This Date in Military History:

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6 February

1778 – During the American War for Independence, representatives from the United States and France sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the United States as an independent nation and encouraged trade between France and the America, while the Treaty of Alliance provided for a military alliance against Great Britain, stipulating that the absolute independence of the United States be recognized as a condition for peace and that France will be permitted to conquer the British West Indies. With the treaties, the first entered into by the U.S. government, the Bourbon monarchy of France formalized its commitment to assist the American colonies in their struggle against France’s old rival, Great Britain. The eagerness of the French to help the United States was motivated both by an appreciation of the American revolutionaries’ democratic ideals and by bitterness at having lost most of their American empire to the British at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars in 1763.

In 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to a diplomatic commission to secure a formal alliance with France. Covert French aid began filtering into the colonies soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, but it was not until the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that the French became convinced that the Americans were worth backing in a formal treaty. On February 6, 1778, the treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them. One month later, war between Britain and France formally began when a British squadron fired on two French ships. During the American Revolution, French naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which culminated in the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. It was the first alliance treaty for the fledgling U.S. government and the last until the 1949 NATO pact.

1778 – England declared war on France.

1778 – Continental Marines helped defend Charleston from the British.

1788 – Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1802 – Congress empowers President Jefferson to arm United States ships in order that they may protect themselves against Tripolitan pirates.

1815 – The state of New Jersey issued the first American railroad charter to John Stevens, who proposed a rail link between Trenton and New Brunswick. The line, however, was never built.

1832 – Battle of Quallah Batto, Sumatra. On Feb. 7 1831, the merchant ship Friendship was attacked in Sumatra by pirates who killed 3 of the ship’s crew and plundered her cargo. The USS Potomiac, disguised as a merchant man, was dispatched on a punitive raid. On Feb. 4 1832 she arrived at Quallah Batto. A landing party of Marines and sailors attacked one fort, carried it and proceeded inland to reduce the remaining two forts.

The first was stiffly defended until Marine Lt. Edson finally seized the drawbridge and gained entrance for the assaulting troops. All the defenders were either killed or retreated into the surrounding jungle. The Marines then assisted in the assault on the remaining position. Shortly thereafter, the remaining pirates escaped into the jungle with the Marines in pursuit. After inflicting casualties upon the sea rovers, the Marines and sailors withdrew to the ships which began shelling the remaining strong point until it’s surrender.

1838 – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrated his telegraph, in Morristown, N.J.

1861 – The 1st meeting of Provisional Congress of Confederate States of America.

1862 – General Ulysses S. Grant provides the first major Union victory of the war when he captures Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Ten days later, he captured Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, which gave the Yankees control of northern Tennessee and paved the way for the occupation of Nashville.

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1863 – Union General S.F. Heintzelman is put in charge of the Federal Department of Washington.

1865 – Confederate General John Pegram is killed at the Battle of Dabney’s Mill, Virginia. Pegram graduated from West Point in 1854, 10th in a class of 46. He served in various posts in the west before resigning his commission at the start of the Civil War. Pegram then received an appointment as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army. Sent to fight in western Virginia during the summer of 1861, he was captured by General George McClellan’s men at the Battle of Rich Mountain. Pegram was exchanged in April 1862 and sent to serve with General Pierre G. T. Beauregard in Mississippi. He fought in Tennessee and Kentucky and earned a promotion to brigadier general. After the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, Pegram was transferred to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

He was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, but recovered to fight with General Jubal Early during the Shenandoah Valley campaign in the summer of 1864. That fall, he was sent to defend his native city of Petersburg. On January 19, Pegram married Hetty Cary, a prominent Richmond socialite who many called the “handsomest women in the Southland.” Even in the gloom of the ongoing siege, the ceremony was a grand affair attended by nearly all of the high-ranking Confederates, including President Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina. The bride, commented onlookers, was a vision of beauty and one said that the “happy gleam of her beautiful brown eyes seemed to defy all sorrow.” Just three weeks later, Pegram’s body was returned to the same church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, and his young widow knelt beside his coffin as the minister who married them presided over the dashing general’s funeral.

1869 – Harper’s Weekly published the 1st picture of Uncle Sam with chin whiskers.

1899 – The Spanish-American War ends. After a protracted struggle between imperialists and anti-imperialists, the Senate ratifies the Treaty of Paris , 57 to 27. The argument for ratification is lead by Henry Cabot Lodge who contends that it will enhance national prestige, prevent foreign annexation of the formerly Spanis possiession of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, and constitute economic, strategic and “civilizing” advantages. The case against ratification is that it is contrary to US tradition to acquire territory outside the continental area; that people of alien races will not be easily assimilated into the American way of life; that the treaty is against the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine and will weaken the American belief in self-government. Anti-imperialists also contend that “the Constitution follows the flag,” but imperialists argue that the people of these new acquisitions, even while being nationals, are not automatically endowed with the privileges of US citizenship. This sets the stage for a series of Supreme Court cases known collectively as the Insular Cases that have never fully settled the issues.

1900 – President McKinley appointed W.H. Taft commissioner to report on the Philippines.

1908 – Bids for the Army’s first airplane considered by the Board of Ordnance and Fortification. Of 24 presented two were approved on Feb 8th by the Secretary of War. Army aviation will be born as a part of the Signal Corps.

1911 – Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan went on to become a film actor, governor of California (1967-1975) and the 40th president of the United States (1981-1989) and was credited with ending the Cold War.

1916 – Germany admitted full liability for Lusitania incident and recognized the United State’s right to claim indemnity.

1919 – The 1st day of 5-day Seattle general strike, the first general strike in America, took effect. During this period Washington was a center for the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the “Wobblies.” Their agitation led to the Centralia massacre and the Everett massacre.

1922 – The Nine-Power Treaty is signed at the Washington Conference, endorsing the Open Door Policy with China, and forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years. The US, UK, France, Italy & Japan signed the Washington naval arms limitation.

1929 – Germany accepted Kellogg-Briand pact.

1933 – The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. The Lame-Duck Amendment changed the inauguration date of congressmen from March 4 to January 3. Moving back the inauguration date for newly-elected congressmen reduced the time that defeated members, or “lame ducks,” remain in office.

1942 – Japanese reinforcements land on Luzon. In the Bataan peninsula there is a lessening of the fighting.

1942 – The first meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, as defined by the Arcadia Conference, takes place. (Note: In military usage, the term “joint” refers to operations by multiple services of one nation and “combined” refers to operations by multiple nations.)

1943 – The American command in Europe and North Africa is restructured. General Andrews is appointed to the new European Theater Command and General Eisenhower remains in command in North Africa.

1944 – Forces of US 5th Army continue fighting in the hills north of Cassino.

1944 – Kwajalein Island in the Central Pacific fell to U.S. Army troops.

1945 – Units of US 4th Corps from US 5th Army take Gallicano in a brief offensive designed to improve the Allied positions on either side of the Serchio Valley.

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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1952 – The carrier USS Philippine Sea returned to Korean waters for its second tour of duty.

1959 – The United States successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral.

1959 – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files the first patent for an integrated circuit.

1963 – The United States reported that all Soviet offensive arms are out of Cuba.

1964 – Cuba blocked the water supply to Guantanamo Naval Base in rebuke of the United State’s seizure of four Cuban fishing boats and fines on Cuban fishermen near Florida. The US imposed water rationing and built desalination plants in response.

1966 – Accompanied by his leading political and military advisers, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky in Honolulu. The talks concluded with issuance of a joint declaration in which the United States promised to help South Vietnam “prevent aggression,” develop its economy, and establish “the principles of self-determination of peoples and government by the consent of the governed.” Johnson declared: “We are determined to win not only military victory but victory over hunger, disease, and despair.” He announced renewed emphasis on “The Other War”–the effort to provide the South Vietnamese rural population with local security, and economic and social programs to win over their active support. In his final statement on the discussions, Johnson warned the South Vietnamese that he would be monitoring their efforts to build democracy, improve education and health care, resettle refugees, and reconstruct South Vietnam’s economy.

1968 – Two reduced Marine battalions, the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines with two companies, and 2d Battalion, 5th Marines with three, recaptured Hue’s hospital, jail, and provincial headquarters. It would take three more weeks of intense house to house fighting, and nearly a thousand Marines killed and wounded, before the imperial city was secured.

1973 – In accordance with the agreement at the Paris Peace Talks, Navy Task Force 78 begins Operation End Sweep, the mine clearance of North Vietnamese waters of mines laid in 1972.

1973 – Supervisors from the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), delegated to oversee the cease-fire, start to take up their positions. The cease-fire had gone into effect as a provision of the Paris Peace Accords. The ICCS included representatives from Canada, Poland, Hungary, and Indonesia, and was supposed to supervise the cease-fire. However, the ICCS had no enforcement powers and had extreme difficulty in settling the many quarrels that quickly arose. In the end, the ICCS proved incapable of enforcing the provisions of the Accords and was largely ineffectual. Consequently, renewed fighting between the South and North Vietnamese broke out after only a brief lull and continued for the next two years, until the North Vietnamese successfully launched their final offensive in 1975 and South Vietnam surrendered.

1974 – US House of Representatives began determining grounds for the impeachment of President Richard Milhouse Nixon.

1975 – President Gerald Ford asked Congress for $497 million in aid to Cambodia.

1985 – In his State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan defines some of the key concepts of his foreign policy, establishing what comes to be known as the “Reagan Doctrine.” The doctrine served as the foundation for the Reagan administration’s support of “freedom fighters” around the globe. Reagan began his foreign policy comments with the dramatic pronouncement that, “Freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few; it is the universal right of all God’s children.” America’s “mission” was to “nourish and defend freedom and democracy.” More specifically, Reagan declared that, “We must stand by our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives-on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua-to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.” He concluded, “Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.” With these words, the Reagan administration laid the foundation for its program of military assistance to “freedom fighters.”

In action, this policy translated into covertly supporting the Contras in their attacks on the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua; the Afghan rebels in their fight against the Soviet occupiers; and anticommunist Angolan forces embroiled in that nation’s civil war. President Reagan continued to defend his actions throughout his two terms in office. During his farewell address in 1989, he claimed success in weakening the Sandinista government, forcing the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan, and bringing an end to the conflict in Angola. Domestic critics, however, decried his actions, claiming that the support of so-called “freedom fighters” resulted only in prolonging and escalating bloody conflicts and in U.S. support of repressive and undemocratic elements in each of the respective nations.

1994 – A day after a mortar shell killed 68 people in a Sarajevo marketplace, President Clinton called for a United Nations probe. NATO threatened air strikes if Serbs failed to pull weapons back from around the city. They moved their weapons and brought a temporary respite.

1995 – The space shuttle Discovery flew to within 37 feet of the Russian space station Mir in the first rendezvous of its kind in two decades.

1997 – Miami strip club owner of “Porky’s,” Ludwig “Tarzan” Fainberg, was charged with trying to broker the sale of a Russian nuclear submarine to Columbian drug barons. He had already purchased 6 Russian helicopters for drug traffickers.

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1998 – President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair redoubled their pledge to use military force against Iraq if necessary; during a joint news conference in which the subject of Monica Lewinsky came up, Clinton said he would never resign.

1998 – President Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

1998 – Two US warplanes collided in the Persian Gulf and one of the pilots was killed.

1998 – Iraq rejects key parts of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s proposal to increase the amount of oil Iraq is permitted to sell under the U.N.’s oil-for-food program from $2.14 billion to $5.2 billion. In a letter to Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf objects to additional funds to pay for U.N. monitoring, proposals to repair electric power stations in northern Iraq, and plans for U.N. agencies to target aid to specific groups such as the poor and children. Al-Sahhaf writes that the Iraqi government should deliver the aid and determine which power stations are repaired, not the U.N.

1999 – The Stardust spacecraft lifted off aboard a Delta II rocket for its 7-year journey to gather particles from the Wild-2 comet.

1999 – Talks began in Rambouillet, France in an attempt to find a Kosovo peace settlement. In January 1999, NATO warned Slobodan Milosevic that it would respond if he failed to come into compliance with the October agreements, if the repression continued, and if he frustrated the peace process. Mr Milosevic failed to meet any of those requirements. On 30 January all parties were informed that they were to agree on a political settlement for Kosovo by 20 February 1999. This deadline was subsequently extended until 23 February.

2001 – A trade tribunal ordered the US to allow Mexican trucks to cross the border following a NAFTA arbitration process.

2002 – A federal judge ordered John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban,” held without bail pending trial.

2002 – The Philippine opposition made a legal move that gave Pres. Arroyo 10 days to justify the presence of US troops.

2003 – Edging closer to war, President Bush declared “the game is over” for Saddam Hussein and urged skeptical allies to join in disarming Iraq.

2003 – Belgium asked the European Union to call an emergency meeting to discuss a peaceful way out of the Iraq crisis.

2003 – Pre-emptive attacks on North Korea’s nuclear facilities would trigger a “total war,” the communist state warned after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld labelled the North’s government a “terrorist regime.”

2003 – Turkey’s parliament voted to allow U.S. troops to renovate Turkish bases for use in a possible war with Iraq.

2003 – US Secretary of State Colin Powell presents tape recordings, satellite photos and informants’ statements to the UN, which he says constitute “irrefutable and undeniable” evidence that Saddam Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.

2003 – The US military says it has activated nearly 17,000 more reserve troops, bringing the total number of reservists on active duty to more than 111,000.

2004 – President Bush created a bipartisan commission to investigate the quality of intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq. Conclusions were set for March, 2005.

2007 – Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) begins. It is the military operation conducted by the United States and partner nations in the Sahara/Sahel region of Africa, consisting of counterterrorism efforts and policing of arms and drug trafficking across central Africa. The goal of the missions is to drive terrorist threats away from the continent of Europe, thus, south and east of the Sahara. Joint Task Force Aztec Silence (JTF Aztec Silence) is the combined arms organization assigned to implement the missions and meet the goals of OEF-TS. The JTF has been part of United States European Command (EUCOM).

As of September 2007, with the announcement of the new United States Africa Command, the mission will fall under the responsibility of Africa Command. The Congress approved $500 million for the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) over six years to support countries involved in counterterrorism against alleged threats of Al Qaeda operating in African countries, primarily Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, and Morocco. This program builds upon the former Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), which concluded in December 2004 and focused on weapon and drug trafficking, as well as counterterrorism.

2007 – A Distributed Denial of Service attack, aimed at the global backbone of top level domain name servers, began at 10 AM UTC and lasted twenty-four hours. At least two of the root servers (G-ROOT and L-ROOT) reportedly “suffered badly” while two others (F-ROOT and M-ROOT) “experienced heavy traffic”. The latter two servers largely contained the damage by distributing requests to other root server instances with anycast addressing. ICANN published a formal analysis shortly after the event. On February 8, 2007 it was announced by Network World that “if the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nation’s critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the President, to launch an actual bombing of an attack source or a cyber counterattack.”

2007 – United States President George W. Bush approves a Pentagon plan for establishing a new command center in Africa. The United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM or AFRICOM) will become one of nine Unified Combatant Commands of the United States Armed Forces, headquartered at Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany. It is responsible for U.S. military operations and military relations with 53 African nations – an area of responsibility (AOR) covering all of Africa except Egypt, which is within the area of responsibility of the United States Central Command.

2009 – Russia’s government will allow the U.S. Armed Forces to ship nonlethal equipment to Afghanistan through Russian territory.

2009 – The USS Port Royal runs aground off Hawaii. USS Port Royal (CG-73) is a United States Navy Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser. At 9 pm Port Royal ran aground about a half-mile south of the Honolulu International Airport’s Reef Runway. The ship had just come out of a dry dock after undergoing maintenance and was undergoing her first sea trials. No one was injured in the incident and no fuel was spilled. On 9 February 2009, Port Royal was pulled off the rock and sand shoal at around 2 a.m. No one was injured during the recovery effort. Captain John Carroll was relieved of his duties and, along with the ship’s executive officer and three other sailors, subsequently disciplined for dereliction of duty and improperly hazarding a vessel.

2012 – As a consequence of the deteriorating conditions in Syria, the United States closes its embassy in Damascus.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

CADWALLADER, ABEL G.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company H, 1st Maryland Infantry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run and Dabneys Mills, Va., 6 February 1865. Entered service at:——. Birth: Baltimore Md. Date of issue: 5 January 1897. Citation: Gallantly planted the colors on the enemy’s works in advance of the arrival of his regiment.

CALDWELL, DANIEL
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company H, 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 6 February 1865. Entered service at:——. Born: 1 June 1842, Marble Hill, Montgomery County, Pa. Date of issue: 25 February 1865. Citation: In a mounted charge, dashed into center of the enemy’s line and captured the colors of the 33rd North Carolina Infantry.

COEY, JAMES
Rank and organization: Major, 147th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 6 February 1865. Entered service at: ——. Born: 12 February 1841, New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 12 May 1892. Citation: Seized the regimental colors at a critical moment and by a prompt advance on the enemy caused the entire brigade to follow him; and, after being himself severely wounded, he caused himself to be lifted into the saddle and a second time rallied the line in an attempt to check the enemy.

DAY, CHARLES
Rank and organization: Private, Company K, 210th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 6 February 1865. Entered service at: Lycoming County, Pa. Birth: Otsego County, N.Y. Date of issue: 20 July 1897. Citation: Seized the colors of another regiment of the brigade, the regiment having been thrown into confusion and the color bearer killed, and bore said colors throughout the remainder of the engagement.

DELANEY, JOHN C.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company I, 107th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Danby’s mills, Va., 6 February 1860. Entered service at: Honesdale, Pa. Birth: 22 April 1848, Ireland. Date of issue: 29 August 1894. Citation: Sprang between the lines and brought out a wounded comrade about to be burned in the brush.

JACOBSON, DOUGLAS THOMAS
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, 3d Battalion, 23d Marines, 4th Marine Division. Place and date: Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 26 February 1945. Entered service at: New York. Born: 25 November 1925, Rochester, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 3d Battalion, 23d Marines, 4th Marine Division, in combat against enemy Japanese forces during the seizure of Iwo Jima in the Volcano Island, 26 February 1945. Promptly destroying a stubborn 20mm. antiaircraft gun and its crew after assuming the duties of a bazooka man who had been killed, Pfc. Jacobson waged a relentless battle as his unit fought desperately toward the summit of Hill 382 in an effort to penetrate the heart of Japanese cross-island defense. Employing his weapon with ready accuracy when his platoon was halted by overwhelming enemy fire on 26 February, he first destroyed 2 hostile machinegun positions, then attacked a large blockhouse, completely neutralizing the fortification before dispatching the 5-man crew of a second pillbox and exploding the installation with a terrific demolitions blast.

Moving steadily forward, he wiped out an earth-covered rifle emplacement and, confronted by a cluster of similar emplacements which constituted the perimeter of enemy defenses in his assigned sector, fearlessly advanced, quickly reduced all 6 positions to a shambles, killed 10 of the enemy, and enabled our forces to occupy the strong point. Determined to widen the breach thus forced, he volunteered his services to an adjacent assault company, neutralized a pillbox holding up its advance, opened fire on a Japanese tank pouring a steady stream of bullets on 1 of our supporting tanks, and smashed the enemy tank’s gun turret in a brief but furious action culminating in a single-handed assault against still another blockhouse and the subsequent neutralization of its firepower. By his dauntless skill and valor, Pfc. Jacobson destroyed a total of 16 enemy positions and annihilated approximately 75 Japanese, thereby contributing essentially to the success of his division’s operations against this fanatically defended outpost of the Japanese Empire. His gallant conduct in the face of tremendous odds enhanced and sustained the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

KINSMAN, THOMAS JAMES
Rank and organization: Specialist Fourth Class, U.S. Army, Company B, 3d Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division. place and date: Near Vinh Long, Republic of Vietnam, 6 February 1968. Entered service at: Seattle, Wash. Born: 4 March 1945, Renton, Wash. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty Sp4c. Kinsman (then Pfc.) distinguished himself in action in the afternoon while serving as a rifleman with Company B, on a reconnaissance-in-force mission. As his company was proceeding up a narrow canal in armored troops carriers, it came under sudden and intense rocket, automatic weapons and small-arms fire from a well entrenched Viet Cong force. The company immediately beached and began assaulting the enemy bunker complex. Hampered by exceedingly dense undergrowth which limited visibility to 10 meters, a group of 8 men became cut off from the main body of the company.

As they were moving through heavy enemy fire to effect a link-up, an enemy soldier in a concealed position hurled a grenade into their midst. Sp4c. Kinsman immediately alerted his comrades of the danger, then unhesitatingly threw himself on the grenade and blocked the explosion with his body. As a result of his courageous action, he received severe head and chest wounds. Through his indomitable courage, complete disregard for his personal safety and profound concern for his fellow soldiers, Sp4c. Kinsman averted loss of life and injury to the other 7 men of his element. Sp4c. Kinsman’s extraordinary heroism at the risk of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

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7 February

1774 – The special investigative commission reports to the English Privy Council that the Massachusetts petition calling for the dismissal of Governor hutchinson and provincial secretary Andrew Oliver is based on false charges. For his role in the matter, having sent letters belonging to Governor Hutchinson to Boston where they were publicly read (and which played a role in fomenting the Boston Tea Party) by Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin was removed from his office as Deputy Postmaster General for America.

1795 – The 11th Amendment to US Constitution was ratified. The Eleventh Amendment, which was the first Constitutional amendment after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, was adopted following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793). In Chisholm, the Court ruled that federal courts had the authority to hear cases in law and equity brought by private citizens against states and that states did not enjoy sovereign immunity from suits made by citizens of other states in federal court. Thus, the amendment clarified Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which gave diversity jurisdiction to the judiciary to hear cases “between a state and citizens of another state.”

1799 – In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, federal marshals arrest John Fries, the leader of a taxpayer’s rebellion. Fires had raised a force of several hundred men in Bucks, Montgomery and Northampton counties in order to protest the direct federal tax implemented by the acts of July 9 and 14, 1798 to raise revenue for the anticipated war with France. Tried twice, Fries will be convicted of treason both times. Although sentenced to death, he will be pardoned by President Adams.

1800 – USS Essex becomes first U.S. Navy vessel to cross the Equator.

1815 – The Board of Naval Commissioners, a group of senior officers, is established to oversee the operation and maintenance of the Navy, under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy.

1832 – 250 Marines defeated Malay pirates in Sumatra, Indonesia.

1861 – The Choctaw Nation declares its allegiance to the Confederacy.

1862 – One day after the fall of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of Rebel forces in the west, orders 15,000 reinforcements to Fort Donelson. This fort lay on the Cumberland River just a few miles from Fort Henry. Johnston’s decision turned out to be a mistake, as many of the troops were captured when the Fort Donelson fell to the Yankees on February 16. During the fall and winter of 1861 to 1862, the Union army and navy penetrated through Kentucky and into Tennessee. Led by General Ulysses S. Grant, the Yankees were gaining crucial advantages by controlling parts of the major rivers in the upper South. Johnston sought to stop the bleeding of lost Confederate territory by strengthening the garrison inside Fort Donelson.

In retrospect, his mistake was in not providing enough support to Donelson. Johnston wanted to buy time so he could gather his forces from eastern Kentucky and Tennessee to Nashville, which lay south and east of Fort Donelson. If Johnston had concentrated his force at Donelson, he would have had a significant advantage over Grant. Instead, Grant surrounded the fort and sent a squadron to attack from the river. On February 16, the Yankees cut off the fort from the south and forced the surrender of 15,000 Confederates. After the fall of Fort Donelson, Johnston gathered his remaining forces to northern Mississippi. On April 6 at Shiloh, the western armies clashed in one of the most destructive battles of the war. Johnston was killed in the Confederate defeat.

1862 – Roanoke Isle, N.C. seized by Marines and Soldiers in battle with Confederates.

1864 – Union troops commanded by Major General Q A Gilmore occupy Jacksonville, Florida.

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1876 – Pres Grant’s private secretary, Gen. Orville E. Babcock, was acquitted of involvement in the Whiskey Ring. The “Whiskey Ring” was a conspiracy among distillers, revenue collectors, and high federal officials to avoid taxation through fraudulent reports on whiskey production. 230 indictments were secured, but no convictions were made. Grant helped Babcock secure an acquittal for his part in the ring. This affair contributed to the reputation for corruption that Grant’s administrations acquired.

1886 – Riots amounting to a small war erupt against the Chinese in Seattle, Washington. At least 400 are forcibly ejected from their homes. Federal troops are required to restore order. Harpers Weekly of March 6, 1886th reported these facts: “By a pre-concerted plan, of which neither the law-abiding citizens of the town nor the Chinamen had a hint, a mob invaded the Chinese quarter late Saturday night, forcibly but quietly entered the houses, dragged the occupants from their beds, forced them quickly to pack their personal effects, and marched them to a steamer. The mob was thoughtful enough to provide wagons to convey the baggage of its victims. Some had money enough to pay their fare to San Francisco, and many did not, but the mob made no distinction.

The few policemen that became aware of the wrong-doing had no power and slight willingness to prevent it, and before the sleeping citizens of the town or the county officers knew what was going on, 400 Chinamen were shivering on the dock. The Sheriff ordered the mob to disperse, but the only result of his order was a hastening of the work of expulsion. The captain of the steam-ship admitted all the Chinamen who had bought tickets, but refused to allow the others to go on board. He armed his crew and attached hose to his boilers, and thus assumed the defensive. Not more than 80 of the 400 Chinamen purchased tickets and safety.”

1894 – The US House of Representatives passed a resolution that prevented the sending of US troops to Hawaii to restore Queen Lili’uokalani.

1894 – The Cripple Creek miners’ strike of 1894 was a five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA. It resulted in a victory for the union and was followed in 1903 by the Colorado Labor Wars. It is notable for being the only time in United States history when a state militia was called out (May/June 1894) in support of striking workers. The strike was characterized by firefights and use of dynamite, and ended after a standoff between the Colorado state militia and a private force working for owners of the mines. In the years after the strike, the WFM’s popularity and power increased significantly through the region.

1914 – Pursuant to the Convention for Safety at Sea in London, President Woodrow Wilson directed that the Revenue Cutter Service undertake the task of manning the International Ice Patrol. Henceforth, the Revenue Cutter Service and the Coast Guard, with brief respites during both World Wars, served in this capacity.

1915 – 1st wireless message sent from a moving train to a station was received.

1917 – The British steamer California is sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat.

1928 – The United States signed an arbitration treaty with France.

1930 – In Kowloon a unified Communist Party of Vietnam (Viet nam Cong Sang Dang) is founded under the leadership of Nguyen Ai Quoc. I Hong Kong the Indochinese Communist Party is also born under his leadership.

1942 – Presidential order creates the War Shipping Administration which assumed control over all phases of merchant marine activities.

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1942 – The federal government ordered passenger car production stopped and converted to wartime purposes. In spite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s exhortation that the U.S. auto industry should become the “great arsenal of democracy,” Detroit’s executives were reluctant to join the war cause. However, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the country mobilized behind the U.S. declaration of war. The government offered automakers guaranteed profits regardless of production costs throughout the war years.

Furthermore, the Office of Production Management allocated $11 billion to the construction of war manufacturing plants that would be sold to the automobile manufacturers at remarkable discounts after the war. What had at first seemed like a burden on the automotive industry became a boon. The production demands placed on the industry and the resources allocated to the individual automobile manufacturers during the war would revolutionize American car making and bring about the Golden Era of the 1950s.

1943 – During a fierce convoy battle near Greenland, the CGC Ingham rescued 33 survivors from the torpedoed troopship SS Henry Mallory while the Bibb rescued 202. Bibb then rescued 33 from the torpedoed Kalliopi.

1943 – The government announced that shoe rationing would go into effect in two days, limiting each purchaser to three pairs for the remainder of the year.

1943 – On Guadalcanal the US 161st Regiment continues a cautious advance. The Japanese proceed with their evacuation.

1944 – In the Kwajalein Atoll, American forces complete the elimination of isolated Japanese pockets of resistance.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, there are new attacks on the British 1st Division by German forces. The Germans aim for the village of Aprilia and “The Factory” nearby. Meanwhile, the British 56th Division and the US 45th Division arrive at Anzio.

1945 – In the US 5th Corps advance toward the Roer, Schmidt is taken. To the south, US 3rd Army units move into Germany east of the Our.

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 – US 76th and 5th Infantry divisions began crossing the Sauer.

1947 – Arabs and Jews rejected a British proposal to split Palestine.

1948 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley. Eisenhower will become President of Columbia University.

1950 – The United States and Great Britain extend de jure recognition to the Bao Dai regime. Vietnam is now effectively split between a communist-influenced north and an anti-communist south.

1950 – Sen Joe McCarthy claimed “communists” in US Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

1955 – Seventh Fleet ships begin evacuation of Chinese nationalists from Tachen Islands.

1962 – President Kennedy began the blockade of Cuba.

1962 – The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports.

1965 – As part of Operation Flaming Dart, 49 U.S. Navy jets from the 7th Fleet carriers Coral Sea and Hancock drop bombs and rockets on the barracks and staging areas at Dong Hoi, a guerrilla training camp in North Vietnam. Escorted by U.S. jets, a follow-up raid by South Vietnamese planes bombed a North Vietnamese military communications center. These strikes were in retaliation for communist attacks on the U.S. installation at Camp Holloway and the adjacent Pleiku airfield in the Central Highlands, which killed eight U.S. servicemen, wounded 109, and destroyed or damaged 20 aircraft. Even before the attack, presidential advisors John T. McNaughton and McGeorge Bundy had favored bombing North Vietnam.

After the attack in the Central Highlands, they strongly urged President Johnson to order the retaliatory raids. Johnson agreed and gave the order to commence Operation Flaming Dart, hoping that a quick and effective retaliation would persuade the North Vietnamese to cease their attacks in South Vietnam. Bundy, who had just returned from Vietnam, defended the air raids as “right and necessary.” Senate Majority Leader Mansfield (D-Montana) and GOP leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois) supported the president’s decision, but Senators Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) attacked the action as a dangerous escalation of the war. The retaliatory raids did not have the desired effect. On February 10, the Viet Cong struck again, this time at an American installation in Qui Nhon, killing 23 Americans. Johnson quickly ordered another retaliatory strike, Flaming Dart II.

1968 – North Vietnamese used 11 Soviet-built light tanks to overrun the U.S. Special Forces camp at Lang Vei at the end of an 18-hour long siege.

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1971 – Operation Dewey Canyon II ends, but U.S. units continue to provide support for South Vietnamese army operations in Laos. Operation Dewey Canyon II began on January 30 as the initial phase of Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos that was to commence on February 8. The purpose of the South Vietnamese operation was to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail, advance to Tchepone in Laos, and destroy the North Vietnamese supply dumps in the area. In Dewey Canyon II, the vanguard of the U.S. 1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division, an armored cavalry/engineer task force, cleared the road from Vandegrift Combat Base (southwest of Cam Lo in the region south of the DMZ) along highway Route 9 toward Khe Sanh.

The area was cleared so that 20,000 South Vietnamese troops could reoccupy 1,000 square miles of territory in northwest South Vietnam and mass at the Laotian border in preparation for the invasion of Laos. In accordance with a U.S. congressional ban, U.S. ground forces were not to enter Laos. Instead, the only direct U.S. support permitted was long-range cross-border artillery fire, fixed-wind air strikes, and 2,600 helicopters to airlift Saigon troops and supplies.

1974 – The island nation of Grenada won independence from Britain.

1984 – While in orbit 170 miles above Earth, Navy Captain Bruce McCandless becomes the first human being to fly untethered in space when he exits the U.S. space shuttle Challenger and maneuvers freely, using a bulky white rocket pack of his own design. McCandless orbited Earth in tangent with the shuttle at speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour and flew up to 320 feet away from the Challenger. After an hour and a half testing and flying the jet-powered backpack and admiring Earth, McCandless safely reentered the shuttle. Later that day, Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stewart tried out the rocket pack, which was a device regarded as an important step toward future operations to repair and service orbiting satellites and to assemble and maintain large space stations. It was the fourth orbital mission of the space shuttle Challenger.

1986 – President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvlaier of Haiti is flown to France on a United States jet after fleeing his country.

1990 – The Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party agrees to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70-year long monopoly of political power. The Committee’s decision to allow political challenges to the party’s dominance in Russia was yet another signal of the impending collapse of the Soviet system. At the end of three days of extremely stormy meetings dealing with economic and political reforms in the Soviet Union, the Central Committee announced that it was endorsing the idea that the Soviet Communist Party should make “no claim for any particular role to be encoded in the Constitution” that was currently being rewritten. The proposal was but one of many made by President Gorbachev during the meetings. Critics of Gorbachev’s plan charged that dissipating the Communist Party’s power would erode the gains made since the Bolshevik Revolution and would weaken the international stature of the Soviet Union.

Supporters, however, carried the day–they noted the impatience of the Soviet people with the slow pace of change and the general pessimism about the crumbling economy under communist rule. As one Communist Party official noted, “Society itself will decide whether it wishes to adopt our politics.” However, he was also quick to add that the move by the Central Committee did not mean that the Communist Party was removing itself from public affairs. Many foreign observers stressed that even in a new pluralistic political system in Russia, the well-established party would have immense advantages over any challengers. The response from the United States was surprise and cautious optimism. One State Department official commented that, “The whole Soviet world is going down the drainpipe with astonishing speed. It’s mind-boggling.”

Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger indicated that he was “personally gratified and astonished that anyone would have the chance to say such things in Moscow without being shot.” President George Bush was more circumspect, merely congratulating President Gorbachev for his “restraint and finesse.” Ironically, the fact that the Communist Party was willing to accept political challenges to its authority indicated how desperately it was trying to maintain its weakening power over the country. The measures were little help, however–President Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991 and the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist on December 31, 1991.

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left for a visit to the Gulf War zone.

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1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, after two years as a fugitive.

1997 – The Air Force suspended all its flights in restricted training areas on the East Coast after two close calls between National Guard jets and civilian airliners.

1999 – NASA launched the Stardust spacecraft on a mission to chase a comet in hopes of collecting a sample of comet dust.

2001 – The space shuttle Atlantis took off with the Destiny module, a laboratory compartment, for the International Space Station.

2001 – Turkish government officials state that Turkey aims to import about 80,000 barrels per day of Iraqi Kirkuk crude oil in 2002, an increase over the 50,000 barrels per day imported in 2001. The oil, which is taken into Turkey by truck, is transported by Turkey’s foreign trade under-secretariat, for refining by Tupras. The trade is outside of the United Nations oil-for-food program.

2001 – In Washington Robert Pickett (47), an accountant with a history of mental illness, was shot in the leg by a Secret Service agent after brandishing a hand gun outside the White House gates.

2002 – The Bush administration allowed Geneva accords to cover Taliban fighters but not members of al Qaeda.

2003 – President Bush courted the leaders of France and China in an uphill struggle to win U.N. backing for war with Iraq.

2003 – The US moved its terror alert status to orange, the 2nd highest level. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the government had received intelligence information, corroborated by multiple sources, that Osama bin Laden’s terror organization sought to attack Americans at home or abroad during the annual hajj pilgrimage to the holy Saudi city of Mecca.

2003 – The CGC Matagorda, a 110-foot Island Class patrol boat, became the first cutter to begin the Integrated Deepwater System modernization and life extension overhaul when she was decommissioned on 7 February 2003 at the Bollinger Shipyard in Lockport, LA.

2005 – US troops manning a checkpoint found 4 Egyptian technicians who had been kidnapped the previous day in Baghdad, freeing them and arresting some of the abductors.

2005 – UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the head of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq and a senior official who dealt with contracts, following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct.

2006 – Mounir El Motassadeq, a member of the Hamburg cell led by Mohamed Atta, is ordered an early release by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The Berlin court rules there is an absence of proof in the government’s case that Motassadeq was informed about the 9/11 terrorist plot.

2008 – Space Shuttle Atlantis launches successfully on its STS-122 mission. STS-122 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS), flown by the Space Shuttle Atlantis. STS-122 marked the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS, and the 121st space shuttle flight since STS-1. The mission was also referred to as ISS-1E by the ISS program. The primary objective of STS-122 was to deliver the European Columbus science laboratory, built by the European Space Agency (ESA), to the station. It also returned Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Daniel M. Tani to Earth. Tani was replaced on Expedition 16 by Léopold Eyharts, a French Flight Engineer representing ESA. After Atlantis’ landing, the orbiter was prepared for STS-125, the final servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.

2008 – British Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri will be extradited to the United States to face terror charges.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

SANDS, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company G, 88th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Dabney’s Mills, Va., 6_7 February 1865. Entered service at: Reading, Pa. Birth: Reading, Pa. Date of issue: 9 November 1893. Citation: Grasped the enemy’s colors in the face of a deadly fire and brought them inside the lines.

SHUTES, HENRY
Rank and organization: Captain of the Forecastle, U.S. Navy. Born: 1804, Baltimore, Md. Accredited to: Maryland. G.O. No.: 71, 15 January 1866. Citation: Served as captain of the forecastle on board the U.S.S. Wissahickon during the battle of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862; and in the engagement at Fort McAllister, 27 February 1863. Going on board the U.S.S. Wissahickon from the U.S.S. Don where his seamanlike qualities as gunner’s mate were outstanding, Shutes performed his duties with skill and courage. Showing a presence of mind and prompt action when a shot from Fort McAllister penetrated the Wissahickon below the water line and entered the powder magazine, Shutes contributed materially to the preservation of the powder and safety of the ship.

SPILLANE, TIMOTHY
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Hatchers Run, Va., 5_7 February 1865. Entered service at: Erie, Pa. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 16 September 1880. Citation: Gallantry and good conduct in action; bravery in a charge and reluctance to leave the field after being twice wounded.

COURTNEY, HENRY C.
Rank and organization: Seaman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1856, Springfield, Ill. Accredited to: Illinois. G.O. No.: 326, 18 October 1884. Citation: On board the U.S. Training Ship Portsmouth, Washington Navy Yard, 7 February 1882. Jumping overboard from that vessel, Courtney assisted in rescuing Charles Taliaferro, jack-of-the-dust, from drowning.

CRAMEN, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Boatswain’s Mate, U.S. Navy. Born: 1848, Ireland. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 326, 18 October 1884. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Portsmouth, Washington Navy Yard, 7 February 1882. Jumping overboard from that vessel, Cramen rescued Charles Taliaferro, jack-of-the-dust, from drowning.

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*GILMORE, HOWARD WALTER
Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy. Born: 29 September 1902, Selma, Ala. Appointed from: Louisiana. Other Navy award: Navy Cross with one gold star. Citation: For distinguished gallantry and valor above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Growler during her Fourth War Patrol in the Southwest Pacific from 10 January to 7 February 1943. Boldly striking at the enemy in spite of continuous hostile air and antisubmarine patrols, Comdr. Gilmore sank one Japanese freighter and damaged another by torpedo fire, successfully evading severe depth charges following each attack. In the darkness of night on 7 February, an enemy gunboat closed range and prepared to ram the Growler.

Comdr. Gilmore daringly maneuvered to avoid the crash and rammed the attacker instead, ripping into her port side at 11 knots and bursting wide her plates. In the terrific fire of the sinking gunboat’s heavy machineguns, Comdr. Gilmore calmly gave the order to clear the bridge, and refusing safety for himself, remained on deck while his men preceded him below. Struck down by the fusillade of bullets and having done his utmost against the enemy, in his final living moments, Comdr. Gilmore gave his last order to the officer of the deck, “Take her down.” The Growler dived; seriously damaged but under control, she was brought safely to port by her well-trained crew inspired by the courageous fighting spirit of their dead captain.

McGAHA, CHARLES L.
Rank and organization: Master Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company G, 35th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Lupao, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 7 February 1945. Entered service at: Crosby, Tenn. Birth: Crosby, Tenn. G.O. No.: 30, 2 April 1946. Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity. His platoon and 1 other from Company G were pinned down in a roadside ditch by heavy fire from 5 Japanese tanks supported by 10 machineguns and a platoon of riflemen. When 1 of his men fell wounded 40 yards away, he unhesitatingly crossed the road under a hail of bullets and moved the man 75 yards to safety. Although he had suffered a deep arm wound, he returned to his post.

Finding the platoon leader seriously wounded, he assumed command and rallied his men. Once more he braved the enemy fire to go to the aid of a litter party removing another wounded soldier. A shell exploded in their midst, wounding him in the shoulder and killing 2 of the party. He picked up the remaining man, carried him to cover, and then moved out in front deliberately to draw the enemy fire while the American forces, thus protected, withdrew to safety. When the last man had gained the new position, he rejoined his command and there collapsed from loss of blood and exhaustion. M/Sgt. McGaha set an example of courage and leadership in keeping with the highest traditions of the service.

MILLETT, LEWIS L.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, Company E, 27th Infantry Regiment. Place and date: Vicinity of Soam-Ni, Korea, 7 February 1951. Entered service at: Mechanic Falls, Maine. Born: 15 December 1920, Mechanic Falls, Maine. G.O. No.: 69, 2 August 1951. Citation: Capt. Millett, Company E, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action. While personally leading his company in an attack against a strongly held position he noted that the 1st Platoon was pinned down by small-arms, automatic, and antitank fire. Capt. Millett ordered the 3d Platoon forward, placed himself at the head of the 2 platoons, and, with fixed bayonet, led the assault up the fire-swept hill. In the fierce charge Capt. Millett bayoneted 2 enemy soldiers and boldly continued on, throwing grenades, clubbing and bayoneting the enemy, while urging his men forward by shouting encouragement.

Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill. His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder. During this fierce onslaught Capt. Millett was wounded by grenade fragments but refused evacuation until the objective was taken and firmly secured. The superb leadership, conspicuous courage, and consummate devotion to duty demonstrated by Capt. Millett were directly responsible for the successful accomplishment of a hazardous mission and reflect the highest credit on himself and the heroic traditions of the military service.

*GARDNER, JAMES A.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. Place and date: My Canh, Vietnam, 7 February 1966. Entered service at: Memphis, Tenn. Born: 7 February 1943, Dyersburg, Tenn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. 1st Lt. Gardner’s platoon was advancing to relieve a company of the 1st Battalion that had been pinned down for several hours by a numerically superior enemy force in the village of My Canh, Vietnam. The enemy occupied a series of strongly fortified bunker positions which were mutually supporting and expertly concealed. Approaches to the position were well covered by an integrated pattern of fire including automatic weapons, machine guns and mortars. Air strikes and artillery placed on the fortifications had little effect. 1st Lt. Gardner’s platoon was to relieve the friendly company by encircling and destroying the enemy force. Even as it moved to begin the attack, the platoon was under heavy enemy fire.

During the attack, the enemy fire intensified. Leading the assault and disregarding his own safety, 1st Lt. Gardner charged through a withering hail of fire across an open rice paddy. On reaching the first bunker he destroyed it with a grenade and without hesitation dashed to the second bunker and eliminated it by tossing a grenade inside. Then, crawling swiftly along the dike of a rice paddy, he reached the third bunker. Before he could arm a grenade, the enemy gunner leaped forth, firing at him. 1st Lt. Gardner instantly returned the fire and killed the enemy gunner at a distance of 6 feet. Following the seizure of the main enemy position, he reorganized the platoon to continue the attack. Advancing to the new assault position, the platoon was pinned down by an enemy machine gun emplaced in a fortified bunker. 1st Lt. Gardner immediately collected several grenades and charged the enemy position, firing his rifle as he advanced to neutralize the defenders. He dropped a grenade into the bunker and vaulted beyond. As the bunker blew up, he came under fire again. Rolling into a ditch to gain cover, he moved toward the new source of fire. Nearing the position, he leaped from the ditch and advanced with a grenade in one hand and firing his rifle with the other. He was gravely wounded just before he reached the bunker, but with a last valiant effort he staggered forward and destroyed the bunker, and its defenders with a grenade. Although he fell dead on the rim of the bunker, his extraordinary actions so inspired the men of his platoon that they resumed the attack and completely routed the enemy. 1st Lt. Gardner’s conspicuous gallantry were in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.

*SISLER, GEORGE K.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces. Place and date: Republic of Vietnam. 7 February 1967. Entered service at: Dexter, Mo. Born: 19 September 1937, Dexter, Mo. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life and above and beyond the call of duty. 1st Lt. Sisler was the platoon leader/adviser to a Special United States/Vietnam exploitation force. While on patrol deep within enemy dominated territory, 1st Lt. Sisler’s platoon was attacked from 3 sides by a company sized enemy force. 1st Lt. Sisler quickly rallied his men, deployed them to a better defensive position, called for air strikes, and moved among his men to encourage and direct their efforts. Learning that 2 men had been wounded and were unable to pull back to the perimeter, 1st Lt. Sisler charged from the position through intense enemy fire to assist them. He reached the men and began carrying 1 of them back to the perimeter, when he was taken under more intensive weapons fire by the enemy. Laying down his wounded comrade, he killed 3 onrushing enemy soldiers by firing his rifle and silenced the enemy machinegun with a grenade.

As he returned the wounded man to the perimeter, the left flank of the position came under extremely heavy attack by the superior enemy force and several additional men of his platoon were quickly wounded. Realizing the need for instant action to prevent his position from being overrun, 1st Lt. Sisler picked up some grenades and charged single-handedly into the enemy onslaught, firing his weapon and throwing grenades. This singularly heroic action broke up the vicious assault and forced the enemy to begin withdrawing. Despite the continuing enemy fire, 1st Lt. Sisler was moving about the battlefield directing force and several additional men of his platoon were quickly wounded. His extraordinary leadership, infinite courage, and selfless concern for his men saved the lives of a number of his comrades. His actions reflect great credit upon himself and uphold the highest traditions of the military service.

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8 February

1690 – French and Indian forces attack Schnectady, New York during King William’s War. The fate of Schenectady was sealed in the middle of January, 1690, when 114 Frenchmen and 96 Sault and Algonquin Indians, started from Montreal to attack English outpost to the south. It was part of the master plan to fulfill the wishes of French King Louis XIV to “build a new empire in America”. They came down the frozen ice on Lake Champlain and in about six days, down to a point that is known today as Fort Edward, it was here where they met with the Indian leaders and decided to attack Schenectady instead of Fort Orange. They continued on down and crossed the icy Mohawk. It was then that spies were sent to scout the Stockade and see if it was secured. Seeing the doors open, and no one guarding them, they reported back to their leaders, and the decision was made to attack. During the raid on Schenectady many men, women and children were killed, or taken captive by the French and Indians and marched up into Canada.

1698 – English Major Robert Ingoldesby arrives in New York leading a military force. Jacob Leisler contests on legal grounds the right of Ingoldesby to demand the surrender of the fort occupied by Leisler and his followers. Best known as a leader of a 1689 New York rebellion that came to bear his name, Jacob Leisler was one of late seventeenth-century New York’s most prominent merchants, land developers, and foremost exponent of Reformed religious fundamentalism and Orangist political ideology. He was intimately bound to the social, economic, and political development of New Netherland and New York from 1659, when he was employed as a nineteen-year-old in the Dutch West India Company’s Amsterdam office, until his execution for treason in New York City in May 1691.

In 1689, in the wake of England’s Glorious Revolution, he assumed the role of King William III’s governor of New York. He thereupon implemented a program based on direct popular representation that had, as contemporaries noted, wide impact from the Chesapeake to New England. The following year he called for and hosted English America’s first intercolonial congress and organized the first intercolonial military action independent of British authority. Leisler’s administration of New York split the province into two distinct camps that were closely aligned with the Regent and Orangist factions in the United Provinces and the Whig and Tory factions in England, the legacy of which, according to some historians, is America’s unique two-party system. Other historians see in Leisler’s assumption of the New York government a forerunner of the American Revolution.

1712 – L. Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran, French general in America, was born.

1770 – Alexander McDougall, the son of a Scotchman from the Hebrides, a sailor, an ardent Son of Liberty, and afterward a major-general in the Continental Army, is arrested for his authorship of a broadside criticizing the New York assembly. Titled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York,” the broadside was issued in December 1769. When the obnoxious hand-bill was read before the Assembly by the Speaker, it was moved that the sense of the House should be taken “whether the said paper was not an infamous and scandalous libel.” When the vote was taken, twenty of the pliant Assembly voted that it was so, and only one member voted No. That member was Philip Schuyler. He boldly faced the rising storm, and by his solitary vote rebuked, in a most emphatic manner, the cowardice of those of his compeers who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in former trials.

The assembly then set about ferreting out the author of the broadside. They authorized the lieutenant governor to offer a reward of $500 for the discovery of the offender. Another individual was cited before the House, but was soon discharged. The printer of the broadside, when discovered, was brought to the bar, when the frightened man gave the name of McDougall as the author. He was taken before the House, where he would make no acknowledgment and refused to give bail. He was indicted for libel and cast into prison, where he remained fourteen weeks until arraigned for trial, when he pleaded not guilty, and gave bail. Several months afterward he was again brought before the House, when he was defended by George Clinton, an active member of that body, who became the first governor of the State of New York.

To the question whether he was the author of the hand-bill signed “A Son of Liberty,” McDougall replied, “That as the Grand Jury and the Assembly had declared the paper a libel, he could not answer; that as he was under prosecution in the Supreme Court, he conceived it would be an infraction of justice to punish twice for one offence; but that he would not deny the authority of the House to punish for a breach of privilege when no cognizance was taken of it, in another court.” His answer was declared to be a contempt, and he was again imprisoned.not guilty to the charges and is released on bail. This case never reaches the courts, as the colony’s witness dies in the meantime.

1817 – Richard Stoddert Ewell (d.1872(), Lt Gen (Confederate Army), was born.

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1820 – Future Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman is born in Lancaster, Ohio. His father died when he was young. Widowed and unable to care for the entire family, his mother sent brother Thomas to be raised by an aunt and William became a foster child to Thomas Ewing, his father’s friend. Cump, as he was known, later married Mr. Ewing’s daughter, Ellen. Educated at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he graduated in 1840. During the Mexican War, Sherman was posted in San Francisco. He resigned his commission in 1853 to become a partner in a bank there. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South, William Tecumseh Sherman was Superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary and Military Academy at Alexandria, Louisiana. After the war, the school moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and became Louisiana State University (LSU). Talk of the secession from the Union was rampant, yet the motto of the seminary was “By the liberality of the General Government of the United States, the Union – esto perpetua.”

On January 18, 1861, Sherman resigned his position stating that he preferred to maintain his allegiance to the Constitution as long as a fragment of it survived. On the 25th of February, Sherman left Louisiana and returned to Ohio. He remained in Lancaster for a month and then moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri where he was elected President of the Fifth Street Railroad. On May 8, 1861, Sherman wrote to the Secretary of War, offering his services not for three months, but for three years. He did not want to become a political general and on June 20, 1861 accepted the grade of Colonel in the Thirteenth Regular Infantry. He assumed command of a brigade in the First Division of McDowell’s army under the command of Brigadier-General Daniel Tyler. His brigade, stationed at a stone bridge during the battle of First Manassas(Bull Run), was routed by devastating Confederate cannon fire. In August, 1861, Sherman and George H. Thomas were promoted to Brigadier General and were assigned to the Department of the Cumberland under the command of Brigadier-General Robert Anderson. Anderson was in command of Ft Sumter when P.T. Beauregard opened fire upon it, beginning the war. Sherman had previously served under Anderson, and it was Anderson that requested that Sherman be transferred to his command.

In October, 1861, Sherman relieved Anderson. Filling quotas for Kentucky volunteers was extremely difficult. The State was split on their beliefs and where their allegiance should be placed. Later that month, Sherman told Secretary of War Cameron that if he had 60,000 men, he would drive the enemy out of Kentucky, and if he had 200,000 men, he would finish the war in that section. When Cameron returned to Washington, he reported that Sherman required 200,000 men. The report was given to newspapers and a cry of indignation arose from the public. A writer of one of these newspapers even went as far as saying that Sherman must be “crazy” in demanding such a large force. The public accepted this insinuated statement as a valid one, thus writers have always declared that he was crazy. Due to the pressure of the press and politicians that believed the insinuation, on November 12, 1861, Brigadier-General Don Carlos Buell relieved Sherman of his command, and Sherman was assigned to the Department of the West, in St. Louis, Missouri under Major-General Halleck. After moving to Missouri, newspapers and gossip continued to harass him with reports that he was insane and that he was not fit to command, demanding his recall. He was in a state of depression from all the harassment, but not mentally incompetent. Halleck, in a letter to Sherman’s foster father stated, “I have seen newspaper squibs charging him with being “crazy”, etc. This is the grossest injustice. I do not however, consider such attacks worthy of notice.”

On February 13, 1862, Sherman assumed the command of the post at Paducah Kentucky relieving U.S. Grant of that position. On March 11, 1862, Halleck was assigned to command the Department of the Mississippi and Major-General U.S. Grant to command the army in the field. The organization and the name given to this army was the Army of the Tennessee. Sherman was placed in command of the Fifth Division of this army. In July 1862, Sherman was assigned to command the District of Memphis. Later that year Sherman failed to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, but was with Grant in the campaign that finally ended in the capture of that city in July 1863. Sherman was given command of the Army of the Tennessee in the fall of 1863. In the spring of 1864, Sherman was made supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered by Grant to “create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy.”

With a grand aggregate of 98,797 troops and 254 cannons, on May 4, 1864, Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign for which he is most (in)famous. Sherman wanted to split the Confederacy, and began planning his March to the Sea. He kept his most seasoned veterans, 60,000 in all and sent the rest of the troops back to Nashville to be under the command of Major-General George Thomas. With four Corps of troops in two columns, in November 1864, Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea. Prior to leaving from Atlanta, he set fire to munitions factories, railroad yards, clothing mills, and other targets that could be resourceful to the Confederacy. Sherman never intended to burn the whole city, but the fire got out of hand and spread throughout the city. With the four Corps in two columns, Sherman cut a swath 60 miles wide marching towards Savannah, destroying anything that could aid or be resourceful to the enemy.

On December 23, 1864, Sherman sent a telegram to Lincoln stating that he was presenting him the city of Savannah as a Christmas gift. General Joe Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April 17, 1865 at Raleigh, North Carolina. After the war, Sherman was commissioned Lieutenant General in the regular army, and after Grant was elected was promoted to the grade of full general and given command of the entire U. S Army. He retired in 1883.

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1837 – The Senate selected Richard Mentor Johnson as the vice president of the United States. Johnson was nominated for vice president on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren in 1836. When Johnson failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the election was thrown into the Senate for the first and only time. Johnson won the election in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16.

1861 – Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Alabama.

1862 – Union General Ambrose Burnside scores a major victory when he captures Roanoke Island in North Carolina. The victory was one of the first major Union victories of the war and it gave the Yankees control of the mouth of Albemarle Sound, a key Confederate bay that allowed the Union to threaten the Rebel capital of Richmond from the south. During the war’s first winter, Union strategists focused their efforts on capturing coastal defenses to deny the Confederates sea outlets. In August 1861, the Yankees took two key forts on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, paving the way for the campaign against Roanoke Island.

On January 11, 1862, Burnside took a force of 15,000 and a flotilla of 80 ships down to the Outer Banks. The expeditionary force arrived at Hatteras Inlet on January 13, but poor weather delayed an attack for three weeks. On February 7, Burnside landed 10,000 on the island. They were met by about 2,500 Confederates. Burnside attacked, and his force overwhelmed the outer defenses of the island. Confederate commander Colonel Henry Shaw retreated to the north end of the island but had no chance to escape. Shaw surrendered the entire force. The Yankees suffered 37 men killed and 214 wounded, while the Confederates lost 23 men killed and 62 wounded before the surrender. The Union now controlled a vital section of the coast. The victory came two days after Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry in northern Tennessee, and, for the first time in the war, the North had reason for optimism.

1863 – Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attacked a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.

1865 – Martin Robinson Delany became the 1st black major in US army.

1865 – Officer Barton received orders from Secretary Mallory to return to the Confederacy. These orders symbolized the abandonment of the long cherished hopes of obtaining ironclad ships from Europe with which to break the ever-tightening blockade. Originally selected to be the flag officer in command of the turreted ironclads “294” and “295”, Barton had arrived in England during October 1863. The Laird rams, however, had been seized by the British government on 9 October 1863 and Barton thereafter served the Confederacy in Paris.

1865 – The first troops of General Schofield’s Twenty-Third Army Corps were landed at Fort Fisher. By mid-month the entire Corps had moved by ocean-transport from Alexandria and Annapolis to North Carolina. The protection of the Federal Navy and the mobility of water movement had allowed the redeployment of thousands of troops from Tennessee to the eastern theater for the final great struggles of the war.

1865 – In the United States, Delaware voters reject the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)

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1887 – In a well-meaning but ultimately flawed attempt to assimilate Native Americans, President Grover Cleveland signs an act to end tribal control of reservations and divide their land into individual holdings. Named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, the Dawes Severalty Act reversed the long-standing American policy of allowing Indian tribes to maintain their traditional practice of communal use and control of their lands. Instead, the Dawes Act gave the president the power to divide Indian reservations into individual, privately owned plots. The act dictated that men with families would receive 160 acres, single adult men were given 80 acres, and boys received 40 acres. Women received no land.

The most important motivation for the Dawes Act was Anglo-American hunger for Indian lands. The act provided that after the government had doled out land allotments to the Indians, the sizeable remainder of the reservation properties would be opened for sale to whites. Consequently, Indians eventually lost 86 million acres of land, or 62 percent of their total pre-1887 holdings. Still, the Dawes Act was not solely a product of greed. Many religious and humanitarian “friends of the Indian” supported the act as a necessary step toward fully assimilating the Indians into American culture. Reformers believed that Indians would never bridge the chasm between “barbarism and civilization” if they maintained their tribal cohesion and traditional ways. J.D.C. Atkins, commissioner of Indian affairs, argued that the Dawes Act was the first step toward transforming, “Idleness, improvidence, ignorance, and superstition…. into industry, thrift, intelligence, and Christianity.”

In reality, the Dawes Severalty Act proved a very effective tool for taking lands from Indians and giving it to Anglos, but the promised benefits to the Indians never materialized. Racism, bureaucratic bungling, and inherent weaknesses in the law deprived the Indians of the strengths of tribal ownership, while severely limiting the economic viability of individual ownership. Many tribes also deeply resented and resisted the government’s heavy-handed attempt to destroy their traditional cultures. Despite these flaws, the Dawes Severalty Act remained in force for more than four decades. In 1934, the Wheeler-Howard Act repudiated the policy and attempted to revive the centrality of tribal control and cultural autonomy on the reservations. The Wheeler-Howard Act ended further transfer of Indian lands to Anglos and provided for a return to voluntary communal Indian ownership, but considerable damage had already been done.

1890 – USS Omaha sailors and marines assist Hodogary, Japan in subduing large fire.

1910 – The Boy Scouts of America are chartered in Washington, D.C., by William D. Boyce, who gets the idea from the English Boy Scouts established by Sir Robert Baden-Powell. In 1909, Boyce, a Chicago publisher, lost his way in a dense London fog. A boy came to his aid and, after guiding the man, refused a tip, explaining that as a Scout he would not take a tip for doing a Good Turn. This gesture by an unknown Scout inspired a meeting with Robert Baden-Powell, the British founder of the Boy Scouts. As a result, William Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910. He also created the Lone Scouts, which merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1924.

1911 – US helped overthrow President Miguel Devila of Honduras.

1915 – Director D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Civil War epic, which cost $100,000 and ran nearly three hours, used revolutionary filmmaking techniques, including multiple camera angles. The film provoked an outcry from liberals and black leaders, who objected to the film’s sympathetic portrayal of members of the Ku Klux Klan and demonization of Southern blacks. Despite attempts by several groups to ban the film, the picture became a financial success, drawing long lines to pay the unprecedented price of $2 a ticket. One of the songs in the movie’s score, “The Perfect Song,” became the first musical hit generated by a movie. Griffith’s pioneering techniques made him one of the most important figures in early film.

His next picture, Intolerance (1916), took two years to make and featured a complex, interwoven plot portraying racism, prejudice, and injustice throughout history. He used much of his own money to finance the $2.5 million film, and its failure ruined him financially: his career foundered for several years after that. In 1919, he co-founded United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charles Chaplin. In 1935, Griffith won an honorary Oscar for his “lasting contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts.” Griffith died in 1948 at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. Today, the highest honor bestowed by the Directors Guild of America is the D.W. Griffith Award.

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1918 – The Army newspaper, “The Stars and Stripes”, begins publication for a second time. The first paper called The Stars and Stripes was a product of the Civil War, put out by four Union soldiers in 1861. Using the facilities of a captured newspaper plant in Bloomfield, Mo., they ran off a one-page paper that made just one appearance. The World War I edition first appeared late in the war in Paris. It was produced weekly by an all-military staff to serve the doughboys of the American Expeditionary Force under General of the Armies John J. “Black Jack” Pershing.

Some of its staff went on to journalistic fame, including Pvt. Harold Ross, who later became the founder and editor of The New Yorker magazine, and sports writer Lt. Grantland Rice. The newspaper ceased production after the war ended, but 24 years later, on April 18, 1942, The Stars and Stripes was reborn during World War II. In a London print shop’s tiny room, a small group of servicemen founded a four-page weekly paper selling for two pence a copy (about 5 cents) which quickly grew to an eight-page daily newspaper. The Hawaii edition was launched a week after VE day (Victory in Europe, May 8, 1945) and became the forerunner of the Pacific Stars and Stripes.

1922 – President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.

1924 – The first coast-to-coast radio broadcast takes place. Bell Telephone’s vice president and chief of research spoke at a meeting of the Bond Men’s Club in a Chicago hotel. The speech was broadcast in Providence, New York, Washington, Oakland, and San Francisco and was heard by some 50 million people.

1926 – German Reichstag decided to apply for League of Nations membership.

1928 – 1st transatlantic TV image was received at Hartsdale, NY.

1928 – Scottish inventor J. Blaird demonstrated color TV.

1940 – “Harry Sawyer” (Sebold) arrives in New York to lead a German spy network in the USA. His special equipment includes “microdots”. (Sebold is a double agent, working for the FBI).

1941 – The Lend-Lease Bill is passed by the House by 260 votes to 165.

1942 – Congress advised FDR that Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn’t oppose the US war effort.

1943 – The last 2000 Japanese troops are evacuated from Guadalcanal by 18 destroyers.

1943 – British General Wingate led a guerrilla force of “Chindits” against the Japanese in Burma. Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast Asia.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, the British 1st Division continues to battle German forces advancing toward Aprilia and “The Factory”.

1945 – In the US 3rd Army sector, the US 8th Corps manages to advance beyond the Our.

1945 – The US 1st Cavalry Division is heavily engaged in the eastern suburbs of Manila. The US 37th Division is also fighting in the city.

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).

1951 – Superfortress bombers attacked the key bridges at Toksil-li, Komusan, and Chuuronjang and cratered the highway paralleling the east-coast rail route. Air Force B-26s, F-51s and F-80s damaged seven bridges and 11 tunnels located mostly near Kilchu. Further south, B-26s bombed boxcars stacked up in the marshaling yard at Hamhung.

1956 – U.S. banned the launching of weather balloons because of Soviet complaints.

1957 – The United States agrees to continue military support of Saudi Arabia in return for a 5 year lease extension of Dhahran airfield which had been built by the US in 1944. Negotiations for this arrangement are concluded by President Eisenhower and King Ibn Saud.

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1958–A U.S. Navy P5M aircraft enroute from San Juan to Norfolk lost one engine and changed course to the island of San Salvador, British West Indies, to attempt a night ditching. AIRSTA Miami sent up a Coast Guard UF amphibian plane, later reinforced by a second amphibian. After contacting the disabled US Navy plane, the pilot of the first amphibian talked the Navy pilot out of attempting to ditch without benefit of illumination and alerted the commanding officer of the Coast Guard LORAN station on San Salvador for assistance after ditching. In true Coast Guard tradition, the LORAN station’s CO borrowed a truck and an 18-foot boat to assist. The commanding officer managed to be on the scene 1 1/2 miles offshore, when the Navy P5M landed with two minutes of fuel remaining. While one of the amphibians provided additional illumination, the Navy plane was guided through a dangerous reef to a mooring, using her operative port engine. There were no casualties.

1959 – William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan (76), Office Strategic Services, died.

1962 – The Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), headed by Gen. Paul D. Harkins, former U.S. Army Deputy Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, is installed in Saigon as the United States reorganizes its military command in South Vietnam. Before MACV, the senior U.S. military command in South Vietnam was the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG-Vietnam), which was formed on November 1, 1955 to provide military assistance to South Vietnam. 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.

MAAG-Vietnam was disbanded in 1964 and its personnel and responsibilities absorbed by MACV. The establishment of MACV, which greatly enlarged and reorganized the advisory effort, represented a substantial increase in the U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam, and American assistance to the South Vietnamese doubled between 1961 and 1962. Thereafter, the conduct of the war was directed by MACV and a major build-up of American advisers, support personnel, and eventually an escalation that included the commitment of U.S. combat troops began.

1963 – Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.

1963 – In Iraq the Baath Party first took power. Right-wing Baathists succeeded in mounting a coup and executed PM Gen. Abdel Karim Qassim. Abdul Salam Arif came to power. This was followed by a massacre of thousands of peasants, communists and trade unionists. The Arab Baath Socialist Party pulled off the coup and ruled Iraq for 9 months.

1965 – South Vietnamese bombed the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.

1968 – Robert F. Kennedy said that the U.S. cannot win the Vietnam War.

1968 – The National Guard at South Carolina State killed 3 black students and injured nearly 50 in the Orangeburg Massacre. The students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, S.C., during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley. In 2001 Gov. Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre.

1971 – South Vietnamese army forces invade southern Laos. Dubbed Operation Lam Son 719, the mission goal was to disrupt the communist supply and infiltration network along Route 9 in Laos, adjacent to the two northern provinces of South Vietnam. The operation was supported by U.S. airpower (aviation and airlift) and artillery (firing across the border from firebases inside South Vietnam). Observers described the drive on North Vietnam’s supply routes and depots as some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Enemy resistance was initially light, as a 12,000-man spearhead of the South Vietnamese army thrust its way across the border into the communists’ deepest jungle stronghold–the town of Tchepone, a major enemy supply center on Route 9, was their major objective.

However, resistance stiffened in the second week when the North Vietnamese rushed reinforcements to the area. During the last week of February, the big push bogged down about 16 miles from the border, after bloody fighting in which the communist troops overran two South Vietnamese army battalions. Also on this day: In Cambodia, Premier Lon Nol suffers a paralyzing stroke and turns his duties over to Deputy Premier Sirik Matak. Debilitated by the stroke, Lon Nol resigned on April 20. A week later, he withdrew his resignation, staying on in a figurehead role as Sirik Matak continued to run the government pending his recovery.

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1973 – Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, including the chairman, Sam J. Ervin Jr., D-N.C.

1974 – The three-man crew of “Skylab” space station returned to Earth after spending 84 days in space.

1978 – The deliberations of the Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time as members opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.

1980 – President Carter unveils a plan to re-introduce draft registration. A system of conscription has been used during the Civil War and again during World War I with the draft mechanism in both instances being dissolved at the end of hostilities. In 1940, prior to U.S. entry into World War II, the first peacetime draft in our nation’s history was enacted in response to increased world tension and the system was able to fill wartime manpower needs smoothly and rapidly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the end of the war the draft law was allowed to expire, but it was reenacted less than two years later to maintain necessary military manpower levels as a result of the Cold War.

From 1948 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the armed forces which could not be filled through voluntary means. Induction authority expired in 1973, but the Selective Service System remained in existence in a “standby” posture to support the all-volunteer force in case an emergency should make it necessary for Congress to authorize a resumption of inductions. Registration was suspended early in 1975 and the Selective Service System entered into a “deep standby” posture.

Beginning in late 1979, a series of “revitalization” efforts were begun in an effort to upgrade the System’s capability for rapid mobilization in an emergency, and in the summer of 1980 the registration requirement was resumed. Presently, young men must register within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with American pilots in Saudi Arabia. Powell drew cheers as he described how allied troops would deal with the Iraqi force in Kuwait: “We’ll cut it off and kill it.”

1999 – The Senate heard closing arguments at President Clinton’s impeachment trial, with House prosecutors challenging senators to “cleanse the office” and the president’s attorney dismissing the case as one of partisan retribution.

2002 – In Afghanistan Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Taliban foreign minister, surrendered in Kandahar and was turned over to US military.

2002 – Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai met with Pakistan Pres. Musharraf in Islamabad and they agreed to bury past misunderstandings.

2003 – The US Navy conducted its last scheduled round of weapons tests on Vasquez Island, Puerto Rico.

2003 – The chief UN arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad for a new round of crucial talks with Iraqi officials.

2003 – Philippine troops killed at least eight Abu Sayyaf rebels during a clash with the guerrillas in the southern town of Patikul.

2003– Bell Helicopter, a subsidiary of Textron, Inc., announced that its tilt-rotor, Vertical-launch Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), the “Eagle Eye,” received a letter contract to commence concept and preliminary design work for the first phase of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle portion of the Coast Guard’s Integrated Deepwater System (ICGS) Program. The contract calls for Bell to design, develop and build three prototype Eagle Eyes for testing by 2005. LCDR Troy Beshears, the Coast Guard’s UAV Program Manager, confirmed that the fleet plans to buy 69 Eagle Eyes if the aircraft meets the requirements and capabilities determined by the ICGS and the Coast Guard.

2004 – In northeastern Afghanistan 4 days of fighting between rival warlords over control of the drug trade left 7 dead and 8 wounded.

2004 – US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Croatia and thanked Pres. Stipe Mesic for Croatia’s small military police contingent (50) in Iraq.

2004 – A UN team met with Iraqi leaders to discuss the feasibility of early legislative elections, and its leader pledged to do “everything possible” to help the country regain its sovereignty.

2005 – In Kuwait, Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, the alleged ringleader of a terror group accused of plotting to attack Americans and Kuwaiti security forces, died of heart failure while in prison.

2007 – The CGC Storis was decommissioned after 64 years of service.

2010 – Space Shuttle Endeavour launches successfully from Kennedy Space Center at 4:14 EST, marking the beginning of STS-130, a two-week mission to the International Space Station. STS-130 (ISS assembly flight 20A) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Space Shuttle Endeavour’s primary payloads were the Tranquility module and the Cupola, a robotic control station with six windows around its sides and another in the center, providing a 360-degree view around the station.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

HUFF, PAUL B.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. Place and date: Near Carano, Italy, 8 February 1944. Entered service at: Cleveland, Tenn. Birth: Cleveland, Tenn. G.O. No.: 41, 26 May 1944. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, in action on 8 February 1944, near Carano, Italy. Cpl. Huff volunteered to lead a 6-man patrol with the mission of determining the location and strength of an enemy unit which was delivering fire on the exposed right flank of his company. The terrain over which he had to travel consisted of exposed, rolling ground, affording the enemy excellent visibility. As the patrol advanced, its members were subjected to small arms and machinegun fire and a concentration of mortar fire, shells bursting within 5 to 10 yards of them and bullets striking the ground at their feet.

Moving ahead of his patrol, Cpl. Huff drew fire from 3 enemy machineguns and a 20mm. weapon. Realizing the danger confronting his patrol, he advanced alone under deadly fire through a minefield and arrived at a point within 75 yards of the nearest machinegun position. Under direct fire from the rear machinegun, he crawled the remaining 75 yards to the closest emplacement, killed the crew with his submachine gun and destroyed the gun. During this act he fired from a kneeling position which drew fire from other positions, enabling him to estimate correctly the strength and location of the enemy. Still under concentrated fire, he returned to his patrol and led his men to safety.

As a result of the information he gained, a patrol in strength sent out that afternoon, 1 group under the leadership of Cpl. Huff, succeeded in routing an enemy company of 125 men, killing 27 Germans and capturing 21 others, with a loss of only 3 patrol members. Cpl. Huff’s intrepid leadership and daring combat skill reflect the finest traditions of the American infantryman.

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9 February

1773 – William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the United States (March 4- April 4, 1841), was born in Charles City County, Virginia.

1775 – English Parliament declared the Massachusetts colony was in rebellion.

1799 – The USS Constellation captured the French frigate Insurgente off the coast of Wisconsin.

1825 – As no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to elect John Quincy Adams, who won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election, as president of the United States. Adams was the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States. In the 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election. On December 1, 1824, the results were announced. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Virginia won 37 electoral votes.

As dictated by the U.S. Constitution, the presidential election was then turned over to the House of Representatives. The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House. Representative Henry Clay, who was disqualified from the House vote as a fourth-place candidate, agreed to use his influence to have John Quincy Adams elected. Clay and Adams were both members of a loose coalition in Congress that by 1828 became known as the National Republicans, while Jackson’s supporters were later organized into the Democratic Party.

Thanks to Clay’s backing, on February 9, 1825, the House elected Adams as president of the United States. When Adams then appointed Clay to the top Cabinet post of secretary of state, Jackson and his supporters derided the appointment as the fulfillment of a corrupt bargain. With little popular support, Adams’ time in the White House was for the most part ineffectual, and the so-called Corrupt Bargain continued to haunt his administration. In 1828, he was defeated in his reelection bid by Andrew Jackson, who received more than twice as many electoral votes than Adams.

1861 – Confederate Provisional Congress declared all laws under the US Constitution were consistent with constitution of Confederate states. The Congress elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H. Stephens vice president. Jefferson Davis’ Mexican War exploits led him to the Confederate White House.

1861 – Tennessee voted against secession.

1863 – The Intl. Committee of Red Cross (Nobel 1917, 1944, 1963) was formed in Geneva, Switzerland.

1864 – Union General George Armstrong Custer marries Elizabeth Bacon in Monroe, Michigan, while the young cavalry officer is on leave. “Libbie,” as she was known to her family, was a tireless defender of her husband’s reputation after his death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and her work helped establish him as an American hero. The two met in November 1862 at a party in Monroe. They courted while George was on winter furlough. After he retuned to service in 1863, Custer became, at 23 years old, the youngest general in the Union army. George and Libbie continued their correspondence, and when he returned to Monroe that winter, their relationship intensified. George recognized that Libbie’s good judgment balanced the young general’s brash and impulsive behavior. They were engaged by Christmas. The bride wore a white satin dress for the nuptials, which were held in Monroe’s packed First Presbyterian Church. They honeymooned in New York, where they visited West Point, Custer’s alma mater.

After spending time in New York City, they settled in Washington and the attractive couple soon became darlings of the social scene. While her husband was in the field, Libbie worked to advance his career by hobnobbing with prominent Republican politicians. Her influence with some prominent members of Congress was helpful, and possible crucial, for Custer’s promotion to major general on April 15, 1865. After the war, Custer became a lieutenant colonel in the downsized postwar frontier army. On June 25, 1876, he and the 210 men under his command were wiped out by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana.

Libbie spent the remainder of her life building Custer’s reputation and defending his actions during his last battle. Not until after her death in 1933 did the first iconoclastic biography of her husband appear. The enduring legend of George Custer was due in large part to the tireless efforts of his widow.

1864 – 109 Union prisoners escaped through a tunnel from the Confederate Libby Prison in Richmond, Va., including Lt. James M. Wells of Michigan. In 1904 Wells published an account of the escape in the Jan. issue of McClure’s Magazine.

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1865 – U.S.S. Pawnee, Commander George B. Balch, U.S.S. Sonoma, Lieutenant Commander Thomas S. Fillebrown, and U.S.S. Daffodil, Acting Master William H. Mallard, engaged Confederate batteries on Togodo Creek, neat the North Edisto River, South Carolina. Pawnee took ten hits and the other ships two each, but the naval bombardment successfully silenced the Southern emplacements. The action was one of several attacks along the coast that helped to clear the way and keep the South’s defenses disrupted while General Sherman’s army advanced northward. With assurance of aid from the sea when needed, Sherman could travel light and fast. On this date he was matching toward Orangeburg, on the north side of the Edisto River, and would capture it on the 12th.

1870 – The first National Weather Bureau is established by Act of Congress. It is designated as a part of the US Army Signal Corps. On July 1, 1891 it will be transferred to the Agriculture Department; on June 30, 1940 it will be merged into the Commerce Department.

1886 – President Cleveland declared a state of emergency in Seattle because of anti-Chinese violence.

1898 – Senor de Lome, Spanish Minister to the US is forced to resign when a private letter he has written to a Cuban friend is published in Hearst’s New York Journal. In the letter de Lome characterizes President McKinley as feebleminded. Publication arouses great indignation in the US.

1904 – Captain A. W. Catlin’s 49 Marines established the first permanent Marine garrison in Honolulu.

1909 – The 1st US federal legislation prohibiting narcotics was directed at opium.

1918 – Army chaplain school organized at Ft. Monroe, Virginia.

1922 – World War I left a mountain of debt in its wake: Great Britain owed the U.S. government over four billion dollars, while France and Italy racked up war-related loans of roughly $3 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively. Alhough President Woodrow Wilson blindly insisted on full repayment of all debts to the U.S., the reality was far thornier, as the European governments were simply too strapped for cash to make good on their loans. Britain attempted to broker a deal for the reciprocal remittance of the debts, but Wilson rebuffed the offer. The debt dilemma festered into the early 1920s, stirring-up bitter and often anti-foreign feelings on both sides of the Atlantic.

In hopes of resolving the issue, Congress convened on February 9, 1922, and voted in favor of establishing the World War Foreign Debt Commission. The Commission rounded the money owed to the U.S. to $11.5 billion and established a sixty-two-year term, at 2 percent interest, for the repayment of the debts. However, by 1925, the U.S. could no longer ignore fiscal reality: the loans would never be repaid in full. Despite his initial refusal to scuttle the debts, President Calvin Coolidge relented and cancelled good chunks of various governments’ outstanding debts.

1940 – Sumner Welles, US Under-Secretary of State, is to visit the belligerent countries in Europe with the aim of trying to negotiate a peace settlement.

1942 – The Normandie, regarded by many as the most elegant ocean liner ever built, burns and sinks in New York Harbor during its conversion to an Allied trip transport ship. Built in France in the early 1930s, the Normandie ruled the transatlantic passenger trade in its day. The first major liner to cross the Atlantic in less than four days, its masterful engineering was only surpassed by its design excellence. The 1,000-foot ship’s distinctive clipper-ship bow was immediately recognizable, and its elaborate architecture and decorations popularized the Modern style.

After the American entrance into World War II, it was seized by the U.S. Navy for the Allied war effort and renamed the U.S.S. Lafayette. However, on February 9, 1942–just days before it was to be completed for trooping–a welder accidentally set fire to a pile of flammable life preservers with his torch, and by early the next morning the ship lay capsized in the harbor, a gutted wreck. It was later towed south to New Jersey and scrapped.

1942 – Chiang Kai-shek met with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in India. Detachment 101 harried the Japanese in Burma and provided close support for regular Allied forces.

1942 – Congress pushes ahead standard time for the United States by one hour in each time zone, imposing daylight saving time–called at the time “war time.” Daylight saving time, suggested by President Roosevelt, was imposed to conserve fuel, and could be traced back to World War I, when Congress imposed one standard time on the United States to enable the country to better utilize resources, following the European model. The 1918 Standard Time Act was meant to be in effect for only seven months of the year–and was discontinued nationally after the war. But individual states continued to turn clocks ahead one hour in spring and back one hour in fall. The World War II legislation imposed daylight saving time for the entire nation for the entire year. It was repealed Sept. 30, 1945, when individual states once again imposed their own “standard” time. It was not until 1966 that Congress passed legislation setting a standard time that permanently superceded local habits.
1943 – FDR ordered a minimal 48 hour work week in war industry.

1943 – Allied authorities declare Guadalcanal secure after Imperial Japan evacuates its remaining forces from the island, ending the Battle of Guadalcanal.

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1943 – The US 161st and 132nd Regiments link up at Tenaro, too late to prevent the Japanese evacuation. The Japanese have lost 10,000 killed and the Americans have lost 1600 killed. Losses in ships and planes have been about equal. Guadalcanal has be a strategic defeat for the Japanese.

1944 – At the Anzio beachhead, German forces capture Aprilia from the British 1st Division which continues to hold “The Factory”.

1945 – As well as the fighting in Manila, there is an attack by the US 11th Airborne Division southeast of the city near Nichols and Nielsen Fields.

1945 – The US 3rd Army is attacking near Prum on its northern flank (US 8th Corps) while US 12th Corps to the south also makes gains. Farther south still, the resistance of the German forces around Colmar comes to an end.

1948 – The first Marine helicopters (HO3S-1s) were delivered to the Corps.

1950 – During a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican-Wisconsin) claims that he has a list with the names of over 200 members of the Department of State that are “known communists.” The speech vaulted McCarthy to national prominence and sparked a nationwide hysteria about subversives in the American government. Speaking before the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator McCarthy waved before his audience a piece of paper. According to the only published newspaper account of the speech, McCarthy said that, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”

In the next few weeks, the number fluctuated wildly, with McCarthy stating at various times that there were 57, or 81, or 10 communists in the Department of State. In fact, McCarthy never produced any solid evidence that there was even one communist in the State Department. Despite McCarthy’s inconsistency, his refusal to provide any of the names of the “known communists,” and his inability to produce any coherent or reasonable evidence, his charges struck a chord with the American people. The months leading up to his February speech had been trying ones for America’s Cold War policies. China had fallen to a communist revolution. The Soviets had detonated an atomic device. McCarthy’s wild charges provided a ready explanation for these foreign policy disasters: communist subversives were working within the very bowels of the American government.

To be sure, McCarthy was not the first to incite anxiety about subversive communists. Congress had already investigated Hollywood for its supposed communist influences, and former State Department employee Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in January 1950 for testimony dealing with accusations that he spied for the Soviet Union during the 1930s. But McCarthy went a step further, claiming that the U.S. government, and the Department of State in particular, knew that communists were working in their midst. “McCarthyism,” as the hunt for communists in the United States came to be known during the 1950s, did untold damage to many people’s lives and careers, had a muzzling effect on domestic debate on Cold War issues, and managed to scare millions of Americans.

McCarthy, however, located no communists and his personal power collapsed in 1954 when he accused the Army of coddling known communists. Televised hearings of his investigation into the U.S. Army let the American people see his bullying tactics and lack of credibility in full view for the first time, and he quickly lost support. The U.S. Senate censured him shortly thereafter and he died in 1957.

1951 – US, British, Australian, New Zealand and Dutch warships pounded the east and west coasts of Korea. The 1st Regiment of the ROK Capital Division entered Chumunjin.

1953 – General Walter Bedell Smith, USA, ended term as 4th director of CIA. Allen W. Dulles, became acting director of CIA and served to 1961.

1953 – The carriers USS Kearsarge, Philippine Sea and Oriskany renewed heavy air attacks against Wonsan with additional warships from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands in support.

1964 – The U.S. embassy in Moscow was stoned by Chinese and Vietnamese students.

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1965 – A U.S. Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion is deployed to Da Nang. President Johnson had ordered this deployment to provide protection for the key U.S. airbase there. This was the first commitment of American combat troops in South Vietnam and there was considerable reaction around the world to the new stage of U.S. involvement in the war. Predictably, both communist China and the Soviet Union threatened to intervene if the United States continued to apply its military might on behalf of the South Vietnamese. In Moscow, some 2,000 demonstrators, led by Vietnamese and Chinese students and clearly supported by the authorities, attacked the U.S. Embassy. Britain and Australia supported the U.S. action, but France called for negotiations.

1968 – USCG vessels helped thwart a Communist attempt to run four trawlers through the Market Time blockade off the coast of South Vietnam. The defeat of this attempted re-supply was hailed as “the most significant naval victory of the Vietnam campaign.”

1971 – The “Apollo 14” spacecraft returned to Earth after man’s third landing on the moon.

1972 – The aircraft carrier USS Constellation joins aircraft carriers Coral Sea and Hancock off the coast of Vietnam. From 1964 to 1975, there were usually three U.S. carriers stationed in the water near Vietnam at any given time. Carrier aircraft participated in the bombing of North Vietnam and also provided close air support for U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. In 1972, the number of U.S. carriers off Vietnam increased to seven as part of the U.S. reaction to the North Vietnamese Eastertide Offensive that was launched on March 30–carrier aircraft played a major role in the air operations that helped the South Vietnamese defeat the communist invasion.

1986 – Iran crosses the Shatt al-Arab and captures the southern Faw peninsula. Saddam Hussein vows to repulse Iran “at all costs.”

1990 – The Galileo satellite flew by Venus.

1991 – Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell met with military commanders in Saudi Arabia to evaluate a possible ground assault against Iraqi forces.

1994 – NATO delivered an ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs to remove heavy guns encircling Sarajevo, or face air strikes. Hours before the ultimatum was issued, the Bosnian Serbs agreed to withdraw their artillery and mortars from around Sarajevo.

1998 – The Pentagon announced that some 3,000 ground troops from Fort Hood, Texas, were to be sent to the Persian Gulf region over the next 10 days. The move was to discourage “creative thinking” on the part of Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

1998 – In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf informs the U.N. that Iraq can only export up to $4 billion of oil in six months. In addition, al-Sahhaf writes that a larger share of the oil sales should go towards humanitarian aid, while the amounts funding U.N. programs and a compensation fund for Persian Gulf war victims should be reduced.

2001 – The US nuclear submarine Greeneville struck the Japanese fishing boat, Ehime Maru, near Oahu with 35 people on board including 13 students. Nine people were missing. The sub was practicing a rapid ascent and had 15 civilian guests onboard. It was later revealed that civilian visitors sat at 2 of the subs 3 main controls when it surfaced. Capt. Scott Waddle, the sub skipper, was relieved of duty pending investigation.

2002 – The US and Pakistan signed an agreement to enhance defense cooperation.

2002 – The Afghan government released 320 captured Taliban fighters and gave each soldier the equivalent of $15 as a gesture of reconciliation.

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2003 – Operation Eagle Fury, a military operation led by the United States in Afghanistan involving Bravo Company, 2nd BN, 7th SFG(A) US Army Special Forces, and USN SEALs, members of the QRF 82nd Airborne Division, and loyal Afghan fighters through 28 February, began. The aim of the operation was to corner Taliban fighters and leaders in the Bahgran Valley, located in Helmand Province, in the mountains of south-east Afghanistan. As part of this operation, in mid-February 2003, the 82nd conducted the first airdrop of fuel to support Operation Enduring Freedom. They dropped 38,088 gallons of fuel, almost certainly the first combat fuel drop since the Vietnam War.

2003 – President Bush told congressional Republicans at a policy conference that Iraq had fooled the world for more than a decade about its banned weapons and the United Nations was now facing “a moment of truth” in disarming Saddam Hussein.

2003 – The U.S. Navy ended its last planned bombing exercises on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island.

2003 – Iran reported the discovery of uranium reserves and planned production facilities for peaceful use of nuclear energy.

2003 – The United States announces the closure of its Interests Section in the Polish Embassy in Baghdad and urges all US citizens to get out of the country.

2012 – The United States Department of Defense issues new guidelines removing restrictions on use of women in combat.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

*CICCHETTI, JOSEPH J.

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company A, 148th Infantry, 37th Infantry Division. Place and date: South Manila, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 9 February 1945. Entered service at: Waynesburg, Ohio. Birth: Waynesburg, Ohio. G.O. No.: 115, 8 December 1945. Citation: He was with troops assaulting the first important line of enemy defenses. The Japanese had converted the partially destroyed Manila Gas Works and adjacent buildings into a formidable system of mutually supporting strongpoints from which they were concentrating machinegun, mortar, and heavy artillery fire on the American forces. Casualties rapidly mounted, and the medical aid men, finding it increasingly difficult to evacuate the wounded, called for volunteer litter bearers.

Pfc. Cicchetti immediately responded, organized a litter team and skillfully led it for more than 4 hours in rescuing 14 wounded men, constantly passing back and forth over a 400-yard route which was the impact area for a tremendous volume of the most intense enemy fire. On 1 return trip the path was blocked by machinegun fire, but Pfc. Cicchetti deliberately exposed himself to draw the automatic fire which he neutralized with his own rifle while ordering the rest of the team to rush past to safety with the wounded. While gallantly continuing his work, he noticed a group of wounded and helpless soldiers some distance away and ran to their rescue although the enemy fire had increased to new fury. As he approached the casualties, he was struck in the head by a shell fragment, but with complete disregard for his gaping wound he continued to his comrades, lifted 1 and carried him on his shoulders 50 yards to safety. He then collapsed and died. By his skilled leadership, indomitable will, and dauntless courage, Pfc. Cicchetti saved the lives of many of his fellow soldiers at the cost of his own.

*BENNETT, THOMAS W.

Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, 2d Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry. Place and date: Chu Pa Region, Pleiku Province, Republic of Vietnam, 9-11 February 1969. Entered service at: Fairmont, W. Va. Born: 7 April 1947, Morgantown, W. Va. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Cpl. Bennett distinguished himself while serving as a platoon medical aidman with the 2d Platoon, Company B, during a reconnaissance-in-force mission. On 9 February the platoon was moving to assist the 1st Platoon of Company D which had run into a North Vietnamese ambush when it became heavily engaged by the intense small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and rocket fire from a well fortified and numerically superior enemy unit. In the initial barrage of fire, 3 of the point members of the platoon fell wounded. Cpl. Bennett, with complete disregard for his safety, ran through the heavy fire to his fallen comrades, administered life-saving first aid under fire and then made repeated trips carrying the wounded men to positions of relative safety from which they would be medically evacuated from the battle position.

Cpl. Bennett repeatedly braved the intense enemy fire moving across open areas to give aid and comfort to his wounded comrades. He valiantly exposed himself to the heavy fire in order to retrieve the bodies of several fallen personnel. Throughout the night and following day, Cpl. Bennett moved from position to position treating and comforting the several personnel who had suffered shrapnel and gunshot wounds. On 11 February, Company B again moved in an assault on the well fortified enemy positions and became heavily engaged with the numerically superior enemy force. Five members of the company fell wounded in the initial assault. Cpl. Bennett ran to their aid without regard to the heavy fire. He treated 1 wounded comrade and began running toward another seriously wounded man. Although the wounded man was located forward of the company position covered by heavy enemy grazing fire and Cpl. Bennett was warned that it was impossible to reach the position, he leaped forward with complete disregard for his safety to save his comrade’s life. In attempting to save his fellow soldier, he was mortally wounded. Cpl. Bennett’s undaunted concern for his comrades at the cost of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

*PROM, WILLIAM R.

Rank and organization: Lance Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps, Company 1, 3d Battalion, 3d Marines, 3d Marine Division (Rein), FMF. Place and date: Near An Hoa, Republic of Vietnam. 9 February 1969. Entered service at: Pittsburgh, Pa. Born: 17 November 1948, Pittsburgh, Pa. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a machinegun squad leader with Company 1, in action against the enemy. While returning from a reconnaissance operation during Operation TAYLOR COMMON, 2 platoons of Company 1 came under an intense automatic weapons fire and grenade attack from a well concealed North Vietnamese Army force in fortified positions. The leading. element of the platoon was isolated and several marines were wounded. L/Cpl. Prom immediately assumed control of 1 of his machineguns and began to deliver return fire. Disregarding his safety he advanced to a position from which he could more effectively deliver covering fire while first aid was administered to the wounded men. Realizing that the enemy would have to be destroyed before the injured marines could be evacuated, L/Cpl. Prom again moved forward and delivered a heavy volume of fire with such accuracy that he was instrumental in routing the enemy, thus permitting his men to regroup and resume their march.

Shortly thereafter, the platoon again came under heavy fire in which 1 man was critically wounded. Reacting instantly, L/Cpl. Prom moved forward to protect his injured comrade. Unable to continue his fire because of his severe wounds, he continued to advance to within a few yards to the enemy positions. There, standing in full view of the enemy, he accurately directed the fire of his support elements until he was mortally wounded. Inspired by his heroic actions, the marines launched an assault that destroyed the enemy. L/Cpl. Prom’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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10 February

1676 – In King Philip’s War Narragansett and Nipmuck Indians, searching for food, raided Lancaster, Mass. Over 35 villagers were killed and 24 were taken captive including Mary Rowlandson and her 3 children. Rowlandson was freed after 11 weeks and an account of her captivity was published posthumously in 1682.

1677 – Virginia Governor William Berkley revokes the royal pardon which Colonel Herbert Jeffreys has brought for rebels of Bacon’s Rebellion. In defiance of the Crown, Berkley proceeds to execute 23 of the rebels.

1763 – The Seven Years’ War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by France, Great Britain, and Spain. In the early 1750s, France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought the country into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756, the British formally declared war against France. In the first year of the war, the British suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia’s struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America.

By 1760, the French had been expelled from Canada, and by 1763 all of France’s allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India. The Seven Years’ War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots.

1840 – A House resolution was introduced to inquire into transferring the Revenue Marine to the Navy.

1855 – US citizenship laws were amended to include all children of US parents born abroad.

1861 – Jefferson Davis receives word that he has been selected president of the new Confederate States of America. Davis was at his plantation, Brierfield, pruning rose bushes with his wife Varina when a messenger arrived from nearby Vicksburg. It was not a job he wanted, but he accepted it out of a sense of duty to his new country. Varina later wrote that she saw her husband’s face grow pale and she recalled, “Reading that telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes he told me like a man might speak of a sentence of death.” Davis said of the job: “I have no confidence in my ability to meet its requirement. I think I could perform the function of a general.”

He could see the difficulties involved in launching the new nation. “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles innumerable. We are without machinery, without means, and threatened by powerful opposition but I do not despond and will not shrink from the task before me.” Davis was prescient in his concerns. He drew sharp criticism during the war–Alexander Stephens, the vice president, said Davis was “weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate,” and Stephens declared that he held “no more feeling of resentment toward him” than he did toward his “poor old blind and deaf dog.”

1862 – Following the capture of Roanoke Island, a naval flotilla, including embarked Marines, under Commander Rowan in U.S.S. Delaware, pursuing Flag Officer Lynch’s retiring Confederate naval force up the Pasquotank River, engaged the gunboats and batteries at Elizabeth City, North Carolina. C.S.S. Ellis was captured and C.S.S. Seabird was sunk; C.S.S. Black Warrior, Fanny, and Forrest were set on fire to avoid capture; the fort and batteries at Cobb’s Point were destroyed. Of Commander Rowan’s success, Admiral Daniel Ammen later wrote: ”Nothing more brilliant in naval ‘dash’ occurred during the entire Civil War than appears in this attack.”

One example of “dash” was called to Flag Officer L. N. Goldsborough’s attention by Commander Rowan. ”I would respectfully call your attention to one incident of the engagement which reflects much credit upon a quarter gunner of the Valley City and for which Congress has provided rewards in the shape of medals. A shot passed through her magazine and exploded in a locker beyond containing fireworks. The commander, Lieutenant Commander Chaplain, went there to aid in suppressing the fire, where he found John Davis, quarter gunner, seated with commendable coolness on an open barrel of powder as the only means to keep the fire out.” For demonstrating such courage, ”while at the same time passing powder to provide the division on the upper deck while under fierce enemy fire,” Davis was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by General Order 11, 3 April 1863.

1865 – The Confederate Navy began its last attempt to gain control of the James River and thus force the withdrawal of General Grant’s army by cutting its communications at City Point. The expedition of 100 officers and men was led by the audacious naval lieutenant, Charles W. Read. He loaded four torpedo boats on wagons and started overland from Drewry’s Bluff. The plan called for marching to a place below City Point on the James River where the party would launch the boats, capture any passing tugs or steamers, and outfit these prizes with spats and torpedoes. The expedition would then ascend the river and attack and sink the Union monitors, leaving the Union gunboats at the mercy of the Confederate ironclads. The James, without which Grant would be denied transport and supplies, would be under Confederate control from Richmond to Hampton Roads.

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1890 – Around 11 million acres, ceded to US by Sioux Indians, opened for settlement.

1896 – Insurgents in Cuba are suppressed when General Valeriano Wyler arrives from Spain. The “Yellow Press” quickly dubs him “the Butcher.”

1900 – Appointment of first naval governor of Guam, Commodore Seaton Schroder.

1915 – President Wilson blasted the British for using the U.S. flag on merchant ships to deceive the Germans. He also warned the Kaiser that he would hold Germany “to a strict accountability” for U.S. lives and property endangered. In Europe [Lithuania], the Germans encircled and captured 100,000 Russians near Nieman River. When the United States entered World War I, propagandist George Creel set out to stifle anti-war sentiment.

1940 – CGCs Bibb and Duane make first transmissions as weather stations.

1940 – President Roosevelt condemns the USSR, saying the US backs Finland.

1941 – Iceland was attacked by German planes. In July, the US 5th Division will be deployed for the defense of Iceland.

1942 – The war halted civilian car production at Ford. Henry Ford opposed America’s entry into World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor, which inspired him to begin an all-out effort to manufacture planes and vehicles for the war effort.

1942 – The former French liner Normandie capsized in New York Harbor a day after it caught fire while being refitted for the U.S. Navy.

1942 – Japanese submarine launches a brutal attack on Midway, a coral atoll used as a U.S. Navy base. It was the fourth bombing of the atoll by Japanese ships since December 7. The capture of Midway was an important part of the broader Japanese strategy of trying to create a defensive line that would stretch from the western Aleutian Islands in the north to the Midway, Wake, Marshall, and Gilbert Islands in the south, then west to the Dutch West Indies.

Occupying Midway would also mean depriving the United States of a submarine base and would provide the perfect launching pad for an all-out assault on Hawaii. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack and commander in chief of the Japanese combined fleet, knew that only the utter destruction of U.S. naval capacity would ensure Japanese free reign in the Pacific.

Japanese bombing of the atoll by ship and submarine failed to break through the extraordinary defense put up by Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, who used every resource available to protect Midway and, by extension, Hawaii. Yamamoto persevered with an elaborate warship operation, called Mi, launched in June, but the Battle of Midway was a disaster for Japan, and was the turning point for ultimate American victory in the Pacific.

1944 – Australian forces advancing from Sio link up with American forces near Saidor. Allied forces now occupy most of the Huon Peninsula.

1945 – German forces open the Schwammenauel Dam, opposite the US 1st Army, in a partially successful attempt to delay the advance of the American forces nearby.

1945 – Task Force 58, with Marine Fighter Squadrons 123, 216, 217, 212, and 451 on board carriers, attacked Tokyo and provided air cover support for Iwo Jima landing forces. They also bombed and strafed Okinawa.

1951 – Eighth Army units retook Inchon and Kimpo airfield. U.N. patrols entered Seoul.

1952 – Operation CLAM-UP began as a moratorium and was imposed on the use of infantry patrols, indirect fire missions and close-air support. The purpose of CLAM-UP was to lure the enemy into investigating the situation and them ambushing them. Unfortunately, the communists did not respond to the bait.

1953 – General James A. Van Fleet retired. General Maxwell D. Taylor assumed command of Eighth Army.

1954 – Eisenhower warned against US intervention in Vietnam.

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1955 – Bell Aircraft displayed a fixed-wing vertical takeoff plane. An ingenious blend of airplane and helicopter features, the Fairey Rotodyne was a case of almost–but not quite enough.

1960 – USS Sargo (SSN-583) surfaces at North Pole.

1962 – Francis Gary Powers, an American who was shot down over the Soviet Union while flying a CIA spy plane in 1960, is released by the Soviets in exchange for the U.S. release of a Russian spy. The exchange concluded one of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War. Powers had been a pilot of one of the high altitude U-2 spy planes developed by the United States in the late-1950s. Supposedly invulnerable to any Soviet antiaircraft defense, the U-2s flew numerous missions over Russia, photographing military installations. On May 1, 1960, Powers’ U-2 was shot down by a Soviet missile. Although Powers was supposed to engage the plane’s self-destruct system (and commit suicide with poison furnished by the CIA), he and much of the plane were captured. The United States at first denied involvement with the flight, but had to admit that Powers was working for the U.S. government when the Soviets presented incontrovertible evidence.

In retaliation, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev called off a scheduled summit with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Powers was put on trial, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In February 1962, the Soviet Union announced that it was freeing Powers because of a petition from the prisoner’s family. American officials made it quite clear, however, that Abel was being exchanged for Powers-a spy-for-a-spy trade, not a humanitarian gesture on the part of the Soviet Union. The U.S. government announced that in exchange for Powers, it would release Col. Rudolf Abel, a Russian convicted of espionage in the United States.

On February 10, Abel and Powers were brought to the Gilenicker Bridge that linked East and West Berlin for the exchange. After the men were successfully exchanged, Powers was flown back to the United States. In an announcement, the Soviet Union declared that its release of Powers was partially motivated by “a desire to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.” U.S. officials were cautious in evaluating the Soviet overture, but did note that the action could certainly help lessen Cold War tensions. The exchange was part of the ongoing diplomatic dance between Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy. Both men seemed earnestly to desire better relations, and the February 1962 exchange was no doubt part of their efforts. Just a few months later, however, the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the Soviets helped construct missile bases in Cuba, erased the memory of these diplomatic overtures and brought the two powers to the brink of nuclear conflict.

1965 – Viet Cong guerrillas blow up the U.S. barracks at Qui Nhon, 75 miles east of Pleiku on the central coast, with a 100-pound explosive charge under the building. A total of 23 U.S. personnel were killed, as well as two Viet Cong. In response to the attack, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a retaliatory air strike operation on North Vietnam called Flaming Dart II. This was the second in a series of retaliations launched because of communist attacks on U.S. installations in South Vietnam. Just 48 hours before, the Viet Cong struck Camp Holloway and the adjacent Pleiku airfield in the Central Highlands.

This attack killed eight U.S. servicemen, wounded 109, and destroyed or damaged 20 aircraft. With his advisors advocating a strong response, President Johnson gave the order to launch Operation Flaming Dart, retaliatory air raids on a barracks and staging areas at Dong Hoi, a guerrilla training camp 40 miles north of the 17th parallel in North Vietnam. Johnson hoped that quick and effective retaliation would persuade the North Vietnamese to cease their attacks in South Vietnam. Unfortunately, Operation Flaming Dart did not have the desired effect. The attack on Qui Nhon was only the latest in a series of communist attacks on U.S. installations, and Flaming Dart II had very little effect.

1966 – Protester David Miller was convicted of burning his draft card.

1967 – The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities, is ratified. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President, as opposed to an Acting President, if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency.

1988 – A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the Army’s ban on homosexuals, saying gays were entitled to the same protection against discrimination as racial minorities. However, the ruling was later set aside by the full appeals court.

1991 – In a broadcast on Baghdad Radio, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein praised his countrymen for withstanding attacks by allied warplanes and rockets.

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1992 – Retired Coast Guard Chief Journalist Alex Haley, internationally noted author and the first person to ever hold that rate in the Coast Guard, dies of a heart attack.

1997 – The Army suspended its top-ranking enlisted soldier, Army Sgt. Major Gene McKinney, following sexual misconduct allegations.
1997 – The city of Cincinnati revealed plans for a new $80 museum for its role in the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. The museum and freedom center were scheduled to open in 2002.

1999 – US and British jets again hit Iraqi air defense sites. It was reported that Saddam Hussein has offered $14,000 to air defense troops who shoot down a US or British plane.

2000 – In Yemen tribesmen released Kenneth White (54), an American oil executive, who was kidnapped a month ago.

2001 – The space shuttle Atlantis’ astronauts installed the $1.4 billion Destiny laboratory on the international space station.

2003 – Afghanistan became the 89th nation to join the International Criminal Court.

2003 – In Kabul, Afghanistan, Germany and the Netherlands took control of the 22-nation peacekeeping force (ISAF) charged with keeping order, replacing Turkey.

2003 – A Chinese court convicted U.S.-based dissident Wang Bingzhang on spying and terrorism charges and sentenced him to life in prison.

2003 – France, Germany and Belgium blocked NATO efforts to begin planning for possible Iraqi attacks against Turkey. Turkey responds and becomes the first country in NATO’s 53-year history to publicly invoke Article 4 of the alliance’s mutual defense treaty which binds the 19 allies to talks when one perceives a threat to its “territorial integrity, political independence or security”.

2003 – Iraq agreed to allow U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons; President Bush, however, brushed aside Iraqi concessions as too little, too late.

2004 – The US broke ground for a new U.S. Embassy compound in the Chinese capital, billed by the American government as the largest State Department project ever built on foreign soil.

2004 – Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi met with Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi, and the United States said it had restored diplomatic contacts with the country. In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks with the Libyan foreign minister.

2005 – New York civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted of smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients, radical Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his terrorist disciples on the outside. In 2006 Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison.

2005 – North Korea announced for the first time that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks anytime soon, saying it needs the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.

2007 – David Petraeus was made commander of Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I), the four-star post that oversees all coalition forces in country, replacing General George Casey. In his new position, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq and employed them in the new “Surge” strategy outlined by the Bush administration. 2007 also saw a sharp increase in insurgent chlorine bombings.

2008 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also arrives in Iraq from a Germany security conference to meet with Iraqi leaders, General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.

2013 – American general Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. takes over command of NATO forces in Afghanistan, replacing John R. Allen.

2015 – The Obama Administration announces the creation of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, a new United States federal government agency that will be a fusion center between existing agencies and the private sector for real-time use against cyber attacks.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

DAVIS, JOHN
Rank and organization: Quarter Gunner, U.S. Navy. Born: Cedarville, N.J. Accredited to: New Jersey. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: Served on board the U.S.S. Valley City during action against rebel fort batteries and ships off Elizabeth City, N.C., on 10 February 1862. When a shell from the shore penetrated the side and passed through the magazine, exploding outside the screen on the berth deck, several powder division protecting bulkheads were torn to pieces and the forward part of the berth deck set on fire. Showing great presence of mind, Davis courageously covered a barrel of powder with his own body and prevented an explosion, while at the same time passing powder to provide the division on the upper deck while under fierce enemy fire.

GLOVER, T. B.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Troop B, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Mizpah Creek, Mont., 10 April 1879; at Pumpkin Creek, Mont., 10 February 1880. Entered service at:——. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 20 November 1897. Citation: While in charge of small scouting parties, fought, charged, surrounded, and captured war parties of Sioux Indians.

GREELY, ADOLPHUS W.
Rank and organization: Major General, U.S. Army, retired. Place and date: —-. Entered service at: Louisiana. Born: 27 March 1844, Newburyport, Mass. G.O. No.: 3, W.D., 1935. Act of Congress, 21 March 1935. Citation: For his life of splendid public service, begun on 27 March 1844, having enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army on 26 July 1861, and by successive promotions was commissioned as major general 10 February 1906, and retired by operation of law on his 64th birthday.

*DAVIS, GEORGE ANDREW, JR.
Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Air Force, CO, 334th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group, 5th Air Force. Place and date: Near Sinuiju-Yalu River area, Korea, 10 February 1952. Entered service at: Lubbock, Tex. Born: 1 December 1920, Dublin, Tex. Citation: Maj. Davis distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. While leading a flight of 4 F-86 Saberjets on a combat aerial patrol mission near the Manchurian border, Maj. Davis’ element leader ran out of oxygen and was forced to retire from the flight with his wingman accompanying him. Maj. Davis and the remaining F-86’s continued the mission and sighted a formation of approximately 12 enemy MIG-15 aircraft speeding southward toward an area where friendly fighter-bombers were conducting low level operations against the Communist lines of communications.

With selfless disregard for the numerical superiority of the enemy, Maj. Davis positioned his 2 aircraft, then dove at the MIG formation. While speeding through the formation from the rear he singled out a MIG-15 and destroyed it with a concentrated burst of fire. Although he was now under continuous fire from the enemy fighters to his rear, Maj. Davis sustained his attack. He fired at another MIG-15 which, bursting into smoke and flames, went into a vertical dive. Rather than maintain his superior speed and evade the enemy fire being concentrated on him, he elected to reduce his speed and sought out still a third MIG-15. During this latest attack his aircraft sustained a direct hit, went out of control, then crashed into a mountain 30 miles south of the Yalu River. Maj. Davis’ bold attack completely disrupted the enemy formation, permitting the friendly fighter-bombers to successfully complete their interdiction mission. Maj. Davis, by his indomitable fighting spirit, heroic aggressiveness, and superb courage in engaging the enemy against formidable odds exemplified valor at its highest.

BACA, JOHN P.
Rank and organization: Specialist Fourth Class, U.S. Army, Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. Place and date: Phuoc Long Province, Republic of Vietnam, 10 February 1970. Entered service at: Fort Ord, Calif. Born: 10 January 1949, Providence, R.I.. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sp4c. Baca, Company D, distinguished himself while serving on a recoilless rifle team during a night ambush mission A platoon from his company was sent to investigate the detonation of an automatic ambush device forward of his unit’s main position and soon came under intense enemy fire from concealed positions along the trail. Hearing the heavy firing from the platoon position and realizing that his recoilless rifle team could assist the members of the besieged patrol, Sp4c. Baca led his team through the hail of enemy fire to a firing position within the patrol’s defensive perimeter.

As they prepared to engage the enemy, a fragmentation grenade was thrown into the midst of the patrol. Fully aware of the danger to his comrades, Sp4c. Baca unhesitatingly, and with complete disregard for his own safety, covered the grenade with his steel helmet and fell on it as the grenade exploded, thereby absorbing the lethal fragments and concussion with his body. His gallant action and total disregard for his personal well-being directly saved 8 men from certain serious injury or death. The extraordinary courage and selflessness displayed by Spc4. Baca, at the risk of his life, are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

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[SHOOTER13]

11 February

1752 – Pennsylvania Hospital, the 1st hospital in the US, opened.

1765 – The term “Sons of Liberty” is used in a letter written by Jared Ingersoll, Sr. The term would soon be adopted by American patriots. In turn, Ingersoll got the phrase from a speech in the House of Commons by Isaac Barré. A vigorous opponent of the taxation of America, Barré displayed his mastery of invective in his championship of the American cause. Another member, Charles Townshend, in a debate on 6 February, spoke scornfully: “And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength & opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

Townshend’s speech prompted Col. Barré, to defend us: “They planted by your care? No! your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country . . . . They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them . . . men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them . . . .They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defense . . . . The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated.” Despite the speech, the House of Commons ended up approving the Stamp Act. Barré was soon proven right, however.

The Americans were “jealous of their liberties” and would “vindicate them”. Ingersoll, having witnessed this exchange, wrote his letter to Governor Thomas Fitch of Connecticut. He later claimed that he was the only man to report the contents of at least one notable speech back to America. Thus, Ingersoll took credit for introducing the phrase “Sons of Liberty” into the American lexicon.

1766 – The Stamp Act was declared unconstitutional in Virginia.

1768 – Samuel Adams composes a letter to the other colonial governments outlining the sept taken in Massachusetts to oppose the Townshend Acts. The letter complains of “taxation without representation” and warns that the English may tamper with colonial governance to make it more independent of the colonies. Finally, the letter calls for united action by the colonies against the British government.

1790 – The first petition to Congress for emancipation of the slaves was made by the Society of Friends.

1794 – A session of US Senate was 1st opened to the public.

1805 – Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian interpreter and guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition, gives birth to her first child, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first met the young Sacagawea while spending the winter among the Mandan Indians along the Upper Missouri River, not far from present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. Still only a teenager, Sacagawea was the wife of a French-Canadian fur trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau, who had purchased her from Hidatsa kidnappers the year before. The Hidatsa had taken Sacagawea from her homeland along the Continental Divide in modern-day southwestern Montana and southeastern Idaho, where she was the daughter of a prominent Shoshone chief.

Viewing such captives as little more than slaves, the Hidatsa were happy to sell Sacagawea and another woman to Charbonneau, who used them as laborers, porters, and sexual companions. That winter, Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau as an interpreter for their projected expedition to the Pacific and back, provided he agreed to bring along his young wife. Lewis and Clark knew they would have to obtain horses from the Shoshone to cross the Continental Divide, and Sacagawea’s services as an interpreter could prove invaluable. Charbonneau agreed, and she became the only woman to join the Corps of Discovery. Two months before the expedition was to depart, Lewis and Clark found themselves with another co-traveler, who later proved useful in an unexpected way.

On this day in 1805, Sacagawea went into labor. Lewis, who would often act as the expedition’s doctor in the months to come, was called on for the first and only time during the journey to assist in a delivery. Lewis was anxious to insure his new Shoshone interpreter was in good shape for the arduous journey to come, and he later worriedly reported “her labour was tedious and the pain violent.” Told that a small amount of the rattle of rattlesnake might speed the delivery, Lewis broke up a rattler tail and mixed it with water. “She had not taken [the mixture] more than ten minutes before she brought forth,” Lewis happily reported. Named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the cries of the healthy young boy announced the arrival of a new member of the Corps of Discovery. No one, it seemed, contemplated leaving Sacagawea and her infant son behind–when the party set out up the Missouri in April 1805, Sacagawea carried Jean Baptiste on her back in an Indian cradleboard.

Nicknamed “Pomp” or “Pompey” by Clark, who developed a strong attachment to the boy, Jean Baptiste accompanied his mother on every step of her epic journey to the Pacific and back. Mother and son both were invaluable to the expedition. As hoped, Sacagawea’s services as a translator played a pivotal role in securing horses from the Shoshone. Jean Baptiste’s presence also proved unexpectedly useful by helping to convince the Indians the party encountered that their intentions were peaceful-no war party, the Indians reasoned, would bring along a mother and infant. When the Corps of Discovery returned east in 1805, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Jean Baptiste resumed the fur-trading life.

Little is known of Sacagawea’s subsequent fate, though a fur trader claimed she died of a “putrid fever” in 1812 at a Missouri River trading post. True to a promise he had made to Sacagawea during the expedition, Clark paid for Jean Baptiste’s education at a St. Louis Catholic academy and became something of an adoptive father to the boy. A bright and charismatic young man, Jean Baptiste learned French, German, and Spanish, hunted with noblemen in the Black Forest of Germany, traveled in Africa, and returned to further explore the American West. He died in 1866 en route to the newly discovered gold fields of Montana.

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