April 5th ~ {continued...}

1991 – The space shuttle “Atlantis” blasted off on a mission that included the deploying of the second of “NASA’s” Great Observatories. NASA launched the $670 million Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. It was directed to a suicide plunge in 2000.

1999 – NATO attacks struck Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad in the most ferocious attacks for a 13th straight day. The first Kosovo refugees were flown out to Norway and Turkey and the US said it would take some 20,000 to Guantanamo Ari Base in Cuba. Pres. Clinton asked for public donations for the relief effort.

1999 – Libya handed over to UN officials 2 men accused in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. They were then flown to the Hague to be tried under Scottish law. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan immediately suspended economic sanctions on Libya.

2000 – In Russia the FSB arrested a US businessman for suspected espionage after he allegedly bought information on defense technology from Russian scientists. Edmond Pope was later identified as a retired navy captain working for Pennsylvania State Univ. in applied research. The key witness against Pope recanted his testimony in November.

2000 – The government of Iran announces that it has seized a tanker which was smuggling Iraqi oil through Iranian territorial waters. A spokesman forthe United States Department of State welcomes the action.

2001 – The United States and China intensified negotiations for the release of an American spy plane’s crew; President Bush, in a conciliatory gesture, expressed regret over the plane’s Apr 1 in-flight collision with a Chinese fighter that triggered the tense standoff.

2002 – US mediator Anthony Zinni met with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah as Israeli forces continued their offensive. At least 35 Palestinians were killed on the bloodiest day of fighting since the beginning of Israel’s week-old military offensive.

2003 – In the 18th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US 3rd Infantry troops entered Baghdad for the first time. Coalition troops took several objectives surrounding the capital in the north and northwest. US warplanes hit Iraqi positions near the commercial center of Mosul. Up to 3,000 Iraqi fighters were killed as American armored vehicles moved into Baghdad.

2003 – Ali Hassan al-Majid (king of spades), Saddam Hussein’s 1st cousin and dubbed “Chemical Ali” by opponents for ordering a 1988 poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, was killed by an airstrike on his house in Basra.

2004 – Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, declared a radical Shiite cleric an “outlaw” after his supporters rioted in Baghdad and four other cities in fighting that killed at least 52 Iraqis, eight U.S. troops and a Salvadoran soldier. A warrant was issued for al-Sadr related to the murder of a rival Shiite leader in 2003.

2009 – North Korea launches its controversial Kwangmyŏngsŏng-2 rocket. The satellite passed over mainland Japan, which prompted an immediate reaction from the United Nations Security Council, as well as participating states of Six-party talks.

2010 – A series of coordinated bombings at the U.S. consulate in Peshawar and at a ruling party rally in the Pakistani North-West Frontier Province kills fifty people and injures one hundred.

2010 – The United States Supreme Court declines to take up a case by residents of Bikini Atoll and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands, who are seeking compensation for U.S. nuclear tests conducted on the islands.

2014 – Amidst violence, voters in Afghanistan elect a new President in what is the country’s first democratic transfer of power.

April 6th ~

610 – Lailat-ul Qadar: The night that the Koran descended to Earth. Muhammad is believed by his followers to have had a vision of Gabriel. The angel told him to recite in the name of God. Other visions are supposed to have Gabriel lead Muhammad to heaven to meet God, and to Jerusalem to meet Abraham, Moses and Jesus. These visions convinced Mohammad that he was a messenger of God.

1712 – The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 begins near Broadway. The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 was an uprising in New York City of 23 enslaved Africans who killed nine whites and injured another six. More than three times that number of blacks, 70, were arrested and jailed. Of these, 27 were put on trial, and 21 convicted and executed.

After the revolt, laws governing the lives of blacks in New York were made more restrictive. African Americans were not permitted to gather in groups of more than three, they were not permitted to carry firearms, and gambling was outlawed. Other crimes, such as property damage, rape, and conspiracy to kill, were made punishable by death. Free blacks were no longer allowed to own land. Slave owners who decided to free their slaves were required to pay a tax of £200, a price much higher than the price of a slave.

1776 – Sloop-of-war Ranger, frigate Queen of France and frigate Warren capture British Hibernia and 7 other vessels.

1776 – In the Battle of Block Island, ships of the Continental Navy fail in their attempt to capture a Royal Navy dispatch boat. This was a nighttime naval encounter between the Continental Navy, returning from a successful raid on Nassau in The Bahamas on its maiden voyage, and HMS Glasgow, a Royal Navy dispatch boat. Glasgow successfully escaped capture by a fleet of seven ships under the command of Commodore Esek Hopkins, although she sustained significant damage in the encounter.

Several of the ship captains of the Continental fleet were criticized for their actions in the engagement, and one was dismissed as a result. Commodore Hopkins was criticized for other actions pertaining to the cruise, including the distribution of seized goods, and was eventually also dismissed from the Navy.

1789 – The first US Congress began regular sessions at Federal Hall on Wall Street, NYC.

1815 – At Dartmoor Prison in southwest England 7 American prisoners were killed by British soldiers under the command of Captain Thomas G. Shortland. Some 6,000 prisoners were awaiting return to the US. A farmer’s jury with no victims or witnesses issued a verdict on April 8 of “justifiable homicide.”

1862 – Two days of bitter fighting began at the Civil War battle of Shiloh as the Confederates attacked Grant’s Union forces in southwestern Tennessee. Union commander Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, planning to advance on the important railway junction at Corinth, Miss., met a surprise attack by General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of Mississippi. The Confederates pushed the Federals back steadily during the first day’s fighting, in spite of Johnston’s death that afternoon. Only with the arrival of Union reinforcements during the night did the tide turn, forcing the rebels to withdraw.

The opposing sides slaughtered each other with such ferocity that one survivor wrote, “No blaze of glory…can ever atone for the unwritten and unutterable horrors of the scene.” Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh said: “I saw an open field… so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across… in any direction, stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground.” More than 9,000 Americans died. The battle left some 24,000 casualties and secured the West for the Union.

1862 – Albert Sidney Johnston (59), US and Confederate general, was killed in battle of Shiloh.

April 6th ~ {continued...}

1865 – At the Battle of Sayler’s Creek, a third of Lee’s army was cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox. Skirmish at High Bridge, VA, (Appomattox). The Battle of Sailor’s Creek (also known as Sayler’s Creek, Hillsman Farm, or Lockett Farm) was fought near Farmville, Virginia, as part of the Appomattox Campaign, in the final days of the American Civil War. It was the last major engagement between the armies of Gen. Robert E. Lee and Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant before the capitulation of Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox Court House three days later.

1866 – G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) was formed. It was composed of men who served in the US Army and Navy during the Civil War. The last member died in 1956.

1909 – Explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole along with 4 Eskimos. The claim, disputed by skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation. Robert E. Peary used Ellesmere Island as a base for his expedition to the North Pole. The north coast of Ellesmere lies just 480 miles from the Pole. He was accompanied by Matthew Henson, an African-American, who had spent 18 years in the Arctic with Peary.

1916 – German government OK’d unrestricted submarine warfare.

1917 – Congress declares war on Germany. However the US Army will have to be expanded before it can contribute to the war, The Navy is more prepares. The US does not become a full ally of the British, French, and Russians, preferring to be an “Associate Power.” Wilson sees the war as a moral crusade and does not want to be associated with the motives of the other states arrayed against Germany.

1917 – The Coast Guard, which consisted of 15 cruising cutters, 200 commissioned officers, and 5000 warrant officers and enlisted men, became part of the U. S. Navy by Executive Order. Coast Guard aviators were assigned to naval air stations in this country and abroad. One Coast Guardsman commanded the Naval Air Station at Ille Tudy, France, and won the French Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Another commanded Chatham Naval Air Station and he piloted one of two HS-1 seaplanes that attempted to bomb and machine gun a surfaced U-boat off the coast of New England. The bombs failed to explode, however, and the U-boat escaped.

1924 – Four open-cockpit biplanes took off from Seattle for a round the world flight. Two of the planes made it back. They flew 26,000 miles in 363 hours over a 175 days at an average speed of 77 mph. The US Congress had to approve the financing and the airplanes were built by Douglas Aircraft.

1938 – Roy Plunkett, a DuPont researcher in New Jersey, discovered the polymer, polytetrafluoroethylene, later known as teflon.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 3rd Amphibious Corps continues to advance in the north, but the US 24th Corps is held by Japanese forces along the first defenses of the Shuri Line. There are numerous Kamikaze attacks on shipping during the day, as part of Operation Kikusui. The aircraft carriers USS Jacinto and HMS Illustrious are hit as well as 25 other ships including 10 small warships.

April 6th ~ {continued...}

1945 – During World War II, the Japanese warship Yamato and nine other vessels sailed on a suicide mission to attack the U.S. fleet off Okinawa; the fleet was intercepted the next day.

1949 – A US Coast Guard H03S-1 helicopter completed the longest unescorted helicopter ferry flight on record. The trip from Elizabeth City, NC to Port Angeles, WA via San Diego, a distance of 3,750 miles, took 10 1/2 days to complete and involved a total flight time of 57.6 hours.

1951 – President Harry S. Truman discussed the relief of General Douglas MacArthur with several of his closest advisors. He asked to meet with them the next day to continue the discussion.

1954 – Four weeks after being attacked on the air by Edward R. Murrow, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., delivered a filmed response on CBS’ “See It Now” in which he charged that Murrow had, in the past, “engaged in propaganda for Communist causes.”

1963 – The United States and Britain signed an agreement under which the Americans would sell Polaris A-3 missiles to the British.’

1965 – The United States launched the “Early Bird” communications satellite, the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit. Intelsat I (nicknamed Early Bird for the proverb “The early bird catches the worm”) was built by the Space and Communications Group of Hughes Aircraft Company (later Hughes Space and Communications Company, and now Boeing Satellite Systems) for COMSAT, which activated it on June 28th.

It was based on the satellite that Hughes had built for NASA to demonstrate that communications via synchronous-orbit satellite were feasible. Its booster was a Thrust Augmented Delta (Delta D). It helped provide the first live TV coverage of a spacecraft splashdown, that of Gemini 6 in December 1965. Originally slated to operate for 18 months, Early Bird was in active service for four years, being deactivated in January 1969, although it was briefly activated in June of that year to serve the Apollo 11 flight when the Atlantic Intelsat satellite failed.

It was deactivated again in August 1969 and has been inactive since that time (except for a brief reactivation in 1990 to commemorate its 25th launch anniversary), although it remains in orbit. The Early Bird satellite was the first to provide direct and nearly instantaneous contact between Europe and North America, handling television, telephone, and tele-facsimile transmissions. It was fairly small, measuring nearly 76 × 61 cm (2.5 × 2.0 feet) and weighing 34.5 kg (76 pounds). Early Bird was one of the satellites used in the then record-breaking broadcast of Our World.

1965 – National Security Advisor Mc George Bundy drafts and signs National Security Action Memorandum 328 on behalf of President Johnson. This document authorizes US forces to take the offensive to secure ‘enclaves’ and to support ARVN operations.

1966 – US Marines destroy a Vietcong hospital and supply area in a sweep near Saigon.

1967 – 2500 combined Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops make four closely coordinated attacks on the city of Quangtri, 15 miles south of the DMZ. The South charges that the Communist raiders had infiltrated through the DMZ.

1968 – Black Panther member Bobby Hutton (17) was killed in a gun battle with police in West Oakland, Ca., and Eldridge Cleaver was arrested.

1968 – USS New Jersey recommissioned for shore bombardment duty in Vietnam.

1968 – The 77 day siege of Khesan is officially relieved when elements of the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division link up with Marines.

April 6th ~ {continued...}

1972 – Clear weather for the first time in three days allows US planes and Navy warships to begin the sustained air strikes and naval bombardment ordered by President Nixon for Operation Linebacker. Hundreds of planes flying 225 missions by 9 April hit troop concentrations and missile emplacements above and below the DMZ. Two US planes are lost to SAM-2 missiles, a new element in North Vietnamese troop defenses.

1973 – Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft. Pioneer 11 (also known as Pioneer G) is a 259 kilogram (569 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter and Saturn, solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere. It was the first probe to encounter Saturn and the second to fly through the asteroid belt and by Jupiter. Due to power constraints and the vast distance to the probe, last contact with the spacecraft was on September 30, 1995.

1979 – The U.S. cut off aid to Pakistan, because of that country’s covert construction of a uranium enrichment facility.

1991 – Bosnian Serbs began a war in a quest for their own ethnically pure republic.1991 – Iraq reluctantly agreed to accept United Nations conditions for ending the Persian Gulf War.

1995 – A seminar of international biological weapons experts convened by UNSCOM concludes that Iraq has an undeclared full-scale biological weapons program.

1996 – Fighting and looting began in Monrovia, Liberia, and a six year civil war resumed between rival ethnic groups. Supporters of Roosevelt Johnson faced off against the ruling council of state, which sacked Johnson as rural development minister and ordered his arrest for murder. Johnson accused Charles Taylor of violating the Abuja accord of August, which set up a transitional government.

1997 – NASA officials announced they were cutting short the 16-day mission of space shuttle Columbia by 12 days because of a deteriorating and potentially explosive power generator.

1998 – Pakistan reported a successful test of medium-range missile from its Kahuta nuclear research lab. It was capable of carrying nuclear warheads with a range of 900 miles.

1998 – President Clinton in a new report to Congress on Iraq’s non-compliance with UNSC resolutions says Iraq remains a threat to international peace and security.

1999 – NATO bombed Yugoslav forces in Montenegro.

1999 – In Serbia Pres. Milosevic announced a unilateral Easter cease-fire through to Sunday. NATO rejected the proposal and escalated its aerial bombardment on Serbian forces and supplies.

April 6th ~ {continued...}

2000 – US and British warplanes bombed military sites in southern Iraq and Iraqi military reported 14 civilians killed and 19 wounded.

2001 – US officials announced some progress toward the release of 24 military personnel in China and hoped to establish a joint US-China commission to examine the April 1 collision of a US spy plane and Chinese jet.

2001 – Algerian national Ahmed Ressam, accused of bringing explosives into the United States just days before the millennium celebrations, was convicted twice in the same day — first in France for belonging to a group supporting Islamic militants, then in Los Angeles on terror charges.

2001 – Bosnian Croats stoned Nato peacekeepers after police and troops seized the Hercegovacka Banka and its 10 branches. The bank was believed to be used by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) to promote a separate Croatian ministate.

2003 – In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom 18 Kurdish fighters were killed and 45 wounded in northern Iraq when a US warplane mistakenly bombed a convoy. The 1st US transport plane landed at Baghdad Airport.

2003 – US forces near Baghdad reportedly found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range Rockets, BM-21 missiles, equipped with sarin and mustard gas and “ready to fire.” David Bloom (39), NBC correspondent, died of a pulmonary embolism south of Baghdad.

2003 – Ahmed Chalabi, Iraqi exile leader, was airlifted by the US along with 700 “freedom fighters” to southern Iraq to join coalition troops and form the nucleus of a new national army.

2003 – Afghan officials announced a plan to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate an estimated 100,000 fighters over the next 3 years.

2004 – Insurgents and rebellious Shiites mounted a string of attacks across Iraq’s south and U.S. Marines launched a major assault on the turbulent city of Fallujah. Up to a dozen Marines were killed in Ramadi. Two more coalition soldiers were reported killed. US warplanes firing rockets destroyed four houses in the besieged city of Fallujah.

2005 – In southeast Afghanistan a US military helicopter crashed in bad weather. 15 US service members and 3 American civilians were killed when their Chinook helicopter crashed.

2011 – Ecuador expels the United States ambassador over Wikileaks diplomatic cables alleging corruption within the Ecuadorian police force.

2012 – A United States Navy FA-18 Hornet crashes into an apartment complex in the US city of Virginia Beach, Virginia with minimal injuries and no fatalities.

April 7th ~

1712 – There was a slave revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks.

1776 – Continental brig Lexington captures British Edward. Commanded by Capt. John Barry, Lexington dropped down the Delaware River 26 March and slipped through the British blockade 6 April. The following day she fell in with British sloop Edward, a tender to the frigate Liverpool. After a fierce fight which lasted about an hour Edward struck her colors. Lexington took her prize into Philadelphia and as soon as the ship was back in fighting trim, Barry put to sea again.

1788 – American Pioneers to the Northwest Territory arrive at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, establishing Marietta, Ohio, as the first permanent American settlement of the new United States in the Northwest Territory, and opening the westward expansion of the new country.

1798 – The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. The Mississippi Territory was expanded in 1804 and again in 1812 until it extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the southern border of Tennessee. (Georgia gave up the northern portion in 1802, and the Gulf Coast region was acquired from Spain.) Originally Mississippi Territory included what is now Alabama, and 9 months before Mississippi was admitted into the Union in 1817, the Alabama Territory to the east was separated out on March 3. The Territory of Mississippi was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed until December 10, 1817, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Mississippi.

1805 – The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

1818 – Gen. Andrew Jackson captured St. Marks, FL, from the Seminole Indians. Jackson had gathered his forces at Fort Scott in March 1818, including 800 U.S. Army regulars, 1,000 Tennessee volunteers, 1,000 Georgia militia, and about 1,400 friendly Lower Creek warriors (under command of Brigadier General William McIntosh, a Creek chief).

On March 15, Jackson’s army entered Florida, marching down the Apalachicola River. When they reached the site of the Negro Fort, destroyed two years earlier, Jackson had his men construct a new fort, Fort Gadsden. The army then set out for the Mikasuki villages around Lake Miccosukee. The Indian town of Tallahassee was burned on March 31, and the town of Miccosukee was taken the next day. More than 300 Indian homes were destroyed.

Jackson then turned south, reaching St. Marks on April 6. At St. Marks Jackson seized the Spanish fort. There he found Alexander George Arbuthnot, a Scottish trader working out of the Bahamas. He traded with the Indians in Florida and had written letters to British and American officials on behalf of the Indians. He was rumored to be selling guns to the Indians and to be preparing them for war. He probably was selling guns, since the main trade item of the Indians was deer skins, and they needed guns to hunt the deer.

Two Indian leaders, Josiah Francis, a Red Stick Creek, also known as the “Prophet”, and Homathlemico, had been captured when they had gone out to an American ship flying the British Union Flag that had anchored off of St. Marks. As soon as Jackson arrived at St. Marks, the two Indians were brought ashore and hanged without trial.

1862 – Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh said: “I saw an open field… so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across… in any direction, stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground.” More than 9,000 Americans died.

April 7th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Battle of Charleston, SC. The Federal fleet attack on Fort Sumter failed. The First Battle of Charleston Harbor was an engagement near Charleston, South Carolina during the American Civil War. The striking force was a fleet of nine ironclad warships of the Union Navy, including seven monitors that were improved versions of the original USS Monitor. A Union Army contingent associated with the attack took no active part in the battle. The ships, under command of Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, attacked the Confederate defenses near the entrance to Charleston Harbor.

Navy Department officials in Washington hoped for a stunning success that would validate a new form of warfare, with armored warships mounting heavy guns reducing traditional forts. Du Pont had been given seven of the Passaic class monitors, the powerful New Ironsides, and the experimental ironclad Keokuk. Other naval operations were sidetracked as their resources were diverted to the attack on Charleston.

After a long period of preparation, conditions of tide and visibility allowed the attack to proceed. The slow monitors got into position rather late in the afternoon, and when the tide turned, Du Pont had to suspend the operation. Firing had occupied less than two hours, and the ships had been unable to penetrate even the first line of harbor defense. The fleet retired with one in a sinking condition and most of the others damaged.

One sailor in the fleet was killed and twenty-one were wounded, while five Confederate soldiers were killed and eight wounded. After consulting with his captains, Du Pont concluded that his fleet had little chance to succeed. He therefore declined to renew the battle the next morning.

1917 – Navy takes control of all wireless radio stations in the U.S. With the US declaration of war on Germany came Executive Order 2585, which cited the presidential powers enumerated in the Radio Act of 1912 by calling for the complete government take over of all necessary radio stations, while calling for the closing of unnecessary ones. Amateur stations along with any commercial station for which there was no foreseeable use by the Navy were to be completely shut down, or in the case of home made sets, dismantled. Commercial and private radio was henceforth, completely shut down for the duration of the war, and for the only time in American history, made a full government monopoly.

1922 – U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Naval Reserve #3, “Teapot Dome,” in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair.

1927 – Philo Farnsworth (21) demonstrated a working prototype of a TV. AT&T Bell Labs scientists invented long-distance TV transmission. An audience in New York saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television. His first tele-electronic image was transmitted on a glass slide in his SF lab at 202 Green St.

1933 – “Near beer” (3.2 beer) became legal after FDR signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, which had made drinking alcohol a federal crime. Prohibition ended when Utah became the 38th state to ratify the 21st Amendment.

1941 – US naval and air bases open in Bermuda. The carrier Ranger and other ships are to be based there as the Central Atlantic Neutrality Patrol. These forces will be considerably increased by three battleships and two carriers later in April and during May and June.

April 7th ~ {continued...}

1942 – The Navy Department today announced that Negro volunteers will be accepted for enlistment for general service in the reserve components of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard. All ratings in those three branches of the Naval Service will be opened to them, and recruiting is to be begun as soon as a suitable training station is established. A public announcement will be made when actual recruiting gets under way.

In making this announcement officials stated that the same physical and mental entrance standards required of all Navy personnel is to be required of Negroes. It was added when Negro sailors are to be utilized for duty in District craft of various kind, in maritime activities around shore establishments, in Navy Yards, and in the Navy’s new construction crews and companies which will be employed in developing bases outside the United States’ continental limits. Recruiting of Negroes for service in the Messman Branch is to continue without change or interruption.

1942 – US President Roosevelt authorizes the American commanders in the Philippines to take any necessary steps. On the Bataan peninsula, the situation for the allies continues to worsen as the Japanese continue to advance, with the greatest gains on the east side of the peninsula. The American and Filipino allies are now withdrawn to a line running inland from Limao. General Wainwright in response to the President’s order withdraws as many of his men as possible to the island of Corregidor in Manilla Bay.

1943 – British and American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa, forming a solid line against the German army. Axis forces are rapidly retreating from the Wadi Akarit Line.

1943 – In an effort to disrupt the American buildup in the Solomons, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto mounts an air offensive known as Operation I. The Japanese 11th Air Fleet, based on Rabaul, Kavieng and Buin is reinforced by pilots and aircraft of the carriers Zuikaku, Shokaku, Junyo and Hiyo. This leaves the Imperial Navy with almost no trained pilots. The attacks begin with a raid against Guadalcanal and Tulagi by 180 planes in which a destroyer and two other vessels are sunk.

1945 – In the East China Sea, the Japanese battleship Yamato is sighted by planes from the American carrier groups which attack the battleship in two waves, involving 380 aircraft. The Yamato suffers 10 torpedo hits and 5 bomb hits before sinking. Some 2498 Japanese are killed on board the battleship. The planes, from US Task Force 58, also sink the Japanese cruiser Yahagi and 4 destroyers accompanying the battleship. A total of 10 planes are lost.

1945 – American P-51 Mustang fighters, based on Iwo Jima, escort B-29 Superfortress bombers on a raid to Tokyo.

1945 – Japanese Kamikaze attacks damage the carrier USS Hancock and the battleship Maryland as well as other ships.

1945 – First two Navy flight nurses land on an active battlefield (Iwo Jima): ENS Jane Kendeigh, USNR, and LTJG Ann Purvis, USN.

1945 – Most of US 1st and 9th Armies are heavily engaged around the Ruhr pocket. Among the gains in the Allied advance to the east is Gottingen. Free French paratroops are dropped north of Zuider Zee in Holland.

1947 – Arab students, influenced by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the Baath Party. Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of German philosopher Johann Fichte. This became a holiday in Iraq until abolished in 2003.

April 7th ~ {continued...}

1954 – At a news conference while describing the importance of defending Dienbienphu in Vietnam, President Eisenhower articulates the “Domino Theory” of confronting Communist aggression. “You have a row of dominoes set up and you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have the beginning of a disintegration that will have the most profound influences.

1965 – President Johnson, in a policy speech at Johns Hopkins University, says that the United States is prepare to engage in unconditional discussions to end the war. He then lays out a number of conditions. He also calls for $1 billion in aid for Southeast Asia. North Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union will reject these proposals.

1966 – The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.

1967 – Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara announces plans to build a fortified barrier just south of the DMZ to curb the infiltration of troops and arms into South Vietnam.

1969 – The Internet’s symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1 entitled “Host Software”, was written by Steve Crocker of the University of California, Los Angeles.

1971 – President Nixon pledged a withdrawal of 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.

1971 – President Nixon ordered Lt. Calley, imprisoned for the My Lai massacre, freed.

1972 – The North Vietnamese offensive in Quangtri Province slows. Good weaher allows South Vietnamese pilots to bomb Communist troop concentrations. Communist troops take Locninh, a district capital in Binhlong Province. 15,000 ARVN troops are surrounded by NVA while retreating form Locninh to Anloc.

1978 – Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.

1979 – Launching of first Trident submarine, USS Ohio (SSBN-726) at Groton, CT. USS Ohio (SSBN-726/SSGN-726), the lead boat of her class of nuclear-powered fleet ballistic missile submarines, was the fourth vessel of the United States Navy to be named for the 17th state. She was commissioned with the hull designation of SSBN-726, and with her conversion to a guided missile submarine she was re-designated SSGN-726.

1980 – U.S. broke relations with Iran during the hostage crises. Pres. Carter ordered all Iranian diplomats expelled from the US and prohibited any further exports to the nation.

1983 – Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first US space walk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.

1988 – Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader Najibullah met in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent. They later issued a joint statement, announcing an to end the civil war in Afghanistan and withdraw Soviet troops.

April 7th ~ {continued...}

1990 – Former national security adviser John M. Poindexter was convicted of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. However, a federal appeals court later reversed the convictions.

1991 – US military planes began airdropping supplies to Kurdish refugees who were facing starvation and exposure in the snow-covered mountains of northern Iraq. The United States warned Iraq not to interfere with the relief effort.

1993 – European warplanes began arriving in Italy, prepared to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1999 – The US State Dept. made public a list of Serb commanders whose names were to be sent to the Yugoslav was crimes tribunal in The Hague.

1999 – Spyros Kyprianou, the acting president of Cyprus, planned to fly to Belgrade to negotiate the release of the 3 American soldiers held by Serbia.

1999 – Heavy NATO bombing in Pristina, Kosovo. The Provincial Executive Council Building, which housed the offices of Zoran Andjelkovic, Kosovo’s top Serbian official, were was hit by bombs.

2001 – The $297 million Mars Odyssey was launched on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the Red Planet and was expected to arrive near Mars Oct 24. A 2-year orbit to map the planet’s chemistry and minerals was planned.

2001 – China rejected US statements of regret and continued to demand an apology for the April 1st collision between a US spy plane and Chinese jet.

2001 – In Vietnam a Russian-made M-17 helicopter carrying a team searching for American MIAs crashed and all aboard were reported killed. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 9 Vietnamese and 7 Americans the next day.

2003 – In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces in tanks and armored vehicles stormed into the center of Baghdad, seizing Saddam Hussein’s Sijood and Republican palaces. As many as 5 marines were killed. Many Iraqis died in constant suicidal attacks.

2003 – A US warplane dropped 4 precision-guided 2,000-pound JDAMs and left a smoking crater 60 feet deep in the upscale al-Mansour section of western Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein was believed to have been in a meeting with top officials.

2003 – Capt. Harry Alexander Hornbuckle on the road to Baghdad led 80 US soldiers against 300 Iraqi and Syrian fighters. 200 enemy were killed with no US casualties.

2004 – The US government issued the 1st license for a manned suborbital rocket to Scaled Composites of Mojave headed by Burt Rutan.

2004 – A U.S.-led multinational force trying to bring stability to Haiti helped detain Wilford Ferdinand, a top rebel figure.

2004 – Militiamen loyal to al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, clashed with Polish troops in Karbala, and Muntadhir al-Mussawi, an aide to the cleric, was killed.

2004 – In Iraq 2 German counter-terrorism GSG-9 security agents were ambushed and went missing while on a routine trip from Jordan to Baghdad.

2005 – Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, was named Iraq’s interim prime minister; Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was sworn in as interim president.

2006 – At 10 o’clock UTC NASA’s Pluto probe New Horizons crossed the orbit of Mars, after 78 days journey. This is a new Earth-to-Mars-distance flight record.

April 8th ~

1789 – The U.S. House of Representatives held its first meeting.

1812 – Marines participated in the sea battle between the USS Hyder Ally and HMS General Monk.

1823 – Marines chased pirates east of Havana, Cuba.

1832 – Some 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry left Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk War.

1864 – The Red River campaign of Union General Nathaniel Banks grinds to a halt when Confederate General Richard Taylor routs Banks’ army at Mansfield, Louisiana. The Red River campaign, which had begun a month earlier, was an attempt by the Union to invade Confederate Texas from Shreveport, Louisiana. Banks, accompanied by a flotilla on the Red River, would move northwest across the state and rendezvous at Shreveport with a force under General Frederick Steele moving from Little Rock, Arkansas.

The slow-moving Banks approached Mansfield and opted to take a shorter road to Shreveport than one that ran along the Red River. Not only was the road narrow, it was far away from the gun support offered by the Union flotilla on the river. Banks’ troops ran into Taylor’s force and a skirmish erupted. At 4:00 p.m., Taylor ordered an all-out assault on the Yankees. The Rebels withered a heavy fire before breaking the Union lines and sending the Federals in a disorganized retreat. The Yankees fell back three miles before reinforcements stopped the Confederate advance.

Banks suffered 113 men killed, 581 wounded, and 1,541 missing, while Taylor had about 1,500 total casualties. But Banks was now in retreat, and the Red River campaign was failing. Taylor attacked again the next day, but this time Banks’ men held the Confederates at bay. Banks was unnerved, though, and he began to retreat back down the Red River without penetrating into Texas.

1865 – General Robert E. Lee’s retreat was cut off near Appomattox Court House. Lee requested to meet with Gen Ulysses Grant to discuss possible surrender.

1913 – The US Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, requiring direct election of senators.

1914 – U.S. and Colombia signed a treaty concerning Panama Canal Zone.

1918 – The US First Aero Squadron was assigned to the Western Front for the first time on observation duty.

1918 – Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York City’s financial district.

1925 – First planned night landings on a carrier, USS Langley, by VF-1.

April 8th ~ {continued...}

1935 – The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was approved by Congress. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression of the 1930s when almost 25 percent of Americans were unemployed. The WPA created low-paying federal jobs intended to provide immediate relief. The WPA put 8.5 million jobless to work on make-work projects as diverse as constructing highways, bridges and public buildings to arts programs like the Federal Writers’ Project.

1942 – Overwhelmed by numbers and short of food and equipment, the American and Filipino forces remaining on the Bataan peninsula are ordered to destroy their equipment prior to a surrender.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.

1945 – On Okinawa, the forces of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, attacking northward on the island, have cut the neck of the Motobu Peninsula and US 6th Marine Division begins operations to clear it of Japanese forces. At sea, there are less intense Kamikaze attacks.

1945 – The US forces on Negros are reinforced by the landing of a second regiment, in the northwest of the island, near Bacolod.

1945 – US 7th Army units capture Schweinfurt. Other Allied armies farther north also advance.

1946 – The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for the last time.

1950 – A US Navy privateer airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane over Latvia and shot it down.

1951 – 1st of 4 detonations, Operation Greenhouse nuclear test.

1952 – President Truman, to avert a strike, ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills after companies rejected Wage Stabilization Board recommendations. Truman’s attempt to take over the US steel industry was later denied by the Supreme Court and the mills were shut down by strikers for 8 weeks.

1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Navy LTCDR Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language).

1962 – Bay of Pigs invaders got thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.

1964 – Gemini 1 launched. Gemini 1 was the first unmanned test flight of the Gemini spacecraft in NASA’s Gemini program. Its main objectives were to test the structural integrity of the new spacecraft and modified Titan II ICBM. It was also the first test of the new tracking and communication systems for the Gemini program and provided training for the ground support crews for the first manned missions.

The spacecraft stayed attached to the second stage of the rocket. The mission lasted for three orbits while test data were taken, but the spacecraft stayed in orbit for almost 64 orbits until the orbit decayed due to atmospheric drag. The spacecraft was not intended to be recovered; in fact, holes were drilled through its heat shield to ensure it would not survive re-entry.

1965 – The US flies 63 sorties against Vietcong concentrations in Kontum Province.

April 8th ~ {continued...}

1968 – 42 US and 37 ARVN battalions begin the largest offensive to date in Vietnam in an operation that will last nearly two months. Operation Toan Thang (Complete Victory) is designed to destroy the Vietcong and NVA forces operating in the Capital Military District.

1968 – Operation Burlington Trail begins, by the 198th Infantry Brigade in Quang Tri Province. By 11 November this operation will claim 1931 enemy casualties.

1969 – Five waves of US B-52s raid suspected enemy camps near the Cambodian border.

1972 – North Vietnamese 2nd Division troops drive out of Laos and Cambodia to open a third front of their offensive in the Central Highlands, attacking at Kontum and Pleiku in attempt to cut South Vietnam in two. If successful, this would give North Vietnam control of the northern half of South Vietnam. The three-front attack was part of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive (later known as the “Easter Offensive”), which had been launched on March 30. The offensive was a massive invasion by North Vietnamese forces designed to strike the knockout blow that would win the war for the communists.

The attacking force included 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments, with more than 120,000 troops and approximately 1,200 tanks and other armored vehicles. North Vietnam had a number of objectives in launching the offensive: impressing the communist world and its own people with its determination; capitalizing on U.S. antiwar sentiment and possibly hurting President Richard Nixon’s chances for re-election; proving that “Vietnamization” was a failure; damaging the South Vietnamese forces and government stability; gaining as much territory as possible before a possible truce; and accelerating negotiations on their own terms.

Initially, the South Vietnamese defenders in each case were almost overwhelmed, particularly in the northernmost provinces, where they abandoned their positions in Quang Tri and fled south in the face of the enemy onslaught. At Kontum and An Loc, the South Vietnamese were more successful in defending against the North Vietnamese attacks. Although the defenders suffered heavy casualties, they managed to hold out with the aid of U.S. advisors and American airpower. Fighting continued all over South Vietnam into the summer months, but eventually the South Vietnamese forces prevailed against the invaders, even retaking Quang Tri in September. With the communist invasion blunted, President Nixon declared that the South Vietnamese victory proved the viability of his Vietnamization program, instituted in 1969 to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese armed forces.

1975 – After a weeklong mission to South Vietnam, Gen. Frederick Weyand, U.S. Army Chief of Staff and former Vietnam commander, reports to Congress that South Vietnam cannot survive without additional military aid. Questioned again later by reporters who asked if South Vietnam could survive with additional aid, Weyand replied there was “a chance.” Weyand had been sent to Saigon by President Gerald Ford to assess the South Vietnamese forces and their chances for survival against the attacking North Vietnamese. The South Vietnamese were on the verge of collapse.

The situation emboldened the North Vietnamese, who launched a new campaign in March 1975, in which the South Vietnamese forces fell back in total disarray. Once again, the United States did nothing. The South Vietnamese abandoned Pleiku and Kontum in the Highlands with very little fighting. Then Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang fell to the communist onslaught. The North Vietnamese continued to attack south along the coast toward Saigon, defeating the South Vietnamese forces at each encounter.

As Weyand reported to Congress, the South Vietnamese were battling three North Vietnamese divisions at Xuan Loc, the last defense line before Saigon. Indeed, it became the last battle in the defense of the Republic of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese forces managed to hold out against the attackers until they ran out of tactical air support and weapons, finally abandoning Xuan Loc to the communists on April 21st. Saigon fell to the communists on April 30th.

1981 – General of the Army Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group who ensured Allied victory over Germany, dies. During the opening days of World War II, he commanded the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was later placed at the head of the II Corps for the North African campaign, proving instrumental in the fall of Tunisia and the surrender of over 250,000 Axis soldiers.

He led forces in the invasion and capture of Sicily and joined his troops in the Normandy invasion, which culminated in the symbolic liberation of Paris by Bradley’s troops. He was promoted to commander of the U.S. 12th Army Group, the largest force ever placed under an American group commander, and led successful operations in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. After the war, Bradley was chosen as the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ultimately promoted to the position of General of the Army in 1950. In 1951, he published his reminiscences of the war in A Soldier’s Story. He retired in 1953.

April 8th ~ {continued...}

1994 – Smoking was banned in Pentagon and all US military bases.

1994 – Kofi Annan was the head of UN Peacekeeping operations when the commander of UN forces in Rwanda warned that the Kigali government was planning to slaughter Tutsis. Annan’s office ordered Gen’l. Romeo Dallaire of Canada not to protect the informant or to confiscate arms stockpiles. Annan later claimed that he lacked the military might and political backing to stop the slaughter of more than 500,000 people.

1995 – Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in an interview with AP Network News and “Newsweek” magazine to promote his memoirs, called America’s Vietnam War policy “terribly wrong.”

1997 – The Columbia space shuttle landed with its mission shortened by 12 days due to a faulty fuel cell [a defective generator].

1998 – In Bosnia NATO forces arrested Miroslav Kvocka and Mladen Radic, both whom were charged for war crimes at the Omarska camp near Prijedor where scores of Muslim and Croat prisoners were killed in 1992.

1999 – At a White House news conference, President Clinton said NATO could still win in Kosovo by air power alone, and he expressed hope for an early release of three American POW’s.

1999 – NATO bombing in Yugoslavia blocked freighter and barge traffic on the Danube.

2000 – The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed that personnel action had been taken following the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy during the NATO war against Yugoslavia; one employee was reportedly fired.

2000 – A Marine Corps aircraft, MV-22 tilt-rotor Osprey, with at least 18 people aboard crashed at the Avra Valley Airport near Tucson. All 19 Marines onboard were killed in the crash.

2001 – Sec. of State Colin Powell expressed sorrow for the Chinese pilot lost on Apr 1, but the Chinese continued to demand that the US apologize reiterated a demand that the US stop all military surveillance off the Chinese coast. U.S. officials said President Bush was sending a letter to the wife of a missing Chinese fighter pilot as a humanitarian gesture.

2002 – The space shuttle Atlantis took off for an 11-day mission to the ISS carrying latticework and a rail car.

April 8th ~ {continued...}

2002 – Saddam Hussein cuts off Iraqi oil exports to the west in a bid to force Israel to abandon its West Bank offensive. Iraq says the oil supplies will be cut off for 30 days unless Israel pulls out before then.

2003 – In the 21st day of Operation Iraqi Freedom George W. Bush and Tony Blair met in Northern Ireland and endorsed a “vital role” for the United Nations when fighting ends in Iraq.

2003 – In Iraq British forces began establishing the first post-war administration, putting a local sheik into power in the southern city of Basra. Looting erupted shortly after their troops took control of the city. A US warplane was shot down near Baghdad. US forces seized Rasheed military airport.

2004 – Condoleeza Rice, US national security advisor, testified before the National Commission on Terrorism Attacks and contended that that Pres. Bush did not ignore threats of terrorism in the months before Sep 11, 2001.

2004 – In Afghanistan troops loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum overran Maymana, the center of Faryab province. In the south, clashes left at least 7 people dead, including two Afghan soldiers, and two police officers killed in an attack by suspected Taliban.

2004 – Shiite Muslim militias held partial control over three southern Iraqi cities, Kufa, Kut and Najaf. In escalating violence, gunmen kidnapped eight South Korean civilians. The US military announced 5 deaths. The estimated Iraqi toll was 460.

2004 – In a dramatic video, Iraqi insurgents revealed they had kidnapped 3 Japanese and threatened to burn them alive in 3 days unless Japan agrees to withdraw its troops.

2004 – In the Philippines 6 members of the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group including Hamsiraji Sali, a senior leader wanted by the US, were killed in a clash with government troops on southern Basilan island. In Oct three informants received $1 million for their help.

2005 – In Washington DC Humayun A. Khan (47) of Islamabad, Pakistan, was indicted for supplying India and Pakistan with outlawed components for nuclear weapons and ballistic missile systems.

2005 – Eric Rudolph agrees to plead guilty to four bombings including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in exchange for four life sentences.

2007 – US forces captured a leading al-Qaeda militant on Sunday, responsible for a wave of deadly car bombings in the capital and a close aide of al-Qaeda’s Baghdad commander. The captured militant acted as a point man for the al-Qaeda commander. He was detained along with two other known al-Qaeda militants.

2008 – Speaking before the Congress, General David Petraeus urged delaying troop withdrawals, saying, “I’ve repeatedly noted that we haven’t turned any corners, we haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel,” referencing the comments of then President Bush and former Vietnam-era General William Westmoreland. When asked by the Senate if reasonable people could disagree on the way forward, Petraeus said, “We fight for the right of people to have other opinions.”

2009 – Chinese and Russian cyber-spies allegedly infiltrate the United States’ electrical grid.

2009 – Somali pirates hijack the Danish container ship MV Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean.

2010 – United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign a new arms reduction treaty that will cut both countries’ arsenals by a third.

2012 – Afghanistan and the United States reach an agreement giving the Government of Afghanistan more control over night raids.

2013 – Wikileaks announces the release of 1.7 million United States diplomatic and intelligence documents from 1973–1976 when Henry Kissinger was United States Secretary of State.

2013 – The Islamic State of Iraq enters the Syrian Civil War and begins by declaring a merger with the Al-Nusra Front under the name Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham.

April 9th ~

1585 – The expedition organised by Sir Walter Raleigh departs England for Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina) to establish the Roanoke Colony.

1682 – The French explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the Mississippi River. La Salle returned to France after having discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River. La Salle claimed lower Mississippi River and all lands that touched it for France.

1731 – Robert Jenkins lost an ear. The event started a war between Britain and Spain. The war took its name from Robert Jenkins, captain of the ship Rebecca, who claimed Spanish coast guards had cut off his ear in 1731. He exhibited the ear in the House of Commons and so aroused public opinion that the government of the British Prime Minister Robert Walpole reluctantly declared war on Oct. 23rd, 1739.

Basically, the war was one of commercial rivalry between England and Spain. By the Treaty of Utecht (1713), which ended Queen Anne’s war, Britain was allowed to participate in slave traffic with the Spanish colonies. A special Spanish fleet, however, interfered with this activity and the Spanish also objected to the English log wooders operating on the coast of Honduras. The other cause of the war was the continued dispute over the boundary of Spanish Florida in relation to Georgia. As soon as war was declared, Gov. James Edward Oglethorpe called on the citizens of Georgia and South Carolina to join in an invasion of Florida. The Spanish retaliated by attempting to invade those colonies by sea.

1782 – Battle of the Saintes begins. The Battle of the Saintes (known to the French as the Bataille de la Dominique, or Battle of Dominica) was an important naval battle that took place over 4 days through 12 April 1782, during the American War of Independence, and was a victory of a British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney over a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse forcing the French and Spanish to abandon a planned invasion of Jamaica.

The battle is named after the Saintes (or Saints), a group of islands between Guadeloupe and Dominica in the West Indies. The French fleet defeated here by the Royal Navy was the same French fleet that had blockaded the British Army during the Siege of Yorktown. The French suffered heavy casualties and many were taken prisoner including the Comte de Grasse. Four French ships of the line were captured (including the flagship) as well as one destroyed. Rodney was credited with pioneering the tactic of “breaking the line” in the battle, though this is disputed.

1861 – Second relief convoy for Fort Sumter left New York.

1864 – The Battle of Pleasant Hill, LA, left 2,870 casualties.

1865 – Federals captured Ft. Blakely, Alabama.

April 9th ~ {continued...}

1865 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. For more than a week, Lee had tried to outrun Grant to the west of Richmond and Petersburg. After a ten-month siege of the two cities, the Union forces broke through the defenses and forced Lee to retreat. The Confederates moved along the Appomattox River, with Union General Phillip Sheridan shadowing them to the south. Lee’s army had little food, and they began to desert in large numbers on the retreat. When Lee arrived at Appomattox, he found that his path was blocked. He had not choice but to request a meeting with Grant.

They met at a house in Appomattox at 2:00 p.m. on the afternoon of April 9th. Lee was resplendent in his dress uniform and a fine sword at his side. Grant arrived wearing a simple soldier’s coat that was muddy from his long ride. The great generals spoke of their service in the Mexican War, and then set about the business at hand. Grant offered generous terms. Officers could keep their side arms, and all men would be immediately released to return home. Any officers and enlisted men who owned horses could take them home, Grant said, to help put crops in the field and carry their families through the next winter. These terms, said Lee, would have “the best possible effect upon the men,” and “will do much toward conciliating our people.” The papers were signed and Lee prepared to return to his men.

In one of the great ironies of the war, the surrender took place in the parlor of Wilmer McClean’s home. McClean had once lived along the banks of Bull Run, the site of the first major battle of the war in July 1861. Seeking refuge from the fighting, McClean decided to move out of the Washington-Richmond corridor to try to avoid the fighting that would surely take place there. He moved to Appomattox Court House only to see the war end in his home. Although there were still Confederate armies in the field, the war was officially over. Four years of bloodshed had left a devastating mark on the country: 360,000 Union and 260,000 Confederate soldiers had perished during the Civil War.

1866 – A Civil Rights Bill passed over Pres Andrew Johnson’s veto to secure for former slaves all the rights of citizenship intended by the 13th Amendment. The president was empowered to use the Army to enforce the law. This formed the basis for the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1867 – Passing by a single vote, the United States Senate ratifies a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska.

1941 – Commissioning of USS North Carolina, which carried 9 16-inch guns.

1941 – The U.S. and Denmark signed an “agreement relating to the defense of Greenland.” The Coast Guard, because of its experience in the Arctic environment, was the principal service to carry out the agreement. The first action seen by U.S. forces in World War II was the seizure of a Nazi weather station and the seizure of a Nazi vessel by the cutter Northland just before the United States declared war.

April 9th ~ {continued...}

1942 – American General King surrenders 75,000 men (12,000 Americans) to the Japanese. A death march begins for the prisoners as they are taken to San Fernado, 100 miles away. Many thousands of them die on the march. Resistance continues in isolated areas of Luzon and other islands. General Wainwright and his troops continue to hold out on Corregidor Island. The prisoners were at once led 55 miles from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan peninsula, to San Fernando, on what became known as the “Bataan Death March.”

At least 600 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos died because of the extreme brutality of their captors, who starved, beat, and kicked them on the way; those who became too weak to walk were bayoneted. Those who survived were taken by rail from San Fernando to POW camps, where another 16,000 Filipinos and at least 1,000 Americans died from disease, mistreatment, and starvation. After the war, the International Military Tribunal, established by MacArthur, tried Lieutenant General Homma Masaharu, commander of the Japanese invasion forces in the Philippines. He was held responsible for the death march, a war crime, and was executed by firing squad on April 3rd, 1946.

1943 – Re-establishment of Commodore rank.

1945 – In the attacks against the Ruhr pocket, US 9th Army units penetrate into Essen and reach the famous Krupp factories. Other British and American units, including some more from US 9th Army, are advancing near the Leine River to the east.

1945 – The Allied spring offensive begins with attacks by British 8th Army (General McCreery). Initially, the Polish 2nd Corps advances along Route 9 toward Imola supported by British 5th and 10th Corps the right and left flanks. The objectives of the offensive include Ferrara and Bologna while the US 5th Army, which is scheduled to begin operations on April 14th, is to strike at Bologna and past Modena to the Po River.

1945 – A Liberty ship loaded with aircraft bombs blows up in Bari harbor, Italy killing 360 and injuring 1730.

1945 – On Okinawa, there are unsuccessful attacks by US 24th Corps around Kakazu along the Japanese held Shuri Line. At sea there are less intense Kamikaze attacks. However, in two days of the Japanese suicide strikes have badly damaged 3 destroyers and 2 other ships.

1945 – In the Sulu Archipelago, the US 163rd Infantry Regiment, of US 41st Division, lands on Jolo. There is no Japanese resistance. Other 41st Division units land on Busuanga in the Calamian group.

1951 – Chinese communists opened the Hwachon Dam gates, flooding the Pukhan River Valley.

1953 – Marines regained “Carson” Hill during fighting in Korea.

1959 – NASA announced the selection of America’s first seven astronauts for the US first orbital flight in 1962 under the Mercury program: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.

April 9th ~ {continued...}

1963 – British statesman Winston Churchill was made an honorary U.S. citizen.

1964 – Four days of major fighting begin in the Vietnam Mekong Delta. Four Americans are killed in a mortar barrage and a US helicopter base is forced to evacuate.

1965 – In the course of raids over North Vietnam, four US carrier based F4 Phantoms are engaged by Chinese MiG fighters based on the Chinese island of Hainan. One Phantom and its two pilots are lost to suspected fratricide.

1966 – Fears that South Vietnamese Premier Ky might be replaced by a neutralist Buddhist lead to a meeting to re-evaluate Vietnam policy. Continuation of current policies is the result, but the meeting is marked by a lack of optimism and minority calls for “cutting losses.”

1969 – Gallup reports that three out of five persons who have an opinion back President Nixon on the Vietnam War–44% approve, 30% reserved judgment or had no opinion, and 26% disapproved.

1969 – Workers uncover another 65 bodies of Vietcong execution squads in hue during the Tet Offensive.

1970 – Cambodia withdraws all of its military forces form Svayrieng Province, also known as the “Parrot’s Beak,” abandoning it to the Vietnamese Communists.

1981 – The U.S. Navy nuclear submarine USS George Washington accidentally collides with the Nissho Maru, a Japanese cargo ship, sinking it.

1983 – The space shuttle Challenger ended its first mission with a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1987 – Responding to charges of bugging at the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Soviet officials displayed microphones and other gadgets they said were found in Soviet missions in the United States.

1987 – As a result of renewed emphasis on special operations in the 1980s, the Special Forces Branch was established as a basic branch of the Army effective April 9, 1987, by General Orders No. 35, June 19th, 1987. The first Special Forces unit in the Army was formed on June 11, 1952, when the 10th Special Forces Group was activated at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. A major expansion of Special Forces occurred during the 1960s, with a total of eighteen groups organized in the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard.

1988 – The US imposed economic sanctions on Panama.

1992 – Former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega was convicted in Miami of eight drug and racketeering charges; he is serving a 30 -year prison sentence.

1993 – Four U.S. warplanes fired at artillery in northern Iraq; the Baghdad government denied provoking the attack with artillery fire at the planes.

1994 – The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on an 11 -day mission that included mapping the Earth’s surface in three dimensions.

April 9th ~ {continued...}

1995 – Two Palestinians blew themselves up outside two Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and killed seven Israeli soldiers and an American, Alisa Flatow (20). The Islamic Jihad and Hamas took responsibility. In 1998 a US district court judge ordered the government of Iran to pay $247 million in damages to the family of Flatow.

1997 – The CIA announced that its own errors may have led to demolition of an Iraqi ammunition bunker filled with chemical weapons at Kamisiyah in 1991. The CIA apologized to Gulf War veterans for failing to do a better job in supplying information to U.S. troops who blew up an Iraqi bunker later found to contain chemical weapons.

1998 – At Andersonville, Ga., the National Prisoner of War Museum opened at the site of the Civil War prison.

1999 – A $250 million Air Force satellite, intended to warn of missile launches, went into a useless orbit after being launched aboard a Titan IV.

1999 – NATO forces made air strikes across Yugoslavia on Orthodox Good Friday. Military industrial plants, fuel depots and communications facilities were hit. Reports of the rape and murder of 20 ethnic Albanian women at an army training camp near Djakovica was reported.

1999 – In Kacanik Yugoslav troops massacred a number of ethnic Albanians. When NATO troops arrive in June they found new graves with 81 markers.

1999 – Russia threatened to take military action against NATO and considered an offer by Serbia to form an alliance. Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of parliament, said that a proposal was discussed to aim Russia’s nuclear weapons at NATO countries.

2002 – Lynne Stewart, lawyer for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (in prison for seditious conspiracy), and 3 of Rahman’s followers were indicted for violating federal restrictions and passing covert messages.

2003 – Baghdad falls, ending Saddam Hussein’s 24-year rule. U.S. forces seized the deserted Baath Party ministries and helped tear down a huge iron statue of Saddam, photos and video of which became symbolic of the event. The abrupt fall of Baghdad was accompanied by massive civil disorder, including the looting of government buildings and drastically increased crime.

2003 – The US said it will move its main military base in South Korea out of the capital as soon as possible.

2003 – James Smith (59), a senior FBI counterintelligence agent, was arrested in LA along with Katrina Leung (49), prominent venture capitalist, for the alleged theft and transfer of a classified defense document to the Chinese government.

2004 – U.S. forces partially reoccupied Kut, the southern city seized by a rebellious Shiite militia, but an American -declared halt in Fallujah was undercut by bursts of gunfire on the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

2004 – Rebels attacked a convoy near Baghdad’s airport and kidnapped 2 US soldiers and 7 Halliburton construction employees. 4 bodies were found in the area a few days later.

2005 – Tens of thousands of Shiites marked the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with a protest against the American military presence at the square where Iraqis and U.S. troops toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein two years ago.

2010 – American and Russian physicists announce the creation of ununseptium, atomic element number 117.

2013 – The Islamic State of Iraq, having expanded into Syria, changes its name, now being known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The number of wilayah—provinces—which it claimed increased to 16. In addition to the seven Iraqi wilayah, the Syrian divisions, largely lying along existing provincial boundaries, are Al Barakah, Al Kheir, Ar-Raqqah, Al Badiya, Halab, Idlib, Hama, Damascus and the Coast. In Syria, ISIS’s seat of power is in Ar-Raqqah Governorate.

April 10th ~

1606 – The Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.

1790 – U.S. patent system was established. The Patent Board was made up of the Secretary of State, Secretary of War and the Attorney General and was responsible for granting patents on “useful and important” inventions. In the first three years, 47 patents were granted. Until 1888 miniature models of the device to be patented were required.

1794 – Matthew Calbraith Perry, the American Navy Commodore who opened Japan, was born.

1806 – Leonidas Polk (d.1864), bishop, Lt General (Confederate Army), was born.

1816 – Congress approves the creation of the Second Bank of the United States.

1827 – Lewis Wallace (d.1905), soldier, lawyer, diplomat and author (Ben Hur), was born. “As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.”

1862 – Union forces began the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.

1863 – Rebel General Earl Van Dorn attacked at Franklin, Tennessee.

1863 – An expedition led by Lieutenant Commander Selfridge of U.S.S. Conestoga cut across Beulah Bend, Mississippi, and destroyed guerrilla stations that had harassed Union shipping on the river.

1864 – Steaming toward Shreveport, Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboats and the Army transports arrived at Springfield Landing, Louisiana, where further progress was halted by Confederate ingenuity, which Porter later described to Major General W. T. Sherman: “When I arrived at Springfield Landing I found a sight that made me laugh. It was the smartest thing I ever knew the rebels to do. They had gotten that huge steamer, New Falls City, across Red River, 1 mile above Loggy Bayou, 15 feet of her on shore on each side, the boat broken down in the middle, and a sand bar making below her. An invitation in large letters to attend a ball in Shreveport was kindly left stuck up by the rebels, which invitation we were never able to accept.”

Before this obstruction could be removed, word arrived from Major General Banks of his defeat at the Battle of Sabine Cross-Roads near Grand Ecore and retreat toward Pleasant Mill. The transports and troops of Brigadier General T.K. Smith were ordered to return to the major force and join Banks. The high tide of the Union’s Red River campaign had been reached. From this point, with falling water level and increased Confederate shore fire, the gunboats would face a desperate battle to avoid being trapped above the Alexandria rapids.

April 10th ~ {continued...}

1865 – At Appomattox Court, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee issued General Order #9, his last orders to the Army of Northern Virginia. Seneca Indian Ely Parker was at his general’s side at Appomattox.

“After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them…I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen…I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

1877 – Federal troops were withdrawn from Columbia, SC.

1912 – The first wireless transmission was received on an airplane.

1930 – The first synthetic rubber is produced.

1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps, a tool for employing young men and improving the government’s vast holdings of western land, is created in Washington, D.C. One of the dozens of New Deal programs created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to fight the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was primarily designed to put thousands of unemployed young men to work on useful public projects.

Roosevelt put the program under the direction of his Secretary of Interior, Harold Ickes, who became an enthusiastic supporter. Since the vast majority of federal public land was in the West, Ickes created most of his CCC projects in that region. The young men who joined, however, came from all over the nation. It was the first time many had left their homes in the densely populated eastern states.

Many of them later remembered their time spent in the wide-open spaces of the West with affection, and many later returned to tour the region or become residents. Participation in the CCC was voluntary, although the various camps often adopted military-like rules of discipline and protocol.

Ickes put his CCC “armies” to work on a wide array of conservation projects. Some young men spent their days planting trees in national forests, while others built roads and dams, fought forest fires, or made improvements in national parks like Glacier and Yellowstone. In exchange for their labor, the CCC men received a minimal wage, part of which was automatically sent to their families back home.

The program thus provided employment for unskilled young men while simultaneously pumping federal money into the depressed national economy. The training provided by the CCC proved particularly valuable to the 77,000 Indian and Hispanic youths who worked in the Southwest. Many of these young men left the CCC able to drive and repair large trucks and tractors, skills that proved highly employable during WWII.

Likewise, many former CCC enlistees found the transition to life as a WWII soldier eased by their previous experience with military-like discipline. Despite the rigid regimentation and low pay, the CCC remained popular with both enlistees and the public throughout its history. By the time Congress abolished the agency in 1942, more than two million men had served, making the CCC one of the most successful government training and employment projects in history.

1941 – U.S. troops occupied Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.

April 10th ~ {continued...}

1941 – The President transferred ten Coast Guard cutters to England, stating that he found the defense of the United Kingdom vital to the defense of the United States. The cutters were of the 250-foot Lake class, consisting of Cayuga, Itasca, Saranac, Sebago, Shoshone, Champlain, Mendota, Chelan, Pontchartrain, and Tahoe. Coast Guardsmen trained British crews in Long Island Sound to operate the cutters.

1941 – USS Niblack, while rescuing survivors of torpedoed ship, depth charged German submarine; first action of WW II between U.S. and German navies.

1942 – About 12,000 Japanese land on Cebu. The small number of American defenders retreat inland.

1942 – The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the “Bataan Death March,” the prisoners were forced to march 85 miles in six days, with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, which was punctuated with atrocities committed by the Japanese guards, hundreds of Americans and many more Filipinos had died.

The day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began. Within a month, the Japanese had captured Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and the U.S. and Filipino defenders of Luzon were forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula. For the next three months, the combined U.S.-Filipino army, under the command of U.S. General Jonathan Wainwright, held out impressively despite a lack of naval and air support. Finally, on April 7, with his army crippled by starvation and disease, Wainwright began withdrawing as many troops as possible to the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay.

However, two days later, 75,000 Allied troops were trapped by the Japanese and forced to surrender. The next day, the Bataan Death March began. Of those who survived to reach the Japanese prison camp near Cabanatuan, few lived to celebrate U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s liberation of Luzon in 1945. In the Philippines, homage is paid to the victims of the Bataan Death March every April on Bataan Day, a national holiday that sees large groups of Filipinos solemnly rewalking parts of the death route.

1944 – German submarines U-515 and U-68 are sunk by elements of US Task Group 21.12 which includes the carrier Guadalcanal.

1945 – On Okinawa, after a massive preparatory barrage, the US 96th Infantry Division seizes part of Kakazu Ridge.

1945 – The Allies liberated their first Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald, north of Weimar, Germany.

1945 – On Luzon, the advance of US 14th Corps reaches Lamon Bay and the coastal town of Mauban is captured.

1945 – Hanover falls to the US 13th Corps (part of US 9th Army). US 3rd Army advances toward Erfurt and US 7th Army advances toward Nuremberg.

1945 – German Me 262 jet fighters shot down ten U.S. bombers near Berlin.

April 10th ~ {continued...}

1951 – The Defense Department issued an order effective May 1 lowering the induction standards for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The plan called for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to receive draftees for the first time since World War II.

1957 – The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months.

1963 – The USS Thresher nuclear-powered submarine failed to surface 220 miles east of Boston, Mass., in a disaster that claimed 129 lives. The second USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead boat of her class of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the United States Navy.

Her loss at sea in the North Atlantic during deep-diving tests approximately 220 miles east of Boston, Massachusetts was a watershed event for the U.S. Navy, leading to the implementation of a rigorous submarine safety program known as SUBSAFE. Judging by the 129 crew members and shipyard personnel who were killed in the incident, historic context and significance, the sinking of Thresher was then, and remains today, the world’s worst submarine disaster. As the first nuclear submarine lost at sea, its disappearance generated international shock and sympathy.

1965 – 5000 Marines stationed in the area of Danang are reinforced by 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines. One reinforced company is immediately sent to Phu Bai, eight miles south of Hue. The first Marine fixed-wing tactical aircraft also arrive at Danang, the F4B Phantom IIs of vMFA-531.

1966 – River Patrol Boats of River Patrol Force commenced operations on inland waters of South Vietnam.

1968 – President Johnson replaced General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam.

1968 – Over the next three days, US troops will recapture a lost Special Forces camp at Langvei, be driven out again, and then retake it once more.

1969 – The Communist offensive heats up. 45 mortar and rocket attacks occur during the night and increased ground fighting is reported in the Mekong Delta and northwest of Saigon.

1970 – Hundreds of ethnic Vietnamese are massacred by Cambodian troops in the village of Prasot in Svayrieng Province. The Cambodian government ascribes the deaths to “crossfire.”

1972 – The United States and the Soviet Union joined some 70 nations in signing an agreement banning biological warfare: The Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention. A defector in 1990 revealed that the Soviet biological weapons program was twice the size of the highest US intelligence estimates. The convention banned the development, production, and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxic weapons.

1972 – Although the U.S. command refuses to confirm publicly the location of targets, U.S. B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam for the first time since November 1967. The bombers struck in the vicinity of Vinh, 145 miles north of the Demilitarized Zone.

It was later acknowledged publicly that target priority during these attacks had been given to SAM-2 missile sites, which had made raids over North Vietnam increasingly hazardous. U.S. officials called Hanoi’s SAM-2 defenses “the most sophisticated air defenses in the history of air warfare.” These defenses consisted of advanced radar and lethally accurate air defense missiles.