This Date in Military History:

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1942 – The Navy credited the CGC Ingham with attacking and sinking the submerged U-boat U-626 south of Greenland.

1942 – Heavy US air attacks continue on Tunis and Gabes and other German air bases in Tunisia.

1943 – Some German forces withdraw from San Pietro and other positions further north. The US 5th Army capture Monte Sammucro.

1944 – Eisenhower releases the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions from AEF reserve to reinforce American troops in the Ardennes. Other infantry and armored forces from US 12th Army Group are also being redeployed to meet the German offensive. Meanwhile, German forces capture 9000 Americans at Echternach, on the extreme right flank of the attack. Soldiers of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich kill some 71 American POWs near Malmedy.

1944 – During World War II, U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issues Public Proclamation No. 21, declaring that, effective January 2, 1945, Japanese American “evacuees” from the West Coast could return to their homes. On February 19, 1942, 10 weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas “as deemed necessary or desirable.” The military in turn defined the entire West Coast, home to the majority of Americans of Japanese ancestry or citizenship, as a military area. By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to remote internment camps built by the U.S. military in scattered locations around the country. For the next two and a half years, many of these Japanese Americans endured extremely difficult living conditions and poor treatment by their military guards. During the course of World War II, 10 Americans were convicted of spying for Japan, but not one of them was of Japanese ancestry. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill to recompense each surviving internee with a tax-free check for $20,000 and an apology from the U.S. government.

1944 – The Germans renewed their attack on the Belgian town of Losheimergraben against the American Army during the Battle of the Bulge.

1944 – Battle of the Bulge – Malmedy massacre – 84 American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWs are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Peiper.

1944 – On Mindoro, American forces capture San Jose Airfield. On Leyte, parts of US 10th and 24th Corps record advances against Japanese positions.

1947 – First flight of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet strategic bomber. The Boeing B-47 Stratojet (company Model 450) was a long range, six-engine, jet-powered strategic bomber designed to fly at high subsonic speed and at high altitude to avoid enemy interception. The B-47’s primary mission was to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. With its engines carried in nacelles under the swept wing, the B-47 was a major innovation in post-World War II combat jet design, and helped lead to modern jet airliners. The B-47 entered service with the United States Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) in 1951. It never saw combat as a bomber, but was a mainstay of SAC’s bomber strength during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and remained in use as a bomber until 1965. It was also adapted to a number of other missions, including photographic reconnaissance, electronic intelligence and weather reconnaissance, remaining in service as a reconnaissance platform until 1969 and as a testbed until 1977.

1950 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Bruce H. Hinton, commander of the 336th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, earned the distinction of becoming the first F-86 Sabre fighter pilot to shoot down a MiG-15 during the Korean War.

1951 – President Harry Truman presented the Collier Trophy to the Coast Guard, the Department of Defense and the “helicopter industry” in a joint award, citing “outstanding development and use of rotary-winged aircraft for air rescue operations.” Coast Guard commandant VADM Merlin O’Neill accepted the trophy for the Coast Guard.

1957 – The United States successfully test -fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

1960 – A Convair C-131D Samaritan operated by the United States Air Force on a flight from Munich to RAF Northolt, crashed shortly after take-off from Munich-Riem Airport, due to fuel contamination. All 20 passengers and crew on board as well as 32 people on the ground were killed.

1969 – The SALT I talks begin. SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement, also known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT I froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels and provided for the addition of new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.

1969 – The U.S. Air Force closed its Project “Blue Book” by finding no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.

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1971 – Cambodian government positions in Prak Ham, 40 miles north of Phnom Penh, and the 4,000-man base at Taing Kauk are the targets of continuous heavy bombardment by communist forces. The communist Khmer Rouge and their North Vietnamese allies were trying to encircle the capital city. Premier Lon Nol took over the government from Prince Norodom Sihanouk in March 1970, and Lon Nol’s troops were locked in a desperate battle with the communists. Despite U.S. air support, the Cambodian government troops were under heavy pressure from the communists. The Prak Ham siege was lifted four days later, but the communists continued to encircle Phnom Penh in the face of weakened Cambodian resistance.

Meanwhile, antigovernment demonstrations against the Lon Nol regime broke out inside the capital. The government reacted by banning all such protests, as well as political meetings, and by authorizing police searches of private houses. Despite the unrest in Phnom Penh and a series of major defeats, Lon Nol managed to retain control of the government. Lon Nol’s government troops managed to hold on largely because of U.S. support. However, with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, American forces were withdrawn from Southeast Asia, and Lon Nol’s forces soon found themselves fighting alone against the communists.

The last U.S. airstrikes flown in support of Cambodian forces were in August 1973. Lon Nol and his forces fought on, but with no external support, it was an overwhelming task. On April 17, 1975, Lon Nol’s greatly depleted forces surrendered to the Khmer Rouge. During the five years of war, approximately 10 percent of Cambodia’s 7 million people died. The victorious Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced millions of Cambodians into forced labor camps, murdered hundreds of thousands of real or imagined opponents, and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths from exhaustion, hunger, and disease.

1975 – A federal jury in Sacramento, California, sentences Lynette Alice Fromme, also known as “Squeaky” Fromme, to life in prison for her attempted assassination of President Gerald R. Ford. On September 5, a Secret Service agent wrested a semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol from Fromme, who brandished the weapon during a public appearance of President Ford in Sacramento. “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson, was pointing the loaded gun at the president when the Secret Service agent grabbed it. Seventeen days later, Ford escaped injury in another assassination attempt when 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at him. Moore, a leftist radical who once served as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a history of mental illness. She was arrested at the scene, convicted, and sentenced to life.

In trial, Fromme pleaded not guilty to the “attempted assassination of a president” charge, arguing that although her gun contained bullets, it had not been cocked, and therefore she had not actually intended to shoot the president. She was convicted, sentenced to life in prison, and sent to the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia. Fromme remained a dedicated disciple of Charles Manson and in December 1987 escaped from Alderson Prison after she heard that Manson, also imprisoned, had cancer. After 40 hours roaming the rugged West Virginia hills, she was caught on Christmas Day, about two miles from the prison. Five years were added to her life sentence for the escape.

1981 – Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped Brigadier General James Dozier, the highest-ranking U.S. NATO officer in Italy.

1986 – Eugene Hasenfus, the American convicted by Nicaragua for his part in running guns to the Contras, was pardoned, then released.

1990 – President Bush pledged “no negotiation for one inch” of Kuwaiti territory would take place as he repeated his demand for Iraq’s complete withdrawal.

1990 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest and opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, is elected president of Haiti in a landslide victory. It was the first free election in Haiti’s history. However, less than one year later, in September 1991, Aristide was deposed in a bloody military coup. He escaped to exile, and a three-man junta took power. In 1994, reacting to evidence of atrocities committed by Haiti’s military dictators, the United Nations authorized the use of force to restore Aristide. On September 18th, the eve of the American invasion, a diplomatic delegation led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter brokered a last-minute agreement with Haiti’s military to give up power.

Bloodshed was prevented, and on September 19, 1994, 20,000 U.S. troops landed unopposed to oversee Haiti’s transition to democracy. In October, Aristide returned and served as president until the expiration of his term in 1996. He was succeeded by his close friend and handpicked successor Rene Preval, who was elected president in a landslide victory the previous year. In 2000, Aristide was again elected Haitian president in an election marked by violence and corruption.

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1991 – After a long meeting between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, a spokesman for the latter announces that the Soviet Union will officially cease to exist on or before New Year’s Eve. Yeltsin declared that, “There will be no more red flag.” It was a rather anti-climactic culmination of events leading toward the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Despite its dramatic implications, the announcement inspired mostly yawns and skeptical jokes from a Russian population weary from months of political intrigue and instability and a crumbling economy. For many people, the Soviet Union had already disintegrated. The various Russian republics had already declared their independence; in a few days they would meet and form the Commonwealth of Independent States. Gorbachev’s power was steadily ebbing: a coup attempt the previous August had already nearly toppled him. Yeltsin, on the other hand, was busily planning the takeover of Soviet facilities and the symbolic lowering of the Soviet hammer-and-sickle to be replaced by the flag of Russia. Even Gorbachev seemed to accept the inevitable, taking time off from his less and less meaningful job to have a photo op with the rock group Scorpion. It was all a rather unexciting end to the nation President Ronald Reagan once called “the evil empire.”

1993 – 2/14 Infantry, 10th Mountain Division, departs Somalia.

1994 – Six shots were fired at the White House by an unidentified gunman.

1994 – North Korea shot down a U.S. Army helicopter which had strayed north of the demilitarized zone – the co pilot, Chief Warrant Officer David Hilemon, was killed; the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall, was captured and held for nearly two weeks.

1996 – A U.N. panel rules that Kuwait Oil Company will receive $610 million, almost two-thirds of the $951 million it claims to have spent while extinguishing oil fires left by the retreating Iraqi army in 1991. In addition, the United Nations has approved 862,000 claims amounting to $3.2 billion for people forced to leave Kuwait because of the Iraqi occupation.

1997 – A US court ordered Cuba to pay $187.6 million for three men killed when their planes were shot down in 1996 by MiG fighters.

1998 – US and British forces launched more missiles on the 2nd day of attacks against Iraq. The strikes included some 100 cruise missiles with 2,000 pound warheads. Pres. Boris Yeltsin withdrew the Russian ambassador from Washington and demanded an immediate end to military action. France and Italy expressed strong opposition while Germany rallied to support the US and Britain. A stray US missile hit Khorramshahr, Iran. The US later apologized.

1999 – The U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 1284 on returning weapons inspectors to Iraq. Under the Resolution, sanctions could be suspended if Iraq were to cooperate with the inspectors over a period of nine months. Iraq has stated that it does not accept the Resolution, which also creates the new United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) for Iraq.

2001 – The Bush administration announced that the anthrax attacks most likely originated from a domestic source.

2001 – Space shuttle Endeavour returned to Cape Canaveral following A 12 -day mission for a crew change at the Int’l. Space Station.

2001 – US Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over the long -abandoned American Embassy in Kabul, inaugurating what U.S. envoy James F. Dobbins promised would be a long commitment to the rebuilding.

2001 – 2001 – The last cave complex at Tora Bora had been taken and its defenders overrun. U.S. and U.K. forces continued searching into January, but no sign of al-Qaeda leadership emerged. An estimated 200 al-Qaeda fighters were killed during the battle, along with an unknown number of tribal fighters. No American or British deaths were reported.

2002 – U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the military to begin deploying a national missile defence system with land – and sea -based interceptor rockets to be operational starting in 2004.

2002 – Iraqi exiles in London declared they want to build a “new Iraq” and agreed on a power -sharing plan that for the first time recognizes the political clout of Shiite Muslims, a majority in a nation long controlled by Sunni Muslims such as Saddam Hussein. Some delegates walked out of the London meeting warning of possible civil war if they were sidelined in any new government.

2003 – In Greece a court handed multiple life sentences to the leader, chief assassin and three other members of the November 17 terror organization.

2003 – Space Ship One, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first powered and first supersonic flight.

2003 – South Korea agreed to send 3,000 troops to Iraq in 2004.

2004 – President Bush signed into law the largest overhaul of US intelligence-gathering in 50 years.

2004 – Afghan forces retook control of Pul-e-Charkhi, the country’s largest jail, following a day-long standoff. 4 inmates and 4 guards were killed in the violence.

2004 – Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Dragan Mikerevic resigned, one day after the international community imposed sanctions against Bosnian Serb police and officials for allegedly helping fugitive war crimes suspects evade justice.

2007 – Russia delivers its first shipment of nuclear fuel to the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran.

2012 – Daniel Inouye, Medal of Honor recipient, senior Senator from Hawaii and the President pro tempore, dies in Honolulu at the age of 88.

2012 – NASA’s twin GRAIL space crafts crash into a mile-high cliff near the Lunar North Pole to close out a successful mission to map the Moon’s gravity field with unprecedented precision.

2013 – NSA Contractor Edward Snowden offers Brazil information over the NSA spying of its citizens.

2014 – Sony Pictures cancels the release of the upcoming 2014 film The Interview, originally scheduled for the next day, due to threatening messages by hackers connected to North Korea.

2014 – U.S. President Barack Obama announces release of Alan Gross, held prisoner by Cuba for five years; announces resumption of normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba for the first time since January 1961. An American embassy will open in Havana and talks to lift the embargo will begin.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BEAUMONT, EUGENE B.
Rank and organization: Major and Assistant Adjutant General, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Mississippi. Place and date: At Harpeth River, Tenn., 17 December 1864; at Selma, Ala., 2 April 1865. Entered service at: Wilkes Barre, Pa. Birth: Luzerne County, Pa. Date of issue: 30 March 1898. Citation: Obtained permission from the corps commander to advance upon the enemy’s position with the 4th U.S. Cavalry, of which he was a lieutenant; led an attack upon a battery, dispersed the enemy, and captured the guns. At Selma, Ala., charged, at the head of his regiment, into the second and last line of the enemy’s works.

HEDGES, JOSEPH
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Harpeth River, Tenn., 17 December 1864. Entered service at: Ohio. Birth: Ohio. Date of issue: 5 April 1898. Citation: At the head of his regiment charged a field battery with strong infantry supports, broke the enemy’s line and, with other mounted troops, captured 3 guns and many prisoners.

MacKENZlE, JOHN
Rank and organization: Chief Boatswain’s Mate, U.S. Navy. Born: 7 July 1886, Bridgeport, Conn. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 391, 1918. Citation: For extraordinary heroism while serving on board the U.S.S. Remlik, on the morning of 17 December 1917, when the Remlik encountered a heavy gale. During this gale, there was a heavy sea running. The depth charge box on the taffrail aft, containing a Sperry depth charge, was washed overboard, the depth charge itself falling inboard and remaining on deck. MacKenzie, on his own initiative, went aft and sat down on the depth charge, as it was impracticable to carry it to safety until the ship was headed up into the sea. In acting as he did, MacKenzie exposed his life and prevented a serious accident to the ship and probable loss of the ship and the entire crew.

*COWAN, RICHARD ELLER
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company M, 23d Infantry, 2d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Krinkelter Wald, Belgium, 17 December 1944. Entered service at: Wichita, Kans. Birth: Lincoln, Nebr. G.O. No.: 48, 23 June 1945. Citation: He was a heavy machinegunner in a section attached to Company I in the vicinity of Krinkelter Wald, Belgium, 17 December 1944, when that company was attacked by a numerically superior force of German infantry and tanks. The first 6 waves of hostile infantrymen were repulsed with heavy casualties, but a seventh drive with tanks killed or wounded all but 3 of his section, leaving Pvt. Cowan to man his gun, supported by only 15 to 20 riflemen of Company I. He maintained his position, holding off the Germans until the rest of the shattered force had set up a new line along a firebreak. Then, unaided, he moved his machinegun and ammunition to the second position. At the approach of a Royal Tiger tank, he held his fire until about 80 enemy infantrymen supporting the tank appeared at a distance of about 150 yards.

His first burst killed or wounded about half of these infantrymen. His position was rocked by an 88mm. shell when the tank opened fire, but he continued to man his gun, pouring deadly fire into the Germans when they again advanced. He was barely missed by another shell. Fire from three machineguns and innumerable small arms struck all about him; an enemy rocket shook him badly, but did not drive him from his gun. Infiltration by the enemy had by this time made the position untenable, and the order was given to withdraw. Pvt. Cowan was the last man to leave, voluntarily covering the withdrawal of his remaining comrades. His heroic actions were entirely responsible for allowing the remaining men to retire successfully from the scene of their last-ditch stand.

LOPEZ, JOSE M.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, 23d Infantry, 2d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Krinkelt, Belgium, 17 December 1944. Entered service at: Brownsville, Tex. Birth: Mission, Tex. G.O. No.: 47, 18 June 1945. Citation: On his own initiative, he carried his heavy machinegun from Company K’s right flank to its left, in order to protect that flank which was in danger of being overrun by advancing enemy infantry supported by tanks. Occupying a shallow hole offering no protection above his waist, he cut down a group of 10 Germans. Ignoring enemy fire from an advancing tank, he held his position and cut down 25 more enemy infantry attempting to turn his flank. Glancing to his right, he saw a large number of infantry swarming in from the front. Although dazed and shaken from enemy artillery fire which had crashed into the ground only a few yards away, he realized that his position soon would be outflanked. Again, alone, he carried his machinegun to a position to the right rear of the sector; enemy tanks and infantry were forcing a withdrawal. Blown over backward by the concussion of enemy fire, he immediately reset his gun and continued his fire.

Single-handed he held off the German horde until he was satisfied his company had effected its retirement. Again he loaded his gun on his back and in a hail of small arms fire he ran to a point where a few of his comrades were attempting to set up another defense against the onrushing enemy. He fired from this position until his ammunition was exhausted. Still carrying his gun, he fell back with his small group to Krinkelt. Sgt. Lopez’s gallantry and intrepidity, on seemingly suicidal missions in which he killed at least 100 of the enemy, were almost solely responsible for allowing Company K to avoid being enveloped, to withdraw successfully and to give other forces coming up in support time to build a line which repelled the enemy drive.

SODERMAN, WILLIAM A.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company K, 9th Infantry, 2d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Rocherath, Belgium, 17 December 1944. Entered service at: West Haven, Conn. Birth: West Haven, Conn. G.O. No.: 97, 1 November 1945. Citation: Armed with a bazooka, he defended a key road junction near Rocherath, Belgium, on 17 December 1944, during the German Ardennes counteroffensive. After a heavy artillery barrage had wounded and forced the withdrawal of his assistant, he heard enemy tanks approaching the position where he calmly waited in the gathering darkness of early evening until the 5 Mark V tanks which made up the hostile force were within pointblank range. He then stood up, completely disregarding the firepower that could be brought to bear upon him, and launched a rocket into the lead tank, setting it afire and forcing its crew to abandon it as the other tanks pressed on before Pfc. Soderman could reload. The daring bazookaman remained at his post all night under severe artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire, awaiting the next onslaught, which was made shortly after dawn by 5 more tanks Running along a ditch to meet them, he reached an advantageous point and there leaped to the road in full view of the tank gunners, deliberately aimed his weapon and disabled the lead tank. The other vehicles, thwarted by a deep ditch in their attempt to go around the crippled machine, withdrew.

While returning to his post Pfc. Soderman, braving heavy fire to attack an enemy infantry platoon from close range, killed at least 3 Germans and wounded several others with a round from his bazooka. By this time, enemy pressure had made Company K’s position untenable. Orders were issued for withdrawal to an assembly area, where Pfc. Soderman was located when he once more heard enemy tanks approaching. Knowing that elements of the company had not completed their disengaging maneuver and were consequently extremely vulnerable to an armored attack, he hurried from his comparatively safe position to meet the tanks. Once more he disabled the lead tank with a single rocket, his last; but before he could reach cover, machinegun bullets from the tank ripped into his right shoulder. Unarmed and seriously wounded he dragged himself along a ditch to the American lines and was evacuated. Through his unfaltering courage against overwhelming odds, Pfc. Soderman contributed in great measure to the defense of Rocherath, exhibiting to a superlative degree the intrepidity and heroism with which American soldiers met and smashed the savage power of the last great German offensive.

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18 December

1777 – The 1st America Thanksgiving Day commemorated Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga. A national Thanksgiving was declared by Congress after the American victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga in December 1777. For many years Thanksgiving celebrations were haphazard with Presidents Washington, Adams and Madison declaring occasional national festivities.

1787 – New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by New York State, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania, and on the southwest by Delaware. The area was inhabited by Native Americans for more than 2,800 years, with historical tribes such as the Lenape along the coast. In the early 17th century, the Dutch and the Swedes made the first European settlements. The English later seized control of the region, naming it the Province of New Jersey. It was granted as a colony to Sir George Carteret and John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton. At this time, it was named after the largest of the Channel Islands, Jersey, Carteret’s birthplace. New Jersey was the site of several decisive battles during the American Revolutionary War.

1799 – George Washington’s body was interred at Mount Vernon.

1813 – British took Fort Niagara in War of 1812.

1859 – South Carolina declared itself an “independent commonwealth.”

1862 – Confederate cavalry leader General Nathan Bedford Forrest routs a Union force under the command of Colonel Robert Ingersoll on a raid into western Tennessee, an area held by the Union. With the main Union army in the region occupying northern Mississippi, General Braxton Bragg ordered Forrest to cut the Federal supply lines in Tennessee. Forrest left Columbia, Tennessee, on December 11 and began crossing the Tennessee River on December 13. On December 16, Union General Jeremiah Sullivan dispatched Ingersoll and 200 men from Jackson to Lexington, where Ingersoll picked up 470 reinforcements. Most of the troops were raw recruits with no combat experience. On December 17, Ingersoll’s scouts detected more than half of Forrest’s 2,500 men approaching Lexington from the south. Ingersoll guessed that Forrest would attack along one of two main roads, Old Stage Road and Lower Road. To impede the Confederate advance, Ingersoll ordered the destruction of a bridge across Beech Creek along Lower Road. He then concentrated the bulk of his force along Old Stage Road.

Forrest pulled his force up to Lexington, but did not attack until December 18th. In the morning, Forrest advanced along Lower Road. Ingersoll’s scouts had failed to eliminate the bridge the day before, leaving the Confederates a clear path towards the smaller part of Ingersoll’s command. The Yankees swung around to stop the attack, but it was too late. Forrest’s troops overwhelmed the panicked Federals and captured 147 men, including Ingersoll. The rest of the Union force scattered into the countryside. Forrest also captured two artillery pieces, 70 horses, many rifles, and supplies. Forrest continued to Jackson, but found the city well defended. He continued his raid into Kentucky, destroying bridges and hampering supplies to the Union armies in Mississippi.

1862 – Grant announced the organization of his army in the West. Sherman, Hurlbut, McPherson, and McClernand would be Corps Commanders.

1864 – U.S.S. Louisiana, Commander Rhind, arrived off Fort Fisher, having that day been towed from Beaufort, North Carolina, by U.S.S. Sassacus, Lieutenant Commander J. L. Davis, in company with Rear Admiral Porter and his fleet. Louisiana had been loaded with powder and was to be blown up as near Fort Fisher as possible in the hope of reducing or substantially damaging that formidable Confederate work. The day before, Porter had sent detailed instructions to Commander Rhind, adding: “Great risks have to be run, and there are chances that you may lose your life in this adventure; but the risk is worth the running, when the importance of the object is to be considered and the fame to be gained by this novel undertaking, which is either to prove that forts on the water are useless or that rebels are proof against gunpowder. . . . I expect more good to our cause from a success in this instance than from an advance of all the armies in the field.” Rhind and his brave crew of volunteers proceeded in toward Fort Fisher towed by U.S.S.Wilderness, Acting Master Henry Arey, but finding the swells too severe, turned back. Major General Butler, seeing the worsening weather at Beaufort, asked Porter to postpone the attempt until the sea was calm enough to land his troops with safety.

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1865 – Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the anti-slavery Republican Party sought not to abolish slavery but merely to stop its extension into new territories and states in the American West. This policy was unacceptable to most Southern politicians, who believed that the growth of free states would turn the U.S. power structure irrevocably against them.

In November 1860, Lincoln’s election as president signaled the secession of seven Southern states and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Shortly after his inauguration in 1861, the Civil War began. Four more Southern states joined the Confederacy, while four border slave states in the upper South remained in the Union. Lincoln, though he privately detested slavery, responded cautiously to the call by abolitionists for emancipation of all American slaves after the outbreak of the Civil War.

As the war dragged on, however, the Republican-dominated federal government began to realize the strategic advantages of emancipation: The liberation of slaves would weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would in turn strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. With 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, there were few pro-slavery congressmen to stand in the way of such an action. In 1862, Congress annulled the fugitive slave laws, prohibited slavery in the U.S. territories, and authorized Lincoln to employ freed slaves in the army. Following the major Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issued a warning of his intent to issue an emancipation proclamation for all states still in rebellion on New Year’s Day. That day–January 1, 1863–President Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, calling on the Union army to liberate all slaves in states still in rebellion as “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.” These three million slaves were declared to be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

The proclamation exempted the border slave states that remained in the Union and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army. The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war against secession into a war for “a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. This ideological change discouraged the intervention of France or England on the Confederacy’s behalf and enabled the Union to enlist the 180,000 African American soldiers and sailors who volunteered to fight between January 1, 1863, and the conclusion of the war.

As the Confederacy staggered toward defeat, Lincoln realized that the Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure, might have little constitutional authority once the war was over. The Republican Party subsequently introduced the 13th Amendment into Congress, and in April 1864 the necessary two-thirds of the overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the amendment. However, the House of Representatives, featuring a higher proportion of Democrats, did not pass the amendment by a two-thirds majority until January 1865, three months before Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

On December 2, 1865, Alabama became the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment, thus giving it the requisite three-fourths majority of states’ approval necessary to make it the law of the land. Alabama, a former Confederate state, was forced to ratify the amendment as a condition for re-admission into the Union. On December 18, the 13th Amendment was officially adopted into the Constitution–246 years after the first shipload of captive Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia, and were bought as slaves. Slavery’s legacy and efforts to overcome it remained a central issue in U.S. politics for more than a century, particularly during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.

1902 – Admiral of the Navy George Dewey receives orders to send his battleship to Trinidad and then to Venezuela to make sure that Great Britain’s and Germany’s dispute with Venezuela was settled by peaceful arbitration not force.

1903 – Marines escorted American diplomats to Addis Ababa, Abyssinia.

1917 – The resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress.

1939 – The US Navy promises to send 40 planes to Finland.

1940 – Hitler dictated Directive No. 21 to crush Russia in a quick campaign. Its message is simple: “The German Armed Forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign.” The projected operation is given the code name Barbarossa. Hitler has modified the draft plans prepared by the army in one important respect. Although three lines of attack are still suggested, Hitler’s scheme reduces the importance which has been laid on the advance to Moscow. He suggests that after the first battles the center group should swing north to help clear the Baltic States and Leningrad before moving on the capital. The preparations are to be ready by May 15, 1940.

1941 – Defended by 610 fighting men, the American-held island of Guam fell to more than 5,000 Japanese invaders in a three-hour battle.

1941 – Censorship is imposed with the passage of the 1st American War Powers Act. The War Powers Act is passed by Congress, authorizing the president to initiate and terminate defense contracts, reconfigure government agencies for wartime priorities, and regulate the freezing of foreign assets. It also permitted him to censor all communications coming in and leaving the country. FDR appointed the executive news director of the Associated Press, Byron Price, as director of censorship. Although invested with the awesome power to restrict and withhold news, Price took no extreme measures, allowing news outlets and radio stations to self-censor, which they did. Most top secret information, including the construction of the atom bomb, remained just that. The most extreme use of the censorship law seems to have been the restriction of the free flow of “girlie” magazines to servicemen-including Esquire, which the Post Office considered obscene for its occasional saucy cartoons and pinups. Esquire took the Post Office to court, and after three years the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the magazine.

1943 – The US 5th Army captures Monte Lungo, threatening the German position at San Pietro. German forces launch counterattacks. San Pietro falls to the US 36th Division (part of 2nd Corps, 5th Army). The 6th Corps advances as the German forces withdraw.

1944 – The Supreme Court upheld the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans, but also said undeniably loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry could not be detained.

1944 – US Task Force 38 is caught in a typhoon while retiring to refuel and replenish. Three destroyers, “Hull,” “Spence” & “Monaghan,” are sunk and 3 fleet carriers, 4 escort carriers and 11 destroyers sustain damage.

1944 – US B-29 Superfortress bombers raid Nagoya (nominally the Mitsubishi aircraft assembly works).

1944 – Some 200 US 14th Air Force planes, and 84 B-29 bombers, attack the Japanese supply base at Hankow causing fires that burn for three days.

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1950 – U.S. Navy Patrol Squadron 892, the first all-Reserve squadron to operate in Korea’s war zone, began operations from Iwakuni, Japan.

1951 – The U.N. command and the communists exchanged prisoner of war lists at Panmunjom. The UNC list contained 132,472 names. The communists listed 11,359.

1956 – Japan was admitted to the United Nations.

1957 – The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went online. It was taken out of service in 1982.

1958 – Project SCORE, the world’s first communications satellite, is launched. Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was the world’s first communications satellite. Launched aboard an American Atlas rocket, SCORE provided a first test of a communications relay system in space, as well as the first successful use of the Atlas as a launch vehicle. It captured world attention by broadcasting a Christmas message via short wave radio from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower through an on-board tape recorder. SCORE, as a geopolitical strategy, placed the United States at an even technological par with the Soviet Union as a highly functional response to the Sputnik satellites.

1965 – "Brown Navy" River Patrol Force established in Vietnam.

1965 – U.S. Marines attacked VC units in the Que Son Valley during Operation Harvest Moon.

1965 – The Borman and Lovell splash down in the Atlantic ended a 2 week Gemini VII mission.

1967 – Operation Preakness II begins in Mekong Delta.

1970 – An atomic leak in Nevada forced hundreds to flee the test site.

1971 – North Vietnamese troops captured the Plain of Jars in Laos.

1972 – The Nixon administration announces that the bombing and mining of North Vietnam will resume and continue until a “settlement” is reached. On December 13, North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of secret talks with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. President Richard Nixon issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.” The North Vietnamese rejected Nixon’s demand and the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler said that the bombing would end only if all U.S. prisoners of war were released and an internationally recognized cease-fire were in force. Linebacker II was the most concentrated air offensive of the war, and was conducted by U.S. aircraft, including B-52s, Air Force fighter-bombers flying from bases in Thailand, and Navy and Marine fighter-bombers flying from carriers in the South China Sea.

During the 11 days of the attack, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties were flown. These planes dropped roughly 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong. The North Vietnamese fired more than 1,000 surface-to-air missiles at the attacking aircraft and also used their MiG fighter-interceptor squadrons, eight of which were shot down. In a throwback to past aerial combat, Staff Sgt. Samuel O. Turner, the tail gunner on a Boeing B-52D bomber, downed a trailing MiG-21 with a blast from his .50 caliber machine guns over Hanoi. Six days later, airman, first class Albert E. Moore, also a B-52 gunner, shot down a second MiG-21 after a strike on the Thai Nguyen rail yard. These were the only aerial gunner kills of the war.

Twenty-six U.S. aircraft were lost, including 15 B-52s. Three aircraft were brought down by MiGs; the rest, including the B-52s, were downed by surface-to-air missiles. American antiwar activists dubbed Linebacker II the “Christmas bombing,” and charged that it involved “carpet bombing”–deliberately targeting civilian areas with intensive bombing that “carpeted” a city with bombs. The campaign was focused on specific military targets and was not intended to be “carpet bombing,” but it did result in the deaths of 1,318 civilians in Hanoi. The Linebacker II bombing was deemed a success because in its wake, the North Vietnamese returned to the negotiating table, where the Paris Peace Accords were signed less than a month later.

1985 – UN Security Council unanimously condemned “acts of hostage-taking.”

1989 – Robert E. Robinson, an attorney and alderman in Savannah, Ga., was killed by a mail bomb similar to a device that had claimed the life of a federal judge in Alabama two days earlier. Walter Leroy Moody Junior was later convicted of both bombings, and is on Alabama’s death row.

1990 – Less than a month before a UN deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, President Bush told reporters he believed Americans would support a military strike, if one proved necessary. In Baghdad, the ruling Revolutionary Command Council said Iraq was “ready for the decisive showdown.”

1993 – The United States and Germany pledged close cooperation to help Boris Yeltsin through Russia’s political and economic crises in a meeting in Oggersheim between Vice President Al Gore and Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

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1995 – A powerful fertilizer bomb was found outside an Internal Revenue Service office in Reno, Nevada, but fizzled before its lit fuse could do much damage.

1996 – Earl Edwin Pitts, a senior US FBI agent, was arrested on espionage charges. He was most active as a Russian spy from 1987-1992. Pitts was sentenced in June 1997 to 27 years in prison after admitting that he’d conspired and attempted to commit espionage.

1997 – President Clinton extended indefinitely the deadline for withdrawal of U.S. troops helping with the U.N. peacekeeping effort in Bosnia.
1997 – In Lebanon a foundation stone was laid for the new US consulate in Beirut.

1997 – HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.

1998 – US and British struck Iraq for a 3rd day with little resistance. The US B-1 bomber was used to drop bombs. Gen’l. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more cruise missiles were launched in the first 2 days than the 289 in the 1991 Gulf War.

1999 – Iraq rejected the UN proposal for an inspection plan that would lead to suspension of sanctions.

1999 – NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT. Terra (EOS AM-1) is a multi-national NASA scientific research satellite in a Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth. It is the flagship of the Earth Observing System (EOS). The name “Terra” comes from the Latin word for Earth.

2000 – US electors voted for their party’s candidates. In the 224 years of the Electoral College only 9 electors had switched votes. The DC elector withheld her vote to protest lack of representation. Bush won 271 votes, one over the constitutional minimum, and became the official president-elect.

2000 – In Canada Pres. Putin of Russia met with Prime Minister Chretien and together supported existing nuclear arms accords. Chretien did not join Putin’s opposition to a US missile defense plan.

2001 – Yemeni troops assaulted tribal forces in the Marib region after local leaders refused to turn over suspected members of al Qaeda. At least 12 people were killed and 22 wounded.

2002 – DoD issues preliminary orders for the deployment of 50,000 troops to threaten Iraq.

2003 – A federal judge in NY ruled that Pres. Bush does not have the power to order that a US citizen captured in this country be held indefinitely as an enemy combatant. Federal judges in SF ruled that the administration’s policy of imprisoning some 600 non-citizens in Cuba without access to US legal protection raises concerns under US and International law.

2003 – Lee Boyd Malvo (18) was convicted in Virginia for his role in the 2002 sniper shootings.

2003 – Iran signed a key accord opening its nuclear facilities to unfettered and unannounced inspections.

2003 – The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq announces that it will provide the Iraqi Oil Ministry with $600 million for infrastructure improvement. The director-general of the state-owned Iraqi Drilling Company says that he expects that the investment could raise daily production, now at about 1.9 million barrels per day, by as much as 1.05 million barrels per day over an 18 month period.

2004 – In Haiti bands of former soldiers and armed residents looted police arsenals, set bonfires and fired shots into the air amid escalating chaos.

2004 – The former Iraqi general known as “Chemical Ali,” Ali Hassan al-Majid, went before a judge in the first investigative hearings of former members of his regime.

2004 – Insurgents claiming to represent three Iraqi militant groups issued a videotape saying they had captured 10 Iraqis working for an American security and reconstruction company and would kill them if the firm did not leave this turbulent country. A clash in Mosul left an Iraqi child dead. An insurgent attack in Mosul left one Iraqi dead. National Guardsmen there killed 3 insurgents.

2010 – The United States Senate repeals “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” by a vote of 65-35. The bill will now be sent to President Barack Obama to be signed.

2011 – The last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, although the US embassy and consulates continues to maintain a staff of more than 20,000 including US Marine Embassy Guards and between 4,000 and 5,000 private military contractors.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

EADIE, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Chief Gunner’s Mate, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Off Provincetown, Mass., 18 December 1927. Entered service at: Rhode Island. Born: 7 April 1887, Scotland. Other Navy award: Navy Cross. Citation: For display of extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession above and beyond the call of duty on 18 December 1927, during the diving operations in connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. S-4 with all on board, as a result of a collision off Prividencetown, Mass. On this occasion when Michels, Chief Torpedoman, U.S. Navy, while attempting to connect an airline to the submarine at a depth of 102 feet became seriously fouled, Eadie, under the most adverse diving conditions, deliberately, knowingly, and willingly took his own life in his hands by promptly descending to the rescue in response to the desperate need of his companion diver. After 2 hours of extremely dangerous and heartbreaking work, by his cool, calculating, and skillful labors, he succeeded in his mission and brought Michels safely to the surface.

BELL, BERNARD P.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company I, 142d Infantry, 36th Infantry Division. Place and date: Mittelwihr, France, 18 December 1944. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: Grantsville, W. Va. G.O. No.: 73, 30 August 1945. Citation: For fighting gallantly at Mittelwihr, France. On the morning of 18 December 1944, he led a squad against a schoolhouse held by enemy troops. While his men covered him, he dashed toward the building, surprised 2 guards at the door and took them prisoner without firing a shot. He found that other Germans were in the cellar. These he threatened with hand grenades, forcing 26 in all to emerge and surrender. His squad then occupied the building and prepared to defend it against powerful enemy action.

The next day, the enemy poured artillery and mortar barrages into the position, disrupting communications which T/Sgt. Bell repeatedly repaired under heavy small-arms fire as he crossed dangerous terrain to keep his company commander informed of the squad’s situation. During the day, several prisoners were taken and other Germans killed when hostile forces were attracted to the schoolhouse by the sound of captured German weapons fired by the Americans.

At dawn the next day the enemy prepared to assault the building. A German tank fired round after round into the structure, partially demolishing the upper stories. Despite this heavy fire, T/Sgt. Bell climbed to the second floor and directed artillery fire which forced the hostile tank to withdraw. He then adjusted mortar fire on large forces of enemy foot soldiers attempting to reach the American position and, when this force broke and attempted to retire, he directed deadly machinegun and rifle fire into their disorganized ranks.

Calling for armored support to blast out the German troops hidden behind a wall, he unhesitatingly exposed himself to heavy small-arms fire to stand beside a friendly tank and tell its occupants where to rip holes in walls protecting approaches to the school building. He then trained machineguns on the gaps and mowed down all hostile troops attempting to cross the openings to get closer to the school building. By his intrepidity and bold, aggressive leadership, T/Sgt. Bell enabled his 8-man squad to drive back approximately 150 of the enemy, killing at least 87 and capturing 42. Personally, he killed more than 20 and captured 33 prisoners.

BARNUM, HARVEY C., IR.
Rank and organization: Captain (then Lt.), U.S. Marine Corps, Company H, 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division (Rein). Place and date: Ky Phu in Quang Tin Province, Republic of Vietnam, 18 December 1965. Entered service at: Cheshire, Conn. Born: 21 July 1940, Cheshire, Conn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. When the company was suddenly pinned down by a hail of extremely accurate enemy fire and was quickly separated from the remainder of the battalion by over 500 meters of open and fire-swept ground, and casualties mounted rapidly.

Lt. Barnum quickly made a hazardous reconnaissance of the area, seeking targets for his artillery. Finding the rifle company commander mortally wounded and the radio operator killed, he, with complete disregard for his safety, gave aid to the dying commander, then removed the radio from the dead operator and strapped it to himself.

He immediately assumed command of the rifle company, and moving at once into the midst of the heavy fire, rallying and giving encouragement to all units, reorganized them to replace the loss of key personnel and led their attack on enemy positions from which deadly fire continued to come. His sound and swift decisions and his obvious calm served to stabilize the badly decimated units and his gallant example as he stood exposed repeatedly to point out targets served as an inspiration to all. Provided with 2 armed helicopters, he moved fearlessly through enemy fire to control the air attack against the firmly entrenched enemy while skillfully directing 1 platoon in a successful counterattack on the key enemy positions.

Having thus cleared a small area, he requested and directed the landing of 2 transport helicopters for the evacuation of the dead and wounded. He then assisted in the mopping up and final seizure of the battalion’s objective. His gallant initiative and heroic conduct reflected great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service.

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19 December

1606 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who found, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.

1675 – The Great Swamp Fight, a pivotal battle in King Philip’s War, gives the English settlers a bitterly won victory against the Naragansett tribe. Fearing that the, officially neutral, Naragansetts would join with the forces of The Pokanoket tribe chief, Metacomet, known as King Phillip, and believing that the Nragansetts had earlier sheltered King Phillip’s men, the militia of Rhode Island began attacking Naragansett villages in November. On a bitterly cold storm-filled day, the main Narragansett fort in modern South Kingstown, Rhode Island was found and attacked by the colonial militia from Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony. Led there by an Indian guide, known as Indian Peter, the militia were able to reach the fort because an unusually cold late fall had frozen the swamp, making an assault possible.

The massive fort, which occupied about 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land and was initially occupied by over a thousand Natives, was eventually overrun after a fierce fight. The Native fort was burned, its inhabitants, including women and children, killed or evicted and most of the tribe’s winter stores destroyed. It is believed that about 300 natives were killed though exact figures are unknown. Many of the warriors and their families escaped into the frozen swamp; there hundreds more died from wounds combined with the harsh conditions. Facing a winter with little food and shelter, the whole surviving Narragansett tribe was forced out of the quasi-neutrality some had tried to maintain in the ongoing war and joined the fight alongside Philip.

The colonists lost many of their officers in this assault and about seventy of their men were killed and nearly 150 more wounded. The dead and wounded colonial militiamen were evacuated to the settlements on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay where they were buried or cared for by many of the Rhode Island colonists until they could return to their homes.

1776 – Thomas Paine published his first “American Crisis” essay in the Pennsylvania Journal, writing: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

1777 – With the onset of the bitter winter cold, the Continental Army under General George Washington, still in the field, enters its winter camp at Valley Forge, 22 miles from British-occupied Philadelphia. Washington chose a site on the west bank of the Schuylkill River that could be effectively defended in the event of a British attack. During 1777, Patriot forces under General Washington suffered major defeats against the British at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown; Philadelphia, the capital of the United States, fell into British hands. The particularly severe winter of 1777-1778 proved to be a great trial for the American army, and of the 11,000 soldiers stationed at Valley Forge, hundreds died from disease. However, the suffering troops were held together by loyalty to the Patriot cause and to General Washington, who stayed with his men. As the winter stretched on, Prussian military adviser Frederick von Steuben kept the soldiers busy with drills and training in modern military strategy. When Washington’s army marched out of Valley Forge on June 19, 1778, the men were better disciplined and stronger in spirit than when they had entered. Nine days later, they won a victory against the British under Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey.

1817 – Confederate General James Archer is born in Harford County, Maryland. Archer received his education at Princeton University and Boston College before serving in the Maryland volunteers during the Mexican War. He earned a brevet promotion (an honorary promotion usually given for battlefield heroism) to major for bravery at the Battle of Chapultepec during the Mexico City campaign. After the war, he practiced law until he joined the U.S. Army in 1855. Archer served in the Pacific Northwest, and when the Civil War broke out, he joined General John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade in the Confederate Army. Archer fought with the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the war. He earned a promotion to brigadier general for his gallantry at the Battle of Seven Pines in June 1862, and his brigade played a key role during the Seven Days’ battles later that month. He was ill during the army’s invasion of Maryland in September 1862, so he relinquished his command for the Battle of Antietam.

In 1863, Archer marched north to Gettysburg as part of Henry Heth’s division in A.P. Hill’s corps. This placed him in the middle of battle’s initial action on July 1. Archer led an attack on the center of the Union line on Seminary Ridge that was so successful that Archer and his men were cut off from the rest of the Confederates. He was captured, the first Confederate general from the Army of Northern Virginia to be captured since Robert E. Lee assumed command on June 1, 1862. Ironically, Archer’s old friend, General Abner Doubleday, commanded the Union force that captured Archer. When he saw Archer being led to the rear, he rode up and extended a handshake and said he was happy to see his old friend. Archer reportedly retorted, “Well, I’m not glad to see you by a damned sight!”

Archer was held at prisons in Ohio and Delaware for more than a year before he was exchanged in August 1864. After his release, Archer received orders to return to his old brigade, which was now serving as part of Hood’s Army of Tennessee in Atlanta. Prison life, however, had compromised his health and his orders were changed. He was sent instead to the trenches around Petersburg, Virginia. His health continued to deteriorate and he died there on October 24, 1864.

1828 – In the Nullification Crisis, Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun pens the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.

1862 – Nathan B. Forrest tore up the railroads in Grant and Rosecrans’ rear, causing considerable delays in the movement of Union supplies.

1862 – Skirmish at Jackson-Salem Church, Tenn., left 80 casualties.

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1863 – Expedition under Acting Master W. R. Browne, comprising U.S.S. Restless, Bloomer, and Caroline, proceeded up St. Andrew’s Bay, Florida, to continue the destruction of salt works. A landing party went ashore under Bloomer’s guns and destroyed those works not already demolished by the Southerners when reports of the naval party were received. Browne was able to report that he had “cleared the three arms of this extensive bay of salt works. . . .Within the past ten days,” he added, “290 salt works, 33 covered wagons, 12 flatboats, 2 sloops (3 ton each) 6 ox carts, 4,000 bushels of salt, 268 buildings at the different salt works, 529 iron kettles averaging 150 gallons each, 103 iron boilers for boiling brine [were destroyed], and it is believed that the enemy destroyed as many more to prevent us from doing so.”

1864 – C.S.S. Water Witch, captured from the Union on 3 June, was burned by the Confederates in the Vernon River near Savannah, in order to prevent her capture by General Sherman’s troops advancing on the city.

1870 – After a month at sea in a 22-foot boat, Coxswain William Halford, the lone survivor of 5, reaches Hawaii to seek help for crew of USS Saginaw, wrecked near Midway Island. Rescuers reach the 88 Saginaw survivors on 4 January 1871.

1912 – William Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over 1,000 people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.

1928 – The 1st autogiro flight was made in the US. It was a predecessor of the modern helicopter.

1939 – The German liner Columbus, closely trailed by the US cruiser Tuscaloosa, is scuttled some 300 miles from the American coast, to avoid capture by the approaching British destroyer HMS Hyperion. The American warship has been trailing the German liner since its departure from Vera Cruz, Mexico and has been constantly reporting the position of the Columbus by radio for any and all ships to hear. The actions taken by the USS Tuscaloosa make the official US position of neutrality highly suspect, but Berlin never protests the incident.

1941 – Adolf Hitler assumes the position of commander in chief of the German army. The German offensive against Moscow was proving to be a disaster. A perimeter had been established by the Soviets 200 miles from the city-and the Germans couldn’t break through. The harsh winter weather-with temperatures often dropping to 31 degrees below zero-had virtually frozen German tanks in their tracks. Soviet General Georgi Zhukov had unleashed a ferocious counteroffensive of infantry, tanks, and planes that had forced the flailing Germans into retreat. In short, the Germans were being beaten for the first time in the war, and the toll to their collective psyche was great. “The myth of the invincibility of the German army was broken,” German General Franz Halder would write later. But Hitler refused to accept this notion. He began removing officers from their command. General Fedor von Bock, who had been suffering severe stomach pains and who on December 1 had complained to Halder that he was no longer able to “operate” with his debilitated troops, was replaced by General Hans von Kluge, whose own 4th Army had been pushed into permanent retreat from Moscow. General Karl von Runstedt was relieved of the southern armies because he had retreated from Rostov. Hitler clearly did not believe in giving back captured territory, so in the biggest shake-up of all, he declared himself commander in chief of the army. He would train it “in a National Socialist way”-that is, by personal fiat. He would compose the strategies and the officers would dance to his tune.

1941 – Japanese land 500 men from the 56th Infantry Regiment near Davao on Mindanao.

1942 – On Guadalcanal, US forces on Mount Austen meet heavy resistance.

1943 – The American regiment at Arawe captures the nearby Japanese airstrip and hold against counterattacks.

1944 – At a meeting of senior Allied commanders, Eisenhower decides to appoint Field Marshal Montgomery, commanding British 21st Army Group, to lead all Allied forces to the north of ” the Bulge” in the line created by the German attack. General Bradley, commanding US 12th Army Group, is responsible for all Allied forces to the south. The arrangement is not made public at this time.

1944 – It is decided that the Japanese 35th Army on Leyte is no longer to be reinforced or supplied. Nonetheless, fighting continues to the north of Ormoc and throughout the northwest of the island.

1944 – Forces of the German 6th SS Panzer Army reach Stavelot in the north while elements of 5th Panzer Army approach Houffalize. Some US forces between these advance continue to defend positions around Gouvy and St. Vith.

1944 – During the Battle of the Bulge, American troops began pulling back from the twin Belgian cities of Krinkelt and Rocherath in front of the advancing German Army.

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1946 – In Hanoi, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam launches its first attack against the French. Following months of steadily deteriorating relations, a bloody ‘pacification’ of Haiphong in November, and unacceptable French demands including the disarmament of the Vietminh militia, the attack has the support of most Vietnamese and begins what comes to be known as the Indochina War.

1950 – The North Atlantic Council named General Eisenhower supreme commander of Western European defense forces of NATO.

1950 – The carrier USS Bataan, commanded by Captain T. N. Neale, arrived on station in Korean waters.

1959 – Reputed to be the last civil war veteran, Walter Williams, died at 117 in Houston.

1960 – A fire aboard USS Constellation, under construction at Brooklyn, killed 50.

1963 – Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara arrives in Saigon to evaluate the new government’s war effort against the Vietcong. Publicly optimistic, in a complete about-face from the previous year, he privately tells Johnson that the situation is ‘very disturbing.’ McNamara feels that unless conditions change in the next two or three months, current rends ‘will lead to neutralization at best, or more likely, to a Communist controlled state.’

1964 – Another bloodless coup occurs when Maj. Gen. Nguyen Khanh and a group of generals led by Air Commodore Nguyen Cao Ky and Army Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu arrest three dozen high officers and civilian officials. The coup was part of the continuing political instability that erupted after the November 1963 coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem. The period following the overthrow of Diem was marked by a series of coups and “revolving door” governments. The coup on this day was engineered by a faction of younger military officers known as the “Young Turks,” who were fed up with what they believed was the ineffective government headed by a group of older generals known as the Military Revolutionary Council. Khanh and the newly formed Armed Forces Council, made up of the generals who had participated in the coup, restored civilian control on January 7, 1965, under Tran Van Huong.

Hunon proved unable to put together a viable government and the Armed Forces Council ousted him on January 27 and installed Gen. Khanh in power. Khanh was ousted by yet another coup on February 18 led by Ky and Thieu. Khanh then went to the United States and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. A short-lived civilian government under Dr. Phan Huy Quat was installed, but it lasted only until June 12, 1965. At that time, Thieu and Ky formed a new government with Thieu as the chief of state and Ky as the prime minister. Thieu and Ky were elected as president and vice-president in general elections held in 1967.

1972 – Hanoi’s foreign ministry, calling the new B-52 raids against Hanoi and Haiphong “extremely barbaric,” accuses the United States of premeditated intensification of the war and labels the actions “insane.” On December 13, North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of secret talks in Paris with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. President Nixon issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.” The North Vietnamese rejected Nixon’s demand and the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. During the 11 days of Linebacker II, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties were flown. These planes dropped roughly 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong. Nixon was severely criticized both by American antiwar activists and in the international community for ordering what became known as the “Christmas bombing.” Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, China and the Soviet Union officially condemned the resumption of American bombing above the 20th parallel.

The French newspaper Le Monde compared the attacks to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, when German planes from the Condor Legion attacked the Spanish city and caused great devastation and loss of life. In England, the Manchester Guardian called the bombing “the action of a man blinded by fury or incapable of seeing the consequences of what he is doing.” Pope Paul VI and United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim expressed concern for world peace. American antiwar activists charged that Linebacker II involved “carpet bombing”–deliberately targeting civilian areas with intensive bombing designed to “carpet” a city with bombs. Though the bombing was focused on specific military targets, it did result in the deaths of 1,318 civilians in Hanoi. The “Christmas bombing” was deemed a success by the U.S., since it caused the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table, where the Paris Peace Accords were signed less than a month later.

1972 – The Apollo lunar-landing program ends on December 19, 1972, when the last three astronauts to travel to the moon splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 17 had lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 days before. In July 1969, after three years of preparation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) accomplished President John F. Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the moon and safely returning him to Earth with Apollo 11. From 1969 to 1972, there were six successful lunar landing missions, and one aborted mission, Apollo 13. During the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt stayed for a record 75 hours on the surface of the moon, conducting three separate surface excursions in the Lunar Rover vehicle and collecting 243 pounds of rock and soil samples.

Although Apollo 17 was the last lunar landing, the last official Apollo mission was conducted in July 1975, when an Apollo spacecraft successfully rendezvoused and docked with the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. It was fitting that the Apollo program, which first visited the moon under the banner of “We came in peace for all mankind,” should end on a note of peace and international cooperation.

1974 – Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford under the provisions of the twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1974 – Former Pres. Nixon’s presidential papers were seized by an act of Congress. A court later ruled that much of the material belonged to Nixon and that he deserved compensation. In 1998 there was still no settlement on value.

1980 – Iran requested $24 billion in US guarantees to free hostages.

1989 – Police in Jacksonville, Fla., disarmed a parcel bomb at the local NAACP office, the fourth in a series of mail bombs to turn up in the Deep South. One bomb killed a Savannah, Ga., alderman, and another a federal judge in Alabama. Walter L. Moody Jr. was convicted in both bombings.

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1990 – Iraq urged its people to stockpile oil to avoid shortages should war break out, and Saddam Hussein declared he was “ready to crush any attack.”

1994 – CNN publicly acknowledged it had disobeyed a judge’s order in broadcasting former Panamanian military ruler Manuel Noriega’s prison telephone conversations.

1996 – The Pentagon chose Lawrence Livermore National Labs. for a $1.1 billion super-laser project. Known as the National Ignition Facility, its goal will be to ignite a self-sustaining fusion reaction in a controlled lab setting.

1998 – After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term. In November 1995, Clinton began an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old unpaid intern. Over the course of a year and a half, the president and Lewinsky had nearly a dozen sexual encounters in the White House. In April 1996, Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon. That summer, she first confided in Pentagon co-worker Linda Tripp about her sexual relationship with the president. In 1997, with the relationship over, Tripp began secretly to record conversations with Lewinsky, in which Lewinsky gave Tripp details about the affair. In December, lawyers for Paula Jones, who was suing the president on sexual harassment charges, subpoenaed Lewinsky. In January 1998, allegedly under the recommendation of the president, Lewinsky filed an affidavit in which she denied ever having had a sexual relationship with him.

Five days later, Tripp contacted the office of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, to talk about Lewinsky and the tapes she made of their conversations. Tripp, wired by FBI agents working with Starr, met with Lewinsky again, and on January 16, Lewinsky was taken by FBI agents and U.S. attorneys to a hotel room where she was questioned and offered immunity if she cooperated with the prosecution. A few days later, the story broke, and Clinton publicly denied the allegations, saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” In late July, lawyers for Lewinsky and Starr worked out a full-immunity agreement covering both Lewinsky and her parents, all of whom Starr had threatened with prosecution.

On August 6th, Lewinsky appeared before the grand jury to begin her testimony, and on August 17 President Clinton testified. Contrary to his testimony in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, President Clinton acknowledged to prosecutors from the office of the independent counsel that he had had an extramarital affair with Ms. Lewinsky. In four hours of closed-door testimony, conducted in the Map Room of the White House, Clinton spoke live via closed-circuit television to a grand jury in a nearby federal courthouse. He was the first sitting president ever to testify before a grand jury investigating his conduct.

That evening, President Clinton also gave a four-minute televised address to the nation in which he admitted he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky. In the brief speech, which was wrought with legalisms, the word “sex” was never spoken, and the word “regret” was used only in reference to his admission that he misled the public and his family. Less than a month later, on September 9, Kenneth Starr submitted his report and 18 boxes of supporting documents to the House of Representatives.

Released to the public two days later, the Starr Report outlined a case for impeaching Clinton on 11 grounds, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power, and also provided explicit details of the sexual relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky. On October 8, the House authorized a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry, and on December 11, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment.

On December 19, the House impeached Clinton. On January 7, 1999, in a congressional procedure not seen since the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, the trial of President Clinton got underway in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (William Rehnquist at this time) was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Five weeks later, on February 12, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office. The president was acquitted on both articles of impeachment.

The prosecution needed a two-thirds majority to convict but failed to achieve even a bare majority. Rejecting the first charge of perjury, 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted “not guilty,” and on the charge of obstruction of justice the Senate was split 50-50. After the trial concluded, President Clinton said he was “profoundly sorry” for the burden his behavior imposed on Congress and the American people.

1998 – The US and Britain ended their attack on Iraq after 4 days of air and missile strikes in Operation Desert Fox. An early estimate of US defense expenses was put at $500 million. Some 62 members of the Republican Guard were killed.

1999 – The shuttle Discovery was launched following 9 delays from Cape Canaveral with 7 astronauts on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

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2000 – The U.N. Security Council voted to impose broad sanctions on Afghanistan Taliban rulers unless they closed “terrorist” training camps and surrender U.S. embassy bombing suspect Osama bin Laden.

2001 – The September 11th WTC death toll was reduced to 3,000. In 2002 a revised tally put the total dead at 2,795. In 2003 the count was reduced to 2,752.

2001 – The fires that had burned beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City for the previous three months were declared extinguished except for a few scattered hot spots.

2001 – Britain advised the UN that it would lead a security force in Afghanistan and contribute 1,500 soldiers to a force of 5,000.

2001 – In the Comoros Islands troops killed 5 of 13 gunmen who posed as American agents hunting al Qaeda fugitives.

2001 – Al Qaeda prisoners in Pakistan revolted and 14 were killed. Another 18 escaped.

2002 – U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declares that Iraq is in “material breach” of United Nations resolutions after reviewing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction declaration released December 7 to the United Nations. States Powell: “Our [U.S.] experts have found it to be anything but currently accurate, full or complete. The Iraqi declaration … totally fails to meet the resolution’s requirements.”

2002 – U.N. weapons inspectors reported that Iraq’s new arms declaration contained inconsistencies and contradictions and didn’t answer key questions about its nuclear, chemical and biological programs.

2002 – In Pakistan Asif Ramzi, a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, died with 3 others in a covert bomb-making facility in Karachi.

2003 – New plans revealed that the signature NYC skyscraper at the World Trade Center site will be a 1,776-foot glass tower that twists into the sky, topped by energy-generating windmills and a spire that evokes the Statue of Liberty. The plan was produced after months of contentious negotiations between Daniel Libeskind, who designed the overall five-building site plan, and David Childs, the lead architect for the Freedom Tower.

2003 – China said it has issued rules restricting exports of missile, nuclear and biological technologies that can be used to make or deliver weapons of mass destruction.

2003 – Japan announced that it will begin building a missile defense system.

2003 – Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, after secret negotiations with the United States and Britain, agreed to halt his nation’s drive to develop nuclear and chemical weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them. Libya admitted to nuclear fuel projects, including possessing centrifuges and centrifuge parts used in uranium enrichment. Libya showed American and British inspectors a significant quantity of mustard agent. Libya acknowledged it intended to acquire equipment and develop capabilities to create biological weapons. Libya admitted “elements of the history of its cooperation with North Korea” to develop extended-range Scud missiles.

2004 – A vehicle carrying a group of suspected Taliban fighters attacked a military checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, sparking a firefight that left six dead.

2004 – Car bombs rocked Najaf and Karbala, Iraq’s two holiest Shiite cities, killing 67 people and wounding more than 120. In downtown Baghdad dozens of gunmen carried out a brazen ambush that killed three Iraqi employees of the organization running next month’s elections.

2006 – A NATO air strike targeting a car in a deserted area of Helmand province killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani along with two other men. He was the top Taliban commander for all of their operations in southern Afghanistan.

2007 – A fire breaks out at the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., which houses ceremonial offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and the majority of White House staff. No injuries are reported.

2009 – NASA releases the first ever photo of liquid outside of Earth, in the form of sunlight reflecting on a lake on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

GAUJOT, ANTOINE A.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company M, 27th Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At San Mateo, Philippine Islands, 19 December 1899. Entered service at: Williamson, W. Va. Birth: Keweenaw, Mich. Date of issue: 15 February I911. Citation: Attempted under a heavy fire of the enemy to swim a river for the purpose of obtaining and returning with a canoe.

GIBSON, EDWARD H.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company M, 27th Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At San Mateo, Philippine Islands, 19 December 1899. Entered service at: Boston, Mass. Birth: Boston, Mass. Date of issue: Unknown. Citation: Attempted under a heavy fire of the enemy to swim a river for the purpose of obtaining and returning with a canoe.

FLUCKEY, EUGENE BENNETT
Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy, Commanding U.S.S. Barb. Place and date: Along coast of China, 19 December 1944 to 15 February 1945. Entered service at: Illinois. Born: S October 1913, Washington, D.C. Other Navy award: Navy Cross with 3 Gold Stars. 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. Barb during her 11th war patrol along the east coast of China from 19 December 1944 to 15 February 1945. After sinking a large enemy ammunition ship and damaging additional tonnage during a running 2-hour night battle on 8 January, Comdr. Fluckey, in an exceptional feat of brilliant deduction and bold tracking on 25 January, located a concentration of more than 30 enemy ships in the lower reaches of Nankuan Chiang (Mamkwan Harbor).

Fully aware that a safe retirement would necessitate an hour’s run at full speed through the uncharted, mined, and rock-obstructed waters, he bravely ordered, “Battle station–torpedoes!” In a daring penetration of the heavy enemy screen, and riding in 5 fathoms of water, he launched the Barb’s last forward torpedoes at 3,000-yard range. Quickly bringing the ship’s stern tubes to bear, he turned loose 4 more torpedoes into the enemy, obtaining 8 direct hits on 6 of the main targets to explode a large ammunition ship and cause inestimable damage by the resultant flying shells and other pyrotechnics. Clearing the treacherous area at high speed, he brought the Barb through to safety and 4 days later sank a large Japanese freighter to complete a record of heroic combat achievement, reflecting the highest credit upon Comdr. Fluckey, his gallant officers and men, and the U.S. Naval Service.

GERSTUNG, ROBERT E.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company H, 313th Infantry, 79th Infantry Division. Place and date: Siegfried Line near Berg, Germany, 19 December 1944. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Born: 6 August 1915, Chicago, Ill. G.O. No.: 75, 5 September 1945. Citation: On 19 December 1944 he was ordered with his heavy machinegun squad to the support of an infantry company attacking the outer defense of the Siegfried Line near Berg, Germany. For 8 hours he maintained a position made almost untenable by the density of artillery and mortar fire concentrated upon it and the proximity of enemy troops who threw hand grenades into the emplacement. While all other members of his squad became casualties, he remained at his gun. When he ran out of ammunition, he fearlessly dashed across bullet-swept, open terrain to secure a new supply from a disabled friendly tank. A fierce barrage pierced the water jacket of his gun, but he continued to fire until the weapon overheated and jammed.

Instead of withdrawing, he crawled 50 yards across coverless ground to another of his company’s machineguns which had been silenced when its entire crew was killed. He continued to man this gun, giving support vitally needed by the infantry. At one time he came under direct fire from a hostile tank, which shot the glove from his hand with an armor-piercing shell but could not drive him from his position or stop his shooting. When the American forces were ordered to retire to their original positions, he remained at his gun, giving the only covering fire. Finally withdrawing, he cradled the heavy weapon in his left arm, slung a belt of ammunition over his shoulder, and walked to the rear, loosing small bursts at the enemy as he went. One hundred yards from safety, he was struck in the leg by a mortar shell; but, with a supreme effort, he crawled the remaining distance, dragging along the gun which had served him and his comrades so well. By his remarkable perseverance, indomitable courage, and heroic devotion to his task in the face of devastating fire, T/Sgt. Gerstung gave his fellow soldiers powerful support in their encounter with formidable enemy forces.

KIMBRO, TRUMAN
Rank and organization: Technician Fourth Grade, U.S. Army, Company C, 2d Engineer Combat Battalion, 2d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Rocherath, Belgium, 19 December 1944. Entered service at: Houston, Tex. Birth: Madisonville, Tex. G.O. No.: 42, 24 May 1945. Citation: On 19 December 1944, as scout, he led a squad assigned to the mission of mining a vital crossroads near Rocherath, Belgium. At the first attempt to reach the objective, he discovered it was occupied by an enemy tank and at least 20 infantrymen. Driven back by withering fire, Technician 4th Grade Kimbro made 2 more attempts to lead his squad to the crossroads but all approaches were covered by intense enemy fire. Although warned by our own infantrymen of the great danger involved, he left his squad in a protected place and, laden with mines, crawled alone toward the crossroads. When nearing his objective he was severely wounded, but he continued to drag himself forward and laid his mines across the road. As he tried to crawl from the objective his body was riddled with rifle and machinegun fire. The mines laid by his act of indomitable courage delayed the advance of enemy armor and prevented the rear of our withdrawing columns from being attacked by the enemy.

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20 December

1606 – Virginia Company settlers left London to establish Jamestown.

1669 – The 1st American jury trial was held in Delaware. Marcus Jacobson was condemned for insurrection and sentenced to flogging, branding & slavery.

1790 – In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 23-year-old British subject Samuel Slater began production of the first American spinning mill. The British jealously guarded their technological superiority in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, making it illegal for machinery, plans and even the men who built and repaired them to leave the country. After serving a 7-year mill apprenticeship in England, Slater recognized the potential offered in America. He memorized the plans for intricate machine specifications, disguised himself as a farm worker and in 1789 sailed to a new life across the Atlantic. Slater entered into a partnership with Rhode Island merchant Moses Brown and built a small spinning mill–the equivalent of 72 spinning wheels. At first, Slater’s Mill employed only a handful of children between the ages of 7 and 12, but by 1800, he had more than 100 employees. By the time of Slater’s death in 1835, he owned or had an interest in 13 textile mills and left an estate of almost $700,000. From this small beginning, America’s own Industrial Revolution grew.

1803 – U.S. and French governments put the finishing touches on a little land transaction known as the Louisiana Purchase. For the relatively paltry price tag of $15 million, the U.S. acquired an area that effectively doubled the size of the nation. The bargain price reflected French fears that their army, already occupied with the Napoleonic Wars, would not be able to stave off revolutionaries in New Orleans. U.S. officials, meanwhile, coveted New Orleans as a duty-free port for American goods that were about to be shipped. Of course, the resulting deal provided the U.S. with much more than a port; indeed, the nation now owned the land that would become Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, the Dakotas, as well as chunks of Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and of course, Louisiana.

1803 – Without a shot fired, the French hand over New Orleans and Lower Louisiana to the United States. In April 1803, the United States purchased from France the 828,000 square miles that had formerly been French Louisiana. The area was divided into two territories: the northern half was Louisiana Territory, the largely unsettled (though home to many Indians) frontier section that was later explored by Lewis and Clark; and the southern Orleans Territory, which was populated by Europeans. Unlike the sprawling and largely unexplored northern territory (which eventually encompassed a dozen large states), Orleans Territory was a small, densely populated region that was like a little slice of France in the New World. With borders that roughly corresponded to the modern state of Louisiana, Orleans Territory was home to about 50,000 people, a primarily French population that had been living under the direction of a Spanish administration.

These former citizens of France knew almost nothing about American laws and institutions, and the challenging task of bringing them into the American fold fell to the newly appointed governor of the region, twenty-eight-year-old William Claiborne. Historians have found no real evidence that the French of Orleans Territory resented their transfer to American control, though one witness claimed that when the French tri-color was replaced by the Stars and Stripes in New Orleans, the citizens wept. The French did resent that their new governor was appointed rather than elected, and they bridled when the American government tried to make English the official language and discouraged the use of French. It didn’t help matters that young Claiborne knew neither French nor Spanish. Claiborne soon found himself immersed in a complex sea of ethnic tensions and political unrest that he little understood, and in January he wrote to Thomas Jefferson that the population was “uninformed, indolent, luxurious-in a word, ill-fitted to be useful citizens for a Republic.”

To his dismay, Claiborne found that most of his time was spent not governing, but dealing with an unrelenting procession of crises like riots, robberies, and runaway slaves. Despite his concerns, Claiborne knew that somehow these people had to be made into American citizens, and over time he gradually made progress in bringing the citizenry into the Union. In December 1804 he was happy to report to Jefferson that “they begin to view their connection with the United States as permanent and to experience the benefits thereof.” Proof of this came eight years later, when the people of Orleans Territory drafted a constitution and successfully petitioned to become the eighteenth state in the Union. Despite Claiborne’s doubts about whether the French would ever truly fit into their new nation, the approval of that petition meant that the people of Louisiana were officially Americans.

1812 – Sacagawea, Shoshone interpreter for Lewis & Clark, died.

1822 – Congress authorizes the 14-ship West Indies Squadron to suppress piracy in the Caribbean.

1860 – South Carolina officially leaves the United States when a convention ratifies an article of secession. South Carolina, the first state to secede, was followed within a few weeks by six other states, who collectively formed the Confederate States of America. When hostilities erupted in April 1861, four more states joined the Confederacy.

1861 – Transports were loaded with 8,000 troops in England. They were setting sail for Canada so that troops would be available if the “Trent Affair” was not settled without war.

1862 – Rear Admiral D. D. Porter in his flagship U.S.S. Black Hawk joined General William T. Sherman at Helena, Arkansas, and prepared for the joint assault on Vicksburg. The fleet under Admiral Porter’s command for the Vicksburg campaign was the largest ever placed under one officer up to that time, equal in number to all the vessels composing the U.S. Navy at the outbreak of war.

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1862 – Confederate General Earl Van Dorn thwarts Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s first attempt to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, when Van Dorn attacks Grant’s supplies at Holly Springs, Mississippi. Grant planned a two-pronged attack on the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. He would take a force from western Tennessee to approach Vicksburg from the interior of Mississippi. Meanwhile, General William T. Sherman would lead an army down the Mississippi River for an attack from the north. Grant said, “We can go as far as supplies can go.” The plan started on a good note–Grant’s army pushed aside Confederates in northern Mississippi. In response, Confederate cavalry colonel John Griffith suggested attacking Grant’s supply line at Holly Springs, and he recommended Van Dorn for the mission.

To that point, Van Dorn had done little to build his reputation. He lost the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Battle of Corinth earlier in 1862, and he was known for his drunkenness and tendency to cavort with prostitutes. Van Dorn gathered three cavalry brigades and left Grenada, Mississippi, on December 17th. On December 20th, Van Dorn fell on the Union supply depot at Holly Springs, driving the Yankee defenders away and capturing materials. What could not be carried was destroyed. Van Dorn remained in the area a few more days, cutting rail and telegraph lines, before fleeing in the face of pursuing Union cavalry. The Confederates rode 500 miles in two weeks, returning on December 28th after successfully disrupting Grant’s campaign. The raid was the highlight of Van Dorn’s military career. He was murdered five months later by the husband of a woman with whom he was having an affair.

1864 – Confederate forces evacuated Savannah, Ga., as Union Gen. William T. Sherman continued his “March to the Sea.”

1864 – Boats from U.S.S. Chicopee, Valley City, and Wyalusing under the command of Commander Macomb on an expedition to engage Confederate troops at Rainbow Bluff, North Carolina, were fired upon while dragging for torpedoes, seven miles below the Bluff. Macomb then put out skirmishers to clear the banks, but made only slow progress against the Southern force along the river. After the destruction of U.S.S. Otsego and Bazely (see 9 December), the Union gunboats moved laboriously up the tortuous river, dragging for torpedoes in small boats and being harassed by Confederate riflemen. As many as 40 torpedoes were found in some bends of the river. Union troops intending to operate with the gunboats were delayed. By the time they were ready to advance on Rainbow Bluff, the Confederate garrison there had been strongly reinforced. Torpedoes in the river, batteries along the banks below that point, and the difficulty of navigating the river forced abandonment of the operation. The wrecks of Otsego and Bazely were destroyed to prevent their falling into Confederate hands on 25 December. The expedition got back to Plymouth three days later.

1879 – Thomas A. Edison privately demonstrated his incandescent light at Menlo Park, N.J.

1880 – NY’s Broadway was lit by electricity. It later became known as “Great White Way.”

1892 – Alexander Brown and George Stillman of Syracuse, New York, patented an inflatable automobile tire. Before the pneumatic tire, wheels were often made of solid rubber. This made travel a bumpy experience. After all, the streets of 1892 were made of dirt or cobblestone. Some horse-drawn carriages had been made with inflatable tires, but Brown and Stillman got the first patent for pneumatic automobile tires.

1924 – Adolf Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison after serving less than one year of a five year sentence for treason.

1939 – The American cruiser USS Tuscalossa arrives in New York with 579 survivors from the scuttled German liner Columbus. They disembark on Ellis Island.

1941 – The Flying Tigers, American pilots in China, entered combat against the Japanese over Kunming. Aircraft of the 1st and 2nd squadrons intercepted 10 unescorted Kawasaki Ki-48 “Lily” bombers of the 21st Hikōtai attacking Kunming. The bombers jettisoned their loads before reaching Kunming. Three of the Japanese bombers were shot down near Kunming and a fourth was damaged so severely that it crashed before returning to its airfield at Hanoi. Furthermore, the Japanese discontinued their raids on Kunming while the AVG was based there.

1941 – Admiral Ernest J. King designated Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet in charge of all operating naval fleets and coastal frontier forces, reporting directly to the President.

1941 – Japanese troops landed on Mindanao.

1943 – CGC Bodega grounded off the Canal Zone. No lives were lost.

1943 – Allied aircraft drop about 2000 tons of bombs on Frankfurt, Mannheim and other cities in southern Germany. There are also raids on the V-1 ramps in France.

1944 – The Women’s Air Force Service Pilots were deactivated. Before deactivation 1,074 WASPs logged 60 million miles flying for the U.S. Army Air Forces.

1944 – The 5th Panzer Army continues to advance to the south against forces of US 12th Army Group, but American defenders of the road junctions of St. Vith and Bastogne continue to hold their positions. Allied sources allege that in the area of Monschau the Germans have been shooting American prisoners with machineguns. Meanwhile, the US 3rd Army reports attacking from the Saarlautern bridgehead and having cleared 40 pillboxes and fortified houses.

1945 – Tire rationing in the U.S. ended on this day as World War II wound to a close, and widespread shortages in the States began to ease.

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1946 – The morning after Viet Minh forces under Ho Chi Minh launched a night revolt in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, French colonial troops crack down on the communist rebels. Ho and his soldiers immediately fled the city to regroup in the countryside. That evening, the communist leader issued a proclamation that read: “All the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonials to save the fatherland. Those who have rifles will use their rifles; those who have swords will use their swords; those who have no swords will use spades, hoes, or sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save his country. Even if we have to endure hardship in the resistance war, with the determination to make sacrifices, victory will surely be ours.”

The First Indochina War had begun. Born in Hoang Tru, Vietnam, in 1890, Ho Chi Minh left his homeland in 1911 as a cook on a French steamer. After several years as a seaman, he lived in London and then moved to France, where he became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he studied revolutionary tactics and took an active role in the Communist International.

In 1924, he went to China, where he set about organizing exiled Vietnamese communists. Expelled by China in 1927, he traveled extensively before returning to Vietnam in 1941. There, he organized a Vietnamese guerrilla organization–the Viet Minh–to fight for Vietnamese independence. Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France’s Vichy regime. Ho, meanwhile, made contact with the Allies and aided operations against the Japanese in South China.

In early 1945, Japan ousted the French administration in Vietnam and executed numerous French officials. When Japan surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh felt emboldened enough to declare the independence of Vietnam from France. French forces seized southern Vietnam and opened talks with the Vietnamese communists in the north. Negotiations collapsed in November 1946, and French warships bombarded the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong, killing thousands. In response, the Viet Minh launched an attack against the French in Hanoi in December 1946. The French quickly struck back, and Ho and his followers found refuge in a remote area of northern Vietnam. The Viet Minh, undefeated and widely supported by the Vietnamese people, waged an increasingly effective guerrilla war against the French. The conflict stretched on for eight years, with Mao Zedong’s Chinese communists supporting the Viet Minh, and the United States aiding the French and anti-communist Vietnamese forces.

In 1954, the French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu, in northwest Vietnam, prompting peace negotiations and the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at a conference in Geneva. Vietnam was divided into northern and southern regions, with Ho in command of North Vietnam and Emperor Bao Dai in control of South Vietnam.

In the late 1950s, Ho Chi Minh organized a communist guerrilla movement in the South, called the Viet Cong. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual U.S.-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1964 withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States, known as the Vietnam War in America but also called the Second Indochina War.

Ho Chi Minh died on September 2, 1969, 25 years after declaring Vietnam’s independence from France and nearly six years before his forces succeeded in reuniting North and South Vietnam under communist rule. Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after it came under the control of the communists in 1975.

1948 – U.S. Supreme Court announced that it had no jurisdiction to hear the appeals of Japanese war criminals sentenced by the International Military Tribunal.

1950 – The 1st Marine Division was active against enemy guerillas in Masan-Pohang-Sondong-Ansong areas. Enemy pressure lessened as Marines forced the 10th North Korean Division to abandon guerilla activity and withdraw northward.

1952 – A United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns in Moses Lake, Washington killing 87.

1957 – Elvis Presley was given a draft notice to join US Army for National Service.

1960 – North Vietnam announces the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South at a conference held “somewhere in the South.” This organization, more commonly known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), was designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule. The NLF reached out to those parts of South Vietnamese society who were displeased with the government and policies of President Ngo Dinh Diem. One hundred delegates representing more than a dozen political parties and religious groups–both communists and non-communists–were in attendance at the conference. However, from the beginning, the NLF was dominated by the Lao Dong Party Central Committee (North Vietnamese Communist Party) and served as the North’s shadow government in South Vietnam. The Saigon regime dubbed the NLF the “Viet Cong,” a pejorative contraction of Viet Nam Cong San (Vietnamese Communists).

The NLF’s military arm was the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). In February 1965, the PLAF attacked U.S. Army installations at Pleiku and Qui Nhon, which convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to send the first U.S. ground troops to South Vietnam a month later. Ultimately, more than 500,000 U.S. troops were sent to Vietnam to fight the PLAF and the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN, or North Vietnamese Army). The NLF reached the height of its power during the 1968 Tet Offensive, when the communists launched a massive coordinated attack against key urban centers throughout South Vietnam. Although the Viet Cong forces were soundly defeated during the course of the offensive, they achieved a great psychological victory because the attack prompted many long time supporters of the war to question the Johnson administration’s optimistic predictions. The Saigon regime dubs the NLF the ‘Vietcong,’ a pejorative contraction of Viet Nam Cong San (Vietnamese Communists). This label, created by Diem’s publicists, is designed to brand the rebels as Communists, and comes to be applied generally to supporters of and participants in the insurgency.

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1963 – More than two years after the Berlin Wall was constructed by East Germany to prevent its citizens from fleeing its communist regime, nearly 4,000 West Berliners are allowed to cross into East Berlin to visit relatives. Under an agreement reached between East and West Berlin, over 170,000 passes were eventually issued to West Berlin citizens, each pass allowing a one-day visit to communist East Berlin. The day was marked by moments of poignancy and propaganda. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 separated families and friends. Tears, laughter, and other outpourings of emotions characterized the reunions that took place as mothers and fathers, sons and daughters met again, if only for a short time. Cold War tensions were never far removed from the scene, however.

Loudspeakers in East Berlin greeted visitors with the news that they were now in “the capital of the German Democratic Republic,” a political division that most West Germans refused to accept. Each visitor was also given a brochure that explained that the wall was built to “protect our borders against the hostile attacks of the imperialists.” Decadent western culture, including “Western movies” and “gangster stories,” were flooding into East Germany before the wall sealed off such dangerous trends. On the West Berlin side, many newspapers berated the visitors, charging that they were pawns of East German propaganda. Editorials argued that the communists would use this shameless ploy to gain West German acceptance of a permanent division of Germany. The visits, and the high-powered rhetoric that surrounded them, were stark reminders that the Cold War involved very human, often quite heated, emotions.

1964 – USS Richard E. Kraus (DD-849) completes a successful emergency mission in aiding the disabled American Merchant Ship, SS Oceanic Spray in the Red Sea.

1967 – Some 474,300 US soldiers were stationed in Vietnam.

1967 – President Lyndon B. Johnson attends a memorial service for Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in Melbourne and then visits Vietnam, Thailand, and the Vatican. Arriving in Thailand on December 23, Johnson visited the U.S. air base at Korat, where he told the U.S. pilots there that the United States and its allies were “defeating this aggression.” The president then visited U.S. combat troops in Cam Ranh, South Vietnam, and told them that the enemy “knows that he has met his master in the field.” Next, Johnson flew to Rome and met with Pope Paul VI for over an hour with only interpreters present. A Vatican statement said the Pope advanced proposals toward attaining peace in Vietnam during the meeting.

1974 – Clearance of Suez Canal for mines and unexploded ordnance completed by Joint Task Force.

1978 – Former White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was released from prison after serving 18 months for his role in the Watergate cover-up.

1989 – The United States invades Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracy in Panama and endangering U.S. nationals. Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered on January 3, 1990. In 1970, Noriega, a rising figure in the Panamanian military, was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to assist in the U.S. struggle against the spread of communism in Central America. Noriega became involved in drug trafficking and in 1977 was removed from the CIA payroll. After the Marxist Sandinista government came to power in 1979, Noriega was brought back into the CIA fold.

In 1983, he become military dictator of Panama. Noriega supported U.S. initiatives in Central America and in turn was praised by the White House, even though a Senate committee concluded in 1983 that Panama was a major center for drug trafficking. In 1984, Noriega committed fraud in Panama’s presidential election in favor of Nicolýs Ardito Barletta, who became a puppet president. Still, Noriega enjoyed the continued support of the Reagan administration, which valued his aid in its efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In 1986, just months before the outbreak of the Iran-Contra affair, allegations arose concerning Noriega’s history as a drug trafficker, money launderer, and CIA employee. Most shocking, however, were reports that Noriega had acted as a double agent for Cuba’s intelligence agency and the Sandinistas.

The U.S. government disowned Noriega, and in 1988 he was indicted by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami on drug-smuggling and money-laundering charges. Tensions between Americans in the Panama Canal Zone and Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces grew, and in 1989 the dictator annulled a presidential election that would have made Guillermo Endara president. President George H. Bush ordered additional U.S. troops to the Panama Canal Zone, and on December 16 an off-duty U.S. Marine was shot to death at a PDF roadblock. The next day, President Bush authorized “Operation Just Cause”–the U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow Noriega. On December 20, 9,000 U.S. troops joined the 12,000 U.S. military personnel already in Panama and were met with scattered resistance from the PDF. By December 24, the PDF was crushed, and the United States held most of the country. Endara was made president by U.S. forces, and he ordered the PDF dissolved.

On January 3rd, Noriega was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents. The U.S. invasion of Panama cost the lives of only 23 U.S. soldiers and three U.S. civilians. Some 150 PDF soldiers were killed along with an estimated 500 Panamanian civilians. The Organization of American States and the European Parliament both formally protested the invasion, which they condemned as a flagrant violation of international law. In 1992, Noriega was found guilty on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, marking the first time in history that a U.S. jury convicted a foreign leader of criminal charges. He was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

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1990 – Pentagon warned Saddam that US air power was ready to attack on January 15th.

1992 – U.S. Marines and Belgian paratroopers in Somalia took control of Kismayu’s port and airport; the first truck convoy in more than a month reached the starving inland town of Baidoa. This is the first US combined amphibious assualt since the Vietnam War.

1993 – Alina Fernandez Revuelta, a daughter of Cuban President Fidel Castro, flew to Spain, where she was granted political asylum by the U.S. Embassy.

1994 – Marcelino Corniel, a homeless man, was shot and mortally wounded by White House security officers as he brandished a knife near the executive mansion.

1995 – During a brief military ceremony in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, French General Bernard Janvier, head of the United Nations peacekeeping force, formally transfers military authority in Bosnia to U.S. Admiral Leighton Smith, commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Southern Europe. The solemn ceremony cleared the path for the deployment of 60,000 NATO troops to enforce the Dayton Peace Accords, signed in Paris by the leaders of the former Yugoslavia on December 14th.

The U.S.-backed peace plan was proposed during talks in Dayton, Ohio, earlier in the year and was reluctantly accepted by the last of the belligerent parties in November, ending four years of bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia, which cost more than 200,000 lives. The United Nations peacekeeping mission to Bosnia began in early 1992, shortly after the war erupted over efforts by the Bosnian Serbs to achieve independence from Bosnia-Herzegovina and unite with Serbia. Although the U.N. force was crucial in distributing humanitarian aid to the impoverished population of Bosnia, it was unable to stop the fighting.

Approximately 25,000 U.N. peacekeepers served in Bosnia over three and a half years, and during that time 110 of those were killed, 831 wounded, and hundreds taken hostage. The NATO force, with its strong U.S. support and focused aim of enforcing the Dayton agreement, was more successful in bringing stability to the war-torn region.

1998 – Germany extradited Mamdouh Mahmud Salim to the US in relation to the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2000 – In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered UN offices closed and pledged to boycott peace talks. New sanctions were imposed in response to the Taliban’s refusal to surrender Osama bin Laden.

2001 – President Bush marked the 100-day anniversary of September 11th by freezing the assets of 2 Pakistan-based groups suspected of terrorist support.

2001 – More than two months after the attack began, the UNSC authorized the creation of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to assist the Afghan Interim Authority in maintaining security. Command of ISAF passed to NATO on 11 August 2003, following the US invasion of Iraq in March of that year. ISAF was initially established as a stabilization force by the UN Security Council to secure Kabul. Its mandate did not extend beyond this area for the first few years.

2001 – It was reported that Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a defector from Iraq, said he worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq before fleeing a year ago.

2002 – U.S. jets fired on two Iraqi air defense sites in the southern no-fly zone after an Iraqi jet entered the restricted air space.

2002 – Grote Reber (90), a pioneer of radio astronomy died in Tasmania. He followed up Karl Jansky’s 1933 announcement of the discovery of radio waves from space and in his spare time in 1937 built a 30-foot antenna dish, the 1st radio telescope, in his back yard in Wheaton, Ill., and managed to pick up signals two years later.

2002 – U.N. weapons inspectors put Iraq on notice that it must provide far more evidence about its weapons of mass destruction. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix urged the United States and Britain to hand over any evidence they have about Iraq’s secret weapons programs so U.N. inspectors can check it on the ground. The US began sharing sensitive information with the UN.
2002 – Yemeni security forces battled suspected al-Qaida members holed up in a building in a gunfight that left 2 policemen dead.

2003 – Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan said he will use his forces to open up the lawless south and east to development aid, in a tactical switch to beat a stubborn insurgency threatening next year’s elections.

2003 – Insurgents attacked pipelines and an oil storage depot in three parts of Iraq, setting fires that blazed for hours and lost millions of gallons of oil.

2003 – A Lebanese military court convicted 32 people of bombing American and British businesses, and imposed sentences ranging from three months to life imprisonment.

2004 – In a sobering assessment of the Iraq war, President Bush acknowledged during a news conference that Americans’ resolve had been shaken by grisly scenes of death and destruction, and he pointedly criticized the performance of US-trained Iraqi troops.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

NORRIS, J. W.
Rank and organization: Landsman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1862, England. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 326, 18 October 1884. Citation: Serving on board the U.S.S. Jamestown, New York Navy Yard, 20 December 1883, Norris rescued from drowning A. A. George, who had fallen overboard.

SWEENEY, ROBERT
SECOND AWARD
Citation: Serving on board the U.S.S. Jamestown, at the Navy Yard New York, 20 December 1883, Sweeney rescued from drowning A. A. George, who had fallen overboard from that vessel.

VOSLER, FORREST T. (Air Mission)
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army Air Corps. 358th Bomber Squadron, 303d Bomber Group. Place and date. Over Bremen, Germany, 20 December 1943. Entered service at: Rochester, N.Y. Born: 29 July 1923, Lyndonville, N.Y. G.O. No.: 73, 6 September 1944. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry in action against the enemy above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a radio operator-air gunner on a heavy bombardment aircraft in a mission over Bremen, Germany, on 20 December 1943. After bombing the target, the aircraft in which T/Sgt. Vosler was serving was severely damaged by antiaircraft fire, forced out of formation, and immediately subjected to repeated vicious attacks by enemy fighters.

Early in the engagement a 20-mm. cannon shell exploded in the radio compartment, painfully wounding T/Sgt. Vosler in the legs and thighs. At about the same time a direct hit on the tail of the ship seriously wounded the tail gunner and rendered the tail guns inoperative. Realizing the great need for firepower in protecting the vulnerable tail of the ship, T/Sgt. Vosler, with grim determination, kept up a steady stream of deadly fire. Shortly thereafter another 20-mm. enemy shell exploded, wounding T/Sgt. Vosler in the chest and about the face. Pieces of metal lodged in both eyes, impairing his vision to such an extent that he could only distinguish blurred shapes. Displaying remarkable tenacity and courage, he kept firing his guns and declined to take first-aid treatment. The radio equipment had been rendered inoperative during the battle, and when the pilot announced that he would have to ditch, although unable to see and working entirely by touch, T/Sgt. Vosler finally got the set operating and sent out distress signals despite several lapses into unconsciousness.

When the ship ditched, T/Sgt. Vosler managed to get out on the wing by himself and hold the wounded tail gunner from slipping off until the other crewmembers could help them into the dinghy. T/Sgt. Vosler’s actions on this occasion were an inspiration to all serving with him. The extraordinary courage, coolness, and skill he displayed in the face of great odds, when handicapped by injuries that would have incapacitated the average crewmember, were outstanding.

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21 December

1620 – The Mayflower reached Plymouth, Mass. after a 63-day voyage. Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Mass. The crew of the ship did not have enough beer to get to Virginia and back to England so they dropped the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock to preserve their beer stock.

1861 – Lord Lyons, the British minister to the United States, meets with Secretary of State William Seward concerning the fate of James Mason and John Slidell, Confederate envoys arrested by the U.S. Navy aboard the British mail steamer Trent. During the meeting, Lyons took a hard line against Seward and forced the Lincoln administration to release the Confederates a few days later. The arrest of Mason and Slidell on November 8 near the Bahamas triggered a major diplomatic crisis between Britain and the United States. The British had not taken sides in the American Civil War and they accepted any paying customers wishing to travel on their ships.

When Mason and Slidell were arrested, the British were furious that their ship had been detained and their guests arrested. The British government demanded their release. The Lincoln administration refused, and the Americans waited for the British reaction. The British stood firm by their demand and prepared for war with the United States. After Lyons met with Seward, he wrote to Lord Russell, the British Foreign Minister. “I am so concerned that unless we give our friends here a good lesson this time, we shall have the same trouble with them again very soon,” wrote Lyons. “Surrender or war will have a very good effect on them.” The Lincoln administration got the message, and Mason and Slidell were released within a week. “One war at a time,” Lincoln said. The Trent affair was the most serious diplomatic crisis between the two nations during the Civil War.

1861 – U.S. Congress authorized the Medal of Honor to be awarded to Navy personnel that had distinguished themselves by their gallantry in action. The Navy and Marine Corps’ Medal of Honor is our country’s oldest continuously awarded decoration, even though its appearance and award criteria has changed since it was created for enlisted men by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles on 16 December 1861. Legislation in 1915 made naval officers eligible for the award. Although originally awarded for both combat and non-combat heroism, the Medal of Honor today is presented for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty. The design of our highest military decoration is rooted in the War Between the States. Crafted by the artist Christian Schuller, the central motif is an allegory in which Columbia, in the form of the goddess Minerva uses the shield of the republic to put down the figure of discord, plainly a reference to the unfolding split in our nation. The design is encircled by 38 stars, representing the states of the Union at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War.

1864 – The Confederate Navy continued vigorous efforts to save the remnants of the Savannah squadron still at that city on the eve of its capture. On 10 December Commander Thomas W. Brent, C.S.S. Savannah, ordered the torpedoes in Savannah harbor removed in order that his vessels might fight their way to Charleston. As Brent later reported to Flag Officer Hunter: “. . . after every endeavor he [Lieutenant McAdam] found that with all the appliances at his command, grapnels, etc., he was unable with the motive power of the boats to remove any one of them, the anchors to which they are attached being too firmly embedded in the sand. . . Under these circumstances it did not seem to me possible to carry out the instructions of the Department in regard to taking the Savannah to sea and fighting her way into this [Charleston] or some other port.” After attempting futilely to move the smaller of his vessels upriver, Hunter this date destroyed C.S.S. Savannah, Isondiga, Firefly, and floating battery Georgia. General Sherman occupied Savannah on 23 December having fought his way across Georgia to the sea where he knew the mobility of naval power would be ready to provide him with support, supplies, and means of carrying out the next operation.

1866 – Determined to challenge the growing American military presence in their territory, Indians in northern Wyoming lure Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman and his soldiers into a deadly ambush on this day in 1866. Tensions in the region started rising in 1863, when John Bozeman blazed the Bozeman Trail, a new route for emigrants traveling to the Montana gold fields. Bozeman’s trail was of questionable legality since it passed directly through hunting grounds that the government had promised to the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Thus when Colorado militiamen murdered more than two hundred peaceful Cheyenne during the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the Indians began to take revenge by attacking whites all across the Plains, including the emigrants traveling the Bozeman Trail. The U.S. government responded by building a series of protective forts along the trail; the largest and most important of these was Fort Phil Kearney, erected in 1866 in north-central Wyoming.

Indians under the leadership of Red Cloud and Crazy Horse began to focus their attacks on Fort Phil Kearney, constantly harassing the soldiers and raiding their wood and supply parties. On December 6, 1866, Crazy Horse discovered to his surprise that he could lead a small detachment of soldiers into a fatal ambush by dismounting from his horse and fleeing as if he were defenseless. Struck by the foolish impulsiveness of the soldiers, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud reasoned that perhaps a much larger force could be lured into a similar deadly trap. On the bitterly cold morning of December 21, about 2,000 Indians concealed themselves along the road just north of Fort Phil Kearney. A small band made a diversionary attack on a party of woodcutters from the fort, and commandant Colonel Henry Carrington quickly ordered Colonel Fetterman to go to their aid with a company of 80 troopers. Crazy Horse and 10 decoy warriors then rode into view of the fort.

When Carrington fired an artillery round at them, the decoys ran away as if frightened. The party of woodcutters made it safely back to the fort, but Colonel Fetterman and his men chased after the fleeing Crazy Horse and his decoys, just as planned. The soldiers rode straight into the ambush and were wiped out in a massive attack during which some 40,000 arrows rained down on the hapless troopers. None of them survived. With 81 fatalities, the Fetterman Massacre was the army’s worst defeat in the West until the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Further Indian attacks eventually forced the army to reconsider its commitment to protecting the Bozeman Trail, and in 1868 the military abandoned the forts and pulled out. It was one of only a handful of clear Indian victories in the Plains Indian Wars.

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1919 – J. Edgar Hoover gallantly deported anarchist, feminist Emma Goldman to Russia for agitating against forced conscription in the US.

1943 – USS Grayling (SS-208) sinks fourth Japanese ship since 18 December.

1943 – US 5th Army is heavily engaged near Monte Sammucro.

1944 – In the north, US forces recapture Stavelot and bring the advance of the German 67th Corps (part of 6th SS Panzer Army), on the right flank of the German attack, to a halt from here to Monschau. To the south, the German 5th Panzer Army has nearly surrounded Bastogne while Houffalize has been secured.

1944 – On Leyte, advances by US 10th Corps and US 24th Corps link up in the center of the Ormoc Valley. Isolated Japanese forces continue to resist in the area.

1944 – US B-29 Superfortress bombers attacked Mukden in Manchuria.

1945 – General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. 3rd Army, dies from injuries suffered not in battle but in a freak car accident. He was 60 years old. Descended from a long line of military men, Patton graduated from the West Point Military Academy in 1909. He represented the United States in the 1912 Olympics-as the first American participant in the pentathlon. He did not win a medal. He went on to serve in the Tank Corps during World War I, an experience that made Patton a dedicated proponent of tank warfare.

During World War II, as commander of the U.S. 7th Army, he captured Palermo, Sicily, in 1943 by just such means. Patton’s audacity became evident in 1944, when, during the Battle of the Bulge, he employed an unorthodox strategy that involved a 90-degree pivoting move of his 3rd Army forces, enabling him to speedily relieve the besieged Allied defenders of Bastogne, Belgium. Along the way, Patton’s mouth proved as dangerous to his career as the Germans. When he berated and slapped a hospitalized soldier diagnosed with “shell shock,” but whom Patton accused of “malingering,” the press turned on him, and pressure was applied to cut him down to size. He might have found himself enjoying early retirement had not General Dwight Eisenhower and General George Marshall intervened on his behalf.

After several months of inactivity, he was put back to work. And work he did-at the Battle of the Bulge, during which Patton once again succeeded in employing a complex and quick-witted strategy, turning the German thrust into Bastogne into an Allied counterthrust, driving the Germans east across the Rhine. In March 1945, Patton’s army swept through southern Germany into Czechoslovakia-which he was stopped from capturing by the Allies, out of respect for the Soviets’ postwar political plans for Eastern Europe. Patton had many gifts, but diplomacy was not one of them.

After the war, while stationed in Germany, he criticized the process of denazification, the removal of former Nazi Party members from positions of political, administrative, and governmental power. His impolitic press statements questioning the policy caused Eisenhower to remove him as U.S. commander in Bavaria. He was transferred to the 15th Army Group, but in December of 1945 he suffered a broken neck in a car accident and died less than two weeks later.

1948 – Seishiro Itagaki, Japanese General and minister of War, was hanged.

1950 – Far East Air Force executed “Operation Kiddie Car” by transporting 1,000 Korean War orphans to the island of Cheju-do. Major Dean E. Hess, an F-51 Mustang pilot and military advisor considered the “Father of the ROK Air Force,” organized and led a desperate cross-country trek from Osan to Kimpo Airport to bring the children to safety from the advancing communist forces.

1951 – First helicopter landing aboard a hospital ship, USS Consolation.

1951 – General Matthew Ridgeway broadcast a message requesting that the Red Cross be allowed to inspect communist POW camps.

1963 – In his formal report to President Johnson, McNamara calls Operation Hardnose, which provides intelligence and disrupts Vietcong movements along the Laos corridor ‘remarkably effective,’ and urges its expansion.

1968 – Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard. On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around the moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so. During Apollo 8’s 10 lunar orbits, television images were sent back home, and spectacular photos were taken of Earth and the moon from the spacecraft.

In addition to being the first human beings to view firsthand their home world in its entirety, the three astronauts were also the first to see the dark side of the moon.

On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27th.

On July 20th of the next year, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first men to walk on the moon. Recovery was by HS-4 helicopters from USS Yorktown (CVS-10).

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1969 – Thailand announces plans to withdraw its 12,000-man contingent from South Vietnam. Thai forces went to Vietnam as part of the Free World Military Forces, an effort by President Lyndon B. Johnson to enlist allies for the United States and South Vietnam. By securing support from other nations, Johnson hoped to build an international consensus behind his policies in Vietnam. The first Thai contribution to the South Vietnamese war effort came in September 1964, when a 16-man Royal Thai Air Force group arrived in Saigon to assist in flying and maintaining some of the cargo aircraft operated by the South Vietnamese Air Force. In 1966, in response to further urging from President Johnson, the Thais agreed to increase their support to South Vietnam. The Royal Thai Military Assistance Group was formed in Saigon in February 1966. Later that year, the Thai government, once again at Johnson’s insistence, agreed to send combat troops to aid the South Vietnamese government.

In September 1967, the first elements of the Royal Thai Volunteer Regiment, the “Queen’s Cobras,” arrived in Vietnam and were stationed in Bear Cat (near Bien Hoa, north of Saigon). The Thai regiment began combat operations in October 1967. In July 1968, the Queen’s Cobras were replaced by the Royal Thai Army Expeditionary Division (the “Black Panthers”), which included two brigades of infantry, three battalions of 105-mm field artillery, and an armored cavalry unit. In August 1970, the Black Panther Division was renamed the Royal Thai Army Volunteer Force, a title it retained throughout the rest of its time in South Vietnam. The decision by the Thai government to begin withdrawing its troops was in line with President Nixon’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops from South Vietnam as the war was turned over to the South Vietnamese. The first Thai troops departed South Vietnam in 1971 and all were gone by early 1972.

1972 – The Defense Department announces that eight B-52 bombers and several fighter-bombers were lost since the commencement of Operation Linebacker II on December 18. These losses included at least 43 flyers captured or killed. President Richard Nixon ordered the operation after the North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of the peace talks in Paris. In response, President Nixon immediately issued an ultimatum that North Vietnam send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.” When they rejected Nixon’s demand, he ordered a full-scale air campaign against Hanoi and Haiphong to force them back to the negotiating table. On December 28, after 11 days of intensive bombing, the North Vietnamese agreed to return to the talks.

1975 – In Vienna, Austria, Carlos the Jackal leads a raid on a meeting of oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). German and Arab terrorists stormed in with machine guns, killed three people, and took 63 people hostage, including 11 OPEC ministers. Calling his group the “Arm of the Arab Revolution,” Carlos demanded that an anti-Israeli political statement be broadcast over radio, and that a bus and jet be provided for the terrorists and their hostages. Austrian authorities complied, and all the hostages were released in Algeria unharmed. OPEC did not hold another summit for 25 years. In 1949, Ilich Ramýrez Sýnchez was born the son of a millionaire Marxist lawyer in Caracas, Venezuela, and attended Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where he became involved with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, he acted as a freelance terrorist for various Arab groups and is suspected to have killed as many as 80 people in a chain of bombings, hijackings, and assassinations. Nearly apprehended on several occasions, Carlos the Jackal managed to evade international authorities until 1994, when French agents captured him hiding in the Sudan. Secretly extradited to France, he was sent to a French prison, where he lived for three years before being put on trial in 1997 for the 1975 Paris murders of two French counterintelligence officers and a pro-Palestinian Lebanese who had turned informant. On December 23, 1997, a French jury found Sýnchez guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

1988 – Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, an hour after departure. A bomb that had been hidden inside an audio cassette player detonated inside the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. All 259 passengers, including 38 Syracuse University students returning home for the holidays, were killed in the explosion. In addition, 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed in the shower of airplane parts that unexpectedly fell from the sky. Authorities accused Islamic terrorists of having placed the bomb on the plane while it was at the low-security airport in Frankfurt, Germany. They apparently believed that the attack was in retaliation for either the 1986 bombing attack on Libya in which Gadhafi was the target, or a 1988 incident, in which the United States killed 290 passengers when it mistakenly shot down an Iran Air commercial flight over the Persian Gulf. Sixteen days before the explosion over Lockerbie, a call was made to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be placed on a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt.

Though some claimed that travelers should have been alerted to this threat, U.S. officials later said that the connection between the call and the bomb was purely coincidental. In the early 1990s, investigators identified Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah as suspects, but Libya refused to turn them over to be tried in the United States. But in 1999-in an effort to ease United Nations sanctions against Libya-Colonel Moammar Gadhafi agreed to turn the suspects over to Scotland for trial in the Netherlands using Scottish law and prosecutors. Families of the victims were dissatisfied with this deal, however, complaining that it did not allow prosecutors to pursue the leads that suggested the bombing was planned and authorized by the highest levels of the Libyan government. The United States did insist, though, that Libya pay compensation to the victims’ families before sanctions against Libya are lifted.

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1990 – In Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis participated in an evacuation drill to test war readiness.

1991 – El Sayyid Nosair was acquitted in New York of killing Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane. Nosair was later convicted in a federal trial.

1991 – In a final step signifying the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, 11 of the 12 Soviet republics declare that they are forming the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Just a few days later, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced he was stepping down from his position. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. The 11 republics-Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan-signed an agreement creating the CIS. Only Georgia, embroiled in a civil war, abstained from participation. Exactly what they created was open to debate. The CIS was not a new nation, but merely an “alliance” between independent states. The political meaning of the alliance was hazy. The independent states each took over the former Soviet government facilities within their borders. The military side of the CIS was even more confusing. They agreed to sustain any arms agreements signed by the former Soviet Union. The former Soviet defense minister would retain control over the military until the CIS could agree on what to do with the nuclear weapons and conventional forces within their borders. Complicating the situation were terrific economic problems and outbreaks of ethnic violence in the new republics. For Gorbachev, the announcement was the final signal that his power-and the existence of the Soviet Union-was at an end. Four days later, on Christmas Day, he announced his resignation.

1997 – President Clinton, accompanied by his wife and daughter, left for Bosnia to spread holiday cheer — and to carry the news that he wanted U.S. troops to remain there indefinitely as the region recovered from its devastating war.

1999 – Amid heightened concerns about the possibility of a holiday terrorist attack, security was ordered tightened at American airports and the Pentagon said it was taking “appropriate action” to protect US forces overseas.

2001 – In Kabul, Afghanistan, power was officially transferred from Pres. Rabbani to Hamid Karzai.

2002 – President Bush received a smallpox vaccination, fulfilling a promise he’d made when he ordered inoculations for about a-half million U.S. troops.

2002 – In Qatar some Persian Gulf leaders opened a summit by calling for regional unity and fast inspections by U.N. experts searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

2003 – Time magazine’s named The American soldier, who bears the duty of “living with and dying for a country’s most fateful decisions,” as Person of the Year.

2004 – A suicide bombing on a base near Mosul killed 22 people and wounded 72 at Forward Operating Base Marez as US soldiers sat down to lunch. Halliburton Co. lost four employees in the attack at the military base. A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility. 2 French reporters held hostage for 4 months in Iraq were released.

2004 – Janes’ Defense Weekly said the US will assign serving military officers to its de facto embassy in Taiwan for the first time since 1979 in a reversal of a longstanding policy.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

STRAUB, PAUL F.
Rank and organization: Surgeon. 36th Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At Alos, Zambales, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 21 December 1899. Entered service at: lowa. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 6 October 1906. Citation: Voluntarily exposed himself to a hot fire from the enemy in repelling with pistol fire an insurgent attack and at great risk of his own life went under fire to the rescue of a wounded officer and carried him to a place of safety.

*BENJAMIN, GEORGE, JR.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company A, 306th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division. Place and date: Leyte, Philippine Islands, 21 December 1944. Entered service at: Carney’s Point, N.J. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. G.O. No.: 49, 28 June 1945. Citation: He was a radio operator, advancing in the rear of his company as it engaged a well-defended Japanese strong point holding up the progress of the entire battalion. When a rifle platoon supporting a light tank hesitated in its advance, he voluntarily and with utter disregard for personal safety left his comparatively secure position and ran across bullet-whipped terrain to the tank, waving and shouting to the men of the platoon to follow. Carrying his bulky radio and armed only with a pistol, he fearlessly penetrated intense machinegun and rifle fire to the enemy position, where he killed 1 of the enemy in a foxhole and moved on to annihilate the crew of a light machinegun.

Heedless of the terrific fire now concentrated on him, he continued to spearhead the assault, killing 2 more of the enemy and exhorting the other men to advance, until he fell mortally wounded. After being evacuated to an aid station, his first thought was still of the American advance. Overcoming great pain he called for the battalion operations officer to report the location of enemy weapons and valuable tactical information he had secured in his heroic charge. The unwavering courage, the unswerving devotion to the task at hand, the aggressive leadership of Pfc. Benjamin were a source of great and lasting inspiration to his comrades and were to a great extent responsible for the success of the battalion’s mission.

CURREY, FRANCIS S.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company K, 120th Infantry, 30th Infantry Division. Place and date: Malmedy, Belgium, 21 December 1944. Entered service at: Hurleyville, N.Y. Birth: Loch Sheldrake, N.Y. G.O. No.: 69, 17 August 1945. Citation: He was an automatic rifleman with the 3d Platoon defending a strong point near Malmedy, Belgium, on 21 December 1944, when the enemy launched a powerful attack. Overrunning tank destroyers and antitank guns located near the strong point, German tanks advanced to the 3d Platoon’s position, and, after prolonged fighting forced the withdrawal of this group to a nearby factory. Sgt. Currey found a bazooka in the building and crossed the street to secure rockets meanwhile enduring intense fire from enemy tanks and hostile infantrymen who had taken up a position at a house a short distance away. In the face of small-arms, machinegun, and artillery fire, he, with a companion, knocked out a tank with 1 shot.

Moving to another position, he observed 3 Germans in the doorway of an enemy-held house. He killed or wounded all 3 with his automatic rifle. He emerged from cover and advanced alone to within 50 yards of the house, intent on wrecking it with rockets. Covered by friendly fire, he stood erect, and fired a shot which knocked down half of 1 wall. While in this forward position, he observed 5 Americans who had been pinned down for hours by fire from the house and 3 tanks. Realizing that they could not escape until the enemy tank and infantry guns had been silenced, Sgt. Currey crossed the street to a vehicle, where he procured an armful of antitank grenades. These he launched while under heavy enemy fire, driving the tankmen from the vehicles into the house. He then climbed onto a half-track in full view of the Germans and fired a machinegun at the house.

Once again changing his position, he manned another machinegun whose crew had been killed; under his covering fire the 5 soldiers were able to retire to safety. Deprived of tanks and with heavy infantry casualties, the enemy was forced to withdraw. Through his extensive knowledge of weapons and by his heroic and repeated braving of murderous enemy fire, Sgt. Currey was greatly responsible for inflicting heavy losses in men and material on the enemy, for rescuing 5 comrades, 2 of whom were wounded, and for stemming an attack which threatened to flank his battalion’s position.

*THORNE, HORACE M.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Troop D, 89th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 9th Armored Division. Place and date: Near Grufflingen, Belgium, 21 December 1944. Entered service at: Keyport, N.J. Birth. Keansburg, N.J. G.O. No.: 80, 19 September 1945. Citation. He was the leader of a combat patrol on 21 December 1944 near Grufflingen, Belgium, with the mission of driving German forces from dug-in positions in a heavily wooded area. As he advanced his light machinegun, a German Mark Ill tank emerged from the enemy position and was quickly immobilized by fire from American light tanks supporting the patrol. Two of the enemy tankmen attempted to abandon their vehicle but were killed by Cpl. Thorne’s shots before they could jump to the ground.

To complete the destruction of the tank and its crew, Cpl. Thorne left his covered position and crept forward alone through intense machinegun fire until close enough to toss 2 grenades into the tank’s open turret, killing 2 more Germans. He returned across the same fire-beaten zone as heavy mortar fire began falling in the area, seized his machinegun and, without help, dragged it to the knocked-out tank and set it up on the vehicle’s rear deck. He fired short rapid bursts into the enemy positions from his advantageous but exposed location, killing or wounding 8.

Two enemy machinegun crews abandoned their positions and retreated in confusion. His gun Jammed; but rather than leave his self-chosen post he attempted to clear the stoppage; enemy small-arms fire, concentrated on the tank, killed him instantly. Cpl. Thorne, displaying heroic initiative and intrepid fighting qualities, inflicted costly casualties on the enemy and insured the success of his patrol’s mission by the sacrifice of his life.

*WARNER, HENRY F.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Antitank Company, 2d Battalion, 26th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Dom Butgenbach, Belgium, 20-21 December 1944. Entered service at: Troy, N.C. Born: 23 August 1923, Troy, N.C. G.O. No.: 48, 23 June 1945. Citation: Serving as 57-mm. antitank gunner with the 2d Battalion, he was a major factor in stopping enemy tanks during heavy attacks against the battalion position near Dom Butgenbach, Belgium, on 20-21 December 1944. In the first attack, launched in the early morning of the 20th, enemy tanks succeeded in penetrating parts of the line. Cpl. Warner, disregarding the concentrated cannon and machinegun fire from 2 tanks bearing down on him, and ignoring the imminent danger of being overrun by the infantry moving under tank cover, destroyed the first tank and scored a direct and deadly hit upon the second. A third tank approached to within 5 yards of his position while he was attempting to clear a jammed breach lock.

Jumping from his gun pit, he engaged in a pistol duel with the tank commander standing in the turret, killing him and forcing the tank to withdraw. Following a day and night during which our forces were subjected to constant shelling, mortar barrages, and numerous unsuccessful infantry attacks, the enemy struck in great force on the early morning of the 21st. Seeing a Mark IV tank looming out of the mist and heading toward his position, Cpl. Warner scored a direct hit. Disregarding his injuries, he endeavored to finish the loading and again fire at the tank whose motor was now aflame, when a second machinegun burst killed him. Cpl. Warner’s gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty contributed materially to the successful defense against the enemy attacks.

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*SMEDLEY, LARRY E.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps, Company D, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division. Place and date: Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam, 21 December 1967. Entered service at: Orlando, Fla. Born: 4 March 1949, Front Royal, Va. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a squad leader with company D, in connection with operations against the enemy. On the evenings of 20-21 December 1967, Cpl. Smedley led his 6-man squad to an ambush site at the mouth of Happy Valley, near Phouc Ninh (2) in Quang Nam Province. Later that night an estimated 100 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army regulars, carrying 122mm rocket launchers and mortars, were observed moving toward Hill 41. Realizing this was a significant enemy move to launch an attack on the vital Danang complex, Cpl. Smedley immediately took sound and courageous action to stop the enemy threat. After he radioed for a reaction force, he skillfully maneuvered his men to a more advantageous position and led an attack on the numerically superior enemy force.

A heavy volume of fire from an enemy machinegun positioned on the left flank of the squad inflicted several casualties on Cpl. Smedley’s unit. Simultaneously, an enemy rifle grenade exploded nearby, wounding him in the right foot and knocking him to the ground. Cpl. Smedley disregarded this serious injury and valiantly struggled to his feet, shouting words of encouragement to his men. He fearlessly led a charge against the enemy machinegun emplacement, firing his rifle and throwing grenades, until he was again struck by enemy fire and knocked to the ground. Gravely wounded and weak from loss of blood, he rose and commenced a l-man assault against the enemy position. Although his aggressive and singlehanded attack resulted in the destruction of the machinegun, he was struck in the chest by enemy fire and fell mortally wounded. Cpl. Smedley’s inspiring and courageous actions, bold initiative, and selfless devotion to duty in the face of certain death were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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22 December

1775 – Congress commissions first naval officers: Esek Hopkins, Commander in Chief of the Fleet, Captains Dudley Saltonstall, Abraham Whipple, Nicolas Biddle, and John Hopkins. Lieutenants included John Paul Jones.

1783 – General of the Army George Washington resigned his military commission.

1807 – The House passed Jefferson’s Embargo Act, which barred trading between the U.S. and European nations. In Jefferson’s eyes, the Embargo Act was not merely a defensive measure; he also hoped to demonstrate the United States’ growing power as a trade partner. The Napoleonic Wars threatened to engulf the nation. French Emperor Napoleon I had vowed to seal off all foreign trade with Britain; the British responded in kind and moved to halt all foreign trade with France. America’s fleet of merchant ships and economic livelihood were effectively caught in the middle of the conflict. Looking to protect the ships without sacrificing the nation’s neutral stance, Jefferson resorted to legislative action. Alas, the Embargo Act had a far different impact than Jefferson intended: it not only took a severe toll on U.S. agricultural and mercantile interests, but also proved to be a financial boon to British and French traders. By 1809, an angry chorus of farmers, mercantilists, and political critics forced Jefferson to repeal the Embargo Act and re-open the doors to trade with Europe, save for Britain and France.

1819 – The Revenue cutter Dallas seized a vessel laden with lumber that had been unlawfully cut from public land in one of the first recorded instance of a revenue cutter enforcing an environmental law.

1828 – Rachel Jackson, beloved wife of Andrew Jackson, died of heart disease just weeks before her recently elected husband was inaugurated as president of the United States. Andrew Jackson had been 21 and a promising young lawyer when Rachel Donelson Robards, his landlady’s daughter and the estranged wife of Lewis Robards of Kentucky, caught his eye. Robards had started divorce proceedings, but had dropped them without his wife’s knowledge. Believing she was a free woman, Rachel married Andrew Jackson in 1791. Two years later, the couple discovered that Robards was finally suing for divorce–on the grounds of adultery and desertion.

The divorce was granted, and in 1794, the couple quietly remarried. Yet, for the rest of her life, Rachel was unjustly slandered for her irregular marriage. The gossip became particularly painful during the 1828 presidential campaign when the 37-year-old scandal was resurrected as a campaign issue. Andrew Jackson defeated his opponent John Quincy Adams, but when Rachel died soon after the election, Jackson bitterly attributed her death to “those vile wretches who…slandered her.”

1837 – Congress authorized President “to cause any suitable number of public vessels, adapted to the purpose, to cruise upon the coast, in the severe portion of the season, and to afford aid to distressed navigators.” First statute authorizing activities in the field of maritime safety. Thus interjecting the national government into the field of lifesaving for the first time. Although revenue cutters were specifically mentioned, the performance of this duty was imposed primarily upon the Revenue Marine Service and quickly became one of its major activities.

1841 – Commissioning of USS Mississippi, first U.S. ocean-going side-wheel steam warship, at Philadelphia.

1862 – Captain Dahlgren, confidant of and advisor to the President, went to the White House at the request of President Lincoln to observe the testing of a new type of gunpowder.

1864 – Union General William T. Sherman presents the city of Savannah, Georgia, to President Lincoln. Sherman captured Georgia’s largest city after his famous “March to the Sea” from Atlanta. Savannah had been one of the last major ports that remained open to the Confederates. After Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864, he did not plan to stay for long. There was still the Confederate army of General John Bell Hood in the area, and cavalry leaders like Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joe Wheeler, who could threaten Sherman’s supply lines. In November, Sherman dispatched part of his force back to Nashville, Tennessee, to deal with Hood while Sherman cut free from his supply lines and headed south and east across Georgia.

Along the way, his troops destroyed nearly everything that lay in their path. Sherman’s intent was to wreck the morale of the South and bring the war to a swift end. For nearly six weeks, nothing was heard from Sherman’s army. Finally, just before Christmas, word arrived that Sherman’s army was outside Savannah. A Union officer reached the coast and found a Union warship that carried him to Washington to personally deliver news of the success. Sherman wired Lincoln with the message, “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”

1882 – 1st string of Christmas tree lights was created by Thomas Edison.

1918 – The last of the food restrictions, that had been enforced because of the shortages during World War I, were lifted.

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1941 – The Arcadia Conference is being held. The purpose of the meeting is war planning by the British leader, Churchill and the American President Roosevelt as well as their Chiefs of Staff and other political leaders from both countries. Now that the United States was directly involved in both the Pacific and European wars, it was incumbent upon both Great Britain and America to create and project a unified front. Toward that end, Churchill and Roosevelt created a combined general staff to coordinate military strategy against both Germany and Japan and to draft a future joint invasion of the Continent. Roosevelt also agreed to a radical increase in the U.S. arms production program: the 12,750 operational aircraft to be ready for service by the end of 1943 became 45,000; the proposed 15,450 tanks also became 45,000; and the number of machine guns to be manufactured almost doubled, to 500,000. Among the momentous results of these U.S.-Anglo meetings was a declaration issued by Churchill and Roosevelt that enjoined 26 signatory nations to use all resources at their disposal to defeat the Axis powers and not sue for a separate peace.

This confederation called itself the “United Nations.” Lead by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, all 26 nations declared a unified goal to “ensure life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve the rights of man and justice.” The blueprint for the destruction of fascism and a future international peacekeeping organization was born. Decisions made at the conference included a confirmation of policy to Germany First as well as the establishment of a Combined Chiefs of Staff to direct the entire Allied military endeavor. British General Wavell is appointed to control operations in the East. Plans are also made for a buildup of US forces in Britain prior to a land invasion of Europe, and the continuation of bombing offensive in Europe.

1941 – After continuing the bombardment of Wake Island the Japanese land 200 men on the island to fierce resistance from the 450 US Marines stationed there1941 – Japanese troops made an amphibious landing on the coast of Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, the Philippines.

1942 – Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Thomas A. Moore performs appendectomy on Fireman Second Class George M. Platter on board USS Silversides (SS-236).

1942 – Sue Dauser takes oath of office as Superintendant of Navy Nurse Corps, becoming first woman with the relative rank of captain in U.S. Navy. She was promoted to the rank of captain on 26 February 1944.

1944 – Commissioning of first 2 African-American WAVES officers, Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances F. Wills.

1944 – With Ho Chi Minh’s support, Giap sets up an armed propaganda brigade of 34 Vietnamese and within two days will begin to attack French outposts in northern Vietnam. This is essentially the beginning of the Vietminh’s armed struggle against the French.

1944 – In the advance of German 5th Panzer Army, Bastogne is surrounded and the Germans demand the surrender of United States troops. The demand to surrender, issued to the American defenders, is rejected by American General McAuliffe commanding the encircled troops. St. Vith is captured late in the day. However, the lack of substantial progress leads Model, commanding Army Group B, and Rundstedt, Commander in Chief West, to recommend an end to the offensive. Brigadier Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe reportedly replied: “Nuts!”

1944 – On Leyte, there is fighting around Palompon where the Japanese forces on the island are now concentrated.

1945 – The U.S. recognized Tito’s government in Yugoslavia.

1950 – The Eighth Army main command post moved from Seoul to Taegu.

1950 – In the biggest air battle of the Korean War, U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabres shot down six communist MiG-15s over North Korea with the loss of a single F-86. This was a fitting end to the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing’s first week in Korea.

1950 – Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy, commander of the U.N. Naval Forces, announced that 400 ships from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, France, the Netherlands and Thailand were participating in the U.N. blockade of North Korea.

1951 – The communists were invited to inspect U.N. prison camps to see that over 35,000 Koreans previously listed as prisoners had been removed from POW status and reclassified, mostly as civilian internees after further screening. The U.N. Command demanded an explanation of why 1,000 missing soldiers (mostly American) were omitted from the communist list of POWs. The U.N. Command proposed an immediate exchange of all sick and wounded prisoners.

1956 – The evacuation of the Suez Canal was completed by Britain and France.

1960 – HS-3 and HU-2 (USS Valley Forge) helicopters rescue 27 men from oiler SS Pine Ridge breaking up in heavy seas off Cape Hatteras.

1963 – The official 30 days of mourning ended following the assassination of President Kennedy.

1964 – The first test flight of the SR-71 (Blackbird) took place at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.

1965 – The EF-105F Wild Weasel made its first kill over Vietnam.

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1971 – The Soviet Union accuses China of backing U.S. policies in Vietnam, an accusation that illustrates the growing rift between the two communist superpowers. China, which had previously taken a hard line toward negotiations between Hanoi and Washington, softened its position by endorsing a North Vietnamese peace plan for ending the war. Although the peace proposal was unacceptable to the United States, the fact that China advocated negotiations between Hanoi and Washington was significant. The Soviet Union, whose relations with China were already deteriorating, was highly suspicious of what they rightfully perceived as a “warming” in Sino-American relations. This suspicion only grew stronger in February 1972, when President Richard Nixon visited China.

1972 – Washington announces that the bombing of North Vietnam will continue until Hanoi agrees to negotiate “in a spirit of good will and in a constructive attitude.” North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of secret talks in Paris on December 13. President Nixon issued an ultimatum to North Vietnam to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours “or else.” They rejected Nixon’s demand, and in response the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. During the 11 days of the operation, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties dropped an estimated 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong. In the course of the bombing, the Cuban, Egyptian, and Indian embassies were hit in Hanoi, as were Russian and Chinese freighters in Haiphong. Bach Mai, Hanoi’s largest hospital, was also damaged by the attacks. In the United States, 41 American religious leaders issued a letter condemning the bombing.

1990 – Twenty-one sailors returning from shore leave to the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga drowned when the Israeli ferry they were traveling on capsized.

1991 – The body of Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, an American hostage murdered by his captors, was found dumped along a highway in Lebanon.

1994 – North Korea handed over the body of American pilot David Hilemon, killed when his helicopter was shot down over the communist country three days earlier.

1997 – During his visit to Bosnia, President Clinton thanked American troops and lectured the nation’s three presidents to set aside their differences.

1998 – The Energy Dept. for the first time awarded a billion-dollar contract to the Tennessee Valley Authority to produce tritium at a TVA nuclear reactor for military use.

1999 – President Clinton urged Americans not to panic despite enhanced security measures prompted by fears of terrorism.

1999 – An Algerian accused of trying to smuggle nitroglycerin and other bomb-making materials into the United States from Canada pleaded innocent in Seattle to all five counts of a federal indictment.

1999 – Two astronauts from the shuttle “Discovery” went on a spacewalk to replace broken instruments in the Hubble Space Telescope.

2001 – A new “thermo-baric” bomb had been developed by the Pentagon for use in caves and tunnels. The BLU-118b was capable of destroying a tunnel’s contents without collapsing the tunnel mouth.

2001 – Passengers and flight attendants subdued Richard Colvin Reid on AA Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. He appeared to have explosive materials in his shoes. The flight was diverted to Boston and the FBI confirmed that his shoes were packed with explosives. French police identified the man as Tariq Raja (28), a Sri Lankan traveling on a British passport. The sneakers contained pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and triacetone triperoxide (TATP). On Jan 30, 2003 Reid was sentenced to life in prison.

2001 – Hamid Karzai was sworn in as prime minister of Afghanistan.

2002 – Afghanistan’s 6 neighbors (Iran, Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) agreed to halt meddling and signed a non-intervention agreement in Kabul.

2002 – North Korea said it had begun removing U.N. monitoring equipment from a nuclear reactor at the centre of the communist state’s suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons.

2003 – Leaders of Arab countries from the Persian Gulf agreed to form a pact to combat terrorism and praised Washington for planning to transfer power to Iraqis by mid-2004.

2003 – Pakistan acknowledged that some scientists participating in its nuclear program may have been involved in the proliferation of sensitive technology.

2004 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, stung by criticism that he’d been insensitive to the needs of troops and their families, offered an impassioned defense, saying when he meets wounded soldiers or relatives of those killed in battle, “their grief is something I feel to my core.”

2004 – The US signed a 99-year lease on a site for its new de facto embassy in Taiwan, an event described as a milestone in relations.

2005 – At about 8:45 AM, in Baghdad, Iraq, an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded near a convoy, killing two government contractors (1 American; 1 South African) and wounding three others (3 South African). No group claimed responsibility.

2006 – Space Shuttle Discovery lands safely at the Kennedy Space Center at 5:32 p.m. EST (22:32 UTC), concluding mission STS-116. They spent 13 days in space and visited the International Space Station.

2008 – A jury finds five men guilty of conspiring to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, United States. Six men were arrested on May 7, 2007, in New Jersey, as two of them were meeting a confidential government witness to purchase three AK-47 automatic machine guns and four semi-automatic M-16s to be used in an attack they had been planning from at least January 2006. The sixth defendant, Agron Abdullahu, pleaded guilty in October to a reduced charge of providing firearms to illegal aliens and received a sentence of 20 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

2010 – The repeal of the Don’t ask, don’t tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, is signed into law by President Barack Obama.

2010 – The United States Senate votes to ratify the New START Treaty with the Russia, which halves the number of deployed strategic nuclear missile launchers maintained by each nation.

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