This Date in Military History:

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1914 – William Westmoreland, U.S. army general during the Vietnam War, is born. General Westmoreland took command in Vietnam in June 1964 replacing Gen. Paul Harkins. He was instrumental in raising the level of US forces deployed in Vietnam and in developing the strategies implemented in the region. Westmoreland continuously requested for an increase in manpower in Vietnam and President Johnson, who had his own troubles at home, refused to send more troops and finally recalled Westmoreland after he successfully stopped the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968.

He was replaced by General Creighton W. Abrams. Upon his return to the US, Westmoreland was appointed as Chief of Staff of the US Army. His biggest challenge was to withdraw the troops from Vietnam and ready them for duty in other regions of the world. He was successful in restructuring the Army at a difficult time, but his tactics in Vietnam had become unpopular with some groups in the US. He maintained for many years that the policy in Vietnam had been the right one. General Westmoreland retired in 1972.

1930 – Congress appropriated $50,000 for Inter-American highway.

1938 – US Coast Guard motor lifeboat Triumph departed from the Point Adams Station, located near Hammond, Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River. It proceeded out to the bar and stood by while several crab boats crossed in. The tug Tyee with a barge load of logs in tow was attempting to cross out. Tyee passed too close to the life buoy and the barge drifted into the outer break on Clatsop Spit. Triumph, while attempting to assist Tyee, lost Surfman Richard O. Bracken overboard in the breakers of Clatsop Spit. Bracken would have been drowned had it not been for the skill of BN (L) John F. McCormick, Officer-in-Charge of Triumph, and the cooperation of the crew, namely CMOMM (L) Albert L. Olsen and Surfman Harold W. Lawrence. In making the rescue, Triumph was carried broadside on the face of a wave a distance of approximately 50 yards. The masts had been completely submerged, then the boat righted itself. Bracken had been washed overboard by the force of the sea. McCormick acting with exceptional skill maneuvered Triumph against the strong current, into the breakers and picked up the drowning man. Olsen remained in the engine room during all these maneuvers, stayed at the controls under perilous conditions, and rendered commendable service. McCormick was awarded a Gold Life-Saving Medal for this rescue. Olsen and Lawrence were awarded Silver Lifesaving Medals for their actions during this rescue.

1942 – ADM King becomes both Chief of Naval Operations and Commander, U.S. Fleet.

1943 – Elsie S. Ott, US Army nurse, became the 1st woman to receive air medal.

1943 – Battle of Komandorski Islands, prevents Japanese reinforcements from reaching Attu. An American squadran of 2 cruisers and 4 destroyers (under the command of Admiral McMorris) meets a Japanese squadron of 4 cruisers and 5 destroyers (under the command of Admiral Hosogaya) off the Komandorski Islands. A traditional gun engagement begins and a cruiser on each side is badly damaged. Hosogaya decides to break off at this point although he has a clear superiority which is beginning to tell.

1944 – Japanese patrols again sight large American naval forces heading for Palau Island. They decide to disperse their warships.

1944 – In Italy, a major reorganization of the Allied forces takes place. The New Zealand Corps is taken out of the line and broken up. Other units of the Eighth Army are brought from the east side to replace it along with the French Corps. The next Allied offensive will not be until May when this reorganization is complete.

1945 – Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton attack at Remagen on the Rhine.

1945 – The US 7th Army begins to send units of US 15th and US 6th Corps across the Rhine River between Worms and Mannheim. To the north all the Allied armies continue to advance.

1945 – On Iwo Jima, the few hundred Japanese troops remaining on the island mount a final suicide attack. They are wiped out by elements of the 5th Marine Division, which have been assigned the task of reducing the last pockets of resistance. About 200 of the Japanese garrison of 20,700 remain alive as prisoners of the marines of US 5th Amphibious Corps. American casualties have been almost 6,000 dead and 17,200 wounded.

1945 – About 14,000 men commanded by General Arnold and drawn from the units of the America Division land just south of Cebu City on the island of Cebu. Admiral Berkey leads a bombardment group in support.

1945 – US naval forces (TF58 and TF52) continue air strikes on Okinawa. US Task Force 54 (Admiral Deyo), with 10 battleships, 10 cruisers and 33 destroyers, begin the main bombardment of Okinawa. The US 77th Infantry Division (General Bruce) lands on Kerama Retto and overruns the small Japanese garrison. The British Pacific Fleet (Admiral Rawlings), also designated Task Force 57, with 4 fleet carriers, 2 battleships, 5 cruisers and 11 destroyers, attacks airfields and other targets on Sakashima Gunto. Japanese submarines make unsuccessful attacks on the Allied ships. Coast Guardsmen participated in the landings at Geruma Shima, Hokaji Shima, and Takashiki in the Ryukyu Islands.

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1946 – International Ice Patrol resumed after being suspended during World War II.

1947 – FBI director J. Edgar Hoover warned HUAC that communists had launched “a furtive attack on Hollywood” 12 years earlier.

1950 – During a radio broadcast dealing with a Senate investigation into communists in the U.S. Department of State, news is leaked that Senator Joseph McCarthy has charged Professor Owen Lattimore with being a top spy for the Soviet Union. Lattimore soon became a central figure in the Red Scare hysteria created by McCarthy’s reckless charges and accusations. McCarthy had achieved instant fame in February 1950 when he stated in a speech that he had a list of over 200 “known communists” in the Department of State. When pressed for details, however, McCarthy was evasive. When the Senate demanded that he produce evidence to support his claim, McCarthy gave a rambling and nearly incoherent presentation. Nevertheless, the senator from Wisconsin maintained his claim and insisted that he had definitive evidence on at least one person who had worked for the State Department–it soon became clear that Lattimore was that person.

Lattimore was a scholar of Chinese history who taught at Johns Hopkins University. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him as a special representative to the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek. Lattimore also served in the Office of War Information. His troubles began after the war, when it became apparent that Chiang’s government would fall to the communist forces of Mao Zedong. When China fell to the communists in 1949, shocked Americans looked for scapegoats to blame for the debacle. Individuals such as Lattimore, who had been unremitting in their criticism of Chiang’s regime, were easy targets.

In March 1950, Senator McCarthy was being pressed hard to produce the “known communists” he had spoken of in his February speech. He turned his attention to those in the Department of State who had been involved in Chinese affairs, and Lattimore’s name naturally arose. Soon, McCarthy was charging that Lattimore was the top Soviet spy in the United States. Lattimore angrily denied it and hearings before a congressional committee cleared him of all charges. McCarthy did not give up, however.

In 1951-1952, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee revisited the accusations against Lattimore. During his testimony, the scholar admitted that his 1950 testimony contained some minor inaccuracies. This was enough for the Subcommittee to charge Lattimore with perjury. These charges were also eventually dropped for lack of evidence, but Lattimore’s career had already been severely damaged. In 1963, he left the United States to teach and write in Great Britain. He returned some years later and died in 1989. He was just one of the many victims of McCarthy’s reckless witch-hunts–as with all of McCarthy’s “communists,” no evidence ever surfaced to support his charges against Lattimore.

1951 – The United States Air Force flag design was approved.

1953 – In talks with French Premier Rene Mayer, Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.

1954 – The U.S. set off the second H-bomb blast in four weeks in the Marshall Islands at Bikini Island. The 15-megaton device was 750 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The blast contaminated the neighboring island of Rongelap and nearly 100 people on the island and other downwind atolls.

1958 – The U.S. Army launched America’s third successful satellite, Explorer 3. Explorer 3 (international designation 1958 Gamma) was an artificial satellite of the Earth, nearly identical to the first United States artificial satellite Explorer 1 in its design and mission. It was the second successful launch in the Explorer program.

1966 – Operation Jackstay in Navy’s first amphibious assault in Vietnam’s inland waters. Operation JACKSTAY begins with an amphibious assault on the Long Thanh peninsula by the US Marines. The RVN committed two Marine battalions. In late February and early March, the VC had attacked two cargo ships on the shipping channel to Saigon and MACV requested that this force be used to clear their base area. This operation, 39 miles southeast of Saigon in the Rung Sat Special Zone, is the southernmost large-scale employment of U.S. forces in Vietnam to date. It terminates on 6 April 1966. They claimed at least 63 enemy KIAs while suffering 5 US KIA, 2 US MIA and 25 US WIA.

1968 – Operation Bold Dragon III began in Mekong Delta it is under the direct control of the Chief of Naval Operations, Vietnam. The force included two SEAL platoons operating from U.S. naval vessels off the coast of Long Tau and Ba Xuyen during Phase I and off Phu Quc Island in Phase II. It was supported by Army and HA(L)-3 helicopters.

1970 – 500th nuclear explosion since 1945 was announced by the US.

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1975 – The city of Hue, in northernmost South Vietnam, falls to the North Vietnamese. Hue was the most recent major city in South Vietnam to fall to the communists during their new offensive. The offensive had started in December 1974, when the North Vietnamese had launched a major attack against the lightly defended province of Phuoc Long, located north of Saigon along the Cambodian border. The communists overran the provincial capital of Phuoc Binh on January 6, 1975.

President Richard Nixon had repeatedly promised South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu that the United States would come to the aid of South Vietnam if North Vietnam committed a major violation of the Peace Accords. However, by the time the communists had taken Phuoc Long, Nixon had already resigned from office and his successor, Gerald Ford, was unable to convince a hostile Congress to make good on Nixon’s promises to Saigon. This situation emboldened the North Vietnamese, who launched a campaign in March 1975 to take the provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands. The South Vietnamese defenders there fought very poorly and were overwhelmed by the North Vietnamese attackers.

Once again, the United States did nothing. President Thieu ordered his forces in the Highlands to withdraw to more defensible positions to the south. What started out as a reasonably orderly withdrawal degenerated into a panic that spread throughout the South Vietnamese armed forces. They abandoned Pleiku and Kontum in the Highlands with very little fighting and the North Vietnamese pressed the attack from the west and north. In quick succession, Quang Tri and Hue fell.

The communists then seized Da Nang, the second largest city in South Vietnam. Many South Vietnamese, both military and civilian, died in the general chaos while attempting to escape from the airport, docks, and beaches. By this time, the South Vietnamese forces were in flight all over the northern half of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese continued to attack south along the coast, overrunning city after city, methodically defeating the South Vietnamese forces. By April 27, the North Vietnamese had completely encircled Saigon and began to maneuver for their final assault, which became known as the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign.”

By the morning of April 30, it was all over. As the North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, the Vietnam War came to an end.

1976 – The United States and Turkey sign a four-year military pact, reopening US bases in Turkey.

1979 – The Camp David peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the White House.

1980 – Ayatollah Mohammad Behesti calls for trials of the US hostages in Iran if the Shah is not returned.

1982 – Ground was broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by Maya Lin of Yale. It was dedicated November 13th.

1983 – US performed another nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.

1987 – NASA launches Fltsatcom-6. It failed to reach orbit.

1989 – The first free elections took place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin was elected. Voters in the Soviet Union filled 1,500 of more than 2,000 seats in the new Congress of People’s Deputies, beginning embarrassing defeats for the Communist Party.

1991 – The Bush administration indicated it would not aid rebels seeking to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

1993 – President Clinton promised a “full-court press” against Bosnian Serbs to secure their agreement to a United Nations peace plan endorsed by Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

1998 – UN Inspectors gain entry into the first Iraqi presidential palace.

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1999 – American-led NATO forces launched a third night of airstrikes against Yugoslavia and 2 MiG-29 fighters were shot down as Serbian troops continued to sweep ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo.

1999 – The UN Security Council defeated a Russian resolution demanding an immediate end to NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. In Russia NATO representatives were from Moscow.

2001 – A US Army plane crashed in Germany and 2 pilots were killed. In Scotland US Air Force F15C fighter jets were lost during training. The body of one pilot, Lt. Col. Kenneth John Hyvonen, and F15 wreckage was found the next day. Wreckage of the 2nd F15 was found after 2 days. The body of Capt. Kirk Jones was found March 30th.

2003 – In the 8th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom about 1,000 members of the US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade parachute into northern Iraq and seize control of an airfield. The U.S. Navy announces that Iraq’s Persian Gulf oil export terminal of Mina al-Bakr has escaped sabotage and is ready to resume operations.

2003 – NATO officially signed up 7 eastern European nations to become members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

2004 – West of Baghdad, U.S. Marines and gunmen fought an hour-long battle that left four Iraqis dead and six wounded. A U.S. Marine and an ABC freelance cameraman were killed during a bitter, hours-long firefight between American troops and Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah.

2007 – The military commission process begins for detainees accused by the United States of war crimes, with the first person to face trial being Australian David Hicks. Hicks pleads guilty to providing material support for terrorists.

2008 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour lands at Cape Canaveral, Florida in a rare nighttime landing ending a 16-day mission to the International Space Station.

2008 – A federal indictment of a former official of Life for Relief and Development claims that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service paid for a U.S. congressional delegation’s trip to the country during the buildup to the war. A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the congressmen on the State Department-approved trip were not aware of this, and that “[n]one of the congressional representatives are accused of any wrongdoing.”

2010 – US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev finalize a new arms control treaty to further reduce the nuclear arsenals of each country still remaining since the Cold War.

2014 – North Korea fires two mid-range ballistic missiles as the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea meet to discuss the security threat it poses to the region.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

*MARTIN, HARRY LINN
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 4 January 1911, Bucyrus, Ohio. Appointed from. Ohio. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as platoon leader attached to Company C, 5th Pioneer Battalion, 5th Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 26 March 1945. With his sector of the 5th Pioneer Battalion bivouac area penetrated by a concentrated enemy attack launched a few minutes before dawn, 1st Lt. Martin instantly organized a firing line with the marines nearest his foxhole and succeeded in checking momentarily the headlong rush of the Japanese. Determined to rescue several of his men trapped in positions overrun by the enemy, he defied intense hostile fire to work his way through the Japanese to the surrounded marines. Although sustaining 2 severe wounds, he blasted the Japanese who attempted to intercept him, located his beleaguered men and directed them to their own lines.

When 4 of the infiltrating enemy took possession of an abandoned machinegun pit and subjected his sector to a barrage of hand grenades, 1st Lt. Martin, alone and armed only with a pistol, boldly charged the hostile position and killed all of its occupants. Realizing that his few remaining comrades could not repulse another organized attack, he called to his men to follow and then charged into the midst of the strong enemy force, firing his weapon and scattering them until he fell, mortally wounded by a grenade. By his outstanding valor, indomitable fighting spirit and tenacious determination in the face of overwhelming odds, 1st Lt. Martin permanently disrupted a coordinated Japanese attack and prevented a greater loss of life in his own and adjacent platoons. His inspiring leadership and unswerving devotion to duty reflect the highest credit upon himself and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.

*DICKEY, DOUGLAS E.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Company C, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, 3d Marine Division (Rein). Place and dale: Republic of Vietnam, 26 March 1967. Entered service at: Cincinnati, Ohio. Born: 24 December 1946, Greenville, Darke, Ohio. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. While participating in Operation Beacon Hill 1, the 2d Platoon was engaged in a fierce battle with the Viet Cong at close range in dense jungle foliage. Pfc. Dickey had come forward to replace a radio operator who had been wounded in this intense action and was being treated by a medical corpsman.

Suddenly an enemy grenade landed in the midst of a group of marines, which included the wounded radio operator who was immobilized. Fully realizing the inevitable result of his actions, Pfc. Dickey, in a final valiant act, quickly and unhesitatingly threw himself upon the deadly grenade, absorbing with his body the full and complete force of the explosion. Pfc. Dickey’s personal heroism, extraordinary valor and selfless courage saved a number of his comrades from certain injury and possible death at the cost of his life. His actions reflected great credit upon himself, the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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27 March

1780 – The Battle of Rantowle’s Bridge. "Two companies of British Light Infantry, American Loyalist Volunteers, and one company of Dragoons, crossed at Rantowle’s in scows; the rest of the army crossed yesterday. Col. Hamilton, of the North Carolinians, and Dr. Smith, of the Hospital, proceeding about a mile in front of the army, to Gov. Rutledge’s house, were immediately surrounded by three hundred Continental Light Horse, and they consequently made prisoners. The British Dragoons fell in with them soon after, and had a skirmish; the Rebels soon gave way. Qr. Master Sergeant Mcintosh, of the Georgia Dragoons was badly wounded in the face by a broadsword."

"Several Dragoons of the Legion were wounded. How many of the Rebels got hurt we can’t learn; but they did not keep up the combat long enough for many to receive damage. This morning, Capt. Saunders, who came in with the flag on the 24th, was sent out; his attendant, Capt. Wilkinson, not being mentioned in the body of the flag, is detained as a prisoner of war. We took up our ground on Gov. Rutledge’s plantation, about one mile from his house, where we remained all night."

1794 – President Washington and Congress authorized creation of the U.S. Navy. The bill authorizes construction of 6 frigates, including Constitution. In the early stages of the American Revolutionary War, Massachusetts had its own navy. The establishment of a national navy was an issue of debate among the members of the Continental Congress. Supporters argued that a navy would protect shipping, defend the coast, and make it easier to seek out support from foreign countries.

Detractors countered that challenging the British Royal Navy, then the world’s preeminent naval power, was a foolish undertaking. Commander in Chief George Washington resolved the debate when he commissioned seven ocean-going cruisers, starting with the schooner USS Hannah, to interdict British supply ships, and reported the captures to the Congress. The Continental Navy achieved mixed results; it was successful in a number of engagements and raided many British merchant vessels, but it lost 24 of its vessels and at one point was reduced to two in active service.

1794 – James Monroe is appointed the American minister to France replacing Governeur Morris, whose recall the French have requested because of his royalist sympathies and meddling.

1799 – USS Constitution recaptures American sloop Neutrality from France.

1802 – The Treaty of Aliens between France, Spain, England, and the Netherlands ends European hostilities, offering US shipping a break from trade restraints.

1813 – In a US attack on Fort George, near the mouth of the Niagara River, LTC Winfield Scott with a 4000-man force captures the 1600-man British garrison under General John Vincent. The British withdraw from Lake Erie. This action permits Captain Oliver Hazard Perry to surreptitiously remove five vessels form the Black Rock shipyard and take them to Presque Isle in order to reinforce the flotilla under construction there.

1814 – General Jackson led U.S. soldiers who killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, La. [in Northern Alabama] Jackson lost 49 men. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend (also known as Tehopeka, Tohopeka, Cholocco Litabixbee, or The Horseshoe), was fought during the War of 1812 in the Mississippi Territory, now central Alabama. United States forces and Indian allies under Major General Andrew Jackson defeated the Red Sticks, a part of the Creek Indian tribe who opposed American expansion, effectively ending the Creek War.

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1836 – In a disastrous setback for the Texans resisting Santa Anna’s dictatorial regime, the Mexican army defeats and executes 417 Texas revolutionaries at Goliad. Long accustomed to enjoying considerable autonomy from their Mexican rulers, many Anglo Texan settlers reacted with alarm when Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna proclaimed himself dictator of Mexico in 1835. Santa Anna immediately imposed martial law and attempted to disarm the Texans. Yet, this move merely fed the flames of Texan resistance. In November 1853, Texan leaders proclaimed their resistance to Santa Anna’s dictatorship, though they stopped short of calling for independence.

The next month, the Texans managed to defeat 800 Mexican soldiers stationed in San Antonio. However, the rebel leaders remained deeply divided over what to do next, making them vulnerable to Santa Anna’s ruthless determination to suppress dissension. While the Texas rebels dallied, Santa Anna moved decisively. In mid-February he led a massive Mexican army across the Rio Grande, and after a 13-day siege of the Alamo, crushed the rebels in San Antonio.

Meanwhile, to the south, Santa Ann’s chief lieutenant, General Urrea, moved to destroy another faction of the rebel army attempting to defend the town of Goliad. Disagreements among the Texans had led to a division of the rebel forces. James W. Fannin was left with only slightly more than 300 Texans to protect Goliad, a position the rebels needed in order to maintain their supply routes to the Gulf Coast. As Urrea’s much larger 1400-man army approached, Fannin acted with indecision, wondering if he should go to the aid of the besieged men at the Alamo. Belatedly, Fannin attempted to fall back from the approaching Mexican army, but his retreat order came too late.

On March 19th, Urrea surrounded the small column of rebel soldiers on an open prairie, where they were trapped without food, water, or cover. After repulsing one Mexican assault, Fannin realized there was no chance of escape. Rather than see his force annihilated, Fannin surrendered. Apparently, some among the Texans who surrendered believed they would be treated as prisoners of war. Santa Anna, however, had clearly stated several months before that he considered the rebels to be traitors who would be given no quarter. In obedience to Santa Anna’s orders, on this day in 1836 Urrea ordered his men to open fire on Fannin and his soldiers, along with about 100 other captured Texans.

More than 400 men were executed that day at Goliad. Ironically, rather than serving to crush the Texas rebellion, the Goliad Massacre helped inspire and unify the Texans. Now determined to break completely from Mexico, the Texas revolutionaries began to yell “Remember Goliad!” along with the more famous battle cry, “Remember the Alamo!” Less than a month later, Texan forces under General Sam Houston dealt a stunning blow to Santa Anna’s army in the Battle of San Jacinto, and Texas won its independence.

1862 – Flag Officer Du Pont reported to Secretary of the Navy Welles that Confederate batteries on Skiddaway and Green Islands, Georgia, had been withdrawn and placed nearer Savannah. This gives Union forces complete control of Wassaw and Ossabaw Sounds and the mouths of the Vernon and Wilmington Rivers, important approaches to the city.

1863 – Confederate President Jefferson Davis called for this to be a day of fasting and prayer.

1863 – U.S.S. Pawnee, Commander Balch, supported an Army landing on Cole’s Island, South Carolina; Balch joined the Army command ashore for a reconnaissance of the island.

1865 – Combined Army-Navy operations, the latter commanded by Rear Admiral Thatcher, aimed at capturing the city of Mobile commenced. The objective was Spanish Fort, located near the mouth of the Blakely River and was the key to the city’s defenses. Six tin clads and supporting gun-boats steamed up the Blakely River to cut the fort’s communications with Mobile while the army began to move against the fort’s outworks. The river had been thickly sown with torpedoes which necessitated sweeping operations ahead of the advancing ironclads. These efforts, directed by Commander Peirce Crosby of U.S.S. Metacomet, netted 150 torpedoes. Nevertheless, a number of the Confederate weapons eluded the Union with telling results. In the next five days three Northern warships would be sunk in the Blakely.

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1865 – President Lincoln meets with Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman at City Point, Virginia, to plot the last stages of the war. Lincoln came to Virginia just as Grant was preparing to attack Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s lines around Petersburg and Richmond, an assault that promised to end the siege that had dragged on for 10 months. Meanwhile, Sherman’s force was steamrolling northward through the Carolinas. The three architects of Union victory met for the first time as a group–Sherman and Lincoln had never met–to plot the final destruction of the Confederacy. Lincoln came to Grant’s headquarters at City Point at the general-in-chief’s request. Lincoln boarded the River Queen with his wife Mary and son Tad on March 23rd, and the first family had a hectic visit.

Lincoln went to the Petersburg lines and witnessed a Union bombardment and a small skirmish. He also reviewed troops, visited wounded soldiers, and then met with Grant and Sherman. Sherman had traveled from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to the coast before catching a steamer to Virginia. During the meeting, Lincoln expressed his concern that that Confederate armies might slip away. He was worried that Lee might escape Petersburg and flee to North Carolina, where he could join forces with Joseph Johnston to forge a new Confederate army that could continue the war for months. Grant and Sherman confidently assured the president that the end was in sight.

Lincoln emphasized to his generals that any surrender terms must preserve the Union war aims of emancipation and a pledge of equality for the freed slaves. After meeting the next day with Admiral David Dixon Porter, the three went their separate ways. In less than four weeks, Grant and Sherman had secured the surrender of the Confederacy.

1866 – President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill, which later became the 14th amendment.

1880 – USS Constellation departs New York with food for famine victims in Ireland.

1884 – The first long-distance telephone call was made, between Boston and New York City.

1886 – Famous Apache warrior, Geronimo, surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.

1898 – Following an antiwar policy in the face of great pressure for what John Hay calls “a splendid little war,” McKinley instructs the US minister to Spain to demand the following: a temporary truce with the Cuban rebels, revocation of the reconcentrado order, US arbitration of a peaceful settlement, and relief to be sent to Cuba.

1899 – The first international radio transmission between England and France was achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.

1899 – Emilio Aguinaldo leads Filipino forces for the only time during the Philippine–American War at the Battle of Marilao River. The Battle of Marilao River was fought in Marilao, Bulacan, Philippines, during the Philippine–American War. It was one of the most celebrated river crossings of the whole war, wherein American forces crossed the Marilao River, which was 80 yards wide and too deep to ford, while under Filipino fire from the opposite bank. The American official account had admitted that Aguinaldo acted with a great sense of military strategy, averting disastrous routs while succeeding to sustain heavy damage on the enemy (that is, the Americans). The losses in the American drive to Malolos, the account also stated, had proved the Filipinos’ effective fighting quality.

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1912 – In Washington, D.C., Helen Taft, wife of President William Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, plant two Yoshina cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government. The planting of Japanese cherry trees along the Potomac was first proposed by socialite Eliza Scidmore, who raised money for the endeavor. Helen Taft had lived in Japan while her husband was president of the Philippine Commission, and knowing the beauty of cherry blossoms she embraced Scidmore’s idea. After learning of the first lady’s interest, the Japanese consul in New York suggested making a gift of the trees to the U.S. government from the city of Tokyo.

In January 1910, 2,000 Japanese cherry trees arrived in Washington from Japan but had fallen prey to disease during the journey. In response, a private Japanese citizen donated the funds to transport a new batch of trees, and 3,020 specimens were taken from the famous collection on the bank of the Arakawa River in Adachi Ward, a suburb of Tokyo. In March 1912, the trees arrived in Washington, and on March 27 the first two trees were planted along the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin in a formal ceremony. The rest of the trees were then planted along the basin, in East Potomac Park, and on the White House grounds.

The blossoming trees proved immediately popular with visitors to Washington’s Mall area, and in 1934 city commissioners sponsored a three-day celebration of the late March blossoming of the trees, which grew into the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. After World War II, cuttings from Washington’s cherry trees were sent back to Japan to restore the Tokyo collection that was decimated by American bombing attacks during the war.

1930 – 1st US radio broadcast from a ship at sea.

1933 – Japan left the League of Nations.

1941 – Roosevelt’s $7,000,000,000 Appropriations Bill for Lend-Lease passes into law.

1941 – Britain leased defense bases in Trinidad to the U.S. for a period of 99 years.

1941 – Tokeo Yoshikawa arrived in Oahu, Hawaii, to begin spying for Japan on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

1942 – All RAF aircraft and the remainder of Chennault’s American volunteer air force are withdrawn from Burma.

1943 – US began an assault on Fondouk-pass, Tunisia.

1945 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters in Paris that German defenses on the Western Front had been broken.

1943 – Battle of the Komandorski Islands – In the Aleutian Islands the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska. The Battle of the Komandorski Islands was a naval battle between American and Japanese forces in the North Pacific area of the Pacific Ocean, south of the Soviet Komandorski Islands. It is considered one of the most unusual naval engagements of World War II being one of the few entirely between surface vessels–neither force had submarine or air escort.

1945 – Iwo Jima was finally cleared of resistance occupied, after 22,000 Japanese and 6,000 US killed.

1945 – US 9th Army begins to penetrate south into the Ruhr industrial area. US 3rd Army has now crossed the Main both west of Frankfurt, where Wiesbaden is attacked, and to the east.

1945 – The last German V2 rocket lands southeast of London at Orpington. The V2 campaign has killed over 2700 British civilians and injured 6500. As well as the 1115 launched at British targets, a further 2050 were aimed at Antwerp, Brussels and Liege.

1945 – Cebu City is captured by the US landing force. As on the other islands, the Japanese are beginning to withdraw to inland strongholds where they will be confined and worn down by Filipino forces. Only on Luzon, Mindanao and Negros will the prolonged presence of US troops be necessary. In Manila Bay, an American force lands on Caballo Island, better known to the Americans as Fort Hughes, where they encounter strong Japanese resistance.

1945 – US naval forces, including TF58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa and TF54 continues bombarding the island. The British Pacific Fleet (Admiral Rawlings), also designated Task Force 57, again attacks airfields and other targets on Sakashima Gunto. A Japanese attack by explosive boats fails. Unsuccessful submarine attacks continue.

1945 – Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan’s ports and waterways begins.

1951 – Carrier Group 101, the first all-Reserve naval air group, entered the war aboard the USS Boxer. Two days later, the group flew its first combat missions.

1952 – Elements of the U.S. Eighth Army reached the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.

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1953 – The 5th Marines, supported by the 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, in the first full day of fighting after the Chinese assault the previous evening of Outpost Vegas on Korea’s western front, counterattacked to regain enemy-held positions. Companies E and F of 2/7, down to only three platoons between them, managed to regain partial control of Outpost Vegas that day.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James P. Hagerstrom, 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing, flying his F-86 Sabre “MiG Poison,” qualified as the 28th ace of the Korean War and his flight wings only ace.

1956 – US seized the US communist newspaper “Daily Worker.”

1958 – The U.S. announced a plan to explore space near the moon.

1965 – Following several days of consultations with the Cambodian government, South Vietnamese troops, supported by artillery and air strikes, launch their first major military operation into Cambodia. The South Vietnamese encountered a 300-man Viet Cong force in the Kandal province and reported killing 53 communist soldiers. Two teams of U.S. helicopter gunships took part in the action. Three South Vietnamese soldiers were killed and seven wounded.

1973 – The White House announces that, at the request of Cambodian President Lon Nol, the bombing of Cambodia will continue until communist forces cease military operations and agree to a cease-fire. In March 1970, Lon Nol had overthrown Prince Norodom Sihanouk in a bloodless coup. Between 1970 and 1975, Lon Nol and his army, the Forces Armees Nationale Khmer (FANK), with U.S. support and military aid, fought the Khmer Rouge and Sihanouk’s supporters for control of Cambodia. During the five years of bitter fighting, approximately 10 percent of Cambodia’s 7 million people died. When the U.S. forces departed South Vietnam in 1973, both the Cambodians and South Vietnamese found themselves fighting the communists alone. Without U.S. support, Lon Nol’s forces succumbed to the Khmer Rouge, surrendering to the communists in April 1975. The victorious Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh and began reordering Cambodian society, which resulted in a killing spree and the notorious “killing fields.” Eventually, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were murdered or died from exhaustion, hunger, and disease.

1975 – The 1st pipe of the Alaska oil pipeline was laid at Tonsina River.

1984 – Tanker war” begins with Iraqi attacks on shipping near the Iranian coast. In coming months, many tankers are attacked by both Iran and Iraq, war risk insurance premiums for tankers soar, and oil tanker traffic in the Gulf (particularly to Iran’s Kharg Island terminal) is reduced.

1987 – The Marine Corps charged that Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, a Marine guard, had escorted Soviet agents through the U.S. Embassy in Moscow — an accusation that was later dropped, although Lonetree was convicted of espionage.

1988 – The U.S. Senate ratified the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

1990 – The The U.S. government begins the operation of TV Marti, which broadcast television programs into communist Cuba. The project marked yet another failed attempt to undermine the regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. TV Marti was put together under the auspices of the Voice of America, the U.S. radio and television broadcasting system established in the 1940s to beam news and propaganda throughout the world, particularly directed toward communist nations. The new addition to this propaganda arsenal, TV Marti, was primarily the result of intense lobbying by Cuban-American interest groups and a handful of senators and representatives from south Florida and New Jersey (areas with large Cuban-American populations). TV Marti programming tried to give Cubans an accurate look at American life.

The legality and effectiveness of TV Marti were immediately issues for debate. International law forbade the transmitting of television signals into another nation if the transmission interfered with regular programming. TV Marti representatives argued that the signal was being sent on unused channels in Cuba. As for how effective it was, Cuba immediately worked to jam the signal as soon as TV Marti launched, so only a few people on the outskirts of Havana could conceivably see the broadcasts. The first day’s programming included some footage of old World Series games, music videos, and replays of the old “Kate and Allie” sitcom. TV Marti was a powerful indication of the strength of Cold War animosities and the Cuban-American lobby in the United States.

The United States and Cuba had been locked in a diplomatic war since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, and the United States resorted to a number of different schemes to try to unseat the dictator during the following decades. During that time, the Cuban-American lobby, which was well organized and well funded, became a powerful voice in Washington. Despite the fact that TV Marti was a dismal failure in terms of weakening the Castro regime, it continues to receive funding and is still in operation.

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1991 – In a surprising flap, President Bush publicly disagreed with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who claimed he had urged further fighting in the Persian Gulf War at the time Bush ordered a cease-fire. Schwarzkopf later apologized to Bush.

1996 – The UN Security Council (Resolution 1051) established an export-import monitoring system for Iraq and demanded full cooperation.

1998 – In Columbia rebels under Comandante Romana freed 9 Columbian hostages but held 4 American birdwatchers and an Italian businessman for ransom.

1999 – NATO expanded its air assault on Yugoslavia in the fourth straight day of attacks. A $42 million US F-117A stealth fighter was downed over Yugoslavia during continued NATO airstrikes. The downed American pilot was rescued by US forces. The wreckage was later believed to have been sold.

2001 – In its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China said Gao Zhan had confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies. The US denied employing her as a spy. Gao, who had been detained on Feb. 11, was released the following July. In 2003 Gao Zhan admitted to illegal profits of over $539,000 from selling 80 microprocessors to the Chinese government.

2002 – The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, “The Stick”, returns to Norfolk Naval yards after participating in combat and support operations in and over Afghanistan. The Stick now holds the record for a carrier’s continuous days at sea with 159, beating the USS Eisenhower’s previous record of 152 set in 1982.

2003 – The Bush administration seized $1.62 billion in Iraqi assets already frozen in the US. The money would be used to help rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is ousted.

2003 – In the 9th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom a British armored unit destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks trying to break out of the besieged city of Basra. A sea-borne relief operation was postponed after discovering Iraqi mines in the shipping channel leading to the recently captured Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Heavy bombing on Baghdad destroyed a main telephone exchange.

2003 – Coast Guard cutter Wrangell, homeported in Portland, Maine, along with a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter from Air Station Honolulu, escorted the first waterborne humanitarian aid shipment into the port of Umm Qasr without incident, while members of Coast Guard Port Security Unit 311, from San Pedro, Calif., assisted other coalition forces protecting the harbor. The shipment, consisting of vital aid donated by numerous countries, was carried aboard the British ship RFA Sir Galahad.

2004 – The 15-nation Caribbean Community withheld recognition from Haiti’s U.S.-backed interim government as leaders closed a summit renewing calls for a U.N. investigation into the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

2006 – Zacarias Moussaoui testifies in an American court that he and Richard Reid planned to fly a passenger jet into the White House as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks, contradicting his previous testimony.

2007 – United States District Court Judge Thomas Hogan dismisses a case of alleged torture against former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld brought by nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2011 – NATO assumes control of military operations in Libya.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

ALLEN, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company I, 23d U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Turret Mountain, Ariz., 27 March 1873. Entered service at: Lansingburg, N.Y. Birth: Brightstown, N.Y. Date of issue: 12 April 1875. Citation: Gallantry in action.

STANLEY, EBEN
Rank and organization: Private, Company A, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Turret Mountain, Ariz., 25 and 27 March 1873. Entered service at. ——. Birth: Decatur County, lowa. Date of issue: 12 April 1875. Citation: Gallantry in action.

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.

CHARETTE, WILLIAM R.
Rank and organization: Hospital Corpsman Third Class, U.S. Navy Medical Corpsman serving with a marine rifle company. Place and date: Korea, 27 March 1953. Entered service at: Ludington, Michigan. Birth: Ludington, Mich. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action against enemy aggressor forces during the early morning hours. Participating in a fierce encounter with a cleverly concealed and well-entrenched enemy force occupying positions on a vital and bitterly contested outpost far in advance of the main line of resistance, HC3c. Charette repeatedly and unhesitatingly moved about through a murderous barrage of hostile small-arms and mortar fire to render assistance to his wounded comrades. When an enemy grenade landed within a few feet of a marine he was attending, he immediately threw himself upon the stricken man and absorbed the entire concussion of the deadly missile with his body.

Although sustaining painful facial wounds, and undergoing shock from the intensity of the blast which ripped the helmet and medical aid kit from his person, HC3c. Charette resourcefully improvised emergency bandages by tearing off part of his clothing, and gallantly continued to administer medical aid to the wounded in his own unit and to those in adjacent platoon areas as well. Observing a seriously wounded comrade whose armored vest had been torn from his body by the blast from an exploding shell, he selflessly removed his own battle vest and placed it upon the helpless man although fully aware of the added jeopardy to himself.

Moving to the side of another casualty who was suffering excruciating pain from a serious leg wound, HC3c. Charette stood upright in the trench line and exposed himself to a deadly hail of enemy fire in order to lend more effective aid to the victim and to alleviate his anguish while being removed to a position of safety. By his indomitable courage and inspiring efforts in behalf of his wounded comrades, HC3c. Charette was directly responsible for saving many lives. His great personal valor reflects the highest credit upon himself and enhances the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*HAMMOND, FRANCIS C.
Rank and organization: Hospital Corpsman, U.S. Navy, attached as a medical corpsman to 1st Marine Division. Place and date: Korea, 26-27 March 1953. Entered service at: Alexandria, Va. Birth: Alexandria, Va. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a HC serving with the 1st Marine Division in action against enemy aggressor forces on the night of 26-27 March 1953. After reaching an intermediate objective during a counterattack against a heavily entrenched and numerically superior hostile force occupying ground on a bitterly contested outpost far in advance of the main line of resistance. HC Hammond’s platoon was subjected to a murderous barrage of hostile mortar and artillery fire, followed by a vicious assault by onrushing enemy troops.

Resolutely advancing through the veritable curtain of fire to aid his stricken comrades, HC Hammond moved among the stalwart garrison of marines and, although critically wounded himself, valiantly continued to administer aid to the other wounded throughout an exhausting 4-hour period. When the unit was ordered to withdraw, he skillfully directed the evacuation of casualties and remained in the fire-swept area to assist the corpsmen of the relieving unit until he was struck by a round of enemy mortar fire and fell, mortally wounded. By his exceptional fortitude, inspiring initiative and self-sacrificing efforts, HC Hammond undoubtedly saved the lives of many marines. His great personal valor in the face of overwhelming odds enhances and sustains the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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28 March

1774 – Britain passed the second Coercive Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, which revoked the Massachusetts colonial charter and removed certain democratic elements of the government. The upper legislative house would be appointed by the crown, as would sheriffs who, in turn, would appoint juries. Additionally, the Massachusetts Government Act placed restrictions on the number of town meetings that could be held.

1776 – Juan Bautista de Anza, one of the great western pathfinders of the 18th century, arrives at the future site of San Francisco with 247 colonists. Though little known among Americans because of his Spanish origins, Anza’s accomplishments as a western trailblazer merit comparison with those of Lewis and Clark, John Fremont, and Kit Carson. Born and raised in Mexico, Anza joined the army when he was 17 and became a captain seven years later. He excelled as a military leader, displaying tactical genius in numerous battles with the Apache Indians. In 1772, Anza made his first major exploratory mission, leading an arduous but successful expedition northwest to the Pacific Coast. Anza’s expedition established the first successful overland connections between the Mexican State of Sonora and northern California. Impressed by this accomplishment, the Mexican viceroy commissioned Anza to return to California and establish a permanent settlement along the Pacific Coast at San Francisco Bay.

Although seagoing Spanish explorers had sailed along the northern California coast during the 16th and 17th centuries, the amazing natural harbor of San Francisco Bay was only discovered in 1769. The Spanish immediately recognized the strategic importance of the bay, though it would be seven years before they finally dispatched Anza to establish a claim there. Anza and 247 colonists arrived at the future site of San Francisco on this day in 1776. Anza established a presidio, or military fort, on the tip of the San Francisco peninsula. Six months later, a Spanish Franciscan priest founded a mission near the presidio that he named in honor of St. Francis of Assisi-in Spanish, San Francisco de Asiacutes. The most northerly outpost of the Spanish Empire in America, San Francisco remained an isolated and quiet settlement for more than half a century after Anza founded the first settlement. It was not until the 1830s that an expansionist United States began to realize the commercial potential of the magnificent natural harbor.

In the wake of the Mexican War, the U.S. took possession of California in 1848, though San Francisco was still only a small town of 900 at that time. With the discovery of gold that year at Sutter’s Fort, however, San Francisco boomed. By 1852, San Francisco was home to more than 36,000 people. The founder of San Francisco did not live to see it flourish. After establishing the San Francisco presidio, Anza returned to Mexico. In 1777, he was appointed governor of New Mexico, where he eventually negotiated a critical peace treaty with Commanche Indians, who agreed to join the Spanish in making war on the Apache. In declining health, Anza retired as governor in 1786 and returned to Sonora. He died two years later, still only in his early 50s and remembered as one of greatest trailblazers and soldiers in Spain’s northern borderlands.

1800 – Essex becomes first U.S. Navy vessel to pass Cape of Good Hope.

1814 – HMS Phoebe and Cherub capture USS Essex off Valparaiso, Chile. Before capture, Essex had captured 24 British prizes during the War of 1812. Two-thirds of Essex’s crew is killed but 13-year old Midshipman David Farragut survives.

1818 – Wade Hampton, Confederate general in the American Civil War, is born in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a member of one of the richest families in the antebellum South. He owned and operated many plantations in Mississippi and South Carolina. Hampton served in the General Assembly as a Representative from 1852-1857 and a Senator from 1858-1861. He resigned from the Senate to accept a colonel’s commission in the Confederate Army. He received many promotions, rising to Lieutenant General in 1865.

Hampton evacuated Columbia in 1865 when General Sherman entered the city. In the 1876 elections for Governor, Hampton defeated Daniel Chamberlain by 1,134 votes. However, a conflict arose between the Democrats and the Republicans and Chamberlain protested the results. Chamberlain took the oath of office but the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hampton. Hampton was barred from the Statehouse by federal troops until April 10, 1877. Hampton was reelected in 1878 as Governor. He resigned to become a United States Senator and served two terms.

1834 – The nasty battle over the Second Bank of the United States took another turn on this day in 1834, as the Senate voted to censure President Andrew Jackson for abusing his authority and meddling with the bank’s finances. In particular, the resolution, introduced by Jackson’s archenemy Henry Clay, took the President to task for removing funds from the bank in the fall of 1833. An ardent supporter of states’ rights, Jackson, along with help from Treasury Secretary Robert Taney, who was also censured by the Senate, transferred chunks of the money from the national bank to state institutions.

Though Jackson claimed that the transfer was a response to the bank’s putatively partisan position during the 1832 elections, he was seemingly making a bald-faced play to kill the bank. Following the censure, the pugnacious president marshaled his forces and attempted to overturn the Senate’s ruling. Though his initial efforts were rebuffed, Jackson eventually won the day. Thanks in large part to Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the censure was stripped from the Senate records in early 1837. More importantly, Jackson successfully blocked the bank from renewing its charter. Defeated bank leader Nelson Biddle instead opted to obtain a state banking license from Pennsylvania.

1845 – Mexico dropped diplomatic relations with United States.

1846 – US troops commanded by General Zachary Taylor move onto the left bank of the Rio Grande River, considered Mexican territory.

1848 – USS Supply reaches the Bay of Acre, anchoring under Mount Carmel near the village of Haifa, during expedition to explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan.

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1862 – Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of New Mexico territory when they turn the Rebels back at Glorieta Pass. This action was part of the broader movement by the Confederates to capture New Mexico and other parts of the West. This would secure territory that the Rebels thought was rightfully theirs but had been denied them by political compromises made before the Civil War. Furthermore, the cash-strapped Confederacy could use western mines to fill their treasury. From San Antonio, the Rebels moved into southern New Mexico (which included Arizona) and captured the towns of Mesilla, Doýa Ana, and Tucson. General Henry H. Sibley, with 3,000 troops, now moved north against the Federal stronghold at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande. Sibley’s force collided with Union troops at Val Verde near Fort Craig on February 21, but the Yankees were unable to stop the invasion. Sibley left parts of his army to occupy Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the rest of the troops headed east of Santa Fe along the Pecos River.

Their next target was the Union garrison at Fort Union, an outpost on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. At Pigeon’s Ranch near Glorieta Pass, they encountered a Yankee force of 1,300 Colorado volunteers under Colonel John Slough. The battle began at 11:00 a.m., and the Federal force was thrown back before taking cover among the adobe buildings of Pigeon’s Ranch. A Confederate attack late in the afternoon pushed the Union troops further down the pass, but nightfall halted the advance. Union troops snatched victory from the jaws of defeat when Major John Chivington led an attack on the Confederate supply train, burning 90 wagons and killing 800 animals.

With their supplies destroyed, the Confederates had to withdraw to Santa Fe. They lost 36 men killed, 70 wounded, and 25 captured. The Union army lost 38 killed, 64 wounded, and 20 captured. After a week in Santa Fe, the Rebels withdrew down the Rio Grande. By June, the Yankees controlled New Mexico again. The Confederates did not return for the rest of the war.

1863 – U.S.S. Diana, Acting Master Thomas L. Peterson, reconnoitering the Atchafalaya River, Louisiana, with troops embarked, was attacked by Confederate sharpshooters and fieldpieces. In action that lasted almost 3 hours, casualties were heavy, Diana’s ”tiller ropes were shot away, the engines disabled, and she finally drifted ashore when it was impossible to fight or defend her longer, and she ultimately surrendered to the enemy.”

1864 – A gunfight erupted in Charleston, Illinois between Union soldiers and Civil War opponents known as ‘Copperheads.’ In easterm Illinois, many Democrats were pro-southern while the Republicans were uniformly pro-Union. Disturbances had occurred earlier in the area, and Copperheads had been killed in Mattoon and Paris. In March, 1863, at Charleston there had been a highly controversial trial of Union deserters. On the day of the riot a large crowd had gathered here for a Democratic rally. Union soldiers were in town on leave. Drinking and fighting led to gunfire. Nine men killed and twelve wounded before troops arrived from Mattoon and quelled the disturbance. Five are killed and twenty wounded.

1870 – 129 Marines seized and destroyed illicit distilleries in “Irishtown” (Brooklyn), New York.

1885 – The Salvation Army was officially organized in the US.

1898 – The Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen, and therefore could not be deported under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

1918 – Marines were placed under the command of French Marshall Foch in WW I.

1933 – German Reichstag conferred dictatorial powers on Hitler.

1935 – Goddard used gyroscopes to control a rocket.

1940 – Sumner Welles, Under-Secretary of State, reports to Roosevelt about his mission to the belligerent countries in Europe.

1942 – A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, exploded, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.

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1945 – Stalin receives a personal telegram from General Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force) giving details of his order of battle and saying that he intends to send the main weight of his advance across southern Germany and Austria. The main thrust is to be toward Erfurt and Leipzig and a secondary effort is to go for Nuremberg, Regensburg and Linz. The British protest the signal sent to Stalin, suggesting that decisions of such importance should not be taken by Eisenhower alone and that he also overstepping the authority in communicating directly with the Soviets. Both Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff would prefer the advance to be directed on Berlin as had been the plan up to now for the political value of this move. However, President Roosevelt, weakened by his illness, leaves most military decisions to General Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Marshall confirms his support for Eisenhower in response to the British protest.

1945 – Marburg is taken by US 3rd Corps (part of US 1st Army) which has made a rapid advance from the Remagen bridgehead.

1945 – US naval forces, including TF58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. Japanese Kamikaze and submarine attacks continue.

1946 – The State Department releases the so-called Acheson-Lilienthal Report, which outlines a plan for international control of atomic energy. The report represented an attempt by the United States to maintain its superiority in the field of atomic weapons while also trying to avoid a costly and dangerous arms race with the Soviet Union. The March 1946 report had been instigated by a rather hastily assembled proposal put forward by Secretary of State James Byrnes at the Moscow Conference in December 1945. Byrnes presented a hazy plan for some sort of United Nations control of atomic energy; Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to the idea. President Harry S. Truman was livid when he learned of Byrnes’s proposal.

By the time of the meeting in Moscow, Truman had come to the conclusion that the Soviets were dangerous adversaries who must be met with force. Giving up America’s nuclear monopoly was not appealing. Nevertheless, he ordered the Department of State to put together a preliminary plan, assuming that America had such a huge head start in atomic power that the Soviets could never really catch up. In addition, perhaps an international body could help avert a potentially dangerous arms race with the Soviets.

Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, administrator of the Tennessee Valley Authority David Lilienthal, and others hammered out a proposal by March 1946. The Acheson-Lilienthal Report suggested that an international body-such as the United Nations-have control over atomic materials and the means of producing nuclear energy. Information on atomic energy would be shared, research facilities would be divided among the nations involved, and the international body would conduct inspections. In the meantime, while this organization was being established, the United States would maintain its atomic monopoly. In June 1946, Truman selected businessman Bernard Baruch to present the plan at the United Nations. Baruch, however, changed many of the key points of the plan and insisted that the United States would have an ultimate veto power on any issues arising in connection with the plan.

The Soviets quickly rejected the idea so the vote was never held in the United Nations. The United States and the Soviet Union would go their own ways in developing their nuclear arsenals. In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atomic device and the nuclear arms race was on.

1953 – The Chinese agreed to the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners proposed by U.N. Forces Commander General Mark Clark and further proposed that prisoners unwilling to be repatriated be transferred to a neutral state.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Colonel James K. Johnson, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 29th ace of the Korean War.

1961 – A U.S. national intelligence estimate prepared for President John F. Kennedy declares that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and the Republic of Vietnam are facing an extremely critical situation. As evidence, the reports cites that more than half of the rural region surrounding Saigon is under communist control and points to a barely failed coup against Diem the preceding November. Not only were Diem’s forces losing to the Viet Cong on the battlefield, the report alleged that he had not effectively dealt with the discontent among a large segment of South Vietnamese society, which had given rise to the coup against him.

The report questioned Diem’s ability to rally the people against the communists. Kennedy wondered what to do about Diem, who was staunchly anticommunist but did not have a lot of credibility with the South Vietnamese people because he was Catholic while the country was predominantly Buddhist. Kennedy and his advisers tried to convince Diem to put in place land reform and other measures that might build popular support, but Diem steadfastly refused to make any meaningful concessions to his opponents. He was assassinated in November 1963 during a coup by a group of South Vietnamese generals.

1962 – The U.S. Air Force announced research into the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites.

1967 – UN Sec. General U Thant made public proposals for peace in Vietnam.

1968 – The U.S. lost its first aircraft in Vietnam. An F-111 vanished in a combat mission over North Vietnam. Republic Aircraft’s F-105 Thunderchief, better known as the ‘Thud,’ was the Air Force’s war-horse in Vietnam.

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1969 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, dies in Washington, D.C., at the age of 78. Born in Denison, Texas, in 1890, Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915, and after World War I he steadily rose in the peacetime ranks of the U.S. Army. After the U.S. entrance into World War II, he was appointed commanding general of the European theater of operations and oversaw U.S. troops massing in Great Britain.

In 1942, Eisenhower, who had never commanded troops in the field, was put in charge of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria. As supreme commander of a mixed force of Allied nationalities, services, and equipment, Eisenhower designed a system of unified command and rapidly won the respect of his British and Canadian subordinates. From North Africa, he successfully directed the invasions of Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, and in January 1944 was appointed supreme Allied commander of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe.

Although Eisenhower left much of the specific planning for the actual Allied landing in the hands of his capable staff, such as British Field Marshall Montgomery, he served as a brilliant organizer and administrator both before and after the successful invasion. After the war, he briefly served as president of Columbia University before returning to military service in 1951 as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Pressure on Eisenhower to run for U.S. president was great, however, and in the spring of 1952 he relinquished his NATO command to run for president on the Republican ticket. In November 1952, “Ike” won a resounding victory in the presidential elections and in 1956 was reelected in a landslide. A popular president, he oversaw a period of great economic growth in the United States and deftly navigated the country through increasing Cold War tension on the world stage. In 1961, he retired with his wife, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He died in 1969 and was buried on a family plot in Abilene, Kansas.

1979 – At 4 a.m. the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry begins when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island fails to close. Cooling water, contaminated with radiation, drained from the open valve into adjoining buildings, and the core began to dangerously overheat. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was built in 1974 on a sandbar on Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River, just 10 miles downstream from the state capitol in Harrisburg. In 1978, a second state-of-the-art reactor began operating on Three Mile Island, which was lauded for generating affordable and reliable energy in a time of energy crises. After the cooling water began to drain out of the broken pressure valve on the morning of March 28, 1979, emergency cooling pumps automatically went into operation.

Left alone, these safety devices would have prevented the development of a larger crisis. However, human operators in the control room misread confusing and contradictory readings and shut off the emergency water system. The reactor was also shut down, but residual heat from the fission process was still being released. By early morning, the core had heated to over 4,000 degrees, just 1,000 degrees short of meltdown. In the meltdown scenario, the core melts, and deadly radiation drifts across the countryside, fatally sickening a potentially great number of people.

As the plant operators struggled to understand what had happened, the contaminated water was releasing radioactive gases throughout the plant. The radiation levels, though not immediately life-threatening, were dangerous, and the core cooked further as the contaminated water was contained and precautions were taken to protect the operators. Shortly after 8 a.m., word of the accident leaked to the outside world. The plant’s parent company, Metropolitan Edison, downplayed the crisis and claimed that no radiation had been detected off plant grounds, but the same day inspectors detected slightly increased levels of radiation nearby as a result of the contaminated water leak. Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh considered calling an evacuation.

Finally, at about 8 p.m., plant operators realized they needed to get water moving through the core again and restarted the pumps. The temperature began to drop, and pressure in the reactor was reduced. The reactor had come within less than an hour of a complete meltdown. More than half the core was destroyed or molten, but it had not broken its protective shell, and no radiation was escaping. The crisis was apparently over. Two days later, however, on March 30, a bubble of highly flammable hydrogen gas was discovered within the reactor building. The bubble of gas was created two days before when exposed core materials reacted with super-heated steam.

On March 28th, some of this gas had exploded, releasing a small amount of radiation into the atmosphere. At that time, plant operators had not registered the explosion, which sounded like a ventilation door closing. After the radiation leak was discovered on March 30, residents were advised to stay indoors. Experts were uncertain if the hydrogen bubble would create further meltdown or possibly a giant explosion, and as a precaution Governor Thornburgh advised “pregnant women and pre-school age children to leave the area within a five-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice.” This led to the panic the governor had hoped to avoid; within days, more than 100,000 people had fled surrounding towns.

On April 1, President Jimmy Carter arrived at Three Mile Island to inspect the plant. Carter, a trained nuclear engineer, had helped dismantle a damaged Canadian nuclear reactor while serving in the U.S. Navy. His visit achieved its aim of calming local residents and the nation. That afternoon, experts agreed that the hydrogen bubble was not in danger of exploding. Slowly, the hydrogen was bled from the system as the reactor cooled. At the height of the crisis, plant workers were exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation, but no one outside Three Mile Island had their health adversely affected by the accident.

Nonetheless, the incident greatly eroded the public’s faith in nuclear power. The unharmed Unit-1 reactor at Three Mile Island, which was shut down during the crisis, did not resume operation until 1985. Cleanup continued on Unit-2 until 1990, but it was too damaged to be rendered usable again. In the more than two decades since the accident at Three Mile Island, not a single new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States.

1986 – The U.S. Senate passed a $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.

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1990 – British customs officials announced they had foiled an attempt to supply Iraq with 40 American-made devices for triggering nuclear weapons, following an 18-month investigation by U.S. and British authorities.

1991 – Fire seriously damaged the US Embassy in Moscow.

1993 – The last A-6E Intruder departed from Marine Corps service. Marine All Weather Attack Squadron 332 transferred the last Marine A-6E to St. Augustine, Florida, and prepared for the squadron’s transition to the F/A-18D and eventual movement from Cherry Point to Beaufort, South Carolina.

1996 – Congress passed the line-item veto, giving the president power to cut government spending by scrapping specific programs.

1996 – The space shuttle Atlantis astronauts said goodbye to the crew of Russia’s space station Mir and then flew away, leaving Shannon Lucid behind for a five-month stay in orbit.

1997 – The UN Security Council agreed to send a multinational force to Albania to protect the delivery of humanitarian aid.

1998 – It was reported that the US government conducted a series of “sub-critical” underground explosions involving radioactive plutonium in a sealed chamber 960 feet below ground at the Los Alamos National Lab.

1999 – NATO broadened its attacks on Yugoslavia to target Serb military forces in Kosovo in the fifth straight night of airstrikes. UN officials reported that some 500,000 ethnic Albanians had fled Kosovo. NATO officials raised the possibility of using ground troops in Yugoslavia as low-level strikes against tanks began. It was feared that anger over the war would spill over to Bosnia.

2000 – Jordan with US intelligence help indicted 28 followers of Osama bin Laden for plotting attacks against American tourists in December.

2002 – A US diplomat, reportedly the CIA station chief, was pulled from Belgrade following accusations that he was receiving military secrets.

2002 – US Air Force Staff Sergeant Timothy Woodland was convicted in a Japanese court and sentenced to nearly three years in prison for raping a woman on the southern island of Okinawa.

2002 – A US Navy helicopter crashed on Split Mountain in the Sequoia National Forest and 2 crew members were killed.

2002 – In Pakistan police in Faisalabad and Lahore seized over 40 suspects in the Islamabad bombing. At least 2 suspects were killed in Faisalabad. Abu Zubaydah, a top al Qaeda commander, was among those arrested.

2003 – In the 10th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom the biggest bombs dropped on Baghdad so far, two 4,700-pound “bunker busters,” struck a communications tower. In the south, Iraqi fighters defending the besieged city of Basra fired on hundreds of civilians trying to flee. The British supply ship Sir Galahad docked at the port of Umm Qasr. The Bush administration said fighting might not be over for months.

2003 – The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan for a year.

2004 – U.S. overseer of Iraq, Paul Bremer, ordered the 60-day closure of Al-Hawza, a newspaper published by Muqtada al-Sadr’s group, on the charges of inciting violence against the occupation. The next day thousands of Iraqis rallied outside the offices of Al-Hawza in support of the newspaper.

2009 – Space Shuttle Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, United States. STS-119 (ISS assembly flight 15A) was a space shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) which was flown by Space Shuttle Discovery during March 2009. It delivered and assembled the fourth starboard Integrated Truss Segment (S6), and the fourth set of solar arrays and batteries to the station.

2012 – The United States suspends planned food aid to North Korea, after the latter had made plans to launch a rocket the next month.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

WILSON, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company I, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Colorado Valley, Tex., 28 March 1872. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 27 April 1872. Second award. Citation: In pursuit of a band of cattle thieves from New Mexico.

*HEDRICK, CLINTON M.
Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company I, 194th Glider Infantry, 17th Airborne Division. Place and date: Near Lembeck, Germany, 27-28 March 1945. Entered service at: Riverton, W. Va. Birth: Cherrygrove, W. Va. G.O. No.: 89, 19 October 1945. Citation: He displayed extraordinary heroism and gallantry in action on 2728 March 1945, in Germany. Following an airborne landing near Wesel, his unit was assigned as the assault platoon for the assault on Lembeck. Three times the landing elements were pinned down by intense automatic weapons fire from strongly defended positions. Each time, T/Sgt. Hedrick fearlessly charged through heavy fire, shooting his automatic rifle from his hip. His courageous action so inspired his men that they reduced the enemy positions in rapid succession. When 6 of the enemy attempted a surprise, flanking movement, he quickly turned and killed the entire party with a burst of fire.

Later, the enemy withdrew across a moat into Lembeck Castle. T/Sgt. Hedrick, with utter disregard for his own safety, plunged across the drawbridge alone in pursuit. When a German soldier, with hands upraised, declared the garrison wished to surrender, he entered the castle yard with 4 of his men to accept the capitulation. The group moved through a sally port, and was met by fire from a German self-propelled gun. Although mortally wounded, T/Sgt. Hedrick fired at the enemy gun and covered the withdrawal of his comrades. He died while being evacuated after the castle was taken. His great personal courage and heroic leadership contributed in large measure to the speedy capture of Lembeck and provided an inspiring example to his comrades.

*MATTHEWS, DANIEL P.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, Company F, 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Vegas Hill, Korea, 28 March 1953. Entered service at. Van Nuys, Calif. Born: 31 December 1931, Van Nuys, Calif. Award presented: 29 March 19S4. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a squad leader of Company F, in action against enemy aggressor forces. Participating in a counterattack against a firmly entrenched and well-concealed hostile force which had repelled 6 previous assaults on a vital enemy-held outpost far forward of the main line of resistance Sgt. Matthews fearlessly advanced in the attack until his squad was pinned down by a murderous sweep of fire from an enemy machine gun located on the peak of the outpost.

Observing that the deadly fire prevented a corpsman from removing a wounded man lying in an open area fully exposed to the brunt of the devastating gunfire, he worked his way to the base of the hostile machine gun emplacement, leaped onto the rock fortification surrounding the gun and, taking the enemy by complete surprise, single-handedly charged the hostile emplacement with his rifle. Although severely wounded when the enemy brought a withering hail of fire to bear upon him, he gallantly continued his valiant l-man assault and, firing his rifle with deadly effectiveness, succeeded in killing 2 of the enemy, routing a third, and completely silencing the enemy weapon, thereby enabling his comrades to evacuate the stricken marine to a safe position. Succumbing to his wounds before aid could reach him, Sgt. Matthews, by his indomitable fighting spirit, courageous initiative, and resolute determination in the face of almost certain death, served to inspire all who observed him and was directly instrumental in saving the life of his wounded comrade. His great personal valor reflects the highest credit upon himself and enhances the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

INGRAM, ROBERT R.
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Corpsman with Company C, First Battalion, Seventh Marines against elements of a North Vietnam Aggressor (NVA) battalion in Quang Ngai Province Republic of Vietnam on 28 March 1966. Petty Officer Ingram accompanied the point platoon as it aggressively dispatched an outpost of an NVA battalion. The momentum of the attack rolled off a ridge line down a tree covered slope to a small paddy and a village beyond. Suddenly, the village tree line exploded with an intense hail of automatic rifle fire from approximately 100 North Vietnamese regulars. In mere moments, the platoon ranks were decimated. Oblivious to the danger, Petty Officer Ingram crawled across the bullet spattered terrain to reach a downed Marine. As he administered aid, a bullet went through the palm of his hand. Calls for “CORPSMAN” echoed across the ridge.

Bleeding, he edged across the fire swept landscape, collecting ammunition from the dead and administering aid to the wounded. Receiving two more wounds before realizing the third wound was life-threatening, he looked for a way off the face of the ridge, but again he heard the call for corpsman and again, he resolutely answered. Though severely wounded three times, he rendered aid to those incapable until he finally reached the right flank of the platoon. While dressing the head wound of another corpsman, he sustained his fourth bullet wound. From sixteen hundred hours until just prior to sunset, Petty Officer Ingram pushed, pulled, cajoled, and doctored his Marines.

Enduring the pain from his many wounds and disregarding the probability of his demise, Petty Officer Ingram’s intrepid actions saved many lives that day. By his indomitable fighting spirit, daring initiative, and unfaltering dedications to duty, Petty Officer Ingram reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

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29 March

1638 – The first permanent white settlement in Delaware was established. Swedish Lutherans who came to Delaware were the first to build log cabins in America. The first English colonists did not know how to build houses from logs but those who lived in the forests of Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland did. German pioneers who settled in Pennsylvania built the first log cabins there in the early 1700s. The Scots-Irish immigrants who settled in the Appalachian highlands after 1720 made the widest use of log cabins and by the time of the American Revolution, log cabins were the mainstay among settlers all along the western frontier.

1790 – John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States (1841-1845), was born in Charles City County, Va. He was also the first vice-president to succeed to office on the death of a president.

1806 – The Great National Pike, also known as the Cumberland Road, became the first highway funded by the national treasury. Built between 1806 and 1840, the Great National Pike stretched from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. On this day the first appropriation of $30,000 was made by congressional act. Eventually over $6 million was appropriated for the highway. In 1856, control over the road was turned over to the states through which it ran. Roads would be left to the devices of the states almost exclusively until the dawn of the automobile. Henry Ford and other leaders of the automotive industry were instrumental in encouraging the federal funding of national highways.

1814 – In the Battle at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, Andrew Jackson beat the Creek Indians.

1847 – Some 12,000 US forces led by General Winfield Scott occupied the city of Vera Cruz after Mexican defenders capitulated. The Battle of Veracruz was a 20-day siege of the key Mexican beachhead seaport of Veracruz, during the Mexican-American War. It began with the first large-scale amphibious assault conducted by United States military forces, and ended with the surrender and occupation of the city. U.S. forces then marched inland to Mexico City.

1864 – Union General Steele’s troops reached Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

1864 – The low level of the Red River continued to hinder Rear Admiral Porter’s efforts to get his gun-boats above the rapids at Alexandria for the assault on Shreveport. He reported: “After a great deal of labor and two and a half days’ hard work, we succeeded in getting the Eastport over the rocks on the falls, hauling her over by main force. . . . ‘ All the Army transports maneuvered safely above the rapids, but hospital ship Woodford was battered against the rocks and sank. Porter added: “I shall only be able to take up I part of the force I brought with me, and leave the river guarded all the way through.”

1865 – Battle of Quaker Road, Virginia.

1865 – The final campaign of the war begins in Virginia when Union troops of General Ulysses S. Grant move against the Confederate trenches around Petersburg. General Robert E. Lee’s outnumbered Rebels were soon forced to evacuate the city and begin a desperate race west. Eleven months before, Grant moved his army across the Rapidan River in northern Virginia and began the bloodiest campaign of the war. For six weeks, Lee and Grant fought along an arc that swung east of the Confederate capital at Richmond. They fought some of the conflict’s bloodiest battles at Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor before they settled into trenches for a siege of Petersburg, 25 miles south of Richmond. The trenches eventually stretched all the way back to Richmond, and for ten months the armies glowered at each other across a no man’s land. Periodically, Grant launched attacks against sections of the Rebel defenses, but Lee’s men managed to fend them off. Time was running out for Lee, though. His army was dwindling in size to about 55,000, while Grant’s continued to grow–the Army of the Potomac now had more than 125,000 men ready for service.

On March 25th, Lee attempted to split the Union lines when he attacked Fort Stedman, a stronghold along the Yankee trenches. His army was beaten back, and he lost nearly 5,000 men. Grant seized the initiative, sending 12,000 men past the Confederates’ left flank and threatening to cut Lee’s escape route from Petersburg. Fighting broke out there, several miles southwest of the city. In a downpour, General Grant launched his wide swinging move to the southwest of Petersburg to roll up Lee’s flank. Ever concerned about his lifeline on the James River, he wrote Rear Admiral Porter: “In view of the possibility of the enemy attempting to come to City Point, or by crossing the Appomattox at Broadway Landing, getting to Bermuda Hundred during the absence of the greater part of the army, I would respectfully request that you direct one or two gunboats to lay in the Appomattox, near the pontoon bridge, and two in the James River, near the mouth of Bailey’s Creek, the first stream below City Point emptying into the James.”

Porter complied with double measure, sending not one or two but several ships to Grant’s assistance. Lee’s men could not arrest the Federal advance. Two days later, the Yankees struck at Five Forks, soundly defeating the Rebels and leaving Lee no alternative. He pulled his forces from their trenches and raced west, followed by Grant. It was a race that even the great Lee could not win. He surrendered his army on April 9 at Appomattox Court House.

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1867 – The United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.

1867 – Congress approved the building of the Lincoln Memorial.

1893 – US Congressman James Blount arrived in Hawaii to investigate the change in government. He later reported to Congress that annexation to the US was being forced and that the people of Hawaii supported their queen.

1898 – Lieutenants David Jarvis and Ellsworth P. Bertholf and Surgeon Dr. Samuel J. Call of the USRC Bear reached Point Barrow after a 2,000 mile “mush” from Nunivak Island that first started on 17 December 1897, driving reindeer as food for 97 starving whalers caught in the Arctic ice. This “Overland Rescue” was heralded by the press and at the request of President William McKinley, Congress issued special gold medals in their honor.

1903 – A regular news service began between New York and London on Marconi’s wireless (radio).

1912 – Revolutionaries from various areas of Mexico began to challenge the new government, and an offensive was launched in March 1912 by Orozco, who accused Madero of abandoning the principles of the Plan of San Luis Potosí. Orozco was defeated, however, by Victoriano Huerta, the unscrupulous commander of the federal forces. To protect the embassy staff, the U.S. sent rifles to the Mexican ambassador in Mexico City and readied U.S. ships to transport troops to fight the rebels.

1917 – Marines garrisoned St. Croix to deny harbor to German submarines.

1918 – US pilot Edward Rickenbacker scores his first air victory. By the end of the war he will be acknowledged as his country’s top ace with 26 kills.

1941 – The North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement goes into effect at 03:00 local time. Usually referred to as NARBA, the treaty set out an international bandplan and interference rules for mediumwave AM broadcasting in North America. NARBA accommodated much of the U.S. bandplan of 1928, with accommodation to Canada and Mexico.

1943 – World War II meat, butter and cheese rationing began.

1945 – The US 7th Army captures Mannheim and Heidelberg.

1945 – General George S. Patton’s 3rd Army captures Frankfurt, as “Old Blood and Guts” continues his march east. Frankfurt am Main, literally “On the Main” River, in western Germany, was the mid-19th century capital of Germany (it was annexed by Prussia in 1866, ending its status as a free city). Once integrated into a united German nation, it developed into a significant industrial city-and hence a prime target for Allied bombing during the war. That bombing began as early as July 1941, during a series of British air raids against the Nazis. In March 1944, Frankfurt suffered extraordinary damage during a raid that saw 27,000 tons of bombs dropped on Germany in a single month. Consequently, Frankfurt’s medieval Old Town was virtually destroyed (although it would be rebuilt in the postwar period-replete with modern office buildings).

In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton broke through the German lines of the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne, relieving its valiant defenders. Patton then pushed the Germans east. Patton’s goal was to cross the Rhine, even if not a single bridge was left standing over which to do it. As Patton reached the banks of the river on March 22, 1945, he found that one bridge — the Ludendorff Bridge, located in the little town of Remagen — had not been destroyed. American troops had already made a crossing on March 7 — a signal moment in the war and in history, as an enemy army had not crossed the Rhine since Napoleon accomplished the feat in 1805.

Patton grandly made his crossing, and from the bridgehead created there, Old Blood and Guts and his 3rd Army headed east and captured Frankfurt on the 29th. Patton then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets. Patton was, not unexpectedly, livid.

1945 – There are American landings in the northwest of the island Negros near Bacolod. The landing force, part of the US 185th Infantry Regiment, encounters heavy Japanese resistance on the island.

1945 – US naval forces, including TF58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. Japanese Kamikaze and submarine attacks continue.

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1950 – Police frantically search Grand Central Station in New York City for a bomb after receiving a threatening note. The bomb was found and taken care of by the bomb squad. In the next few months, five more bombs were found at landmark sites around New York, including the Public Library and the Grand Hotel. Authorities realized that this new wave of terrorist acts was the work of the Mad Bomber. New York’s first experience with the so-called Mad Bomber was on November 16, 1940, when a pipe bomb was left in the Edison building with a note that read, “Con Edison crooks, this is for you.” More bombs were recovered in 1941, each more powerful than the last, until the Mad Bomber sent a note in December stating, “I will make no more bomb units for the duration of the war.” He went on to say that Con Edison, New York’s electric utility company, would be brought to justice in due time.

The patriotic Mad Bomber made good on his promise, although he did periodically send threatening notes to the press. After his flurry of activity in 1950, the Mad Bomber was silent until a bomb injured two people at Radio City Music Hall in 1954. In 1955, the Mad Bomber hit Grand Central Station, Macy’s and the RCA building. A bomb that injured seven on the Staten Island Ferry showed that his bomb making ability was advancing. The police had no luck finding the Mad Bomber, but an investigative team working for Con Ed finally tracked him down.

Looking through their employment records, they found that George Peter Metesky had been a disgruntled ex-employee since an accident in 1931. Metesky was enraged that Con Ed refused to pay disability benefits and resorted to terrorism as his revenge. Metesky, a rather mild-mannered man, was found living with his sisters in Connecticut. He was sent to a mental institution in April 1957 where he stayed until his release in 1973. As he left, he was reported to have said, “I don’t look like a Mad Bomber, do I?”

1951 – In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. The conviction of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950. British authorities, with assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information to the Soviet Union.

Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and began a series of accusations. Fuchs confessed that American Harry Gold had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs passed along his information. American authorities captured Gold, who thereupon pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Gold claimed Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs. Upon his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies who controlled the entire operation. Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950.

By present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast. It began on March 6, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by March 29. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold. Gold supported Greenglass’s accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent. This testimony sealed Julius’s fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme.

The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 19, 1953 in Sing Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end. The Rosenberg case garnered worldwide attention. Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold War hysteria that was sweeping America. The French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called their execution a “legal lynching.” Others pointed out that even if the Rosenbergs did pass secrets along to the Soviets during World War II, Russia had been an ally, not an enemy, of the United States at the time. Those who supported the verdict insisted that the couple got what they deserved for endangering national security by giving top-secret information on a devastating weapon to communists.

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1951 – The Chinese rejected MacArthur’s offer for a truce in Korea.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel George L. Jones, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 30th ace of the Korean War.

1954 – Carrier aircraft began reconnaissance near Dien Bien Phu, Indochina.

1960 – Launch of first fully integrated Fleet Ballistic Missile from USS Observation Island.

1961 – The 23rd amendment, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president, was ratified.

1962 – Cuba opened the trial of the Bay of Pigs invaders.

1964 – The U.S. planned to add $50 million a year for aid to South Vietnam.

1971 – Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the 1968 My Lai massacre. Calley ended up spending three years under house arrest.

1973 – Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining, admitted, American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam. In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops.

By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history. During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks.

In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. Richard Nixon, the new U.S. president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and elsewhere. Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced.

In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the U.S. government. Even before the last American troops departed on March 29, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War. On April 30, 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, “You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated.” The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost 58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

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1973 – Operation Barrel Roll, a covert US bombing campaign in Laos to stop communist infiltration of South Vietnam, ends.

1973 – As part of the Accords, Hanoi releases the last 67 of its acknowledged American prisoners of war, bringing the total number released to 591.

1974 – The unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 10, launched by NASA in November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury, sending back close-up images of a celestial body usually obscured because of its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus eight weeks before but only for the purpose of using Venus’ gravity to whip it toward the closest planet to the sun. In three flybys of Mercury between 1974 and 1975, the NASA spacecraft took detailed images of the planet and succeeded in mapping about 35 percent of its heavily cratered, moonlike surface. Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system and completes its solar orbit in only 88 earth days.

Data sent back by Mariner 10 discounted a previously held theory that the planet does not spin on its axis; in fact, the planet has a very slow rotational period that stretches over 58 earth days. Mercury is a waterless, airless world that alternately bakes and freezes as it slowly rotates. Highly inhospitable, Mercury’s surface temperature varies from 800 degrees Fahrenheit when facing the sun to -279 degrees when facing away. The planet has no known satellites. Mariner 10 is the only human-created spacecraft to have visited Mercury to date.

1974 – Eight Ohio National Guardsmen were indicted on charges stemming from the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University. The guardsmen were later acquitted.

1975 – Evacuation of Danang by sea began.

1985 – The Nantucket I was decommissioned, the last lightship in service with the Coast Guard. This ended 164 years of continuous lightship service by the Government. Nantucket I was the last of the U.S. lightships and the last of the Nantucket Shoals lightships that watched over that specific area since June of 1854. Launched as WLV-612 in 1950 at Baltimore, the ship has stood watch as the light vessel for San Francisco and Blunts Reef in California, at Portland, Oregon, and finally at Nantucket Shoals. The CGC Nantucket I also served as a “less-than-speedy” law enforcement vessel off Florida for a time.

1988 – US Congress discontinued aid to Nicaraguan contras.

1991 – General H. Norman Schwarzkopf publicly apologized to President Bush for questioning his judgment about calling a cease-fire in the Gulf War.

1995 – The House of Representatives rejected, 227-204, a constitutional amendment placing term limits on lawmakers. The rejected proposal would have limited terms to 12 years in the House and Senate.

1999 – It was reported that the US government knowingly risked the lives of thousands of workers over the last 50 years by allowing them to be exposed to dangerous levels of beryllium, a metal critical to the military.

1999 – Albania and Macedonia appealed for help as thousands of refugees fled Kosovo on the 6th day of bombing. NATO said Serbs were targeting ethnic Albanian leadership for executions and the US accused Milosevic of “crimes against humanity.”

1999 – In Montenegro President Milo Djukanovic made a plea for an end to NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. The country reported that over 30,000 refugees had taken asylum there.

2002 – At Fort Irwin, Ca., a mortar round exploded prematurely and 3 soldiers were killed.

2002 – It was reported that Russia had announced plans to build a nuclear plant for North Korea.

2003 – President Bush sought to marshal the nation’s resolve to withstand more casualties, saying further sacrifice must be expected.

2003 – In the 11th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom a suicide bomber driving a taxi killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint near Najaf, Iraq. US jets destroyed a building in Basra where paramilitary fighters were meeting and 200 were reported killed.

2003 – Two US special forces soldiers were killed and another wounded in an ambush in southern Afghanistan. Fighting there killed four Taliban with 6 captured.

2003 – A low-flying Iraqi missile avoided the detection of US defense systems and landed just off the coast of Kuwait City, shattering windows at the seaside Souq Sharq shopping mall.

2004 – Pres. Bush hosted a White House ceremony to welcome Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia into the NATO alliance.

2010 – Nine members of the Hutaree militia, a militia movement group adhering to the ideology of the Christian Patriot movement, based near Adrian, Michigan, are arrested in the United States on allegations of a plot to kill policemen then to attack the funerals, in preparation for a war against all levels of American government. The name “Hutaree” appears to be a neologism; the group’s web site says that it means “Christian warriors”. The prosecution said this was to have involved killing a police officer and attacking the funeral with bombs. The presiding judge dismissed these charges. Three members pled guilty to possessing a machine gun and were sentenced to time served.

2013 – North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un orders preparations for strategic rocket strikes on the US mainland at an overnight meeting with top army commanders, in response to the use of nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth Bombers in joint US-South Korea military drills.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

HIGBY, CHARLES
Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Appomattox Campaign, Va., 29 March to 9 April 1865. Entered service at: New Brighton, Pa. Birth: Pittsburgh, Pa. Date of issue: 3 May 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.

PEARSON, ALFRED L.
Rank and organization: Colonel, 155th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Lewis’ Farm, Va., 29 March 1865. Entered service at: Pittsburgh, Pa. Birth: Pittsburgh, Pa. Date of issue: 17 September 1897. Citation: Seeing a brigade forced back by the enemy, he seized his regimental color, called on his men to follow him, and advanced upon the enemy under a severe fire. The whole brigade took up the advance, the lost ground was regained, and the enemy was repulsed.

SOVA., JOSEPH E.
Rank and organization: Saddler, Company H, 8th New York Cavalry. Place and date: At Appomattox Campaign, Va., 29 March to 9 April 1865. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Chili, N.Y. Date of issue: 3 May 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.

TOBIE, EDWARD P.
Rank and organization: Sergeant Major, 1st Maine Cavalry. Place and date: At Appomattox Campaign, Va., 29 March to 9 April 1865. Entered service at: Lewiston, Maine. Birth: Lewiston, Maine. Date of issue: 1 April 1898. Citation: Though severely wounded at Sailors Creek, 6 April, and at Farmville, 7 April, refused to go to the hospital, but remained with his regiment, performed the full duties of adjutant upon the wounding of that officer, and was present for duty at Appomattox.

*DIETZ, ROBERT H .
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company A, 38th Armored Infantry Battalion, 7th Armored Division. Place and date: Kirchain, Germany, 29 March 1945. Entered service at: Kingston, N.Y. Birth: Kingston, N.Y. G.O. No.: 119, 17 December 1945. Citation: He was a squad leader when the task force to which his unit was attached encountered resistance in its advance on Kirchain, Germany. Between the town’s outlying buildings 300 yards distant, and the stalled armored column were a minefield and 2 bridges defended by German rocket-launching teams and riflemen. From the town itself came heavy small-arms fire. Moving forward with his men to protect engineers while they removed the minefield and the demolition charges attached to the bridges, S/Sgt. Dietz came under intense fire.

On his own initiative he advanced alone, scorning the bullets which struck all around him, until he was able to kill the bazooka team defending the first bridge. He continued ahead and had killed another bazooka team, bayoneted an enemy soldier armed with a panzerfaust and shot 2 Germans when he was knocked to the ground by another blast of another panzerfaust. He quickly recovered, killed the man who had fired at him and then jumped into waist-deep water under the second bridge to disconnect the demolition charges. His work was completed; but as he stood up to signal that the route was clear, he was killed by another enemy volley from the left flank. S/Sgt. Dietz by his intrepidity and valiant effort on his self-imposed mission, single-handedly opened the road for the capture of Kirchain and left with his comrades an inspiring example of gallantry in the face of formidable odds.

GARMAN, HAROLD A.
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, Company B, 5th Medical Battalion, 5th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Montereau, France, 25 August 1944. Entered service at: Albion, Ill. Born: 26 February 1918, Fairfield, Ill. G.O. No.: 20, 29 March 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. On 25 August 1944, in the vicinity of Montereau, France, the enemy was sharply contesting any enlargement of the bridgehead which our forces had established on the northern bank of the Seine River in this sector. Casualties were being evacuated to the southern shore in assault boats paddled by litter bearers from a medical battalion. Pvt. Garman, also a litter bearer in this battalion, was working on the friendly shore carrying the wounded from the boats to waiting ambulances.

As 1 boatload of wounded reached midstream, a German machinegun suddenly opened fire upon it from a commanding position on the northern bank 100 yards away. All of the men in the boat immediately took to the water except 1 man who was so badly wounded he could not rise from his litter. Two other patients who were unable to swim because of their wounds clung to the sides of the boat. Seeing the extreme danger of these patients, Pvt. Garman without a moment’s hesitation plunged into the Seine. Swimming directly into a hail of machinegun bullets, he rapidly reached the assault boat and then while still under accurately aimed fire towed the boat with great effort to the southern shore.

This soldier’s moving heroism not only saved the lives of the three patients but so inspired his comrades that additional assault boats were immediately procured and the evacuation of the wounded resumed. Pvt. Garman’s great courage and his heroic devotion to the highest tenets of the Medical Corps may be written with great pride in the annals of the corps.

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30 March

1769 – Following the example of the Philadelphia merchants, Baltimore merchants join the non-importation movement by banning the purchase of English goods until the repeal of the Townshend Acts.

1775 – King George III endorses the New England Restraining Act, which forbids the New England colonies from trading with any other countries except England after 1 July, and also bans them from fishing in the North Atlantic after 20 July. On 13 April the provisions of the act will also be applied to Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia when Parliament hears that these colonies have ratified the Continental Association.

1820 – A group of New England missionaries arrives on the Hawaiian Islands, to be greeted by King Kamehameha II.

1822 – Congress combined East and West Florida into the Florida Territory. The Territory of Florida was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed until March 3, 1845, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Florida. Originally the Spanish territory of La Florida, and later the provinces of East and West Florida, it was ceded to the United States as part of the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty. It was governed by the Florida Territorial Council.

1825 – Confederate General Samuel Maxey is born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky. Maxey served in the West and led Native Americans troops in Indian Territory. Maxey attended West Point and graduated in 1846, second to last in a class of 59. He was sent immediately to fight in the Mexican War. Although he did well there and fought at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, Maxey resigned his commission after the war to study law in Kentucky. In 1857, he moved to Texas and became active in politics. When the war began, he raised a regiment, the 9th Texas Infantry, and took his unit to fight in Mississippi. Maxey was promoted to brigadier general in March 1862 and his force participated in the Vicksburg campaign before aiding in the defense of Port Hudson, Louisiana. He was fortunate to avoid capture when those locations fell into Union hands, and Maxey was shipped to assist in the Confederate siege of Chattanooga in September 1863. While there, Maxey received a promotion to commander of Indian Territory. In 1864, he worked to recruit and train members of the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw tribes. On April 18, 1864, troops under Maxey’s command attacked a Union wagon train at Poison Springs, Arkansas. They routed the federal force, which was led by the 1st Kansas Colored Regiment. Maxey’s men proceeded to kill all black soldiers who were wounded or captured. After the war, Maxey continued to support his Native American friends when he served in the U.S. Senate and was an outspoken advocate of Indian rights. He died in 1895.

1855 – In territorial Kansas’ first election, some 5,000 so-called “Border Ruffians” invade the territory from western Missouri and force the election of a pro-slavery legislature. Although the number of votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters in the territory, Kansas Governor Andrew Reeder reluctantly approved the election to prevent further bloodshed. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave.

A few months after pro-slavery forces defrauded Kansas’ first election, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown. In May 1856, Border Ruffians sacked the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and in retaliation a small Free State force under John Brown massacred five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. During the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continued in “Bleeding Kansas,” as it became popularly known. In 1861, the irrepressible differences in Kansas were swallowed up by the outbreak of full-scale civil war in America.

1858 – Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patented the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.

1864 – A boat expedition under the command of Acting Master James M. Williams, U.S.S. Commodore Barney, with a detachment of sailors under the command of Acting Master Charles B. Wilder, U.S.S. Minnesota, ascended Chuckatuck Creek late at night seeking to capture a party of Confederate troops reported to be in that vicinity. After landing at Cherry Grove, Virginia, shortly before dawn, the sailors silently surrounded the Confederate headquarters and took 20 prisoners.

1867 – The United States government put the finishing touches on the deal to purchase that “large stump of ice,” better known as Alaska. The acquisition, brokered in absolute secrecy by Secretary of State William Seward, saw the U.S. pay Alaska’s owner, Russia $7.2 million, or roughly two cents per acre of land. Though Alaska was the first bit of property ever relinquished by Russia, some American officials sneered at the seemingly barren new state. In certain circles, the deal was derisively known as “Seward’s Folly.” However, Alaska promised a few bright benefits for the U.S.

Along with freeing another piece of the continent from the grip of monarchy, America’s newest state was flush with furs and fish. Rather than establishing a formal government in the territory, President Andrew Johnson reasoned that Alaska’s economic activities placed it under the charge of the Treasury Department, which regulated the fur and fish trades. In effect, Johnson's decision created a government monopoly and planted the seeds for conflict in Alaska’s not too distant future.

1870 – The 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, passed.

1870 – Texas was the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

1891 – Arthur Herrington, American engineer and manufacturer; developed the World War II Jeep, was born in Coddenham, East Suffolk, England. Immigrating to the United States with his family at the age of five, Herrington grew up in Madison, N.J., and was educated at the Stevens Preparatory School and Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. He was first employed by the Harley-Davidson Motor Company of Milwaukee. After World War I he was given a reserve commission in the Army and was retained as a consultant while returning to his civilian occupation.

In France, Herrington had been impressed by the problems of conventional-drive vehicles in off-the-road maneuvering. He experimented with and designed a series of trucks with four- and six-wheel drives, which he built in association with the Marmon Motor Car Company of Indianapolis, Ind. These vehicles aided Allied troops during World War II; but none equaled the success and popularity of the smallest of the line, the quarter-ton jeep (apparently from the letters GP, for “general purpose”) reconnaissance car, noted for its outstanding stamina, versatility, power, and maneuverability.

1915 – Wilson protests the British blockade of German ports. His concern is for US shipping and neutral vessels destined for neutral ports. However, since most of these vessels are carrying cargoes which will ultimately find their way to Germany, Britain refuses to budge.

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1940 – Japan establishes its own government in conquered Nanking, the former capital of Nationalist China. In 1937, Japan drummed up a rationale for war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist China (claiming Chinese troops attacked Japanese troops on maneuvers in a so-called “autonomous” region of China) and invaded northeastern China, bombing Shanghai and carving out a new state, Manchukuo. Money and supplies poured into Free China from the United States, Britain, and France, until the Burma Road, which permitted free passage of goods into China from the West, was closed after a Japanese invasion of Indochina. Making matters more difficult, Chiang was forced to fight on two fronts: one against the Japanese (with U.S. help in the person of Gen. Joseph Stillwell, Chiang’s chief of staff), and another against his ongoing political nemesis, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung. (Although the United States advised concentrating on the Japanese first as the pre-eminent threat, Chiang was slow to listen.)

The Japanese proceeded to prosecute a war of terror in Manchukuo. With the capture of Nanking (formerly the Nationalist Chinese capital, which was now relocated to Chungking) by the Central China Front Army in December 1937, atrocities virtually unparalleled commenced. The army, under orders of its commander, Gen. Matsui Iwane, carried out the mass execution of more than 50,000 civilians, as well as tens of thousands of rapes. Nanking and surrounding areas were burned and looted, with one-third of its buildings utterly destroyed. The “Rape of Nanking” galvanized Western animus against the Japanese. On March 30, 1940, Nanking was declared by the Japanese to be the center of a new Chinese government, a regime controlled by Wang Ching-wei, a defector from the Nationalist cause and now a Japanese puppet.

1941 – The U.S. seized Italian, German and Danish ships in 16 ports.

1942 – Coast Guard was designated as a service of the Navy to be administered by the Commandant of Coast Guard under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, similar to the administration of the Marine Corps.

1942 – The Joint Chiefs divide the Pacific into two command spheres. Admiral Nimitz is appointed Commander in Chief of the Pacific Ocean zone and General MacArthur, the Commander in Chief of the Southwest Pacific. This demarcation will lead to friction when planning the re-conquest of the east.

1944 – The U.S. fleet attacked Palau, near the Philippines. First use of torpedo squadrons from carriers to drop aerial mines (Palau Harbor).

1944 – US forces occupy Pityilu Island to the north of Manus Island. There is little Japanese resistance.

1945 – The US 1st Army advances north out of its salient around Marburg and reaches and crosses the Eder River. US 3rd Army is attempting to strike east and north toward Gotha and Kassel.

1945 – In American air raids on the northern ports, the German cruiser Koln and 14 U-boats are sunk.

1945 – US naval forces, including TF58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. A Japanese Kamikaze plane badly damages the cruiser USS Indianapolis. Unsuccessful submarine attacks continue.

1945 – A Soviet cable was intercepted that referred to an agent named Ales, later suspected of being Alger Hiss. The intercepted cables were classified as part of the “Venona Project” released in 1996. The US began releasing the coded Venona cables in 1995. They implicated 349 US citizens and residents as Soviet helpers.

1946 – The Allies seized 1,000 Nazis who were attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.

1950 – President Truman denounced Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.

1951 – The heaviest air attack of the war was staged by 38 B-29’s on twin bridges over the Yalu River at Sinuiju, dropping some 280 tons of bombs. Escorting F-80s and F-86s engaged enemy MiG-15 jets, destroying three and damaging six.

1952 – A fire completely destroyed the headquarters of the 7th Cavalry Regiment at Camp Crawford, Japan. Many of the regiment’s souvenirs, some dating back to the time of Custer, were lost in the blaze.

1952 – Chou En-Lai, Foreign Minister, Peoples’ Republic of China, suggested that POWs not desiring repatriation might be placed in the temporary custody of a neutral nation until negotiations determined their final status. Prior to this proposal the communists had insisted on the repatriation of all POWs. Their new flexibility on this issue provided an opportunity to resume truce negotiations.

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1965 – A bomb explodes in a car parked in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, virtually destroying the building and killing 19 Vietnamese, 2 Americans, and 1 Filipino; 183 others were injured. Congress quickly appropriated $1 million to reconstruct the embassy. Although some U.S. military leaders advocated special retaliatory raids on North Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson refused.

1966 – The 7th Marine Regiment terminated Operation Indiana in Vietnam.

1972 – A major coordinated communist offensive opens with the heaviest military action since the sieges of Allied bases at Con Thien and Khe Sanh in 1968. Committing almost their entire army to the offensive, the North Vietnamese launched a massive three-pronged attack into South Vietnam. Four North Vietnamese divisions attacked directly across the Demilitarized Zone in Quang Tri province. Thirty-five South Vietnamese soldiers died in the initial attack and hundreds of civilians and soldiers were wounded. Following the initial assault in Quang Tri province, the North Vietnamese launched two more major attacks: at An Loc in Binh Long Province, 60 miles north of Saigon; and at Kontum in the Central Highlands.

With the three attacks, the North Vietnamese committed 500 tanks and 150,000 men, as well as thousands of Viet Cong, supported by heavy rocket and artillery fire. After initial successes, especially against the newly formed South Vietnamese 3rd Division in Quang Tri, the North Vietnamese attack was stopped cold by the combination of defending South Vietnamese divisions (along with their U.S. advisers) and massive American airpower. Estimates placed the North Vietnamese losses at more than 100,000 and at least one-half of their tanks and large caliber artillery.

1975 – As the North Vietnamese forces moved toward Saigon, desperate South Vietnamese soldiers mobbed rescue jets.

1981 – President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr. The president had just finished addressing a labor meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel and was walking with his entourage to his limousine when Hinckley, standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three of his attendants. White House Press Secretary James Brady was shot in the head and critically wounded, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy was shot in the side, and District of Columbia policeman Thomas Delahaney was shot in the neck. After firing the shots, Hinckley was overpowered and pinned against a wall, and President Reagan, apparently unaware that he’d been shot, was shoved into his limousine by a Secret Service agent and rushed to the hospital. The president was shot in the left lung, and the .22 caliber bullet just missed his heart.

In an impressive feat for a 70-year-old man with a collapsed lung, he walked into George Washington University Hospital under his own power. As he was treated and prepared for surgery, he was in good spirits and quipped to his wife, Nancy, ”Honey, I forgot to duck,” and to his surgeons, “Please tell me you’re Republicans.” Reagan’s surgery lasted two hours, and he was listed in stable and good condition afterward. The next day, the president resumed some of his executive duties and signed a piece of legislation from his hospital bed. On April 11, he returned to the White House. Reagan’s popularity soared after the assassination attempt, and at the end of April he was given a hero’s welcome by Congress. In August, this same Congress passed his controversial economic program, with several Democrats breaking ranks to back Reagan’s plan. By this time, Reagan claimed to be fully recovered from the assassination attempt. In private, however, he would continue to feel the effects of the nearly fatal gunshot wound for years. Of the victims of the assassination attempt, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and D.C. policeman Thomas Delahaney eventually recovered.

James Brady, who nearly died after being shot in the eye, suffered permanent brain damage. He later became an advocate of gun control, and in 1993 Congress passed the “Brady Bill,” which established a five-day waiting period and background checks for prospective gun buyers. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law. After being arrested on March 30, 1981, 25-year-old John Hinckley was booked on federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president. He had previously been arrested in Tennessee on weapons charges. In June 1982, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

In the trial, Hinckley’s defense attorneys argued that their client was ill with narcissistic personality disorder, citing medical evidence, and had a pathological obsession with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which the main character attempts to assassinate a fictional senator. His lawyers claimed that Hinckley saw the movie more than a dozen times, was obsessed with the lead actress, Jodie Foster, and had attempted to reenact the events of the film in his own life. Thus the movie, not Hinckley, they argued, was the actual planning force behind the events that occurred on March 30, 1981.

The verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity” aroused widespread public criticism, and many were shocked that a would-be presidential assassin could avoid been held accountable for his crime. However, because of his obvious threat to society, he was placed in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a mental institution. In the late 1990s, Hinckley’s attorney began arguing that his mental illness was in remission and thus had a right to return to a normal life. Beginning in August 1999, he was allowed supervised day trips off the hospital grounds and later was allowed to visit his parents once a week unsupervised. The Secret Service voluntarily monitors him during these outings.

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1982 – Space Shuttle program: STS-3 Mission is completed with the landing of Columbia at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

1994 – The Clinton administration announced it was lifting virtually all export controls on non-military products to China and the former Soviet bloc.

1996 – The space shuttle Atlantis narrowly avoided having to make an emergency landing when its cargo-bay doors wouldn’t open at first to release built-up heat.

1999 – Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic insisted that NATO attacks stop before he moved toward peace, declaring his forces ready to fight “to the very end.” The US called the offer “woefully inadequate.” NATO moved to step up the air war and Serbian forces continued unopposed in Kosovo as refugees streamed out. NATO answered with new resolve to wreck his military with a relentless air assault.

2000 – The United Nations Security Council votes to allow Iraq to import $1.2billion in spare parts and other equipment for its oil industry this year under the “oil-for-food” program. This is an increase from the previous $600 million annual value allowed.

2002 – The United States joined other U.N. Security Council members in adopting a resolution calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, where Yasser Arafat headquarters was under siege.

2003 – In the 12th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom an Iraqi general, captured by British forces in southern Iraq, was pressed to provide information. A British TV correspondent covering the war in Iraq died after apparently falling from a hotel roof.

2004 – Philippine officials reported the arrest of 4 Muslim extremists in the brutal al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group. They were found with a stash of TNT targeted for terror attacks on trains and shopping malls in the Philippine capital. A suspected Muslim extremist told police interrogators he planted TNT in a television set on a ferry that caught fire last month, killing more than 100 people.

2005 – Fred Korematsu (86), who’d challenged the World War II internment policy that sent Japanese-Americans to detention camps, died in Larkspur, California.

2005 – Under heavy protection, First Lady Laura Bush visited the capital of Afghanistan, where she talked with Afghan women freed from Taliban repression and urged greater rights.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

*PETERSON, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company K, 18th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Eisern, Germany, 30 March 1945. Entered service at: Brooklyn, N.Y. Birth: Brooklyn, N.Y. G.O. No.: 88, 17 October 1945. Citation: He was an acting platoon sergeant with Company K, near Eisern, Germany. When his company encountered an enemy battalion and came under heavy small-arms, machinegun, and mortar fire, the 2d Platoon was given the mission of flanking the enemy positions while the remaining units attacked frontally. S/Sgt. Peterson crept and crawled to a position in the lead and motioned for the 2d Platoon to follow. A mortar shell fell close by and severely wounded him in the legs, but, although bleeding and suffering intense pain, he refused to withdraw and continued forward. Two hostile machineguns went into action at close range.

Braving this grazing fire, he crawled steadily toward the guns and worked his way alone to a shallow draw, where, despite the hail of bullets, he raised himself to his knees and threw a grenade into the nearest machinegun nest, silencing the weapon and killing or wounding all its crew. The second gun was immediately turned on him, but he calmly and deliberately threw a second grenade which rocked the position and killed all 4 Germans who occupied it. As he continued forward he was spotted by an enemy rifleman, who shot him in the arm. Undeterred, he crawled some 20 yards until a third machinegun opened fire on him. By almost superhuman effort, weak from loss of blood and suffering great pain, he again raised himself to his knees and fired a grenade from his rifle, killing 3 of the enemy gun crew and causing the remaining one to flee.

With the first objective seized, he was being treated by the company aid man when he observed 1 of his outpost men seriously wounded by a mortar burst. He wrenched himself from the hands of the aid man and began to crawl forward to assist his comrade, whom he had almost reached when he was struck and fatally wounded by an enemy bullet. S/Sgt. Peterson, by his gallant, intrepid actions, unrelenting fighting spirit, and outstanding initiative, silenced 3 enemy machineguns against great odds and while suffering from severe wounds, enabling his company to advance with minimum casualties.

*WILL, WALTER J.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company K 18th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Eisern, Germany, 30 March 1945. Entered service at: West Winfield, N.Y. Birth: Pittsburgh, Pa. G.O. No.: 88, 17 October 1945. Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry during an attack on powerful enemy positions. He courageously exposed himself to withering hostile fire to rescue 2 wounded men and then, although painfully wounded himself, made a third trip to carry another soldier to safety from an open area. Ignoring the profuse bleeding of his wound, he gallantly led men of his platoon forward until they were pinned down by murderous flanking fire from 2 enemy machineguns. He fearlessly crawled alone to within 30 feet of the first enemy position, killed the crew of 4 and silenced the gun with accurate grenade fire.

He continued to crawl through intense enemy fire to within 20 feet of the second position where he leaped to his feet, made a lone, ferocious charge and captured the gun and its 9-man crew. Observing another platoon pinned down by 2 more German machineguns, he led a squad on a flanking approach and, rising to his knees in the face of direct fire, coolly and deliberately lobbed 3 grenades at the Germans, silencing 1 gun and killing its crew. With tenacious aggressiveness, he ran toward the other gun and knocked it out with grenade fire. He then returned to his platoon and led it in a fierce, inspired charge, forcing the enemy to fall back in confusion. 1st Lt. Will was mortally wounded in this last action, but his heroic leadership, indomitable courage, and unflinching devotion to duty live on as a perpetual inspiration to all those who witnessed his deeds.

*BOBO, JOHN P.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, 3d Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division (Rein), FMF. Place and date: Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, 30 March 1967. Entered service at: Buffalo, N.Y. Born: 14 February 1943, Niagara Falls, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Company 1 was establishing night ambush sites when the command group was attacked by a reinforced North Vietnamese company supported by heavy automatic weapons and mortar fire. 2d Lt. Bobo immediately organized a hasty defense and moved from position to position encouraging the outnumbered marines despite the murderous enemy fire. Recovering a rocket launcher from among the friendly casualties, he organized a new launcher team and directed its fire into the enemy machine gun positions.

When an exploding enemy mortar round severed 2d Lt. Bobo’s right leg below the knee, he refused to be evacuated and insisted upon being placed in a firing position to cover the movement of the command group to a better location. With a web belt around his leg serving as a tourniquet and with his leg jammed into the dirt to curtain the bleeding, he remained in this position and delivered devastating fire into the ranks of the enemy attempting to overrun the marines. 2d Lt. Bobo was mortally wounded while firing his weapon into the main point of the enemy attack but his valiant spirit inspired his men to heroic efforts, and his tenacious stand enabled the command group to gain a protective position where it repulsed the enemy onslaught. 2d Lt. Bobo’s superb leadership, dauntless courage, and bold initiative reflected great credit upon himself and 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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31 March

1774 – In response to the continuing rebelliousness of the Massachusetts colony, an angry parliament passes a series of Coercive Acts. The first of these is the Boston Port Bill, to go into force June 1. The port bill forbids any shipping or trade in Boston harbor except for that involving military supplies and certain approved cargoes of food and fuel. The bill also provides for the stationing of customs officials at Salem rather than Boston. If Massachusetts reimburses customs for the duties owed and the costs of the Boston Tea Party, only then will the port be opened to all maritime traffic.

1777 – A young Abigail Adams encouraged her husband John to give women voting privileges in the new American government. She wrote to her husband on March 31, 1777, while he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention: “I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous to them than were your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” Twenty years later her husband was a candidate in America’s first real election.

1801 – Lt Col Commandant William W. Burrows rode with president Thomas Jefferson to look for “a proper place to fix the Marine Barracks on.” President Jefferson was a personal friend of the Commandant, and deeply interested in the welfare of the Corps and accompanied Burrows on horseback on the morning of 31 March. They chose a square in Southeast Washington, bounded by 8th and 9th streets, and a & I streets, because it lay near the Navy Yard and was within easy marching distance of the Capitol.

1814 – In a message to Congress, President Madison recommends the repeal of the Embargo and Non-Importation Acts. This legislation has failed to achieve its purpose, and the repeal is supported by New England, despite the newly developing industries that have been protected by the acts.

1854 – In Tokyo, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan. In July 1853, Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with a squadron of four U.S. vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but eventually they accepted letters from U.S. President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it was declared closed to foreigners in 1683. After giving Japan time to consider the establishment of external relations, Perry returned to Tokyo in March 1854, and on March 31 signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened Japan to trade with the United States, and thus the West.

In April 1860, the first Japanese diplomats to visit a foreign power reached Washington, D.C., and remained in the U.S. capital for several weeks discussing expansion of trade with the United States. Perry’s great achievement was widely recognized at the time. Perhaps there is no better praise for this naval veteran of 45 years’ service than the collective memorial sent by the American merchants at Canton to the Commodore in Sept. 1854 on his return trip to the U.S.: “You have conquered the obstinate will of man and, by overturning the cherished policy of an empire, have brought an estranged but culturated people into the family of nations. You have done this without violence, and the world has looked on with admiration to see the barriers of prejudice fall before the flag of our country without the firing of a shot.”

1862 – Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces took place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.

1863 – Confederate troops opened a sustained attack and siege of the Union position at Washington, North Carolina. The assaulting forces erected numerous batteries along the Pamlico River in an effort to check the Union Navy. Nonetheless, the senior naval officer, Commander Davenport, moved quickly to aid the beleaguered Union soldiers. He dispatched all but two gunboats guarding New Bern to Washington and left only one at Plymouth, before the attack was broken up on 16 April, the warships’ heavy gunfire support swung the balance in stopping the Con-federates. In addition, small boats transported desperately needed ammunition to the troops and ultimately it was the waterborne supplies reaching the garrison that induced the Confederates to withdraw.

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