This Date in Military History:

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23 October

4004BC– According to 17th century divine James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. John Lightfoot of Cambridge, the world was created on this day, a Sunday, at 9 a.m.

1775 – Continental Congress approved a resolution barring blacks from army.

1783 – Virginia emancipated slaves who fought for independence during the Revolutionary War.

1818 – The RC Monroe captured the armed brig Columbia inside the Virginia Capes. Columbia had been “cut out” of a Venezuelan fleet by pirates.

1861 – President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C. for all military-related cases.

1863 – General Grant arrived at Chattanooga and assumed command from General George Thomas.

1864 – Forces led by Union Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate Gen. Stirling Price’s army in Missouri. Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition had changed course from St. Louis and Jefferson City to Kansas City and Fort Leavenworth. As his army neared Kansas City, Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis’s Army of the Border blocked its way west, while Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton’s provisional cavalry division was closing on their rear. Price decided that he needed to deal with the two Union forces and decided to attack them one at a time. With Pleasonton still behind him, Price chose to strike Curtis at Westport first. Curtis had established strong defensive lines and during a four-hour battle, the Confederates hurled themselves at the Union forces but to no avail. The Rebels could not break the Union lines and retreated south. Westport was the decisive battle of Price’s Missouri Expedition, and from this point on, the Rebels were in retreat.

1917 – The 1st Infantry division, “Big Red One,” fired the 1st US shot in WW I. This morning the first American shell of the war was sent screaming toward German lines by a First Division artillery unit.

1918 – President Wilson felt satisfied that the Germans were accepting his armistice terms and agreed to transmit their request for an armistice to the Allies. The Germans had agreed to suspend submarine warfare, cease inhumane practices such as the use of poison gas, and withdraw troops back into Germany.

1918 – By the 22nd of the month III and V Corps had secured the Bois de Foret and Bois des Rappes and had pushed to the northern and western limits of the Bois de Bantheville. First Army prepares for final assault on Sedan.

1921 – Four unknown soldiers from the cemeteries of Asine-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme, and St. Mihiel were brought to the Hotel de Ville in France for final selection to commemorate the sacrifice of the 77,000 American servicemen who died during World War I. the US military selected bodies of unknown soldiers who died in France. One was chosen to be brought to Arlington National Cemetery. The chosen soldier would represent just one of many who would never be identified. The military service record describes the selection of the first unknown soldier out of a group of four: “The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death.” The selection of the first unknown soldier to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery was made at the Hotel de Ville. Sergeant Edward F. Younger was chosen to select which of the four unknown soldiers would be brought to the United States. Younger entered the mortuary room, “carrying a spray of white roses which had been donated by M. Brasseur Brulfer, a former member of the City Council. Sergeant Younger passing between two lines formed by the officials, entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted. General Duport stepped forward at the other end of the casket and saluted in the name of the French people. He was followed by the other officials present.” The casket was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with the inscription, “An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War.”

1939 – North of Murmansk, a German prize crew steers the US ship City of Flint into Kola Bay. The steamer was seized as contraband by a German cruiser. SS City of Flint, a freighter of the United States Merchant Marine, was the first American ship captured by the Germans during World War II. Under the command of Captain Joseph H. Gainard, City of Flint first became involved in the war when she rescued 200 survivors of the torpedoed British passenger liner SS Athenia in early September 1939. On October 9, City of Flint was carrying 4000 tons of lubricating oil from New York to Great Britain. (Panzerschiff) Deutschland seized her some 1200 miles out from New York, declaring her cargo to be contraband and the ship a prize of war. A German prize crew painted out all US insignia and hoisted the German ensign. To avoid the Royal Navy, the prize crew headed for Tromsø. The Norwegians, neutral at the time and disturbed by the sinking of the merchant SS Lotent W. Hassen, refused entry to the Germans. The prize crew then sailed for Murmansk, claiming havarie (the privilege of sanctuary for damage caused at sea), but the Russians also refused entry, stating that if the Germans claimed havarie, the American crew could not be prisoners of war. In the several weeks that elapsed, the United States ordered many US merchant ships to register with other countries, so as to continue supporting the Allies without violating the US’s nominal neutrality. The Royal Navy began closing on the captured ship. The prize crew then tried Norway again at the port of Haugesund. The Norwegian government again refused entry, describing the German crew as kidnappers. The approaching Royal Navy left the prize crew no choice, though; on November 3rd they entered the harbor. The Norwegian Admiralty interned the German crew and, on November 6 returned City of Flint to Captain Gainard’s command.

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1942 – In preparation for Operation Torch, British General Clark lands in Algeria for discussion with French General Mast and Robert Murphy, an American diplomat. Murphy has been conducting the negotiations with the French leaders in Morocco and Algeria concerning the coming invasion. French Generals Mast and Bethourart, Chiefs of Staff at Algiers and Casablanca have given their support. However, support of the Allies is less prevalent with the more senior French officials and soldiers. It is nonexistent with the Navy, who have not forgiven the British for the bombings of French ships at Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar. The purpose of this particular meeting is to ensure the cooperation of General Mast with the allied effort and to gain his acceptance of French General Giraud as the French leader. Mast agrees.

1942 – All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Amongst the victims is award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger (“Thanks for the Memory”, “Love in Bloom”, “Blue Hawaii”).

1942 – The Western Task Force, destined for North Africa, departed from Hampton Roads, Virginia. The command of the Western Task Force, part of an invasion of North Africa during World War II known as Operation Torch, was given to General George Patton. Placed under the command of General George Patton, the Western Task Force had the advantage of having a man at the top who would stop at nothing to see that the mission was accomplished, a quality that would be needed in the days ahead. Naval operations were in the hands of Rear Adm. H. Kent Hewitt, an easygoing man who, in the beginning, found it difficult to work with Patton, but with increasing familiarity became a solid partner.

1942 – 4th Marine Raider Battalion organized at Camp Joseph H. Pendleton, Oceanside, CA. Bn. composed of HQ, A, B and C Companies.

1943 – In Italy, a British division of Gen. Mark Clark’s 5th Army takes Sparanise, a town adjacent to the ancient Roman Appian Way, and nears the Germans’ Barbara defense line, 95 miles south of Rome.

1944 – In the Philippines the Battle of Leyte Gulf began. The US 1st Cavalry Division (part of US 10th Corps) attacks northwest form Toclaban. To the right, armored forces attached to 7th Division (part of US 24th Corps) capture Burauen. At sea, the Japanese Center Force (Kurita) is sited off Palawan by two American submarines. The Japanese lose 2 cruisers to the submarines and sink 1 American submarine. The report of the sighting, however, alerts the three groups of Task Force 38, east of the Philippines.

1944 – Troops of the US 5th Army capture Monte Salvaro, Italy.

1944 – The 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry, 36th Infantry Division (TX), soon known as the “Lost Battalion” was cut off on top of a hill by German infantry and armored forces. After six days of stemming repeated enemy attacks and suffering extremely high losses and with ammunition, food and water running out, the battalion was relieved by the other two battalions of the 141st along with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of Japanese-Americans.

1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing Meadow.

1950 – Communist troops massacred 68 American POWs in the Sunchon tunnel. A 1st Cavalry Division force under the command of Brigadier General Frank A. Allen rescued 21 survivors.

1954 – In Paris, an agreement was signed providing for West German sovereignty and permitting West Germany to rearm and enter NATO and the Western European Union. Britain, England, France and USSR agreed to end occupation of Germany.

1955 – Diem’s referendum in South Vietnam results in a 98.2% majority against Bao Dai and for Diem, who becomes chief of state. More of a test of loyalty than an exercise in democracy, the election is by all accounts rigged, with the CIA’s Colonel Lansdale once again playing an important role. In Saigon, Diem receives one-third more votes than there are registered voters.

1965 – The 1st Cavalry Division (United States) (Airmobile), in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launches a new operation seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleiku in the II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).

1973 – US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.

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1983 – A truck filled with explosives, driven by a Moslem suicide terrorist, crashed into the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut International Airport in Lebanon. The bomb killed 241 Marines and sailors and injured 80. Almost simultaneously, a similar incident occurred at French military headquarters, where 58 died and 15 were injured. Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh was suspected of involvement. They were part of a contingent of 1,800 Marines that had been sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational force to help separate the warring Lebanese factions. Twice during the early 1980s the U.S. had deployed troops to Lebanon to deal with the fall-out from the 1982 Israeli invasion. In the first deployment, Marines helped oversee the peaceful withdrawal of the PLO from Beirut. In mid-September 1982 — after the U.S. troops had left — Israel’s Lebanese allies massacred an estimated 800 unarmed Palestinian civilians remaining in refugee camps. Following this, 1,800 Marines had been ordered back into Lebanon. The president assembled his national security team to devise a plan of military action. The planned target was the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations. Instead, President Reagan ordered the battleship USS New Jersey, stationed off the coast of Lebanon, to the hills near Beirut. The move was seen as largely ineffective. Four months after the Marine barracks bombing, U.S. Marines were ordered to start pulling out of Lebanon.

1983 – Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada, West Indies) begins. The State Department sent Ambassador Francis J. McNeill to meet with representatives of the OECS, Jamaica, and Barbados in Bridgetown, Barbados, and assess their countries’ willingness to join peacekeeping operations. Admiral McDonald flew to Washington late in the evening to brief the JCS on the plan. Titled “Evacuation of US Citizens from Grenada,” it reflected the missions added to the estimate: restoration of a democratic government in concert with the OECS, Jamaica, and Barbados; logistical support for US allies; and deterrence of Cuban intervention. Thre were several operational problems in ADM McDonald’s concept of operations which stemmed from the makeup of his and VADM Metcalf’s headquarters. Both organizations were “bluewater commands” overwhelmingly made up of naval officers. Atlantic Command lacked the Army and Air Force staff officers needed to plan the maneuver and tactical air support of several battalions of ground troops. To remedy that deficiency, this night, the JCS ordered MG Schwarzkopf, Commanding General of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, to report to VADM Metcalf at Norfolk to serve as Metcalf’s adviser on ground operations. Two of General Schwarzkopf’s superiors, Lieutenant General Jack V. Mackmull, USA, Commanding General, XVIII Airborne Corps, and General Richard E. Cavazos, USA, Commander in Chief, Forces Command, had recommended Schwarzkopf because of his extensive experience with airborne troops and Rangers and with Marines while assigned to a unified command.

1992 – President Bush announced that Vietnam had agreed to turn over all materials in its possession related to U.S. personnel in the Vietnam War.

1995 – President Clinton met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Hyde Park, New York; the leaders agreed that Russian troops would help enforce peace in Bosnia, but remained deadlocked on the issue of NATO command.

1997 – The UN threatened a trade ban against Iraq unless Iraq cooperates with weapons inspectors.

1998 – An American brokered peace deal was reached at the Wye Plantation in Maryland between Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli and Palestinian extremists denounced the deal. Land for the Palestinians was exchanged for security guarantees to the Israelis backed by the American CIA. Pres. Clinton agreed to release Jonathan Pollard, who was jailed 11 years ago on charges of spying for Israel.

2000 – Secretary of State Madeleine Albright held talks in North Korea with communist leader Kim Jong Il.

2000 – The Int’l. Commission on Kosovo recommended that Kosovo become a separate state when the safety of its minorities can be guaranteed.

2001 – President Bush announced he had authorized money for improved post office security following the deaths of two postal workers from inhalation anthrax.

2001 – Traces of anthrax were found at an off-site facility that handled mail for the White House.

2001 – A relieved NASA team celebrated as the 2001 Mars Odyssey slipped into orbit around the Red Planet, two years after back-to-back failures by Mars missions.

2001 – US bombs in Kabul, Afghanistan, reportedly killed 22 Harkat ul-Mujahedeen fighters from Pakistan.

2001 – John Ashcroft, US Attorney Gen’l., said 3 men wanted by German authorities, Said Bahaji, Ramzi Binalshibh and Zakariya Essabar, were part of a terrorist cell in Hamburg that included 3 men from the Sep 11 attack on the WTC.

2001 – US military officers were sent to the Philippines to assess how the US might help the local war against terrorism.

2001 – The Irish Republican Army (IRA) began to destroy its arsenal of weapons in a move to save the Northern Ireland peace process.

2001 – In the Philippines 6 suspected Muslim rebels surrendered and 3 were captured. 2002 – Allied planes bombed two military air defense sites in the southern no-fly zone over Iraq in the third round of strikes in a week.

2003 – Madame Chiang Kai-shek (105), who became one of the world’s most famous women as she helped her husband fight the Japanese during World War II and later the Chinese Communists, died in NYC.

2004 – A purported Taliban militant set off grenades strapped to his body on a bustling Kabul street, killing Jamie Michalsky (23), an American woman, and an Afghan girl.

2004 – The U.S. military arrested a “senior leader” in the network run by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, along with five others during overnight raids in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

2004 – A suicide car bomber set off an explosion at a police station near Khan al-Baghdadi in western Iraq, killing at least 16 policemen and wounding 40 other people. A 2nd car bomb killed 4 Iraqi guardsmen at Ishaqi near Samarra. 2 foreign truck drivers were fatally shot in Mosul.

2004 – Some 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers were killed in eastern Iraq as they headed home on leave after basic training. Many were shot execution style with gunshots to the back of the head.

2004 – Gunmen opened fire on a convoy of Turkish trucks in Mosul, killing two Turkish drivers and wounding two others.

2007 – Space Shuttle Discovery successfully lifts off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the United States. The Shuttle was carrying the STS-120 crew on an assembly mission to the International Space Station, as well as the Harmony module.

2014 – A New York City physician tests positive for Ebola at the Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan after treating Ebola patients in Guinea.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

*DUNN, PARKER F.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company A, 312th Infantry, 78th Division. Place and date: Near Grand-Pre, France, 23 October 1918. Entered service at: Albany, N.Y. Birth: Albany, N.Y. G.O. No.: 49, W.D., 1922. Citation: When his battalion commander found it necessary to send a message to a company in the attacking line and hesitated to order a runner to make the trip because of the extreme danger involved, Pfc. Dunn, a member of the intelligence section, volunteered for the mission. After advancing but a short distance across a field swept by artillery and machinegun fire, he was wounded, but continued on and fell wounded a second time. Still undaunted, he persistently attempted to carry out his mission until he was killed by a machinegun bullet before reaching the advance line.

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24 October

1590 – John White, the governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the “lost” colonists.

1742 – Gooch’s American Regiment of Foot is disbanded and its men, most weakened by tropical diseases, are boarded on ships to return them to their respective colonies. With the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain in 1740 the British authorities decided to capture the Spanish colony of Cartagena (today the nation of Columbia) in South America. The regular army was stretched too thin to support this effort so it was determined to organize an expedition from volunteers drawn from the militia of eleven of the English North American colonies. Two colonies, Georgia and South Carolina, were too involved in their own ‘war’ against Indian raids coming from Spanish Florida to aid in the Cartagena campaign. From the remaining 11 colonies a huge regiment numbering almost 3,500 men was organized.

It was known by several designations as the 61st Regiment of Foot, the American Regiment and probably most frequently as “Gooch’s Regiment” after Virginia’s Governor, William Gooch, who served as its colonel. Keeping with the regional composition of the regiment, the 1st Battalion was composed of men from New England, the 2nd from New Jersey and New York, the 3rd from Pennsylvania and Delaware and the 4th from Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Commanding a Virginia company in the 4th Battalion was Captain Lawrence Washington, older brother of George. The expedition proved an utter failure, due to incompetence in leadership and poor planning which had the men involved in a siege operation during the height of the malaria and yellow fever season. Only about 600 men survived the expedition. Perhaps the most lasting effect of the entire venture was when Lawrence Washington returned home he named his plantation “Mount Vernon” in honor of Admiral Edward Vernon, the British naval commander of the expedition. When Lawrence died in 1752 and George inherited the property he retained the name, which it still carries today.

1755 – A British expedition against the French held Fort Niagara in Canada ended in failure. British Governor William Shirley determined that this makeshift navy had been unable to prevent French reinforcement and resupply of the fort and decided to deoly the planned attack on Niagara until 1756.

1861 – West Virginia seceded from Virginia. Residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state. The accuracy of these election results have been questioned, since Union troops were stationed at many of the polls to prevent Confederate sympathizers from voting. At the Constitutional Convention, which met in Wheeling from November 1861 to February 1862, delegates selected the counties for inclusion in the new state of West Virginia. From the initial list, most of the counties in the Shenandoah Valley were excluded due to their control by Confederate troops and a large number of local Confederate sympathizers. In the end, fifty counties were selected (all of present-day West Virginia’s counties except Mineral, Grant, Lincoln, Summers, and Mingo, which were formed after statehood). Most of the eastern and southern counties did not support statehood, but were included for political, economic, and military purposes. The mountain range west of the Blue Ridge became the eastern border of West Virginia to provide a defense against Confederate invasion. One of the most controversial decisions involved the Eastern Panhandle counties, which supported the Confederacy. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which ran through the Eastern Panhandle, was extremely important for the economy and troop movements. Inclusion of these counties removed all of the railroad from the Confederacy.

1861 – Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line. The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent as Justice Stephen J. Field of California transmitted a telegram to President Lincoln. Telegraph lines linked the West Coast to the rest of the country and made the Pony Express obsolete late in the year.

1911 – Robert Scott’s expedition left Cape Evans for South Pole.

1915 – The Marine Corps Recruit Depot was moved from Norfolk and established at Parris Island, South Carolina.

1929 – Black Thursday—the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression. Dow Jones was down 12.8%. Stock values collapsed and 13 million shares changed hands as small investors frantically tried to sell off their holdings, a new record; 4 million was the average of the day. Thousands of confused investors and brokers were ruined and banks, which had also invested heavily in the market, failed when they could not produce enough cash on demand for angry depositors. Most of the panic took place in the morning hours. The ticker tape machine fell behind by an hour and a half leaving investors madly scrambling to sell their investments without even knowing the current prices. Panic set in. People gathered outside the exchanges and brokerages, police were dispatched to insure peace. Rumors were flying. By 12:30 pm, the Chicago and Buffalo Exchanges closed down, eleven well-known speculators had already killed themselves and the NYSE closed the visitor’s gallery on the wild scenes below. Reporters learned that an important meeting was taking place at the office of J.P. Morgan and Company, involving many of the most important men in banking.

After the meeting broke, Thomas Lamont, senior partner at Morgan – a company founded by a man who had help stop a panic in 1907, made the following statement to newspaper reporters: “There has been a little distress selling on the Stock Exchange… due to a technical condition of the market” and that things were “susceptible to betterment.” The market moved up a bit after Lamont’s statement, but the real recovery came at 1:30 pm, when self-confident Richard Whitney, vice-president of the NYSE and floor broker of J.P. Morgan and Company, walked into the exchange floor. The crowd went silent. Everyone expected an announcement that the NYSE would be closed. Instead, Richard Whitney surprised everybody… Whitney asked for the latest bid on U.S. Steel. “195” someone shouted. Then he promptly announced that he was buying 10,000 shares of U.S. Steel at 205. He immediately received 200 shares and then left the rest of the order with the specialist. He continued to make similar orders for over a dozen more stocks. Fear evaporated as investors became worried that they would miss the new boom. The market would have closed much higher if stop loss orders from earlier that day hadn’t been triggered during the upward surge. Needless to say, the recovery on Black Thursday was impressive, but so was the massive sell off earlier in the morning that gave it its name. Friday and Saturday morning sessions held steady as everyone became optimistic with the market’s ability to recover. These feelings were squashed on Black Monday.

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1942 – On Guadalcanal, heavy fighting continues as the Japanese offensive gains some success with the secondary operations infiltrating the left wing of the America positions. The main operation against the south of the American perimeter begins at dusk and continues throughout the night. It is repelled.

1943 – Allied aircraft raid Rabaul, New Britain Island, for a second time in two days. One Japanese destroyer and five merchant ships have been sunk in the raids.

1943 – Elements of the US 5th Army capture Sant’Angelo, Italy. 34th Division moved up through the mist on the morning and entered the walled and narrow streets of Sant’ Angelo d’Alife without resistance.

1944 – On land, elements of US 1st Cavalry land on Samar. The fighting on Leyte continues. At sea, Japanese aircraft, based on Luzon, attack US Task Group 38.3 (Sherman), critically damaging the carrier Princeton. The Japanese Center Force (Kurita) is discovered by scout planes from US Task Group 38.2 and attacked throughout the day by all the carrier groups. The Japanese battleship Musashi is sunk and a cruiser is damaged and turns back. Center Force withdraws during the day. The Japanese Southern Force (Nishimura) is also sighted but American air strikes fail to cause significant damage. Admiral Oldendorf assembles a force in the Surigao Strait to block Southern Force. Meanwhile, Northern Force (Ozawa) locates TG38.2 and launches an air strike. The Japanese planes do not find the objective and land on Luzon. Late in the day, Admiral Halsey (commanding US 3rd Fleet) assembles his carriers and battleships to attack Northern Force, leaving Admiral Oldendorf to defend against Southern Force. During the night, Center Force reverses course.

1944 – “Ace of Aces” David McCampbell (1910-1996) and one other fighter faced 60 planes approaching US forces. He shot down 9 “Zekes” and with his comrade managed to scatter the remaining 51 planes at the battle of Leyte Gulf. “All available fighter pilots! Man your planes!” boomed the squawk box in Essex’ ready room. The ship’s radar had detected three large groups of Japanese planes coming in. David McCampbell, the CAG and the Navy’s most famous living aviator, considered this announcement. Earlier that morning, Admiral Sherman himself had forbidden McCampbell from joining a dawn sortie. Given his responsibilities as Commander of Essex’ Air Group and his public prominence as a top ace, McCampbell was too valuable. He decided that he was indeed “available” and headed for his airplane, Minsi III. His plane crew hurried to fuel Minsi III, which had not been scheduled to fly that day.

With the Hellcat only partially fueled, the Flight Officer ordered it off the flight deck – either into the air or below to the hangar deck. McCampbell went up, leading Essex’s last seven fighters toward the Jap strike force. He and Ensign Roy Rushing got out in front of the other Hellcats, putting on all speed to intercept the Japs, then only 22 miles away. He directed the other F6F’s to get the bombers, while he and Rushing tackled the fighters. Surprisingly, the enemy fighters turned, allowing McCampbell and Rushing to gain altitude and a position behind them. Seeing over 40 Japanese fighters, McCampbell radioed back to the carrier for help. “Sorry, none available.” The enemy planes spread out in a typical formation of three V’s. McCampbell picked out a Zero on the extreme right and flamed it. Rushing also got one on this first pass. Incredibly, there was no reaction from the Japs as they climbed back up to regain altitude.

The two Hellcat pilots dived back down on their quarry for another pass; McCampbell blew up a second Zero. Now the gaggle of Zeros, Tonys, Hamps, and Oscars reacted – by going into a Lufbery! McCampbell made a couple of head-on passes against the formation, but without results. A strange interlude ensued as McCampbell and Rushing climbed back up and circled, while the Japanese fighters continued to circle below. McCampbell radioed again for help; one of the Hellcats that had been going after the bombers headed his way. The Lufbery broke up and the planes headed toward Luzon in a wide Vee. The two American fliers closed in again on the formation. McCampbell opened up at 900 feet, and exploded his third plane of the morning. Rushing shot down his second one. Apparently low on fuel, the Japanese planes doggedly flew on, maintaining formation. On his next firing pass, gunfire coming from behind forced McCampbell to break off his attack and pull up. It was another Hellcat shooting too close to him. A few choice words straightened things out. Still the enemy planes didn’t turn and mix it up. McCampbell realized he could relax and take his time.

This was practically gunnery exercise. He could focus on identifying his targets carefully. The next one was an Oscar. Again his six fifties roared anad blasted the Oscar’s wing root. It flamed for number four. Rushing had scored his third by this time. This continued for several more passes until McCampbell had downed 7 and Rushing 6. Rushing radioed that he was out of ammo, but he would stay on McCampbell’s wing while the CAG used up his remaining bullets. Two more passes and two more kills. As the Jap planes approached the security of their bases on Luzon, the two Americans’ low fuel finally ended the slaughter. The Hellcats broke off and headed for Essex. In one morning sortie, McCampbell had shot down nine enemy planes and Rushing six, an unparalleled achievement in American fighter aviation.

1944 – The China-Burma-India Theater (formerly under General Stilwell) command is divided into the India-Burma Theater (General Sultan) and the China Theater (General Wedemeyer) commands.

1944 – Hitler informs his generals of his intention to launch a surprise counteroffensive against the weakly held Ardennes area of the Allied line.

1945 – The United Nations was born with the ratification of its charter by the first 29 nations at a San Francisco Conference chaired by the State Department’s Alger Hiss.

1946 – A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space. Launched from the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, the rocket reached a maximum altitude of 107.5 miles (173 km), well above the commonly accepted boundary of space at 100 kilometers.



1950 – General MacArthur removed all restrictions on the advance of non-Korean U.N. forces to the Yalu River.

1951 – Dr. Albert W. Bellamy, chief of Radiological Services for the California State Civil Defense, held a press conference to assure state residents that there would be no ill effects from the atomic test explosions near Las Vegas.

1951 – The largest air battle of the Korean War occurs at 150 MiGs attack a formation of B-29s escorted by 55 F-84 Thunderjets. Four of the bombers were destroyed and three others seriously damaged and one F-84 was lost. Eight MiGs were destroyed (an additional two probably destroyed) and 10 others heavily damaged.

1952 – Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, “I shall go to Korea” as he promised to end the conflict if elected.

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1954 – President Eisenhower sends a landmark letter to Diem. Although Eisenhower makes it clear to Diem that US aid to his government in Vietnam’s present ‘hour of trail’ is contingent up on his assurances of the ‘standards of performance [he] would be able to maintain in the event such aid were supplied,’ President Johnson later cites this letter as the starting point of the US commitment to South Vietnam. Diem agrees to the ‘needed reforms’ stipulated as a precondition for receiving aid.

1957 – The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program to develop a space plane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and sabotage of enemy satellites. The program ran to 10 December 1963, cost US$660 million ($5.08 billion today), and was cancelled just after spacecraft construction had begun.

1958 – USS Kleinsmith (APD-134) evacuates U.S. nationals from Nicaro, Cuba. While operating out of Guantanamo Bay 24 October, she rescued 56 U.S. citizens and 3 foreign nationals at Nicaro, Cuba, where they were endangered by military operations between the Cuban Army and the Castro rebels.

1962 – The U.S. blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis officially began under a proclamation signed by President Kennedy. Atlantic Fleet begins quarantine operations to force Soviet Union to agree to remove ballistic missiles and long range bombers from Cuba. On the day the quarantine was to take effect, the alignment of Soviet and free world nations continued to develop rapidly. The evening before, the U.S. position was presented to a special session of the United Nations Security Council. Soviet Ambassador Zorin’s speech in reply emphasized that the present crisis existed between the United States and Cuba and reflected a Soviet desire to avoid the appearance of a direct Soviet-U.S. confrontation. This approach appeared to be calculated to create a climate for a U.S. reversal of the quarantine stand, to diminish the military threat to the U.S. and to reduce tensions among Soviet Bloc masses. Other Bloc reactions were becoming known. The Polish regime was playing the Cuban crisis in low key to avoid panic and a strain on low food-stocks. Although that nation’s armed forces were alerted, there was no evidence of increased military activity. The Chinese communists issued a statement fully supporting the “just stand of the Soviet Government.” Various developments throughout the day suggested that the Soviet Bloc intended to proceed with extreme caution. This indication was supported by Zorin’s comparatively mild statements at the UN, the lack of any Soviet move to evacuate dependents in East Germany and elsewhere, and other political developments. Turkish officials, worried about the possibility of Soviet pressure to eliminate missile sites in their country in exchange for withdrawal of Russian missiles in Cuba, urged an increase in U. S. military aid to Turkey. Brazil backed off somewhat from her support of the arms quarantine with the statement that the Government did not support the “use of force which may violate an independent country’s territorial integrity and place world peace in jeopardy.” The Commander in Chief, Atlantic, established the surface quarantine line on an arc 500 miles from Cape Maysi between 27-30N, 75W and 20N, 65W. The line thus established was out of range of Soviet IL-28 “Beagle” bombers based in Cuba. The line was to be manned by 12 destroyers from Task Force 136.

1968 – At the National Air and Space Administration test pilot Bill Dana was at the controls of the North American X-15 rocket-propelled research aircraft when it made the 199th–and what turned out to be the final–flight of the X-15 program. He was flying the X-15-1, which had been the first of three aircraft to participate in a series of tests that spanned a decade and resulted in major advances for America’s space flight program. In the course of that research, the X-15s spent 18 hours flying above Mach 1, 12 hours above Mach 2, nearly 9 hours above Mach 3, almost 6 hours above Mach 4, one hour above Mach 5 and a few short minutes above Mach 6. The X-15 was hailed by the scientific community as the most successful research aircraft of all time.

1972 – Henry Kissinger in secret unauthorized talks in Paris proposed to end the war in Vietnam by this date, but was urged by Pres. Nixon to stretch the timing a few months so as to insure re-election in Nov. The peace agreement allowed North Vietnam to keep its army in the South.

1988 – The crew of the USS Vincennes received an emotional homecoming in San Diego, nearly four months after the cruiser downed an Iranian jetliner in the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.

1995 – President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin met in New York, trying to stabilize relations shaken by disputes over human rights, trade and Taiwan.

1997 – Setting the stage for an upcoming summit, President Clinton rejected calls for a confrontational approach to China, arguing that isolating the Chinese would be “potentially dangerous.”

1997 – A UN director said that the Taliban of Afghanistan has agreed to enforce a ban on poppy production.

1998 – Officials from the US, China and North and South Korea seeking a permanent peace for the divided Korean peninsula announced in Geneva they had removed the last obstacles to full-blown talks.

1998 – Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission. Deep Space 1 (DS1) is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies. The Deep Space mission carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille, which was selected as the mission’s science target. Its mission was extended twice to include an encounter with Comet Borrelly and further engineering testing. Problems during its initial stages and with its star tracker led to repeated changes in mission configuration. While the flyby of the asteroid was a partial success, the encounter with the comet retrieved valuable information. Three of twelve technologies on board had to work within a few minutes of separation from the carrier rocket for the mission to continue.

2000 – The space shuttle Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base following the 100th shuttle flight and work on the International Space Station.

2000 – In North Korea Kim Jong Il promised not to launch any ballistic missiles during talks with US Sec. of State Madeleine Albright in return for a package that included the launch of a North Korean satellite.

2001 – US jets attacked frontline Taliban positions for a 4th day.

2001 – The Pentagon accused the Taliban regime of planning to poison relief food supplies and to blame the US for resulting deaths.

2001 – The US government arranged to buy 100 million Cipro tablets from Bayer for 95 cents each. The tablets were for anthrax.

2001 – It was reported that Abdul Haq, a Pashtun opposition leader, had entered southern Afghanistan with some 100 men to open an ethnic-Pashtun front against the Taliban.

2001 – A NATO spokesman said peacekeepers in Bosnia had disrupted a Bosnian terrorist network.

2002 – John Allen Muhammad (41), an Army veteran who recently converted to Islam, and John Lee Malvo (17) were arrested near Frederick, Maryland, in connection with the sniper shootings that left 10 dead and 3 wounded. In 2003 a judge ruled that Malvo could be tried as an adult. Muhammad began to argue his own defense on October 20th.

2002 – In Iraq officials told many foreign journalists to leave due to coverage of recent protests.

2003 – Iraq’s postwar reconstruction received a boost as nations from Japan to Saudi Arabia pledged $13 billion in new aid on top of more than $20 billion from the US. But the figure fell well short of the estimated $56 billion needed to rebuild the country.

2004 – A US Marine warplane bombed suspected militants trying to rebuild a command post in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

2004 – A Soyuz capsule, carrying 2 Russians and an American, landed in Kazakhstan. The crew had spent 6 months at the int’l. space station.

2010 – South Korea and the United States cancel a joint naval drill against North Korea in the Yellow Sea, citing its previous anti-submarine training, held from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, and a desire “not to irritate neighboring countries” ahead of the upcoming 2010 G-20 Seoul summit.

2013 – Germany summons the United States Ambassador over claims that the US monitored Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

DALY, DANIEL JOSEPH (Second Award)
Rank and organization: Gunnery Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: Glen Cove, Long Island, N.Y., 11 November 1873. Accredited to: New York. Other Navy awards: Second Medal of Honor, Navy Cross. Citation: Serving with the 15th Company of Marines on 22 October 1915, G/Sgt. Daly was one of the company to leave Fort Liberte, Haiti, for a 6-day reconnaissance. After dark on the evening of 24 October, while crossing the river in a deep ravine, the detachment was suddenly fired upon from 3 sides by about 400 Cacos concealed in bushes about 100 yards from the fort. The marine detachment fought its way forward to a good position, which it maintained during the night, although subjected to a continuous fre from the Cacos. At daybreak the marines, in 3 squads, advanced in 3 different directions, surprising and scattering the Cacos in all directions. G/Sgt. Daly fought with exceptional gallantry against heavy odds throughout this action.

OSTERMANN, EDWARD ALBERT
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps, 15th Company of Marines (mounted). Place and date: Vicinity Fort Liberte, Haiti, 24 October 1915. Entered service at: Ohio. Born: 1883, Columbus, Ohio. Citation: In company with members of the 15th Company of Marines, all mounted, 1st Lt. Ostermann left Fort Liberte, Haiti, for a 6-day reconnaissance. After dark on the evening of 24 October 1915, while crossing the river in a deep ravine, the detachment was suddenly fired upon from 3 sides by about 400 Cacos concealed in bushes about 100 yards from the fort. The marine detachment fought its way forward to a good position, which it maintained during the night, although subjected to a continuous fire from the Cacos. At daybreak, 1st Lt. Ostermann, in command of 1 of the 3 squads which advanced in 3 different directions, led his men forward, surprising and scattering the Cacos, and aiding in the capture of Fort Dipitie.

UPSHUR, WILLIAM PETERKIN
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 28 October 1881, Richmond, Va. Appointed from: Virginia. Citation: In company with members of the 15th Company of Marines, all mounted, Capt. Upshur left Fort Liberte, Haiti, for a 6-day reconnaissance. After dark on the evening of 24 October 1915, while crossing the river in a deep ravine, the detachment was suddenly fired upon from 3 sides by about 400 Cacos concealed in bushes about 100 yards from the fort. The marine detachment fought its way forward to a good position which it maintained during the night, although subjected to a continuous fire from the Cacos. At daybreak, Capt. Upshur, in command of one of the 3 squads which advanced in 3 different directions led his men forward, surprising and scattering the Cacos, and aiding in the capture of Fort Dipitie.

COOLIDGE, CHARLES H.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company M, 141st Infantry, 36th Infantry Division. Place and date: East of Belmont sur Buttant, France, 24-27 October 1944. Entered service at: Signal Mountain, Tenn. Birth: Signal Mountain, Tenn. G.O. No.: 53, July 1945. Citation: Leading a section of heavy machineguns supported by 1 platoon of Company K, he took a position near Hill 623, east of Belmont sur Buttant, France, on 24 October 1944, with the mission of covering the right flank of the 3d Battalion and supporting its action. T/Sgt. Coolidge went forward with a sergeant of Company K to reconnoiter positions for coordinating the fires of the light and heavy machineguns. They ran into an enemy force in the woods estimated to be an infantry company. T/Sgt. Coolidge, attempting to bluff the Germans by a show of assurance and boldness called upon them to surrender, whereupon the enemy opened fire. With his carbine, T/Sgt. Coolidge wounded 2 of them. There being no officer present with the force, T/Sgt. Coolidge at once assumed command. Many of the men were replacements recently arrived; this was their first experience under fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge, unmindful of the enemy fire delivered at close range, walked along the position, calming and encouraging his men and directing their fire. The attack was thrown back.

Through 25 and 26 October the enemy launched repeated attacks against the position of this combat group but each was repulsed due to T/Sgt. Coolidge’s able leadership. On 27 October, German infantry, supported by 2 tanks, made a determined attack on the position. The area was swept by enemy small arms, machinegun, and tank fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge armed himself with a bazooka and advanced to within 25 yards of the tanks. His bazooka failed to function and he threw it aside. Securing all the hand grenades he could carry, he crawled forward and inflicted heavy casualties on the advancing enemy. Finally it became apparent that the enemy, in greatly superior force, supported by tanks, would overrun the position. T/Sgt. Coolidge, displaying great coolness and courage, directed and conducted an orderly withdrawal, being himself the last to leave the position. As a result of T/Sgt. Coolidge’s heroic and superior leadership, the mission of this combat group was accomplished throughout 4 days of continuous fighting against numerically superior enemy troops in rain and cold and amid dense woods.

McCAMPBELL, DAVID
Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy, Air Group 15. Place and date: First and second battles of the Philippine Sea, 19 June 1944. Entered service at: Florida. Born: 16 January 1 910, Bessemer, Ala. Other Navy awards: Navy Cross, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross with 2 Gold Stars, Air Medal. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commander, Air Group 15, during combat against enemy Japanese aerial forces in the first and second battles of the Philippine Sea. An inspiring leader, fighting boldly in the face of terrific odds, Comdr. McCampbell led his fighter planes against a force of 80 Japanese carrier-based aircraft bearing down on our fleet on 19 June 1944. Striking fiercely in valiant defense of our surface force, he personally destroyed 7 hostile planes during this single engagement in which the outnumbering attack force was utterly routed and virtually annihilated. During a major fleet engagement with the enemy on 24 October, Comdr. McCampbell, assisted by but l plane, intercepted and daringly attacked a formation of 60 hostile land-based craft approaching our forces. Fighting desperately but with superb skill against such overwhelming airpower, he shot down 9 Japanese planes and, completely disorganizing the enemy group, forced the remainder to abandon the attack before a single aircraft could reach the fleet. His great personal valor and indomitable spirit of aggression under extremely perilous combat conditions reflect the highest credit upon Comdr. McCampbell and the U.S. Naval Service.

O’KANE, RICHARD HETHERINGTON
Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Tang. Place and date: Vicinity Philippine Islands, 23 and 24 October 1944. Entered service at: New Hampshire. Born: 2 February 1911, Dover, N.H. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Tang operating against 2 enemy Japanese convoys on 23 and 24 October 1944, during her fifth and last war patrol. Boldly maneuvering on the surface into the midst of a heavily escorted convoy, Comdr. O’Kane stood in the fusillade of bullets and shells from all directions to launch smashing hits on 3 tankers, coolly swung his ship to fire at a freighter and, in a split-second decision, shot out of the path of an onrushing transport, missing it by inches. Boxed in by blazing tankers, a freighter, transport, and several destroyers, he blasted 2 of the targets with his remaining torpedoes and, with pyrotechnics bursting on all sides, cleared the area.

Twenty-four hours later, he again made contact with a heavily escorted convoy steaming to support the Leyte campaign with reinforcements and supplies and with crated planes piled high on each unit. In defiance of the enemy’s relentless fire, he closed the concentration of ship and in quick succession sent 2 torpedoes each into the first and second transports and an adjacent tanker, finding his mark with each torpedo in a series of violent explosions at less than l,000-yard range. With ships bearing down from all sides, he charged the enemy at high speed, exploding the tanker in a burst of flame, smashing the transport dead in the water, and blasting the destroyer with a mighty roar which rocked the Tang from stem to stern. Expending his last 2 torpedoes into the remnants of a once powerful convoy before his own ship went down, Comdr. O’Kane, aided by his gallant command, achieved an illustrious record of heroism in combat, enhancing the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.


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25 October

1760 – King George III of Britain was crowned. He succeeded his late grandfather, George II and ruled until 1820. With the rule of George III the civil list (government officers, judges, ambassadors and royal staff) was paid by the Parliament in return for the king’s surrender of the hereditary revenues of the crown.

1812 – The U.S. frigate United States captured the British vessel Macedonian during the War of 1812. Soon after daylight, in latitude 29° north, longitude 29°30′ west, this American 44 fell in with, on her weather beam, the British 38-gun frigate Macedonian, Captain John Carden. The latter, then steering north-west-by-west, with the wind to the southward, immediately bore-up towards the United-States; whose force and national character (her colours being hoisted) were soon made out. At nine o’clock, finding that the British frigate was bearing down to the attack in a heedless and confident manner, the United-States opened a fire from her long 24’s; almost every shot of which struck either the hull or masts of the Macedonian. As the latter closed and hauled-up to fire her broadside, the American frigate bore-way a little, to retain the advantage of her superior skill in gunnery.

Thus was the action maintained until nearly ten o’clock: by which time all the carronades on the Macedonian’s engaged side had been disabled, and much other damage and a very serious loss incurred; while the United-States was comparatively uninjured. Satisfied now, that her opponent was more than half beaten, and that there was little danger in closing with her, the United-States backed her main topsail, and, coming to the wind, opened a rapid and most destructive fire from the whole of her broadside; receiving in return the main-deck fire alone of the Macedonian, and that too ill-directed to be of much effect. By the time the action, from its commencement, had lasted full two hours, the Macedonian had had her mizzen-mast shot away by the board and her fore and main topmasts by the caps, her main yard cut to pieces, lower masts badly wounded, rigging of every sort destroyed, a small portion only of the fore-sail left to the yard, two guns on the main deck, and all on the quarter-deck and forecastle but two, disabled: she had also received upwards of a hundred shots in the hull, several of them between wind and water; had all her boats, except the jolly-boat towing astern, destroyed, and a great portion of her crew killed and wounded.

While the British frigate lay in this defenseless condition, the American, in a comparatively perfect state, having shot ahead, was about to place herself in a raking position on the former’s bow. No alternative therefore remained; and at a few minutes past eleven the Macedonian hauled down her colors. Out of her 270 men at quarters and twenty-two boys, the Macedonian had her boatswain, one master’s mate, her schoolmaster, twenty-three seamen, two boys, and eight marines killed, her first lieutenant, (severely,) third lieutenant, (slightly,) one master’s mate, one midshipman, one first-class volunteer, fifty seamen, (two mortally,) four boys, (two with each leg amputated,) and nine marines wounded; total, thirty- six killed and sixty-eight wounded. The United-States is represented to have had her masts and rigging not materially injured, and to have received only nine shots in her hull: her loss, from the same authority, amounted to no more than five seamen killed, Lieutenant John Funk and one seaman mortally, and five others badly wounded.

1825 – The Erie Canal opened, linking the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean.

1864 – Skirmishes took place at Mine Creek, KS. About six miles south of Trading Post, where the Marais de Cygnes engagement had occurred, the brigades of Col. Frederick W. Benteen and Col. John F. Phillips, of Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton’s Provisional Cavalry Division, overtook the Confederates as they were crossing Mine Creek. These Rebels, stalled by their wagons crossing the ford, had formed a line on the north side of Mine Creek. The Federals, although outnumbered, commenced the attack as additional troops from Pleasonton’s command arrived during the fight. They soon surrounded the Rebels, resulting in the capture of about 600 men and two generals, Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke and Brig. Gen. William L. Cabell. Having lost this many men, Price’s army was doomed. Retreat to friendly territory was the only recourse.

1888 – Richard E. Byrd, U.S. aviator and explorer who made the first flight over the North Pole, was born. Born to one of the oldest and most distinguished families in the history of Virginia, Richard Byrd seemed destined for fame. First, Byrd sought a career in the U.S. Navy and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. However, a series of injuries made it difficult for Byrd to serve as a naval officer at sea, where long watches were required. In 1916, Byrd retired from the Navy, but the advent of World War I returned him into active service. Byrd was particularly interested in the new technology of airplanes and earned his wings as a pilot at Pensacola. When World War I ended, Byrd maintained his interest in aviation and helped to navigate and plan the Navy team who achieved a transatlantic crossing by means of sea planes in 1919. After commanding the U.S. Navy pilots assisting Donald MacMillan’s expedition to Greenland in 1925, Byrd raised funds for his own expedition to fly across the North Pole in 1926, an accomplishment he announced on May 9, 1926.

In recognition, the U.S. Congress awarded him the Medal of Honor and promoted him to commander. New York City threw a ticker tape parade. Byrd himself referred to his new status with both pride –and sometimes exasperation– as “the hero business.” Soon after, in 1927, Byrd added to his fame by leading a team that flew an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean, the third since Charles Lindbergh in that year. Antarctica, however, would become the major theater of Byrd’s career. Byrd led or participated in five expeditions to Antarctica, commencing in 1928. After the first expedition returned in 1930, Byrd received another ticker-tape parade in New York City, the others following the North Pole and the transatlantic flights. By the time of his death in 1957, Byrd was so closely affiliated with exploration and scientific investigation of Antarctica that some referred to him as the “Mayor of Antarctica.”

1923 – The Teapot Dome scandal came to public attention as Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, subcommittee chairman, revealed the findings of the past 18 months of investigation. His case would result in the conviction of Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil, and later Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, the first cabinet member in American history to go to jail. The scandal, named for the Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming, involved Fall secretly leasing naval oil reserve lands to private companies.

1924 – Airship, USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), completes round trip transcontinental cruise that began on 7 October. The U.S.S. Shenandoah (ZR-1), the first American-built rigid airship, made her first flight on September 4, 1923. She was lost in a storm over southeastern Ohio on September 3, 1925, taking the lives of fourteen of her crew, including the ship’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne. One of the ship’s officers, Charles Rosendahl, free-ballooned in the detached bow section along with a number of other survivors until the bow came to rest on the ground.

1929 – Former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted of accepting a $100,000 bribe in connection with the Elk Hills Naval Oil Reserve in California. Fall served under Pres. Warren Harding.

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1941 – South Greenland Patrol expanded to include 3 cutters of the Northeast Greenland Patrol and form the Greenland Patrol.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, the Japanese army again attempt attacks on the southern perimeter of the American positions. They are thrown back with heavy losses. Meanwhile, the Japanese navy mounts a major operation to support the offensive on Guadalcanal. Four battleships and the carriers Shokaku, Zuikaku, Zuiho and Junyo as well as numerous cruisers and destroyers. The carriers contain aircraft for use at Henderson Field airstrip when the Japanese capture it. A report to that effect has brought the carriers this close to the islands. The Americans have two carriers in the area, Hornet and Enterprise, with an attending battleship USS South Dakota close enough to provide anti-aircraft cover. The Japanese force is split into four for the operation. Numerically the number of planes are close, the Japanese have 212, the Americans have 171. The Americans discover the Japanese force first launching an attack which doesn’t find the Japanese ships.

1944 – On land, the US 1st Cavalry Division continues advancing on the northeast coast of Leyte. Other elements of US 10th and US 24th Corps, to the south, are inactive because of a lack of supplies. At sea, the Japanese Southern Force (Nishimura) and the 2nd Striking Force (Shima) engage American forces, commanded by Admiral Oldendorf, blocking the Surigao Strait. After suffering losses the Japanese withdraw. The Center Force (Kurita) passes through the San Bernardino Strait and engages US Task Force 77.4.3 (Sprague) which is then reinforced by aircraft from TF77.4.2 as it attempts to retreat. Center Force suffers some losses and Admiral Kurita chooses to withdraw because he believes the aircraft are from US Task Force 38. While Center Force turns back, TF77.4.3 is struck by Kamikaze strikes which sink 4 escort carriers. These are the first significant Kamikaze attacks recorded. At the same time, TF77.4.1 is also attacked by Kamikazes. Meanwhile, the Northern Force (Ozawa) is attacked TF38. Only the carrier-battleships (Ise and Hyuga) survive the day. During the engagement, two groups of TF38 turn back to attack Center Force but fail to arrive in time.

1944 – The USS Tang under Richard O’Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship’s own malfunctioning torpedo.

1945 – Japanese surrendered Taiwan to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

1950 – U.N. forces approached to within 34 miles of the Yalu River, the Chinese Manchurian border, as the Chinese Communist Forces launched their First Phase Offensive around this date. UNC intelligence agencies remained ignorant of Chinese intentions and the extent of their commitment to intervening in the war.

1950 – Transport aircraft of the 315th Air Division hauled 1,962 tons of cargo for the largest 24-hour total for the war.

1951 – Peace talks aimed at ending the Korean Conflict resumed in Panmunjom after 63 days.

1952 – The 7th Infantry Division battled the Chinese near Kumwha and suffered 2,000 casualties during the Battle of Sniper Ridge.

1952 – The USS Missouri hurled 500 tons of high-explosive shells against entrenched enemy in the vicinity of Tanchon.

1958 – The last U.S. troops left Beirut.

1960 – Cuba nationalized all remaining US businesses.

1962 – U.S. ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson presented photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba to the U.N. Security Council. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson demanded USSR and Zorin answer regarding Cuban missile bases saying ” Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don’t wait for the translation. Yes or no? I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over.”

1963 – Anti-Kennedy “WANTED FOR TREASON” pamphlets scattered in Dallas.

1966 – Operation Sea Dragon logistics interdiction began. North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas were not exempt from this time-honored adage. They were dependent on the vast quantities of food and munitions smuggled across South Vietnam’s shores and waterways. It was because of this waterborne logistic highway that the destroyers Mansfield and Hanson sailed north toward the 17th parallel before dawn on October 25, 1966. At 0500 hours, the ships entered North Vietnamese waters and opened a new phase of the war, attacking WBLC (pronounced “wib-lic” and meaning waterborne logistic craft) and coastal lines of communication targets still in Communist waters. As part of Operation Sea Dragon, Seventh Fleet destroyers, cruisers and eventually one battleship participated in this new mission between October 1966 and November 1968.

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1971 – The UN General Assembly voted to admit the People’s Republic of China and expel Nationalist China (Taiwan).

1972 – The first female FBI agents were hired.

1974 – The US Air Force fired its 1st ICBM.

1983 – 1,800 U.S. Marines and Rangers, assisted by 300 soldiers from six Caribbean nations, invaded Grenada at the order of President Reagan, who said the action was needed to protect U.S. citizens there. Helicopters touched down at Pearls Airport at 5 a.m. on 25 Oct., the PRA–People’s Revolutionary Army–greeted the Marines with bursts from small arms and machine guns. In pairs, the Marines scrambled out of the helos and immediately dug in, waiting for the choppers to leave. Three Soviet-made 12.7mm guns on a nearby hill fired at helicopters bringing in the second assault–Marines of Fox Company–to the town of Grenville, just south of Pearls, at 6 a.m. Sea- Cobra attack helicopters were called in to silence the guns and Fox Company landed amid light mortar fire. Echo and Fox companies moved slowly and cautiously after their landings; after a couple of hours, most of the resistance at Pearls and Grenville was beaten down. Army Rangers, arriving at the airfield at Point Salines at dawn the same day in C-130 [Hercules] aircraft, met much stiffer resistance than the Marines were encountering at Pearls. To avoid the anti-aircraft fire, the Rangers jumped from a very low altitude–500 feet. Machine-gun fire blasted at aircraft and Rangers on the ground. But US Air Force AC-130 [Spectre] gunships silenced the hostile fire with devastatingly accurate blasts.

The airfield at Point Salines was blocked, a clear sign an assault was expected. There had been reports in the press on Saturday (Oct. 22) that the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States had met. It was probable that someone passed the word to Grenada that the United States and a Caribbean peacekeeping force would invade. Word had been put out on Grenada radio that the invasion would occur on Sunday. On Sunday, however, the United States was still discussing the risks of the operation and trying to ascertain how much resistance the Caribbean peace keeping force would meet. There were three or four dozen Cuban Army regulars in Grenada not organized into a regular military unit, but were primarily advisers and instructors to the Grenadian military as well as a handful of paramilitary Cubans–such as police and secret service types. There were also about 600 Cuban construction workers, all militarily trained, armed and trained. Even before securing Point Salines airfield on the first day, Rangers had moved to evacuate American students at the True Blue campus of St. George’s Medical Center. The campus, located at one end of the 10,000-foot runway the Cubans had been building, was reached easily and the students were rescued. A second campus at Grand Anse was farther away, and retreating Cubans and PRA units blocked the Rangers from the students.

By afternoon the Point Salines air field was secured from all but sporadic mortar and small arms fire, and Rangers were moving against PRA positions near St. George’s, the capital. Other Rangers removed obstacles on the Point Salines runway, and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division flew in to add more people and heavier weapons to the assault. Meanwhile, Fox and Echo companies merged north of St. George’s and secured a flat, stadium-like area called the Queen’s Racecourse, which the Marines dubbed “LZ Racetrack.” The battalion landing team commander set up headquarters there. During the evening, Marines of Golf Company, from the tank landing ships Manitowoc and Barnstable County, landed at Grand Mal beach, just north of St. George’s, with 13 amphibious vehicles and five tanks. Throughout the first night, a constant stream of logistics aircraft landed and took off from the partially completed runway at Point Salines. Gunfire roared from ships and aircraft.

1985 – CGC Polar Sea arrived home to Seattle after a voyage through the Northwest Passage by way of the Panama Canal, the east coast, and then Greenland, sparking an international incident with Canada. She completed the first solo circumnavigation of the North American continent by a U.S. vessel and the first trip by a Polar-Class icebreaker. She also captured the record for the fastest transit of the historic northern route. She had departed Seattle to begin the voyage on 6 June 1985.

1990 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the Pentagon was laying plans to send as many as 100-thousand more troops to Saudi Arabia.

1993 – Colonel Irene Trowell-Harris, from the New York Air National Guard, is promoted to Brigadier General on this date; thus becoming the National Guard’s first African American woman to hold general officer rank. She was serving as the Assistant to the Director, Medical Readiness, Office of the Surgeon General, Headquarters, USAF. She started her Guard career as a flight nurse by joining the 102nd Aeromedical Evacuation Flight, NY Air National Guard in 1963. She steadily moved up in rank and responsibility, becoming the nurse administrator of the105th Tactical Air Command Hospital in 1985. In 1986 she was appointed to command the 105th, the first nurse in Air Guard history to command a medical facility. Promoted to Major General in September 1998, she retired in September 2001.

1996 – Federal Judge Richard Matsch granted Oklahoma City bombing defendants Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols separate trials.

1996 – The US held back $100 million in arms until Bosnia cuts its ties to Iran. M-60 tanks, M-111 armored personnel carriers and 50,000 small arms, ammunition and supplies were part of the deal.

1998 – NATO generals left Belgrade with more assurances from Pres. Milosevic that enough forces will be withdrawn by the 27th deadline to avoid air strikes.

1999 – US and British jets attacked sites in the northern no-fly zone.

2001 – A day after the House signed on, the Senate sent President Bush a package of anti-terror measures giving police improved ability for searches and wiretaps.

2001 – A State Dept. mail worker in Virginia was diagnosed with the inhalational form of anthrax.

2001 – American warplanes dropped cluster bombs for the 1st time on Taliban front lines.

2001 – Operation Green Quest was the name given to a Treasury Dept. led task force headed by the Customs Service to crack down on financial sponsors of terrorism.

2002 – In Utah 2 F-16 fighter jets collided during training and 1 pilot survived. The 2nd pilot’s body was found October 26th.

2003 – US-led coalition troops and Afghan militia killed 18 rebel fighters in a six-hour firefight in eastern Afghanistan.

2003 – In Afghanistan CIA officers William Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, N.C., and Christopher Glenn Mueller, 32, of San Diego were ambushed and killed near the village in Shkin in Paktika province while tracking terrorists.

2004 – Hamid Karzai was assured of a majority in Afghanistan’s election to become its first democratically chosen president. A close to final tally soon gave Karzai 55.4% of the vote.

2004 – Saboteurs blew up a pipeline feeding Iraq’s biggest refinery.

2007 – The United States imposes economic sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for its support of terrorism.

2011 – The last of the United States’ nine-megaton B53 warheads, formerly the most powerful nuclear weapons in the country’s nuclear arsenal, is disassembled near Amarillo, Texas, having been in service since 1962.

2014 – USS North Dakota (SSN-784), a Virginia-class submarine of the United States Navy, is commissioned. She will be the second U.S. Navy ship to be named for the U.S. state of North Dakota.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

YOUNG, CAVALRY M.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company L, 3d lowa Cavalry. Place and date: At Osage, Kans., 25 October 1864. Entered service at: Hopeville, Clark County, lowa. Birth: Washington County, Ohio. Date of issue: 4 April 1865. Citation: Gallantry in capturing Gen. Cabell.

BASILONE, JOHN
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 4 November 1916, Buffalo, N.Y. Accredited to: New Jersey. Other Navy award: Navy Cross. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action against enemy Japanese forces, above and beyond the call of duty, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division in the Lunga Area. Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 24 and 25 October 1942. While the enemy was hammering at the Marines’ defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machineguns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault.

In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone’s sections, with its gun crews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on. Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived. A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment. His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

CHOATE, CLYDE L.
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company C, 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion. Place and date: Near Bruyeres, France, 25 October 1944. Entered service at: Anna, 111. Born: 28 June 1920, West Frankfurt, 111. G.O. No.: 75, 5 September 1945. Citation: He commanded a tank destroyer near Bruyeres, France, on 25 October 1944. Our infantry occupied a position on a wooded hill when, at dusk, an enemy Mark IV tank and a company of infantry attacked, threatening to overrun the American position and capture a command post 400 yards to the rear. S/Sgt. Choate’s tank destroyer, the only weapon available to oppose the German armor, was set afire by 2 hits. Ordering his men to abandon the destroyer, S/Sgt. Choate reached comparative safety. He returned to the burning destroyer to search for comrades possibly trapped in the vehicle risking instant death in an explosion which was imminent and braving enemy fire which ripped his jacket and tore the helmet from his head. Completing the search and seeing the tank and its supporting infantry overrunning our infantry in their shallow foxholes, he secured a bazooka and ran after the tank, dodging from tree to tree and passing through the enemy’s loose skirmish line. He fired a rocket from a distance of 20 yards, immobilizing the tank but leaving it able to spray the area with cannon and machinegun fire.

Running back to our infantry through vicious fire, he secured another rocket, and, advancing against a hail of machinegun and small-arms fire reached a position 10 yards from the tank. His second shot shattered the turret. With his pistol he killed 2 of the crew as they emerged from the tank; and then running to the crippled Mark IV while enemy infantry sniped at him, he dropped a grenade inside the tank and completed its destruction. With their armor gone, the enemy infantry became disorganized and was driven back. S/Sgt. Choate’s great daring in assaulting an enemy tank single-handed, his determination to follow the vehicle after it had passed his position, and his skill and crushing thoroughness in the attack prevented the enemy from capturing a battalion command post and turned a probable defeat into a tactical success.

*EVANS, ERNEST EDWIN
Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy. Born: 13 August 1908, Pawnee, Okla. Accredited to: Oklahoma. Other Navy awards: Navy Cross, Bronze Star Medal. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Johnston in action against major units of the enemy Japanese fleet during the battle off Samar on 25 October 1944. The first to lay a smokescreen and to open fire as an enemy task force, vastly superior in number, firepower and armor, rapidly approached. Comdr. Evans gallantly diverted the powerful blasts of hostile guns from the lightly armed and armored carriers under his protection, launching the first torpedo attack when the Johnston came under straddling Japanese shellfire.

Undaunted by damage sustained under the terrific volume of fire, he unhesitatingly joined others of his group to provide fire support during subsequent torpedo attacks against the Japanese and, outshooting and outmaneuvering the enemy as he consistently interposed his vessel between the hostile fleet units and our carriers despite the crippling loss of engine power and communications with steering aft, shifted command to the fantail, shouted steering orders through an open hatch to men turning the rudder by hand and battled furiously until the Johnston, burning and shuddering from a mortal blow, lay dead in the water after 3 hours of fierce combat. Seriously wounded early in the engagement, Comdr. Evans, by his indomitable courage and brilliant professional skill, aided materially in turning back the enemy during a critical phase of the action. His valiant fighting spirit throughout this historic battle will venture as an inspiration to all who served with him.

GIUNTA, SALVATORE A.
Rank: Staff Sergeant, Organization: U.S. Army, Company: Battle Company, 2nd Battalion, Division: Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment, Born: 21 January 1985, Clinton, Iowa, Departed: No, Entered Service At: Cedar Rapids, Iowa, G.O. Number: , Date of Issue: 11/16/2010, Accredited To: Iowa, Place / Date: Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 25 October 2007. Citation: Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, on October 25, 2007. While conducting a patrol as team leader with Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment, Specialist Giunta and his team were navigating through harsh terrain when they were ambushed by a well-armed and well-coordinated insurgent force. While under heavy enemy fire, Specialist Giunta immediately sprinted towards cover and engaged the enemy.

Seeing that his squad leader had fallen and believing that he had been injured, Specialist Giunta exposed himself to withering enemy fire and raced towards his squad leader, helped him to cover, and administered medical aid. While administering first aid, enemy fire struck Specialist Giunta’s body armor and his secondary weapon. Without regard to the ongoing fire, Specialist Giunta engaged the enemy before prepping and throwing grenades, using the explosions for cover in order to conceal his position. Attempting to reach additional wounded fellow soldiers who were separated from the squad, Specialist Giunta and his team encountered a barrage of enemy fire that forced them to the ground. The team continued forward and upon reaching the wounded soldiers, Specialist Giunta realized that another soldier was still separated from the element. Specialist Giunta then advanced forward on his own initiative. As he crested the top of a hill, he observed two insurgents carrying away an American soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other.

Upon reaching the wounded soldier, he began to provide medical aid, as his squad caught up and provided security. Specialist Giunta’s unwavering courage, selflessness, and decisive leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon’s ability to defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American soldier from the enemy. Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment, and the United States Army.


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26 October

1682 – William Penn accepted the area around the Delaware River in what is now known as Pennsylvania ( Penn's Woods ) from the Duke of York.

1774 – The first Continental Congress, which protested British measures and called for civil disobedience, concluded in Philadelphia. The Congress, which included delegated from 12 of the 13 colonies, Georgia had decided not to attend and were distracted by restive Creek Indians, had met at the Philadelphia Carpenter’s Hall. Major actions taken by the Congress included the following: The Association. The Congress adopted the Continental Association, or simply, the Association, which established a total boycott by means of non-importation, non-exportation and non-consumption accords. These agreements were to be enforced by a group of committees in each community, which would publish the names of merchants defying the boycott, confiscate contraband and encourage public frugality. Declaration of Rights and Grievances. The Congress composed a statement of American complaints. It was addressed to King George III, to whom the delegates remained loyal, and pointedly not to Parliament. The radical elements were critical of the Declaration because it conceded the right of Parliament to regulate colonial trade, a traditional view long held by most Americans, but one that was losing favor in the mid-1770s. Future Meeting. Finally the Congress agreed to convene the following spring if colonial complaints had not been properly addressed. That meeting, the Second Continental Congress, was indeed called in May 1775 in the wake of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The First Continental Congress was regarded as a success by both the general public and the delegates. The latter, despite heated and frequent disagreements, had come to understand the problems and aspirations of people living in other colonies. Many of the friendships forged there would make easier the gargantuan task of governing the new nation in the coming years.

1774 – Minutemen were selected in the American colonies. The terms militia and minutemen are sometimes used interchangeably, but there was a difference between them. Militia were military units formed to protect their towns from foreign invasion. Minutemen, on the other hand, were a small elite force, hand-picked by militia commanders, which were required to be able to assemble quickly. Usually 25 years of age or younger, they were chosen for their enthusiasm, reliability, and physical strength. Usually about a fourth of the militia served as Minutemen. Although today Minutemen are thought of as originating in the War for Independence, they actually began in Massachusetts during as early as 1645. Equipped with matchlocks or pikes, they were to report within half an hour of being warned. One thing the Minutemen lacked was central leadership, a flaw that would lead to their dissolution. At Concord, Minutemen companies from Concord, Acton, Littleton, and other towns combined their units. They were sent to the North Bridge in Concord with a number of light infantry. After a few volleys were fired, the British light infantry retreated back to the Concord Common area. Lacking central command, each company of Minutemen chose their own action and they did not pursue the redcoats. In the running battle that ensued fifteen miles back to Boston the Massachusetts militia would see their last action as Minutemen in history. The militia would go on to form an army, surrounding Boston and inflicting heavy casualties on the British army at Bunker and Breed’s Hill.

1775 – King George III of Great Britain goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1776 – Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

1787 – “Federalist Papers,” a series of articles written under the pen name of Publius by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, were published and called for ratification of Constitution. Madison, widely recognized as the Father of the Constitution, would later go on to become President of the United States. Jay would become the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Hamilton would serve in the Cabinet and become a major force in setting economic policy for the US.

1795 – Pinckney’s Treaty (Treaty of San Lorenzo) between Spain and US was signed. Spain recognized U.S. borders at the Mississippi and the 31st parallel (the northern border of Florida, a Spanish possession) and granted Americans the right to deposit goods for transshipment at New Orleans. The second provision was a vital concern of American farmers in the West. Efforts to transport their goods to market in the East by overland routes were time-consuming and expensive. The right of deposit allows one nation to temporarily store goods on another nation’s soil without paying any fees or duties. Spain granted these concessions to the United States, not from fear of America’s military might, but from concern over major power diplomatic realities. Spain was a rival of Britain and noted the warming relationship between Britain and the U.S. as evidenced in Jay’s Treaty. Therefore, Spain hoped to keep Britain off balance by establishing a positive relationship with America.

1813 – Invading Canada from Lake Champlain, American General Wayne Hampton advanced down the Chateaugay River against defenses established by General Sir George Prevost. An American detachment under Colonel Robert Purdy was repulsed by Canadian militia led by Colonel Charles-Michel Salaberry, forcing Hampton to withdraw and later resign his commission.

1861 – The Pony Express ended after 18 months of operation. Financially, the owners spent $700,000 on the Pony Express and had a $200,000 deficit. The company failed to get the million dollar government contract because of political pressures and the outbreak of the Civil War. Improved communication between east and west. Proved the central route could be traveled all winter. Supported the central route for the transcontinental railroad. Kept communication open to California at the beginning of the Civil War. Provided the fastest communication between east and west until the telegraph. Captured the hearts and the imagination of people all over the world.

1864 – “Bloody Bill” Anderson, Confederate guerilla, is killed. Notorious Confederate guerrilla leader William “Bloody Bill” Anderson is killed in Missouri in an ambush. Born in Kentucky in 1839, Anderson grew up in Missouri and moved to Kansas in 1857. Arriving to settle on his father’s land claim east of Council Grove, he was soon enmeshed in the bitter fight over slavery that gave the area the nickname “Bleeding Kansas.” Before the war, he trafficked stolen horses and escorted wagon trains along the Santa Fe Trail. When the war broke out, Anderson joined an antislavery, pro-Union band of guerillas known as “Jayhawkers.” He soon switched sides and joined a band of pro-Confederate “Bushwhackers.” In the partisan warfare of Kansas and Missouri, these groups were often more interested in robbery, looting, and personal gain than advancement of a political cause. Anderson’s father was killed in a dispute in 1862. Anderson and his brother Jim gunned down the killer and then moved the family back to western Missouri. Anderson became the head of a band ranging from 30 to 40 guerillas, and his activities cast a shadow of suspicion over the rest of his family. The Union commander along the border, General Thomas Ewing, arrested several wives and sisters of a notorious band, led by William Quantrill, that was terrorizing and murdering Union sympathizers.

While Anderson commanded his own band, he often collaborated with Quantrill’s larger force. As a result, the group Ewing arrested also included three of Anderson’s sisters, who were imprisoned in a temporary Union jail in Kansas City. On August 14, the structure collapsed, killing Anderson’s 14-year-old sister Josephine and injuring his two other sisters. Quantrill assembled 450 men to exact revenge against the abolitionist community of Lawrence, Kansas. On August 21, the band killed 150 residents and burned much of the town. Anderson was credited with 14 murders that day. Anderson went to Texas that winter, got married, and returned to Missouri in 1864 with a band of about 50 fighters. Anderson embarked on a summer of violence, leading his group on a campaign that killed hundreds and caused extensive damage. The climax came on September 27 when Anderson’s gang joined with several others to pillage the town of Centralia, Missouri. When more than 100 Union soldiers pursued them, the guerillas ambushed and massacred the entire detachment. Just a month later, Anderson’s band was caught in a Union ambush outside of Albany, Missouri, and Anderson was killed by two bullets to his head. The body of the “blood-drenched savage,” as he became known in the area, was placed on public display. Anderson kept a rope to record his killings, and there were 54 knots in it at the time of his death.

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1864 – General Price, heading north toward St. Louis, received word at Fredericktown of Federal positions. Spies told him that 8,000 troops were encamped near St. Louis and ready to defend the city. He was also told that a garrison of 1,500 Federals was at the nearby town of Pilot Knob. The old general saw the chance of an easy victory and on September 26, he sent General Shelby northward to destroy the tracks and bridges of the Iron Mountain Railroad, cutting off the Union force at Pilot Knob from St. Louis reinforcements. The rest of Price’s army marched toward Pilot Knob until late in the afternoon when they collided with Federals at a spot called Shut-In Gap near the town of Arcadia where indecisive skirmishing took place until darkness fell. At sunrise the struggle resumed with the Federals fighting a delaying action through Ironton to Pilot Knob where their commander, Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing, ordered his men to take up positions at Fort Davidson. Surrounded by a dry moat ten feet wide and over six feet deep, the fort was an eight-sided structure with a nine-foot high dirt parapet topped with sandbags. An impressive network of trenches beyond its walls provided the fort with outer defenses. Gen. Ewing’s force was not 1,500 strong as reported to Price, but actually consisted of no more than 900 men, some of whom were civilian volunteers from the vicinity.

However, with four huge siege guns, three howitzers, three mortars, and six field artillery pieces, Ewing’s men prepared to hold the fort against the thousands of Confederates massing before them. That afternoon, after a short and pitifully ineffective bombardment of the fort by four cannons situated on high ground, Price ordered an assault. The high-pitched Rebel yell echoed through the valley as thousands of men hurled themselves into a hideous storm of shot and shell. Three times they charged the walls; three times they failed to take them. The hellish gunfire mowed down scores of brave, young soldiers. A few reached the moat, only to be slaughtered by rifle fire and crude grenades. As the thunder of the guns finally subsided, thick clouds of sulfurous gun smoke drifted away to reveal a ghastly scene of carnage. The fields before Fort Davidson were covered with nearly 1,000 dead and wounded men. The surviving Confederates bivouacked for the night and prepared to renew the bloody contest in the morning, building ladders to scale the fort’s walls. Word that the hated General Ewing was in command of the Union force no doubt strengthened the resolve of the Southerners. Inside the fort, Ewing tallied up his casualties, only 75, and made plans to attempt an evacuation that night. Incredibly, he succeeded! At 3:00 A.m. his troops quietly slipped out of the fort, and in the nighttime chaos of battle preparations, the Union force was mistaken by Rebel pickets for friendly troops moving to a new position. An hour after the Yanks abandoned the fort, a slow burning fuse in the powder magazine accomplished its mission, setting off an incredible explosion that shook the surrounding hills and left a huge smoldering crater in the middle of the fort.

Not taking a hint, the Confederates believed an accident had occurred within the stronghold and that the survivors would surrender at dawn. In the morning, Price learned that the fort was his but that Ewing and his men were gone. A subsequent attempt by a portion of the Confederate force to overtake the Federals was unsuccessful. There was no victory for the Confederates to celebrate at Pilot Knob and large numbers of troops began deserting the Army of Missouri soon after the bloody debacle.

1876 – President Grant sent federal troops to SC. The soldiers assigned to South Carolina belonged to the 7th Cavalry, Lt. Col. (Brevet Maj. Gen.) George Armstrong Custer’s regiment, which had recently fought the Cheyennes on the Great Plains. The troops were headquartered in York County, the center for much of the Klan activity in the state, and they were commanded by 37-year-old Major Lewis M. Merrill. At first skeptical of the seemingly alarmist accounts of the KKK, Merrill soon became convinced of the basic truth of the allegations and would go on to play a crucial role in combating terrorism in the state.

1889 – Marine Barracks was established at Naval Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1912 – By an executive order Delaware was represented by the first star and Delaware wais represented by the top stripe of the American flag. Delaware was the first of the 13 colonies to ratify the Constitution, on Dec. 7, 1787. It was thus assigned the top of the 13 stripes and the first of the then 48 stars by an executive order signed by President William Howard Taft. Each subsequent stripe was then assigned to the colonies in the order in which they ratified the Constitution. The first 13 stars (from left to right) also represent the order in which the colonies ratified, and are then followed by the rest of the states in the order in which they were admitted into the Union.

1918 – General Erich Ludendorff is replaces a deputy chief of the General Staff by General Wilhelm Groener. Ludendorff has recently quarreled with his superior, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and has suggested that Germany seek an armistice.

1921 – In first successful test, a compressed air, turntable catapult, launches an N-9 seaplane. This type of catapult was later installed on battleships, replacing turret-mounted platforms for launching aircraft.

1922 – LCDR Godfrey deC. Chevalier makes first landing aboard a carrier (USS Langley) while underway off Cape Henry, Virginia.

1939 – On the eve of the Senate vote on amending the Neutrality Act, President Roosevelt delivers a fireside chat: “In and out of Congress we have heard orators and commentators and others beating their breasts proclaiming against sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe. That I do not hesitate to label as one of the worst fakes in current history. It is a deliberate setup of an imaginary bogy.”

1940 – ParaMarines organize at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Two Marine parachute operations were planned during the war in the Pacific, but were both cancelled. The only combat jump by the Paramarines was in Southern France when a group of Marines jumped as part of an Office of Startegic Services (OSS) team to aid the French Resistance. For the remainder of the war, the Paramarines were employed as regular infantry in the Pacific. In 1944 the Regiment was disbanded when it was decided the need for airborne Marines were no longer needed.

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1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight. The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang was an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II, the Korean War and other conflicts. The Mustang was conceived, designed and built by North American Aviation (NAA) in response to a specification issued directly to NAA by the British Purchasing Commission. The prototype NA-73X airframe was rolled out on 9 September 1940, 102 days after the contract was signed and, with an engine installed, first flew on this date. The Mustang was originally designed to use the Allison V-1710 engine, which had limited high-altitude performance. It was first flown operationally by the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a tactical-reconnaissance aircraft and fighter-bomber (Mustang Mk I). The addition of the Rolls-Royce Merlin to the P-51B/C model transformed the Mustang’s performance at altitudes above 15,000 ft, matching or bettering that of the Luftwaffe’s fighters.

The definitive version, the P-51D, was powered by the Packard V-1650-7, a license-built version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 60 series two-stage two-speed supercharged engine, and armed with six .50 caliber (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns. From late 1943, P-51Bs (supplemented by P-51Ds from mid-1944) were used by the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force to escort bombers in raids over Germany, while the RAF’s 2 TAF and the USAAF’s Ninth Air Force used the Merlin-powered Mustangs as fighter-bombers, roles in which the Mustang helped ensure Allied air superiority in 1944. The P-51 was also in service with Allied air forces in the North African, Mediterranean and Italian theaters, and saw limited service against the Japanese in the Pacific War. During World War II, Mustang pilots claimed 4,950 enemy aircraft shot down.

At the start of the Korean War, the Mustang was the main fighter of the United Nations until jet fighters such as the F-86 took over this role; the Mustang then became a specialized fighter-bomber. Despite the advent of jet fighters, the Mustang remained in service with some air forces until the early 1980s. After World War II and the Korean War, many Mustangs were converted for civilian use, especially air racing, and increasingly, preserved and flown as historic warbird aircraft at airshows.

1942 – The Battle of Santa Cruz. Both American and Japanese forces launch at dawn. Two hours later the Japanese attack reach and seriously damages the USS Hornet. Both attacks have been launched at the extreme edge of the aircrafts’ range and the Japanese have the advantage as their range is longer. When the American planes find part of the Japanese force, there is not enough fuel left for an organized attack, however, the cruiser Chikuma of Admiral Abe’s Vanguard Group is damaged. The remainder of the planes attack the carrier Shokaku and damage it heavily. A second wave of Japanese attackers severely damages the USS Enterprise but many of the planes are shot down by the antiaircraft guns of the South Dakota. The third wave of Japanese planes from the Junyo suffer the same fate. Enough though the Enterprise is made partially operational, Admiral Kinkaid decides to withdraw. The battle is considered a Japanese victory. The damaged USS Enterprise is now the only American carrier in the Pacific. However, the victory is costly as again loss of Japanese aircrew is high and the lost of aircraft has removed the effectiveness of the undamaged aircraft carrier Zuikaku. The loss of planes and crew also mean that no attack on Henderson Field airstrip is possible.

1944 – US 7th Army continues to fight for St. Die.

1944 – On land, elements of US 24th Corps unsuccessfully attack Japanese positions on Catmon Hill, north of Dulag. The defenders fall back after the battle. Japanese reinforcements arrive at Ormoc. At sea, American air attacks continue to harass the retiring Japanese squadrons. Three Japanese cruisers are sunk.

1944 – Special Task Air Group One makes last attack in month long demonstration of TDR drone missile against Japanese shipping and islands in the Pacific. Of 46 missiles fired, 29 reached their target areas.

1950 – U.S. Amphibious Force Seventh Fleet lands 1st Marine Division at Wonsan, Korea.

1950 – A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reached the Yalu River. They were the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushed the whole army down into South Korea. The ROK 1st and 6th ROK Infantry Divisions captured the first Chinese prisoners of the Korean War. The prisoners reported that the units of the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) 40th and 56th Army had crossed into Korea in the past two weeks. The ROK 6th Infantry Division reached the Yalu River at Chosan.

1955 – Ngo Dinh Diem proclaimed Vietnam a republic with himself as the president. Ngo Dinh Diem declares that pursuant to the wishes of the South Vietnamese people, as evidenced in a national referendum a few days before, the Republic of Vietnam is now in existence and that he will serve as the nation’s first president. The event marked a crucial step in the deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and gave evidence of some troubling aspects that would characterize Diem’s eight years in power. Peace agreements in 1954, between the French and Vietnamese nationalists battling for independence, left Vietnam a divided country. In the north, Ho Chi Minh and his communist supporters were in control. In the south the French installed a weak “nationalist” government led by Bao Dai. National elections were to be held in two years to reunify the nation and select a leader. The United States was not a party to this agreement and quickly determined to save southern Vietnam from Ho’s control.

Diem was viewed by U.S. officials as the best hope for a leader for an independent, democratic South Vietnam. In 1954 Bao Dai named Diem as premier. By 1955, Diem decided to jettison Bao Dai and take control. He called a national referendum, which was supported by the United States. The resulting balloting was an embarrassment to all concerned (except Diem). Diem received 98.2 percent of the vote. (Just a short time earlier, President Eisenhower had criticized elections in Iron Curtain countries, claiming that no one receives over 90 percent of the vote in a truly free election.)

Charges of corruption were immediately raised, and it was soon discovered that the 400,000 voters in Saigon cast over 600,000 ballots. Nevertheless, Diem succeeded. Bao Dai was out, and Diem’s rule was complete. The United States, despite some qualms about exactly how “democratic” Diem’s government would be, recognized the new president. The nation of South Vietnam was now a reality, and the United States had committed itself to its new government and leader.

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1962 – JFK warned Russia that the US would not allow Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba. Nikita Khrushchev sent note to JFK offering to withdraw his missiles from Cuba if US closed its bases in Turkey. The offer was rejected. A boarding party from the Pierce and Kennedy executed the first quarantine interdiction of the Marucla. A tanker, the Groznyy is placed under aerial surveillance. Three more Soviet ships en route to Cuba were reported to have changed course and were returning to their ports of departure. They were the Vishnevsky, Okhotsk, and Sergev Botkin. Later in the day, Lawrence and MacDonough were shadowing Groznyy. The tanker had several cylindrical tanks topside and had declared them to contain ammonia.

1962 – At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasilli Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused to agree with his Captain’s order to launch nuclear torpedos against US warships and setting off what might well have been a terminal superpower nuclear war. The US had been dropping depth charges near the submarine in an attempt to force it to surface, unaware it was carrying nuclear arms. The Soviet officers, who had lost radio contact with Moscow, concluded that World War 3 had begun, and 2 of the officers agreed to ‘blast the warships out of the water’. Arkhipov refused to agree – unanimous consent of 3 officers was required – and thanks to him, we are here to talk about it.

1963 – USS Andrew Jackson (SSBN-619) launches first Polaris A-3 missile from a submerged submarine, off Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1966 – A fire breaks out on board the 42,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Tonkin. The accident occurred when a locker filled with night illumination magnesium flares burst into flame. The fire spread quickly through most of the ship, resulting in 35 officers and eight enlisted men killed and a further 16 injured. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the valor of crewmen who pushed 300 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound bombs that lay within reach of the flames on the hangar deck overboard. The fire destroyed four fighter-bombers and two helicopters, but it was brought under control after three hours. The fallen were returned to the United States for burial.

1967 – The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his Queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.

1968 – The 1st Infantry Division troops are attacked in Binh Long Province (III Corps), 60 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. Communist forces launched a mortar, rocket, and ground attack against Fire Support Base (FSB) Julie, eight miles west of An Loc. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry, manned the FSB. U.S. B-52s conducted 22 strikes over the area in an effort to disperse a reported massing of North Vietnamese forces. The defenders were successful in fending off the Communist attack but eight soldiers were killed and 33 were wounded.

1972 – National security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam.

1972 – Igor Sikorsky (83), Russian-born helicopter pioneer, died. Igor Ivan Sikorsky pioneered early Russian aviation while barely out of his teens and had the longest continuous aeronautical career in history-more than 60 years. Among his early achievements was the world’s first four-engined airplane in 1913, the precursor to the most successful bomber of World War I. Immigrating to the United States in 1919, he founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation, the forerunner of the present helicopter manufacturing giant, the Sikorsky Division of United Technologies. In the 1930’s, Sikorsky designed and manufactured a series of successful large passenger carrying flying boats that pioneered the transocean commercial air routes in the Caribbean and Pacific. In 1909, in Russia, he had unsuccessfully experimented with rotary-wing aircraft, and his first models failed only for want of a lightweight engine of sufficient power.

He nurtured the dream, however, and on September 14, 1939, produced his first practical helicopter, the VS-300. A later model in 1943, the R-4, became the world’s first production rotary-wing craft. This led to highly successful helicopters widely used by all U.S. military services, more than 50 foreign countries, and most of the world’s scheduled helicopter airlines. The recipient of a great many honors in his lifetime, he has received the National Medal for Science and the Wright Brother’s Memorial Trophy. Few advancements in aeronautical science have had such impact on mankind as his invention of the helicopter.

1977 – The experimental space shuttle Enterprise glided to a bumpy but successful landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This is the 5th and final test.

1993 – A man described as a mentally disturbed musician shot dead two American businessmen and an eminent French jurist as they ate dinner at a luxury Cairo hotel. An Italian injured in the attack later died, three other people were wounded. The government said the attacker was mentally retarded and was not a Gama’a Islaami member, but some sources described him as a militant sympathizer.

1998 – In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered an investigation of Osama bin Laden.

1998 – A UN panel reported that the Iraqi government lied to UN weapons inspectors about its nerve gas arsenal and had loaded the VX nerve agent on at least 2 warheads during the Persian Gulf War.

1998 – In Kosovo Serb forces appeared to be withdrawing under the threat of NATO air strikes.

1999 – Unidentified armed Yemenni tribesmen kidnapped three US citizens. The tribesmen demanded the government release five fellow tribesmen, according to press reports. The hostages were released unharmed on 28 October.

1999 – The US CIA agreed to give Germany copies of some 32,000 files that belonged to the Stasi, the former East German intelligence service. The CIA acquired the files in 1989.

2001 – Pres. Bush signed a sweeping anti-terrorism bill into law. It gave police and intelligence agencies vast new powers to fight terrorism. The USA Patriot Act.

2001 – Anthrax was found in the offices of 3 lawmakers in the Longworth House Office building on Capital Hill. The Supreme Court was shut down to test for anthrax spores.

2001 – Lockheed Martin won a $200 million military contract, the biggest in US history, for a new fleet of fighter jets for the US and British forces.

2001 – In Afghanistan the Taliban captured and executed Abdul Haq, a prominent opposition leader, who was attempting to arrange defections.

2001 – In Colombia US ambassador Anne Patterson said the US would provide counter-terrorist aid: “Colombia has 10% of the terrorist groups in the world.”

2002 – President Bush launched urgent diplomatic talks to unite Japan, South Korea and other allies behind a strategy to deal with a nuclear-armed North Korea. He also sought support for possible war with Iraq as Pacific Rim leaders stung by terrorism gathered for their annual summit.

2002 – Pacific Rim prime ministers and presidents united to tackle the most urgent of missions, preventing the melting borders of a connected world from enabling terrorists to undermine the push toward prosperity.

2003 – Iraqi insurgents attacked the heavily guarded al Rashid hotel with a missile barrage that killed an American colonel, wounded 18 other people.

2004 – Spacecraft Cassini flew within 745 miles of Titan providing scientists with new images of the Saturn largest moon.

2004 – A US airstrike in Fallujah killed an aide to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. An Iraqi insurgent group, meanwhile, said on a Web site it had taken 11 Iraqi National Guard soldiers hostage.

2006 – George W. Bush signs into law The Secure Fence Act of 2006 to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Congress has failed to fund the project sufficiently to finish the fence.

2007 – An explosion shakes the Mexican consulate in New York City. The explosion was caused by two thrown hand grenades aided by additional explosive material. 7 injuries were reported, with several windows blown out and debris entering the building.

2014 – Camp Leatherneck, an American base, and Camp Bastion, the last remaining British base in Afghanistan, next to it are handed over to the Afghan Government.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

PORTER, DAVID DIXON
Rank and organization: Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 29 April 1877, Washington, D.C. Appointed from: District of Columbia. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle at the junction of the Cadacan and Sohoton Rivers, Samar, Philippine Islands, 17 November 1901. In command of the columns upon their uniting ashore in the Sohoton Region, Col. Porter (then Capt. ) made a surprise attack on the fortified cliffs and completely routed the enemy, killing 30 and capturing and destroying the powder magazine, 40 lantacas (guns), rice, food and cuartels. Due to his courage, intelligence, discrimination and zeal, he successfully led his men up the cliffs by means of bamboo ladders to a height of 200 feet. The cliffs were of soft stone of volcanic origin, in the nature of pumice and were honeycombed with caves.

Tons of rocks were suspended in platforms held in position by vines and cables (known as bejuco) in readiness to be precipitated upon people below. After driving the insurgents from their position which was almost impregnable, being covered with numerous trails lined with poisoned spears, pits, etc., Col. Porter led his men across the river, scaled the cliffs on the opposite side, and destroyed the camps there. He and the men under his command overcame incredible difficulties and dangers in destroying positions which, according to reports from old prisoners, had taken 3 years to perfect, were held as a final rallying post, and were never before penetrated by white troops. Col. Porter also rendered distinguished public service in the presence of the enemy at Quinapundan River, Samar, Philippine Islands, on 26 October 1901.

*CARSWELL, HORACE S., JR. (Air Mission)
Rank and organization: Major, 308th Bombardment Group, U.S. Army Air Corps. Place and date: Over South China Sea, 26 October 1944. Entered service at: San Angelo, Tex. Birth: Fort Worth, Tex. G.O. No.: 14, 4 February 1946. Citation: He piloted a B-24 bomber in a one-plane strike against a Japanese convoy in the South China Sea on the night of 26 October 1944. Taking the enemy force of 12 ships escorted by at least 2 destroyers by surprise, he made 1 bombing run at 600 feet, scoring a near miss on 1 warship and escaping without drawing fire. He circled. and fully realizing that the convoy was thoroughly alerted and would meet his next attack with a barrage of antiaircraft fire, began a second low-level run which culminated in 2 direct hits on a large tanker.

A hail of steel from Japanese guns, riddled the bomber, knocking out 2 engines, damaging a third, crippling the hydraulic system, puncturing 1 gasoline tank, ripping uncounted holes in the aircraft, and wounding the copilot; but by magnificent display of flying skill, Maj. Carswell controlled the plane’s plunge toward the sea and carefully forced it into a halting climb in the direction of the China shore. On reaching land, where it would have been possible to abandon the staggering bomber, one of the crew discovered that his parachute had been ripped by flak and rendered useless; the pilot, hoping to cross mountainous terrain and reach a base. continued onward until the third engine failed. He ordered the crew to bail out while he struggled to maintain altitude. and, refusing to save himself, chose to remain with his comrade and attempt a crash landing. He died when the airplane struck a mountainside and burned. With consummate gallantry and intrepidity, Maj. Carswell gave his life in a supreme effort to save all members of his crew. His sacrifice. far beyond that required of him, was in keeping with the traditional bravery of America’s war heroes.

COOLIDGE, CHARLES H.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company M, 141st Infantry, 36th Infantry Division. Place and date: East of Belmont sur Buttant, France, 24-27 October 1944. Entered service at: Signal Mountain, Tenn. Birth: Signal Mountain, Tenn. G.O. No.: 53, July 1945. Citation: Leading a section of heavy machineguns supported by 1 platoon of Company K, he took a position near Hill 623, east of Belmont sur Buttant, France, on 24 October 1944, with the mission of covering the right flank of the 3d Battalion and supporting its action. T/Sgt. Coolidge went forward with a sergeant of Company K to reconnoiter positions for coordinating the fires of the light and heavy machineguns. They ran into an enemy force in the woods estimated to be an infantry company. T/Sgt. Coolidge, attempting to bluff the Germans by a show of assurance and boldness called upon them to surrender, whereupon the enemy opened fire. With his carbine, T/Sgt. Coolidge wounded 2 of them. There being no officer present with the force, T/Sgt. Coolidge at once assumed command. Many of the men were replacements recently arrived; this was their first experience under fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge, unmindful of the enemy fire delivered at close range, walked along the position, calming and encouraging his men and directing their fire. The attack was thrown back.

Through 25 and 26 October the enemy launched repeated attacks against the position of this combat group but each was repulsed due to T/Sgt. Coolidge’s able leadership. On 27 October, German infantry, supported by 2 tanks, made a determined attack on the position. The area was swept by enemy small arms, machinegun, and tank fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge armed himself with a bazooka and advanced to within 25 yards of the tanks. His bazooka failed to function and he threw it aside. Securing all the hand grenades he could carry, he crawled forward and inflicted heavy casualties on the advancing enemy. Finally it became apparent that the enemy, in greatly superior force, supported by tanks, would overrun the position. T/Sgt. Coolidge, displaying great coolness and courage, directed and conducted an orderly withdrawal, being himself the last to leave the position. As a result of T/Sgt. Coolidge’s heroic and superior leadership, the mission of this combat group was accomplished throughout 4 days of continuous fighting against numerically superior enemy troops in rain and cold and amid dense woods.

PAIGE, MITCHELL
Rank and organization: Platoon Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps. Place and date: Solomon Islands, 26 October 1942. Entered service at: Pennsylvania. Born: 31 August 1918, Charleroi, Pa. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty while serving with a company of marines in combat against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on 26 October 1942. When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire against the advancing hordes until reinforcements finally arrived. Then, forming a new line, he dauntlessly and aggressively led a bayonet charge, driving the enemy back and preventing a breakthrough in our lines. His great personal valor and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*SKINNER, SHERROD E., JR.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Battery F, 2d Battalion, 11th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Korea, 26 October 1952. Entered service at: East Lansing, Mich. Born: 29 October 1929, Hartford, Conn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as an artillery forward observer of Battery F, in action against enemy aggressor forces on the night of 26 October 1952. When his observation post in an extremely critical and vital sector of the main line of resistance was subjected to a sudden and fanatical attack by hostile forces, supported by a devastating barrage of artillery and mortar fire which completely severed communication lines connecting the outpost with friendly firing batteries, 2d Lt. Skinner, in a determined effort to hold his position, immediately organized and directed the surviving personnel in the defense of the outpost, continuing to call down fire on the enemy by means of radio alone until his equipment became damaged beyond repair. Undaunted by the intense hostile barrage and the rapidly-closing attackers, he twice left the protection of his bunker in order to direct accurate machine gun fire and to replenish the depleted supply of ammunition and grenades. Although painfully wounded on each occasion, he steadfastly refused medical aid until the rest of the men received treatment.

As the ground attack reached its climax, he gallantly directed the final defense until the meager supply of ammunition was exhausted and the position overrun. During the 3 hours that the outpost was occupied by the enemy, several grenades were thrown into the bunker which served as protection for 2d Lt. Skinner and his remaining comrades. Realizing that there was no chance for other than passive resistance, he directed his men to feign death even though the hostile troops entered the bunker and searched their persons. Later, when an enemy grenade was thrown between him and 2 other survivors, he immediately threw himself on the deadly missile in an effort to protect the others, absorbing the full force of the explosion and sacrificing his life for his comrades. By his indomitable fighting spirit, superb leadership, and great personal valor in the face of tremendous odds, 2d Lt. Skinner served to inspire his fellow marines in their heroic stand against the enemy and upheld the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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27 October

1682 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded. William Penn founded the city to serve as capital of Pennsylvania Colony. By the 1750s, Philadelphia had surpassed Boston to become the largest city and busiest port in British America, and second in the British Empire, behind London. During the American Revolution, Philadelphia played an instrumental role as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787. Philadelphia was one of the nation’s capitals during the Revolutionary War, and the city served as the temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C., was under construction. During the 19th century, Philadelphia became a major industrial center and railroad hub that grew from an influx of European immigrants. It became a prime destination for African Americans during the Great Migration and surpassed two million occupants by 1950.

1728 – Captain James Cook (d.1779), explorer, was born in Scotland. His discoveries included the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

1787 – The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of 77 essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, was published in a New York newspaper. The essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay were later published as “The Federalist Papers.”

1795 – In Madrid, the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also known as Pinckney’s Treaty), which provided for free navigation of the Mississippi River. The Treaty of San Lorenzo between Spain and the United States played a major role in the expansion of the infant nation’s boundaries. Preceded by the acquisition of lands set forth by the Northwest Ordinance eight years earlier, and soon-to-be followed by the Louisiana Purchase eight years later, the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also known as Pinckney’s Treaty) opened up the Mississippi River to American navigation. Negotiated by Thomas Pinckney, America’s special envoy to Spain, the agreement also allowed western settlers the “right to deposit” their exports in New Orleans and to engage in commercial transactions within that city. This was of vital importance to the more than 100,000 westerners who lived in Kentucky and Tennessee, and to the many thousands of settlers who lived in what is now Ohio. Under the treaty Spain officially recognized the southern and western boundaries of the U.S. as the 31st parallel and the Mississippi River. Thus, the treaty allowed the U.S. to gain access to the area now known as the states of Mississippi and Alabama.

1810 – President James Madison ordered the annexation of the western part of West Florida. Settlers there had rebelled against Spanish authority. A group of U.S. citizens captured the Spanish Fort San Carlos in Baton Rouge. They declared the independence of the “Republic of West Florida.” That same year, President James Madison claimed Florida from the Mississippi River to the Perdido River as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Spain criticized the action, but because it was involved in war with France, did not take action. In 1813, the United States took another piece of West Florida by annexing the land between the Pearl and the Perdido rivers.

1838 – Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated. Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the Extermination Order in Latter Day Saint history, was an executive order issued on October 27, 1838 by the governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs. It was issued in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Mormons and a unit of the Missouri State Guard in northern Ray County, Missouri, during the 1838 Mormon War. Claiming that the Mormons had committed “open and avowed defiance of the laws”, and had “made war upon the people of this State,” Boggs directed that “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description”. While Executive Order 44 is often referred to as the “Mormon Extermination Order” due to the phrasing used by Boggs, no one is known to have been killed by the militia or anyone else specifically because of it.

1858 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States (1901-1909) who was the namesake of the “Teddy” bear, was born in New York City. Today a reconstruction of the house is a National Historic Site and open to the public. The 26th president of the U.S., Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919. He wrote the 4-volume “The Winning of the West.” In 1996 The American Experience series broadcast a 4-hr. TV special that covered his life. His pursuit of boxing left him blind in one eye. He put 230 million acres of land under federal protection. “Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.”

1862 – A Confederate force was routed at the Battle of Labadieville, near Bayou Lafourche in Louisiana. Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commanding Union forces in the Department of the Gulf, launched an expedition into the Bayou Lafourche region to eliminate the Rebel threat from that area, to make sure that sugar and cotton products from there would come into Union hands and, in the future, to use it as a base for other military operations. He organized a brigade of about 4,000 men under the command of his protege Brig. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel to accomplish the missions. On October 25, Weitzel and his men arrived at Donaldsonville, where the Lafourche meets the Mississippi, and began an advance up the east bank of the bayou. The Confederates under the command of Brig. Gen. Alfred Mouton attempted to concentrate to meet the threat.

By the 27th, the Confederates had occupied a position on the bayou above Labadieville. A little more than half the force was on the east bank while the rest of the men were on the west bank near Georgia Landing, generally without means of concentrating on one side or the other. As the Federal troops continued down the east bank, they encountered the Rebels at about 11:00 am and began skirmishing. The Confederates fell back quickly. Weitzel then began crossing his men to the west bank to attack the Rebel troops there. For some time, these Confederate troops fought resolutely and brought the Union assault to a standstill. The Rebels, however, ran out of artillery ammunition and had to withdraw to Labadieville, opening up this portion of the Lafourche to the Union.

1864 – Battle of Boydton Plank Road, Va. (Burgess’ Mill, Southside Railroad). Directed by Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, divisions from three Union corps (II, V, and IX) and Gregg’s cavalry division, numbering more than 30,000 men, withdrew from the Petersburg lines and marched west to operate against the Boydton Plank Road and South Side Railroad. The initial Union advance on October 27 gained the Boydton Plank Road, a major campaign objective. But that afternoon, a counterattack near Burgess’ Mill spearheaded by Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s division and Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton’s cavalry isolated the II Corps and forced a retreat. The Confederates retained control of the Boydton Plank Road for the rest of the winter.1864 – Battle of Fair Oaks, Va. In combination with movements against the Boydton Plank Road at Petersburg, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler attacked the Richmond defenses along Darbytown Road with the X Corps. The XVIII Corps marched north to Fair Oaks where it was soundly repulsed by Field’s Confederate division. Confederate forces counterattacked, taking some 600 prisoners. The Richmond defenses remained intact. Of Grant’s offensives north of the James River, this was repulsed most easily.

1864 – LT William Cushing, USN, sinks Confederate ram Albemarle with a spar torpedo attached to the bow of his launch.

1873 – Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applied for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire. [see Nov 24, 1874] Joseph Glidden and Isaac Ellwood formed a company in De Kalb, Illinois to manufacture barbed wire, an essential product of old West. Patents on barbed wire were granted as early as 1867, but Glidden was the first to devise a commercially viable way of producing it after seeing a sample of barbed wire at a fair in 1873. Glidden and Ellwood’s product greatly increased the use of barbed wire to protect crops and livestock from roaming cattle. Open ranges dramatically dwindled in the face of new fencing over the next two decades.

1913 – President Woodrow Wilson declares the US will never attack another country unless attacked first.

1918 – French 4th Army to the left [west] of the US 1st Army catches up to American front line. This is made possible by the success of two U.S. divisions, the 2nd and 36th, successfully capturing Blanc Mont Ridge in the Champagne and pursuing the enemy to the River Aisne.

1920 – League of Nations moved headquarters in Geneva.

1922 – Navy League of U.S. sponsors first annual celebration of Navy Day to focus public attention on the importance of the U.S. Navy. That date was selected because it was Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday.

1922 – In Italy, liberal Luigi Facta’s cabinet resigned after threats from Mussolini that “either the government will be given to us or we will seize it by marching on Rome.” Mussolini called for a general mobilization of all Fascists.

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1930 – Ratifications exchanged in London for the first London Naval Treaty, signed in April modifying the 1925 Washington Naval Treaty and the arms limitation treaty’s modified provisions, go into effect immediately, further limiting the expensive naval arms race among its five signatories.

1939 – King Leopold III, in a broadcast to the USA, declares that Belgium is determined to defend its neutrality.

1939 – The US Senate approves amendments to the Neutrality Act, repealing the arms embargo provision.

1941 – In a broadcast to the nation on Navy Day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared: “America has been attacked, the shooting has started.” He did not ask for full-scale war yet, realizing that many Americans were not yet ready for such a step.

1941 – The Chicago Daily Tribune dismissed the possibility of war with Japan, editorializing, “She cannot attack us. That is a military impossibility. Even our base at Hawaii is beyond the effective striking power of her fleet.”

1942 – At Guadalcanal, the Japanese halt the offensive. They have suffered 3500 casualties with entire units being destroyed. Both sides are exhaustive by the heavy day and night fighting, but the initiative has passed to the Americans.

1943 – First women Marines report for duty on West Coast, Camp Pendleton.

1944 – On land, the US 7th Division (part of US 24th Corps) captures Buri Airfield. Meanwhile, the Tacloban airstrip, on Leyte, becomes operational and the US 9th Fighter Squadron flies the first mission by Philippines based American fighters since 1942. At sea, a group of 3 carriers commanded by Admiral Sherman attacks Japanese shipping around Luzon, sinking 2 destroyers. There are also air strikes on Luzon. The battleship USS California is damaged.

1952 – The 8th Fighter-Bomber Wing recorded its 50,000th combat sortie of the war.

1954 – Pres. Eisenhower offered aid to S. Vietnam Pres. Ngo Dinh Diem.

1954 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force. Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. (December 18, 1912 – July 4, 2002) was an American United States Air Force general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen. He was the first African-American general officer in the United States Air Force. On December 9, 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton. During World War II, Davis was commander of the 99th and the 332nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis himself flew sixty missions in P-39, Curtiss P-40, P-47 and P-51 Mustang fighters. Davis followed in his father’s footsteps in breaking racial barriers, as Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. was the first African-American general in the United States Army.

1961 – The 1st Saturn launch vehicle made an unmanned flight test from Cape Canaveral. The Saturn rocket evolved from the idea of clustering a number of Jupiter engines around Redstone and Jupiter propellant tanks to build a large launch vehicle. These engines, whose thrust would total 1.5 million pounds (6.7 million newtons), would be mounted on a structure consisting of eight 70-inch (178-centimeter)-diameter tanks clustered around a single 105-inch (267-centimeter) Jupiter tank. The Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) gave its approval to develop such a structure in August 1958. Development of the three-stage Saturn 1 began in December 1959. In early 1960, the second stage was changed so that six less powerful engines replaced the four 20,000-pound second-stage engines, and the third stage was eliminated. Assembly of the first flight vehicle began in May 1960.

1962 – Negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union finally result in a plan to end the two-week-old Cuban Missile Crisis. Since President John F. Kennedy’s October 22 address warning the Soviets to cease their reckless program to put nuclear weapons in Cuba and announcing a naval “quarantine” against additional weapons shipments into Cuba, the world held its breath waiting to see whether the two superpowers would come to blows. U.S. armed forces went on alert and the Strategic Air Command went to a Stage 4 alert (one step away from nuclear attack). On October 24, millions waited to see whether Soviet ships bound for Cuba carrying additional missiles would try to break the U.S. naval blockade around the island. At the last minute, the vessels turned around and returned to the Soviet Union. On October 26, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev responded to the quarantine by sending a long and rather disjointed letter to Kennedy offering a deal: Soviet ships bound for Cuba would “not carry any kind of armaments” if the United States vowed never to invade Cuba. He pleaded, “let us show good sense,” and appealed to Kennedy to “weigh well what the aggressive, piratical actions, which you have declared the U.S.A. intends to carry out in international waters, would lead to.”

He followed this with another letter the next day offering to remove the missiles from Cuba if the United States would remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Kennedy and his officials debated the proper U.S. response to these offers. Attorney General Robert Kennedy ultimately devised an acceptable plan: take up Khrushchev’s first offer and ignore the second letter. Although the United States had been considering the removal of the missiles from Turkey for some time, agreeing to the Soviet demand for their removal might give the appearance of weakness. Nevertheless, behind the scenes, Russian diplomats were informed that the missiles in Turkey would be removed after the Soviet missiles in Cuba were taken away. This information was accompanied by a threat: If the Cuban missiles were not removed in two days, the United States would resort to military action. It was now Khrushchev’s turn to consider an offer to end the standoff.

1962 – Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban missile crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

1966 – U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Averell Harriman visits 10 nations to explain the results of the Manila conference and the current U.S. evaluation of the situation in Southeast Asia. Harriman, acting as Johnson’s personal emissary, visited leaders in Ceylon, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Italy, France, West Germany, Britain, and Morocco to explain the results of the Manila conference and the “Declaration of Peace” signed there by Allied leaders with troops in Vietnam. They pledged they would pull their troops out of Vietnam within six months after all North Vietnamese troops were withdrawn from South Vietnam. Harriman reported to the president on November 11 that the pledge was received favorably and “Every country in the world wants to see peace, with the exception of Red China and North Vietnam.” The Communist Chinese news agency Hsinhua had already denounced the Manila pledge as “out-and-out blackmail and shameless humbug.” The North Vietnamese did not respond favorably to the Manila pledge and it had no impact on the conduct of the war, which continued unabated.

1966 – Women Marines serve in WestPac – first time west of Hawaii.

1967 – Operation Coronado VIII begins in the Rung Sat Zone.

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1988 – Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure.

1995 – William Kreutzer, US Army sergeant, opened fire on a field of 1300 soldiers. He killed a fellow 82nd Airborne soldier, Major Stephen Badger and wounded several others. Defense lawyers in 1996 pleaded that he suffered from depression. He was convicted of pre-meditated murder on 6/11/96. The next day he was sentenced to death.

1997 – The crew of the CGC Baranof confiscated two .50-caliber sniper rifles, ammunition and other military supplies that were allegedly to be used in an assassination attempt against Cuban President Fidel Castro. Four Cuban exiles were arrested for illegal possession of firearms after the 46-foot La Esperanza was ordered into Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, by the Baranof. There a search of the vessel turned up the weapons. One suspect confessed that the sniper rifles were to be used to assassinate Castro on his arrival on Venezuela’s Margarita Island for the Ibero-American Summit Conference. A magistrate in the U.S. District Court in San Juan later dismissed the charge of conspiracy to assassinate Castro but let the charges of illegal importation of firearms and making false statements stand.

1998 – Serb forces drew back from former Kosovo battlefronts, holding off the immediate threat of NATO airstrikes.

1999 – The Clinton administration authorized the first direct military training for opponents of Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein.

2001 – In Washington, the search for deadly anthrax widened to thousands of businesses and 30 mail distribution centers.

2001 – US warplanes hit frontline Taliban positions in the heaviest attacks to date. 10 people were reported killed from an errant bomb in the village of Ghanikhel in Kapisa province. 2001 – Ruue Lubbers, the UN refugee chief, said some 150,000 Afghans had crossed into Pakistan in recent weeks.

2001 – Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed (27), a Yemeni microbiology student, was turned over to US authorities in Pakistan. He was said to be an active al Qaeda member and was suspected of involvement in the Oct 12, 2000 bombing of the Cole in Aden.

2003 – UN police and NATO-led peacekeepers near Pristina, Serbia, arrested 5 former ethnic Albanian rebels for alleged war crimes in Kosovo.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BONNAFFON, SYLVESTER, JR.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company G, 99th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Boydton Plank Road, Va., 27 October 1864. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth:——. Date of issue: 29 September 1893. Citation: Checked the rout and rallied the troops of his command in the face of a terrible fire of musketry; was severely wounded.

BROWN, JEREMIAH Z.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company K, 148th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Petersburg, Va., 27 October 1864. Entered service at: Rimmersburg, Pa. Birth: Clarion County, Pa. Date of issue: 22 June 1896. Citation: With 100 selected volunteers, assaulted and captured the works of the enemy, together with a number of officers and men.

DENNING, LORENZO
Rank and organization: Landsman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1843, Connecticut. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: Denning served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1 in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram Albemarle which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

EMBLER, ANDREW H.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company D, 59th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Boydton Plank Road, Va., 27 October 1864. Entered service at: New York. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 19 October 1893. Citation: Charged at the head of 2 regiments, which drove the enemy’s main body, gained the crest of the hill near the Burgess house and forced a barricade on the Boydton road.

GEORGE, DANIEL G.
Rank and organization: Ordinary Seaman, U.S. Navy. (Real name is William Smith. ) Born: 1840, Plaistow, N.H. Accredited to: New Hampshire. G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: George served on board U.S. Picket Boat No. 1, in action 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram, Albemarle, which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

HAMILTON, RICHARD
Rank and organization: Coal Heaver, U.S. Navy. Born: 1836, Philadelphia, Pa. Accredited to: Pennsylvania G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: Hamilton served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1, in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram Albemarle which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

HARLEY, BERNARD
Rank and organization: Ordinary Seaman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1842, Brooklyn, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: Harley served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1, in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram Albemarle, which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

HOUGHTON, EDWARD J.
Rank and organization: Ordinary Seaman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1843, Mobile, Ala. Accredited to: Alabama. G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: Houghton served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1 in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram Albemarle, which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

KING, ROBERT H.
Rank and organization: Landsman, U.S. Navy. Place: Plymouth, N.C. Born: 1845, New York. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: King served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1, in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram, Albemarle, which had res1sted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

MURPHY, DANIEL J.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company F, 19th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 27 October 1864. Entered service at: Lowell, Mass. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 1 December 1864. Citation: Capture of flag of 47th North Carolina Infantry (C.S.A.).

NOLAN, JOHN J.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company K, 8th New Hampshire Infantry. Place and date: At Georgia Landing, La., 27 October 1862. Entered service at: Nashua, N.H. Born: 24 June 1844, Ireland. Date of issue: 3 August 1897. Citation: Although prostrated by a cannon shot, refused to give up the flag which he was carrying as color bearer of his regiment and continued to carry it at the head of the regiment throughout the engagement.

ORR, CHARLES A.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 187th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 27 October 1864. Entered service at: Bennington, N.Y. Birth: Holland, N.Y. Date of issue: 1 April 1898. Citation: This soldier and two others, voluntarily and under fire, rescued several wounded and helpless soldiers.

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WILKES, HENRY
Rank and organization: Landsman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1845, New York, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Citation: Wilkes served on board U.S. Picket Boat No. 1 in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate Ram, Albemarle, which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and them made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.

WOODRUFF, ALONZO
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company I, 1st U.S. Sharpshooters. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 27 October 1864. Entered service at: Ionia, Mich. Birth: lonia, Mich. Date of issue: 29 January 1896. Citation: Went to the assistance of a wounded and overpowered comrade, and in a hand_to_hand encounter effected his rescue.

*PERKINS, MICHAEL J.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company D, 101st Infantry, 26th Division. Place and date: At Belieu Bois, France, 27 October 1918. Entered service at: Boston, Mass. Birth: Boston, Mass. G.O. No.: 34, W.D. 1919. Citation: He, voluntarily and alone, crawled to a German “pill box” machinegun emplacement, from which grenades were being thrown at his platoon. Awaiting his opportunity, when the door was again opened and another grenade thrown, he threw a bomb inside, bursting the door open, and then, drawing his trench knife, rushed into the emplacement. In a hand-to-hand struggle he killed or wounded several of the occupants and captured about 25 prisoners, at the same time silencing 7 machineguns.

COOLIDGE, CHARLES H.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company M, 141st Infantry, 36th Infantry Division. Place and date: East of Belmont sur Buttant, France, 2427 October 1944. Entered service at: Signal Mountain, Tenn. Birth: Signal Mountain, Tenn. G.O. No.: 53, July 1945. Citation: Leading a section of heavy machineguns supported by 1 platoon of Company K, he took a position near Hill 623, east of Belmont sur Buttant, France, on 24 October 1944, with the mission of covering the right flank of the 3d Battalion and supporting its action. T/Sgt. Coolidge went forward with a sergeant of Company K to reconnoiter positions for coordinating the fires of the light and heavy machineguns. They ran into an enemy force in the woods estimated to be an infantry company. T/Sgt. Coolidge, attempting to bluff the Germans by a show of assurance and boldness called upon them to surrender, whereupon the enemy opened fire. With his carbine, T/Sgt. Coolidge wounded 2 of them. There being no officer present with the force, T/Sgt. Coolidge at once assumed command. Many of the men were replacements recently arrived; this was their first experience under fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge, unmindful of the enemy fire delivered at close range, walked along the position, calming and encouraging his men and directing their fire. The attack was thrown back.

Through 25 and 26 October the enemy launched repeated attacks against the position of this combat group but each was repulsed due to T/Sgt. Coolidge’s able leadership. On 27 October, German infantry, supported by 2 tanks, made a determined attack on the position. The area was swept by enemy small arms, machinegun, and tank fire. T/Sgt. Coolidge armed himself with a bazooka and advanced to within 25 yards of the tanks. His bazooka failed to function and he threw it aside. Securing all the hand grenades he could carry, he crawled forward and inflicted heavy casualties on the advancing enemy. Finally it became apparent that the enemy, in greatly superior force, supported by tanks, would overrun the position. T/Sgt. Coolidge, displaying great coolness and courage, directed and conducted an orderly withdrawal, being himself the last to leave the position. As a result of T/Sgt. Coolidge’s heroic and superior leadership, the mission of this combat group was accomplished throughout 4 days of continuous fighting against numerically superior enemy troops in rain and cold and amid dense woods.

*OLSON, ARLO L.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, 1 5th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Crossing of the Volturno River, Italy, 13 October 1943. Entered service at: Toronto, S. Dak. Birth: Greenville, lowa. G.O. No.: 71, 31 August 1944. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. On 13 October 1943, when the drive across the Volturno River began, Capt. Olson and his company spearheaded the advance of the regiment through 30 miles of mountainous enemy territory in 13 days. Placing himself at the head of his men, Capt. Olson waded into the chest-deep water of the raging Volturno River and despite pointblank machine-gun fire aimed directly at him made his way to the opposite bank and threw 2 handgrenades into the gun position, killing the crew. When an enemy machinegun 150 yards distant opened fire on his company, Capt. Olson advanced upon the position in a slow, deliberate walk. Although 5 German soldiers threw handgrenades at him from a range of 5 yards, Capt. Olson dispatched them all, picked up a machine pistol and continued toward the enemy. Advancing to within 15 yards of the position he shot it out with the foe, killing 9 and seizing the post. Throughout the next 13 days Capt. Olson led combat patrols, acted as company No. 1 scout and maintained unbroken contact with the enemy.

On 27 October 1943, Capt. Olson conducted a platoon in attack on a strongpoint, crawling to within 25 yards of the enemy and then charging the position. Despite continuous machinegun fire which barely missed him, Capt. Olson made his way to the gun and killed the crew with his pistol. When the men saw their leader make this desperate attack they followed him and overran the position. Continuing the advance, Capt. Olson led his company to the next objective at the summit of Monte San Nicola. Although the company to his right was forced to take cover from the furious automatic and small arms fire, which was directed upon him and his men with equal intensity, Capt. Olson waved his company into a skirmish line and despite the fire of a machinegun which singled him out as its sole target led the assault which drove the enemy away. While making a reconnaissance for defensive positions, Capt. Olson was fatally wounded. Ignoring his severe pain, this intrepid officer completed his reconnaissance, Supervised the location of his men in the best defense positions, refused medical aid until all of his men had been cared for, and died as he was being carried down the mountain.

O’BRIEN, GEORGE H., JR.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Company H, 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Korea, 27 October, 1952. Entered service at: Big Spring, Tex. Born: 10 September 1926, Fort Worth, Tex. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a rifle platoon commander of Company H, in action against enemy aggressor forces. With his platoon subjected to an intense mortar and artillery bombardment while preparing to assault a vitally important hill position on the main line of resistance which had been overrun by a numerically superior enemy force on the preceding night, 2d Lt. O’Brien leaped from his trench when the attack signal was given and, shouting for his men to follow, raced across an exposed saddle and up the enemy-held hill through a virtual hail of deadly small-arms, artillery, and mortar fire. Although shot through the arm and thrown to the ground by hostile automatic-weapons fire as he neared the well-entrenched enemy position, he bravely regained his feet, waved his men onward, and continued to spearhead the assault, pausing only long enough to go to the aid of a wounded marine.

Encountering the enemy at close range, he proceeded to hurl hand grenades into the bunkers and, utilizing his carbine to best advantage in savage hand-to-hand combat, succeeded in killing at least 3 of the enemy. Struck down by the concussion of grenades on 3 occasions during the subsequent action, he steadfastly refused to be evacuated for medical treatment and continued to lead his platoon in the assault for a period of nearly 4 hours, repeatedly encouraging his men and maintaining superb direction of the unit. With the attack halted he set up a defense with his remaining forces to prepare for a counterattack, personally checking each position, attending to the wounded and expediting their evacuation. When a relief of the position was effected by another unit, he remained to cover the withdrawal and to assure that no wounded were left behind. By his exceptionally daring and forceful leadership in the face of overwhelming odds, 2d Lt. O’Brien served as a constant source of inspiration to all who observed him and was greatly instrumental in the recapture of a strategic position on the main line of resistance. His indomitable determination and valiant fighting spirit reflect the highest credit upon himself and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.


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28 October

1492 – Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba on his first voyage to the New World.

1768 – Germans and Acadians joined French Creoles in their armed revolt against Antonio de Ulloa the Spanish governor of New Orleans. This combined militia will force his resignation the next day.

1775 – A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston.

1776 – Battle of White Plains; Washington retreated to NJ. British General William Howe lurched back into action on October 12. He hoped to avoid a costly direct assault against the Americans, who were entrenched in hilly northern Manhattan. Instead, Howe executed a flanking movement, sending his soldiers by boat up the East River, through Hell Gate and onto Long Island Sound. Soldiers were landed first at Throg’s Neck and later at Pell’s Point. Washington was aware that the British were massing behind his lines. On October 23, he left 2,000 of his best soldiers at Fort Washington in northwestern Manhattan and began a march with the reminder of his force northward into Westchester County. Progress was exceedingly difficult. The Americans had few horses and were forced to move many of their cannon by hand. Safety of sorts was found in the hills outside of the village of White Plains. Following several days of skirmishes, significant fighting occurred on October 28, particularly on Chatterton’s Hill.

The American forces were dislodged from their position, but once again Howe failed to pursue his opponents and waited for reinforcements. By November 1, the British were ready to resume their offensive, but a heavy wind and rain storm slowed their progress. Washington took advantage of the British lethargy and retreated northward to another hilltop location, this time about five miles away near the town of North Castle. Washington and his dispirited army believed that a major, perhaps decisive, battle would occur within the next few days. To their utter amazement, dawn on November 4 brought the sight of the British turning their backs on the lightly entrenched Americans and beginning a march back to Manhattan. Washington made a crucial decision to divide his army and led about 2,500 men into New Jersey. A larger force of some 11,000 men was left under the command of the erratic Charles Lee and was responsible for halting any future British advance into New England. Howe next turned his attention to the small American presence at Fort Washington.

1790 – NY gave up claims to Vermont for $30,000.

1793 – Eliphalet Remington, US gun maker, was born. He was an American inventor, gunsmith and arms manufacturer. Remington was trained in blacksmithing, but turned to gunsmithing at an early age. His father founded and ran a firearms firm in Ilion, N.Y., until he died in 1828. At this time, Eliphalet took over. He supplied the U.S. army with rifles in the Mexican war. In 1856 the business was expanded to include the manufacture of agricultural implements. When the firm held many government contracts, Eliphalet’s son, Philo Remington, directed the business. The Remington firm later supplied the armies with several European countries with breech-loading rifles. In 1879, it began making sewing machines. The Remington Firearms Company still manufactures guns today. It is the focal point of Ilion and aids greatly in the production of their economy.

1864 – Battle at Fair Oaks, Virginia, ended after 1554 casualties. Union forces withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond. The assault was actually a diversion to draw attention from a larger Union offensive around Petersburg. The scene of one of the Seven Days’ Battles in June 1862, Fair Oaks was located on the defensive perimeter around the Confederate capital of Richmond. General Robert E. Lee’s army constructed five lines of trenches that stretched 25 miles south to Petersburg. For five months, Lee’s troops had been under siege by the forces of Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The monotony of the siege was broken only periodically by a Union attempt to break Lee’s lines. One such attack came at Hatcher’s Run, southwest of Petersburg, on October 27. At the same time, Grant ordered an attack at Fair Oaks, about 24 miles from the assault at Hatcher’s Run. The Richmond defenses were formidable, so any direct assault was unlikely to succeed. By attacking at Fair Oaks, Grant hoped to prevent Lee from shifting any troops along the Richmond-Petersburg line to reinforce the lines at Hatcher’s Run.

Troops from General Benjamin Butler’s Tenth Corps moved north of the James River and conducted a two-pronged offensive against Richmond on October 27. Confederate General James Longstreet, in charge of the Richmond section of the Confederate defenses, skillfully positioned troops to thwart the Yankees. Union General Godfrey Weitzel, commander of part of the attack, enjoyed some initial success but could not significantly penetrate the Rebel trenches. On October 2, he determined that he had accomplished all that he could, and he withdrew his troops. Some 1100 Union men were killed, wounded, or captured during the attack, while the Confederates lost just 450. The planned diversion did not work–at the far end of the defenses, the Yankees failed to move around the end of the Confederate line at Hatcher’s Run.

1864 – Battle of Wauhatchie, TN. In an effort to relieve Union forces besieged in Chattanooga, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas and Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant initiated the “Cracker Line Operation” on October 26, 1863. This operation required the opening of the road to Chattanooga from Brown’s Ferry on the Tennessee River with a simultaneous advance up Lookout Valley, securing the Kelley’s Ferry Road. Union Chief Engineer, Military Division of the Mississippi, Brig. Gen. William F. “Baldy” Smith, with Brig. Gen. John B. Turchin’s and Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen’s 1st and 2nd brigades, 3rd Division, IV Army Corps, was assigned the task of establishing the Brown’s Ferry bridgehead. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, with three divisions, marched from Bridgeport through Lookout Valley towards Brown’s Ferry from the south. At 3:00 am, on October 27, portions of Hazen’s brigade embarked upon pontoons and floated around Moccasin Bend to Brown’s Ferry. Turchin’s brigade took a position on Moccasin Bend across from Brown’s Ferry.

Upon landing, Hazen secured the bridgehead and then positioned a pontoon bridge across the river, allowing Turchin to cross and take position on his right. Hooker, while his force passed through Lookout Valley on October 28, detached Brig. Gen. John W. Geary’s division at Wauhatchie Station, a stop on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, to protect the line of communications to the south as well as the road west to Kelley’s Ferry. Observing the Union movements on the 27th and 28th, Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and Gen. Braxton Bragg decided to mount a night attack on Wauhatchie Station. Although the attack was scheduled for 10:00 pm on the night of October 28, confusion delayed it till midnight. Surprised by the attack, Geary’s division, at Wauhatchie Station, formed into a V-shaped battle line. Hearing the din of battle, Hooker, at Brown’s Ferry, sent Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard with two XI Army Corps divisions to Wauhatchie Station as reinforcements. As more and more Union troops arrived, the Confederates fell back to Lookout Mountain. The Federals now had their window to the outside and could receive supplies, weapons, ammunition, and reinforcements via the Cracker Line. Relatively few night engagements occurred during the Civil War; Wauhatchie is one of the most significant.

1864 – Steamer General Thomas and gunboat Stone River destroy Confederate batteries on Tennessee River near Decatur, Alabama forcing the withdrawal of General Hood’s troops.

1882 – Orders issued for first Naval Attache (LCDR French Chadwick sent to London, England).

1917 – U.S.A. second Liberty Loan: £1,000,000,000 ($3,000,000 US) to France and Britain is approved at 5%.

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1918 – World War I was reaching its climax as Allied forces all along the Western Front continue launching attacks against the German “Hindenburg Line”. Used to keep the pressure on the Germans most of these attacks gain some ground but not all succeed. A case in point is the failed assault launched on this date by the 26th Division (CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT) in a sector known to the French as the “Death Valley”. But it is no wonder the assault failed. The division was very weak, having been in action almost daily, with little relief, since the start of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in late September. For instance, its 51st Brigade, composed of the 101st Infantry (MA) and the 102nd Infantry (CT), had only 15 officers and just over 800 men when their combined organizational strength should have been 6,100 men. The men were tired but when the order came to advance they moved out. Despite artillery support from the 101st Field Artillery (MA) and some French cannon, their attack failed to reach its goal and the survivors withdrew to their original jumping off point having lost an additional 150 men killed, wounded or missing. On November 1st the 26th Division was pulled out of Death Valley and sent to a rest area. It would see no more combat as the war ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918.

1919 – Congress passed the National Prohibition Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act, on this date. The Volstead Act authorized the enforcement of the 18th Amendment, ratified on 29 January 1919. The Act authorized the Coast Guard to prevent the maritime importation of illegal alcohol. This led to the largest increase in the size and responsibilities of the service to date.

1922 – Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

1929 – Black Monday, a day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which also saw major stock market upheaval.

1938 – There was a farewell parade of International Brigade in Barcelona, Spain.

1942 – American diplomat Robert Murphy informs French General Mast that the Allied invasion of North Africa will take place in November. Mast protests that he will be unable to organize support for either General Giraud or the Allied cause in time.

1942 – The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.

1943 – The US 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion is landed by sea at Voza on Choiseul Island (Operation Blissful). They engage Japanese forces. This is a diversion from the intended attack on Bougainville.

1943 – As a consequence of a number of unresolved disputes, a coal miners strike gains momentum. About 500,000 miners are on strike at this point.

1944 – The first B-29 Superfortress bomber mission flew from the airfields in the Mariana Islands in a strike against the Japanese base at Truk.

1944 – On Leyte, attacks by US 24th Corps around Dagami make slow progress and suffer heavy losses. To the north, the US 1st Cavalry Division (part of US 10th Corps) encounters heavy resistance near Carigara and is held up. At sea, carrier groups under the command of Admiral Davison and Admiral Bogan conduct air strikes.

1951 – At Panmunjom, the communists agreed generally to accept the U.N. Command concept that the battle line should be the demarcation line. Both sides thereby had an incentive to take and hold ground, a factor that perhaps prolonged the war.

1960 – In a note to the OAS (Organization of American States), the United States charged that Cuba had been receiving substantial quantities of arms and numbers of military technicians” from the Soviet bloc.

1962 – The Cuban Missile crisis comes to a close as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agrees to remove Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for a promise from the United States to respect Cuba’s territorial sovereignty. This ended nearly two weeks of anxiety and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that came close to provoking a nuclear conflict. The consequences of the crisis were many and varied. Relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were on shaky ground for some time after Khrushchev’s removal of the missiles, as Fidel Castro accused the Russians of backing down from the Americans and deserting the Cuban revolution. European allies of the United States were also angered, not because of the U.S. stance during the crisis, but because the Kennedy administration kept them virtually in the dark about negotiations that might have led to an atomic war. Inside the Soviet Union, hard-liners were appalled at Khrushchev’s withdrawal of the weapons. Two years later, in 1964, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin pushed him from power and proceeded to lead the Soviet Union on a massive military buildup. There was perhaps one positive aspect of the crisis. Having gone to the edge of what President Kennedy referred to as the “abyss of destruction,” cooler heads in both nations initiated steps to begin some control over nuclear weapons. Less than a year after the crisis ended, the United States and Soviet Union signed an agreement to end aboveground testing; in 1968, both nations signed a non-proliferation treaty.

1962 – An 11,000-man 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade left Camp Pendleton by sea for the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis. One week earlier, the entire 189,000-man Marine Corps had been put on alert and elements of the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions were sent to Guantanamo Bay to reinforce the defenders of the U.S. Naval Base. Other 2d Division units and squadrons from five Marine Aircraft Groups were deployed at Key West, Florida, or in Caribbean waters during the Cuban crisis.

1964 – U.S. T-28 airplanes flown by Thai pilots bomb and strafe North Vietnamese villages in the Mugia Pass area. North Vietnam charged publicly that U.S. personnel participated in the raids, but U.S. officials denied that any Americans were involved.

1965 – Viet Cong commandos damage and destroy a number of allied aircraft in two separate raids on U.S. air bases, including Chu Lai, on the coast of the South China Sea in Quang Tin Province, I Corps.


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1985 – The leader of the so-called “Walker family spy ring,” John Walker, pleaded guilty to giving U-S Navy secrets to the Soviet Union. John Walker was the KGB’s most important spy in the United States in the 1970s. As a chief warrant officer in the US Navy, Walker had access to naval secrets and spied for the Soviet Union in exchange for money. After retiring, John Walker continued to spy with the help of family members still serving in the Navy until the FBI caught him.

1990 – In a surprise move, Iraq said it was halting gasoline rationing imposed earlier in response to global economic sanctions.

1991 – Thousands of Haitian migrants began fleeing their homeland after the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, prompting one of the largest SAR operations in Coast Guard history. Cutters and aircraft from as far north as New England converged on the Windward Passage. In the first 30 days of the operation, Coast Guard forces rescued more than 6,300 men, women, and children who left Haiti in grossly overloaded and unseaworthy vessels. 75 Coast Guard units ultimately take part in the massive SAR operation and by the end of the year, over 40,000 Haitian migrants are rescued.

1994 – President Clinton visited Kuwait, where he praised U.S. ground forces sent in response to an Iraqi threat, and all but promised the troops they’d be home by Christmas.

1999 – Two Navy Blue Angel aviators, Kieron O’Connor (35) and Kevin Colling (32), were killed when their F/A-18 Hornet crashed during a training flight near Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. 23 pilots have died at shows or training since the group was formed in 1946.

2001 – The CDC reported a 13th case of anthrax in a New Jersey postal worker. Spores were found at the mail center in Landover, Md.

2001 – The US expanded air strikes over Afghanistan and hit targets in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Heart, Jalalabad, Kandahar and near the Tajik border. 13 civilians, including 4 children, were reported killed in Kabul.

2002 – In Jordan an assassin pumped eight shots into Laurence Foley (62), an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development, outside his home in the first known killing of a Western envoy in Amman. 2 suspects were arrested December 14th.

2003 – It was reported that Forbes Magazine had estimated Yasser Arafat’s fortune at some $300 million, with much of it controlled by adviser Mohammed Rachid.

2004 – A breakaway Taliban group abducted three foreign UN workers from Kabul because they assisted Afghanistan’s “fake election” and threatened to kill them if a rescue mission was launched.

2004 – Militants released a grisly video that showed the killing of 11 Iraqi troops held hostage for days, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style. Another group released a video of a kidnapped Polish woman, demanding Warsaw pull its troops from Iraq.

2005 – Lewis Libby, Vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, is indicted in the Valerie Plame case. Libby resigns later that day.

2005 – President Fidel Castro of Cuba agrees to allow three officials from the United States Agency for International Development into the country to assist in relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. The communist nation typically turns down offers of assistance from the United States since trade embargoes from the U.S. have been in place for over 40 years.

2007 – The USS Porter, a destroyer opened fire on pirates who had captured a freighter and with other vessels blockaded a port the pirates attempted to take refuge in.

2007 – Clocks are not set back one hour on this date, the last Sunday of October, as they have been since 1966. A 2005 act changed the end date of Daylight Saving to the fist Sunday of November (4 Nov, 2007) effective this year. Various technological glitches result.

2007 – About 80 Taliban fighters were killed in a six-hour battle with forces from the US-led coalition in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

2009 – NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X mission, the only rocket launch for its later-cancelled Constellation program.

2011 – A Wahhabi Islamist armed with hand grenades and an automatic weapon opens fire outside the United States embassy in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, resulting in two people being injured, including the gunman.

2011 – NASA launches its NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite to send back data on weather and climate conditions.

2012 – The SpaceX Dragon capsule on a re-supply mission to the International Space Station returns to Earth.

2014 – An unmanned Antares rocket carrying NASA’s Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in the U.S. state of Virginia. The loss includes five thousand pounds of cargo.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BREAULT, HENRY
Rank and organization: Torpedoman Second Class, U.S. Navy. Born: 14 October, 1900, Putnam, Conn. Accredited to: Vermont. G.O. No.: 125, 20 February 1924. Citation: For heroism and devotion to duty while serving on board the U.S. submarine 0-5 at the time of the sinking of that vessel. On the morning of 28 October 1923, the 0-5 collided with the steamship Abangarez and sank in less than a minute. When the collision occurred, Breault was in the torpedo room. Upon reaching the hatch, he saw that the boat was rapidly sinking. Instead of jumping overboard to save his own life, he returned to the torpedo room to the rescue of a shipmate whom he knew was trapped in the boat, closing the torpedo room hatch on himself. Breault and Brown remained trapped in this compartment until rescued by the salvage party 31 hours later. (Medal presented by President Coolidge at the White House on 8 March 1924.)

ADAMS, LUCIAN
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, 30th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near St. Die, France, 28 October 1944. Entered service at: Port Arthur, Tex. Birth: Port Arthur, Tex. G.O. No.: 20, 29 March 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty on 28 October 1944, near St. Die, France. When his company was stopped in its effort to drive through the Mortagne Forest to reopen the supply line to the isolated third battalion, S/Sgt. Adams braved the concentrated fire of machineguns in a lone assault on a force of German troops. Although his company had progressed less than 10 yards and had lost 3 killed and 6 wounded, S/Sgt. Adams charged forward dodging from tree to tree firing a borrowed BAR from the hip.

Despite intense machinegun fire which the enemy directed at him and rifle grenades which struck the trees over his head showering him with broken twigs and branches, S/Sgt. Adams made his way to within 10 yards of the closest machinegun and killed the gunner with a hand grenade. An enemy soldier threw hand grenades at him from a position only 10 yards distant; however, S/Sgt. Adams dispatched him with a single burst of BAR fire. Charging into the vortex of the enemy fire, he killed another machinegunner at 15 yards range with a hand grenade and forced the surrender of 2 supporting infantrymen. Although the remainder of the German group concentrated the full force of its automatic weapons fire in a desperate effort to knock him out, he proceeded through the woods to find and exterminate 5 more of the enemy. Finally, when the third German machinegun opened up on him at a range of 20 yards, S/Sgt. Adams killed the gunner with BAR fire. In the course of the action, he personally killed 9 Germans, eliminated 3 enemy machineguns, vanquished a specialized force which was armed with automatic weapons and grenade launchers, cleared the woods of hostile elements, and reopened the severed supply lines to the assault companies of his battalion.

*BROSTROM, LEONARD C.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company F, 17th Infantry, 7th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Dagami, Leyte, Philippine Islands, 28 October 1944. Entered service at: Preston, Idaho. Birth: Preston, Idaho. G.O. No.: 104, 15 November 1945. Citation: He was a rifleman with an assault platoon which ran into powerful resistance near Dagami, Leyte, Philippine Islands, on 28 October 1944. From pillboxes, trenches, and spider holes, so well camouflaged that they could be detected at no more than 20 yards, the enemy poured machinegun and rifle fire, causing severe casualties in the platoon. Realizing that a key pillbox in the center of the strong point would have to be knocked out if the company were to advance, Pfc. Bostrom, without orders and completely ignoring his own safety, ran forward to attack the pillbox with grenades.

He immediately became the prime target for all the riflemen in the area, as he rushed to the rear of the pillbox and tossed grenades through the entrance. Six enemy soldiers left a trench in a bayonet charge against the heroic American, but he killed 1 and drove the others off with rifle fire. As he threw more grenades from his completely exposed position he was wounded several times in the abdomen and knocked to the ground. Although suffering intense pain and rapidly weakening from loss of blood, he slowly rose to his feet and once more hurled his deadly missiles at the pillbox. As he collapsed, the enemy began fleeing from the fortification and were killed by riflemen of his platoon. Pfc. Brostrom died while being carried from the battlefield, but his intrepidity and unhesitating willingness to sacrifice himself in a l-man attack against overwhelming odds enabled his company to reorganize against attack, and annihilate the entire enemy position.

*OKUBO, JAMES K.
Technician Fifth Grade James K. Okubo distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 28 and 29 October and 4 November 1944, in the Foret Domaniale de Champ, near Biffontaine, eastern France. On 28 October, under strong enemy fire coming from behind mine fields and roadblocks, Technician Fifth Grade Okubo, a medic, crawled 150 yards to within 40 yards of the enemy lines. Two grenades were thrown at him while he left his last covered position to carry back wounded comrades. Under constant barrages of enemy small arms and machine gun fire, he treated 17 men on 28 October and 8 more men on 29 October. On 4 November, Technician Fifth Grade Okubo ran 75 yards under grazing machine gun fire and, while exposed to hostile fire directed at him, evacuated and treated a seriously wounded crewman from a burning tank, who otherwise would have died. Technician Fifth Grade James K. Okubo’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

*THORSON, JOHN F.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company G, 17th Infantry, 7th Infantry Division. Place and date: Dagami, Leyte, Philippine Islands, 28 October 1944. Entered service at: Armstrong, lowa Birth: Armstrong, lowa. G.O. No.: 58, 19 July 1945. Citation: He was an automatic rifleman on 28 October 1944, in the attack on Dagami Leyte, Philippine Islands. A heavily fortified enemy position consisting of pillboxes and supporting trenches held up the advance of his company. His platoon was ordered to out-flank and neutralize the strongpoint. Voluntarily moving well out in front of his group, Pvt. Thorson came upon an enemy fire trench defended by several hostile riflemen and, disregarding the intense fire directed at him, attacked single-handed He was seriously wounded and fell about 6 yards from the trench. Just as the remaining 20 members of the platoon reached him, 1 of the enemy threw a grenade into their midst. Shouting a warning and making a final effort, Pvt. Thorson rolled onto the grenade and smothered the explosion with his body. He was instantly killed, but his magnificent courage and supreme self-sacrifice prevented the injury and possible death of his comrades, and remain with them as a lasting inspiration.

BURKE, LLOYD L.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company G, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. Place and date: Near Chong-dong, Korea, 28 October 1951. Entered service at: Stuttgart, Ark. Born: 29 September 1924, Tichnor, Ark. G.O. No.: 43. Citation: 1st Lt. Burke, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Intense enemy fire had pinned down leading elements of his company committed to secure commanding ground when 1st Lt. Burke left the command post to rally and urge the men to follow him toward 3 bunkers impeding the advance. Dashing to an exposed vantage point he threw several grenades at the bunkers, then, returning for an Ml rifle and adapter, he made a lone assault, wiping out the position and killing the crew. Closing on the center bunker he lobbed grenades through the opening and, with his pistol, killed 3 of its occupants attempting to surround him. Ordering his men forward he charged the third emplacement, catching several grenades in midair and hurling them back at the enemy.

Inspired by his display of valor his men stormed forward, overran the hostile position, but were again pinned down by increased fire. Securing a light machine gun and 3 boxes of ammunition, 1st Lt. Burke dashed through the impact area to an open knoll, set up his gun and poured a crippling fire into the ranks of the enemy, killing approximately 75. Although wounded, he ordered more ammunition, reloading and destroying 2 mortar emplacements and a machine gun position with his accurate fire. Cradling the weapon in his arms he then led his men forward, killing some 25 more of the retreating enemy and securing the objective. 1st Lt. Burke’s heroic action and daring exploits inspired his small force of 35 troops. His unflinching courage and outstanding leadership reflect the highest credit upon himself, the infantry, and the U.S. Army.

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[SHOOTER13]

29 October

1682 – The founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, landed at what is now Chester, Pa. William Penn founded Philadelphia. Penn founded Pennsylvania as a “Holy Experiment” based on Quaker principles.

1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.

1813 – The Demologos, the first steam-powered warship, was launched in New York City.

1863 – The troops of Union General Ulysses S. Grant open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee, when they drive away a Confederate attack by General James Longstreet. Although the Confederates still held the high ground above Chattanooga, the new supply line allowed the Union to hold the city and prepare for a major new offensive the next month. After the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia on September 19 and 20, the defeated Union army of General William Rosecrans fled back to nearby Chattanooga. Braxton Bragg’s Confederates took up positions along Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge to the east of the city. The Rebel lines made a semicircle around the city, and Confederate guns closed traffic on the Tennessee River. As a result, Union supplies had to come over a rugged mountainous route from the west. This line was vulnerable to a Confederate attack, and it made the Union’s hold on Chattanooga tenuous at best.

On October 23, Grant arrived as the new commander of all western forces. He immediately ordered two brigades to attack Brown’s Ferry, where the Confederates were blocking river traffic to Chattanooga. The Yankees captured the ferry on October 27, then held off a counterattack to maintain control. On the night of October 28, Longstreet mounted a much larger attack to retake the crossing. The Confederates possessed superior numbers but could not pry the Union troops from the river. In the dark, the Yankees held and Longstreet withdrew his forces before dawn. The Union suffered 78 killed, 327 wounded, and 15 missing, while the Confederates suffered 34 killed, 305 wounded, and 69 missing. The Battle of Wauhatchie was one of the few Civil War engagements that took place at night. As a result of the battle, the Tennessee River was reopened for the Union and supplies reached Grant’s troops. One month later, Grant drove the Confederates from the mountains around Chattanooga.

1863 – Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.

1864 – Union forces under the command of Major General Benjamin Butler attacked the Richmond defenses along Darbytown Road. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, has been under indirect siege since General Ulysses Grant placed the Army of the Potomac in a wide arc surrounding its southern flank, including the outlaying town of Petersburg. Butler hoped to breech Richmond’s outer works but was easily repulsed, loosing about 1,000 men, 600 of whom were captured. General Butler, having no military experience when the war began was never-the-less appointed a brigadier general of Massachusetts volunteers. He succeeded in bringing reinforcements to Washington despite riots in Baltimore against Union troops. For this President Abraham Lincoln appointed him a major general and placed him to command Fort Monroe situated on the point of land blocking the James River connecting Richmond with the Chesapeake Bay. While in command here he offered runaway slaves sanctuary calling them “contraband of war.” In late 1861 he returned to Massachusetts to organize six new regiments and with these he captured New Orleans in May 1862. This was the high point of his military career. After some minor actions, in spring 1864 he was commanding the Army of the James on the southern flank of Richmond. Within this army he organized the XXV Corps composed entirely of U.S. Colored Troops (African Americans fighting for the Union army). He launched this Corps in an unsuccessful attack at Chapins Farm. Fourteen of the 18 Medals of Honor awarded to African Americans soldiers in the Civil War were earned in this battle. One recipient, Sergeant Christian Fleetwood, would later serve as a major commanding the black battalion in the Washington, DC Guard in the 1880s. Soon after his defeat on Darbytown Road, Butler was transferred to North Carolina where he failed to capture Wilmington. Grant and Lincoln finally agreed to remove him from command. Butler went on to have a successful career as a congressman, serving from 1867-1879. He later served as governor of Massachusetts.

1885 – George B. McClellan (58), Union army general, died. A brilliant engineer and highly capable organizer, George B. McClellan just wasn’t an army commander. In that position he proved the weakness of West Point in its early years; the academy was simply geared to the production of engineers and company officers for a small, pre-Civil War regular army. The Philadelphia native had entered the academy from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1846 in the second position of his class. Accordingly he was assigned to the engineers. He earned two brevets under Winfield Scott in Mexico and later served at his alma mater. The slow promotions in the regular army prompted him to take a captaincy in the cavalry in the 18 5 5 expansion of the service. He was dispatched to study European armies and filed an extensive report centering on the Crimean War siege operations at Sebastopol. This experience would later influence his decisions on the Virginia Peninsula. During the rest of his year overseas he travelled widely and altered the Prussian and Hungarian cavalry saddles into the “McClellan Saddle” that was used until the army abolished its mounted arm. He resigned his commission on January 16, 1857, and entered railroad engineering. He worked for the Illinois Central-as chief engineer and vice president and just before the Civil War became a division president for the Ohio & Mississippi.

In December 1861 he was downed by typhoid and this prolonged the delays. By the time he did advance on Manassas, Joseph E. Johnston’s army had withdrawn. McClellan then planned an advance on Richmond by way of the Peninsula between the James and York Rivers. It was a good plan despite Lincoln’s fears for Washington. But McClellan did not have the ability to direct it. The movement started well but-remembering Sebastopol-he begin siege operations at Yorktown which allowed Johnston to move in reinforcements. When Johnston withdrew McClellan followed, fighting at Williamsburg, to within sight of the Confederate capital. He then stopped. He was constantly overestimating the strength of the enemy facing him. It was these constant delays which prompted Lincoln to suspend him from command of all the armies on March 11, 1862, so that he could concentrate on the Army of the Potomac and Richmond. He survived the Confederate counterattack at Seven Pines, principally through confusion in the Confederate army and the actions of his own subordinates. When Lee attacked him in the Seven Days in late June he failed to take the opportunity to strike at Richmond along the weakly defended south side of the Chickahominy River. Instead he panicked and ordered a dangerous change of base from the York to the James River in the facing of Lee’s attacks. Most of the battles fought in the movement were Union successes but the overall outcome of the campaign was negative as a result of McClellan’s weaknesses. Safely entrenched at Harrison’s Landing he began condemning the War Department, Lincoln, and Stanton, blaming them for the defeat. Finally it was decided in Washington to abandon the campaign and transfer most of McCiellan’s men to John Pope’s army in northern Virginia.

There were charges that McClellan-now called by the press “Mac the Unready” and “The Little Corporal of Unsought Fields”was especially slow in cooperating. With Pope defeated at 2nd Bull Run and his men streaming back to the Washington fortifications, McClellan was restored to active command of his reconstituted army and was welcomed by his men who affectionately called him “Little Mac.” In the Maryland Campaign he advanced to confront Lee in the western part of the state and moved uncharacteristically fast when some of his command found a copy of Lee’s orders for the movement of his troops. Lee fought several delaying actions along South Mountain in order to reconcentrate his army. His caution returning, McClellan slowed down, and Lee was able to get most of his men in line at Antietam. McClellan attacked piecemeal and his attacks failed to crush Lee who was heavily outnumbered with his back to the Potomac River. Lincoln was extremely upset by the escape of Lee and his army but nonetheless used the “victory” to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Continuing his dilatory tactics, McClellan resorted to constant demands for more men and called for massive reequipping and fresh mounts for his cavalry. Then for the second time JEB Stuart’s cavalry rode completely around the Army of the Potomac,

Under orders from the War Department, McClellan relinquished command on November 9, 1862, and repaired to his Trenton, New Jersey, home to await new directives destined never to arrive. The Democratic candidate for president in 1864, he was hampered by the party’s plank calling for an end to the war, which was labeled a failure. He himself denounced the plank and was for the rigorous pursuit of victory. At first it appeared that he would defeat Lincoln, but Union victories in the field diminished the public’s war weariness. Winning in only three states, he resigned from the army on election day. Active in state politics, he served as New Jersey’s governor in the late 1870’s and early 1880’s. He died at Orange, New Jersey, and is buried in Riverview Cemetery, Trenton.

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[SHOOTER13]

1901 – Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted for the assassination of President McKinley at Auburn Prison in NY state. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo.

1921 – Bill Maudlin, American political cartoonist whose GI “Willie” and “Joe” characters appeared in Stars and Stripes newspapers, was born in New Mexico. He won Pulitzer Prizes in 1945 and 1959. William Henry Mauldin was born October 29, 1921, in Mountain Park, New Mexico. He knew from an early age that he wanted to make cartooning his career, and after high school, began studying toward that goal at Chicago’s Academy of Fine Art. But World War II intervened, as it did for so many young men of his generation, and he’d scarcely begun his studies when he found himself a member of the U.S. Army’s 45th Division.
But the war didn’t even slow his career down. In 1940, he created Willie & Joe, a couple of cartoon soldiers, for the division’s newspaper. They resonated so well with the army’s rank and file that by 1944 Mauldin was cartooning full time for Stars & Stripes, also a military newspaper, but one that served the entire U.S. Army. His work there received a favorable write-up by the famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle. As a result, by the time the war was over, Mauldin’s cartoons were being syndicated by United Feature, alongside The Captain & the Kids and Nancy. In 1945, he won his first Pulitzer Prize for newspaper cartooning, and published his first book — Up Front, which reprinted dozens of Willie & Joe cartoons, accompanied by Mauldin’s comments on the real-life situation his fictional characters were in. It has remained in print for decades, and even now stands as one of the most vivid and true-to-life accounts of the typical American soldier’s life during World War II.

More books followed — Back Home (1947), Bill Mauldin in Korea (1952), The Brass Ring (1971), and several others. He also wrote a few short stories, and appeared in the 1951 movie, The Red Badge of Courage. He won a second Pulitzer in 1959, so it was almost an anticlimax when, two years later, he took home The National Cartoonists’ Society’s Reuben Award, as Cartoonist of the Year. By that time, he was working as editorial cartoonist for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. United Feature had found his cartoons hard to sell in many markets, because of his tendency not to pull punches when cartooning about McCarthyism or The Ku Klux Klan; and he’d been so discouraged that for a few years during the ’50s, he’d actually given up cartooning altogether. It was a mistake he didn’t make again — but he did find larger urban areas, where a wider range of opinion has always flourished, more receptive to his viewpoints. Mauldin moved to The Chicago Sun-Times in 1962, and stayed there for many years. By the time he retired, in 1992, his cartoons were being syndicated to about 250 papers. He died in a nursing home on January 22, 2003, 81 years of age.

1922 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, appoints Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister.

1929 – The DJIA dropped 11.7%. “Black Tuesday” was the worst day of the market crash as panicked survivors dumped 16 million shares on the market. Clerical workers stayed up all night to find that $30 billion in paper value had been wiped out in one day. Prices collapsed amid panic selling and thousands of investors were wiped out as America’s Great Depression began. On Wall street prices plunged $14 million. By mid- November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September were been wiped out. Stocks continued to slide until 1932, but the fear caused by the crash made Americans unwilling to buy or invest and the economy slowly worsened into the Great Depression. In 1994 daily trades average 200-300 million shares. In 2001 Maury Klein authored “Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929.”

1939 – Reflecting the rising number of Chinese defections to the Japanese, the US military attache reports that there are 100,000 armed Chinese serving as Huang Hsieh Chun (Imperial Assisting Troops).

1940 – The first draftees are selected by lottery from the Selective Service registrations. In New York, the first person chosen is Yuen Chong Chan. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson drew the first number.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, the Japanese, stung by their heavy losses begin withdrawals from the coast to the west of the American beachhead. The Americans begin preparing to occupy this area.

1943 – 3 Allied officers escaped the German camp Stalag Luft 3.

1944 – On Leyte, elements of US 24th Corps capture Abuyag, south of Dulag, while Catmon Hill is cleared and the advance to Dagami continues. At sea, carrier groups under the command of Admiral Davison and Admiral Bogan conduct air strikes. In two days, they destroy almost 100 Japanese planes for a loss of 15 American aircraft. The carrier USS Intrepid is damaged by a Kamikaze attack.

1950 – The X Corps advance in the northeast was slowed by determined resistance by communist forces. First Marine Division units were attacked at Kojo. The 7th Infantry Division landed at Iwon, 150 miles north of Wonsan to join X Corps forces on the ground.

1952 – Eight Navy Aircraft from VF-54 struck the city of Kapsan in North Korea. Intelligence reports had indicated that a congregation of high-level Communist Party officials would be attending a meeting there. A week following the raid, North Korean broadcasts denounced the strike and labeled the participants as the “Butchers of Kapsan.”

1956 – Israeli armed forces push into Egypt toward the Suez Canal, initiating the Suez Crisis. They would soon be joined by French and British forces, creating a serious Cold War problem in the Middle East. The catalyst for the joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt was the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian leader General Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1956. The situation had been brewing for some time. Two years earlier, the Egyptian military had begun pressuring the British to end its military presence (which had been granted in the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty) in the canal zone. Nasser’s armed forces also engaged in sporadic battles with Israeli soldiers along the border between the two nations, and the Egyptian leader did nothing to conceal his antipathy toward the Zionist nation. Supported by Soviet arms and money, and furious with the United States for reneging on a promise to provide funds for construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River, Nasser ordered the Suez Canal seized and nationalized. The British were angry with the move and sought the support of France (which believed that Nasser was supporting rebels in the French colony of Algeria), and Israel (which needed little provocation to strike at the enemy on its border), in an armed assault to retake the canal.

The Israelis struck first, but were shocked to find that British and French forces did not immediately follow behind them. Instead of a lightening strike by overwhelming force, the attack bogged down. The United Nations quickly passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire. The Soviet Union began to issue ominous threats about coming to Egypt’s aid. A dangerous situation developed quickly, one that the Eisenhower administration hoped to defuse before it turned into a Soviet-U.S. confrontation. Though the United States sternly warned the Soviet Union to stay out of the situation, Eisenhower also pressured the British, French, and Israeli governments to withdraw their troops. They eventually did so in late 1956 and early 1957.

1963 – Kennedy cables Lodge, instructing him to ask that the expected coup, already delayed a number of times, be postponed again. Lodge never delivers the message.

1967 – In Oakland, Ca., police made a traffic stop on Black Panther leader Huey Newton. In a gun battle Newton was wounded and police officer John Frey was killed. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but the conviction was overturned. Gene McKinney (d.2000 at 58) and Newton had driven out for takeout feed following a Black Panther Party fundraiser when they were pulled over. McKinney commandeered a passing car to get Newton to a hospital.

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[SHOOTER13]

1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 pm, from Boelter Hall 3420. Kline transmitted from the university’s SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute’s SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word login; the l and the o letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was lo. About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full login. The first permanent ARPANET link was established on 21 November 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By 5 December 1969, the entire four-node network, adding University of California, Santa Barbara and The University of Utah, was established.

1971 – The total number of U.S. troops remaining in Vietnam drops to 196,700 – the lowest level since January 1966. This was a result of the Vietnamization program announced by President Richard Nixon at the June 1969 Midway Conference. U.S. troops were to be withdrawn as the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the war. The first withdrawal included troops from the 9th Infantry Division, who departed in August 1969. The withdrawals continued steadily, and by January 1972 there were less than 75,000 U.S. troops remaining in South Vietnam.

1979 – On the 50th anniversary of the great stock market crash, anti-nuclear protesters tried but failed to shut down the New York Stock Exchange.

1980 – USS Parsons (DDG-33) rescues 110 Vietnamese refugees 330 miles south of Saigon.

1980 – A demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for a second attempt at an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base’s Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.

1990 – The UN Security Council voted to hold Saddam Hussein’s regime liable for human rights abuses and war damages during its occupation of Kuwait.

1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1991 – President Bush imposed trade sanctions against Haiti to pressure its new leaders to restore ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

1991 – On the eve of a historic Middle East peace conference in Spain, President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met at the Soviet Embassy in Madrid and expressed hope for a positive outcome.

1993 – A group of U.S. luge athletes was attacked by right-wing skinheads in Oberhof, Germany.

1994 – Francisco Martin Duran of Colorado Springs, Colo., fired more than two dozen shots from a semiautomatic rifle at the White House while standing on Pennsylvania Avenue; Duran was later convicted of trying to assassinate President Clinton and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

1995 – Palestinians burned American and Israeli flags and swore revenge for the assassination of Dr. Fathi Shakaki, the leader of the radical Islamic Jihad and a top architect of terror attacks against Israel. Shakaki was gunned down three days earlier in Malta, reportedly by Israeli intelligence.

1997 – Pres. Clinton and China’s Pres. Jiang Zemin engaged in high level talks and publicly disagreed on Chinese human rights policies, but agreed to end the diplomatic chill between their countries. Business deals included an accord to let Westinghouse and other firms develop nuclear power in China and a $3 billion order from Boeing.

1997 – Iraq barred US personnel from being included in UN inspection teams of weapons programs– a move that outraged chief weapons inspector Richard Butler and prompted him to suspend inspections.

1998 – The shuttle Discovery blasted off with 6 crew mates including John Glenn (77), the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Hershel Glenn, Jr., is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging. Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts. A decorated pilot, he had flown nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States, flying from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes. In April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and his spacecraft, Vostok 1, made a full orbit before returning to Earth. Less than one month later, American Alan B. Shepard, Jr., became the first American in space when his Freedom 7 spacecraft was launched on a suborbital flight. American “Gus” Grissom made another suborbital flight in July, and in August Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard Vostok 2, making 17 orbits. As a technological power, the United States was looking very much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans wanted to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before another Soviet space advance arrived.

On February 20, 1962, NASA and Colonel John Glenn accomplished this feat with the flight of Friendship 7, a spacecraft that made three orbits of the Earth in five hours. Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23 President John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral. Glenn later addressed Congress and was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City. Out of a reluctance to risk the life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the “Clean Marine” in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964 announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio and formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate bid after seriously injuring his inner ear in a fall from a horse. In 1970, following a stint as a Royal Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated Metzenbaum, won the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In 1984, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president. In 1998, Glenn attracted considerable media attention when he returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. In 1999, he retired from his U.S. Senate seat after four consecutive terms in office, a record for the state of Ohio.

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[SHOOTER13]

2000 – The wounded destroyer USS Cole departed Aden, Yemen, towed by tugboats to a Norwegian heavy-lift ship to be taken home to repair the gaping hole in its side; 17 sailors were killed in a suicide bombing attack on Oct. 12.

2001 – Pres. Bush said that he has created a task force to recommend sweeping changes on immigration laws to keep out terrorists and deport those already here.

2001 – A hospital worker in NY and a woman who handled mail in New Jersey were found to have anthrax. Since Oct 4 a total of 37 people have tested positive for exposure and 15 have contracted the disease.

2002 – The federal government filed charges against Washington sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad under a 1946 extortion law that could bring the death penalty, accusing him of a murderous plot to get $10 million.

2002 – China and the United States have agreed to resume military-to-military ties with plans to hold talks at senior level in the near future.

2004 – Osama bin Laden appeared in a new video, dropped off at the Pakistan offices of Al-Jazeera television. He claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks and claimed more violence is possible regardless of who wins the US elections. Bin Laden vowed to bleed America to bankruptcy, according to a full transcript of the unaired portions.

2004 – Hundreds of British soldiers arrived at their base near Baghdad in a deployment aimed at provide cover for U.S. troops considering a new assault on Iraqi insurgents.

2007 – The USS Arleigh Burke enters Somali waters in pursuit of a Japanese ship carrying benzene that was hijacked by pirates.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

CARR, JOHN
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 8th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Chiricahua Mountains, Ariz., 29 October 1869. Entered service at:——. Birth: Columbus, Ohio. Date of issue: 14 February 1870. Citation: Gallantry in action.

MATHEWS, GEORGE W.
Rank and organization: Assistant Surgeon, 36th Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: Near Labo, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 29 October 1899. Entered service at: Worcester, Mass. Birth: Worcester, Mass. Date of issue: 14 March 1902. Citation: While in attendance upon the wounded and under a severe fire from the enemy, seized a carbine and beat off an attack upon wounded officers and men under his charge.

HAJIRO, BARNEY F.
Private Barney F. Hajiro distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 19, 22, and 29 October 1944, in the vicinity of Bruyeres and Biffontaine, eastern France. Private Hajiro, while acting as a sentry on top of an embankment on 19 October 1944, in the vicinity of Bruyeres, France, rendered assistance to allied troops attacking a house 200 yards away by exposing himself to enemy fire and directing fire at an enemy strong point. He assisted the unit on his right by firing his automatic rifle and killing or wounding two enemy snipers. On 22 October 1944, he and one comrade took up an outpost security position about 50 yards to the right front of their platoon, concealed themselves, and ambushed an 18-man, heavily armed, enemy patrol, killing two, wounding one, and taking the remainder as prisoners. On 29 October 1944, in a wooded area in the vicinity of Biffontaine, France, Private Hajiro initiated an attack up the slope of a hill referred to as “Suicide Hill” by running forward approximately 100 yards under fire. He then advanced ahead of his comrades about 10 yards, drawing fire and spotting camouflaged machine gun nests. He fearlessly met fire with fire and single-handedly destroyed two machine gun nests and killed two enemy snipers. As a result of Private Hajiro’s heroic actions, the attack was successful. Private Hajiro’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon him, his unit, and the United States Army.

*OKUBO, JAMES K.
Technician Fifth Grade James K. Okubo distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 28 and 29 October and 4 November 1944, in the Foret Domaniale de Champ, near Biffontaine, eastern France. On 28 October, under strong enemy fire coming from behind mine fields and roadblocks, Technician Fifth Grade Okubo, a medic, crawled 150 yards to within 40 yards of the enemy lines. Two grenades were thrown at him while he left his last covered position to carry back wounded comrades. Under constant barrages of enemy small arms and machine gun fire, he treated 17 men on 28 October and 8 more men on 29 October. On 4 November, Technician Fifth Grade Okubo ran 75 yards under grazing machine gun fire and, while exposed to hostile fire directed at him, evacuated and treated a seriously wounded crewman from a burning tank, who otherwise would have died. Technician Fifth Grade James K. Okubo’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

SAKATO, GEORGE T.
Private George T. Sakato distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 29 October 1944, on hill 617 in the vicinity of Biffontaine, France. After his platoon had virtually destroyed two enemy defense lines, during which he personally killed five enemy soldiers and captured four, his unit was pinned down by heavy enemy fire. Disregarding the enemy fire, Private Sakato made a one-man rush that encouraged his platoon to charge and destroy the enemy strongpoint. While his platoon was reorganizing, he proved to be the inspiration of his squad in halting a counter-attack on the left flank during which his squad leader was killed. Taking charge of the squad, he continued his relentless tactics, using an enemy rifle and P-38 pistol to stop an organized enemy attack. During this entire action, he killed 12 and wounded two, personally captured four and assisted his platoon in taking 34 prisoners. By continuously ignoring enemy fire, and by his gallant courage and fighting spirit, he turned impending defeat into victory and helped his platoon complete its mission. Private Sakato’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

CAPTAIN HUMBERT R. VERSACE
UNITED STATES ARMY for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty: Captain Humbert R. Versace distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism during the period of 29 October 1963 to 26 September 1965, while serving as S-2 Advisor, Military Assistance Advisory Group, Detachment 52, Ca Mau, Republic of Vietnam. While accompanying a Civilian Irregular Defense Group patrol engaged in combat operations in Thoi Binh District, An Xuyen Province, Captain Versace and the patrol came under sudden and intense mortar, automatic weapons, and small arms fire from elements of a heavily armed enemy battalion. As the battle raged, Captain Versace, although severely wounded in the knee and back by hostile fire, fought valiantly and continued to engage enemy targets. Weakened by his wounds and fatigued by the fierce firefight, Captain Versace stubbornly resisted capture by the over-powering Viet Cong force with the last full measure of his strength and ammunition. Taken prisoner by the Viet Cong, he exemplified the tenets of the Code of Conduct from the time he entered into Prisoner of War status.

Captain Versace assumed command of his fellow American soldiers, scorned the enemy’s exhaustive interrogation and indoctrination efforts, and made three unsuccessful attempts to escape, despite his weakened condition which was brought about by his wounds and the extreme privation and hardships he was forced to endure. During his captivity, Captain Versace was segregated in an isolated prisoner of war cage, manacled in irons for prolonged periods of time, and placed on extremely reduced ration. The enemy was unable to break his indomitable will, his faith in God, and his trust in the United States of America. Captain Versace, an American fighting man who epitomized the principles of his country and the Code of Conduct, was executed by the Viet Cong on 26 September 1965. Captain Versace’s gallant actions in close contact with an enemy force and unyielding courage and bravery while a prisoner of war are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflect the utmost credit upon himself and the United States Army.


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[SHOOTER13]

30 October

1735 – John Adams, second president of the United States (1797-1801), was born in Braintree (Quincy), Mass. In three remarkable careers as a foe of British oppression and champion of independence (1761 77), as an American diplomat in Europe (1778 88), and as the first vice-president (1789 97) and then the second president of the United States (1797 1801) John Adams was a founder of the United States. Perhaps equally important, however, was the life of his mind and spirit; in a pungent diary, vivid letters, learned tracts, and patriotic speeches he revealed himself as a quintessential Puritan, patriarch of an illustrious family, tough-minded philosopher of the republic, sage, and sometimes a vain, stubborn, and vitriolic partisan. John Adams was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Mass. in a small saltbox house still standing and open to visitors. His father, John Adams, a deacon and a fifth-generation Massachusetts farmer, and his mother, the former Suzanna Boylston, were, their son wrote, “both fond of reading”; so they resolved to give bookishly inclined John a good education. He became the first of his family to go to college when he entered Harvard in 1751.

There, and in six further years of intensive reading while he taught school and studied law in Worcester and Boston, he mastered the technicalities of his profession and the literature and learning of his day. By 1762, when he began 14 years of increasingly successful legal practice, he was well informed, ambitious, and public spirited. His most notable good fortune, however, occurred in 1764 when he married Abigail Smith (see Adams, Abigail). John Adams’s marriage of 54 years to this wise, learned, strong-willed, passionate, and patriotic woman began the brilliant phase of Adams family history that produced their son John Quincy Adams, his son Charles Francis Adams, his sons Henry Adams and Brooks Adams, and numerous other distinguished progeny. In 1761, John Adams began to think and write and act against British measures that he believed infringed on colonial liberties. He soon became a leader among Massachusetts radicals. Although he early committed himself to independence as an unwelcome last resort, Adams’s innate conservatism made him determined in 1770 that the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre receive a fair hearing. He defended the soldiers at their trial. He also spoke out repeatedly against mob violence and other signs of social disintegration.

In 1774 76, Adams was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. His speeches and writings (especially a newspaper series signed “Novanglus” in 1775) articulating the colonial cause and his brilliant championing of American rights in Congress caused Thomas Jefferson to call him the “Colossus of Independence.” Adams helped draft the Declaration of Independence, secured its unanimous adoption in Congress, and wrote his wife on July 3, 1776, that “the most memorable Epoch in the History of America has begun.” After 18 months of toil in committee and on the floor of Congress managing the American Revolution, Adams crossed the Atlantic to be an American commissioner to France. The termination of this mission after less than a year in Paris allowed him to return home long enough to take a leading role in drafting the new Massachusetts constitution. He sailed again for Europe, accompanied by two of his sons, in November 1779 as a commissioner to seek peace with Britain. After quarrels in Paris with Benjamin Franklin and French officials, he left for the Netherlands, where he secured Dutch recognition of American independence. He returned to Paris in October 1782 to insist on American rights (especially to fish on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland) in the negotiations that led to Britain’s recognition of the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris of Sept. 3, 1783. For two more years Adams helped Franklin and Jefferson negotiate treaties of friendship and commerce with numerous foreign powers. Then, appointed the first U.S. minister to Britain, Adams presented his credentials to George III in 1785, noting his pride in “having the distinguished honor to be the first [ex-colonial subject] to stand in your Majesty’s royal presence in a diplomatic character.”

When he returned to the United States in 1788, Adams was greeted by his countrymen as one of the heroes of independence and was promptly elected vice-president under the new Constitution. This post, regarded by Adams as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” left him time to work out his increasingly sober views of republican government. In Europe he had been impressed with both the unsuitability of self-government for masses of destitute, ignorant people, and the usefulness, in evoking patriotism and in maintaining order, of the pomp and ceremony of monarchy. He was thus appalled, but not surprised, at the riotous French Revolution and emphasized the need for dignity, ritual, and authority in a republic such as the United States. He also supported the efforts of George Washington to give the presidency an almost regal quality and to extend executive power, and he agreed with Alexander Hamilton on most of the latter’s fiscal plans. He never accepted, however, the “high” Federalist biases toward commercial growth and government by “the rich, the well-born, and the able.” Although his own presidency (1797 1801) was a troubled one, Adams made uniquely important contributions during his term as chief executive. He managed orderly transitions of power at both the beginning and the end of his administration, and he gave the government stability by continuing most of the practices established under Washington. The major crisis he faced, however, arose from strained relations with revolutionary France.

When, in the so-called XYZ Affair (1797-1798), American peace commissioners returned from Paris with lurid stories of deceit and bribery, Adams called for an assertion of national pride, built up the armed forces, and even accepted the Alien and Sedition Acts as emergency national security measures. With his opponents (led by Jefferson) charging oppression and some of his own Federalist Party (led by Hamilton) urging war and conquest, Adams kept his nerve and, when the opportunity arose, dispatched another peace commission to France. This defused the crisis and led in 1800 to an agreement with France that ended the so-called Quasi-War. Nonetheless, deserted by Hamilton and other Federalists who disapproved of his independent course, and attacked by the Jeffersonian Republicans as a vain monarchist, Adams was forced out of office after one term. When he and Abigail returned to Massachusetts, they moved into a comfortable but unpretentious house in Quincy (it is known today and open to visitors as the Adams National Historic Site) they had bought 12 years before. There, tending to his fields, visiting with neighbors, and enjoying his family, John Adams lived for 25 years as a sage and national patriarch. Of his numerous correspondences, the cherished 14-year (1812 26) one with Jefferson became a literary legacy to the nation. Although the debilitations of old age and the death of his beloved Abigail in 1818 troubled his last years, his mind remained sharp and his spirit buoyant until the end. Like Jefferson, he died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Ninety years old at his death, Adams was revered by his countrymen not only as one of the founding fathers but also as a plain, honest man who personified the best of what the nation could hope of its citizens and leaders.

1775 – Congress authorizes four, by adding two to the pair authorized on 13 october, vessels for the defense of the United Colonies one to carry twenty guns, the other thirty-six, and increasing the membership of the Marine Committee to eleven.

1799 – William Balch becomes Navy’s first commissioned Chaplain.

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