Between the vulnerability of the thin, isolated American units and the thick fog that prevented Allied air cover from discovering German movement, the Germans were able to push the Americans into retreat.

Fresh from commanding the 21st Army group during the Normandy invasion, and having suffered an awful defeat in September as his troops attempted to cross the Rhine, Montgomery took temporary command of the northern shoulder of American and British troops in the Ardennes. He immediately fell into a familiar pattern, failing to act spontaneously for fear of not being sufficiently prepared. Montgomery was afraid to move before the German army had fully exhausted itself, finally making what American commanders saw as only a belated counterattack against the enemy. As the weather improved, American air cover raided German targets on the ground, which proved the turning point in the Allied victory. Monty eventually cut across northern Germany all the way to the Baltic and accepted the German surrender in May. Montgomery had already earned the ire of many American officers because of his cautiousness in the field, arrogance off the field, and willingness to disparage his American counterparts.

The last straw was Montgomery’s whitewashing of the Battle of the Bulge facts to assembled reporters in his battlefield headquarters-he made his performance in the Ardennes sound not only more heroic but decisive, which necessarily underplayed the Americans’ performance. Since the loss of American life in the battle was tremendous and the surrender of 7,500 members of the 106th Infantry humiliating, Gen. Omar Bradley complained loudly to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who passed the complaints on to Churchill. On January 18, Churchill addressed Parliament and announced in no uncertain terms that the “Bulge” was an American battle-and an American victory.

1945 – The attacks of the US 8th Corps of US 1st Army, along the line of the Ourthe west of Houffalize, record progress around Laroche. German attacks in Alsace also continue with some success south of Strasbourg in the area around Erstein.

1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO. Previously, the news media often treated UFO reports with a whimsical or glib attitude reserved for silly season news. Following Mantell’s death, however, Jacobs notes “the fact that a person had died in an encounter with an alleged flying saucer dramatically increased public concern about the phenomenon. Now a dramatic new prospect entered thought about UFOs: they might be not only extraterrestrial but potentially hostile as well.” However, later investigation by the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which in 1948 was a top-secret project that Mantell would not have known about.

1953 – In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. It was just three years earlier on January 31, 1950, that Truman publicly announced that had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. Truman’s directive came in responds to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within USSR in 1949.

1959 – Just six days after the fall of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S. officials recognize the new provisional government of the island nation. Despite fears that Fidel Castro, whose rebel army helped to overthrow Batista, might have communist leanings, the U.S. government believed that it could work with the new regime and protect American interests in Cuba. The fall of the pro-American government of Batista was cause for grave concern among U.S. officials. The new government, temporarily headed by provisional president Manuel Urrutia, initially seemed chilly toward U.S. diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith. Smith, in particular, was wary of the politics of the new regime. He and other Americans in Cuba were suspicious of the motives and goals of the charismatic rebel leader Fidel Castro. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles overrode Smith’s concerns.

The secretary counseled President Dwight D. Eisenhower to recognize the Urrutia government, since it seemed to be “free from Communist taint” and interested in “friendly relations with the United States.” Dulles and other U.S. officials may have viewed recognition of the new Cuban government as a way to forestall the ascension to power of more radical elements in the Cuban revolution. In addition, several other nations, including a number of Latin American countries, had already extended recognition. Despite this promising beginning, relations between Cuba and the United States almost immediately deteriorated. U.S. officials realized that Castro, who was sworn in as the premier of Cuba in February 1959, wielded the real power in Cuba. His policies concerning the nationalization of American-owned properties and closer economic and political relations with communist countries convinced U.S. officials that Castro’s regime needed to be removed. Less than two years later, the United States severed diplomatic relations, and in April 1961, unleashed a disastrous–and ineffectual–attack by Cuban exile forces against the Castro government (the Bay of Pigs invasion).

1960 – Launch of the first fully-guided flight of a Polaris missile at Cape Canaveral (flew 900 miles).

1960 – A small submarine, the Trieste, sets a new record for depth when it descends 24,000 feet into the Pacific off Guam.

1965 – Gen. Nguyen Khanh and the newly formed Armed Forces Council – the generals who had participated in a coup on December 19, 1964 – restore civilian control of the South Vietnamese government.

1967 – The first elements of the Mobile Riverine Force reached Vietnam on when the USS Whitfield County (LST 1169) docked at Vung Tau. Training began immediately with the 2nd Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division. This unit, in preparation for the assignment to the Mobile Riverine Force, had gotten rid of their tanks, trucks, APCs and jeeps since there would obviously be little need for them in the Mekong Delta. In addition, some of their heavier artillery was also left behind since most of the necessary fi re support would be supplied by the assault boats.

January 7th ~ { continued...}

1971 – Accompanied by Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird arrives in South Vietnam to assess the military situation. The purpose of Laird’s visit was to check on the progress of the “Vietnamization” effort. In the summer of 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered that measures be taken to “Vietnamize” the war – he hoped to increase the capabilities of South Vietnamese forces so U.S. troops could eventually be withdrawn and the South Vietnamese could assume more responsibility for the war.

This effort included a rapid modernization of South Vietnamese forces with new equipment and weapons, and a renewed emphasis on the American advisory effort. American troop withdrawals began in the fall of 1969 and continued on a regular basis. At the completion of his visit, Laird announced that the preponderance of U.S. “combat responsibility” would end by mid-summer. Upon his return to the United States, however, he warned President Nixon and his cabinet of “some tough days ahead.”

1986 – Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral. Surveyor 7 was the fifth and final spacecraft of the Surveyor series to achieve a lunar soft landing. The objectives for this mission were to perform a lunar soft landing (in an area well removed from the maria to provide a type of terrain photography and lunar sample significantly different from those of other Surveyor missions); obtain post landing TV pictures; determine the relative abundances of chemical elements; manipulate the lunar material; obtain touchdown dynamics data; and obtain thermal and radar reflectivity data.

This spacecraft was similar in design to the previous Surveyors, but it carried more scientific equipment including a television camera with polarizing filters, a surface sampler, bar magnets on two footpads, two horseshoe magnets on the surface scoop, and auxiliary mirrors. Of the auxiliary mirrors, three were used to observe areas below the spacecraft, one to provide stereoscopic views of the surface sampler area, and seven to show lunar material deposited on the spacecraft. The spacecraft landed on the lunar surface on January 10, 1986, on the outer rim of the crater Tycho.

1993 – The US claimed that Saddam Hussein moved surface-to-air missiles into southern Iraq. Baghdad refused to remove them and allied warplanes attacked the missile sites and warships fired cruise missiles at a nuclear facility near Baghdad.

1993 – Largest military confrontation of Restore Hope. 500 Marines engage in a shoot-out with Warlord Aidid’s forces in Mogadishu. 15 Somalis are taken POW, no US casualties.

1997 – The United Nations approves three more contracts for the sale of Iraqi oil, bringing to 24 the total number of contracts approved so far under the “Oil-for-Food” agreement.

1998 – President Mohhamad Khatami of Iran endorsed cultural relations with the US but no political ties in a preliminary effort to “crack the wall” of hostility between the two countries.

1999 – A US jet fired on an air defense station in Iraq after it was targeted on radar.

1999 – The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins.

2002 – Tony Blair arrived in Kabul. He said the West would not abandon Afghanistan. 9 US senators also visited the area.

2003 – Police in London announced they had found traces of the deadly poison ricin in a north London apartment and arrested six men in connection with the virulent toxin that has been linked to al-Qaida terrorists and Iraq.

2003 – Creation of the Select Committee on Homeland Security to help Congress coordinate oversight of the new Department of Homeland Security and to ensure implementation of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

2004 – L. Paul Bremer, the top American civilian official in Iraq, said U.S. authorities will release 506 low-level Iraqi prisoners while increasing the bounties for fugitives suspected of major roles in attacks against coalition forces.

2005 – A military jury at Fort Hood, Texas, acquitted Army SGT Tracy Perkins of involuntary manslaughter in the alleged drowning of an Iraqi civilian, but convicted him of assault in the January 2004 incident.

2005 – The nuclear submarine USS San Francisco ran aground 350 miles off the Pacific Ocean territory of Guam, injuring about 20 crew members. One died the next day.

2007 – President George W. Bush announces that he will send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq as part of a shift in American military strategy. Under this new strategy, labeled “the surge,” American troops will pacify and protect individual neighborhoods rather than combat sectarian violence through mobile patrols.

2007 – The US intervenes in the Battle of Ras Kamboni, a battle in the 2006-2007 Somali War fought by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and affiliated militias against Ethiopian and the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces for control of Ras Kamboni, a town near the Kenyan border which once served as a training camp for the militant Islamist group Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya. The battle began on January 5, 2007, when TFG and Ethiopian forces launched their assault. The United States entered the conflict by launching airstrikes using an AC-130 gunship against suspected Al Qaeda members operating within the ranks of the ICU. The town finally fell to the TFG and Ethiopian forces on January 12, 2007.

2008 – Two United States Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets, a F/A-18E and two-seat F/A-18F, flying off the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, crash in the Persian Gulf. The aviators were safely recovered. There was no indication of hostile fire.

2013 – U.S. President Barack Obama nominates PIAB Chairman Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense and HSC Advisor John O. Brennan to be the next Director of the CIA.

2014 – Five members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, who in 1971 stole documents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and gave them to journalists, come forth. The leak exposed COINTELPRO, a program of surveillance and blackmail against American leftists including Martin Luther King, Jr. Keith Forsyth, John C. Raines and Bonnie Raines, and Robert Williamson. William C. Davidon (the recruiter and informal leader) died in 2013 but had planned to reveal his involvement.

2015 – The United States denounces a flag-raising ceremony at Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington DC, saying the ceremony violated US-Taiwan ties.

January 8th ~

1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.

1802 – As mandated by Jay’s Treaty, a specially appointed commission finds that in settlement of the war claims of British citizens, both Loyalists and English merchants, the US owes, $2,664,000.

1811 – An unsuccessful slave revolt is led by Charles Deslondes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana. The 1811 German Coast Uprising occurred on the east bank of the Mississippi River in what are now St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes, Louisiana. While the slave insurgency was the largest in US history, the rebels killed only two white men. Confrontations with militia and executions after trial killed ninety-five black people. Between 64 and 125 enslaved men marched from sugar plantations near present-day La Place on the German Coast toward the city of New Orleans. They collected more men along the way.

Some accounts claimed a total of 200–500 slaves participated. During their two-day, twenty-mile march, the men burned five plantation houses (three completely), several sugarhouses, and crops. They were armed mostly with hand tools. White men led by officials of the territory formed militia companies to hunt down and kill the insurgents. Over the next two weeks, white planters and officials interrogated, tried and executed an additional 44 insurgents who had been captured. Executions were by hanging or decapitation. Whites displayed the bodies as a warning to intimidate slaves. The heads of some were put on pikes and displayed at plantations.

1815 – U.S. forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson and French pirate Jean Lafitte led 4,000 backwoodsmen to victory, defending against 8,000 British veterans on the fields of Chalmette in the Battle of New Orleans – the closing engagement of the War of 1812. Two weeks after the War of 1812 officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, U.S. General Andrew Jackson achieves the greatest American victory of the war at the Battle of New Orleans.

In September 1814, an impressive American naval victory on Lake Champlain forced invading British forces back into Canada and led to the conclusion of peace negotiations in Ghent, Belgium. Although the peace agreement was signed on December 24, word did not reach the British forces assailing the Gulf coast in time to halt a major attack.

On January 8, 1815, the British marched against New Orleans, hoping that by capturing the city they could separate Louisiana from the rest of the United States. Pirate Jean Lafitte, however, had warned the Americans of the attack, and the arriving British found militiamen under General Andrew Jackson strongly entrenched at the Rodriquez Canal. In two separate assaults, the 7,500 British soldiers under Sir Edward Pakenham were unable to penetrate the U.S. defenses, and Jackson’s 4,500 troops, many of them expert marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee, decimated the British lines.

In half an hour, the British had retreated, General Pakenham was dead, and nearly 2,000 of his men were killed, wounded, or missing. U.S. forces suffered only eight killed and 13 wounded. Although the battle had no bearing on the outcome of the war, Jackson’s overwhelming victory elevated national pride, which had suffered a number of setbacks during the War of 1812. The Battle of New Orleans was also the last armed engagement between the United States and Britain.

1821 – Confederate General James Longstreet is born near Edgefield, South Carolina. Longstreet became one of the most successful generals in the Confederate Army, but after the war was a target of some of his comrades, who were searching for a scapegoat. Longstreet grew up in Georgia and attended West Point, graduating 54th in a class of 62 in 1842. He was a close friend of Ulysses S. Grant, and served as best man in Grant’s 1848 wedding to Julia Dent, Longstreet’s fourth cousin.

Longstreet fought in the Mexican War and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec. He served in the army until he resigned at the beginning of the Civil War, when he was named brigadier general in the Confederate Army. Longstreet fought at the First Battle of Bull Run and within a year was commander of corps in the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. Upon the death of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, Longstreet was considered the most effective corps commander in Lee’s army. He served with Lee for the rest of the war – except for the fall of 1863, when he took his force to aid the Confederate effort in Tennessee. Longstreet was severely wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, and he did not return to service for six months.

He resumed service and fought with Lee until the surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. After the war, Longstreet engaged in a number of businesses and held several governmental posts, most notably U.S. Minister to Turkey. Although successful, he made two moves that greatly tarnished his reputation among his fellow southerners. He joined the despised Republican Party and publicly questioned Lee’s strategy at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg. His fellow officers considered these sins to be unforgivable, and former comrades such as Generals Jubal Early and John Gordon attacked Longstreet as a traitor. They asserted that, in fact, Longstreet was responsible for the errors that lost Gettysburg. Longstreet outlived most of his comrades and detractors but died on January 2, 1904. His second wife, Helen Dortch, lived until 1962.

1835 – The United States national debt is zero for the only time. Except for about a year during 1835–1836, the United States has continuously held a public debt since the US Constitution legally went into effect on March 4, 1789. The payments of the debt were accomplished by the sale of federally owned land in the West by the Jackson administration.

January 8th ~ { continued...}

1847 – About 500 Mexican militia led by commanders Jose Maria Flores and Andres Pico offered the last serious Mexican resistance against U.S. invasion forces at the Battle of the San Gabriel River (in modern-day Montebello). There Mexican defenders attempted to block the march of U.S. Army and Naval troops commanded by General Stephen Watts Kearny and U.S. Navy Captain Robert F. Stockton advancing from the direction of San Diego.

A month earlier, Pico had led a successful attack on Kearny’s force at San Pasqual, inflicting heavy casualties on the Americans (18 killed) and forcing them to retreat to San Diego. At the Battle of San Gabriel, however, the Mexicans were not successful in facing Kearny and Stockton’s new offensive. The Americans possessed superior firepower and a more professional military force. The Mexicans were mostly hastily assembled local people and ranchers. After two hours of artillery duels, infantry and cavalry charges, the Mexicans saw no chance of victory and conceded the Battle of the San Gabriel River by withdrawing. Pico also feared that, if captured, Kearny would have him executed out of revenge for the San Pasqual defeat.

Another military skirmish occurred the following day in what is now Vernon (the Battle of La Mesa). The Mexicans again attempted to fight off an American assault yet found themselves unable to match their firepower. After hearing of the final military outcome, leaders from Los Angeles came out to surrender the city peacefully to the American military force. Pico headed north to meet up with and surrender to U.S. Army General John C. Fremont’s force in the Cahuenga Pass that had been marching from the north to meet Stockton and Kearny in Los Angeles. Pico signed the Treaty of Cahuenga, effectively surrendering California to the United States.

A plaque presently marks the site of the Battle of the San Gabriel River. It is located at the northeast corner of Washington Blvd. and Bluff Rd. in Montebello.

1863 – The Second Battle of Springfield was a battle in the American Civil War fought in Springfield, Missouri. It is sometimes known as The Battle of Springfield. (The First Battle of Springfield was fought on October 25, 1861, and there was also the better-known Battle of Wilson’s Creek, fought nearby on August 10, 1861.) Fighting was urban and house-to-house, which was rare in the Civil War.

1867 – African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C.

1877 – Outnumbered, low on ammunition, and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves, Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their final losing battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana. Six months earlier, Crazy Horse (Tashunca-uitco) and his ally, Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), led their combined forces of Sioux and Cheyenne to a stunning victory over Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his men near the Little Bighorn River of Montana.

Outraged by the killing of the flamboyant Custer and more than 200 soldiers, the American people demanded speedy revenge. The U.S. Army responded by commanding General Nelson Miles to mount a winter campaign in 1876-77 against the remaining hostile Indians on the Northern Plains. Combining military force with diplomatic overtures, Nelson succeeded in convincing many Indians to surrender and return to their reservations. Much to Nelson’s frustration, though, Sitting Bull refused to give in and fled across the border to Canada, where he and his people remained for four years before finally returning to the U.S. to surrender in 1881.

Meanwhile, Crazy Horse and his band also refused to surrender, though they were suffering badly from sickness and starvation. His followers later reported that Crazy Horse, who had always been slightly odd, began to grow even stranger during this difficult time, disappearing for days into the wilderness by himself and walking about the camp with his eyes to the ground. On January 8, 1877, General Miles found Crazy Horse’s camp along Montana’s Tongue River. The soldiers opened fire with their big wagon-mounted guns, driving the Indians from their warm tents out into a raging blizzard. Crazy Horse and his warriors managed to regroup on a ridge and return fire, but most of their ammunition was gone, and they were reduced to fighting with bows and arrows. They managed to hold off the soldiers long enough for the women and children to escape under cover of the blinding blizzard before they turned to follow them.

Though he had escaped decisive defeat, Crazy Horse realized that Miles and his well-equipped cavalry troops would eventually hunt down and destroy his cold and hungry people. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse led 1,100 Indians to the Red Cloud reservation near Fort Robinson. The mighty warrior surrendered in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Five months later, a guard fatally stabbed him after he allegedly resisted imprisonment by Indian policemen.

1889 – Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the ‘Art of Applying Statistics’ — his punched card calculator.

1918 – President Woodrow Wilson addressed a hastily convened joint session of Congress, publicly stating the Fourteen Points—his idealistic plan for a world forever free from conflict. Most of Wilson’s Fourteen Points addressed specific European territorial concerns, but he also called for fair and generous treatment of Germany, absolute freedom of the seas, national boundaries determined on the basis of language, and the establishment of a general assembly of nations.

When World War I ended in November 1918, Wilson personally attended the peace negotiations, believing that with his guidance, “peace without victory” was possible and a new world order was at hand. What he had not counted on was the bitterness and cynicism of his allies, who had lost much. As the negotiations progressed, more and more of the Fourteen Points were sacrificed to vengeance and a grab for land.

The German magazine Simplicissimus remarked on Wilson’s betrayal of his principles in June 1919 with God asking, “Woodrow Wilson, where are your 14 Points?” and Wilson responding, “Don’t get excited, Lord, we didn’t keep your Ten Commandments either!”

January 8th ~ { continued...}

1920 – The steel strike of 1919 ends in a complete failure for the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers labor union. The Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the union to organize the United States steel industry in the wake of World War I. The strike began on September 21, 1919. The union had formed in 1876. It was a union of skilled iron and steel workers which was deeply committed to craft unionism. However, technological advances had slashed the number of skilled workers in both industries. The September strike shut down half the steel industry, including almost all mills in Pueblo, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois, Wheeling, West Virginia; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Lackawanna, New York; and Youngstown, Ohio. The steel companies had seriously misjudged the strength of worker discontent. The post-war Red Scare, however, had swept the country in the wake of the Russian revolution of October 1917. The steel companies took eager advantage of the change in the political climate.

As the strike began, they published information exposing National Committee co-chairman William Z. Foster’s past as a Wobblie and syndicalist, and claimed this was evidence that the steelworker strike was being masterminded by communists and revolutionaries. President Wilson’s stroke on September 26, 1919, prevented government intervention, since Wilson’s advisors were loath to take action with the president incapacitated. The federal government’s inaction permitted state and local authorities and the steel companies room to maneuver. Mass meetings were prohibited in most strike-stricken areas. Veterans and tradesmen were pressed into service as deputies. The Pennsylvania state police clubbed picketers, dragged strikers from their homes and jailed thousands on flimsy charges. In Delaware, company guards were deputized and threw 100 strikers in jail on fake weapons charges. In Monessen, Pennsylvania, hundreds of men were jailed then were promised release if they agreed to disavow the union and return to work.

After strikebreakers and police clashed with unionists in Gary, Indiana, the U.S. Army took over the city on October 6, 1919, and martial law was declared. National guardsmen, leaving Gary after federal troops had taken over, turned their anger on strikers in nearby Indiana Harbor, Indiana. Between 30,000 and 40,000 unskilled African-American and Mexican American workers were brought to work in the mills. Company officials played on the racism of many white steelworkers by pointing out how well-fed and happy the black workers seemed now that they had ‘white’ jobs. Company spies also spread rumors that the strike had collapsed elsewhere, and they pointed to the operating steel mills as proof that the strike had been defeated. Almost no union organizing in the steel industry occurred in the next 15 years. Advances in technology, such as the development of the wide strip continuous sheet mill, made most of the skilled jobs in steelmaking obsolete.

1926 – Twelve-year old Emperor Bao Dai ascends the throne as Emperor of Vietnam. Born Nguyen Phuc Vinh Thụy, was the 13th and final emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty, which was the last dynasty of Vietnam. From 1926 to 1945, he was king of Annam. The Japanese ousted the Vichy-French administration in March 1945 and then ruled through Bao Dại. At this time, he restored the name of his country, “Vietnam”. He abdicated in August 1945 when Japan surrendered. He was the chief of state of the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from 1949 until 1955.

1940 – A message from Benito Mussolini is forwarded to Adolf Hitler. In the missive, the Duce cautions the Fuhrer against waging war against Britain. Mussolini asked if it was truly necessary “to risk all-including the regime-and to sacrifice the flower of German generations.” Mussolini’s message was more than a little disingenuous.

At the time, Mussolini had his own reasons for not wanting Germany to spread the war across the European continent: Italy was not prepared to join the effort, and Germany would get all the glory and likely eclipse the dictator of Italy. Germany had already taken the Sudetenland and Poland; if Hitler took France and then cowed Britain into neutrality – or worse, defeated it in battle—Germany would rule Europe. Mussolini had assumed the reigns of power in Italy long before Hitler took over Germany, and in so doing Mussolini boasted of refashioning a new Roman Empire out of an Italy that was still economically backward and militarily weak. He did not want to be outshined by the upstart Hitler. And so the Duce hoped to stall Germany’s war engine until he could figure out his next move.

The Italian ambassador in Berlin delivered Mussolini’s message to Hitler in person. Mussolini believed that the “big democracies…must of necessity fall and be harvested by us, who represent the new forces of Europe.” They carried “within themselves the seeds of their decadence.” In short, they would destroy themselves, so back off. Hitler ignored him and moved forward with plans to conquer Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Mussolini, rather than tie Italy’s fortune to Germany’s – which would necessarily mean sharing the spotlight and the spoils of any victory – began to turn an eye toward the east. Mussolini invaded Yugoslavia and, in a famously disastrous strategic move, Greece.

1945 – Allied forces eliminate German positions on the west bank of the Maas River. In the Ardennes, American forces now control 9 miles of the Laroche-St. Vith road. US 3rd Army captures Flamierge, 9 km northwest of Bastogne, on the southern flank of the German held salient. Meanwhile, in Alsace, the battles north and south of Strasbourg continue. The US 7th Army is under considerable pressure near Rimling and Gambsheim.

1946 – President Truman vowed to stand by the Yalta accord on self-determination for the Balkans.

1951 – When blizzards forced USN Task Force 77 carriers to suspend close air support missions for X Corps, Fifth Air Force took up the slack. Superfortresses cratered Kimpo Airfield to prevent its use by enemy aircraft. U.S. forces in central Korea withdrew to new positions three miles south of Wonju. Fifth Air Force Shooting Stars, Thunderjets, and Mustangs provide X Corps 50 close- air support sorties.

Afterward, the weather moved in again and Fifth Air Force was forced to completely stand down operations. U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, with attached French and Netherlands battalions, stopped the Chinese communist drive south of Wonju.

January 8th ~ { continued...}

1967 – About 16,000 U.S. soldiers from the 1st and 25th Infantry Divisions, 173rd Airborne Brigade and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment join 14,000 South Vietnamese troops to mount Operation Cedar Falls.

This offensive, the largest of the war to date, was designed to disrupt insurgent operations near Saigon, and had as its primary targets the Thanh Dien Forest Preserve and the Iron Triangle, a 60-square-mile area of jungle believed to contain communist base camps and supply dumps. During the course of the operations, U.S. infantrymen discovered and destroyed a massive tunnel complex in the Iron Triangle, apparently a headquarters for guerrilla raids and terrorist attacks on Saigon.

The operation ended with 711 of the enemy reported killed and 488 captured. Allied losses were 83 killed and 345 wounded. The operation lasted for 18 days.

1973 – National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Hanoi’s Le Duc Tho resume peace negotiations in Paris. After the South Vietnamese had blunted the massive North Vietnamese invasion launched in the spring of 1972, Kissinger and the North Vietnamese had finally made some progress on reaching a negotiated end to the war. However, a recalcitrant South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu had inserted several demands into to the negotiations that caused the North Vietnamese negotiators to walk out of the talks on December 13. President Richard Nixon issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.”

The North Vietnamese rejected Nixon’s demand and the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. On December 28, after 11 days of round-the-clock bombing (with the exception of a 36-hour break for Christmas), North Vietnamese officials agreed to return to the peace negotiations in Paris. When the negotiators returned on January 8, the peace talks moved along quickly. On January 23, 1973, the United States, North Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, and the Viet Cong signed a cease-fire agreement that took effect five days later.

1975 – President Ford appoints an eight-man commission to investigate charges that the CIA had been involved in a wide range of illegal activities. On 21 December, the New York Times had charged that the agency had orchestrated a vast domestic intelligence operation. The next day, President Ford announced that he would not tolerate such activities in his administration. The commission, headed by Nelson Rockefeller, will report its findings in June.

1979 – U.S. advised the Shah to get out of Iran.

1991 – Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz arrived in Geneva for the first high-level talks between their countries since the Persian Gulf crisis began.

1998 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, was sentenced in New York to life imprisonment.

2002 – US soldiers captured 14 suspected fighters at the Zhawar Kili cave and bunker complex near Khost. An al Qaeda fighter blew himself up with a grenade during an escape attempt at a Kandahar hospital. 2 senior al Qaeda leaders were reported caught with documents and laptops, while fleeing bombing in eastern Afghanistan. An intensified search was reported to be in progress for Abu Zubeida (Zain al-Abidin Muhammad Husain), the director of external affairs for al Qaeda.

2003 – A federal appeals court ruled that Pres. Bush could order U.S. citizens captured overseas indefinitely detained as enemy combatants without the rights normally afforded citizens charged in criminal cases.

2004 – In Iraq a US Black Hawk medivac helicopter crashed near Fallujah killing all nine soldiers aboard.

2004 – Turkey and the US agreed to reopen the Incirlik air base for Iraq operations.

2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.

2005 – U.S. Army sergeant Tracy Perkins is acquitted of manslaughter but found guilty of aggravated assault for forcing two Iraqi civilians to leap from a bridge into the River Tigris on 3 January 2004.

2006 – An AC-130 gunship belonging to the United States military attacked suspected al-Qaeda operatives in southern Somalia. The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower had been moved into striking distance. The aircraft flew out of its base in Djibouti.

2007 – Mounir El Motassadeq is sentenced by a court in Hamburg, Germany to 15 years in jail for his role in the planning of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

2008 – Operation Phantom Phoenix, a major nation-wide offensive launched by the Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) in an attempt to build on the success of the two previous corps-level operations, Operation Phantom Thunder and Operation Phantom Strike and further reduce violence and secure Iraq’s population, particularly in the capital Baghdad, begins.

The offensive consisted of a number of joint Coalition and Iraqi Army operations throughout northern Iraq as well as in the southern Baghdad Belts. The northern operation was designated Operation Iron Harvest. Its objective was to hunt down the remaining 200 Al-Qaeda extremists remaining in the province of Diyala following the end of the previous offensive. The operation also included targeting insurgent elements in Salah ad-Din province and Nineveh province. The southern operation was designated Operation Marne Thunderbolt and targeted insurgent safe havens in the belts to the south-east of Baghdad, particularly the Arab Jabour region.

Additionally, Phantom Phoenix’s aims were the remaining car, truck and suicide bomb networks in Baghdad as well as al-Qaeda’s financial network.

2011 – The United States has subpoenaed Twitter for personal information regarding people connected to Wikileaks, including founder Julian Assange, suspected source of leaks Bradley Manning, and supporter Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of Iceland’s Althing.

2014 – A book released by former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticizes President Barack Obama for his handling of the War in Afghanistan. The book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” was released by the Knopf Double Day Publishing Group.

January 9th ~

1776 – Propagandist Thomas Paine anonymously published “Common Sense,” a scathing attack on King George III’s reign over the colonies and a call for complete independence. It sold more than 500,000 copies in just a few months, greatly affecting public sentiment and the deliberations of the Continental Congress leading up to the Declaration of Independence.

He advocated an immediate declaration of independence from Britain. An instant bestseller in both the colonies and in Britain, Paine baldly stated that King George III was a tyrant and that Americans should shed any sentimental attachment to the monarchy.

America, he argued, had a moral obligation to reject monarchy. “O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare opposed not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted around the globe….O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind,” he urged. Within a few years, a land with a population of 2.5 million had bought 500,000 copies of Paine’s stirring call for independence.

1788 – Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the United States. Connecticut prospered during the era following the American Revolution, as mills and textile factories were built and seaports flourished from trade and fisheries.

In 1786, Connecticut ceded territory to the U.S. government that became part of the Northwest Territory. Connecticut retained land extending across the northern part of present-day Ohio, called the Connecticut Western Reserve. The Western Reserve section was settled largely by people from Connecticut, and they brought Connecticut place names to Ohio.

Agreements with Pennsylvania and New York extinguished the land claims by Connecticut within its neighbors, creating the Connecticut Panhandle. Connecticut ceded the Western Reserve in 1800 to the federal government, which brought the state to its present boundaries other than minor adjustments with Massachusetts.

1789 – The governor of the Northwest Territory, General Arthur St. Clair, signs the Treaty of Fort Harmar with the Ohio Indians renewing the Treaty of Ft. McIntosh.

1808 – The Embargo Act of December 22, 1807 is supplemented by an additional Embargo Act, to be followed by a third Embargo Act on March 12. These Embargo Acts prove relatively ineffective as smugglers carry on an active trade across the Canadian border, as well as at seausing ships that remained abroad after the passage of the first Embargo Act.

1809 – Congress passes the Enforcement Act, which is designed to halt smuggling activities and other illegal avoidance of the Embargo Acts. The Enforcement Act authorizes the seizure of any goods in violation. In New England, hard hit economically by the legislation, town meetings are held attacking the Embargo and Enforcement Acts as being pro-French and anti-British.

1861 – A Union merchant ship, the “Star of the West,” is fired upon as it tries to bring supplies to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This incident was the first time shots were exchanged between North and South but it not trigger the Civil War. When it seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, South Carolina demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. President James Buchanan refused to do so but was also careful not to make any provocative move. Inside the fort, Major Robert Anderson and his 80 soldiers needed supplies.

The Buchanan administration decided to dispatch a civilian ship, the “Star of the West,” instead of a military transport, in order to keep tensions from flaring. The ship left New York on January 5. After it was en route, Secretary of War Joseph Holt received a dispatch from Anderson saying that the garrison was safe and supplies were not needed immediately. Anderson added that the secessionists were building gun emplacements overlooking the main shipping channel into Charleston Harbor. Holt realized that the ship was in great danger and that a war might erupt. He tried in vain to recall the “Star of the West,” and Anderson was not aware that the ship continued on its way.

On the morning on January 9, ship captain John McGowan steered the ship into the channel near the fort. Two cannon shots roared from a South Carolina battery on Morris Island. They came from gunner George E. Haynsworth, a cadet at The Citadel in Charleston. They were poor shots, but they represented the opening salvo of the war. More shots were fired, and the ship suffered a minor hit. Anderson watched from Sumter but did not respond in support of the ship. If he had, the war may have started on that day. The incident resulted in strong talk on both sides, but they stopped short of war. The standoff at Fort Sumter continued until the Confederates attacked in April, triggering the Civil War.

1861 – Thirty Marines from Washington Navy Yard under First Lieutenant Andrew J. Hays, USMC, garrisoned Fort McHenry, Baltimore, until U.S. Army troops could relieve them.

1861 – Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

January 9th ~ {continued...}

1862 – Orders from the Navy Department appointed Flag Officer Farragut to command Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, flagship U.S.S. Hartford, then at Philadelphia. The bounds of the command extended from West Florida to the Rio Grande, but a far larger purpose than even the important function of blockade lay behind Farragut’s appointment.

Late in 1861 the administration had made a decision that would have fateful results on the war. The full list of senior officers in the Navy was reviewed for a commander for an enterprise of first importance—the capture of New Orleans, the South’s “richest and most populous city,” and the beginning of the drive of sea-based power up the Father of Waters to meet General Grant, who would soon move south behind the spearhead of the armored gunboats.

On 21 December 1861, in Washington, Farragut had written his wife; ”Keep your lips closed, and burn my letters; for perfect silence is to be observed- the first injunction of the Secretary. I am to have a flag in the Gulf and the rest depends upon myself. Keep calm and silent. I shall sail in three weeks.” Meanwhile, the tight blockade was causing grave concern in New Orleans. The Commercial Bulletin reported: ”The situation of this port makes it a matter of vast moment to the whole Confederate State that it should be opened to the commerce of the world within the least possible period … We believe the blockading vessels of the enemy might have been driven away and kept away months ago, if the requisite energy had been put forth . . . The blockade has remained and the great port of New Orleans has been hermetically sealed. . .”

1863 – U.S.S. Baron De Kalb, Louisville, Cincinnati, Lexington, Rattler, and Black Hawk, under Rear Admiral Porter in tug Ivy, engaged and, with the troops of Major General W. T. Sherman, forced the surrender of Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post. Ascending the Arkansas River, Porter’s squadron covered the landing of the troops and shelled Confederates from their rifle pits, enabling McClernand’s troops on January 9th to take command of the woods below the fort and approach unseen. Though the Army was not in a position to press the attack on 10 January, the squadron moved to within 60 yards of the staunchly defended fort to soften the works for the next day’s assault. A blistering engagement ensued, the fort’s 11 guns pouring a withering fire into the gunboats. U.S.S. Rattler, Lieutenant Commander Watson Smith, attempted to run past the fort to provide enfilade support, but was caught on a snag placed in the river by the Confederates, received a heavy raking fire, and was forced to return downstream.

Porter’s gunboats renewed the engagement the next morning, January 11th, when the Army launched its assault, and “after a well directed fire of about two and one-half hours every gun in the fort was dismounted or disabled and the fort knocked all to pieces. . .” Ram Monarch and U.S.S. Rattler and Glide, under Lieutenant Commander W. Smith, knifed upriver to cut off any attempted escape. Brigadier General Thomas J. Churchill, CSA, surrendered the fort-including some 36 defending Confederate naval officers and men after a gallant resistance to the fearful pounding from the gunboats. Porter wrote Secretary of the Navy Welles: “No fort ever received a worse battering, and the highest compliment I can pay those engaged is to repeat what the rebels said: ‘You can’t expect men to stand up against the fire of those gunboats.’ ”

After the loss of Fort Hindman, Confederates evacuated other positions on the White and St. Charles Rivers before falling waters forced the gunboats to retire downstream. Porter wrote: ‘The fight at Fort Hindman was one of the prettiest little affairs of the war, not so little either, for a very important post fell into our hands with 6,500 prisoners, and the destruction of a powerful ram at Little Rock [C.S.S. Pontchartrain], which could have caused the Federal Navy in the West a great deal of trouble, was ensured. . . . Certain it is, the success at Arkansas Post had a most exhilarating effect on the troops, and they were a different set of men when they arrived at Milliken’s Bend than they were when they left the Yazoo River.”

A memorandum in the Secretary’s office added: ”The importance of this victory can not be estimated. It happened at a moment when the Union arms were unsuccessful on three or four battlefields. . . ”

1918 – The Battle of Bear Valley was a small engagement fought in 1918 between a band of Yaquis and a detachment of United States Army soldiers. Elements of the American 10th Cavalry Regiment detected about thirty armed Yaquis in Bear Valley, Arizona, a large area that was commonly used as a passage across the international border with Mexico. A short firefight ensued, which resulted in the death of the Yaqui commander and the capture of nine others. Though the conflict was merely a skirmish, it was the last time the United States Army engaged hostile native Americans in combat and thus has been seen as one of the final battles of the American Indian Wars.

1924 – Sun Yat-sen appealed to the U.S. to seek international pressure for peace in China.

1942 – Japanese forces begin the assault on the Bataan Peninsula.

1943 – The Americans capture the village of Tarakena, New Guinea but their attempts to advance further toward Sanananda are held by the Japanese defenders.

1944 – On Bougainville, American engineers complete a second airfield at Piva.

1944 – Two divisions of the US 2nd Corps (part of 5th Army) attack Cervaro and Monte Trochio, to the east of Cassino.

January 9th ~ { continued... }

1945 – Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the American 6th Army land on the Lingayen Gulf of Luzon, another step in the capture of the Philippine Islands from the Japanese. The Japanese controlled the Philippines from May 1942, when the defeat of American forces led to General MacArthur’s departure and Gen. Jonathan Wainwright’s capture.

But in October 1944, more than 100,000 American soldiers landed on Leyte Island to launch one of one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific war-and herald the beginning of the end for Japan. Newsreels captured the event as MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte on October 20, returning to the Philippines as he had famously promised he would after the original defeat of American forces there. What the newsreels didn’t capture were the 67 days it took to subdue the island, with the loss of more than 55,000 Japanese soldiers during the two months of battle and approximately 25,000 more soldiers killed in smaller-scale engagements necessary to fully clear the area of enemy troops. The U.S. forces lost about 3,500.

The sea battle of Leyte Gulf was the same story. The loss of ships and sailors was horrendous for both sides. That battle also saw the introduction of the Japanese kamikaze suicide bombers. More than 5,000 kamikaze pilots died in this gulf battle, taking down 34 ships. But the Japanese were not able to prevent the loss of their biggest and best warships, which meant the virtual end of the Japanese Imperial Fleet.

These American victories on land and sea at Leyte opened the door for the landing of more than 60,000 American troops on Luzon on January 9. Once again, cameras recorded MacArthur walking ashore, this time to greet cheering Filipinos. Although the American troops met little opposition when they landed, American warships were in for a new surprise: kamikaze boats. Japanese boats loaded with explosives and piloted by kamikaze personnel rammed the light cruiser Columbia and the battleship Mississippi, killing a total of 49 American crewmen.

The initial ease of the American fighters’ first week on land was explained when they discovered the intricate defensive network of caves and tunnels that the Japanese created on Luzon. The intention of the caves and tunnels was to draw the Americans inland, while allowing the Japanese to avoid the initial devastating bombardment of an invasion force. Once Americans reached them, the Japanese fought vigorously, convinced they were directing American strength away from the Japanese homeland. Despite their best efforts, the Japanese lost the battle for Luzon and eventually, the battle for control over all of the Philippines.

1945 – The fleet carriers of Task Force 38 attack targets on Okinawa and Formosa in conjunction with US Army Air Force B-29 Superfortress bombers from bases in China. This is intended to give cover to the landings on Luzon. One Japanese destroyer is sunk along with seven other ships.

1945 – The US 3rd Army renews its attacks northeast and southeast of Bastogne.

1945 – An Anglo-American joint statement is issued that notes increased U-boat activity in December of 1944 and higher shipping losses. Nonetheless, it states that all forces are continuing to be supplied regularly.

1951 – General MacArthur indicated that he had little hope of defending Korea unless given reinforcements and authority to carry the war to the Chinese homeland. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, with President Truman’s approval, informed MacArthur that the United States would continue to limit hostilities to Korea. MacArthur was expected to defend successive positions, inflicting as much damage on the enemy as possible.

1952 – In his 1952 State of the Union address, President Harry S. Truman warns Americans that they are “moving through a perilous time,” and calls for vigorous action to meet the communist threat. Though Truman’s popularity had nose-dived during the previous 18 months because of complaints about the way that he handled the Korean War, his speech received a standing ovation from congressmen and special guest Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Truman spent much of his speech addressing foreign policy concerns.

The primary focus was on meeting the communist challenge. The president declared that the United States was confronted with “a terrible threat of aggression.” He also pointed with pride to U.S. action in meeting that threat. In Korea, combined U.S. and United Nations forces “turned back the Chinese Communist invasion;” elsewhere in Asia, U.S. assistance to its allies was helping to “hold back the Communist advance;” and in Europe and the Middle East, the fight against Soviet expansion was also ongoing. Truman was particularly proud of the Point Four program, which provided U.S. scientific and technical assistance (such as in the field of agriculture) to the underdeveloped world, claiming that it helped “feed the whole world so we would not have to stomach communism.” There could be no slacking of effort, however, since the Soviet Union was “increasing its armed might,” and with the Soviet acquisition of atomic bomb technology, the world was still walking “in the shadow of another world war.”

Truman’s speech was a stirring rebuttal to domestic critics like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who attacked Truman’s “softness” on communism. Perhaps such criticism contributed to Truman’s decision not to run for re-election. Adlai Stevenson ran as the Democratic candidate, but he lost the election to Dwight Eisenhower.

1953 – B-29 Superfortress bombers and Fifth Air Force fighter-bombers struck Pyongyang and the Sinanju complex.

1964 – Anti-U.S. rioting broke out in the Panama Canal Zone, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and three U.S. soldiers. U.S. forces killed six Panamanian students protesting in the canal zone. Violent clashes between Panamanians and American soldiers, which resulted in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and four American soldiers, began when U.S. students’ attempted to raise the American flag at the Canal Zone high school.

An order banning the flying of any flags in front of Canal Zone schools had been issued on December 30, 1963, because of Panamanian sensitivity to U.S. control of the Zone. These events led to attempts to renegotiate the Canal Zone’s status.

January 9th ~ {continued...}

1965 – Under pressure from United States officials, Gen. Nguyen Khanh and the newly formed Armed Forces Council–generals who participated in the bloodless coup on December 19, 1964–agree to support the civilian government of Premier Tran Van Huong. The coup occurred when Khanh and a group of generals, led by Air Commodore Nguyen Cao Ky and Army Maj. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, arrested three dozen high officers and civilian officials and took control of the government.

The coup was part of the continuing political instability that followed the November 1963 coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem. The period following the overthrow of Diem was marked by a series of coups and “revolving door” governments. In addition to pledging to support Huong, Khanh and the generals agreed to release five High National Council members and 50 others arrested during the coup. They also promised to confine their activities to the military sphere. A national convention was to be convened to “assume legislative powers” and to draw up a permanent constitution.

However, this did not happen. Tran Van Huong was unable to put together a viable government and the Armed Forces Council ousted him on January 27 and installed General Khanh to power. Khanh was ousted by yet another coup on February 18, led by Ky and Thieu. Khanh then moved to the United States and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. A short-lived civilian government under Dr. Phan Huy Quat was installed, but it lasted only until June 12, 1965. At that time, Thieu and Ky formed a new government with Thieu as the chief of state and Ky as the prime minister. Thieu and Ky were elected as president and vice-president in general elections held in 1967. They served together until 1971, when Thieu was re-elected president.

1967 – The Agency for International Development (AID) attempts to respond to reports in the American media of widespread corruption and thievery of commodities sent to South Vietnam by the United States. In a report to the president, AID officials asserted, “No more than 5-6 percent of all economic assistance commodities delivered to Vietnam were stolen or otherwise diverted.”

1974 – Cambodian Government troops open a drive to avert insurgent attack on Phnom Penh.

1991 – Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz met for six hours in Geneva, but failed to resolve the Persian Gulf crisis. President Bush, in Washington, accused Iraq of “a total stiff-arm, a total rebuff.”

1995 – In New York, trials began for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and 11 other defendants accused of conspiring to wage a holy war against the United States. Nine were convicted of seditious conspiracy, and two reached plea agreements with the government.

1998 – Ramzi Yousef was sentenced in New York to life in prison for the 1994 bombing of a Philippines airliner and 240 years for masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

2002 – A US KC-130 aerial refueler crashed at Kharan, Pakistan, and all 7 marines aboard were killed.

2002 – In the Philippines Gen. Diomedio Villanueva said some 100 US military advisers will be allowed to join front-line Philippine troops fighting Abu Sayyaf rebels.

2002 – The White House declares that the Guantanamo detainees are, as “enemy combatants,” not entitled to the protections accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

2003 – The Bush administration said federal airport security screeners will not be allowed to unionize so as not to complicate the war on terrorism.

2005 – The U.S. military frees about 230 prisoners it was holding at Abu Ghraib. Around 7,400 remain in custody.

2014 – The government of Afghanistan announces the release of 72 Taliban fighters from jails, despite American objections that they pose a security threat.

2015 – At a court in New York City, a US District Judge sentences the radical imam Abu Hamza al-Masri to a life sentence for terrorism offenses relating to hostage taking, conspiracy to establish a militant training camp and calling for holy war in Afghanistan in the United States.

January 10th ~

1738 – Ethan Allen was born. Allen spent a considerable portion of his life in the effort to achieve independence for what is now Vermont, commanding (1770-1775) an irregular force called the Green Mountain Boys, so named in defiance of the New York threat to drive Vermont settlers off the fields and “into the Green Mountains.” The “Yorkers” at one point put a bounty of £60 on Allen’s head, to which he responded by offering his own of £25 on any of the officials involved.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) he led the expedition that captured Fort Ticonderoga in the first colonial victory of the war (notwithstanding the fact that he and the Boys basically knocked on the door, walked in and took over). He would soon thereafter attempt a badly planned, badly executed assault on Montreal which would result in his being imprisoned by the British and thus removed from further participation in the Revolution. After the War, he continued the campaign for Vermont statehood, a goal which was not to be achieved during his lifetime. Allen was no military genius, rather an overbearing, loud-mouthed braggart. He was also a staunch patriot who apparently did not know the meaning of fear.

More importantly, he had the loyalty of the Green Mountain Boys, as unruly a bunch of roughnecks as any in history. He could control them better than anyone else, and they would follow him anywhere. George Washington would write of Allen, “There is an original something about him that commands attention.” The Reverend Nathan Perkins, on the other hand, wrote in his diary, “Arrived at Onion River falls (present-day Winooski) and passed by Ethan Allyn’s grave. An awful infidel, one of Ye wickedest Men Yt ever walked this guilty globe. I stopped and looked at his grave with a pious horror.” A grain of salt might be in order: Perkins had quite a bit to say (little of it good) about Vermont and Vermonters during and after brief visits. For all his faults, and despite his having done but one significant thing in the Revolution, Vermonters are proud of him; his very name evokes the essence of independence.

History records Ethan Allen as having demanded the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” According to historian and folklorist B.A.Botkin, one Israel Harris was present at the time, and later told his grandson (the late Professor James D. Butler of Madison, Wisconsin) that Allen’s actual words were “Come out of there, you goddam old rat!”

1776 – Thomas Paine publishes his pamphlet “Common Sense,” setting forth the arguments for American independence. Although little used today, pamphlets were an important medium for the spread of ideas in the 16th through 19th centuries. Paine was born in England in 1737 and worked as a corset maker in his teens. He also worked as a sailor and schoolteacher before becoming a prominent pamphleteer. In 1774, Paine arrived in Philadelphia and came to support American independence. His 47-page pamphlet sold some 500,000 copies and had a powerful influence on American opinion. Paine served in the U.S. Army and worked for the Committee of Foreign Affairs before returning to Europe in 1787.

Back in England, he continued writing pamphlets in support of revolution. He released The Rights of Man, supporting the French revolution in 1791-2, in answer to Edmund Burke’s famous Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). His sentiments were highly unpopular with the British government, so he fled to France but was later arrested for his political opinions. He returned to the United States in 1802 and died in New York in 1809.

1779 – The French present John Paul Jones with a dilapidated vessel, the Duc de Duras. This Jones refits, mounts with 42 guns and renames Bonhomme Richard in honor of Benjamin Franklin. On 19 June 1779 Bonhomme Richard sailed from L’Orient accompanied by Alliance, Pallas, Vengeance, and Cerf with troop transports and merchant vessels under convoy to Bordeaux and to cruise against the British in the Bay of Biscay. Forced to return to port for repair, the squadron sailed again on August 14th, 1779.

Going northwest around the west coast of the British Isles into the North Sea and then down the east coast the squadron took 16 merchant vessels as prizes. On 23 September 1779 they encountered the Baltic Fleet of 41 sail under convoy of HMS Serapis (44) and Countess of Scarborough (22) near Flamborough Head. After 1800 Bonhomme Richard engaged Serapis and a bitter engagement ensued during the next four hours before Serapis struck her colors. Bonhomme Richard, shattered, on fire, and leaking badly defied all efforts to save her and sank at 1100 on 25 September 1779. John Paul Jones sailed the captured Serapis to Holland for repairs.

1791 – The Siege of Dunlap’s Station begins near Cincinnati during the Northwest Indian War. In the winter of 1790-1791 a large confederation of native people surrounded John Dunlap’s small armed and fortified community in what became SW Ohio. A 25 hour long battle ensued. Dunlap’s Station, later referred to as Fort Colerain, was on the east bank of the Great Miami River, and established in early 1790.

Convinced that the untrained American militias were vulnerable to forays by united warriors, in November & December 1790 chiefs of the confederated tribes met with British Indian agents to plan simultaneous raids on Baker’s and Dunlap’s Stations. The “white Indian” Simon Girty was honored with the leadership of these attacks. The Natives approached the station, bragging that they were led by the multi-lingual “villain” Simon Girty and demanded surrender using a captive surveyor, Abner Hunt, as an interpreter.

This parlay lasted about an hour on the east side of the Fort. Gunfire broke out on the opposite side by the deep portion of the river while the demands were being made. Then the shooting continued for another two hours, but these battle demands were ignored. The attackers then withdrew until the evening, but very likely used the time to butcher their cattle. The captive Hunt was killed under disputed circumstances. John S. Wallace, a civilian, had escaped to summon reinforcements, who rapidly made their way to assist. Fighting resumed at the break of dawn the next day, however, the Natives lacked siege weapons. They withdrew around 8:00 A.M. before a relief force from Fort Washington arrived around 10:00 A.M.

1800 – Congress ratifies the Treaty of August 28, 1797 with Tunis. This treaty is supposed to ensure that, in return for a higher tribute from the US, the Barbary pirates will leave US shipping in the Mediterranean unmolested.

January 10th ~ {continued...}

1861 – Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, were seized by Louisiana State troops.

1861 – Florida secedes from the Union.

1863 – Union gunboats begin a bombardment of Galveston, Texas.

1868 – The Senate Committee on Military Affairs releases its report which exonerates Secretary of War Stanton in his struggle with President Johnson over dismissal from office.

1899 – Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo renounces the Treaty of Paris, which annexed the Philippines to the United States.

1901 – In the town of Beaumont, Texas, a 100-foot drilling derrick named Spindletop produced a roaring gusher of black crude oil. The oil strike took place at 10:30 a.m. on this day in 1901, coating the landscape for hundreds of feet around in sticky oil. The first major oil discovery in the United States, the Spindle Top gusher marked the beginning of the American oil industry.

Soon the prices of petroleum-based fuels fell, and gasoline became an increasingly practical power source. Without Spindletop, internal combustion might never have replaced steam and battery power as the automobile power plant of choice, and the American automobile industry might not have changed the face of America with such staggering speed.

1912 – The World’s first flying-boat airplane, designed by Glenn Curtiss, made its maiden flight at Hammondsport. Curtis was the 1st licensed pilot and Orville Wright was the 2nd. The first airplane purchased by the U.S. Navy was a Curtiss Model E hydroaeroplane and was given the Navy designation A-1 in early 1911.

The Navy purchased a second Model E in July 1911, with a more powerful 80-horsepower Curtiss OX engine, and designated it the A-2. It was also known as the OWL, standing for Over Water and Land. Modifications of the A-2 by the Navy led to re-designations of E-1 and later AX-1. These modifications, done at the Curtiss plant at Hammondsport, New York, included moving the seats from the lower wing to the float and enclosing the crew area with a fabric-covered framework, giving the aircraft the appearance of a short-hull flying boat.

The OWL, with its modified float, was developed into a true flying boat (the entire fuselage being a hull as opposed to mounting the aircraft on a separate float) by Curtiss in 1912, first with the Model D Flying Boat, and then a refined version, the Model E. The Model E Flying Boat was the first truly practical flying boat. It was powered by either a 60- or a 75-horsepower Curtiss V8 engine. Both the U.S. Army and Navy purchased Curtiss Model E Flying Boats, the Navy designating it the C-1.

1916 – In an attempt to embroil the US in turmoil with Mexico, Francisco “Pancho” Villa and his troupe of bandits stopped a train at Santa Ysabel. The bandits removed a group of 18 Texas business men (mining engineers) invited by the Mexican government to reopen the Cusihuiriachic mines below Chihuahua City and executed them in cold blood.

However, one of those shot feined death and rolled down the side of the embankment and, crawling away into a patch of brown mesquite bushes, escaped. The train moved on, leaving the corpses at the mercy of the slayers, who stripped and mutilated them. After the escapee arrived back at Chihuahua City, a special train sped to Santa Ysabel to reclaim the bodies. When the people of El Paso heard of the massacre, they went wild with anger. El Paso was immediately placed under martial law to prevent irate Texans from crossing into Mexico at Juarez to wreak vengeance on innocent Mexicans.

Despite outrage in the United States and Washington over the Santa Ysabel massacre, President Wilson refused to intervene and send troops into Mexico. Two months later, Villa would decide to strike again.

1917 – The Navy places its first production order for aerial photographic equipment.

1920 – League of Nations formally comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, takes effect. In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war.

In November 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months later, the Allies met with conquered Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson urged a just and lasting peace, but England and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their former enemies. The League of Nations was approved, however, and in the summer of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Wilson suffered a severe stroke soon in the fall of that year, which prevented him from reaching a compromise with those in Congress who thought the treaties reduced U.S. authority. In November, the Senate declined to ratify both.

The League of Nations proceeded without the United States, holding its first meeting in Geneva on November 15, 1920. During the 1920s, the League, with its headquarters at Geneva, incorporated new members and successfully mediated minor international disputes but was often disregarded by the major powers. The League’s authority, however, was not seriously challenged until the early 1930s, when a series of events exposed it as ineffectual.

Japan simply quit the organization after its invasion of China was condemned, and the League was likewise powerless to prevent the rearmament of Germany and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. The declaration of World War II was not even referred to by the then-virtually defunct League. In 1946, the League of Nations was officially dissolved with the establishment of the United Nations. The United Nations was modeled after the former but with increased international support and extensive machinery to help the new body avoid repeating the League’s failures.

January 10th ~ {continued...}

1923 – Four years after the end of World War I, President Warren G. Harding orders U.S. occupation troops stationed in Germany to return home. In 1917, after several years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into World War I was a major turning point in the conflict. When the war ended in November 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and more than 50,000 of them had lost their lives.

As part of the Treaty of Versailles, signed the next year, U.S. troops, along with other Allied forces, were to occupy the defeated Central Powers nations to enforce the terms of the peace agreement. In Germany, Allied occupation and stiff war reparations levied against the country were regarded with increasing bitterness, and in 1923, after four years of contending with a resentful German populace, the American troops were ordered home.

1927 – 2nd Bn 5th Marines landed in Nicaragua. A civil war had erupted between liberal rebels under General Jose Maria Moncada (1868-1945) and the government under Diaz, who requested and received military assistance from the United States.

1934 – Six Consolidated P2Y-1s of Patrol Squadron 10F, Lieutenant Commander Knefler McGinnis commanding, made a nonstop formation flight from San Francisco, Calif., to Pearl Harbor, T.H. He made the trip in 24 hours 35 minutes, thereby bettering the best previous time for the crossing, exceeding the best distance of previous mass flights, and breaking a nine-day- old world record for distance in a straight line for Class C seaplanes with a new mark of 2,399 miles.

1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program is brought before the U.S. Congress for consideration. Roosevelt devised the Lend-Lease program as a means of aiding Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans. The program gave the chief executive the power to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of any military resources he deemed in the ultimate interest of the defense of the United States. The idea was that if Britain were better able to defend itself, the security of the U.S. would be enhanced.

The program also served to bolster British morale, as they would no longer feel alone in their struggle against Hitler. Congress authorized the program on March 11. By November, after much heated debate, Congress extended the terms of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, even though Stalin’s USSR had already been the recipient of American military weapons and had been promised $1 billion in financial aid. By the end of the war, more than $50 billion in funds, weapons, aircraft, and ships were distributed to 44 countries through the program. After the war, the Lend-Lease program morphed into the Marshall Plan, which allocated funds for the revitalization of “friendly” democratic nations.

1942 – The Ford Motor Company signed on to make Jeeps, the new general-purpose military vehicles desperately needed by American forces in World War II. The original Jeep design was submitted by the American Bantam Car Company. The Willys-Overland company won the Jeep contract, however, using a design similar to Bantam’s, but with certain improvements.

The Jeep was in high demand during wartime, and Ford soon stepped in to lend its huge production capacity to the effort. By the end of the war, the Jeep had won a place in the hearts of Americans, and soon became a popular civilian vehicle. And that catchy name? Some say it comes from the initials G.P., for “General Purpose.” Others say it was named for "Jeep the moon dog", the spunky and durable creature who accompanied Popeye through the comics pages.

1943 – On Guadalcanal, an new American offensive begins with heavy air and artillery bombardment. The Japanese-held Gifu strongpoint is attacked by the US 35th Infantry Regiment. The Americans have over 50,000 troops on the island; the Japanese have less than 15,000 ill-supplied troops defending. During the night eight Japanese destroyers attempt to deliver supplies. One of the destroyers is damaged by American PT boats.

1944 – The GI Bill of Rights, first proposed by the American Legion, was passed by Congress. The Bill, more formally known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, was intended to smooth demobilization for America’s almost 16 million servicemen and women. Postwar college and vocational school attendance soared as more than 50 percent of honorably discharged veterans took advantage of education benefits of up to $500 a year for tuition, plus a living allowance.

When they returned home to marry and start families in record numbers, veterans faced a severe housing shortage. The home loan provisions of the GI Bill provided more than 2 million home loans and created a new American landscape in the suburbs. In 1990, President George Bush summed up the impact of the GI Bill: “The GI Bill changed the lives of millions by replacing old roadblocks with paths of opportunity.”

1944 – On New Britain, Americans send reinforcements to Arawe. There is a small advance by US regimental forces along the Aogiri Ridge, despite Japanese resistance.

1945 – In the Ardennes, American forces are engaged near Laroche. The British 30th Corps is advancing on the town from the west, capturing Bure and Samree. German forces are withdrawing, in good order, from the western tip of the salient. St. Hubert, 15 miles west of Bastogne, has been evacuated by the Germans under pressure from Allied forces.

1945 – The US forces continue to come ashore on Luzon. Their beachhead is now several miles wide and deep.

1946 – Chiang Kai-shek and the Yenan Communist forces halt fighting in China.

1946 – Establishment of first Navy nuclear power school at Submarine Base, New London, CT.

1946 – The first General Assembly of the United Nations, comprising 51 nations, convenes at Westminster Central Hall in London, England. One week later, the U.N. Security Council met for the first time and established its rules of procedure. Then, on January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.

In 1944, at the Dumbarton Oaks conference in Washington, D.C., the groundwork was laid by Allied delegates for an international postwar organization to maintain peace and security in the postwar world. The organization was to possess considerably more authority over its members than the defunct League of Nations, which had failed in its attempts to prevent the outbreak of World War II. In April 1945, with celebrations of victory in Europe about to commence, delegates from 51 nations convened in San Francisco to draft the United Nations Charter. On June 26, the document was signed by the delegates, and on October 24 it was formally ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of other signatories.

January 10th ~ {continued...}

1946 – The United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the moon and receiving the reflected signals. This was the first experiment in radar astronomy and the first attempt to actively probe another celestial body. It was the inspiration for later EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communication techniques. At a laboratory at Camp Evans (part of Fort Monmouth), in Wall Township, New Jersey, a large transmitter, receiver and antenna array were constructed for this purpose.

The transmitter, a highly modified SCR-271 radar set from World War II, provided 3,000 watts at 111.5 MHz in 1/4 second pulses, applied to the antenna, a “bedspring” reflective array antenna composed of an 8×8 array of half wave dipoles in front of a reflector which provided 24 dB of gain. Reflected signals were received about 2.5 seconds later, the time required for the radio waves to make the 477,000 mile round-trip journey from the Earth to the Moon and back.

The receiver had to compensate for the Doppler shift in frequency of the reflected signal due to the Moon’s orbital motion relative to the Earth’s surface, which was different each day, so this motion had to be carefully calculated for each trial. The antenna could be rotated in azimuth only, so the attempt could be made only as the moon passed through the 15 degree wide beam at moonrise and moonset, as the antenna’s elevation angle was horizontal. About 40 minutes of observation was available on each pass as the Moon transited the various lobes of the antenna pattern. The first successful echo detection came at 11:58am local time by John H. DeWitt and his chief scientist E. King Stodola.

Project Diana marked the birth of radar astronomy later used to map Venus and other nearby planets, and was a necessary precursor to the US space program. It was the first demonstration that terrestrial radio signals could penetrate the ionosphere, opening the possibility of radio communications beyond the earth for space probes and human explorers. It also established the practice of naming space projects after Roman gods, e.g., Mercury and Apollo.

1951 – Continued severe winter weather forced Fifth Air Force to cancel close air support missions, and Far East Air Forces flew the lowest daily total of sorties since July 1950. Brig. Gen. James E. Briggs, USAF, replaced General O’Donnell as commander of FEAF Bomber Command. From now on, Strategic Air Command changed commanders of the Bomber Command every four months to provide wartime experience to as many officers as possible.

1951 – Major General John T. Seldon succeeded Major General Gerald C. Thomas as commander of the 1st Marine Division.

1953 – Seventeen B-29s kicked off an air campaign against the Sinanju communications complex by bombing rail bridges at Yongmi-dong, antiaircraft gun positions near Sinanju, and two marshalling yards at Yongmi-dong and Maejung-dong. Fighter-bombers followed up the B-29 night attacks with a daylight 158-aircraft raid against bridges, rail lines, and gun positions.

1962 – NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle. It became better known as the Saturn V Moon rocket, which launched every Apollo Moon mission.

1964 – President Johnson held a meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after which he approved covert operations against North Vietnam.

1964 – Panama broke ties with the U.S. and demanded a revision of the canal treaty.

1967 – President Johnson, in his annual State of the Union message to Congress, asks for enactment of a 6 percent surcharge on personal and corporate income taxes to help support the Vietnam War for two years, or “for as long as the unusual expenditures associated with our efforts continue.” Congress delayed for almost a year, but eventually passed the surcharge. The U.S. expenditure in Vietnam for fiscal year 1967 would be $21 billion.

1989 – As part of an arrangement to decrease Cold War tensions and end a brutal war in Angola, Cuban troops begin their withdrawal from the African nation. The process was part of a multilateral diplomatic effort to end years of bloodshed in Angola-a conflict that, at one time or another, involved the Soviet Union, the United States, Portugal, and South Africa. Angola officially became an independent nation in 1975, but even before the date of independence, various groups within the former Portuguese colony battled for control.

One group, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), received support from the United States; another, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), got much of its support from the Soviet Union and Cuba; and a third group, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), pragmatically took aid from whatever source was available, including South Africa and China. The United States, the Soviet Union, and China each believed Angola was a critical battlefield for political dominance in mineral-rich and strategically important southern Africa.

By September 1975, South African troops were assisting UNITA forces in Angola. In November, Cuba – which became involved in Angola as part of Fidel Castro’s aggressive foreign policy to assert Cuba’s role in anticolonial struggles – responded by flying in thousands of troops to aid the MPLA. Their powerful assistance caused South African forces to withdraw. In 1981, the South Africans, who saw an MPLA regime in Angola as threatening to its political control of neighboring Namibia, again invaded Angola and increased their aid to UNITA. UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi courted U.S. assistance and visited with President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

The United States responded with military aid for UNITA’s forces and demanded that the Cuban troops depart Angola. As fighting escalated, Castro dispatched 15,000 additional troops to Africa. Throughout 1987 and 1988, UNITA and MPLA forces and their respective allies fought increasingly bloody battles. Sensing that the situation was spiraling out of control, the United States helped broker an agreement in December 1988 between Angola, Cuba, and South Africa, whereby the three nations vowed to remove all foreign forces from Angola. All three nations had expended vast amounts of manpower and money in the seemingly endless conflict and Cuba, in particular, was eager to negotiate a graceful exit. The Cuban troops began their withdrawal a few weeks later, and by 1991 they were gone.

The situation in Angola was another indication that, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, Africa was coming to play a more significant role in the Cold War geopolitics. Additionally, the Cuban intervention in the conflict was yet another event that served to chill relations between the United States and Cuba.

January 10th ~ {continued...}

1991 – Five days before a UN deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, peace efforts intensified, with UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar setting off on a mission aimed at averting war.

1993 – Marines kill 3 Somali gunmen when they come under attack.

1995 – The Pentagon announced that 2,600 U.S. Marines would be deployed to Somalia for Operation United Shield to assist in the final withdrawal of UN peacekeeping troops from Somalia. The decision came in response to a UN request for American protection of its peacekeeping forces serving in the war-torn African nation.

2002 – A CIA report said China, North Korea and Iran will probably have long-range missile capable of reaching the US by 2015.

2002 – An F-16 crashed near the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The pilot ejected safely.

2002 – In Afghanistan gunmen attacked the Kandahar airport as a US military transport took off carrying al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to the US Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

2003 – North Korea announced that it was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

2004 – A US anti-terror team arrived in Mauritania. The US had received information of threats against American interests in the West African nations of Mauritania and Senegal.

2005 – CBS issued a damning independent review of mistakes related to a “60 Minutes Wednesday” report, aired by Dan Rather, on President Bush’s National Guard service and fired three news executives and a producer for their “myopic zeal” in rushing it to air.

2007 – In a televised address to the US public, Bush proposed 21,500 more troops for Iraq, a job program for Iraqis, more reconstruction proposals, and $1.2 billion for these programs.

2010 – Ahead of the Iraqi parliamentary election, 2010, the De-Ba’athification Commission recommends banning the leaders of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, the Coalition for Iraqi National Unity and 13 other parties for links to Saddam Hussein’s banned Ba’ath Party.

2015 – Space X successfully launches a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as part of boosting its Dragon spacecraft into space for a Monday arrival at the ISS in the SpaceX CRS-5 resupply mission. However, an experimental recovery attempt of the first stage fails when it crash-lands on a floating platform possibly due to insufficient hydraulic fluid, resulting in damage to the platform.

January 11th ~

1775 – Francis Salvador, the first Jew to be elected in the Americas, takes his seat on the South Carolina Provincial Congress. In June 1776, Salvador, a Patriot, became known as the “Southern Paul Revere” when he warned Charleston, South Carolina, of the approaching British naval fleet. Thanks to Salvador’s intelligence information, Fort Sullivan in Charleston harbor was able to prepare for the British attack, and the half-completed fort successfully repelled an attack by a British fleet under Sir Peter Parker.

On August 1 of the same year, while leading a militia group under the general command of Major Wilkinson, Salvador and his men were ambushed by a group of Cherokees and Loyalists near present-day Seneca, South Carolina. Salvador was wounded and then scalped by the Cherokees. He was the first recorded Jewish soldier killed in the American War for Independence.

1782 – French troops begin a siege of a British garrison on Brimstone Hill in Saint Kitts in a bid to weaken and distract British forces in the American War of Independence. After landing on Saint Kitts, the French troops of the Marquis de Bouillé stormed and besieged Brimstone Hill, and after a month of siege the heavily outnumbered and cut-off British garrison surrendered. The Comte de Grasse, who delivered de Bouillé’s troops and supported the siege, was outmaneuvered and deprived of his anchorage by Admiral Hood. Even though Hood’s force was inferior by one-third, de Grasse was beaten off when he attempted to dislodge Hood. Hood’s attempts to relieve the ongoing siege were unsuccessful, and the garrison capitulated after one month. About a year later, the Treaty of Paris restored Saint Kitts and adjacent Nevis to British rule.

1785 – The Confederation Congress reconvenes in New York City having previously convened in Trenton, New Jersey. The Congress of the Confederation, or the Confederation Congress, formally referred to as the “United States in Congress Assembled”, was the governing body of the United States of America that existed from March 1, 1781, to March 4, 1789.

1805 – The Michigan Territory is created. The Territory of Michigan was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from June 30, 1805, until January 26, 1837, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Michigan. Detroit was the territorial capital.

1861 – Alabama secedes from the Union. Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union when a convention votes 61 to 39 in favor of the measure. Alabama had a much closer vote than other states, due to strong Unionist sentiment in the northern part of the state.

1861 – U.S. Marine Hospital two miles below New Orleans was occupied by Louisiana State troops.

1863 – Union General John Mc Clernand and Admiral David Porter capture Arkansas Post, a Confederate stronghold on the Arkansas River. The victory secured central Arkansas for the Union and lifted northern morale just three weeks after the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg. Arkansas Post was a massive fort 25 miles from the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. It was designed to insure Confederate control of the White and Arkansas rivers, and to keep pressure off Vicksburg, the last major Rebel city on the Mississippi River. The sides of the square fort were each nearly 200 feet long and the structure was protected by a moat. It sat on a bluff 25 feet above the river. The post was a major impediment to Yankee commerce on the Arkansas.

Mc Clernand gathered his Army of the Mississippi at Milliken’s Bend, just north of Vicksburg. He had 32,000 men in two corps commanded by Generals George Morgan and William T. Sherman. Mc Clernand’s main objective was Vicksburg, but he decided to capture Arkansas Post first to secure Yankee commerce on the rivers north of Vicksburg. Mc Clernand was accompanied by Porter’s flotilla. The plan was to steam up the Arkansas River and land the troops below the post, then have Sherman’s men swing around behind the fort while Morgan approached from downriver.

Porter began bombing the fort on the night of January 10. The bombardment continued the following afternoon. Through the afternoon, Union infantry moved towards the fort while the ships passed in front and began firing from the other side of the fort. The Confederate garrison was surrounded, and offered a white flag before the day was out. The Yankees lost 134 men and suffered 898 wounded, but they captured 5,000 Confederates and preserved Union commerce on the Arkansas and White rivers.

1863 – The Confederate ship Alabama under Capt. Semmes flew a British flag and lured the USS Hatteras out of Galveston harbor. The Hatteras was quickly sunk.

1917 – The Kingsland munitions factory explosion occurs as a result of suspected sabotage. The charge is never borne out. A fire started in Building 30 of the Canadian Car and Foundry Company in Kingsland (now Lyndhurst), Bergen County, New Jersey. In 4 hours, probably 500,000 pieces of 76 mm (3″) -high explosive shells were cooked off. The entire plant was destroyed.

1928 – Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Bolshevik revolution and early architect of the Soviet state, is deported by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Alma-Ata in remote Soviet Central Asia. He lived there in internal exile for a year before being banished from the USSR forever by Stalin. Born in the Ukraine of Russian-Jewish parents in 1879, Trotsky embraced Marxism as a teenager and later dropped out of the University of Odessa to help organize the underground South Russian Workers’ Union. In 1898, he was arrested for his revolutionary activities and sent to prison. In 1900, he was exiled to Siberia. In 1902, he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronshtein).

In London, he collaborated with Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but later sided with the Menshevik factions that advocated a democratic approach to socialism. With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia and was again exiled to Siberia when the revolution collapsed. In 1907, he again escaped. During the next decade, he was expelled from a series of countries because of his radicalism, living in Switzerland, Paris, Spain, and New York City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the revolution in 1917. Trotsky played a leading role in the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power, conquering most of Petrograd before Lenin’s triumphant return in November. Appointed Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs, he negotiated with the Germans for an end to Russian involvement in World War I.

In 1918, he became war commissioner and set about building up the Red Army, which succeeded in defeating anti-Communist opposition in the Russian Civil War. In the early 1920s, Trotsky seemed the heir apparent of Lenin, but he lost out in the struggle of succession after Lenin fell ill in 1922. In 1924, Lenin died, and Joseph Stalin emerged as leader of the USSR. Against Stalin’s stated policies, Trotsky called for a continuing world revolution that would inevitably result in the dismantling of the Soviet state. He also criticized the new regime for suppressing democracy in the Communist Party and for failing to develop adequate economic planning. In response, Stalin and his supporters launched a propaganda counterattack against Trotsky. In 1925, he was removed from his post in the war commissariat. One year later, he was expelled from the Politburo and in 1927 from the Communist Party.

In January 1928, Trotsky began his internal exile in Alma-Ata and the next January was expelled from the Soviet Union outright. He was received by the government of Turkey and settled on the island of Prinkipo, where he worked on finishing his autobiography and history of the Russian Revolution. After four years in Turkey, Trotsky lived in France and then Norway and in 1936 was granted asylum in Mexico. Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City, he was found guilty of treason in absentia during Stalin’s purges of his political foes. He survived a machine-gun attack on his home but on August 20, 1940, fell prey to a Spanish Communist, Ramon Mercader, who fatally wounded him with an ice-ax. He died from his wounds the next day.

January 11th ~ {continued...}

1941 – Adolf Hitler orders forces to be prepared to enter North Africa to assist the Italian effort, marking the establishment of the Afrika Korps. Hitler’s first choice to command the DAK (Deutcshes Afrika Korps-German Afrika Korps) was Maj. General Hans von Funk, a Prussian aristocrat, who’s negative report that Libya was lost led him to be dissmissed. Hitler considered Lt. General Erich von Manstein, who devised the invasion of France, but he was a too valuable component of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. Hitler settled for Erwin Rommel. The beginning of the DAK was simply the 5th Light Division, but was doubled when a full panzer division arrived. Rommel would arrive in Tripoli on February 12, 1941.

1942 – Japan invades the Dutch East Indies at Borneo. The Japanese had three specific objectives in their military thrust – the rich oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, particularly Borneo; the Philippines and the associated mainland areas of Southeast Asia. Japan was determined to control the natural resources of these areas, including the world’s largest supply of tin and rubber.

1942 – The American carrier Saratoga is severely damaged by Japanese submarine I.6 near Hawaii.

1943 – The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China.

1943 – On Guadalcanal, US forces take the “Sea Horse” position. The Japanese Gifu strongpoint continues to resist American pressure.

1944 – Aircraft from Escort Carrier USS Block Island make first aircraft rocket attack on German submarine. Departing San Diego in May 1943 Block Island steamed to Norfolk, Va., to join the Atlantic Fleet. After two trips from New York to Belfast, Ireland, during the summer of 1943 with cargoes of Army fighters, she operated as part of a hunter-killer team. During her four anti-submarine cruises Block Island’s planes sank two submarines.

At 2013, 29 May 1944, Block Island was torpedoed by U-549 which had slipped undetected through her screen. The German submarine put one and perhaps two more torpedoes into the stricken carrier before being sunk herself by the avenging Eugene E. Gilmore (DE-686) and Ahrens (DE-575). Block Island (CVE-21) received two battle stars for her service.

1944 – The US 8th Air Force carries out a fighter escorted daylight raid on Oschersleben. A quarter of the 238 bombers are lost. The attrition effect on the defending German fighters is not reflected in this loss.

1944 – President Roosevelt asks Congress for a new national service law to prevent damaging strikes and to mobilize the entire adult population for war.

1944 – Elements of the US 32nd Division, at Saidor, complete repairs to the airfield.

1944 – Franz Kettner, a private in the German army and a prisoner of war at Camp Hearne in Texas, is killed by a Nazi kangaroo court. Internment camps for German prisoners of war were dominated by Nazi enforcers, who killed as many as 150 of their fellow prisoners during World War II.

Only seven were officially considered murder. Kettner’s wrists were slashed so that his death would be recorded as a suicide. Even the smallest infraction could put German prisoners at risk. Those who talked to guards, spoke English, or refused to parrot the Nazi line were often beaten or killed. American camp officials generally looked the other way because they appreciated the discipline and order that the Nazis provided in the camps. Prisoners who were not ethnically German and had been conscripted into service were particularly in danger from their fellow prisoners.

In the later part of 1943, a rash of murders were committed at camps all across America. When Corporal Johann Kunze was beaten to death in an Oklahoma camp for allegedly providing Americans with information, five Nazi sergeants were charged with his murder. They were hanged in 1945 and became the first foreign prisoners of war to meet that fate in the United States. Hans Geller, a prisoner in Arkansas, was killed by his fellow soldiers despite a stellar war record as a paratrooper for the German army. His only mistake was his fluency in English.

Eventually, American officials began separating the Nazis from the anti-Nazi Germans, and three camps were set aside for those who opposed Hitler. Despite Nazi threats that those who opposed them would be in bad shape when the war was over, anti-Nazi prisoners were often put in positions of power by Americans when they were repatriated. The Nazis, on the other hand, were widely scorned after Hitler’s defeat.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 25th Division and an armored group land at Lingayen to reinforce the American beachhead. The first serious fighting begins ashore. There are more Kamikaze attacks on the American ships. Many smaller craft are damaged.

1945 – Aircraft from the US 3rd Fleet (Halsey) sink 25 ships and damage 13 others off the coast of Indochina in attacks on four Japanese convoys.

1945 – Units of the US 3rd Army and the British 30th Corps join up near St. Hubert as the German salient in the Ardennes is further reduced. To the south, the fighting in the US 7th Army around Bitche is also continuing but German attacks are being held.

1949 – Surrender talks in China between the Nationalists and Communists opened as Tientsing was virtually lost to the Communists.

January 11th ~ {continued...}

1949 – On Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., the cornerstone is laid at the first mosque of note in the United States. Intended to serve as a national mosque for all American Muslims, the Islamic Center was built in a traditional Arabic architectural style, complete with a 160-foot minaret from which prayers were to be announced. A colonnade cloister joined the mosque to two wings containing a library, classrooms, a museum, and administrative offices. In the basement of the mosque was an auditorium built to accommodate several hundred people. The Islamic Center’s first director was Dr. Mahmoud Hoballah.

1949 – The first “networked” television broadcasts take place as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania goes on the air connecting the east coast and mid-west programming.

1951 – With improved weather, Fifth Air Force and FEAF Bomber Command resumed close air support missions for X Corps in north central South Korea.

1953 – 307th BW B-29s bombed Sonchon and Anju marshalling yards. Enemy searchlights illuminated a B-29 apparently betrayed by its contrails, and fighters shot it down.

1956 – South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem issues Ordinance No. 6, allowing the internment of former Viet Minh members and others “considered as dangerous to national defense and common security.” The Viet Minh was a largely communist organization that overthrew French colonial rule in Vietnam and assumed control of the government in North Vietnam in October 1954. Diem’s internment of former Viet Minh members was an attempt to consolidate his control of South Vietnam. He had already subdued opposition from various religious sects and had launched a drive against Viet Minh who remained in the South.

Although by the end of 1956, Diem had smashed 90 percent of the former Viet Minh insurgent agents in the Mekong Delta, his ruthless drive against all dissidents did little to enhance his popularity, and he lost many potential allies. He managed to stay in power until November 1963, when he was assassinated during a coup by South Vietnamese army generals.

1963 – Senior White house aide Michael V. Forrestal advises President Kennedy to expect a long and costly war. ‘No one really knows how many of the 20,000 “Vietcong” killed last year were only innocent, or at least, persuadable, villagers, whether the strategic hamlet program is providing enough government services to counteract the sacrifices it requires, or how the mute class of villagers react to the charges against Diem of dictatorship and nepotism.’ he points out that Vietcong recruitment in South Vietnam is effective enough to continue the war without any infiltration from the North.

1965 – Major cities–especially Saigon and Hue–and much of central Vietnam are disrupted by demonstrations and strikes led by Buddhists. Refusing to accept any government headed by Tran Van Huong, who they saw as a puppet of the United States, the Buddhists turned against U.S. institutions and their demonstrations took on an increasingly anti-American tone. Thich Tri Quang, the Buddhist leader, and other monks went on a hunger strike. A Buddhist girl in Nha Trang burned herself to death (the first such self-immolation since 1963). Although Huong tried to appease the Buddhists by rearranging his government, they were not satisfied.

In the end, Huong was unable to put together a viable government and, on January 27, the Armed Forces Council overthrew him in a bloodless coup and installed Gen. Nguyen Khanh in power. Khanh was ousted by yet another coup on February 18, led by Air Commodore Nguyen Cao Ky and Maj. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu. A short-lived civilian government under Dr. Phan Huy Quat was installed, but it lasted only until June 12, 1965. At that time, Thieu and Ky formed a new government with Thieu as the chief of state and Ky as the prime minister. Thieu and Ky would be elected as president and vice-president in general elections held in 1967.

1988 – World War II flying ace Gregory “Pappy” Boyington died in Fresno, California at age 75.

1991 – The United States and Iraq intensified their rhetoric, with Secretary of State James A. Baker III telling Air Force pilots in Saudi Arabia, “We pass the brink at midnight January 15,” and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein boasting of his army’s readiness. Congress empowered Bush to order attack on Iraq.

1993 – In Somalia, Operation Nutcracker. 900 Marines sweep through the Bakara bazaar. No casualties on either side.

1996 – STS-72 launches from the Kennedy Space Center marking the start of the 74th Space Shuttle mission and the 10th flight of Endeavour on a mission to capture and return to Earth a Japanese microgravity research spacecraft known as Space Flyer Unit (SFU). The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

1999 – US planes fired missiles at 2 Iraqi defense installations after determining that they were about to be attacked by surface to air missiles.

1999 – Iraq rejects a proposal by Saudi Arabia to ease United Nations trade sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The initiative would recommend that Iraq be allowed to buy and sell all goods, except military equipment or materials that could be used for military purposes.

2001 – The US Army premiered its new slogan “An Army of One” on the TV sitcom “Friends.”

2002 – First group of 20 detainees arrives at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray.

2004 – U.S. paratroopers captured Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, a former regional Baath Party chairman and militia commander a former Baath Party official who was No. 54 on the list of 55 most-wanted figures from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

2004 – Danish and Icelandic troops reported a cache of 36 shells buried in the Iraqi desert, and preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent. The 120mm mortar shells are thought to be left over from the eight-year war between Iraq and neighboring Iran, which ended in 1988.

2006 – In Georgia, Vladimir Arutinian is convicted of the attempted assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush and terrorist charges and sentenced with life imprisonment.

2007 – The U.S. Defense Department reports that United States Department of Defense contractors, while traveling through Canada, have had Canadian coins with radio transmitters inside planted on them by unknown people. The transmitters could be used to track the locations of the contractors.

2014 – The United States State Department issues a warning to those going to the host city of Sochi, informing that local medical facilities are “untested” and that there are threats of terrorist activity.

January 12th ~

1777 – American Brigadier General Hugh Mercer died as a result of his wounds received at the Battle of Princeton and became a fallen hero and rallying symbol of the American Revolution. Mercer was a soldier and physician. He initially served with British forces during the Seven Years’ War but later became a brigadier general in the Continental Army and a close friend to George Washington. There are rumors that Mercer exclusively originated Washington’s daring plan to cross the Delaware River and surprise the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, and he was certainly a major contributor to its execution. Because of the win at Trenton (and a small monetary bonus), Washington’s men agreed to a ten-day extension to their enlistment. When Washington decided to face off with Cornwallis during the Second Battle of Trenton on January 2, 1777, Mercer was given a major role in the defense of the city.

The next day, January 3, Washington’s army was en route to Princeton, New Jersey. While leading a vanguard of 350 soldiers, Mercer’s brigade encountered two British regiments and a mounted unit. A fight broke out at an orchard grove and Mercer’s horse was shot from under him. Getting to his feet, he was quickly surrounded by British troops who mistook him for George Washington and ordered him to surrender.

Outnumbered, he drew his saber and began an unequal contest. He was finally beaten to the ground, then bayoneted repeatedly – seven times – and left for dead. When he learned of the British attack and saw some of Mercer’s men in retreat, Washington himself entered the fray. Washington rallied Mercer’s men and pushed back the British regiments, but Mercer had been left on the field to die with multiple bayonet wounds to his body and blows to his head. (Legend has it that a beaten Mercer, with a bayonet still impaled in him, did not want to leave his men and the battle and was given a place to rest on a white oak tree’s trunk, while those who remained with him stood their ground.

The tree became known as “the Mercer Oak” and is the key element of the seal of Mercer County, New Jersey.) When he was discovered, Mercer was carried to the field hospital in the Thomas Clarke House (now a museum) at the eastern end of the battlefield. In spite of medical efforts by Benjamin Rush, Mercer was mortally wounded and died nine agonizing days later.

1813 – US Frigate Chesapeake captures British Volunteer.

1819 – Congress fails to endorse a report sponsored by Senator Henry Clay, condemning Andrew Jackson for his conduct in the First Seminole War in Florida.

1828 – The US and Mexico agree to a common border along the Sabine River.

1846 – John Slidell’s report on his unsuccessful attempt to negotiate with the President of Mexico reaches President Polk. The following day Polk orders General Zachary Taylor to move from the Nueces River to a position on or near the left bank of the Rio Grande. Taylor’s “Army of Observation” now has nearly 3500 troops, about half the US Army.

1848 – Attack on Sloop Lexington, San Blas, Mexico. She landed a party at and captured several of the enemy guns.

1861 – Fort Barrancas and the Pensacola Navy Yard, Captain James Armstrong, USN, were seized by Florida and Alabama militia. Union troops escaped across the Bay to Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, a position which remained in Union hands throughout the war.

1864 – Under cover of U.S.S. Yankee, Currituck, Anacostia, Tulip, and Jacob Bell, commanded by Acting Lieutenant Edward Hooker, Union cavalry and infantry under General Gilman Marston landed on the peninsula between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, capturing “a small body of the enemy and a large number of cavalry horses.” The small gunboats supported the Army operations on the 13th and 14th, and covered the reembarkation of the soldiers on the 15th.

1865 – General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick is promoted to major general in the Union army. Kilpatrick served in both the eastern and western theaters of war and earned a reputation as a fearless-and, many would say, reckless – leader. Kilpatrick was born in New Jersey in 1836. He attended West Point and graduated in 1861 alongside fellow cavalryman George Custer. He joined the 5th New York Infantry and became one of the first officers wounded in the war when he was shot at the Battle of Big Bethel, Virginia, in June 1861.

By 1863, Kilpatrick was a brigadier general in the Army of the Potomac’s cavalry division. His aggressive battlefield tactics were often dangerous for his troops and he earned the nickname “Kill cavalry.” When the Battle of Gettysburg was winding down after Pickett’s Charge on July 3, 1863, Kilpatrick ordered General Elon Farnsworth of his command to charge the Confederate’s right flank. Farnsworth informed Kilpatrick that the position was too strong, but Kilpatrick did not relent. Farnsworth was killed in the failed attack.

In early 1864, Kilpatrick led a poorly conceived raid on Richmond that was also repulsed. Despite these blemishes on his record, Kilpatrick was selected by General William T. Sherman to command a cavalry division during the Atlanta campaign in 1864. Sherman wanted an aggressive leader to harass the Confederates. Kilpatrick attacked the Confederate supply line at Lovejoy’s Station, but he did not succeed in cutting the railroad. He was wounded later at Dalton, Georgia, but he returned in time to participate in Sherman’s March to the Sea and the campaign in the Carolinas in the winter and spring of 1864 and 1865. After the war, Kilpatrick was appointed U.S. minister to Chile. He returned to the U.S. in 1868, but he resumed the post in 1880. He died in 1881 and is buried at West Point.

1872 – Russian Grand Duke Alexis goes on a gala buffalo hunting expedition with Gen. Phil Sheridan and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.

January 12th ~ {continued...}

1893 – Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, commander of the Luftwaffe, is born. The son of a judge who had been sent by Bismarck to South-West Africa as the first Resident Minister Plenipotentiary, Goering entered the army in 1914 as an Infantry Lieutenant, before being transferred to the air force as a combat pilot. Goering distinguished himself as an air ace, credited with shooting down twenty-two Allied aircraft. Awarded the Pour le Merite and the Iron Cross (First Class), he ended the war with the romantic aura of a much decorated pilot and war hero.

After World War I he was employed as a showflier. Goering’s aristocratic background and his prestige as a war hero made him a prize recruit to the infant Nazi Party and Hitler appointed him to command the SA Brownshirts in December 1922. In 1923 he took part in the Munich Beer-Hall putsch, in which he was seriously wounded and forced to flee from Germany for four years until a general amnesty was declared.

Returning to Germany in 1927, he rejoined the NSDAP and was elected as one of its first deputies to the Reichstag a year later. Following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, Goering was made Prussian Minister of the Interior, Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Police and Gestapo and Commissioner for Aviation. As the creator of the secret police, Goering, together with Himmler (q.v.) and Heydrich, set up the early concentration camps for political opponents, showing formidable energy in terrorizing and crushing all resistance.

On 1 March 1935 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and was responsible for organizing the rapid build-up of the aircraft industry and training of pilots. Goering identified with Hitler’s territorial aspirations, playing a key role in bringing about the Anschluss in 1938 and the bludgeoning of the Czechs into submission. Appointed Reich Council Chairman for National Defence on 30 August 1939 and officially designated as Hitler’s successor on 1 September, Goering directed the Luftwaffe campaigns against Poland and France, and on 19 June 1940 was promoted to Reich Marshal.

In August 1940 he confidently threw himself into the great offensive against Great Britain, Operation Eagle, convinced that he would drive the RAF from the skies and secure the surrender of the British by means of the Luftwaffe alone. Goering, however, lost control of the Battle of Britain and made a fatal, tactical error when he switched to massive night bombings of London. This move saved the RAF sector control stations from destruction and gave the British fighter defences precious time to recover. The failure of the Luftwaffe caused the abandonment of Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of England, and began the political eclipse of Goering.

On May 9th 1945, Goering was captured by forces of the American Seventh Army and put on trial at Nuremberg in 1946. Goering was found guilty on all four counts: of conspiracy to wage war, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. No mitigating circumstances were found and Goering was sentenced to death by hanging. On 15 October 1946, two hours before his execution was due to take place, Goering committed suicide in his Nuremberg cell.

1908 – A wireless message is sent long-distance for the first time from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

1913 – Kiel and Wilhelmshaven become submarine bases in Germany.

1918 – The Distinguished Service Cross was established by President Woodrow Wilson. General Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Forces in France, had recommended that recognition other than the Medal of Honor, be authorized for the Armed Forces of the United States for service rendered, in like manner, to that awarded by the European Armies. The request for establishment of the medal was forwarded from the Secretary of War to the President in a letter dated December 28, 1917. The Act of Congress establishing this award (193-65th Congress) dated July 9, 1918 is contained in Title 10 United States Code (USC) 3742. The establishment of the Distinguished Service Cross was promulgated in War Department General Order No. 6, dated January 12, 1918.

“A bronze medal of appropriate design and a ribbon to be worn in lieu thereof, to be awarded by the President to any person who, while serving in any capacity with the Army shall hereafter distinguish himself or herself, or who, since April 6, 1917, has distinguished himself or herself by exceptionally meritorious service to the Government in a duty of great responsibility in time of war or in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United States.”

The Act of Congress on July 9, 1918, recognized the need for different types and degrees of heroism and meritorious service and included such provisions for award criteria. The current statutory authorization for the Distinguished Service Medal is Title 10, United States Code, Section 3743. Among the first awards of the Distinguished Service Medal for service in World War I, were those to the Commanding Officers of the Allied Armies: Marshals Foch and Joffre, General Petain of France, Field Marshal Haig of Great Britain, General Diaz of Italy, General Gillain of Belgium, and General Pershing.

1927 – U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg claims that Mexican President, former rebel, Plutarco Calles is aiding a bolshevist plot in Nicaragua.

1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board under the chairmanship of William Hammatt Davis. It became a tripartite body and was charged with acting as an arbitration tribunal in labor-management dispute cases, thereby preventing work stoppages which might hinder the war effort. It administered wage control in national industries such as automobiles, shipping, railways, airlines, telegraph lines, and mining.

The Board was originally divided into 12 Regional Administrative Boards which handled both labor dispute settlement and wage stabilization functions for specific geographic regions. The National Board further decentralized in 1943, when it established special tripartite commissions and panels to deal with specific industries on a national base. It ceased operating in 1946, and labor disputes were afterwards handled by the National Labor Relations Board, originally set up in 1935.

1943 – In the Aleutians, Amchitka Island is occupied by a small US force led by General Jones. The destroyer Warden is lost in an accident.

1944 – US 5th Army forces (particularly 34th Division) capture Cervaro and advance toward Cassino.

1945 – There are air attacks from the planes of the carriers of Task Force 38 against Japanese installations at the naval base at Camranh Bay and others areas in Indochina. TG 38.5 continues the attacks from its specially trained carriers. Japanese losses to the attacks amount to 29 ships of 116,000 tons. Eleven small warships are also sunk.

1949 – Under-Secretary of State-designate Dean Acheson reaffirms the United Nations’ responsibility to provide military security to Pacific area nations. He does not consider Korea to be within the US defense perimeter.

January 12th ~ {continued...}

1951 – After Wonju fell to communist forces, 98th BG sent ten B-29s to attack the occupied city. For the first time, B-29s dropped 500-pound general purpose bombs fused to burst in the air and shower enemy troops with thousands of steel fragments. The innovation slowed the enemy advance. To improve bombing precision, Far East Air Forces installed shoran (a short-range navigation system) on a B-26 for the first time.

1952 – F-84s caught three supply trains at Sunchon, racing for the shelter of a tunnel. They blasted the tunnel mouth shut, trapping the trains in the open, then destroyed the boxcars and at least two locomotives.

1953 – Landings tested on board USS Antietam, first angled deck carrier USS Antietam, a 27,100 ton Ticonderoga class aircraft carrier built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, was commissioned in January 1945. She transited the Panama Canal to the Pacific in June and was en route to the Western Pacific war zone when Japan capitulated in August 1945. Antietam operated in Far Eastern waters during the first years of the post-war era, returning to the United States in 1949, when she was decommissioned and placed in the Reserve Fleet. Recomissioned in January 1951, in response to Korean War requirements, the carrier made one combat deployment, between September 1951 and March 1952.

In September-December 1952, after joining the Atlantic Fleet, Antietam was modified to receive the U.S. Navy’s first angled flight deck. During the next few years, she served as the test platform for this feature, which was to revolutionize carrier flight operations. After being rated as an attack aircraft carrier (CVA-36) from October 1952 to August 1953, she was thereafter classified as an antisubmarine support aircraft carrier, with the hull number CVS-36. In that role, Antietam made Sixth Fleet cruises in the Mediterranean Sea in 1955 and in 1956-57. She was then assigned to carrier flight training duty, generally operating in waters near Pensacola, Florida. Relieved as training carrier in October 1962, she was decommissioned for the last time in May 1963. Following a decade in the Reserve Fleet, USS Antietam was sold for scrapping in February 1974.

1954 – In a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations dinner in his honor, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States will protect its allies through the “deterrent of massive retaliatory power.” The policy announcement was further evidence of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to rely heavily on the nation’s nuclear arsenal as the primary means of defense against communist aggression.

Dulles began his speech by examining communist strategy that, he concluded, had as its goal the “bankruptcy” of the United States through overextension of its military power. Both strategically and economically, the secretary explained, it was unwise to “permanently commit U.S. land forces to Asia,” to “support permanently other countries,” or to “become permanently committed to military expenditures so vast that they lead to ‘practical bankruptcy.'” Instead, he believed a new policy of “getting maximum protection at a bearable cost” should be developed.

Although Dulles did not directly refer to nuclear weapons, it was clear that the new policy he was describing would depend upon the “massive retaliatory power” of such weapons to respond to future communist acts of war. The speech was a reflection of two of the main tenets of foreign policy under Eisenhower and Dulles. First was the belief, particularly on the part of Dulles, that America’s foreign policy toward the communist threat had been timidly reactive during the preceding Democratic administration of President Harry S. Truman. Dulles consistently reiterated the need for a more proactive and vigorous approach to rolling back the communist sphere of influence.

Second was President Eisenhower’s belief that military and foreign assistance spending had to be controlled. Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative and believed that the U.S. economy and society could not long take the strain of overwhelming defense budgets. A stronger reliance on nuclear weapons as the backbone of America’s defense answered both concerns – atomic weapons were far more effective in terms of threatening potential adversaries, and they were also, in the long run, much less expensive than the costs associated with a large standing army.

1962 – Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in the Vietnam War, takes place. In December 1961, the USNS Core (T-AKV-41) docked in Saigon with 82 US Army Piasecki H-21 helicopters. A little more than 12 days later, Operation Chopper commenced. The helicopters transported over 1,000 South Vietnamese paratroopers for an assault on a suspected Viet Cong stronghold 10 miles west of Saigon. The Viet Cong were surprised and soundly defeated, but they gained valuable combat experience they would later use with great effect against US troops. The paratroopers also captured a sought-after underground radio transmitter.

This operation heralded a new era of air mobility for the U.S. Army, which had been slowly growing as a concept since the Army formed twelve helicopter battalions in 1952 as a result of the Korean War. These new battalions eventually formed a sort of modern day cavalry for the Army.

1962 – The United States Air Force launches Operation Ranch Hand, a “modern technological area-denial technique” designed to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong. Flying C-123 Providers, U.S. personnel dumped an estimated 19 million gallons of defoliating herbicides over 10-20 percent of Vietnam and parts of Laos between 1962-1971.

Agent Orange – named for the color of its metal containers – was the most frequently used defoliating herbicide. The operation succeeded in killing vegetation, but not in stopping the Viet Cong. The use of these agents was controversial, both during and after the war, because of the questions about long-term ecological impacts and the effect on humans who either handled or were sprayed by the chemicals. Beginning in the late 1970s, Vietnam veterans began to cite the herbicides, especially Agent Orange, as the cause of health problems ranging from skin rashes to cancer to birth defects in their children. Similar problems, including an abnormally high incidence of miscarriages and congenital malformations, have been reported among the Vietnamese people who lived in the areas where the defoliating agents were used.

January 12th ~ {continued...}

1971 – The Harrisburg Seven,a group of religious anti-war activists, led by Philip Berrigan, were charged in a failed conspiracy case in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, located at Harrisburg. The “Seven” were Berrigan, Sister Elizabeth McAlister, Rev. Neil McLaughlin, Rev. Joseph Wenderoth, Eqbal Ahmad, Anthony Scoblick, and Mary Cain Scoblick.

The group was unsuccessfully prosecuted for alleged criminal plots during the Vietnam War era. Six of the seven were Roman Catholic nuns or priests. The seventh, Ahmad, was a Pakistani journalist, American-trained political scientist, and self-described “odd man out” of the group. Haverford College physics professor William C. Davidon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. In 1970, the group attracted government attention when Berrigan, then imprisoned, and McAlister were caught trading letters that alluded to kidnapping National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and blowing up steam tunnels.

1986 – Congressman Bill Nelson (D-FL) lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61-C as a Mission Specialist. STS-61-C was the twenty-fourth mission of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and the seventh mission of Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the first time that Columbia, the first operational orbiter to be constructed, had flown since STS-9. The mission launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on 12 January 1986, and landed six days later on 18 January.

STS-61-C’s seven-person crew included the second African-American shuttle pilot, future NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, the first Costa Rican-born astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, as well as the second sitting politician to fly in space. It was the last shuttle mission before the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which occurred just ten days after STS-61-C’s landing.

1991 – After a two day debate, a deeply divided Congress gave President Bush the authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf. The Senate voted 52-to-47 to empower Bush to use armed forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait; the House followed suit on a vote of 250-to-183. The 5th MEB embarked and arrived in the North Arabian Sea in support of Desert Shield.

1993 – First US KIA in Somalia. Marine killed while on patrol in Mogadishu.

1995 – In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, an American soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Gregory D. Cardott, assigned to A Company, 3rd Battalion, Third Special Forces Group, was killed and another wounded during a shootout with a former Haitian army officer who also was killed.

1997 – Two recently enrolled female cadets at The Citadel announced they were not returning for the spring semester, citing harassment by male cadets.

1998 – Iraq authorities said they would block a UN inspection team led by former US Marine captain Scott Ritter.

1999 – In Iraq a US F-16 jet encountered an active radar site and fired a HARM anti-radiation missile at it.

2002 – The United States intensified its anti-terror campaign in eastern Afghanistan, dropping bombs on suspected al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts.

2002 – Malaysia announced the arrests of 2 more suspected militants tied to al Qaeda and linked to a cell in Singapore.

2002 – Pakistan’s Pres. Musharraf vowed to crack down on militant Islamists using Pakistan as a base of operations in Kashmir. Musharraf also announced new regulations on education criteria for the estimated 6,000 madrassas, the Islamic schools.

2004 – The US Supreme Court refused to hear on appeal by civil liberties groups seeking access to basic data of individuals detained indefinitely by the government after the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks.

2005 – NASA launched its Deep Impact spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was scheduled to launch an 820-poind impactor vehicle at Comet Tempel-1 on July 4th.

2005 – United States intelligence officials confirm that its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended last month. The claim that Iraq had an active WMD program was one of a laundry list of justifications by the White House for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

2007 – United States armed forces raid the office of the Iranian Consulate General in Arbil, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan.

2007 – Terrorists fire an anti-tank missile at the Embassy of the United States in Athens. No one is injured or killed.

2009 – CGC Boutwell departed Alameda, CA, on an around-the-world cruise as part of the USS Boxer Expeditionary Strike Group.

2010 - A devastating earthquake struck Haiti. CGCs Forward, Mohawk and Tahoma were the first U.S. assets to arrive on scene at Port au Prince, with Forward arriving the morning of 13 January 2010 and Mohawk arriving in the afternoon. These units provided air traffic control for military aircraft, conducted damage assessments of the port, and ferried supplies and injured people with embarked boats and helicopters. Other Coast Guard assets began arriving soon thereafter to assist in the recovery efforts, including the CGC Oak and aircraft from AIRSTA Clearwater.

2015 – Apparent Islamic State computer hackers hack the feeds for the United States Central Command for Twitter and Youtube.

January 13th ~

1776 – In the early morning hours of January 13, 1776, British forces raid Prudence Island, Rhode Island, in an effort to steal a large quantity of sheep. But, upon landing on the island’s southern beaches, the British were ambushed by fifteen Minutemen from Rhode Island’s Second Company led by Captain Joseph Knight, who had been tipped off to the Brits’ plans and rowed across Narragansett Bay from Warwick Neck the previous morning. A brief but deadly battle ensued before the British were forced to retreat. Three British marines were killed and seven injured during the ambush. Two Minutemen were wounded; one died and the other was taken prisoner. Afraid of further violence, residents abandoned the island between 1776 and 1777, and the island’s homes and windmill were burned.

1807 – Union General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford is born in Woodford, Kentucky. Buford held many commands in the west and was a hero at the Battle of Belmont early in the war. Buford attended West Point and graduated in 1827, sixth out of 38 in his class. After a stint with the frontier military, he was given leave to study law at Harvard. He taught at West Point before leaving the service to become a businessman. He was an engineer and banker in Illinois during the 1840s and 1850s. When the war began, the 54-year-old Buford raised his own regiment, the 27th Illinois. He was commissioned as a colonel, and his unit was sent to Cairo, Illinois, and placed in General Ulysses S. Grant’s army.

On November 7, 1861, Grant attacked a Confederate camp at Belmont, Missouri, and quickly drove the Rebels away. But Grant’s men became preoccupied with plundering the area, and a Confederate counterattack nearly turned to disaster for the Yankees. Buford’s regiment was nearly cut off from the main Union force. He rallied his men and they fought their way out of the Confederate trap. Buford was commended for his bravery. After Belmont, Buford participated in the capture of Island No. 10, a Confederate stronghold in the Mississippi River, and Buford was left in command after its capture. Buford and his regiment fought at Corinth in October 1862, but the colonel fell seriously ill from sunstroke. He left field command and sat on the court martial of General Fitz John Porter in Washington. Buford returned to the west and was promoted to Brigadier General in charge of the District of Eastern Arkansas. He remained there for the remainder of the war, although his main military action came in chasing off Confederate raiders in the area. Poor health forced his resignation in March 1865, just before the end of the war. He was brevetted to major general following his retirement. He worked in a variety of businesses after the war and died in Chicago in 1883. Napoleon Bonaparte Buford was the older half-brother of John Buford, a Union General who commanded the Union force that first engaged the Confederates at Gettysburg in 1863.

1813 – Captain Oliver Hazard Perry arrives in Presque Isle (Michigan) where he will supervise the construction of a flotilla. Two brigs, a schooner, and three gunboats will be constructed from materials transported overland and by inland waterway from Philadelphia, by way of Pittsburgh, in preparation for the naval battle for Lake Erie.

1815 – British troops capture Fort Peter in St. Marys, Georgia, the only battle of the War of 1812 to take place in the state. The Battle of Fort Point Peter was a successful attack by a British force on St. Marys, Georgia, and a smaller force of American soldiers at a fort on Point Peter on the Georgia side of the St. Marys River. The river was part of the international border between the US and British-allied Spanish Florida. Occupying coastal Camden County allowed the British to blockade American transportation on the Intracoastal Waterway. The attack on Fort Peter occurred after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which would end the War of 1812, but before the treaty’s ratification. The attack on Fort Peter occurred at the same time as the siege of Fort St. Philip in Louisiana and was part of the British occupation of St. Marys and Cumberland Island.

1833 – President Andrew Jackson writes to Vice President Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina’s defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis. The Nullification Crisis was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of South Carolina. The controversial and highly protective Tariff of 1828 (known to its detractors as the “Tariff of Abominations”) was enacted into law during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. The tariff was opposed in the South and parts of New England. Its opponents expected that the election of Jackson as President would result in the tariff being significantly reduced.

In July of 1832, Jackson signed into law the Tariff of 1832. This compromise tariff received the support of most northerners and half of the southerners in Congress. The reductions were too little for South Carolina, and in November 1832 a state convention declared that the tariffs of both 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable in South Carolina after February 1, 1833. Military preparations to resist anticipated federal enforcement were initiated by the state. In late February both a Force Bill, authorizing the President to use military forces against South Carolina, and a new negotiated tariff, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, satisfactory to South Carolina were passed by Congress. The South Carolina convention reconvened and repealed its Nullification Ordinance on March 11, 1833.

1838 – Canadian rebels surrender their arms to US militamen along the Canadian frontier. Many rebels took refuge in the northern United States, where, with the help of American supporters, they formed secret friends called Hunters’ Lodges to renew the rebellion. The lodges will conduct several raids across the border, leading to another short-lived rising in Lower Canada (Quebec).

1846 – President James Polk dispatched General Zachary Taylor and 4,000 troops to the Texas Border as war with Mexico loomed. Mexico had severed relations with the United States in March 1845, shortly after the U.S. annexation of Texas. In September President Polk sent John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico City to negotiate the disputed Texas border, settle U.S. claims against Mexico, and purchase New Mexico and California for up to $30,000,000. Mexican officials, aware in advance of Slidell’s intention of dismembering their country, refused to receive him. When Polk learned of the snub, he ordered troops to occupy the disputed area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande rivers.

January 13th ~ {continued...}

1862 – The Federal army fitted out a steamer with five guns and made a descent upon the Cedar Keys. The attack was not expected, and so only a 23 man Confederate force on the Island. It was too small to do more than burn the cotton and turpentine in the face of an attack from an overwhelming Union force. Confederate Brigadier General J. H. Trapier, CS army, had transferred the bulk of his forces (two Florida companies) to meet an expected attack at Fernandina on Amelia Island. While some Confederate soldiers were taken prisoner, were all returned. The 80 to 100 civilians on the island, according to Trapier’s report “were required to sign an oath not to take up arms against the Government of the (so-called) United States during the present war.” None of the three old rebel cannon were saved as they weren’t worth the effort. The Union assault was a successful one.

1865 – After the failure of his December expedition against Fort Fisher, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler was relieved of command. Maj. Gen. Alfred Terry was placed in command of a ‘Provisional Corps,’ including Paine’s Division of U.S. Colored Troops, and supported by a naval force of nearly 60 vessels, to renew operations against the fort. After a preliminary bombardment directed by Rear Adm. David D. Porter on January 13, Union forces landed and prepared an attack on Maj. Gen. Robert Hoke’s infantry line. On the 15th, a select force moved on the fort from the rear. A valiant attack late in the afternoon, following the bloody repulse of a naval landing party carried the parapet. The Confederate garrison surrendered, opening the way for a Federal thrust against Wilmington, the South’s last open seaport on the Atlantic coast.

1893 – U.S. Marines land in Honolulu, Hawaii from the USS Boston to prevent the queen from abrogating the Bayonet Constitution.

1910 – Lee De Forest, the American inventor of the vacuum tube, broadcasts a live performance of Enrico Caruso from the Metropolitan Opera. The broadcast over a telephone transmitter could be heard only by the small number of electronics hobbyists who had radio receivers. De Forest started regular nightly concerts in 1915, increasing interest in radio receivers, which at the time depended on the vacuum tubes manufactured by De Forest’s company. Many discoveries in the field of electricity led to the development of radio. In 1873, British physicist James Clerk Maxwell published his theory of electromagnetic waves. Inventor David Edward Hughes discovered that if one passed those waves through the junction of a steel point and a carbon block, it would conduct a current.

In 1879, he showed how radio signals could be received from a transmitter hundreds of yards away. People had already been transmitting long-distance messages with light rays through a heliograph, but radio was more versatile because its waves could travel farther and could be amplified. Italian electrical engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi is traditionally recognized as the inventor of the radio for his 1896 invention, which transmitted signals over more than a mile. The following year, he transmitted signals from land to a ship that was sailing nearly 20 miles off shore. Soon, France and England began using the invention to communicate with each other, even during rainstorms, and by 1905 ships often used radios to communicate with stations on shore.

Marconi’s work earned him a share of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Radio developed quickly after World War I, and amateur operators using short-wave radios made the first transatlantic radio transmission in 1921. Short-wave radio is still used today during emergencies when other modes of communication are rendered useless, and more than 1.5 million people around the world are licensed ham-radio operators. Development in radio (from high-tech equipment to extremely high frequency communication systems) has made space exploration possible, including the Apollo lunar-landing missions. Radio waves of different lengths have diverse characteristics and are identified by their frequencies (for instance, shorter waves have higher frequencies, or numbers of cycles per second). One cycle per second is called a hertz, in honor of German radio genius Heinrich Hertz. Commercial radio stations are broadcast on frequency modulation (FM) or amplitude modulation (AM) and are assigned bandwidths by the Federal Communications Commission.

1929 – Frontiersman Wyatt Earp died in LA, Ca., after an illustrious life in the West. Cowboy stars William S. Hart and Tom Mix served as pallbearers. Born in Illinois in 1848, he served as a lawman in Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas, as well as Tombstone, Arizona Territory, where Wyatt and his brothers Morgan and Virgil were notorious for violent clashes with outlaws. Western historians have disagreed about the particulars of Wyatt Earp’s life, but he is said to have been a freighter-teamster, railroad construction worker, policeman, prisoner, saloon keeper and horse farmer, and he was involved in several gunfights – for reasons that may or may not have been related to law enforcement. When Morgan was killed, Wyatt avenged his death by killing Frank Stilwell, an outlaw he had previously arrested. Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was buried in Colma, California.

1937 – The United States bars US citizens from serving in the Spanish Civil War.

January 13th ~ {continued...}

1942 – German U-Boats begin operations of the US East Coast. The move is called operation Paukenschlag (Drum Roll). Admiral Doenitz has faced arguments from his superiors in the German Navy who do not favor the operation, and he has had the difficulty that only the larger 740-ton U-Boats are really suitable for such long range patrols. When Doenitz gives the order for the attack to begin there are 11 U-Boats in position and 10 more en route. Together they sink more than 150,000 tons during the first month.

Intelligence sources have given reasonable warning of the attack but the U-Boats find virtually peace-time conditions in operation. Ship sail with lights on at night; lighthouses and bouys are still lit; there is no radio discipline – merchant ships often give their positions in plain text; there are destroyer patrols (not convoys with escorts) but these are regular and predictable and their crews are naturally inexperienced.

1942 – Japanese attacks on Bataan continue and, although they make progress on the east side of the peninsula, they are still held on the west.

1942 – Allied representatives meeting in London announce that Axis war criminals will be punished after the war.

1943 – US forces on Guadalcanal further develop their offensive, advancing westward along the north coast as well as attacking parallel to this advance further inland.

1943 – General Eichelberger, an American, is given overall command of the fighting troops on New Guinea.

1945 – Near the Philippines the escort carrier Salamaua is badly damaged in a Kamikaze attack. These are now becoming rare, however, because most of the Kamikaze aircraft have been lost and the rest withdrawn. Ashore, the US bridgehead is being extended and Damortis is taken.

1945 – In the Ardennes, units of the US First Army and the British XXX Corps from the west reach the Ourthe River between Laroche and Houffalize. Third Army forces are also moving on Houffalize.

1950 – For the second time in a week, Jacob Malik, the Soviet representative to the United Nations, storms out of a meeting of the Security Council, this time in reaction to the defeat of his proposal to expel the Nationalist Chinese representative. At the same time, he announced the Soviet Union’s intention to boycott further Security Council meetings. Several days before the January 13 meeting, Malik walked out to show his displeasure over the United Nations’ refusal to unseat the Nationalist Chinese delegation. The Soviet Union had recognized the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the true Chinese government, and wanted the PRC to replace the Nationalist Chinese delegation at the United Nations.

Malik returned on January 13, however, to vote on the Soviet resolution to expel Nationalist China. Six countries–the United States, Nationalist China, Cuba, Ecuador, Cuba, and Egypt–voted against the resolution, and three–the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and India–voted in favor of it. Malik immediately left the meeting, declaring that the United States was “encouraging lawlessness” by refusing to recognize the “illegal presence” of the Nationalist Chinese representatives. He concluded that “even the most convinced reactionaries” had to recognize the justness of the Soviet resolution, and he vowed that the Soviet Union would not be bound by any decisions made by the Security Council if the Nationalist Chinese representative remained.

Hoping to forestall any future Security Council action, Malik announced that the Soviet Union would no longer attend its meetings. The remaining members of the Security Council decided to carry on despite the Soviet boycott. In late June 1950, it became apparent that the Soviet action had backfired when the issue of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea was brought before the Security Council. By June 27, the Security Council voted to invoke military action by the United Nations for the first time in the organization’s history. The Soviets could have blocked the action in the Security Council, since the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France each had absolute veto power, but no Russian delegate was present. In just a short time, a multinational U.N. force arrived in South Korea and the grueling three-year Korean War was underway.

1951 – Far East Air Forces flew the first effective tarzon mission against an enemy-held bridge at Kanggye, dropping a six-ton radio-guided bomb on the center span, destroying fifty-eight feet of the structure.

1951 – President Truman told General MacArthur to withdraw his forces if continued resistance was no longer militarily possible, and even then, if practicable, continue to resist from islands off Korea’s coast. “In the worst case,” said Truman, “it would be important that, if we must withdraw from Korea, it be clear to the world that that course is forced upon us by military necessity, and that we shall not accept the result politically or militarily until the aggression has been rectified.”

1952 – Ten Okinawa-based Super Fortresses dropped 396 high explosive 500-pound bombs on the railroad bridge east of Sinanju across the Chongchong River, rendering the bridge unserviceable.

1953 – Some twelve enemy fighters shot down a B-29 on a psychological warfare, leaflet-drop mission over North Korea. The crew included Col. John K. Arnold, Jr., USAF, Commander, 581st ARCW.