This Date in Military History:

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

DEBLANC, JEFFERSON JOSEPH
Rank and Organization: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Marine Fighting Squadron 112. Place and date: Off Kolombangara Island in the Solomons group, 31 January 1943. Entered service at: Louisiana. Born: 15 February 1921, Lockport, La. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as leader of a section of 6 fighter planes in Marine Fighting Squadron 112, during aerial operations against enemy Japanese forces off Kolombangara Island in the Solomons group, 31 January 1943. Taking off with his section as escort for a strike force of dive bombers and torpedo planes ordered to attack Japanese surface vessels, 1st Lt. DeBlanc led his flight directly to the target area where, at 14,000 feet, our strike force encountered a large number of Japanese Zeros protecting the enemy’s surface craft. In company with the other fighters, 1st Lt. DeBlanc instantly engaged the hostile planes and aggressively countered their repeated attempts to drive off our bombers, persevering in his efforts to protect the diving planes and waging fierce combat until, picking up a call for assistance from the dive bombers, under attack by enemy float planes at 1,000 feet, he broke off his engagement with the Zeros, plunged into the formation of float planes and disrupted the savage attack, enabling our dive bombers and torpedo planes to complete their runs on the Japanese surface disposition and withdraw without further incident.

Although his escort mission was fulfilled upon the safe retirement of the bombers, 1st Lt. DeBlanc courageously remained on the scene despite a rapidly diminishing fuel supply and, boldly challenging the enemy’s superior number of float planes, fought a valiant battle against terrific odds, seizing the tactical advantage and striking repeatedly to destroy 3 of the hostile aircraft and to disperse the remainder. Prepared to maneuver his damaged plane back to base, he had climbed aloft and set his course when he discovered 2 Zeros closing in behind. Undaunted, he opened fire and blasted both Zeros from the sky in a short, bitterly fought action which resulted in such hopeless damage to his own plane that he was forced to bail out at a perilously low altitude atop the trees on enemy-held Kolombangara. A gallant officer, a superb airman, and an indomitable fighter, 1st Lt. DeBlanc had rendered decisive assistance during a critical stage of operations, and his unwavering fortitude in the face of overwhelming opposition reflects the highest credit upon himself and adds new luster to the traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*KELLEY, JONAH E.
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, 311th Infantry, 78th Infantry Division. Place and date: Kesternich, Germany, 30-31 January 1945. Entered service at: Keyser, W. Va. Birth: Roda, W. Va. G.O. No.: 77, 10 September 1945. Citation: In charge of the leading squad of Company E, he heroically spearheaded the attack in furious house-to-house fighting. Early on 30 January, he led his men through intense mortar and small arms fire in repeated assaults on barricaded houses. Although twice wounded, once when struck in the back, the second time when a mortar shell fragment passed through his left hand and rendered it practically useless, he refused to withdraw and continued to lead his squad after hasty dressings had been applied. His serious wounds forced him to fire his rifle with 1 hand, resting it on rubble or over his left forearm. To blast his way forward with hand grenades, he set aside his rifle to pull the pins with his teeth while grasping the missiles with his good hand. Despite these handicaps, he created tremendous havoc in the enemy ranks. He rushed l house, killing 3 of the enemy and clearing the way for his squad to advance.

On approaching the next house, he was fired upon from an upstairs window. He killed the sniper with a single shot and similarly accounted for another enemy soldier who ran from the cellar of the house. As darkness came, he assigned his men to defensive positions, never leaving them to seek medical attention. At dawn the next day, the squad resumed the attack, advancing to a point where heavy automatic and small arms fire stalled them. Despite his wounds, S/Sgt. Kelley moved out alone, located an enemy gunner dug in under a haystack and killed him with rifle fire. He returned to his men and found that a German machinegun, from a well-protected position in a neighboring house, still held up the advance.

Ordering the squad to remain in comparatively safe positions, he valiantly dashed into the open and attacked the position single-handedly through a hail of bullets. He was hit several times and fell to his knees when within 25 yards of his objective; but he summoned his waning strength and emptied his rifle into the machinegun nest, silencing the weapon before he died. The superb courage, aggressiveness, and utter disregard for his own safety displayed by S/Sgt. Kelley inspired the men he led and enabled them to penetrate the last line of defense held by the enemy in the village of Kesternich .

*OLSON, TRUMAN O.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company B, 7th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Cisterna di Littoria, Italy, 30-31 January 1944. Entered service at: Cambridge, Wis. Birth: Christiana, Wis. G.O. No.: 6, 24 January 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. Sgt. Olson, a light machine gunner, elected to sacrifice his life to save his company from annihilation. On the night of 30 January 1944, after a 16-hour assault on entrenched enemy positions in the course of which over one-third of Company B became casualties, the survivors dug in behind a horseshoe elevation, placing Sgt. Olson and his crew, with the 1 available machinegun, forward of their lines and in an exposed position to bear the brunt of the expected German counterattack.

Although he had been fighting without respite, Sgt. Olson stuck grimly to his post all night while his guncrew was cut down, 1 by 1, by accurate and overwhelming enemy fire. Weary from over 24 hours of continuous battle and suffering from an arm wound, received during the night engagement, Sgt. Olson manned his gun alone, meeting the full force of an all-out enemy assault by approximately 200 men supported by mortar and machinegun fire which the Germans launched at daybreak on the morning of 31 January. After 30 minutes of fighting, Sgt. Olson was mortally wounded, yet, knowing that only his weapons stood between his company and complete destruction, he refused evacuation. For an hour and a half after receiving his second and fatal wound he continued to fire his machinegun, killing at least 20 of the enemy, wounding many more, and forcing the assaulting German elements to withdraw.

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DODD, CARL H.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant (then 2d Lt.), U.S. Army, Company E, 5th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Subuk, Korea, 30 and 31 January 1951. Entered service at: Kenvir, Ky. Born: 21 April 1925, Evarts, Ky. G.O. No.: 37, 4 June 1951. Citation: 1st Lt. Dodd, Company E, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. First Lt. Dodd, given the responsibility of spearheading an attack to capture Hill 256, a key terrain feature defended by a well-armed, crafty foe who had withstood several previous assaults, led his platoon forward over hazardous terrain under hostile small-arms, mortar, and artillery fire from well-camouflaged enemy emplacements which reached such intensity that his men faltered. With utter disregard for his safety, 1st Lt. Dodd moved among his men, reorganized and encouraged them, and then single-handedly charged the first hostile machine gun nest, killing or wounding all its occupants.

Inspired by his incredible courage, his platoon responded magnificently and, fixing bayonets and throwing grenades, closed on the enemy and wiped out every hostile position as it moved relentlessly onward to its initial objective. Securing the first series of enemy positions, 1st Lt. Dodd again reorganized his platoon and led them across a narrow ridge and onto Hill 256. Firing his rifle and throwing grenades, he advanced at the head of his platoon despite the intense concentrated hostile fire which was brought to bear on their narrow avenue of approach. When his platoon was still 200 yards from the objective he moved ahead and with his last grenade destroyed an enemy mortar killing the crew. Darkness then halted the advance but at daybreak 1st Lt. Dodd, again boldly advancing ahead of his unit, led the platoon through a dense fog against the remaining hostile positions. With bayonet and grenades he continued to set pace without regard for the danger to his life, until he and his troops had eliminated the last of the defenders and had secured the final objective. First Lt. Dodd’s superb leadership and extraordinary heroism inspired his men to overcome this strong enemy defense reflecting the highest credit upon himself and upholding the esteemed traditions of the military service.

CLAUSEN, RAYMOND M.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 263, Marine Aircraft Croup 16, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. Place and date: Republic of Vietnam, 31 January 1970. Entered service at: New Orleans, La. Born: 14 October 1947, New Orleans, La. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 263 during operations against enemy forces. Participating in a helicopter rescue mission to extract elements of a platoon which had inadvertently entered a minefield while attacking enemy positions, Pfc. Clausen skillfully guided the helicopter pilot to a landing in an area cleared by 1 of several mine explosions.

With 11 marines wounded, 1 dead, and the remaining 8 marines holding their positions for fear of detonating other mines, Pfc. Clausen quickly leaped from the helicopter and, in the face of enemy fire, moved across the extremely hazardous mine laden area to assist in carrying casualties to the waiting helicopter and in placing them aboard. Despite the ever-present threat of further mine explosions, he continued his valiant efforts, leaving the comparatively safe area of the helicopter on 6 separate occasions to carry out his rescue efforts. On 1 occasion while he was carrying 1 of the wounded, another mine detonated, killing a corpsman and wounding 3 other men. Only when he was certain that all marines were safely aboard did he signal the pilot to lift the helicopter. By the courageous, determined and inspiring efforts in the face of the utmost danger, Pfc. Clausen upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the U.S. Naval Service.

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DIX, DREW DENNIS
Rank and Organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, U.S. Senior Advisor Group, IV Corps, Military Assistance Command. Place and date: Chau Doc Province, Republic of Vietnam, 31 January and 1 February 1968. Entered service at: Denver, Colo. Born: 14 December 1944, West Point, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. S/Sgt. Dix distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving as a unit adviser. Two heavily armed Viet Cong battalions attacked the Province capital city of Chau Phu resulting in the complete breakdown and fragmentation of the defenses of the city. S/Sgt. Dix, with a patrol of Vietnamese soldiers, was recalled to assist in the defense of Chau Phu. Learning that a nurse was trapped in a house near the center of the city, S/Sgt. Dix organized a relief force, successfully rescued the nurse, and returned her to the safety of the Tactical Operations Center.

Being informed of other trapped civilians within the city, S/Sgt. Dix voluntarily led another force to rescue 8 civilian employees located in a building which was under heavy mortar and small-arms fire. S/Sgt. Dix then returned to the center of the city. Upon approaching a building, he was subjected to intense automatic rifle and machine gun fire from an unknown number of Viet Cong. He personally assaulted the building, killing 6 Viet Cong, and rescuing 2 Filipinos. The following day S/Sgt. Dix, still on his own volition, assembled a 20-man force and though under intense enemy fire cleared the Viet Cong out of the hotel, theater, and other adjacent buildings within the city. During this portion of the attack, Army Republic of Vietnam soldiers inspired by the heroism and success of S/Sgt. Dix, rallied and commenced firing upon the Viet Cong. S/Sgt. Dix captured 20 prisoners, including a high ranking Viet Cong official. He then attacked enemy troops who had entered the residence of the Deputy Province Chief and was successful in rescuing the official’s wife and children. S/Sgt. Dix’s personal heroic actions resulted in 14 confirmed Viet Cong killed in action and possibly 25 more, the capture of 20 prisoners, 15 weapons, and the rescue of the 14 United States and free world civilians. The heroism of S/Sgt. Dix was in the highest tradition and reflects great credit upon the U.S. Army.

FERGUSON, FREDERICK EDGAR
Rank and organization: Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Army, Company C, 227th Aviation Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Place and date: Hue, Republic of Vietnam, 31 January 1968. Entered service at: Phoenix, Ariz. Born: 18 August 1939, Pilot Point, Tex. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. CWO Ferguson, U.S. Army distinguished himself while serving with Company C. CWO Ferguson, commander of a resupply helicopter monitoring an emergency call from wounded passengers and crewmen of a downed helicopter under heavy attack within the enemy controlled city of Hue, unhesitatingly volunteered to attempt evacuation. Despite warnings from all aircraft to stay clear of the area due to heavy antiaircraft fire, CWO Ferguson began a low-level night at maximum airspeed along the Perfume River toward the tiny, isolated South Vietnamese Army compound in which the crash survivors had taken refuge.

Coolly and skillfully maintaining his course in the face of intense, short range fire from enemy occupied buildings and boats, he displayed superior flying skill and tenacity of purpose by landing his aircraft in an extremely confined area in a blinding dust cloud under heavy mortar and small-arms fire. Although the helicopter was severely damaged by mortar fragments during the loading of the wounded, CWO Ferguson disregarded the damage and, taking off through the continuing hail of mortar fire, he flew his crippled aircraft on the return route through the rain of fire that he had experienced earlier and safely returned his wounded passengers to friendly control. CWO Ferguson’s extraordinary determination saved the lives of 5 of his comrades. His actions are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on himself and the U.S. Army .

PENRY, RICHARD A.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company C, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Infantry Brigade. Place and date: Binh Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam, 31 January 1970. Entered service at: Oakland, Calif. Born: 18 November 1948, Petaluma. Calif. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sgt. Penry, Company C, distinguished himself while serving as a rifleman during a night ambush mission. As the platoon was preparing the ambush position, it suddenly came under an intense enemy attack from mortar, rocket, and automatic weapons fire which seriously wounded the company commander and most of the platoon members, leaving small isolated groups of wounded men throughout the area. Sgt. Penry, seeing the extreme seriousness of the situation, worked his way through the deadly enemy fire to the company command post where he administered first aid to the wounded company commander and other personnel. He then moved the command post to a position which provided greater protection and visual communication and control of other platoon elements.

Realizing the company radio was damaged and recognizing the urgent necessity to reestablish communications with the battalion headquarters, he ran outside the defensive perimeter through a fusillade of hostile fire to retrieve a radio. Finding it inoperable, Sgt. Penry returned through heavy fire to retrieve 2 more radios. Turning his attention to the defense of the area, he crawled to the edge of the perimeter, retrieved needed ammunition and weapons and resupplied the wounded men. During a determined assault by over 30 enemy soldiers, Sgt. Penry occupied the most vulnerable forward position placing heavy, accurate fire on the attacking enemy and exposing himself several times to throw hand grenades into the advancing enemy troops. He succeeded virtually single-handedly in stopping the attack. Learning that none of the radios were operable, Sgt. Penry again crawled outside the defensive perimeter, retrieved a fourth radio and established communications with higher headquarters. Sgt. Penry then continued to administer first aid to the wounded and repositioned them to better repel further enemy attacks.

Despite continuous and deadly sniper fire, he again left the defensive perimeter, moved to within a few feet of enemy positions, located 5 isolated wounded soldiers, and led them to safety. When evacuation helicopters approached, Sgt. Penry voluntarily left the perimeter, set up a guiding beacon, established the priorities for evacuation and successively carried 18 wounded men to the extraction site. After all wounded personnel had been evacuated, Sgt. Penry joined another platoon and assisted in the pursuit of the enemy. Sgt. Penry’s extraordinary heroism at the risk of his own life are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

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1 February

1633 – The tobacco laws of Virginia were codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.

1780 – The British fleet carrying General Clinton’s 8,000-man army arrives from New York off Charleston, South Carolina.

1790 – In the Royal Exchange Building on New York City’s Broad Street, the Supreme Court of the United States meets for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding. The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article Three of the U.S. Constitution, which took effect in March 1789. The Constitution granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which constitutionality was at issue. The court was also designated to rule on cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction. In September 1789, the Judiciary Act was passed, implementing Article Three by providing for six justices who would serve on the court for life.

The same day, President George Washington appointed John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge of South Carolina, William Cushing of Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, Robert Harrison of Maryland, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania to serve as associate justices. Two days later, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Supreme Court later grew into arguably the most powerful judicial body in the world in terms of its central place in the U.S. political order. In times of constitutional crisis, for better or worse, it always played a definitive role in resolving the great issues of the time.

1800 – In the undeclared naval war with France, the USS Constellation engages in a decisive battle with the French vessel La Vengeance.

1809 – In the winter of 1807, the U.S. was thrust into the middle of the Napoleonic wars, as the British and French hassled American merchant ships in hopes of gaining a strategic edge in their ongoing battles. However, in an attempt to keep the nation out of another bloody and costly conflict, President Thomas Jefferson quickly pushed the Embargo Act through the legislative chain. But, the legislation, which effectively sealed U.S. ports, backfired: intended as a nonviolent, fiscal response to the British and French attacks, the act instead served to aid foreign merchants at the expense of American interests. Mercantilists in New England and New York suffered mightily and, in some instances, resorted to smuggling and other underhanded tactics to elude the crippling grip of the Embargo Act.

In January of 1809, the Federal government passed the Enforcement Act, which called for severe penalties against illegal trading. Infuriated by the latest round of legislation, anti-embargo forces mounted a strong drive to nullify the acts. On February 1, Massachusetts Senator Thomas Pickering stepped into the fray and convened an assembly in New England that demanded the demise of the Embargo Act. An ardent Federalist, as well as a strong British ally and staunch opponent of Jefferson’s policies, Pickering helped force the president’s hand. With but a few days remaining in his second term, Jefferson signed the Non-Intercourse Act on March 1, 1809; the legislation reopened U.S. ports, save for trading with the British and French.

1861 – A furious Governor Sam Houston stormed out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas had voted 167-7 to secede from the Union. Texas Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union when a state convention votes 166 to 8 in favor of the measure. The Texans who voted to leave the Union did so over the objections of their governor, Sam Houston. The hero of the Texas War for Independence was in his third term as the state’s chief executive; a staunch Unionist, his election seemed to indicate that Texas did not share the rising secessionist sentiments of the other southern states. But events in the year following Houston’s election swayed many Texans to the secessionist cause. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859 raised the specter of a massive slave insurrection, and the ascendant Republican Party made many Texans uneasy about continuing in the Union.

After Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, pressure mounted on Houston to call a convention so that Texas could consider secession. He did so reluctantly in January, and he sat in silence on February 1 as the convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of secession. Houston grumbled that Texans were “stilling the voice of reason,” and he predicted an “ignoble defeat” for the South. Texas’ move completed the first round of secession. Seven states–South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas–left the Union before Lincoln took office. Four states–Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas– waited until the formal start of the war with the firing on Ft. Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina, before deciding to leave the Union. The remaining slave states–Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri–never mustered the necessary majority for secession.

1862 – “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was first published in “Atlantic Monthly” as an anonymous poem. The lyric was the work of Julia Ward Howe and was based on chapter 63 of the Old Testament’s Book of Isaiah. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” soon became the most popular Union marching song of the Civil War and is still being sung and to the tune of a song titled, “John Brown’s Body”. Julia Ward Howe (b.1819-1908) was an influential social reformer and wife of fellow reformer and educator Samuel Gridley Howe. She was prominent in the anti-slavery movement, woman‘s suffrage, prison reform and the international peace movements. Julia Ward Howe was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Fine Arts and Letters in 1908. Ralph Waldo Emerson, said: “I honor the author of ‘The Battle Hymn’ … she was born in the city of New York. I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts. We have no such poetess in New England.”

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1863 – Ironclad U.S.S. Montauk, Commander Worden, with U.S.S. Seneca, Wissahickon, Dawn, and mortar schooner C. P. Williams, again tested the defenses of Fort McAllister described by Rear Admiral Du Pont as “rather a thorn in my flesh.” On the 28th of January, Worden had learned, through “a contraband,” the position of the obstructions and torpedoes which bad effectively blocked his way in the assault of 27 January. “This information,” Worden reported,” with the aid of the contraband, whom I took on board, enabled me to take up a position nearer the fort in the next attack. . . ” Ammunition supplies replenished, Montauk moved to within 600 yards of McAllister in the early morning; the gunboats took a position one and three-quarters miles below the fort. Worden opened fire at 7:45 a.m., and reported at ”7:53 a.m. our turret was hit for the first time during this action at which time the enemy were working their guns with rapidity and precision."

The Confederate fire was concentrated on the ironclad, which took some 48 hits in the 4-hour engagement. Colonel Robert H. Anderson, commanding Fort McAllister, paid tribute to the accuracy of the naval gunfire: ”The enemy fired steadily and with remarkable precision. Their fire was terrible. Their mortar fire was unusually fine, a large number of their shells bursting directly over the battery. The ironclad’s fire was principally directed at the VIII- inch columbiad, and the parapet in front of this gun was so badly breached as to leave the gun entirely exposed.” General Beauregard added: ”For hours the most formidable vessel of her class hurled missiles of the heaviest caliber ever used in modern warfare at the weak parapet of the battery, which was almost demolished; but, standing at their guns, as became men fighting for homes, for honor, and for independence’. the garrison replied with such effect as to cripple and beat back their adversary, clad though in impenetrable armor and armed with XV and XI inch guns, supported by mortar boats whose practice was of uncommon precision.

1865 – Lincoln’s home state of Illinois became the first to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United States. President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, but it had not effectively abolished slavery in all of the states–it did not apply to slave-holding border states that had remained with the Union during the Civil War. After the war, the sentiment about blacks was mixed even among anti-slavery Americans: some considered Lincoln’s address too conservative and pushed for black suffrage, arguing that blacks would remain oppressed by their former owners if they did not have the power to vote. After the amendment was passed, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created to help blacks with the problems they would encounter while trying to acquire jobs, education and land of their own.

1893 – The US Minister to Hawaii, at the request of President Dole, placed the Provisional Government under formal US protection and raised the US flag over Hawaii.

1865 – A boat expedition from U.S.S. Midnight, Acting Master John C. Wells, landed and destroyed salt works “of 13,615 boiling capacity” at St. Andrews Bay, Florida. The making of salt from sea water became a major industry in Florida during the Civil War as salt was a critical commodity in the Confederate war effort. Large quantities were needed for preserving meat, fish, butter, and other perishable foods, as well as for curing hides. Federal warships continuously destroyed salt works along the coasts of Florida. The expedition led by Wells was the finale in the Union Navy’s effective restriction of this vital Confederate industry.

1906 – 1st federal penitentiary building completed in Leavenworth, Kansas.

1909 – U.S. troops left Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president.

1915 – The government of Germany agrees to permit an unrestricted submarine warfare campaign. Ships, even those of neutral countries, can now be sunk without warning. On 4 February the Germans announce a submarine blockade of Britain to begin on the 18th. All vessels bound for Britain are deemed legitimate targets.

1917 – Admiral Tirpitz (1849-1930) announced that Germany would attack all shipping in the North Atlantic with its feared U-Boats.

1923 – Fascists Voluntary Militia formed in Italy under Mussolini.

1940 – The Chinese Communist Mao Tse-tung calls for the US to stand firm against Japan.

1941 – There is a major reorganization of the US Navy. It is now to be formed in three fleets, the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Asiatic. Admiral King is appointed to command the new Atlantic Fleet. There is to be a significant strengthening of the forces in the Atlantic.

1942 – U.S. Navy conducts Marshalls-Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater. These were tactical airstrikes and naval artillery attacks by United States Navy aircraft carrier and other warship forces against Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) garrisons in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. The Japanese garrisons were under the overall command of Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the 4th Fleet. Japanese aircraft in the islands belonged to the IJN’s 24th Air Flotilla under Rear Admiral Eiji Gotō. The U.S. warship forces were under the overall command of Vice Admiral William Halsey, Jr. The raids were carried out by two separate U.S. carrier task forces. Aircraft from Task Force 17 (TF 17), commanded by Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher and centered on the carrier USS Yorktown, attacked Jaluit, Mili, and Makin (Butaritari) islands.

The Yorktown aircraft inflicted moderate damage to the Japanese naval installations on the islands and destroyed three aircraft. Seven Yorktown aircraft were lost, as well as a floatplane from one of TF 17’s cruisers. Aircraft from TF 8, commanded by Halsey and centered on the carrier USS Enterprise, struck Kwajalein, Wotje, and Taroa. At the same time, cruisers and destroyers bombarded Wotje and Taroa. The strikes inflicted light to moderate damage on the three islands’ naval garrisons, sank three small warships and damaged several others, including the light cruiser Katori, and destroyed 15 Japanese aircraft. The heavy cruiser USS Chester was hit and slightly damaged by a Japanese aerial bomb, and six Enterprise aircraft were lost. TFs 8 and 17 retired from the area immediately upon completion of the raids.

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1942 – Coast Guard enlistees after this date were restricted to enlistment in the USCG Reserve. This was done to prevent having too many enlistees in the service at war’s end.

1942 – Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States government, begins broadcasting with programs aimed at areas controlled by the Axis powers.

1943 – One of America’s most decorated military units of World War II, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese-Americans, was authorized.

1943 – Japanese forces on Guadalcanal Island, defeated by Marines, start to withdraw after the Japanese emperor finally gives them permission. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island, part of the Solomon Islands chain, and began constructing an airfield. In response, the U.S. launched Operation Watchtower, in which American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain, including Guadalcanal. The landings on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tananbogo met with much initial opposition from the Japanese defenders, despite the fact that the landings took the Japanese by surprise because bad weather had grounded their scouting aircraft. “I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting,” wrote one American major general on the scene. “These people refuse to surrender.”

The Americans who landed on Guadalcanal had an easier time of it, at least initially. More than 11,000 Marines landed, but 24 hours passed before the Japanese manning the garrison knew what had happened. The U.S. forces quickly met their main objective of taking the airfield, and the outnumbered Japanese troops temporarily retreated. Japanese reinforcements were landed, though, and fierce hand-to-hand jungle fighting ensued. The Americans were at a particular disadvantage because they were assaulted from both sea and air, but when the U.S. Navy supplied reinforcement troops, the Americans gained the advantage.

By February 1943, the Japanese retreated on secret orders of their emperor. In fact, the Japanese retreat was so stealthy that the Americans did not even know it had taken place until they stumbled upon abandoned positions, empty boats, and discarded supplies. In total, the Japanese lost more than 25,000 men compared with a loss of 1,600 by the Americans. Each side lost 24 warships.

1944 – American operations against the Kwajalein Atoll continue. On Roi US forces are mopping up. There is heavy fighting on Namur. US Task Force 52 (Admiral Turner) provides naval support for the landing of the 7th Infantry Division (General Corlett) on Kwajalein. Here, the Americans overrun a third of island, despite heavy Japanese resistance.

1944 – The forces of US 5th Army continue operations against the German defenses of the Gustav Line. The 34th Division gains some ground north of Cassino, around Monte Maiola.

1945 – The US 6th Corps from 7th Army crosses the river Moder and advances to Oberhofen.

1945 – The American advance on all fronts is slowed by fierce Japanese resistance. US 1st Corps is heavily engaged near Rosario and San Jose while US 11th Corps is struggling to make more ground across the neck of the Bataan Peninsula.

1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).

1946 – A press conference for what is considered the first computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC), was held at the University of Pennsylvania. The machine took up an entire room, weighed 30 tons and used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes to perform functions such as counting to 5,000 in one second. ENIAC, costing $450,000, was designed by the U.S. Army during World War II to make artillery calculations. The development of ENIAC paved the way for modern computer technology–but even today’s average calculator possesses more computing power than ENIAC did. John Mauchley and John “Pres” Eckert supervised the project.

1951 – The third A-bomb tests were telecast for the 1st time and completed in the desert of Nevada.

1951 – Alfred Krupp & 28 other German war criminals were freed.

1951 – By a vote of 44 to 7, the United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning the communist government of the People’s Republic of China for acts of aggression in Korea. It was the first time since the United Nations formed in 1945 that it had condemned a nation as an aggressor. In June 1950, communist forces from North Korea invaded South Korea in an attempt to unify the nation, which had been divided in 1945 when Soviet troops occupied the northern portion of the country and U.S. troops the southern in order to accept the surrender of Japanese forces in Korea. In late 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed into North Korea to do battle with U.S. forces, which had earlier driven the invading North Korean forces out of South Korea.

By 1951, the United States was deeply involved in Korea, having committed thousands of troops and millions of dollars in aid to South Korea. The General Assembly vote followed unsuccessful attempts by the U.S. delegation to the United Nations to have the Security Council take action against the Chinese. Exercising his nation’s veto power, the Soviet representative on the Security Council consistently blocked the U.S. effort. (The United States, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Nationalist China had absolute veto power of any Security Council proposal.) Turning to the General Assembly, the U.S. delegation called for the United Nations to condemn communist China as an aggressor in Korea. The final vote fell largely along ideological lines, with the communist bloc nations of the Soviet Union, Byelorussia, Ukraine, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, joined by neutralists Burma and India, voting against the resolution.

Despite the votes against it, the resolution passed, declaring that China was “engaged in aggression in Korea,” and asked that it “cause its forces and nationals in Korea to cease hostilities against the United Nations forces and to withdraw from Korea.” The action was largely symbolic, because many nations-including some that voted for the resolution-were reluctant to take more forceful action against the People’s Republic of China for fear that the conflict in Korea would escalate. While economic and political sanctions could have been brought against China, the United Nations decided to take no further action. The Korean War dragged on for two more bloody years, finally ending in a stalemate and cease-fire in 1953. By that time, over 50,000 U.S. troops had died in the conflict.

1951 – The 23rd Regimental Combat Team, of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, engaged the Chinese Communist Forces in the Battle of the Twin Tunnels, killing an estimated 1,300 Chinese. U.S. casualties included 45 killed, four missing and 207 wounded in action.

1955 – Operation Deep Freeze, a research task force, established in Antarctic.

1959 – Texas Instruments requested a patent for the IC (Integrated Circuit).

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1958 – Elvis Presley records his last single, “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck,” before joining the army. Elvis had topped the charts eight times since April 1956, when “Heartbreak Hotel” hit No. 1. Drafted in 1958, Elvis enlisted in the army in March that year and served until 1960. When he joined the army, his monthly salary dropped from $100,000 to $78. Fortunately, his manager had already recorded enough material to keep Elvis singles on the charts during most of The King’s army service.

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson rejected Charles de Gaulle’s plan for a neutral Vietnam.

1964 – U.S. and South Vietnamese naval forces initiate Operation Plan (Oplan) 34A, which calls for raids by South Vietnamese commandos, operating under American orders, against North Vietnamese coastal and island installations. Although American forces were not directly involved in the actual raids, U.S. Navy ships were on station to conduct electronic surveillance and monitor North Vietnamese defense responses under another program called Operation De Soto. The Oplan 34A attacks played a major role in events that led to what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats, responding to an Oplan 34A attack by South Vietnamese gunboats against the North Vietnamese island of Hon Me, attacked the destroyer USS Maddox which was conducting a De Soto mission in the area.

Two days after the first attack, there was another incident that still remains unclear. The Maddox, joined by destroyer USS C. Turner Joy, engaged what were thought at the time to be more attacking North Vietnamese patrol boats. Although it was questionable whether the second attack actually happened, the incident provided the rationale for retaliatory air attacks against the North Vietnamese and the subsequent Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which became the basis for the initial escalation of the war in Vietnam, and ultimately the insertion of U.S. combat troops into the area.

1967 – Operation Prairie II was begun in Quang Tri province by elements of the 3d Marine Division. During the 46-day search-and-destroy operation which terminated 18 March, 93 Marines and 693 of the enemy were killed.

1968 – U.S. troops drove the North Vietnamese out of Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon.

1968 – South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu declared martial law.

1968 – During the Vietnam War, Saigon’s police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head in a scene captured in a famous news photograph.

1971 – The three astronauts aboard the Apollo XIV overcame a difficult docking problem but faced a critical test to determine whether they could land on the moon.

1979 – The People’s Republic of China opened its 1st two American Consulates in San Francisco and Houston.

1979 – Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran in triumph after 15 years of exile. The shah and his family had fled the country two weeks before, and jubilant Iranian revolutionaries were eager to establish a fundamentalist Islamic government under Khomeini’s leadership. Born around the turn of the century, Ruhollah Khomeini was the son of an Islamic religious scholar and in his youth memorized the Qur’an. He was a Shiite–the branch of Islam practiced by a majority of Iranians–and soon devoted himself to the formal study of Shia Islam in the city of Qom. A devout cleric, he rose steadily in the informal Shiite hierarchy and attracted many disciples.

On November 4, 1979, the 15th anniversary of his exile, students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the staff hostage. With Khomeini’s approval, the radicals demanded the return of the shah to Iran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The shah died in Egypt of cancer in July 1980. In December 1979, a new Iranian constitution was approved, naming Khomeini as Iran’s political and religious leader for life. Under his rule, Iranian women were denied equal rights and required to wear a veil, Western culture was banned, and traditional Islamic law and its often-brutal punishments were reinstated. In suppressing opposition, Khomeini proved as ruthless as the shah, and thousands of political dissidents were executed during his decade of rule. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran’s oil-producing province of Khuzestan. After initial advances, the Iraqi offense was repulsed.

In 1982, Iraq voluntarily withdrew and sought a peace agreement, but Khomeini renewed fighting. Stalemates and the deaths of thousands of young Iranian conscripts in Iraq followed. In 1988, Khomeini finally agreed to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. After the Ayatollah Khomeini died on June 3, 1989, more than two million anguished mourners attended his funeral. Gradual democratization began in Iran in early the 1990s, culminating in a free election in 1997 in which the moderate reformist Mohammed Khatami was elected president.

1984 – President Reagan orders the withdrawal of US Marines from Beirut. They will be fully withdrawn by 26 February.

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1996 – Both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to rewrite the 61-year-old Communications Act, freeing the exploding television, telephone and home computer industries to jump into each other’s fields.

1998 – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls for an increase in the amount of oil Iraq can sell under the U.N.-sponsored oil-for-food program. Annan recommends raising the sales limit from $2.14billion every six months to $5.2 billion.

1998 – Rear Admiral Lillian E. Fishburne becomes the first female African American to be promoted to rear admiral.

1999 – The Morse code SOS was officially retired and replaced by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System.

2000 – US House members voted to strengthen military ties with Taiwan with a 341-70 vote in favor of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act.

2001 – In Ecuador Ronald Clay Sander (54), an oil technician from Missouri, was found shot to death. He had been kidnapped in October and 7 more hostages were still held.

2002 – Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his captors.

2003 – Space shuttle Columbia broke apart in flames over Texas, killing all 7 astronauts just 16 minutes before they were supposed to glide to ground in Florida. The astronauts included Michael P. Anderson (b.1959), David M. Brown (b.1956), Laurel Clark (b.1962), Kalpana Chawla (b.1962), Rick Husband (b.1957), William C. McCool (b.1961) and Ilan Ramon (b.1954). An explosion in the wheel well under the left wing was later suspected as the cause.

2003 – In Colombia leftist guerrillas freed an American photographer and a British reporter.

2012 – The London Times reports that a secret NATO report claims that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, is set to regain control over Afghanistan after international forces withdraw from the country.

2013 – A suicide bombing outside the U.S. embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, kills at least two people.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

HARING, ABRAM P.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company G, 132d New York Infantry. Place and date: At Bachelors Creek, N.C., 1 February 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y., Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 28 June 1890. Citation: With a command of 11 men, on picket, resisted the attack of an overwhelming force of the enemy.

ATKINS, DANIEL
Rank and organization: Ship’s Cook, First Class, U.S. Navy. Born: 1867, Brunswick, Va. Accredited to: Virginia. G.O. No.: 489, 20 May 1898. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Cushing, 11 February 1898. Showing gallant conduct, Atkins attempted to save the life of the late Ens. Joseph C. Breckenridge, U.S. Navy, who fell overboard at sea from that vessel on this date.

STEWART, JAMES A.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 1839, Philadelphia, Pa. Accredited to: Pennsylvania. G.O. No.: 180, 10 October 1872. Citation: Serving on board the U.S.S. Plymouth, Stewart jumped overboard in the harbor of Villefranche, France, 1 February 1872 and saved Midshipman Osterhaus from drowning.

*ANDERSON, RICHARD BEATTY
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 26 June 1921, Tacoma, Wash. Accredited to: Washington. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 4th Marine Division during action against enemy Japanese forces on Roi Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, 1 February 1944. Entering a shell crater occupied by 3 other marines, Pfc. Anderson was preparing to throw a grenade at an enemy position when it slipped from his hands and rolled toward the men at the bottom of the hole. With insufficient time to retrieve the armed weapon and throw it, Pfc. Anderson fearlessly chose to sacrifice himself and save his companions by hurling his body upon the grenade and taking the full impact of the explosion. His personal valor and exceptional spirit of loyalty in the face of almost certain death were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

KNAPPENBERGER, ALTON W.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Cisterna di Littoria, Italy, 1 February 1944. Entered service at: Spring Mount, Pa. Birth: Cooperstown, Pa. G.O. No.: 41, 26 May 1944. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action involving actual conflict with the enemy, on 1 February 1944 near Cisterna di Littoria, Italy. When a heavy German counterattack was launched against his battalion, Pfc. Knappenberger crawled to an exposed knoll and went into position with his automatic rifle. An enemy machinegun 85 yards away opened fire, and bullets struck within 6 inches of him. Rising to a kneeling position, Pfc. Knappenberger opened fire on the hostile crew, knocked out the gun, killed 2 members of the crew, and wounded the third. While he fired at this hostile position, 2 Germans crawled to a point within 20 yards of the knoll and threw potato-masher grenades at him, but Pfc. Knappenberger killed them both with 1 burst from his automatic rifle. Later, a second machinegun opened fire upon his exposed position from a distance of 100 yards, and this weapon also was silenced by his well-aimed shots.

Shortly thereafter, an enemy 20mm. antiaircraft gun directed fire at him, and again Pfc. Knappenberger returned fire to wound 1 member of the hostile crew. Under tank and artillery shellfire, with shells bursting within 15 yards of him, he held his precarious position and fired at all enemy infantrymen armed with machine pistols and machineguns which he could locate. When his ammunition supply became exhausted, he crawled 15 yards forward through steady machinegun fire, removed rifle clips from the belt of a casualty, returned to his position and resumed firing to repel an assaulting German platoon armed with automatic weapons. Finally, his ammunition supply being completely exhausted, he rejoined his company. Pfc. Knappenberger’s intrepid action disrupted the enemy attack for over 2 hours.

*POWER, JOHN VINCENT
Rank and organization. First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 20 November 1918, Worcester, Mass. Appointed from: Massachusetts. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as platoon leader, attached to the 4th Marine Division, during the landing and battle of Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, 1 February 1944. Severely wounded in the stomach while setting a demolition charge on a Japanese pillbox, 1st Lt. Power was steadfast in his determination to remain in action. Protecting his wound with his left hand and firing with his right, he courageously advanced as another hostile position was taken under attack, fiercely charging the opening made by the explosion and emptying his carbine into the pillbox. While attempting to reload and continue the attack, 1st Lt. Power was shot again in the stomach and head and collapsed in the doorway. His exceptional valor, fortitude and indomitable fighting spirit in the face of withering enemy fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

DIX, DREW DENNIS
Rank and Organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, U.S. Senior Advisor Group, IV Corps, Military Assistance Command. Place and date: Chau Doc Province, Republic of Vietnam, 31 January and 1 February 1968. Entered service at: Denver, Colo. Born: 14 December 1944, West Point, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. S/Sgt. Dix distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving as a unit adviser. Two heavily armed Viet Cong battalions attacked the Province capital city of Chau Phu resulting in the complete breakdown and fragmentation of the defenses of the city. S/Sgt. Dix, with a patrol of Vietnamese soldiers, was recalled to assist in the defense of Chau Phu. Learning that a nurse was trapped in a house near the center of the city, S/Sgt. Dix organized a relief force, successfully rescued the nurse, and returned her to the safety of the Tactical Operations Center. Being informed of other trapped civilians within the city, S/Sgt. Dix voluntarily led another force to rescue 8 civilian employees located in a building which was under heavy mortar and small-arms fire. S/Sgt. Dix then returned to the center of the city. Upon approaching a building, he was subjected to intense automatic rifle and machine gun fire from an unknown number of Viet Cong. He personally assaulted the building, killing 6 Viet Cong, and rescuing 2 Filipinos.

The following day S/Sgt. Dix, still on his own volition, assembled a 20-man force and though under intense enemy fire cleared the Viet Cong out of the hotel, theater, and other adjacent buildings within the city. During this portion of the attack, Army Republic of Vietnam soldiers inspired by the heroism and success of S/Sgt. Dix, rallied and commenced firing upon the Viet Cong. S/Sgt. Dix captured 20 prisoners, including a high ranking Viet Cong official. He then attacked enemy troops who had entered the residence of the Deputy Province Chief and was successful in rescuing the official’s wife and children. S/Sgt. Dix’s personal heroic actions resulted in 14 confirmed Viet Cong killed in action and possibly 25 more, the capture of 20 prisoners, 15 weapons, and the rescue of the 14 United States and free world civilians. The heroism of S/Sgt. Dix was in the highest tradition and reflects great credit upon the U.S. Army.

*STEINDAM, RUSSELL A.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Troop B, 3d Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 25th Infantry, Division. Place and date: Tay Ninh Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1 February 1970. Entered service at: Austin, Tex. Born: 27 August 1946, Austin, Tex. Citation: for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. 1st Lt. Steindam, Troop B, while serving as a platoon leader, led members of his platoon on a night ambush operation. On the way to the ambush site, suspected enemy movement was detected on 1 flank and the platoon’s temporary position was subjected to intense small arms and automatic weapons fire as well as a fusillade of hand and rocket-propelled grenades. After the initial barrage, 1st Lt. Steindam ordered fire placed on the enemy position and the wounded men to be moved to a shallow bomb crater.

As he directed the return fire against the enemy from his exposed position, a fragmentation grenade was thrown into the site occupied by his command group. Instantly realizing the extreme gravity of the situation, 1st Lt. Steindam shouted a warning to alert his fellow soldiers in the immediate vicinity. Then, unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his safety, 1st Lt. Steindam deliberately threw himself on the grenade, absorbing the full and fatal force of the explosion as it detonated. By his gallant action and self-sacrifice, he was able to save the lives of the nearby members of his command group. The extraordinary courage and selflessness displayed by 1st Lt. Steindam were an inspiration to his comrades and are in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.

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2 February

1571 – All eight members of a Jesuit mission in Virginia were murdered by Indians who pretended to be their friends.

1653 – New Amsterdam, later New York City, was incorporated.

1800 – USS Constellation (CAPT Thomas Truxtun) defeats la Vengeance. The USS Constellation vs La Vengeance was a single-ship action fought between frigates of the French Navy and the United States Navy during the Quasi-War. The battle resulted in the American frigate USS Constellation severely damaging the French frigate La Vengeance and forcing her to flee. In 1798, an undeclared war had begun between the United States and France due to French seizures of American merchantmen. As part of an American effort to deter French attacks, Commodore Thomas Truxton led an American naval squadron that was dispatched to the Lesser Antilles. Learning that regular French naval forces were in the region, Truxton set out in his flagship Constellation and sailed to Guadeloupe to engage them.

On 1 February, while nearing the French colony, Constellation met François Marie Pitot’s frigate La Vengeance of the French Navy. Despite Pitot’s attempts to flee, his frigate was drawn into a heavy engagement with Constellation. Although the French frigate struck her colors (surrendered) twice, Constellation was unable to take La Vengeance as a prize. Eventually Pitot was able to escape with his frigate to Curaçao, though only after sustaining severe casualties and damage to his vessel. Truxton’s ship sustained light damage and sailed to Jamaica for repairs before returning home to a hero’s welcome.

1803 – Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston is born in Washington, Kentucky. Johnston was considered one of the best Confederate commanders until he was killed at Shiloh, the first major engagement in the west. Johnston grew up in Kentucky and received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in 1822. While there, he became acquainted with Robert E. Lee and future Confederate President Jefferson Davis, two men who shaped Johnston’s career. After graduation, Johnston served in the Black Hawk War of 1832 and resigned from the service in 1834 to care for his invalid wife. After her death, he moved to the new Republic of Texas and enlisted in the army as a private. Within three years he rose to general of the army, then Secretary of War for his adopted country. After Texas was annexed by the United States, Johnston served in the Mexican War and was commended for bravery at the Battle of Monterrey. Johnston retired to his Texas plantation after the war, but he struggled financially. He returned to the service as paymaster for the forts in Texas, and in 1857 was appointed to lead an expedition against members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as the Mormons) in Utah Territory. The Mormons disagreed with the government on issues of the territory’s governance, and some officials thought a rebellion was in the making. Johnston arrived and found no opposition, and he spent the next three years occupying the territory.

When the Civil War erupted, Davis appointed Johnston commander of the Confederate department that stretched from the Appalachians to Texas. On April 6, 1862, Johnston attacked General Ulysses S. Grant’s army at Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee (Shiloh). The Confederates enjoyed great success initially. Grant’s army was surprised and nearly destroyed until the afternoon, when Johnston rode forward to supervise the battle. He was mortally wounded, and the tide turned against the Confederates. The armies struggled into the next day but the Union held the field. Johnston and Union General James McPherson were the only two army commanders killed in action during the Civil War. Johnston’s death left a void in the leadership of the western armies that was never effectively filled.

1812– Staking a tenuous claim to the riches of the Far West, Russians establish Fort Ross on the coast north of San Francisco. As a growing empire with a long Pacific coastline, Russia was in many ways well positioned to play a leading role in the settlement and development of the West. The Russians had begun their expansion into the North American continent in 1741 with a massive scientific expedition to Alaska. Returning with news of abundant sea otters, the explorers inspired Russian investment in the Alaskan fur trade and some permanent settlement. By the early 19th century, the semi-governmental Russian-American Company was actively competing with British and American fur-trading interests as far south as the shores of Spanish-controlled California. Russia’s Alaskan colonists found it difficult to produce their own food because of the short growing season of the far north. Officials of the Russian-American Company reasoned that a permanent settlement along the more temperate shores of California could serve both as a source of food and a base for exploiting the abundant sea otters in the region. To that end, a large party of Russians and Aleuts sailed for California where they established Fort Ross (short for Russia) on the coast north of San Francisco. Fort Ross, though, proved unable to fulfill either of its expected functions for very long.

By the 1820s, the once plentiful sea otters in the region had been hunted almost to extinction. Likewise, the colonists’ attempts at farming proved disappointing, because the cool foggy summers along the coast made it difficult to grow the desired fruits and grains. Potatoes thrived, but they could be grown just as easily in Alaska. At the same time, the Russians were increasingly coming into conflict with the Mexicans and the growing numbers of Americans settling in the region. Disappointed with the commercial potential of the Fort Ross settlement and realizing they had no realistic chance of making a political claim for the region, the Russians decided to sell out. After making unsuccessful attempts to interest both the British and Mexicans in the fort, the Russians finally found a buyer in John Sutter. An American emigrant to California, Sutter bought Fort Ross in 1841 with an unsecured note for $30,000 that he never paid. He cannibalized the fort to provide supplies for his colony in the Sacramento Valley where, seven years later, a chance discovery ignited the California Gold Rush.

1827 – In the case Martin v. Mott, the Supreme Court finds that constitutionally, the President alone has the final power to determine whether the state militia should be mobilized in the national interest.

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1848 – US and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo (now a neighborhood of Mexico City) between the U.S. and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–48). With the defeat of its army and the fall of the capital, Mexico entered into negotiations to end the war. The treaty called for the United States to pay $15 million to Mexico and pay off the claims of American citizens against Mexico up to $3.25 million. It gave the United States the Rio Grande boundary for Texas, and gave the U.S. ownership of California, and a large area comprising New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. Mexicans in those annexed areas had the choice of relocating to within Mexico’s new boundaries or of receiving American citizenship with full civil rights. Over 90% chose the latter. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 38–14. The opponents of this treaty were led by the Whigs, who had opposed the war and rejected Manifest Destiny in general, and rejected this expansion in particular.

1861 – U.S. Revenue Schooner Henry Dodge, First Lieutenant William F. Rogers, USRM, was seized at Galveston, as Texas joined the Confederacy.

1862 – USS Hartford, Capt David G. Farragut, departs Hampton Roads for Mississippi River campaign.

1864 – Early in the morning, a Confederate boat expedition planned and boldly led by Commander John Taylor Wood, CSN, captured and destroyed 4-gun side wheel steamer U.S.S. Underwriter, Acting Master Jacob Westervelt, anchored in the Neuse River near New Bern, North Carolina. The boats had been shipped by rail from Petersburg, Virginia, to Kinston, North Carolina, and from there started down the Neuse. Wood, grandson of President Taylor and nephew of Jefferson Davis, silently approached Underwriter about 2:30 a.m. and was within 100 yards of the gunboat before the boats were sighted. Underwriter’s guns could not be brought to bear in time, and the Confederates quickly boarded and took her in hand-to-hand combat, during which Westervelt was killed.

Unable to move Underwriter because she did not have steam up, Wood destroyed her while under the fire of nearby Union batteries. He later wrote Colonel Lloyd J. Beall, Commandant of the Confederate Marine Corps, commending the Marines who had taken part in the expedition: “Though their duties were more arduous than those of the others, they were always prompt and ready for the performance of all they were called upon to do. As a body they would be a credit to any organization, and I will be glad to be associated with them on duty at any time.” Lieutenant George W. Gift, CSN, who took part in what Secretary Mallory termed “this brilliant exploit,” remarked: “I am all admiration for Wood. He is modesty personified, conceives boldly and executes with skill and courage.

1864 – Confederate raider William Quantrill and his bushwackers robbed citizens, burned a railroad depot and stole horses from Midway, Kentucky.

1887 – People began gathering at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., to witness the groundhog’s search for its shadow.

1901 – The US Army Dental Corps is established.

1916 – U.S. Senate voted independence for Philippines, effective in 1921.

1921 – Airmail service opened between New York and San Francisco.

1932 – A few weeks after receiving a green light from the House, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) opened its doors for business. Initially equipped with $500 million, as well as license to borrow up to $2 billion in tax exempt bonds, the RFC was charged with doling out loans to banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that stood to spark the nation’s ravaged economy. Under the charge of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the RFC became a bulwark of the New Deal. And, when America made its entrance into World War II, the agency helped fund the country’s blossoming military industry. However, a government probe in 1951 revealed that the agency was awash in corruption. The revelation signaled the downfall of the RFC: the government quickly set to redistributing the agency’s powers and, by 1957 the RFC was forced into shut its doors.

1932 – A World Disarmament Conference is held in Geneva, Switzerland, sponsored by the League of Nations. While not formally belonging to the League, the US sends delegates. In the end, nothing comes of it.

1933 – Adolf Hitler dissolved Parliament 2 days after becoming chancellor.

1942 – A Los Angeles Times column urged security measures against Japanese-Americans, arguing that a Japanese-American “almost inevitably … grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.”

1943 – On Guadalcanal the American coastal advance crosses the Bonegi River.

1944 – Allied attacks around Anzio end. They have suffered high losses without significant success. Defending German forces, however, have had to postpone counterattacks planned to begin today because of their own losses.

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1944 – The 4th Marine Division, as part of the first assault on islands controlled by the Japanese before the start of World War II, captured Namur and eight other islands in the Kwajalein Atoll. Almost all of the 3700 Japanese defenders on these islands have been killed. American casualties number 740 killed and wounded. Japanese forces on Kwajalein continue to resist.

1945 – President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed Malta for the Yalta summit with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1945 – US 1st Army units are attacking near Remscheid. British forces mount attacks over the Maas, north of Breda and near Nijmegen to put pressure on the Germans.

1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).

1949 – In response to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s proposal that President Harry S. Truman travel to Russia for a conference, Secretary of State Dean Acheson brusquely rejects the idea as a “political maneuver.” This rather curious exchange was further evidence of the diplomatic sparring between the United States and the Soviet Union that was so characteristic of the early years of the Cold War. Stalin broached the idea of Truman traveling to the Soviet Union, or perhaps to Poland or Czechoslovakia, during a statement in which he indicated that his health prohibited him from coming to the United States to meet his American counterpart. Stalin’s agenda for such a meeting was sketchy, beyond a general call for a declaration by each nation that it would not resort to war in dealing with the other. Secretary Acheson stated that he found this idea “puzzling,” arguing that treaty commitments and adherence to the United Nations Charter already excluded war between the two powers.

Furthermore, without a more concrete agenda, Acheson was reluctant to commit the United States to any one-on-one negotiations with the Soviet Union. In any case, the secretary concluded, President Truman was not willing to go “halfway around the world” to meet with the Soviet leader. Acheson also indicated his disappointment that any nation would “play international politics” with an issue as important as world peace. Stalin’s vague proposal and Acheson’s blistering response were typical of the constant war of words that took place between the Soviet Union and the United States during the late-1940s and all during the 1950s. The verbal sparring illustrated the lack of trust on both sides and the failure to locate any foundation for diplomatic negotiations. Although relations between the two nations warmed slightly during the 1960s and 1970s, the war of rhetoric continued unabated.

1951 – The French Battalion, attached to the 2nd Infantry Division’s 23rd Infantry Regimental Combat Team, met the communist counterattack and stabilized the U.N. position north of Yoju.

1951 – The minesweeper USS Partridge hit a mine off Sokcho, just north of the 38th parallel, and sank within 10 minutes with a loss of 10 killed or missing and six severely wounded.

1954 – President Eisenhower reported the 1952 detonation of 1st Hydrogen bomb.

1962 – The first U.S. Air Force plane is lost in South Vietnam. The C-123 aircraft crashed while spraying defoliant on a Viet Cong ambush site. The aircraft was part of Operation Ranch Hand, a technological area-denial technique designed to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong. U.S. personnel dumped an estimated 19 million gallons of defoliating herbicides over 10-20 percent of Vietnam and parts of Laos from 1962 to 1971. Agent Orange–so named from the color of its metal containers–was the most frequently used. The operation succeeded in killing vegetation but not in stopping the Viet Cong.

The use of these agents was controversial, both during and after the war, because of questions about long-term ecological impacts and the effect on humans who handled or were sprayed by the chemicals. Beginning in the late 1970s, Vietnam veterans began to cite the herbicides, especially Agent Orange, as the cause of health problems ranging from skin rashes to cancer and birth defects in their children. Similar problems, including an abnormally high incidence of miscarriages and congenital malformations, have been reported among the Vietnamese people who lived in the areas where the defoliate agents were used.

1964 – G.I. Joe debuted as a popular American toy.

1971 – The Apollo XIV astronauts confirmed that they would attempt a lunar landing.

1974 – The F-16 Fighting Falcon flies for the first time. The General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft. Over 4,500 aircraft have been built since production was approved. Although no longer being purchased by the U.S. Air Force, improved versions are still being built for export customers. The Fighting Falcon has key features including a frameless bubble canopy for better visibility, side-mounted control stick to ease control while maneuvering, a seat reclined 30 degrees to reduce the effect of G-forces on the pilot, and the first use of a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire flight control system helps to make it a nimble aircraft.

The F-16 has an internal M61 Vulcan cannon and 11 locations for mounting weapons and other mission equipment. The F-16’s official name is “Fighting Falcon”, but “Viper” is commonly used by its pilots, due to a perceived resemblance to a viper snake as well as the Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper starfighter. In addition to active duty U.S. Air Force, Air Force Reserve Command, and Air National Guard units, the aircraft is also used by the USAF aerial demonstration team, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, and as an adversary/aggressor aircraft by the United States Navy. The F-16 has also been procured to serve in the air forces of 25 other nations.

1977 – Radio Shack officially began creating the TRS-80 computer.

1980 – Details of ABSCAM, an FBI operation to uncover political corruption in the government, are released to the public. Thirty-one public officials were targeted for investigation, including Representative John Murphy of New York, five other representatives, and Harrison Williams, a Republican senator of New Jersey. In the operation, FBI agents posed as representatives of Abdul Enterprises, Ltd., a fictional business owned by an Arab sheik. Under FBI video surveillance, the agents met with the officials and offered them money or other considerations in exchange for special favors, such as the approval of government contracts for companies in which the sheik had invested. Senator Williams, and Representatives Murphy, Michael J. Myers, Richard Kelly, and John W. Jenrette Jr., were ultimately convicted of bribery and corruption. All but Richard Kelly, who had his conviction overturned in 1982 on the basis that the FBI had unlawfully entrapped him, left Congress. John Murphy, whose term ended in 1981, was saved the fate of expulsion suffered by Williams and Myers. John Jenrette resigned in 1980.

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1988 – In a speech that three major television networks declined to broadcast live, President Reagan pressed his case for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989 – The last Soviet armored column leaves Kabul.

1992 – The U.S. Coast Guard shipped home 250 more Haitian refugees from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, a day after repatriating a shipload of about 150 Haitians.

1994 – High Level Technical Talks in Baghdad. Fourth round of talks between IAEA, UNSCOM & Iraq.

1998 – UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan recommended that the Security Council more than double the amount of oil Iraq is allowed to sell.

1998 – Russia announced that an envoy in Baghdad received concessions from Saddam Hussein on UN weapons inspections. US Sec. Albright failed to get permission from Saudi Arabia for US use of air bases to launch air strikes against Iraq. France, Turkey, Jordan, the Arab League and Yasser Arafat said they would send envoys to Baghdad to avert a possible US military strike.

1999 – In Iraq US pilots operated under broader rules of attack and targeted a newly assembled missile site.

2002 – The Bush administration approved a $700 million grant to help rebuild lower Manhattan devastated by the September 11th terrorist attacks.

2002 – In Pakistan police arrested 2 people in Karachi linked to the Jan 23 kidnapping of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

2004 – A white powder containing Ricin, a deadly poison, was discovered in a mail room near the office of US Senate majority leader Bill Frist.

2004 – Pakistan said Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of its nuclear program, has acknowledged in a written statement that he sent sensitive technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea to aid their atomic programs.

2005 – A former secret U.S. military investigative report on Guantanamo Bay is revealed to conclude there is no evidence of systemic detainee abuse but cited several cases of questionable physical force documented on videotape.

2006 – Venezuela expelled U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Correa, a military attaché at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, on suspicion of espionage.

2011 – NASA’s Kepler Mission announces the discovery of a planetary system of six planets circulating the star Kepler-11.

2013 – Former United States Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and another man are killed at a shooting range near Glen Rose, Somervell County, Texas.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

JEWETT, ERASTUS W.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company A, 9th Vermont Infantry. Place and date: At Newport Barracks, N.C., 2 February 1864. Entered service at: St. Albans, Vt. Birth: St. Albans, Vt. Date of issue: 8 September 1891. Citation: By long and persistent resistance and burning the bridges kept a superior force of the enemy at a distance and thus covered the retreat of the garrison.

LIVINGSTON, JOSIAH O.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, and Adjutant, 9th Vermont Infantry. Place and date: At Newport Barracks, N.C., 2 February 1864. Entered service at: Marshfield, Vt. Birth: Walden, Vt. Date of issue: 8 September 1891. Citation: When, after desperate res1stance, the small garrison had been driven back to the river by a vastly superior force, this officer, while a small force held back the enemy, personally fired the railroad bridge, and, although wounded himself, ass1sted a wounded officer over the burning structure.

PECK, THEODORE S.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company H, 9th Vermont Infantry. Place and date: At Newport Barracks, N.C., 2 February 1864. Entered service at: Burlington, Vt. Birth: Burlington, Vt. Date of issue: 8 September 1891. Citation: By long and persistent resistance and burning the bridges, kept a superior force of the enemy at bay and covered the retreat of the garrison.

*HUTCHINS, CARLTON BARMORE
Rank and organization: Lieutenant, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Off California Coast, 2 February 1938. Born: 12 September 1904, Albany, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. Citation: For extraordinary heroism as the pilot of the U.S. Navy Seaplane PBY-2 No. 0463 (11-P-3) while engaged in tactical exercises with the U.S. Fleet on 2 February 1938. Although his plane was badly damaged, Lt. Hutchins remained at the controls endeavoring to bring the damaged plane to a safe landing and to afford an opportunity for his crew to escape by parachutes. His cool, calculated conduct contributed principally to the saving of the lives of all who survived. His conduct on this occasion was above and beyond the call of duty.

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*DYESS, AQUILLA JAMES
Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 11 January 1909, Augusta, Ga. Appointed from: Georgia. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines (Rein), 4th Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces during the assault on Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, 1 and 2 February 1944. Undaunted by severe fire from automatic Japanese weapons, Lt. Col. Dyess launched a powerful final attack on the second day of the assault, unhesitatingly posting himself between the opposing lines to point out objectives and avenues of approach and personally leading the advancing troops. Alert, and determined to quicken the pace of the offensive against increased enemy fire, he was constantly at the head of advance units, inspiring his men to push forward until the Japanese had been driven back to a small center of resistance and victory assured. While standing on the parapet of an antitank trench directing a group of infantry in a flanking attack against the last enemy position, Lt. Col. Dyess was killed by a burst of enemy machinegun fire. His daring and forceful leadership and his valiant fighting spirit in the face of terrific opposition were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

*KNIGHT, JACK L.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 124th Cavalry Regiment, Mars Task Force. Place and date: Near LoiKang, Burma, 2 February 1945. Entered service at: Weatherford, Tex. Birth: Garner, Tex. G.O. No.: 44, 6 June 1945. Citation: He led his cavalry troop against heavy concentrations of enemy mortar, artillery, and small arms fire. After taking the troop’s objective and while making preparations for a defense, he discovered a nest of Japanese pillboxes and foxholes to the right front. Preceding his men by at least 10 feet, he immediately led an attack Single-handedly he knocked out 2 enemy pillboxes and killed the occupants of several foxholes. While attempting to knock out a third pillbox, he was struck and blinded by an enemy grenade. Although unable to see, he rallied his platoon and continued forward in the assault on the remaining pillboxes. Before the task was completed he fell mortally wounded. 1st Lt. Knight’s gallantry and intrepidity were responsible for the successful elimination of most of the Jap positions and served as an inspiration to officers and men of his troop.

SORENSON, RICHARD KEITH
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, 4th Marine Division. Place and date: Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll Marshall Islands, 1 -2 February 1944. Entered service at: Minnesota. Born: 28 August 1924, Anoka, Minn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with an assault battalion attached to the 4th Marine Division during the battle of Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, on 1-2 February 1944. Putting up a brave defense against a particularly violent counterattack by the enemy during invasion operations, Pvt. Sorenson and 5 other marines occupying a shellhole were endangered by a Japanese grenade thrown into their midst. Unhesitatingly, and with complete disregard for his own safety, Pvt. Sorenson hurled himself upon the deadly weapon, heroically taking the full impact of the explosion. As a result of his gallant action, he was severely wounded, but the lives of his comrades were saved. His great personal valor and exceptional spirit of self-sacrifice in the face of almost certain death were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*MAXAM, LARRY LEONARD
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps, Company D, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, 3d Marine Division (Rein), FMF. place and date: Cam Lo District, Quang Tri province, Republic of Vietnam, 2 February 1968. Entered service at: Los Angeles, Calif. Born: 9 January 1948, Glendale, Calif. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a fire team leader with Company D. The Cam Lo District Headquarters came under extremely heavy rocket, artillery, mortar, and recoilless rifle fire from a numerically superior enemy force, destroying a portion of the defensive perimeter. Cpl. Maxam, observing the enemy massing for an assault into the compound across the remaining defensive wire, instructed his assistant fire team leader to take charge of the fire team, and unhesitatingly proceeded to the weakened section of the perimeter. Completely exposed to the concentrated enemy fire, he sustained multiple fragmentation wounds from exploding grenades as he ran to an abandoned machine gun position. Reaching the emplacement, he grasped the machine gun and commenced to deliver effective fire on the advancing enemy. As the enemy directed maximum firepower against the determined marine, Cpl. Maxam’s position received a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade, knocking him backwards and inflicting severe fragmentation wounds to his face and right eye. Although momentarily stunned and in intense pain, Cpl. Maxam courageously resumed his firing position and subsequently was struck again by small-arms fire.

With resolute determination, he gallantly continued to deliver intense machine gun fire, causing the enemy to retreat through the defensive wire to positions of cover. In a desperate attempt to silence his weapon, the North Vietnamese threw hand grenades and directed recoilless rifle fire against him inflicting 2 additional wounds. Too weak to reload his machine gun, Cpl. Maxam fell to a prone position and valiantly continued to deliver effective fire with his rifle. After 11/2 hours, during which he was hit repeatedly by fragments from exploding grenades and concentrated small-arms fire, he succumbed to his wounds, having successfully defended nearly half of the perimeter single-handedly. Cpl. Maxam’s aggressive fighting spirit, inspiring valor and selfless devotion to duty reflected great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps and upheld the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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3 February

1690 – Massachusetts authorized the first official paper currency to be ever used in the Western Hemisphere. Until 1690, the North American colonies had dealt primarily in coinage. Silver and gold were rather rare, so colonists generally used unofficial coins, or “decrepit coppers.” Boston-based silversmiths John Hull and Robert Sanderson did operate their own mint between 1652 and 1682, issuing silver shillings and three and sixpence pieces, but save for a few ill-fated experiments, paper money was hardly tried or used. Faced with an immediate need to pay expenses relating to a military action against Canada during King William’s War, on December 10, 1690 the General Court authorized the issuing of £7,000 in public paper currency. This was the first public paper money issued in the history of Western civilization. Previously all currency had an intrinsic value of gold, silver or copper, much like the value of commodity items used for bartering. Now for the first time, the money itself had no intrinsic value other than the value of the paper on which it was printed. Rather, the value of the money came from the fact that it was backed by the colony. It was legislated as being equivalent to the denomination printed on the bill and would be accepted as the equivalent of hard currency by the colony.

Within a few months it was further legislated that the paper money would be accepted by the government for tax payments at a 5% premium and that on demand bills could be turned into the treasury for the equivalent in hard currency, if the colony had such hard currency available. At first Massachusetts notes were accepted at par with specie, which was predominately the Spanish American silver 8 reales, called a Spanish “dollar” by the colonists. In Massachusetts the Spanish dollar was valued at 6 shillings. In 1690 for every 6s of paper money one could obtain a Spanish silver dollar. As more paper money was put into circulation individuals would no longer accept the paper as equal to specie. Thus began the usual problem of paper currency, or fiat money, inflation, and the usual response, revaluation, and all in response to the usual cause, the need to pay for a war. By 1737 so much paper money was in circulation it took 22s6d in paper money to equal a Spanish dollar. To rectify this problem the Commonwealth decided to revalue its paper money. Starting with the issue of February 4, 1737 Massachusetts introduced a new series of notes, called New Tenor money, that was legislated to have three times the value of equivalent denomination notes from earlier emissions.

However, as more notes were printed inflation continued and the value of both types of notes continued to drop. Once again, another adjustment to the currency was legislated. For the issue of January 15, 1742 the notes were to have four times the value of equivalent denomination notes from Old Tenor emissions. At this time the emissions from 1737-1740 became known as Middle Tenor or Three Fold Tenor, while the 1742 and later emissions became known as New Tenor (or four fold Tenor). In effect Massachusetts had three different types of currency circulating at once; in 1742 a Spanish dollar was valued at 24s9d in Old Tenor bills, 8s3ds in Middle Tenor bills or 6s2d in New Tenor notes.

Unfortunately inflation continued so that by 1749 a Spanish dollar was valued at 45s in Old tenor bills, 15s in Middle tenor bills or 11s3d in New Tenor notes. As individuals might make a purchase using all three varieties it was essential for merchants to know the current inflation rates and to keep a conversion chart handy (various charts were printed for this purpose)! The real resolution finally came in 1751 with the mandatory redemption of all notes and a return to hard money. There would be no further emission of paper in Massachusetts until the “Soldier’s notes” emission of May 25, 1775 printed by Paul Revere to pay the soldiers who were soon to fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 16th.

1779 – Colonial forces lead by General William Moultrie successfully defend Port Royal, South Carolina, against a British attack. The British approached and tried to force the Americans to leave Beaufort, Moultrie was waiting with 300 militia, 20 Continentals, and 3 cannon. The Americans repulsed their attack in less than an hour. The Americans had to fight in the open while the British had some cover from the woods. The Americans knocked out one of the British guns and erased the British advantage early in the battle. The Americans had run out of ammunition and Moultrie ordered a retreat. At the same time, he learned that the British were also retreating. He then countermanded his retreat order and told his mounted troops to advance upon the retreating British. The British were able to escape by boat to Savannah and Moultrie moved his force south to rejoin General Benjamin Lincoln. British losses were heavy and they soon retreated to their ships. The American victory discouraged the British Army from taking any further action into South Carolina for 3 months.

1781 – In furtherance of a blockade during the American War of Independence, British forces seize the island Sint Eustatius. British army and naval forces under General John Vaughan and Admiral George Rodney seized the Dutch-owned Caribbean island. The capture was controversial in Britain, as it was alleged that Vaughan and Rodney had used the opportunity to enrich themselves and had neglected more important military duties. The island was subsequently taken by Dutch-allied French forces in late 1781, ending the British occupation.

1783 – Spain recognizes the independence of the United States. Sweden and Denmark will follow before the end of the month and Russia will recognize the new nation in July.

1801 – Treaty of peace with France ratified ending Quasi-War with France, in which the Revenue Marine had rendered outstanding service.

1809 – The Territory of Illinois was created from organized incorporated territory of the United States. The territory existed as such until December 3, 1818, when the southern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Illinois. Its capital was the former French village of Kaskakia. The area was earlier known as “Illinois Country” while under French control, first as part of French Canada and then as part of French Louisiana. The British gained authority over the region with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, marking the end of the French and Indian War. During the American Revolutionary War, Colonel George Rogers Clark took possession of the entire Illinois Country for Virginia, which established the “County of Illinois” to exercise nominal governance over the area. Virginia later ceded nearly all of its claims to land north of the Ohio River to the Federal government of the United States in order to satisfy objections of land-locked states. The area became part of the United States’ Northwest Territory (from July 13, 1787 until July 4, 1800), and then part of the Indiana Territory as Ohio prepared to become a state.

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1811 – Horace Greeley, abolitionist newspaper editor, was born in Amherst, New Hampshire. He popularized the phrase “Go west, young man.” Greeley, who began his journalism career at The New Yorker, founded The New York Tribune in 1841 with support from powerful political friends. Under Greeley’s direction, The Tribune took a strong stand against slavery, the South and slave owners in the years leading up to the Civil War. The Tribune and Greeley also crusaded against liquor, gambling, prostitution and capital punishment. One of the founders of the Republican Party, Greeley was also an eccentric who dabbled in many of the fads of his day. The phrase was spoken to Josiah Grinell, who went west to Iowa, became a Congregational minister and founded Grinell College.

1852 – Marines landed at Buenos Aires, Argentina, to protect American lives.

1863 – U.S.S. Lexington, Fairplay, St. Clair, Brilliant, Robb, and Silver Lake, under Lieutenant Commander Fitch, supported Army troops at Fort Donelson and repulsed a Confederate attack at that point. Proceeding up the Cumberland River on convoy duty from Smithfield, Kentucky, Fitch’s squadron met steamer Wild Cat coming down river some 24 miles below Dover, Tennessee, bearing a mes-sage from Colonel Abner C. Harding, commanding at Donelson, which reported that he was being assaulted in force by Confederate troops. Fitch pushed his squadron “on up with all possible speed” and arrived in the evening to find the defending troops “out of ammunition and entirely surrounded by the rebels in overwhelming numbers, but still holding them in check.” Not expecting the presence of the gunboats, the Confederates had taken a position which enabled the mobile force afloat to rake them effectively with a telling fire from the guns. “The rebels were so much taken by surprise,” Fitch reported, “that they did not even fire a shot, but immediately commenced retreating. So well directed was our fire on them that they could not even carry off a caisson that they had captured from our forces, but were compelled to abandon it, after two fruitless attempts to destroy it by fire.” Fitch then stationed his vessels to prevent the return of the Southern forces.

1863 – The long, tortuous Army-Navy operation against Fort Pemberton at Greenwood, Mississippi, was begun with the opening of the levee at Yazoo Pass to gain access to the Yazoo River above Haynes’ Bluff and reach Vicksburg from the rear. The next day Acting Master G. W. Brown, of U.S.S. Forest Rose, which was standing by to enter the opening, reported that “the water is gushing through at a terrible rate. . . . After cutting two ditches through and ready for the water, we placed a can of powder (so pounds) under the dam, which I touched off by means of three mortar fuzes joined together. It blew up immense quantities of earth, opening a passage for the water, and loosened the bottom so that the water washed it out very fast. We then sunk three more shafts, one in the entrance of the other ditch, and the other two on each side of the mound between the two ditches, and set them off simultaneously, completely shattering the mound and opening a passage through the ditch. . . . [creating] a channel 70 or 75 yards wide. It is thought that it will be at least four or five days before we can enter.” The plan of attack called for gunboats and Army transports to go through the Pass into Moon Lake, down the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers to the Yazoo, take Pemberton, effect the capture of Yazoo City, and proceed down to assault Vicksburg on its less strongly defended rear flanks.

1864 – U.S.S. Petrel, Marmora, Exchange, and Romeo, under Lieutenant Commander Owen, silenced Confederate batteries at Liverpool, Mississippi, on the Yazoo River, as naval forces began an expedition to prevent Southerners from harassing Major General W. T. Sherman’s expedition to Meridian, Mississippi. In the next two weeks, Owen’s light-draft gunboats pushed up the Yazoo Rivet as far as Greenwood, Mississippi, engaging Confederate troops en route. Confederates destroyed steamer Sharp to prevent her capture before the Union naval force turned back. ‘This move,” Rear Admiral Porter later reported to Secretary Welles,” has had the effect of driving the guerrillas away from the Mississippi River, as they are fearful it is intended to cut them off.”

1865 – President Lincoln meets with a delegation of Confederate officials to discuss a possible peace agreement. Lincoln refuses to grant the delegation any concessions, and the president departs for the north. New York Tribune editor and abolitionist Horace Greeley provided the impetus for the conference when he contacted Francis Blair, a Maryland aristocrat and presidential adviser. Greeley suggested that Blair was the “right man” to open discussions with the Confederates to end the war. Blair sought permission from Lincoln to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and he did so twice in January 1865. Blair suggested to Davis that an armistice be forged and the two sides turn their attention to removing the French-supported regime of Maximilian in Mexico. This plan would help cool tensions between North and South by providing a common enemy, he believed. Meanwhile, the situation was becoming progressively worse for the Confederates in the winter of 1864 and 1865.

In January, Union troops captured Fort Fisher and effectively closed Wilmington, North Carolina, the last major port open to blockade runners. Davis conferred with his vice president, Alexander Stephens, and Stephens recommended that a peace commission be appointed to explore a possible armistice. Davis sent Stephens and two others to meet with Lincoln at Hampton Roads, Virginia. The meeting convened on February 3. Stephens asked if there was any way to stop the war and Lincoln replied that the only way was “for those who were resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance.”

The delegation underestimated Lincoln’s resolve to make the end of slavery a necessary condition for any peace. The president also insisted on immediate reunification and the laying down of Confederate arms before anything else was discussed. In short, the Union was in such an advantageous position that Lincoln did not need to concede any issues to the Confederates. Robert M.T. Hunter, one of the delegation, commented that Lincoln was offering little except the unconditional surrender of the South. After less than five hours, the conference ended and the delegation left with no concessions. The war continued for more than two months.

1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to citizens regardless of race. The third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.

1887 – US Congress created the Electoral Count Act to avoid disputed national elections.

1904 – Colombian troops clashed with U.S. Marines in Panama.

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1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment, which authorized the federal income tax, was ratified, just a month before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as president. The notion of an income tax, though perhaps not palatable to all Americans, was hardly a novelty. The U.S. government levied an income tax during the Civil War, and although it was allowed to lapse after the war, it was deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1881. In 1894, legislators went after the tax again and passed a graduated income tax as part of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act. This time, however, the high court reversed course and deemed the tax unconstitutional on the grounds that the legislation, rather than providing for the redistribution of funds to the states, focused narrowly on one portion of the country.

Undeterred, pro-tax forces drafted and gained passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1909. The government was not shy about deploying the Sixteenth Amendment and implemented the first graduated income tax later in the same year as part of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act. Underwood-Simmons, one of Wilson’s key early initiatives, slashed import duties as a means of promoting free trade and boosting the nation’s industrial efforts. In turn, the tax was viewed as a necessary means of recouping some of the funds that the government would lose as a result of the tariff reform.

1917 – The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. A German submarine sank the U.S. liner Housatonic off coast of Sicily.

1919 – League of Nations held its 1st meeting in Paris.

1920 – The Allies demanded that 890 German military leaders stand trial for war crimes.

1924 – Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, dies in Washington, D.C., at the age of 67. In 1912, Governor Wilson of New Jersey was elected president in a landslide Democratic victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The focal point of President Wilson’s first term in office was the outbreak of World War I and his efforts to find a peaceful end to the conflict while maintaining U.S. neutrality. In 1916, he was narrowly reelected president at the end of a close race against Charles Evans Hughes, his Republican challenger. In 1917, the renewal of German submarine warfare against neutral American ships, and the “Zimmerman Note,” which revealed a secret alliance proposal by Germany to Mexico, forced Wilson to push for America’s entry into the war. At the war’s end, President Wilson traveled to France, where he headed the American delegation to the peace conference seeking an official end to the conflict.

At Versailles, Wilson was the only Allied leader who foresaw the future difficulty that might arise from forcing punitive peace terms on an economically ruined Germany. He also successfully advocated the creation of the League of Nations as a means of maintaining peace in the postwar world. In November 1920, President Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at Versailles. In the autumn of 1919, while campaigning in the United States to win approval for the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations, Wilson suffered a severe stroke that paralyzed his left side and caused significant brain damage. This illness likely contributed to Wilson’s uncharacteristic failure to reach a compromise with the American opponents to the European agreements, and in November the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or the League of Nations.

During his last year in office, there is evidence that Wilson’s second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, may have served as acting president for the debilitated and bed-ridden president who often communicated through her. In March 1921, Wilson’s term expired, and he retired with his wife to Washington, D.C., where he lived until his death on February 3, 1924. Two days later, he was buried in Washington’s National Cathedral, the first president to be laid to rest in the nation’s capital.

1943 – On Guadalcanal the Americans consolidate their front running inland from Tassafaronga. US patrols penetrate much closer to Cape Esperance.

1943 – The U.S. transport ship “Dorchester,” which was carrying troops to Greenland, sank after being hit by a torpedo. Four Army chaplains gave their life belts to four other men, and went down with the ship. The torpedoing of the transport Dorchester off the coast of Greenland saw CGC Comanche and Escanaba respond. The crew of Escanaba used a new rescue technique when pulling survivors from the water. This “retriever” technique used swimmers clad in wet suits to swim to victims in the water and secure a line to them so they could be hauled onto the ship. Although Escanaba saved 133 men (one died later) and Comanche saved 97, over 600 men were lost, including the famous “Four Chaplains”.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German forces commanded by General Mackensen begin limited attacks against the British 1st Division salient around Campoleone. To the south, the New Zealand Corps (General Freyberg) joins the US 5th Army order of battle. It is being deployed near Cassino.

1944 – American forces invade and take control of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations. The Marshalls, east of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the “Japanese Mandated Islands” as determined by the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles, which concluded the First World War, stipulated certain islands formerly controlled by Germany–including the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas (except Guam)–had to be ceded to the Japanese, though “overseen” by the League. But the Japanese withdrew from the League in 1933 and began transforming the Mandated Islands into military bases. Non-Japanese, including Christian missionaries, were kept from the islands as naval and air bases–meant to threaten shipping lanes between Australia and Hawaii–were constructed.

During the Second World War, these islands, as well as others in the vicinity, became targets of Allied attacks. The U.S. Central Pacific Campaign began with the Gilbert Islands, south of the Mandated Islands; U.S. forces conquered the Gilberts in November 1943. Next on the agenda was Operation Flintlock, a plan to capture the Marshall Islands. Adm. Raymond Spruance led the 5th Fleet from Pearl Harbor on January 22, 1944, to the Marshalls, with the goal of getting 53,000 assault troops ashore two islets: Roi and Namur. Meanwhile, using the Gilberts as an air base, American planes bombed the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, which was located on Kwajalein, an atoll that was part of the Marshall cluster of atolls, islets, and reefs. By January 31, Kwajalein was devastated. Repeated carrier- and land-based air raids destroyed every Japanese airplane on the Marshalls. By February 3, U.S. infantry overran Roi and Namur atolls. The Marshalls were then effectively in American hands–with the loss of only 400 American lives.

1944 – General George C. Marshall, in a memorandum to President Roosevelt dated February 3, 1944, wrote: ‘The fact that the ground troops, Infantry in particular, lead miserable lives of extreme discomfort and are the ones who must close in personal combat with the enemy, makes the maintenance of their morale of great importance. The award of the Air Medal have had an adverse reaction on the ground troops, particularly the Infantry Riflemen who are now suffering the heaviest losses, air or ground, in the Army, and enduring the greatest hardships.’ The Air Medal had been adopted two years earlier to raise airmen’s morale.

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1945 – French and American units complete the capture of Colmar. All formations of French 1st Army are now making good progress in this sector. The other Allied armies keep up the pressure on the Germans all along the front.

1945 – On Luzon in the Tagaytay Ridge area, the uncommitted regiment of the US 11th Airborne Division is dropped to help the advance of the other regiments. The fighting north of Manila also continues.

1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).

1945 – As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17s of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin.

1950 – Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British scientist who helped developed the atomic bomb, is arrested in Great Britain for passing top-secret information about the bomb to the Soviet Union. The arrest of Fuchs led authorities to several other individuals involved in a spy ring, culminating with the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their subsequent execution. Fuchs and his family fled Germany in 1933 to avoid Nazi persecution and came to Great Britain, where Fuchs earned his doctorate in physics. During World War II, British authorities were aware of the leftist leanings of both Fuchs and his father. However, Fuchs was eventually invited to participate in the British program to develop an atomic bomb (the project named “Tube Alloys”) because of his expertise. At some point after the project began, Soviet agents contacted Fuchs and he began to pass information about British progress to them.

Late in 1943, Fuchs was among a group of British scientists brought to America to work on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop an atomic bomb. Fuchs continued his clandestine meetings with Soviet agents. When the war ended, Fuchs returned to Great Britain and continued his work on the British atomic bomb project. Fuchs’ arrest in 1950 came after a routine security check of Fuchs’ father, who had moved to communist East Germany in 1949. While the check was underway, British authorities received information from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation that decoded Soviet messages in their possession indicated Fuchs was a Russian spy. On February 3, officers from Scotland Yard arrested Fuchs and charged him with violating the Official Secrets Act.

Fuchs eventually admitted his role and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released in 1959 and spent his remaining years living with his father in East Germany. Fuchs’ capture set off a chain of arrests. Harry Gold, whom Fuchs implicated as the middleman between himself and Soviet agents, was arrested in the United States. Gold thereupon informed on David Greenglass, one of Fuchs’ co-workers on the Manhattan Project. After his apprehension, Greenglass implicated his sister-in-law and her husband, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. They were arrested in New York in July 1950, found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, and executed at Sing Sing Prison in June 1953.

1953 – Carrier aircraft blasted western Korea from Chinnampo to Haeju while the cruisers USS Toledo and Rochester and the destroyers USS Kidd and Chevalier engaged targets in the Kosong area.

1961 – The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a “Doomsday Plane” is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States’ bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC’s command post.

1962 – President John F. Kennedy banned all trade with Cuba except for food & drugs.

1970 – The Senate Foreign Relations Committee opens hearings on the conduct of the war by the Nixon administration. Senator Charles Goodell (R-New York) said that Vietnamization (President Richard Nixon’s program to transfer war responsibility to the South Vietnamese) had been a “great public relations success.” Taking exception with Senator Goodell’s assessment, Senators Harold Hughes (D-Iowa), Thomas Eagleton (D-Missouri), and Alan Cranston (D-California) testified in support of a Senate resolution calling for the termination of the American commitment to South Vietnam unless the Saigon government took steps to broaden its cabinet, stop press censorship, and release political prisoners.

1984 – STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger. STS-41-B was the tenth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the fourth flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It launched on February 3, 1984, and landed on February 11 after deploying two communications satellites. It was also notable for including the first untethered spacewalk.

1988 – The U.S. House of Representatives handed President Reagan a major defeat, rejecting his request for at least $36.25 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.

1988 – The Air Force Arial Achievement Medal, was established by the Secretary of the Air Force. It is awarded by the Department of the Air Force to U.S. military and civilian personnel for sustained meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight. The achievements must be accomplished with distinction above and beyond that normally expected of professional airmen.

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1991 – US military officials confirmed that seven of eleven Marines who were killed in combat on January 30th died from “friendly fire.”

1994 – Nearly two decades after the fall of Saigon, U.S. President Bill Clinton announces the lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam, citing the cooperation of Vietnam’s communist government in helping the United States locate the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War. Despite the lifting of the embargo, high tariffs remained on Vietnamese exports pending the country’s qualification as a “most favored nation,” a U.S. trade-status designation that Vietnam might earn after broadening its program of free-market reforms.

In July 1995, the Clinton administration established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam. In making the decision, Clinton was advised by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, an ex-Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. Brushing aside criticism of Clinton’s decision by some Republicans, McCain asserted that it was time for America to normalize relations with its old enemy. Five years later, in November 2000, President Clinton became the first president to visit Vietnam since Richard Nixon’s 1969 trip to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

1994 – The space shuttle Discovery lifted off, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a U.S. spacecraft.

1995 – Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. STS-63 was the second mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried out the first rendezvous of the American Space Shuttle with Russia’s space station Mir. Known as the ‘Near-Mir’ mission, the flight used Space Shuttle Discovery.

1996 – Sergeant First Class Donald A. Dugan, 38, became the first US soldier killed while on duty in Bosnia when a piece of ammunition exploded in his hands.

1997 – The Army announced that a retired female sergeant major had accused Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney of sexual assault and harassment. McKinney, who was accused of sexual misconduct by six women, faced court-martial, but was acquitted of 18 charges of pressuring enlisted women for sex. He received a reprimand and reduction in rank.

1998 – A US surveillance aircraft cut a ski cable in Italy and caused the death of 20 skiers in a gondola cable car running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis. The EA-6B aircraft was normally used for patrols over Bosnia and was only slightly damaged. Lt. Col. Steven Watters was later relieved of command for telling crew members of a related squadron to destroy evidence in the investigation. The pilot did not have Italian military maps that identified the ski lift. Four crewmen were later charged by the Marine Corps with negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter and dereliction of duty. The pilot and navigator faced trial for manslaughter.

Pilot Richard J. Ashby was acquitted of all charges in 1999. Navigator Joseph Schweitzer was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide charges. Schweitzer later pleaded guilty to obstruction and conspiracy charges for destroying a videotape made during the flight. The tape indicated that the plane had been flying upside down. Schweitzer was sentenced to dismissal from the Marine Corps. Capt. Ashby (32) was found guilty of obstruction of justice and conspiracy in May, 1999 and was sentenced to 6 months in prison and dismissed from the Marine Corps. Families of the victims settled for $2 million apiece in 2000.

1999 – The Clinton administration told Congress a NATO-led peacekeeping force could be needed in Kosovo for three to five years and might include up to 4,000 American troops.

1999 – In Kosovo members of the KLA demanded that peace talks include a guaranteed vote for independence.

2000 – The US Navy in the Straits of Hormuz took control of a Russian tanker, Volgoneft-147, on suspicion that it was smuggling oil from Iraq in violation of US sanctions. Tests showed the oil came from Iraq and it was forced to discharge the oil in Oman.

2003 – It was reported that the US and Britain had mapped out a strategy to limit arms inspections in Iraq to no more than 6 more weeks.

2003 – A new British report said Iraqi security agents have bugged every room and telephone of the UN weapons inspectors based in Baghdad and have hidden documents in Iraqi hospitals, mosques and homes.

2004 – US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said that a white powder found in his office tested positive for ricin, forcing closure of Senate office buildings and close scrutiny of congressional mail.

2005 – An Afghan passenger jet carrying 104 people disappeared from radar screens during a snowstorm near the mountain-ringed capital. NATO helicopters found the wreckage of 2 days later. There were no survivors.

2005 – An interim UN report zeroed in on the chief of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, saying Saddam Hussein’s regime awarded oil allocations in his name to a trading company between 1998 and 2001.

2006 – Jamal al-Bedawi, who masterminded the USS Cole bombing, and Fawaz al-Rabeiee, who planned the 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg, escape from a prison in Yemen along with 22 other prisoners, 12 of whom were convicted members of Al-Qaida.

2006 – The United States expels Venezuelan diplomat Jeny Figueredo Frias in retaliation for yesterday’s expulsion of suspected US spy John Correa from Venezuela. A State Department spokesman described the move as part of “tit-for-tat diplomatic games”.

2009 – Suspected Taliban militants suspend NATO supply lines by destroying a bridge on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

2010 – NASA and Cornell University have given up attempting to move the Spirit rover, currently stuck in sand near Home Plate, Gusev crater on the planet Mars, and are converting it into a stationary outpost. Its twin rover, Opportunity, remains mobile on Mars.

2012 – Major General Michael Linnington orders a court martial for US Private Bradley Manning responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

HORTON, JAMES
Rank and organization: Captain of the Top, U.S. Navy. Born: 1850, Boston, Mass. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 326, 18 October 1884. Citation: Serving on board the U.S.S. Constitution, at sea, 13 February 1879, Horton showed courageous conduct in going over the stern during a heavy gale and cutting the fastenings of the ship’s rudder chains.

*BIANCHI, WILLIBALD C.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 45th Infantry, Philippine Scouts. Place and date: Near Bagac, Bataan Province, Philippine Islands, 3 February 1942. Entered service at: New Ulm, Minn. Birth: New Ulm, Minn. G.O. No.: 11, 5 March 1942. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy on 3 February 1942, near Bagac, Province of Bataan, Philippine Islands. When the rifle platoon of another company was ordered to wipe out 2 strong enemy machinegun nests, 1st Lt. Bianchi voluntarily and of his own initiative, advanced with the platoon leading part of the men. When wounded early in the action by 2 bullets through the left hand, he did not stop for first aid but discarded his rifle and began firing a pistol. He located a machinegun nest and personally silenced it with grenades. When wounded the second time by 2 machinegun bullets through the chest muscles, 1st Lt. Bianchi climbed to the top of an American tank, manned its antiaircraft machinegun, and fired into strongly held enemy position until knocked completely off the tank by a third severe wound.

*PEDEN, FORREST E.
Rank and organization: Technician 5th Grade, U.S. Army, Battery C, 10th Field Artillery Battalion, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Biesheim, France, 3 February 1945. Entered service at: Wathena, Kans. Birth: St. Joseph, Mo. G.O. No.: 18, 13 February 1946. Citation: He was a forward artillery observer when the group of about 45 infantrymen with whom he was advancing was ambushed in the uncertain light of a waning moon. Enemy forces outnumbering the Americans by 4 to 1 poured withering artillery, mortar, machinegun, and small-arms fire into the stricken unit from the flanks, forcing our men to seek the cover of a ditch which they found already occupied by enemy foot troops. As the opposing infantrymen struggled in hand-to-hand combat, Technician Peden courageously went to the assistance of 2 wounded soldiers and rendered first aid under heavy fire.

With radio communications inoperative, he realized that the unit would be wiped out unless help could be secured from the rear. On his own initiative, he ran 800 yards to the battalion command post through a hail of bullets which pierced his jacket and there secured 2 light tanks to go to the relief of his hard-pressed comrades. Knowing the terrible risk involved, he climbed upon the hull of the lead tank and guided it into battle. Through a murderous concentration of fire the tank lumbered onward, bullets and shell fragments ricocheting from its steel armor within inches of the completely exposed rider, until it reached the ditch. As it was about to go into action it was turned into a flaming pyre by a direct hit which killed Technician Peden. However, his intrepidity and gallant sacrifice was not in vain. Attracted by the light from the burning tank, reinforcements found the beleaguered Americans and drove off the enemy.

POWERS, LEO J.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, 133d Infantry, 34th Infantry Division. Place and date: Northwest of Cassino, Italy, 3 February 1944. Entered service at: Alder Gulch, Mont. Birth: Anselmo, Nebr. G.O. No.: 5, 15 January 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. On 3 February 1944, this soldier’s company was assigned the mission of capturing Hill 175, the key enemy strong point northwest of Cassino, Italy. The enemy, estimated to be at least 50 in strength, supported by machineguns emplaced in 3 pillboxes and mortar fire from behind the hill, was able to pin the attackers down and inflict 8 casualties. The company was unable to advance, but Pfc. Powers, a rifleman in 1 of the assault platoons, on his own initiative and in the face of the terrific fire, crawled forward to assault 1 of the enemy pillboxes which he had spotted. Armed with 2 handgrenades and well aware that if the enemy should see him it would mean almost certain death, Pfc. Powers crawled up the hill to within 15 yards of the enemy pillbox. Then standing upright in full view of the enemy gunners in order to throw his grenade into the small opening in the roof, he tossed a grenade into the pillbox. At this close, the grenade entered the pillbox, killed 2 of the occupants and 3 or 4 more fled the position, probably wounded. This enemy gun silenced, the center of the line was able to move forward again, but almost immediately came under machinegun fire from a second enemy pillbox on the left flank.

Pfc. Powers, however, had located this pillbox, and crawled toward it with absolutely no cover if the enemy should see him. Raising himself in full view of the enemy gunners about 15 feet from the pillbox, Pfc. Powers threw his grenade into the pillbox, silencing this gun, killing another German and probably wounding 3 or 4 more who fled. Pfc. Powers, still acting on his own initiative, commenced crawling toward the third enemy pillbox in the face of heavy machine-pistol and machinegun fire. Skillfully availing himself of the meager cover and concealment, Pfc. Powers crawled up to within 10 yards of this pillbox fully exposed himself to the enemy gunners, stood upright and tossed the 2 grenades into the small opening in the roof of the pillbox. His grenades killed 2 of the enemy and 4 more, all wounded, came out and surrendered to Pfc. Powers, who was now unarmed. Pfc. Powers had worked his way over the entire company front, and against tremendous odds had single-handedly broken the backbone of this heavily defended and strategic enemy position, and enabled his regiment to advance into the city of Cassino. Pfc. Powers’ fighting determination and intrepidity in battle exemplify the highest traditions of the U.S. Armed Forces.

MURPHY, RAYMOND G.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Korea, 3 February 1953. Entered service at: Pueblo, Colo. Born: 14 January 1930, Pueblo, Colo. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a platoon commander of Company A, in action against enemy aggressor forces. Although painfully wounded by fragments from an enemy mortar shell while leading his evacuation platoon in support of assault units attacking a cleverly concealed and well-entrenched hostile force occupying commanding ground, 2d Lt. Murphy steadfastly refused medical aid and continued to lead his men up a hill through a withering barrage of hostile mortar and small-arms fire, skillfully maneuvering his force from one position to the next and shouting words of encouragement. Undeterred by the increasing intense enemy fire, he immediately located casualties as they fell and made several trips up and down the fire-swept hill to direct evacuation teams to the wounded, personally carrying many of the stricken marines to safety.

When reinforcements were needed by the assaulting elements, 2d Lt. Murphy employed part of his unit as support and, during the ensuing battle, personally killed 2 of the enemy with his pistol. With all the wounded evacuated and the assaulting units beginning to disengage, he remained behind with a carbine to cover the movement of friendly forces off the hill and, though suffering intense pain from his previous wounds, seized an automatic rifle to provide more firepower when the enemy reappeared in the trenches. After reaching the base of the hill, he organized a search party and again ascended the slope for a final check on missing marines, locating and carrying the bodies of a machine gun crew back down the hill. Wounded a second time while conducting the entire force to the line of departure through a continuing barrage of enemy small-arms, artillery, and mortar fire, he again refused medical assistance until assured that every one of his men, including all casualties, had preceded him to the main lines. His resolute and inspiring leadership, exceptional fortitude, and great personal valor reflect the highest credit upon 2d Lt. Murphy and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

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4 February


1747 – Tadeusz Kosciusko, patriot, American Revolution hero (built West Point), was born in Poland.

1777 – George Washington appoints Nathaniel Sackett as spymaster over what will become the Culper Ring of spies. During the American War of Independence the Culper ring was assigned to obtain intelligence on the plans of the British enemy forces in New York. His work involved the recruitment of agents and informers, behind the enemy lines, if necessary paid from a purse of $500 sanctioned by Washington. Nathaniel was recommended to General Washington by William Duer, a Continental Congressman, with whom Nathaniel served on the New York committee for detecting and defeating conspiracies.

Taking his instructions personally from Washington, Nathaniel set up an intelligence-gathering network in the New York area. He was soon reporting information gathered in the field to Duer and through him to Washington. The Culpers were extremely successful, the more so for having to develop tradecraft as they went, with an intricate arrangement of dead drops and codes.

1779 – John Paul Jones takes command of Bonhomme Richard. Bonhomme Richard, formerly Duc de Duras, was a warship in the Continental Navy. She was originally an East Indiaman, a merchant ship built in France for the French East India Company in 1765, for service between France and the Orient. She was placed at the disposal of John Paul Jones, who renamed the vessel in honor of Benjamin Franklin, by King Louis XVI of France as a result of a loan to the United States by French shipping magnate, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray.

1783 – Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, the United States of America.

1787 – In an attack on Shays’ insurgents at Petersham, Massachusetts, General Benjamin Lincoln captures 150 rebels and forces Shays to flee for Vermont. By the end of the month, the uprising has been completely suppressed. In March the Massachusetts legislature offers a pardon to all except Shays, Luke Day and two other leaders. Shays will be pardoned on 13 June, 1788. This rebellion has the effect of causing the state legislature to avoid direct taxation, to lower court costs, and to exempt household necessities and workmen’s tools from the debt process. Shays’ Rebellion is also an important factor in influencing the creation of a new federal constitution, since the states have seen how essentially powerless they are to prevent such incidents of violence.

1789 – George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors. John Adams of Massachusetts, who received 34 votes, was elected vice president. The electors, who represented 10 of the 11 states that had ratified the U.S. Constitution, were chosen by popular vote, legislative appointment, or a combination of both four weeks before the election. According to Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, the states appointed a number of presidential electors equal to the “number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress.” Each elector voted for two people, at least one of whom did not live in their state. The individual receiving the greatest number of votes was elected president, and the next-in-line, vice president. (In 1804, this practice was changed by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which ordered separate ballots for the office of president and vice president.) New York–though it was to be the seat of the new United States government–failed to choose its eight presidential electors in time for the vote on February 4, 1789. Two electors each from Virginia and Maryland were delayed by weather and did not vote.

In addition, North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would have had seven and three electors respectively, had not ratified the Constitution and so could not vote. That the remaining 69 unanimously chose Washington to lead the new U.S. government was a surprise to no one. As commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War, he had led his inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers to victory over one of the world’s great powers. After the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Washington rejected with abhorrence a suggestion by one of his officers that he use his preeminence to assume a military dictatorship. He would not subvert the very principles for which so many Americans had fought and died, he replied, and soon after, he surrendered his military commission to the Continental Congress and retired to his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. When the Articles of Convention proved ineffectual, and the fledging republic teetered on the verge of collapse, Washington again answered his country’s call and traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to preside over the Constitutional Convention. Although he favored the creation of a strong central government, as president of the convention he maintained impartiality in the public debates. Outside the convention hall, however, he made his views known, and his weight of character did much to bring the proceedings to a close.

The drafters created the office of president with him in mind, and on September 17, 1787, the document was signed. The next day, Washington started for home, hoping that, his duty to his country again served, he could live out the rest of his days in privacy. However, a crisis soon arose when the Constitution fell short of its necessary ratification by nine states. Washington threw himself into the ratification debate, and a compromise agreement was made in which the remaining states would ratify the document in exchange for passage of the constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights. Government by the United States began on March 4, 1789. In April, Congress sent word to George Washington that he had unanimously won the presidency. He borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New York. On April 30, he came across the Hudson River in a specially built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowed cheered after he took the oath of office. The president then retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” The evening celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons.

As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, “I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, making good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his Cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously reelected but four years later refused a third term. In 1797, he finally began his long-awaited retirement at Mount Vernon. He died on December 14, 1799. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

1822 – Free American Blacks settled Liberia, West Africa. The first group of colonists landed in Liberia and founded Monrovia, the colony’s capital city, named in honor of President James Monroe.

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1859 – U.S. signs “Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation” with Paraguay at Asuncion after the revenue cutter Harriet Lane, as part of a US Navy expedition, forces the opening of the Paraguay and Parana Rivers. During the 1850s, Carlos Antonio Lopez, dictator of the small, landlocked, South American country of Paraguay, was a thorn in the side of the United States government. In 1853, Lopez refused to ratify a commercial and navigational treaty with the United States, and began confiscating the property of American citizens resident in Paraguay. Because of a dispute with Britain, Lopez closed Paraguayan waters to foreign warships. In February 1855, Paraguayan soldiers fired upon an American ship engaged in a scientific survey of the Parana River, killing one American crew member. Nearly three years after the incident, and with a second scientific expedition in preparation, President James Buchanan decided that a show of force was necessary to bring about a redress of the situation. In his first annual message to Congress of December 1857, Buchanan requested funding for a military expedition to Paraguay. With a Congressional allocation of $10,000, a naval squadron of 19 vessels, 200 guns, and 2500 sailors and marines under the command of Commodore William B. Shubrick embarked for Paraguay in the early winter of 1858. It was the largest military expedition in the peacetime history of the United States to that date.

Harper’s Weekly emphasized the importance of the mission’s demand that American citizens in Paraguay be granted the same rights and protections that Paraguayan citizens in the United States were accorded. After landing at Montevideo, Uruguay, the American force began the 1000-mile journey up the Parana River to the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion. This was one of the major news stories in Harper’s Weekly during the spring of 1859. The newspaper provided illustrations, portraits, maps, letters from participants, and reports from a special correspondent. The situation was dramatized by the news that the 2500 Americans were preparing to face 15,000 of the best troops in South America. Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, formally apologized for the shooting incident of 1855, compensated the family and employer of the slain sailor, and signed a treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States.

1861 – The Confederate State of America is open for business when the Provisional Congress convenes in Montgomery, Alabama. The official record read: “Be it remembered that on the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the Capitol of the State of Alabama, in the city of Montgomery, at the hour of noon, there assembled certain deputies and delegates from the several independent South State of North America…” The first order of business was drafting a constitution. They used the U.S. Constitution as a model, and most of it was taken verbatim. It took just four days to hammer out a tentative document to govern the new nation. The president was limited to one six-year term.

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the word “slave” was used and the institution protected in all states and any territories to be added later. Importation of slaves was prohibited, as this would alienate European nations and would detract from the profitable “internal slave trade” in the South. Other components of the constitution were designed to enhance the power of the states–governmental money for internal improvements was banned and the president was given a line-item veto on appropriations bills. The Congress then turned its attention to selecting a president. The delegates settled on Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate who was the U.S. Secretary of War in the 1850s and a senator from Mississippi.

1861 – The Apache Wars begin. A group of unidentified Indians stole cattle and kidnapped the stepson of the rancher John Ward near Sonoita, Arizona, Arizona. Ward sought redress from the nearby American army. Lieutenant George N. Bascom was dispatched and Ward accompanied the detail. Bascom set out to meet with Cochise near Apache Pass and the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach station to secure the cattle and Ward’s son. Cochise was unaware of the incident, but he offered to seek those responsible. Dissatisfied, Bascom accused Cochise of having been involved. He took Cochise and his group of family members under arrest in the negotiating tent. Angered, Cochise slashed his way from the tent and escaped. After further failed negotiations, Cochise took a member of the stage coach station hostage after an exchange of gunfire.

With Bascom unwilling to exchange prisoners, Cochise and his party killed the members of a passing Mexican wagon train. The Apache killed and ritually mutilated nine Mexicans, and took three whites captive, but killed them later. They were unsuccessful in attempting an ambush of a Butterfield Overland stagecoach. With negotiations between Cochise and Bascom at an impasse, Bascom sent for reinforcements. Cochise killed the remaining four captives from the Butterfield Station and abandoned negotiations. Upon the advice of military surgeon, Dr. Bernard Irwin, Bascom hanged the Apache hostages in his custody. The retaliatory executions became known as the Bascom Affair; they initiated another eleven years of open warfare between the varying groups of Apache and the United States settlers, the U.S. Army and the Confederate Army.

1862 – Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman, gallant defender of Fort Henry, informed General John B. Floyd: “Gunboats and transports in Tennessee River. Enemy landing in force 5 miles below Fort Henry.” After initiating the debarkation of troops below Fort Henry, Flag Officer Foote, in U.S.S. Cincinnati with General Grant on board, took the four ironclad gunboats that he had been able to man up the Tennessee for reconnoitering, and exchanged shots with the Confederate gunners. Torpedoes, planted in the river but torn loose by the flooding waters, floated by. Foote had some fished out for inspection. He and Grant went aft to watch the disassembling of one. According to a reminiscence, suddenly there was a strange hiss. The deck was rapidly cleared. Grant beat Foote to the top of the ladder. When Foote asked the General about his hurry, Grant replied that ”the Army did not believe in letting the Navy get ahead of it.”

1865 – Belatedly, Robert E. Lee is named Commander in Chief of the Confederate Army. Lee knows as well as anyone that the cause is now hopeless.

1865 – A boat expedition under Lieutenant Commander Cushing, U.S.S. Monticello, proceeded up Little River, South Carolina, placing the small town of All Saints Parish under guard and capturing a number of Confederate soldiers. On the 5th Cushing destroyed some $15,000 worth of cotton.

1868 – Marines landed at Osaka, Japan, to protect foreign nationals.

1899 – After an exchange of gunfire, fighting broke out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War (also referred to as the Philippine Insurrection of 1899). American soldiers patrolling in Santa Mesa opened fire on Filipino soldiers near a bridge over the San Juan River.

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1915 – Germans decreed British waters part of war zone; all ships were to be sunk without warning.

1938 – Hitler seized control of German army and put Nazis in key posts.

1941 – The United Service Organization, a civilian agency, is founded. The organization was formed to offer support for U.S. service members and their families, and sent many actors, musicians, and other performers to entertain the troops. In 1948, the original USO was disbanded, but formed again the following year, and still exists today, providing recreation, entertainment, children’s programs and other services to U.S. military families. Bob Hope made annual trips to entertain overseas troops from World War II through Desert Storm in 1991.

1942 – Dutch and American ships attacking in the Makassar Straits are repelled by Japanese aircraft. Two American cruisers are damaged in the fighting.

1943 – On Guadalcanal, about 5000 more Japanese troops are evacuated by a squadron (led by Admiral Koyanagi) consisting of one cruiser and 22 destroyers. Four of the ships are damaged. Meanwhile, the US 147th Regiment advances west of Tassafaronga.

1944 – Organized Japanese resistance in the Kwajalein Atoll ends. Most of the 8700 Japanese garrison commanded by Admiral Akiyama have been killed. Only 265 are captured, many are Korean laborers or wounded. The Americans have deployed 41,000 troops of whom 370 have been killed in action and 1500 wounded.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German attacks force the British 1st Division to fall back. Meanwhile, to the south, the forces of US 5th Army continue offensive operations. The US 34th Division gains ground near Point 593 and Point 445 as well as attacking Colle Sant’Angelo.

1944 – President Roosevelt authorized the Bronze Star Medal by Executive Order 9419 dated 4 February 1944, retroactive to 7 December 1941. This authorization was announced in War Department Bulletin No. 3, dated 10 February 1944. The Executive Order was amended by President Kennedy, per Executive Order 11046 dated 24 August 1962, to expand the authorization to include those serving with friendly forces.

1945 – The Yalta Conference begins. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin and their senior military and political advisors meet to discuss the postwar order and the war with Japan. Yalta is a recently liberated Crimean resort. While a number of important agreements were reached at the conference, tensions over European issues-particularly the fate of Poland-foreshadowed the crumbling of the Grand Alliance that had developed between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union during World War II and hinted at the Cold War to come. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin each arrived with their own agendas for the conference. For Stalin, postwar economic assistance for Russia, and U.S. and British recognition of a Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe were the main objectives. Churchill had the protection of the British Empire foremost in his mind, but also wanted to clarify the postwar status of Germany. Roosevelt’s goals included consensus on establishment of the United Nations and gaining Soviet agreement to enter the war against Japan once Hitler had been defeated. None of them left Yalta completely satisfied. There was no definite determination of financial aid for Russia. Many issues pertaining to Germany were deferred for further discussion. As for the United Nations, Stalin wanted all 16 Soviet republics represented in the General Assembly, but settled for three (the Soviet Union as a whole, Belorussia, and the Ukraine). However, the Soviets did agree to join in the war against Japan 90 days after Hitler’s Germany was defeated. It was over the issue of the postwar status of Poland, however, that the animosity and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union that would characterize the Cold War were most readily apparent. Soviet troops were already in control of Poland, a procommunist provisional government had already been established, and Stalin was adamant that Russia’s interests in that nation be recognized.

The United States and Great Britain believed that the London-based noncommunist Polish government-in-exile was most representative of the Polish people. The final agreement merely declared that a “more broadly based” government should be established in Poland. Free elections to determine Poland’s future were called for sometime in the future. Many U.S. officials were disgusted with the agreement, which they believed condemned Poland to a communist future. Roosevelt, however, felt that he could do no more at the moment, since the Soviet army was occupying Poland. As the Cold War became a reality in the years that followed the Yalta Conference, many critics of Roosevelt’s foreign policy accused him of “selling out” at the meeting and naively letting Stalin have his way. It seems doubtful, however, that Roosevelt had much choice. He was able to secure Russian participation in the war against Japan (Russia declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945), established the basic principles of the United Nations, and did as much as possible to settle the Poland issue. With World War II still raging, his primary interest was in maintaining the Grand Alliance. He believed that troublesome political issues could be postponed and solved after the war. Unfortunately, Roosevelt never got that chance–almost exactly two months after the end of the conference, Roosevelt suffered a stroke and died.

1945 – The Allies announce that all German forces have been expelled from Belgium. US 1st and 3rd Army units are attacking toward the Roer River around Duren.

1945 – On Luzon, advance units of the US 1st Cavalry Division reach the outskirts of Manila from the north while units of 11th Airborne Division approach from the south. Yamashita has not ordered his forces to defend the city but the 20,000 Japanese troops under the local naval commander in the city are prepared to fight to the end.

1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).

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1959 – Keel laying of USS Enterprise, first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, Newport News, VA.

1962 – The first U.S. helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. It was one of 15 helicopters ferrying South Vietnamese Army troops into battle near the village of Hong My in the Mekong Delta. The first U.S. helicopter unit had arrived in South Vietnam aboard the ferry carrier USNS Core on December 11, 1961. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.

1964 – The federal government put an end to one of the nation’s more shameful bits of legislation by authorizing the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which effectively outlawed the poll tax. The tax stemmed back to the 1880s, when members of the burgeoning Populist party began to build a potentially potent coalition of African American and lower class white voters in the South. Across the region, planters, merchants, and industrialists moved to preserve their power and pushed for the passage of a deliberately prohibitive poll tax. The legislation, adopted by a host of Southern states, proved all too effective, as scores of African-Americans, as well as the “poorer sort” of whites, simply could not afford to pay the tax and thus lost the right to vote. However, thanks in large part to the efforts of Senator Spessard L. Holland of Florida, the once recalcitrant Congress slowly came around to the cause of outlawing the tax and passed the Twenty-fourth Amendment. On January 23, 1964, the amended was ratified by the South Dakota legislature, giving it the three-fourth majority necessary to make it the law of the land.

1965 – McGeorge Bundy, American Special Assistant for National Security, arrives in Saigon for talks with U.S. Ambassador General Maxwell Taylor. Two days later Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin arrived in Hanoi. There was worldwide speculation that their visits were linked–that the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to pressure their “clients” into negotiations–but this was denied by all the principals. Bundy, in fact, was there to confer with Ambassador Taylor on the best way to deal with the political situation. And although Kosygin publicly proclaimed continued Soviet support for North Vietnam and the communist war, a Soviet participant in the talks later described the North Vietnamese as “a bunch of stubborn bastards.”

1966 – Senate Foreign Relations Committee began televised hearings on the Vietnam War.

1967 – Lunar Orbiter 3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13 on its mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft.

1969 – Al-Fatah-leader Yasser Arafat officially took over as chairman of PLO.

1971 – National Guard was mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington, NC.

1971 – Moonwalk by CAPT Alan B. Shepherd, Jr. USN, Commander of Apollo 14 and CDR Edgar D. Mitchell, USN Lunar Module Pilot. During the 9 day mission, 94 lbs of lunar material was collected and Shepard became the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon.

1972 – A force of 824 soldiers, the last of Thailand’s 12,000 troops serving in South Vietnam, departs. The Thai contingent, which had first arrived in country in the fall of 1967, had been 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 effort was also known as the “many flags” program. In all, 44 countries responded to Johnson plea for military aid to South Vietnam, but only Australia, New Zealand, Korea, and Thailand provided combat troops. In the end, the program never achieved the widespread international support that Johnson sought.

1974 – Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of publishing billionaire William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, apartment. Stephen Weed, Hearst’s fiancý, was beaten unconscious by the two abductors. Soon, a ransom demand came from the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical activist group led by Donald DeFreeze. DeFreeze had formed the SLA in 1973 after he escaped from prison. On November 6, 1973, the SLA shot and killed Marcus Foster, Oakland’s superintendent of schools, with bullets laced with cyanide. Less than a month before Hearst’s kidnapping, an SLA bomb-making factory was discovered by the police. The SLA instructed William Hearst to distribute $70 million in food to the poor in Oakland to have Patty released. The Black Muslims, Malcolm X’s former organization, were chosen to manage the food distribution, which turned into a riot when more than 10,000 people showed up and fought for the food. However, DeFreeze and the SLA did not release Patty.

The Hearst story took a strange and unexpected turn two months after the abduction, when the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. The surveillance cameras clearly showed that Patty Hearst was one of the machine gun-toting robbers. Soon after followed a taped message from the SLA in which Hearst claimed that she had voluntarily joined the SLA and was now to be known as “Tania.” On May 17, 1974, police were tipped that the SLA leaders were at a Los Angeles home. With 400 police and FBI agents outside the house, a tremendous gun battle broke out. The overwhelming firepower of the police eventually caused a fire to break out. DeFreeze and five other SLA members died in the fire.

However, Hearst was not inside the house. She was not found until September 1975. Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape, isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA. Prosecutors believed that she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst’s sentence after she had served two years. Hearst is currently seeking a pardon.

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1982 – President Reagan announced a plan to eliminate all medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

1982 – The Attorney General, William Smith, declared at a press conference that Operation Tiburon was “the most successful international marijuana interdiction effort to date.” The operation began in November, 1980, and accounted for the seizure of 95 vessels. It was a combined operation that included elements of the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service and various state and local law enforcement agencies.

1991 – Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani offered to hold talks with Iraq and the United States in an attempt to mediate an end to the Gulf War.

2002 – The CIA believed that it killed a top al Qaeda official with a Hellfire missile, Predator aerial drone, near Zawar Kili, Afghanistan. 7 al Qaeda members were killed.

2002 – In Afghanistan northern militia factions agreed to withdraw from Mazar-e-Sharif and create a new joint security force.

2003 – Pres. Bush visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he led a tribute to the lost crew of the shuttle Columbia and rededicated the nation to space travel.

2003 – A rare television interview with Saddam Hussein aired in which the Iraqi leader charged that US claims of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in his country were a pretext to seize Iraq’s oil fields.

2003 – The North Atlantic Council decided to extend Operation Active Endeavour to include escorting non-military ships traveling through the Strait of Gibraltar to maintain security in the area and to secure the safe transit of designated Allied ships.

2005 – The UN vowed to discipline two officials implicated in a report that detailed conflicts of interest and flawed management in the U.N. oil-for-food program. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will discipline Benon Sevan and another UN official, Joseph Stephanides, who may have “tainted” bidding for an oil-for-food contract.

2005 – Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz announced that 15,000 U.S. troops whose tours of duty had been extended in order to provide election security would be pulled out of Iraq by the next month.

2008 – United States district court judge Florence-Marie Cooper rules that President George W. Bush cannot exempt the United States Navy from complying with environmental laws banning sonar training. Later in the year, the US Supreme Court overturns this ruling.

2012 – The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan estimates that civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan rose to a record level in 2011 of 3021 with insurgents responsible for most of the deaths.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

GEDEON, LOUIS
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 19th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Mount Amia, Cebu, Philippine Islands, 4 February 1900. Entered service at: Pittsburgh, Pa. Birth: Pittsburgh, Pa. Date of issue: 10 March 1902. Citation: Singlehanded, defended his mortally wounded captain from an overwhelming force of the enemy.

ADAMS, STANLEY T.
Rank and organization: Master Sergeant (then Sfc.), U.S. Army, Company A, 19th Infantry Regiment. Place and date: Near Sesim-ni, Korea, 4 February 1951. Entered service at: Olathe, Kans. Born: 9 May 1922, DeSoto, Kans. G.O. No.: 66, 2 August 1951. Citation: M/Sgt. Adams, Company A, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against an enemy. At approximately 0100 hours, M/Sgt. Adams’ platoon, holding an outpost some 200 yards ahead of his company, came under a determined attack by an estimated 250 enemy troops. Intense small-arms, machine gun, and mortar fire from 3 sides pressed the platoon back against the main line of resistance. Observing approximately 150 hostile troops silhouetted against the skyline advancing against his platoon, M/Sgt. Adams leaped to his feet, urged his men to fix bayonets, and he, with 13 members of his platoon, charged this hostile force with indomitable courage.

Within 50 yards of the enemy M/Sgt. Adams was knocked to the ground when pierced in the leg by an enemy bullet. He jumped to his feet and, ignoring his wound, continued on to close with the enemy when he was knocked down 4 times from the concussion of grenades which had bounced off his body. Shouting orders he charged the enemy positions and engaged them in hand-to-hand combat where man after man fell before his terrific onslaught with bayonet and rifle butt. After nearly an hour of vicious action M/Sgt. Adams and his comrades routed the fanatical foe, killing over 50 and forcing the remainder to withdraw. Upon receiving orders that his battalion was moving back he provided cover fire while his men withdrew. M/Sgt. Adams’ superb leadership, incredible courage, and consummate devotion to duty so inspired his comrades that the enemy attack was completely thwarted, saving his battalion from possible disaster. His sustained personal bravery and indomitable fighting spirit against overwhelming odds reflect the utmost glory upon himself and uphold the finest traditions of the infantry and the military service.

*GONZALEZ, ALFREDO
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein), FMF. Place and date: Near Thua Thien, Republic of Vietnam, 4 February 1968. Entered service at: San Antonio, Tex. Born: 23 May 1946, Edinburg Tex. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as platoon commander, 3d Platoon, Company A. On 31 January 1968, during the initial phase of Operation Hue City, Sgt. Gonzalez’ unit was formed as a reaction force and deployed to Hue to relieve the pressure on the beleaguered city. While moving by truck convoy along Route No. 1, near the village of Lang Van Lrong, the marines received a heavy volume of enemy fire. Sgt. Gonzalez aggressively maneuvered the marines in his platoon, and directed their fire until the area was cleared of snipers. Immediately after crossing a river south of Hue, the column was again hit by intense enemy fire. One of the marines on top of a tank was wounded and fell to the ground in an exposed position. With complete disregard for his safety, Sgt. Gonzalez ran through the fire-swept area to the assistance of his injured comrade. He lifted him up and though receiving fragmentation wounds during the rescue, he carried the wounded marine to a covered position for treatment. Due to the increased volume and accuracy of enemy fire from a fortified machine gun bunker on the side of the road, the company was temporarily halted.

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Sgt. Gonzalez exposed himself to the enemy fire and moved his platoon along the east side of a bordering rice paddy to a dike directly across from the bunker. Though fully aware of the danger involved, he moved to the fire-swept road and destroyed the hostile position with hand grenades. Although seriously wounded again on 3 February, he steadfastly refused medical treatment and continued to supervise his men and lead the attack. On 4 February, the enemy had again pinned the company down, inflicting heavy casualties with automatic weapons and rocket fire. Sgt. Gonzalez, utilizing a number of light antitank assault weapons, fearlessly moved from position to position firing numerous rounds at the heavily fortified enemy emplacements. He successfully knocked out a rocket position and suppressed much of the enemy fire before falling mortally wounded. The heroism, courage, and dynamic leadership displayed by Sgt. Gonzalez reflected great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps, and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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5 February

1631 – Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island and an important American religious leader, arrives in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England. Williams, a Puritan, worked as a teacher before serving briefly as a colorful pastor at Plymouth and then at Salem. Within a few years of his arrival, he alarmed the Puritan oligarchy of Massachusetts by speaking out against the right of civil authorities to punish religious dissension and to confiscate Indian land. In October 1635, he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court. After leaving Massachusetts, Williams, with the assistance of the Narragansett tribe, established a settlement at the junction of two rivers near Narragansett Bay, located in present-day Rhode Island.

He declared the settlement open to all those seeking freedom of conscience and the removal of the church from civil matters, and many dissatisfied Puritans came. Taking the success of the venture as a sign from God, Williams named the community “Providence.” Among those who found a haven in the religious and political refuge of the Rhode Island Colony were Anne Hutchinson–like Williams, exiled from Massachusetts for religious reasons–some of the first Jews to settle in North America, and the Quakers. In Providence, Roger Williams also founded the first Baptist church in America and edited the first dictionary of Native American languages.

1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1723 – John Witherspoon, Declaration of Independence signer, was born.

1783 – Sweden recognized the independence of the United States.

1840 – Hiram Stevens Maxim (d.1916), inventor of the automatic single-barrel rifle, was born in Sangerville, Maine. He invented the hair-curling iron, and patented such items as a mousetrap, a locomotive headlight, a method of manufacturing carbon filaments for lamps, and an automatic sprinkling system.

1847 – General Taylor has growing disagreements with President Polk and believes he must protect himself politically and militarily. He defends his views and actions in a New York newspaper on 22 January and then disobeys orders to communicate with General Scott and moves west.

1864 – Federal forces occupied Jackson, Mississippi.

1865 – Union and Confederate forces around Petersburg, Virginia, begin a three-day battle that produces 3,000 casualties but ends with no significant advantage for either side. Dabney’s Mill was another attempt by Union General Ulysses S. Grant to break the siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia. In 1864, Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee pounded each other as they wheeled south around the cities. After a month of heavy battling that produced the highest casualty rates of the war, Grant and Lee settled into trenches around Petersburg. These lines eventually stretched 25 miles to Richmond, and the stalemate continued for 10 months. Periodically, Grant mounted offensives either to break through Lee’s lines or envelope the ends. In June, August, and October, these moves failed to extricate the Confederates from their trenches. Now, Grant sent cavalry under General David Gregg to capture a road that carried supplies from Hicksford, Virginia, into Petersburg.

On February 5, Gregg moved and captured a few wagons along his objective, the Boydton Plank Road. He found little else, so he pulled back toward the rest of the Union army. Yankee infantry under General Gouverneur K. Warren also moved forward and probed the area at the end of the Confederate’s Petersburg line. The Rebels responded by moving troops into the area. Skirmishes erupted that evening and the fighting continued for two more days as each side maneuvered for an advantage. The fighting surged back and forth around Dabney’s Mill, but the Yankees were never able to penetrate the Confederate lines. The Union suffered 2,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, while the Confederates lost about 1,000. The battle did extend the Petersburg line a few miles to further stretch Lee’s thin lines, but the stalemate continued for six more weeks before Grant’s forces finally sent Lee racing west with the remnants of his army. The chase ended in April when Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.

1900 – The United States and Great Britain signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the United States the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it.

1904 – The American occupation of Cuba ended.

1917 – With more than a two-thirds majority, Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passes the Immigration Act. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or agreements with the United States, such as the Philippines. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States received a majority of the world’s immigrants, with 1.3 million immigrants passing through New York’s Ellis Island in 1907 alone. Various restrictions had been applied against immigrants since the 1890s, but most of those seeking entrance into the United States were accepted. However, in 1894, the Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston and subsequently petitioned the U.S. government to legislate that immigrants be required to demonstrate literacy in some language before being accepted.

The organization hoped to quell the recent surge of lower-class immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Congress passed a literacy bill in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it. In early 1917, with America’s entrance into World War I three months away, xenophobia was at a new high, and a bill restricting immigration was passed over President Wilson’s veto. Subsequent immigration to the United States sharply declined, and, in 1924 a law was passed requiring immigrant inspection in countries of origin, leading to the closure of Ellis Island and other major immigrant processing centers. Between 1892 and 1924, some 16 million people successfully immigrated to the United States to seek a better life.

1918 – The 1st Marine Replacement Battalion sailed for France in WW I.

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1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military. His unit, the 1st Aero Squadron had not yet begun combat operations. Thompson visited a French unit with a fellow member of the 1st Aero Squadron and both were invited to fly as gunner-bombardiers with the French on a bombing raid over Saarbrücken, Germany. After they had dropped their bombs, the squadron was attacked by Albatros D.III fighters. Thompson shot down one of them. This was the first aerial victory by any member of the U.S. military. He was awarded the Croix de guerre with Palm for the action.

1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1940 – The US Maritime Commission announces that Britain and France are buying 113,000 tons of old American cargo ships.

1942 – The United States declares war on Thailand.

1942 – The British RAF drops 1.4 million copies of 2 American leaflets, describing scale of the US arms program, over 8 French cities and towns.

1945 – The German pocket near Colmar is cut in two by a link between French units and part of the US 21st Corps. Farther north, US 1st Army extends its attacks, led by US 5th Corps, toward the Roer aiming to take the Schwammenauel Dam.

1945 – The US forces close in tighter around Manila. The US 11th Corps has completed its attack across the Bataan Peninsula.

1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).

1947 – The Soviet Union and Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over Japanese Pacific Isles.

1951 – Operation ROUNDUP, an advance by X Corps, began. This attack in the central front was directed against the enemy’s II and V Corps with friendly forces converging on Hongchon from the east and west.

1953 – The American Iron and Steel Institution announced that U.S. steel concerns had produced 117,500,000 short tons of steel during the past year. The years following World War II were a heady time for the American steel industry. Long suffering from the effects of the Great Depression, the industry was revived by the war, as the nation’s factories were given the responsibility of building the “great arsenal of democracy.” Although the close of the World War II seemingly threatened the industry’s resurgence, the government, motivated by the emergence of the Cold War as well as economic concerns, decided to maintain full-scale military production. The manufacturing sector, including the steel industry, steamed ahead at full-pace, churning out items at a record clip. The steel industry kept rolling through the early 1950s.

1958 – In the Tybee Island B-47 crash the United States Air Force lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 nuclear bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, United States. During a practice exercise, the B-47 bomber carrying the bomb collided in midair with an F-86 fighter plane. To protect the aircrew from a possible detonation in the event of a crash, the bomb was jettisoned. Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost somewhere in Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island.

1960 – The South Vietnamese government requests that Washington double U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG-Vietnam) strength from 342 to 685. The advisory group was formed on November 1, 1955 to provide military assistance to South Vietnam. It had replaced U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group Indochina (MAAG-Indochina), which had been providing military assistance to “the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina” (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) in accordance with President Harry S. Truman’s order of June 27, 1950. MAAG-Vietnam had U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps elements that provided advice and assistance to the South Vietnamese Ministry of Defense, Joint General Staff and corps and division commanders, as well as to training centers and province and district headquarters. In May 1964, MAAG-Vietnam was disbanded and its personnel and responsibilities absorbed by the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), which had been established in Saigon two years earlier.

1968 – U.S. troops divided Viet Cong at Hue while the Saigon government claimed they would arm loyal citizens.

1971 – Moonwalk by CAPT Alan B. Shepherd, Jr. USN, Commander of Apollo 14 and CDR Edgar D. Mitchell, USN Lunar Module Pilot. During the 9 day mission, 94 lbs of lunar material was collected and Shepard became the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon.

1972 – It was reported that the United States had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

1972 – US airlines began mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage.

1973 – Services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for Army Lt. Col. William B. Nolde, the last American soldier killed before the Vietnam cease-fire.

1974 – Patty Hearst was kidnapped at gunpoint by a white woman and two black men.

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1975 – North Vietnamese Gen. Van Tien Dung departs for South Vietnam to take command of communist forces in preparation for a new offensive. In December 1974, the North Vietnamese 7th Division and the newly formed 3rd Division attacked Phuoc Long Province, north of Saigon. This attack represented an escalation in the “cease-fire war” that started shortly after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. The North Vietnamese wanted to see how Saigon and Washington would react to a major attack so close to Saigon. President Richard Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford, had promised to come to the aid of South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese launched a major new offensive.

With Nixon’s Watergate resignation and Ford facing an increasingly hostile Congress, Hanoi was essentially conducting a “test” attack to see if the United States would honor its commitment to Saigon. The attack was much more successful than the North Vietnamese anticipated: the South Vietnamese soldiers fought poorly and the United States did nothing. Emboldened by their success, the North Vietnamese decided to launch a major offensive against the South Vietnamese. “Campaign 275” began on March 1, 1975. The North Vietnamese forces quickly overran the South Vietnamese and the United States failed to provide the promised support. Saigon fell on April 30 and the South Vietnamese government officially surrendered.

1976 – An outbreak of Swine Flu begins at Ft. Dix, NJ. David Lewis, an Army private said he felt tired and weak, then left his sick bed to go on a forced run, collapsed, was revived by his Sergeant only to die a few days later and four of his fellow soldiers were additionally hospitalized. Two weeks after his death, health officials announced that swine flu was the cause of death and that this strain of flu appeared to be closely related to the strain involved in the 1918 flu pandemic. Alarmed public-health officials decided that action must be taken to head off another major pandemic, and they urged President Gerald Ford that every person in the U.S. be vaccinated for the disease’ despite prior knowledge that one version of the vaccine could cause neurological damage.

The vaccination program, enacted at a cost of $135 million, was plagued by delays and public relations problems. However, Centers for Disease Control vaccination efforts achieved unprecedented distribution results, with more than 40 million Americans immunized between October and December that year. The first vaccinations were given on approximately October 1, the government suspended the immunization program on December 16 after reports of at least 54 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome across ten states. Approximately 24% of the population had been vaccinated by the time the program was canceled.

1981 – A military jury in North Carolina convicted Marine Pvt. 1st Class Robert Garwood of collaborating with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

1983 – Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie (d.1991), expelled from Bolivia, was brought to trial in Lyon, France. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

1988 – Two federal grand juries in Florida announce indictments of Panama military strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega and 16 associates on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. Noriega, the de facto dictator of Panama since 1983, was charged with smuggling marijuana into the United States, laundering millions of U.S. dollars, and assisting Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel in trafficking cocaine to America. The Panamanian leader denied the charges and threatened expulsion of the 10,000 U.S. service personnel and their families stationed around the Panama Canal. In 1968, Noriega, then a first lieutenant in the Panamanian National Guard, played an important part in a coup that ousted President Arnulfo Arias and brought General Omar Torrijos to power. Early the next year, Torrijos rewarded Noriega for his loyalty by promoting him to lieutenant colonel and appointing him chief of military intelligence.

In 1970, Noriega, who had first been approached by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while a promising military student in the early 1960s, went on the payroll of the CIA. The United States used Noriega as a check against the left-leaning Torrijos and as an informer on Central American revolutionaries, the Colombian drug cartels, and communist Cuba, which Torrijos, though not a Marxist himself, admired and visited. Noriega, meanwhile, developed his G-2 intelligence agency into a feared secret police force and became involved in the drug trade. The U.S. government was aware of his drug trafficking, and in 1977 he was removed from the CIA payroll. However, in 1981, the United States organized and financed the anti-Sandinista Contras in Nicaragua, and Noriega was brought back into the CIA fold. For a salary of close to $200,000 a year, Noriega provided intelligence about the Sandinistas and Cubans to the Americans and aided the Contras in their drug-trafficking efforts.

In July 1981, Omar Torrijos was killed in a plane crash, and Colonel Noriega became chief of staff to General Rubýn Darýo Paredes, head of the National Guard. For two years, military and civilian leader struggled to gain the upper hand. In 1983, Paredes resigned and control of the military and the country passed to Noriega. Noriega unified the armed forces into the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF), promoted himself to the rank of general, and consolidated his rule. Under his regime, political repression and corruption became widespread. In 1984, he held a presidential election, but when Arnulfo Arias won another apparent victory, Noriega tampered with the returns and gave the election to 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 his supporters staged protests against the American presence in Panama. Meanwhile, the dictator cracked down on growing political opposition in Panama. In February 1988, Noriega was indicted by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami, and Panamanian President Eric Arturo Delvalle attempted to dismiss Noriega. Delvalle was himself dismissed by the Noriega-led National Assembly. In March 1988, the United States froze all Panamanian assets in U.S. banks and imposed sanctions, and the same month an attempted coup by a handful of anti-Noriega PDF officers was crushed by loyal PDF soldiers.

During the next year, tensions between Americans and Noriega supporters in Panama continued to grow, and the United States increased its economic sanctions. In May 1989, Noriega annulled a presidential election that would have made Guillermo Endara president, and demonstrators protesting the fraud were attacked by the Noriega-subsidized Dignity Battalions. In response, U.S. President George Bush ordered additional U.S. troops to the Panama Canal Zone and urged U.S. civilians to return to the United States. In October, another coup attempt by anti-Noriega PDF soldiers failed, and on December 15 the Noriega-led assembly declared the dictator the official chief executive while recognizing that a state of war existed with the United States. The next day, an off-duty U.S. Marine officer was shot to death at a PDF roadblock. U.S. forces in Panama were put on high alert, and on December 17 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, the United States held most of the country, and Noriega sought asylum with the Vatican nuncio in Panama City. Meanwhile, Endara had been made president by U.S. forces, and he ordered the PDF dissolved. On January 3, Noriega surrendered and was taken to Howard Air Force Base, where he was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials for his grand jury indictments. On January 4, he arrived in Florida to await his trial. 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. Noriega’s criminal trial began in 1991, and he pleaded innocent.

On April 9, 1992, he was found guilty on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, marking the first time in history that a U.S. jury had convicted a foreign leader of criminal charges. He was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

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1989 – In an important move signaling the close of the nearly decade-long Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the last Russian troops withdraw from the capital city of Kabul. Less than two weeks later, all Soviet troops departed Afghanistan entirely, ending what many observers referred to as Russia’s “Vietnam.” Soviet armed forces entered Afghanistan in December 1979 to support that nation’s pro-Soviet communist government in its battles with Muslim rebels. Almost immediately, the Soviet Union found itself mired in a rapidly escalating conflict. Afghan rebels put up unexpectedly stiff resistance to the Russian intervention. Soon, thousands of Soviet troops were fighting a bloody, costly, and ultimately frustrating battle to end the Afghan resistance. By the time the Soviets started to withdraw in early 1989, over 13,000 Russian soldiers were dead and over 22,000 had been wounded. The Soviet Union also suffered from a very negative diplomatic response from the United States–President Jimmy Carter put a hold on arms negotiations, asked for economic sanctions, and pressed for an American boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

By 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the manpower and financial drains imposed by Afghanistan were unacceptable and indicated that Soviet troops would shortly begin their withdrawal. The Soviet Union was in the midst of tremendous internal political and economic instability at the time, and Gorbachev’s action in regards to Afghanistan was yet another indication that Soviet power was on the wane. In less than three years, Gorbachev had resigned and the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the death and destruction. The Afghan rebels, who had been armed to the teeth by U.S. aid, simply turned their attention to political and religious rivals within the country. Civil war continued to wrack the nation.

1991 – President Bush announced he was sending Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Gulf war zone to assess how the US-led offensive was progressing.

1992 – The House of Representatives authorized an investigation into whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign conspired with Iran to delay release of the American hostages. The task force investigating the “October Surprise” allegations later said it found no credible evidence of such a conspiracy.

1998 – President Clinton ordered 2,000 Marines to the Persian Gulf and met with PM Tony Blair of Britain to discuss the possible use of force against Iraq.

1998 – Democratic fundraiser Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie pleaded innocent in Washington to charges he’d raised illegal donations to buy influence in high places. Trie pleaded guilty in May 1999 to a felony count and a misdemeanor and was sentenced later that year to four months’ home detention and three years’ probation.

2001 – Four disciples of Osama bin Laden went on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The four were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2002 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., indicted John Walker Lindh on 10 charges, alleging he was trained by Osama bin Laden’s network and then conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans.

2002 – In Pakistan 2 men associated with the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl were arrested in a Karachi suburb. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (28), Islamic militant, turned himself in to Ejah Shah, the home secretary in Punjab province.

2002 – US officials announced plans to train and arm Colombian troops to protect the key Cano Limon oil pipeline.

2003 – Secretary of State Colin Powell, made his case that Iraq had defied all demands that it disarm. He presented tape recordings, satellite photos and statements from informants that he said was “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.

2003 – North Korea said that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their operation “on a normal footing.”

2003 – US military officials say that the USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Arabian Sea on the weekend, putting a third US aircraft carrier battle group within striking distance of Iraq.

2004 – CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged that US spy agencies may have over-estimated Iraq’s illicit weapons capabilities.

2004 – NASA restored communications with the Mars Spirit rover.

2004 – U.S. and Iraqi forces captured more than 100 suspected guerrillas in raids across the country, arresting one of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chiefs and another Iraqi believed involved in a suicide bombing last month.

2004 – Pakistan’s Pres. Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan after Kahn absolved Islamabad of selling nuclear secrets to Iran.

2007 – Space Shuttle astronaut and Navy Commander Lisa Nowak is arrested in Florida for attempted kidnapping of U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman, who was romantically involved with astronaut William Oefelein. Nowak was released on bail, and initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included attempted kidnapping, burglary with assault, and battery. Her assignment to the space agency as an astronaut was terminated by NASA effective March 8, 2007. On November 10, 2009, Nowak agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to charges of felony burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BUCKINGHAM, DAVID E.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company E, 4th Delaware Infantry. Place and date: At Rowanty Creek, Va., 5 February 1865. Entered service at: ——. Born: 3 February 1840, Pleasant Hill, Del. Date of issue: 13 February 1895. Citation: Swam the partly frozen creek, under fire, in the attempt to capture a crossing.

RAUB, JACOB F.
Rank and organization: Assistant Surgeon, 210th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 5 February 1865. Entered service at: Weaversville, Pa. Born: 13 May 1840, Raubsville Northhampton County, Pa. Date of issue: 20 April 1896. Citation. Discovering a flank movement by the enemy, appraised the commanding general at great peril, and though a noncombatant voluntarily participated with the troops in repelling this attack.

SMITH, S. RODMOND
Rank and organization: Captain, Company C, 4th Delaware Infantry. Place and date: At Rowanty Creek, Va., 5 February 1865. Entered service at: Wilmington, Del. Birth: Delaware. Date of issue: 8 April 1895. Citation: Swam the partly frozen creek under fire to establish a crossing.

KILBOURNE, CHARLES E.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Volunteer Signal Corps. Place and date: At Paco Bridge, Philippine Islands, 5 February 1899. Entered service at. Portland. Oreg. Birth: Fort Myer, Va. Date of issue: 6 May 1905. Citation: Within a range of 250 yards of the enemy and in the face of a rapid fire climbed a telegraph pole at the east end of the bridge and in full view of the enemy coolly and carefully repaired a broken telegraph wire, thereby reestablishing telegraphic communication to the front.

RUDOLPH, DONALD E.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company E, 20th Infantry, 6th Infantry Division. Place and date: Munoz, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 5 February 1945. Entered service at: Minneapolis, Minn. Birth: South Haven, Minn. G.O. No.: 77, 10 September 1945. Citation: 2d Lt. Rudolph (then T/Sgt.) was acting as platoon leader at Munoz, Luzon, Philippine Islands. While administering first aid on the battlefield, he observed enemy fire issuing from a nearby culvert. Crawling to the culvert with rifle and grenades, he killed 3 of the enemy concealed there. He then worked his way across open terrain toward a line of enemy pillboxes which had immobilized his company. Nearing the first pillbox, he hurled a grenade through its embrasure and charged the position.

With his bare hands he tore away the wood and tin covering, then dropped a grenade through the opening, killing the enemy gunners and destroying their machinegun. Ordering several riflemen to cover his further advance, 2d Lt. Rudolph seized a pick mattock and made his way to the second pillbox. Piercing its top with the mattock, he dropped a grenade through the hole, fired several rounds from his rifle into it and smothered any surviving enemy by sealing the hole and the embrasure with earth. In quick succession he attacked and neutralized 6 more pillboxes. Later, when his platoon was attacked by an enemy tank, he advanced under covering fire, climbed to the top of the tank and dropped a white phosphorus grenade through the turret, destroying the crew. Through his outstanding heroism, superb courage, and leadership, and complete disregard for his own safety, 2d Lt. Rudolph cleared a path for an advance which culminated in one of the most decisive victories of the Philippine campaign.

*VIALE, ROBERT M.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company K, 148th Infantry, 37th Infantry Division. Place and date: Manila, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 5 February 1945. Entered service at: Ukiah, Calif. Birth: Bayside, Calif. G.O. No.: 92, 25 October 1945. Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. Forced by the enemy’s detonation of prepared demolitions to shift the course of his advance through the city, he led the 1st platoon toward a small bridge, where heavy fire from 3 enemy pillboxes halted the unit. With 2 men he crossed the bridge behind screening grenade smoke to attack the pillboxes. The first he knocked out himself while covered by his men’s protecting fire; the other 2 were silenced by 1 of his companions and a bazooka team which he had called up. He suffered a painful wound in the right arm during the action. After his entire platoon had joined him, he pushed ahead through mortar fire and encircling flames. Blocked from the only escape route by an enemy machinegun placed at a street corner, he entered a nearby building with his men to explore possible means of reducing the emplacement. In 1 room he found civilians huddled together, in another, a small window placed high in the wall and reached by a ladder.

Because of the relative positions of the window, ladder, and enemy emplacement, he decided that he, being left-handed, could better hurl a grenade than 1 of his men who had made an unsuccessful attempt. Grasping an armed grenade, he started up the ladder. His wounded right arm weakened, and, as he tried to steady himself, the grenade fell to the floor. In the 5 seconds before the grenade would explode, he dropped down, recovered the grenade and looked for a place to dispose of it safely. Finding no way to get rid of the grenade without exposing his own men or the civilians to injury or death, he turned to the wall, held it close to his body and bent over it as it exploded. 2d Lt. Viale died in a few minutes, but his heroic act saved the lives of others.

*NOONAN, THOMAS P., JR.
Rank and organization: Lance Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps, Company G, 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division. Place and date: Near Vandergrift Combat Base, A Shau Valley, Republic of Vietnam, 5 February 1969. Entered service at: Brooklyn, N.Y. Born: 18 November 1943, Brooklyn, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a fire team leader with Company G, in operations against the enemy in Quang Tri Province. Company G was directed to move from a position which they had been holding southeast of the Vandergrift Combat Base to an alternate location. As the marines commenced a slow and difficult descent down the side of the hill made extremely slippery by the heavy rains, the leading element came under a heavy fire from a North Vietnamese Army unit occupying well concealed positions in the rocky terrain. Four men were wounded, and repeated attempts to recover them failed because of the intense hostile fire. L/Cpl. Noonan moved from his position of relative security and, maneuvering down the treacherous slope to a location near the injured men, took cover behind some rocks.

Shouting words of encouragement to the wounded men to restore their confidence, he dashed across the hazardous terrain and commenced dragging the most seriously wounded man away from the fire-swept area. Although wounded and knocked to the ground by an enemy round, L/Cpl. Noonan recovered rapidly and resumed dragging the man toward the marginal security of a rock. He was, however, mortally wounded before he could reach his destination. His heroic actions inspired his fellow marines to such aggressiveness that they initiated a spirited assault which forced the enemy soldiers to withdraw. L/Cpl. Noonan’s indomitable courage, inspiring initiative, and selfless devotion to duty upheld 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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