This Date in Military History:

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1864 – For the second time in a week, a Confederate force captures a Union wagon train trying to supply the Federal force at Camden, Arkansas. This time, the loss forced Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw back to Little Rock. Steele captured Camden on April 15 as he moved southwest towards Shreveport, Louisiana. This was part of a larger Union operation in the region. General Nathaniel Banks moved up the Red River into northwest Louisiana on a planned invasion of Texas, but he was turned back at the Battle of Mansfield on April 8. Steele was to pinch Confederate forces around Shreveport with a move from central Arkansas. After taking Camden, Steele sent 1,100 men west to capture a store of corn. That force was badly defeated by a Confederate detachment at the Battle of Poison Springs on April 18. Now, with provisions dwindling, Steele sent another wagon train northeast from Camden towards Pine Bluff to fetch supplies. Lieutenant Colonel Francis Drake and 1,700 troops accompanied the 240 wagons that left Camden on April 22. Three hundred runaway slaves traveled along as well. Three days later, Confederate troops under General James Fagan pounced on Drake’s command near Mark’s Mills. They came from two sides, and Drake was wounded and captured early in the battle along with 1,400 of his troops. The Confederates lost 41 killed and 108 wounded, but they captured the entire wagon train. Tragically, the Rebels followed up their victory much as they had at Poison Springs on April 18, where they massacred captured black soldiers. At Mark’s Mills, at least half of the runaways were killed in cold blood. Even one of the Confederate officers admitted in his report that “No orders, threat, or commands could restrain the men from vengeance on the Negroes…” Steele’s army was now in dangerous territory. With Confederate forces lurking all around Camden and with supplies running low, Steele retreated to Little Rock, leaving southern Arkansas under Rebel control. Drake survived his wounds and later became governor of Iowa. Drake University in Des Moines now bears his name.

1864 – After facing defeat in the Red River Campaign, Union General Nathaniel Bank returned to Alexandria, Louisiana.

1865 – Four of the five Lincoln assassination suspects arrested on the 17th were imprisoned on the monitors U.S.S. Montauk and Saugus which had been prepared for this purpose on the 15th and were anchored off the Washington Navy Yard in the Anacostia River. Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was taken into custody at the boarding house she operated after it was learned that her son was a close friend of John Wilkes Booth and that the actor was a frequent visitor at the boarding house. Mrs. Surratt was jailed in the Carroll Annex of Old Capitol Prison. Lewis Paine was also taken into custody when he came to Mrs. Surratt’s house during her arrest. Edward Spangler, stagehand at the Ford Theater and Booth’s aide, along with Michael O’Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, close associates of Booth during the months leading up to the assassination, were also caught up in the dragnet. O’Laughlin and Paine, after overnight imprisonment in the Old Capitol Prison, were transferred to the monitors at the Navy Yard.

They were joined by Arnold on the 19th and Spangler on the 24th. George A. Atzerodt, the would-be assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Ernest Hartman Richter, at whose home Atzerodt was captured, were brought on board the ships on the 20th. Joao Celestino, Portuguese sea captain who had been heard to say on the 14th that Seward ought to be assassinated, was transferred from Old Capitol Prison to Montauk on the 25th The last of the eight conspiracy suspects to be incarcerated on board the monitors was David E. Herold. The prisoners were kept below decks under heavy guard and were manacled with both wrist and leg irons. In addition, their heads were covered with canvas hoods the interior of which were fitted with cotton pads that tightly covered the prisoners’ eyes and ears. The hoods contained two small openings to permit breathing and the consumption of food. An added security measure was taken with Paine by attaching a ball and chain to each ankle.

1898 – The United States formally declared war on Spain. The US House passed the declaration 311 to 6. After the Maine was destroyed on 15 February, newspaper publishers Hearst and Pulitzer decided that the Spanish were to blame, and they publicized this theory as fact in their New York City papers using sensationalistic and astonishing accounts of “atrocities” committed by the Spanish in Cuba by using headlines in their newspapers, such as “Spanish Murderers” and “Remember The Maine”. Their press exaggerated what was happening and how the Spanish were treating the Cuban prisoners. The stories were based on factual accounts, but most of the time, the articles that were published were embellished and written with incendiary language causing emotional and often heated responses among readers. A common myth states, that Randolph Hurst responding to the opinion of his illustrator, Frederic Remington, that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities, said: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” This new “yellow journalism” was, however, uncommon outside New York City, and historians no longer consider it the major force shaping the national mood.

Public opinion nationwide did demand immediate action, overwhelming the efforts of President McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, and the business community to find a negotiated solution. A speech delivered by Republican Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont on March 17, 1898 thoroughly analyzed the situation, concluding that war was the only answer. The speech helped provide one final push for the United States to declare war. Many in the business and religious communities which had until then opposed war, switched sides, leaving McKinley and Speaker Reed almost alone in their resistance to a war. On April 11, McKinley ended his resistance and asked Congress for authority to send American troops to Cuba to end the civil war there, knowing that Congress would force a war. On April 19, while Congress was considering joint resolutions supporting Cuban independence, Republican Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado proposed the Teller Amendment to ensure that the U.S. would not establish permanent control over Cuba after the war. The amendment, disclaiming any intention to annex Cuba, passed the Senate 42 to 35; the House concurred the same day, 311 to 6. The amended resolution demanded Spanish withdrawal and authorized the President to use as much military force as he thought necessary to help Cuba gain independence from Spain.

President McKinley signed the joint resolution on April 20, 1898, and the ultimatum was sent to Spain. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21. On the same day, the U.S. Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Spain declared war on April 23. On April 25, Congress declared that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain had existed since April 21, the day the blockade of Cuba had begun. The Navy was ready, but the Army was not well-prepared for the war and made radical changes in plans and quickly purchased supplies. In the spring of 1898, the strength of the Regular U.S. Army was just 28,000 men. The Army wanted 50,000 new men but received over 220,000, through volunteers and the mobilization of state National Guard units.

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1913 – The formal charter of the Marine Corps Association was established.

1914 – First combat observation mission by Navy plane, at Veracruz, Mexico.

1943 – American bombers raid an airfield around Bari, Italy in the south.

1945 – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.

1945 – Liberation Day (Italy): The Nazi occupation army surrenders and leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement. The puppet fascist regime dissolves and Benito Mussolini is captured after trying to escape. This day was set as a public holiday to celebrate the Liberation of Italy.

1945 – Delegates from some 50 countries met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations. Charles Easton Rothwell (d.1987) headed the 500-member group that helped establish the UN Charter.

1945 – Soviet forces complete the encirclement of Berlin near Ketzin. The 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian froms continue to attack, from the east and south, into the city. South of the capital, elements of 1st Ukrainian Front advancing toward the Elbe River, link up with American units at Torgau. Meanwhile, in East Prussia, Pillau is taken. (Since early in the year, about 140,000 wounded and 40,000 refugees have been evacuated to the west from Pillau.) A few German troops continue to hold out at the tip of the Samland Peninsula. US 3rd Army crosses the Danube near Regensburg and assault the city.

1945 – American planes strike Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, nominally the Skoda Works.

1945 – Clandestine Radio 1212, used to hoax Nazi Germany, made its final transmission.

1951 – Eighth Army was pushed back 20 miles. The volunteer battalion from Belgium and Luxembourg was cut off but fought its way to safety after a 20-hour siege. Members of the battalion had high praise for the support provided by U.S. Marine Corsairs.

1953 – 1953 – Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories.

1954 – UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill rejects the US proposed Radford Plan, initially conceived of as a nuclear strike but negotiated down to a massive US air strike against the Viet Minh in response to the fall of Dienbienphu. Churchill states, “What we are being asked to do is assist in misleading the Congress into approving a military operation which would be in itself ineffective, and might well bring the world to the verge of a major war.”

1957 – The 1st experimental sodium nuclear reactor operated.

1960 – First submerged circumnavigation of the Earth was completed by a Triton submarine. Operation Sandblast was the code name for the first submerged circumnavigation of the world executed by the United States Navy nuclear-powered radar picket submarine USS Triton (SSRN-586) in 1960 while under the command of Captain Edward L. Beach, USN. The New York Times described Triton ’s submerged circumnavigation of the Earth as “a triumph of human prowess and engineering skill, a feat which the United States Navy can rank as one of its bright victories in man’s ultimate conquest of the seas.” The actual circumnavigation took place between 24 February and 25 April 1960, covering 26,723 nautical miles (49,491 km; 30,752 mi) over 60 days and 21 hours.

Operation Sandblast used the St. Peter and Paul Rocks, located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean near the Equator, as the starting point and terminus for the circumnavigation. During the course of the circumnavigation, Triton crossed the Equator four times while maintaining an average speed of advance (SOA) of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Triton ’s overall navigational track during Operation Sandblast generally followed the same course for the first circumnavigation of the world led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan between 1519-1522.

The initial impetus for Operation Sandblast was to enhance American technological and scientific prestige prior to the May 1960 Paris Summit between U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Additionally, Operation Sandblast provided a high-profile public demonstration of the capability of U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarines to carry out long-range submerged operations independent of external support and undetected by hostile forces, presaging the initial deployment of the U.S Navy’s Polaris ballistic missile submarines later in 1960.

Finally, Operation Sandblast gathered extensive oceanographic, hydrographic, gravimetric, geophysical, and psychological data during Triton ’s circumnavigation. Although official celebrations for Operation Sandblast were cancelled following the diplomatic furor arising from the shooting down of a CIA U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in early May 1960, the Triton did receive the Presidential Unit Citation with a special clasp in the form of a golden replica of the globe in recognition of the successful completion of its mission, and Captain Beach received the Legion of Merit for his role as Triton ’s commanding officer. In 1961, Beach received the Magellanic Premium, the United States’ oldest and most prestigious scientific award, from the American Philosophical Society in “recognition of his navigation of the U.S. submarine Triton around the globe.”

1961 – Robert Noyce patented the integrated circuit.

1961 – Mercury-Atlas rocket lifted off with an electronic mannequin. An unmanned Mercury test exploded on launch pad.

1962 – U.S. Ranger spacecraft crash landed on the Moon.

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that General William Westmoreland will replace General Paul Harkins as head of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as of June 20. The assignment would put Westmoreland in charge of all American military forces in Vietnam. One of the war’s most controversial figures, General Westmoreland was given many honors when the fighting was going well, but when the war turned sour, many Americans saw him as a cause of U.S. problems in Vietnam. Negative feeling about Westmoreland grew particularly strong following the Tet Offensive of 1968, when he had requested a large number of additional troops for deployment to Vietnam. On March 22, 1968, President Johnson announced that Westmoreland would depart South Vietnam to take on the post of Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced him as the senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam.

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1972 – Hanoi’s 320th Division drives 5,000 South Vietnamese troops into retreat and traps about 2,500 others in a border outpost northwest of Kontum in the Central Highlands. This was part of the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, also known as the “Easter Offensive,” which included an invasion by 120,000 North Vietnamese troops. The offensive was based on three objectives: Quang Tri in the north, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc in the south–just 65 miles north of Saigon. If successful, the attack at Kontum would effectively cut South Vietnam in two across the Central Highlands, giving North Vietnam control of the northern half of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese defenders were able to hold out and prevent this from happening.

1975 – Fearing impending coup, President Thieu flees Saigon following his resignation and transfer of authority to Vice President Tran Van Huong.

1976 – All-Vietnam elections are held for a new National Assembly. 249 deputies are elected from the North and 243 from the South with 6 seats of the total 492 reserved for minorities.

1980 – President Jimmy Carter announced the failed hostage rescue disaster in Iran.

1982 – In accordance with Camp David agreements, Israel completed the Sinai withdrawal. Ariel Sharon, as defense minister, directed the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Sinai Peninsula. Nearly 5,000 residents and many more sympathizers were dragged off roofs and bundled onto buses.

1983 – The Pioneer 10 spacecraft crossed Pluto’s orbit, speeding on its endless voyage through the Milky Way.

1988 – NASA launched space vehicle S-211.

1990 – The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. The space telescope, conceived in the 1940s, designed in the 1970s, and built in the 1980s, was designed to give astronomers an unparalleled view of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. Initially, Hubble’s operators suffered a setback when a lens aberration was discovered, but a repair mission by space-walking astronauts in December 1993 successfully fixed the problem, and Hubble began sending back its first breathtaking images of the universe. Free of atmospheric distortions, Hubble has a resolution 10 times that of ground-based observatories. About the size of a bus, the telescope is solar-powered and orbits Earth once every 97 minutes. Among its many astronomical achievements, Hubble has been used to record a comet’s collision with Jupiter, provide a direct look at the surface of Pluto, view distant galaxies, gas clouds, and black holes, and see billions of years into the universe’s past.

1991 – The White House threatened to “take whatever steps are necessary” should Iraq fail to meet a deadline for withdrawing its security forces from the refugee zone in northern Iraq.

1999 – On the third and final day of their Washington summit, NATO leaders promised military protection and economic aid to Yugoslavia’s neighbors for standing with the West against Slobodan Milosevic. Pres. Yeltsin called Pres. Clinton to search for a solution to Kosovo.

1999 – NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia destroyed the last bridge in Novi Sad along with other targets in northern and central Serbia. The KLA staged a new conference in Kukes and pleaded anew for a battlefield alliance with NATO.

1999 – In Iraq US warplanes struck air defense sites in the northern no fly zone after being threatened by radar.

2000 – Royal Dutch Shell agrees to pay a $2 million fine for transporting smuggled Iraqi oil aboard a Russian tanker. Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon states that Shell appeared to have acquired the Iraqi oil unwittingly, and would therefore be allowed to keep the cargo. The fine will go into a United Nations fund for the enforcement of sanctions.

2001 – In unusually blunt terms, President Bush warned China that an attack on Taiwan could provoke a U.S. military response.

2003 – Nuclear talks in Beijing ended after U.S. officials said North Korea claimed to have nuclear weapons and might test, export or use them.

2003 – Farouk Hijazi, who once helped run Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service and was linked to al-Qaida, was delivered by Syria to US forces.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BRENNAN, CHRISTOPHER
Rank and organization: Seaman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1832, Ireland. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 17, 10 July 1863. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Mississippi during attacks on Forts Jackson and St. Philip and during the taking of New Orleans, 24-25 April 1862. Taking part in the actions which resulted in the damaging of the Mississippi and several casualties on it, Brennan showed skill and courage throughout the entire engagements which resulted in the taking of St. Philip and Jackson and in the surrender of New Orleans.

BUCK, JAMES
Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 1808, Baltimore, Md. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: Served on board the U.S.S. Brooklyn in the attack upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip and at the taking of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. Although severely wounded by a heavy splinter, Buck continued to perform his duty until positively ordered below. Later stealing back to his post, he steered the ship for 8 hours despite his critical condition. His bravery was typical of the type which resulted in the taking of the Forts Jackson and St. Philip and in the capture of New Orleans.

FLOOD, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Boy, U.S. Navy. Born: 1840, Ireland. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: Served on board the U.S.S. Pensacola in the attack on Forts Jackson and St. Philip and at the taking of new Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. Swept from the bridge by a shell which wounded the signal quartermaster, Flood returned to the bridge after assisting the wounded man below and taking over his duties, “Performed them with coolness, exactitude and the fidelity of a veteran seaman. His intelligence and character cannot be spoken of too warmly.”

McLEOD, JAMES
Rank and organization: Captain of the Foretop, U.S. Navy. Born: Scotland. Accredited to: Maine. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: Captain of foretop, and a volunteer from the Colorado, McLeod served on board the U.S.S. Pensacola during the attack upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the taking of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. Acting as gun captain of the rifled howitzer aft which was much exposed, he served this piece with great ability and activity, although no officer superintended it.

PARKER, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Captain of the Afterguard, U.S. Navy. Birth: Boston, Mass. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: At the wheel on board the U.S.S. Cayuga during the capture of Forts St. Philip and Jackson, and New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. As his ship led the advance column toward the barrier and both forts opened fire simultaneously, striking the vessel from stem to stern, Parker conscientiously performed his duties throughout the action in which attempts by 3 rebel steamers to butt and board were thwarted, and the ships driven off. Eleven gunboats were successfully engaged and the enemy garrisons forced to surrender during this battle in which the Cayuga sustained 46 hits.

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RICHARDS, LOUIS
Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 1835, New York, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: Richards served as quartermaster on board the U.S.S. Pensacola in the attack upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip, and at the taking of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. Through all the din and roar of battle, he steered the ship through the narrow opening of the barricade, and his attention to orders contributed to the successful passage of the ship without once fouling the shore or the obstacles of the barricade.

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

WRIGHT, EDWARD
Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 1829, New York, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Cayuga during the capture of Forts St. Philip and Jackson and the taking of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. As his ship led the advance column toward the barrier and both forts opened fire simultaneously, striking the vessel from stem to stern Wright conscientiously performed his duties throughout the action in which attempts by 3 rebel steamers to butt and board were repelled, and the ships driven off or forced to surrender. Eleven gunboats were successfully engaged and the enemy garrisons captured during this battle in which the Cayuga sustained 46 hits.

YOUNG, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Boatswain’s Mate, U.S. navy. Born: 1835, New York. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Cayuga during the capture of Forts St. Philip and Jackson and the taking of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. As his ship led the advance column toward the barrier and both forts opened fire simultaneously, striking the vessel from stem to stern, Young calmly manned a Parrot gun throughout the action in which attempts by three rebel steamers to butt and board were thwarted and the ships driven off or captured, 11 gunboats were successfully engaged and garrisons forced to surrender. During the battle, the Cayuga sustained 46 hits.

FACTOR, POMPEY
Rank and organization: Private, Indian Scouts. Place and date: At Pecos River, Tex., 25 April 1875. Entered service at:——. Birth: Arkansas. Date of issue: 28 May 1875. Citation: With 3 other men, he participated in a charge against 25 hostiles while on a scouting patrol.

PAYNE, ISAAC
Rank and organization: Trumpeter, Indian Scouts. Place and date: At Pecos River, Tex., 25 April 1875. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Mexico. Date of issue: 28 May 1875. Citation: With 3 other men, he participated in a charge against 25 hostiles while on a scouting patrol.

WARD, JOHN
Rank and organization: Sergeant, 24th U.S. Infantry Indian Scouts Place and date: At Pecos River, Tex., 25 April 1875. Entered service at. Fort Duncan, Tex. Birth: Arkansas. Date of issue: 28 May 1875. Citation. With 3 other men, he participated in a charge against 25 hostiles while on a scouting patrol.

*GONZALES, DAVID M.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company A, 127th Infantry, 32d Infantry Division. Place and date: Villa Verde Trail, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 25 April 1945. Entered service at: Pacoima, Calif. Birth: Pacoima, Calif. G.O. No.: 115, 8 December 1945. Citation: He was pinned down with his company. As enemy fire swept the area, making any movement extremely hazardous, a 500-pound bomb smashed into the company’s perimeter, burying 5 men with its explosion. Pfc. Gonzales, without hesitation, seized an entrenching tool and under a hail of fire crawled 15 yards to his entombed comrades, where his commanding officer, who had also rushed forward, was beginning to dig the men out. Nearing his goal, he saw the officer struck and instantly killed by machinegun fire. Undismayed, he set to work swiftly and surely with his hands and the entrenching tool while enemy sniper and machinegun bullets struck all about him. He succeeded in digging one of the men out of the pile of rock and sand. To dig faster he stood up regardless of the greater danger from so exposing himself. He extricated a second man, and then another. As he completed the liberation of the third, he was hit and mortally wounded, but the comrades for whom he so gallantly gave his life were safely evacuated. Pfc. Gonzales’ valiant and intrepid conduct exemplifies the highest tradition of the military service.

*KNIGHT, RAYMOND L. (Air Mission)
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Corps. Place and date: In Northern Po Valley, Italy, 24 25 April 1945. Entered service at: Houston, Tex. Birth: Texas. G.O. No.: 81, 24 September 1945. Citation: He piloted a fighter-bomber aircraft in a series of low-level strafing missions, destroying 14 grounded enemy aircraft and leading attacks which wrecked 10 others during a critical period of the Allied drive in northern Italy. On the morning of 24 April, he volunteered to lead 2 other aircraft against the strongly defended enemy airdrome at Ghedi. Ordering his fellow pilots to remain aloft, he skimmed the ground through a deadly curtain of antiaircraft fire to reconnoiter the field, locating 8 German aircraft hidden beneath heavy camouflage. He rejoined his flight, briefed them by radio, and then led them with consummate skill through the hail of enemy fire in a low-level attack, destroying 5 aircraft, while his flight accounted for 2 others. Returning to his base, he volunteered to lead 3 other aircraft in reconnaissance of Bergamo airfield, an enemy base near Ghedi and 1 known to be equally well defended.

Again ordering his flight to remain out of range of antiaircraft fire, 1st Lt. Knight flew through an exceptionally intense barrage, which heavily damaged his Thunderbolt, to observe the field at minimum altitude. He discovered a squadron of enemy aircraft under heavy camouflage and led his flight to the assault. Returning alone after this strafing, he made 10 deliberate passes against the field despite being hit by antiaircraft fire twice more, destroying 6 fully loaded enemy twin-engine aircraft and 2 fighters. His skillfully led attack enabled his flight to destroy 4 other twin-engine aircraft and a fighter plane. He then returned to his base in his seriously damaged plane. Early the next morning, when he again attacked Bergamo, he sighted an enemy plane on the runway.

Again he led 3 other American pilots in a blistering low-level sweep through vicious antiaircraft fire that damaged his plane so severely that it was virtually non flyable. Three of the few remaining enemy twin-engine aircraft at that base were destroyed. Realizing the critical need for aircraft in his unit, he declined to parachute to safety over friendly territory and unhesitatingly attempted to return his shattered plane to his home field. With great skill and strength, he flew homeward until caught by treacherous air conditions in the Appennines Mountains, where he crashed and was killed. The gallant action of 1st Lt. Knight eliminated the German aircraft which were poised to wreak havoc on Allied forces pressing to establish the first firm bridgehead across the Po River; his fearless daring and voluntary self-sacrifice averted possible heavy casualties among ground forces and the resultant slowing on the German drive culminated in the collapse of enemy resistance in Italy.

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*ESSEBAGGER, JOHN, JR.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Company A, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Popsudong, Korea, 25 April 1951. Entered service at: Holland, Mich. Born: 29 October 1928, Holland, Mich. G.O. No.: 61, 24 April 1952. Citation: Cpl. Essebagger, a member of Company A, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Committed to effect a delaying action to cover the 3d Battalion’s withdrawal through Company A, Cpl. Essebagger, a member of 1 of 2 squads maintaining defensive positions in key terrain and defending the company’s right flank, had participated in repulsing numerous attacks. In a frenzied banzai charge the numerically superior enemy seriously threatened the security of the planned route of withdrawal and isolation of the small force. Badly shaken, the grossly outnumbered detachment started to fall back and Cpl. Essebagger, realizing the impending danger, voluntarily remained to provide security for the withdrawal.

Gallantly maintaining a one man stand, Cpl. Essebagger raked the menacing hordes with crippling fire and, with the foe closing on the position, left the comparative safety of his shelter and advanced in the face of overwhelming odds, firing his weapon and hurling grenades to disconcert the enemy and afford time for displacement of friendly elements to more tenable positions. Scorning the withering fire and bursting shells, Cpl. Essebagger continued to move forward, inflicting destruction upon the fanatical foe until he was mortally wounded. Cpl. Essebagger’s intrepid action and supreme sacrifice exacted a heavy toll in enemy dead and wounded, stemmed the onslaught, and enabled the retiring squads to reach safety. His valorous conduct and devotion to duty reflected lasting glory upon himself and was in keeping with the noblest traditions of the infantry and the U.S. Army.

*GILLILAND, CHARLES L.
Rank and organization: Corporal (then Pfc.), U.S. Army, Company I, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Tongmang-ni, Korea, 25 April 1951. Entered service at: Yellville (Marion County), Ark. Born: 24 May 1933, Mountain Home, Ark. G.O. No.: 2, 11 January 1955. Citation: Cpl. Gilliland, a member of Company I, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. A numerically superior hostile force launched a coordinated assault against his company perimeter, the brunt of which was directed up a defile covered by his automatic rifle. His assistant was killed by enemy fire but Cpl. Gilliland, facing the full force of the assault, poured a steady fire into the foe which stemmed the onslaught. When 2 enemy soldiers escaped his raking fire and infiltrated the sector, he leaped from his foxhole, overtook and killed them both with his pistol.

Sustaining a serious head wound in this daring exploit, he refused medical attention and returned to his emplacement to continue his defense of the vital defile. His unit was ordered back to new defensive positions but Cpl. Gilliland volunteered to remain to cover the withdrawal and hold the enemy at bay. His heroic actions and indomitable devotion to duty prevented the enemy from completely overrunning his company positions. Cpl. Gilliland’s incredible valor and supreme sacrifice reflect lasting glory upon himself and are in keeping with the honored traditions of the military service.

*GOODBLOOD, CLAIR
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Company D, 7th Infantry Regiment. Place and date: Near Popsu-dong, Korea, 24 and 25 April 1951. Entered service at: Burnham, Maine. Born: 18 September 1929, Fort Kent, Maine. G.O. No.: 14, 1 February 1952. Citation: Cpl. Goodblood, a member of Company D, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action against an armed enemy of the United Nations. Cpl. Goodblood, a machine gunner, was attached to Company B in defensive positions on thickly wooded key terrain under attack by a ruthless foe. In bitter fighting which ensued, the numerically superior enemy infiltrated the perimeter, rendering the friendly positions untenable. Upon order to move back, Cpl. Goodblood voluntarily remained to cover the withdrawal and, constantly vulnerable to heavy fire, inflicted withering destruction on the assaulting force.

Seeing a grenade lobbed at his position, he shoved his assistant to the ground and flinging himself upon the soldier attempted to shield him. Despite his valorous act both men were wounded. Rejecting aid for himself, he ordered the ammunition bearer to evacuate the injured man for medical treatment. He fearlessly maintained his l-man defense, sweeping the onrushing assailants with fire until an enemy banzai charge carried the hill and silenced his gun. When friendly elements regained the commanding ground, Cpl. Goodblood’s body was found lying beside his gun and approximately 100 hostile dead lay in the wake of his field of fire. Through his unflinching courage and willing self-sacrifice the onslaught was retarded, enabling his unit to withdraw, regroup, and resecure the strongpoint. Cpl. Goodblood’s inspirational conduct and devotion to duty reflect lasting glory on himself and are in keeping with the noble traditions of the military service.

MIYAMURA, HIROSHI H.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Company H, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Taejon-ni, Korea, 24 and 25 April 1951. Entered service at: Gallup, N. Mex. Birth: Gallup, N. Mex. G.O. No.: 85, 4 November 1953. Citation: Cpl. Miyamura, a member of Company H, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. On the night of 24 April, Company H was occupying a defensive position when the enemy fanatically attacked threatening to overrun the position. Cpl. Miyamura, a machine gun squad leader, aware of the imminent danger to his men unhesitatingly jumped from his shelter wielding his bayonet in close hand-to-hand combat killing approximately 10 of the enemy. Returning to his position, he administered first aid to the wounded and directed their evacuation. As another savage assault hit the line, he manned his machine gun and delivered withering fire until his ammunition was expended.

He ordered the squad to withdraw while he stayed behind to render the gun inoperative. He then bayoneted his way through infiltrated enemy soldiers to a second gun emplacement and assisted in its operation. When the intensity of the attack necessitated the withdrawal of the company Cpl. Miyamura ordered his men to fall back while he remained to cover their movement. He killed more than 50 of the enemy before his ammunition was depleted and he was severely wounded. He maintained his magnificent stand despite his painful wounds, continuing to repel the attack until his position was overrun. When last seen he was fighting ferociously against an overwhelming number of enemy soldiers. Cpl. Miyamura’s indomitable heroism and consummate devotion to duty reflect the utmost glory on himself and uphold the illustrious traditions on the military service.

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SPRAYBERRY, JAMES M .
Rank and organization: Captain (then 1st Lt.), U.S. Army, Company D, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry , 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Place and date: Republic of Vietnam, 25 April 1968. Entered service at: Montgomery, Ala. Born: 24 April 1947, LaGrange, Ga. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Capt. Sprayberry, Armor, U.S. Army, distinguished himself by exceptional bravery while serving as executive officer of Company D. His company commander and a great number of the men were wounded and separated from the main body of the company. A daylight attempt to rescue them was driven back by the well entrenched enemy’s heavy fire. Capt. Sprayberry then organized and led a volunteer night patrol to eliminate the intervening enemy bunkers and to relieve the surrounded element. The patrol soon began receiving enemy machinegun fire. Capt. Sprayberry quickly moved the men to protective cover and without regard for his own safety, crawled within close range of the bunker from which the fire was coming. He silenced the machinegun with a hand grenade. Identifying several one man enemy positions nearby, Capt. Sprayberry immediately attacked them with the rest of his grenades. He crawled back for more grenades and when 2 grenades were thrown at his men from a position to the front, Capt. Sprayberry, without hesitation, again exposed himself and charged the enemy-held bunker killing its occupants with a grenade.

Placing 2 men to cover his advance, he crawled forward and neutralized 3 more bunkers with grenades. Immediately thereafter, Capt. Sprayberry was surprised by an enemy soldier who charged from a concealed position. He killed the soldier with his pistol and with continuing disregard for the danger neutralized another enemy emplacement. Capt. Sprayberry then established radio contact with the isolated men, directing them toward his position. When the 2 elements made contact he organized his men into litter parties to evacuate the wounded. As the evacuation was nearing completion, he observed an enemy machinegun position which he silenced with a grenade. Capt. Sprayberry returned to the rescue party, established security, and moved to friendly lines with the wounded. This rescue operation, which lasted approximately 71/2 hours, saved the lives of many of his fellow soldiers. Capt. Sprayberry personally killed 12 enemy soldiers, eliminated 2 machineguns, and destroyed numerous enemy bunkers. Capt. Sprayberry’s indomitable spirit and gallant action at great personal risk to his life are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

STUMPF, KENNETH E.
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant (then Sp4c.), U.S. Army, Company C, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Duc Pho, Republic of Vietnam, 25 April 1967. Entered service at: Milwaukee, Wis. Born: 28 September 1944, Neenah, Wis. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. S/Sgt. Stumpf distinguished himself while serving as a squad leader of the 3d Platoon, Company C, on a search and destroy mission. As S/Sgt. Stumpf’s company approached a village, it encountered a North Vietnamese rifle company occupying a well fortified bunker complex. During the initial contact, 3 men from his squad fell wounded in front of a hostile machinegun emplacement. The enemy’s heavy volume of fire prevented the unit from moving to the aid of the injured men, but S/Sgt. Stumpf left his secure position in a deep trench and ran through the barrage of incoming rounds to reach his wounded comrades. He picked up 1 of the men and carried him back to the safety of the trench. Twice more S/Sgt. Stumpf dashed forward while the enemy turned automatic weapons and machineguns upon him, yet he managed to rescue the remaining 2 wounded squad members.

He then organized his squad and led an assault against several enemy bunkers from which continuously heavy fire was being received He and his squad successfully eliminated 2 of the bunker positions, but one to the front of the advancing platoon remained a serious threat. Arming himself with extra hand grenades, S/Sgt. Stumpf ran over open ground, through a volley of fire directed at him by a determined enemy, toward the machinegun position. As he reached the bunker, he threw a hand grenade through the aperture. It was immediately returned by the occupants, forcing S/Sgt. Stumpf to take cover. Undaunted, he pulled the pins on 2 more grenades, held them for a few seconds after activation, then hurled them into the position, this time successfully destroying the emplacement. With the elimination of this key position, his unit was able to assault and overrun the enemy. S/Sgt. Stumpf’s relentless spirit of aggressiveness, intrepidity, and ultimate concern for the lives of his men, are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.

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26 April

1607 – Ships under the command of Capt. Christopher Newport sought shelter in Chesapeake Bay. The forced landing led to the founding of Jamestown on the James River, the first English settlement. An expedition of English colonists, including Capt. John Smith, went ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

1655 – Dutch West Indies Co. denied Peter Stuyvesant’s desire to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam.

1718 – Esek Hopkins, first U.S. commander-in-chief, was born.

1777 – Sybil Ludington (16) rode from NY to CT rallying her father’s militia.

1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and former Consul to Tunis, William Eaton. The Battle of Derne was the decisive victory of a mercenary army led by a detachment of United States Marines and United States Army soldiers against the forces of Ottoman Tripolitania during the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded land battle the United States fought overseas. U.S. forces and mercenaries marched for 600 miles (970 km) through the desert to attack Derne.

1827 – Charles Edward Hovey, Bvt Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1856 – Some 20 settlers of Honey Lake Valley, California, met at the cabin of Isaac Roop and formed “the independent Territory of Nataqua.” They named the cabin Fort Defiance, chose Peter Lassen as their surveyor and selected Susanville, named after Roop’s daughter, as the territorial capital.

1862 – Fort Macon, North Carolina, surrendered to combined land-sea forces under Commander Lock¬wood and Brigadier General John G. Parke. U.S.S. Daylight, State of Georgia, Chippewa, and Gemsbok heavily bombarded the fort; blockade runners Alliance and Gondar were captured after the fort’s surrender.

1865 – Confederate General Joseph Johnston officially surrenders his army to General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina. After the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s force on April 9, Johnston’s army was the last hope of the Confederacy.

1865 – John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Twenty-six-year-old Booth was one of the most famous actors in the country when he shot Lincoln during a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington on the night of April 14. Booth was a Maryland native and a strong supporter of the Confederacy. As the war entered its final stages, Booth hatched a conspiracy to kidnap the president. He enlisted the aid of several associates, but the opportunity never presented itself. After the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, Booth changed the plan to a simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. Only Lincoln was actually killed, however. Seward was stabbed by Lewis Paine but survived, while the man assigned to kill Johnson did not carry out his assignment.

After shooting Lincoln, Booth jumped to the stage below Lincoln’s box seat. He landed hard, breaking his leg, before escaping to a waiting horse behind the theater. Many in the audience recognized Booth, so the army was soon hot on his trail. Booth and his accomplice, David Herold, made their way across the Anacostia River and headed toward southern Maryland. The pair stopped at Dr. Samuel Mudd’s home, and Mudd treated Booth’s leg. This earned Mudd a life sentence in prison when he was implicated as part of the conspiracy, but the sentence was later commuted.

Booth found refuge for several days at the home of Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent, before securing a boat to row across the Potomac to Virginia. After receiving aid from several Confederate sympathizers, Booth’s luck finally ran out. The countryside was swarming with military units looking for Booth, although few shared information since there was a $20,000 reward. While staying at the farm of Richard Garrett, Federal troops arrived on their search but soon rode on. The unsuspecting Garrett allowed his suspicious guests to sleep in his barn, but he instructed his son to lock the barn from the outside to prevent the strangers from stealing his horses.

A tip led the Union soldiers back to the Garrett farm, where they discovered Booth and Herold in the barn. Herold came out, but Booth refused. The building was set on fire to flush Booth, but he was shot while still inside. He lived for three hours before gazing at his hands, muttering “Useless, useless,” as he died. He was secretly buried in the floor of the Old Penitentiary in Washington.

1898 – Morrill, Hudson, and Hamilton, formerly Revenue Cutters and recently armed for service in the Mosquito Fleet, passed through Hampton Roads and after asking formal permission of the Commodore, proceeded to Key West. From that point they joint the Cuban blockading fleet.

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1915 – The government of Italy agrees to side with the Entente against it’s former ally Austria-Hungary and has been promised substantial territorial gains in the event of victory. Austria-Hungary rapidly moves to reinforce it’s border with Italy from the Eastern Front and Serbia.

1921 – The first weather news was aired by station WEW in St. Louis, Mo.

1937 – During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force, the Luftwaffe, and the principles of Blitzkreig, on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a small rural city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared nonbelligerence in the conflict. With Franco’s approval, the cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days. The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica aroused world opinion and became a symbol of fascist brutality.
Unfortunately, by 1942, all major participants in World War II had adopted the bombing innovations developed by the Nazis at Guernica, and by the war’s end, in 1945, millions of innocent civilians had perished under both Allied and Axis air raids.

1943 – An American squadron under the command of Admiral McMorris bombards the Japanese held harbors on Attu Island.

1943 – New plans are approved for the Solomon Islands operatoins (code named “Cartwheel”). Admiral Halsey’s South Pacific Area forces are to advance through New Georgia and Bougainville. MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area is to continue its advance northwest along the coast of New Guinea until he and Halsey can link up to isolate the Japanese bases at Rabaul and Kavieng.

1944 – The American beachheads at Tanahmerah Bay and Humboldt Bay are linked up. Australian forces, to the east, capture Alexishafen, west of Madang.

1945 – US 3rd Army units take Regensburg while other elements enter Austria. In the south, the French 1st Army reaches Lake Constance.

1945 – US 5th Army units head north from Verona toward the Brenner Pass and west toward Milan. The British 8th Army has crossed the Adige River and moves northeast toward Venice and Trieste.

1945 – There is a further American landing on Negros, this time by units of the Americal Division in the southwest of the island. The troops advance well inland before encountering Japanese resistance.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 24th Corps attacks the along the Japanese held Maeda Escarpment (Shuri Line). American armor reaches the reverse slope.

1945 – Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army are liberated in Baguio City and they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

1952 – US minesweeper “Hobson” rammed the aircraft carrier “Wasp,” and 176 were killed when the minesweeper sank.

1952 – Armistice negotiations resumed.

1952 – Air Force Major William H. Wescott, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, scored his fifth aerial victory to become the 12th ace of the Korean War. His F-86 Sabre “Lady Francis/Michigan Center” was also used by Colonel “Gabby” Gabreski for one of his victories.

1954 – In an effort to resolve several problems in Asia, including the war between the French and Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina, representatives from the world’s powers meet in Geneva. The conference marked a turning point in the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, France, and Great Britain came together in April 1954 to try to resolve several problems related to Asia. One of the most troubling concerns was the long and bloody battle between Vietnamese nationalist forces, under the leadership of the communist Ho Chi Minh, and the French, who were intent on continuing colonial control over Vietnam. Since 1946 the two sides had been hammering away at each other. By 1954, however, the French were tiring of the long and inclusive war that was draining both the national treasury and public patience. The United States had been supporting the French out of concern that a victory for Ho’s forces would be the first step in communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia. When America refused France’s requests for more direct intervention in the war, the French announced that they were including the Vietnam question in the agenda for the Geneva Conference.

Discussions on the Vietnam issue started at the conference just as France suffered its worst military defeat of the war, when Vietnamese forces captured the French base at Dien Bien Phu. In July 1954, the Geneva Agreements were signed. As part of the agreement, the French agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Vietnam. Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections within two years to choose a president and reunite the country. During that two-year period, no foreign troops could enter Vietnam. Ho reluctantly signed off on the agreement though he believed that it cheated him out of the spoils of his victory. The non-communist puppet government set up by the French in southern Vietnam refused to sign, but without French support this was of little concern at the time. The United States also refused to sign, but did commit itself to abide by the agreement.

Privately, U.S. officials felt that the Geneva Agreements, if allowed to be put into action, were a disaster. They were convinced that national elections in Vietnam would result in an overwhelming victory for Ho, the man who had defeated the French colonialists. The U.S. government scrambled to develop a policy that would, at the least, save southern Vietnam from the communists. Within a year, the United States had helped establish a new anti-communist government in South Vietnam and began giving it financial and military assistance, the first fateful steps toward even greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

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1961 – President Kennedy meets with the National Security Council to decide whether to send troops into Laos. Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell L. Gilpatric recommends quick expansion of Vietnam’s forces by 40,000 to prevent an invasion of South Vietnam from Laos, as well as an increase of two 1600 man US trainers and 400 Special Forces troops with a counterinsurgency tasking.

1962 – NASA’s Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. Ranger 4 was a spacecraft of the Ranger program designed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to crashing upon the Moon, to rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon, to collect gamma-ray data in flight, to study radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, and to continue testing of the Ranger program for development of lunar and interplanetary spacecraft. An onboard computer failure caused failure of the deployment of the solar panels and navigation systems; as a result the spacecraft crashed on the far side of the Moon without returning any scientific data. It was the first U.S. spacecraft to reach another celestial body.

1965 – Secretary McNamara reports that although the air raids against North Vietnam have ‘slowed down the movement of men and materiel…infiltration of both arms and personnel into South Vietnam has increased. McNamara, however, refuses to answer questions on increasing troop strength. The war is now costing the nation about $1.5 billion per year.

1965 – A Lou Harris poll shows that about 57% of Americans support Johnson’s handling of the war.

1965 – 20,000 Cambodian students attack the US Embassy there and tear down the US flag in protest.

1967 – US planes from Thailand attack a five-span bridge four miles north of Hanoi to sever rail links to Communist China.

1968 – The United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a one-megaton nuclear device called “Boxcar.”

1971 – The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. These figures were a direct result of President Richard Nixon’s new “Vietnamization” strategy, which he had announced at the Midway Conference in June 1969. This strategy was a three-pronged program to disengage the United States from the war in Vietnam. The program required that efforts be increased to improve the combat capability of the South Vietnamese armed forces so that they could assume responsibility for the war against the North Vietnamese. Then, as the South Vietnamese became more capable, U.S. forces would be withdrawn from South Vietnam. At the same time, U.S. negotiators would continue to try to reach a negotiated settlement to the war with the communists at the Paris peace talks.

The announcement represented a significant change in the nature of the U.S. commitment to the war. The first U.S. soldiers were withdrawn in the fall of 1969 and the withdrawals continued periodically through 1972. Simultaneously, the U.S. increased the advisory effort and provided massive amounts of new equipment and weapons to the South Vietnamese. When the North Vietnamese launched the massive “Easter Offensive” invasion in spring 1972, the South Vietnamese wavered, but eventually rallied with U.S. support and prevailed over the North Vietnamese. Nixon proclaimed that the South Vietnamese victory validated his strategy.

1971 – In Washington D.C., heretofore peaceful anti-war protests of the past five days, change character as militant leaders from Vietnam Veterans Against the War take over. Tactics change to aggressive ‘people’s lobbying,’ with the avowed purpose of ‘shutting down the government,’ primarily by clogging traffic. 5000 Washington police, backed by 12000 troops outmaneuver them.

1972 – President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. Nixon emphasized that while U.S. ground troops were being withdrawn, sea and air support for the South Vietnamese would continue. In fact, the U.S. Navy doubled the number of its fighting ships off Vietnam.

1980 – Following an unsuccessful attempt by the United States to rescue U.S. Embassy hostages in Iran, the Tehran government announced that captives were being scattered to thwart any future effort.

1999 – Pres. Milosevic met with Red Cross Pres. Cornelio Sommuraga and said the Red Cross may return to Kosovo and “go anywhere.” Sommuraga met briefly with the 3 captive Americans and said they were ok.

2001 – A US federal judge ruled that military exercises could resume on Vieques Island. Puerto Ricans mobilized for mass demonstrations.

2001 – A group led by Larry Silverstein, a NYC developer, and Westfield America Inc., signed a 99-year lease on the 11-million square-foot WTC complex from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

2003 – In Iraq attackers fired into an ammunition dump guarded by Americans on Baghdad’s southeastern outskirts, setting off thunderous explosions that killed at least six Iraqis and wounded four. As many as 40 were thought killed.

2003 – Russia launched a Soyuz rocket with a 2-man crew, American astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, to keep the space station operating while Shuttle flights are suspended.

2004 – In Baghdad, Iraq, an explosion leveled part of a building as American troops searched it for suspected production of “chemical munitions.” 2 soldiers were killed and 5 wounded in the blast. In a Fallujah suburb 1 Marine was killed along with 8 insurgents.

2010 – Former dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega is extradited from the United States to France.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

COOPER, JOHN (Second Award)
Rank and organization: Coxswain, U.S. Navy. Born: 1832, Ireland. Accredited to: New York G.O. No.: 62, 29 June 1865. Citation: Served as quartermaster on Acting Rear Admiral Thatcher’s staff. During the terrific fire at Mobile, on 26 April 1865, at the risk of being blown to pieces by exploding shells, Cooper advanced through the burning locality, rescued a wounded man from certain death, and bore him on his back to a place of safety.

CODY, WILLIAM F.
Rank: Civilian Scout. Born: Scott County, Iowa. Organization: 3rd Cavalry U.S. Army. Action date: 26 April 1872. Place: Platte River, Nebraska. Citation: Gallantry in action.
(In 1916, the general review of all Medals of Honor deemed 900 unwarranted. This recipient was one of them. In June 1989, the U.S. Army Board of Correction of Records restored the medal to this recipient.)

FOLEY, JOHN H.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company B, 3d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Loupe Fork, Platte River, Nebr., 26 April 1872. Entered service at:——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 22 May 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

STRAYER, WILLIAM H.
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 3d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Loupe Forke, Platte River, Nebr., 26 April 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Maytown, Pa. Date of issue: 22 May 1862. Citation: Gallantry in action.

VOKES, LEROY H.
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company B, 3d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Loupe Fork, Platte River, Nebr., 26 April 1872. Entered service at:——. Birth: Lake County, Ill. Date of issue: 22 May 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

SHELTON, GEORGE M.
Rank and organization: Private, Company 1, 23d U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At La Paz, Leyte, Philippine Islands, 26 April 1900. Entered service at: Bellington, Tex. Birth: Brownwood, Tex. Date of issue: 10 March 1902. Citation: Advanced alone under heavy fire of the enemy and rescued a wounded comrade.

*DUKE, RAY E.
Rank and organization: Sergeant First Class, U.S. Army, Company C, 21st Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Mugok, Korea, 26 April 1951. Entered service at: Whitwell (Marion County), Tenn. Born: 9 May 1923, Whitwell, Tenn. G.O. No.: 20, 19 March 1954. Citation: Sfc. Duke, a member of Company C, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Upon learning that several of his men were isolated and heavily engaged in an area yielded by his platoon when ordered to withdraw, he led a small force in a daring assault which recovered the position and the beleaguered men. Another enemy attack in strength resulted in numerous casualties but Sfc. Duke, although wounded by mortar fragments, calmly moved along his platoon line to coordinate fields of fire and to urge his men to hold firm in the bitter encounter.

Wounded a second time he received first aid and returned to his position. When the enemy again attacked shortly after dawn, despite his wounds, Sfc. Duke repeatedly braved withering fire to insure maximum defense of each position. Threatened with annihilation and with mounting casualties, the platoon was again ordered to withdraw when Sfc. Duke was wounded a third time in both legs and was unable to walk. Realizing that he was impeding the progress of 2 comrades who were carrying him from the hill, he urged them to leave him and seek safety. He was last seen pouring devastating fire into the ranks of the onrushing assailants. The consummate courage, superb leadership, and heroic actions of Sfc. Duke, displayed during intensive action against overwhelming odds, reflect the highest credit upon himself, the infantry, and the U.S. Army.

*ESTOCIN, MICHAEL J.
Rank and organization. Captain (then Lt. Cmdr.), U.S. Navy, Attack Squadron 192, USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14). Place and date: Haiphong, North Vietnam, 20 and 26 April 1967. Entered service at: Akron Ohio, 2() July 1954. Born: 27 April 1931, Turtle Creek, Pa. Citation. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty on 20 and 26 April 1967 as a pilot in Attack Squadron 192, embarked in USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14). Leading a 3-plane group of aircraft in support of a coordinated strike against two thermal power plants in Haiphong, North Vietnam, on 20 April 1967, Capt. Estocin provided continuous warnings to the strike group leaders of the surface-to-air missile (SAM) threats, and personally neutralized 3 SAM sites. Although his aircraft was severely damaged by an exploding missile, he reentered the target area and relentlessly prosecuted a SHRIKE attack in the face of intense antiaircraft fire.

With less than 5 minutes of fuel remaining he departed the target area and commenced in-flight refueling which continued for over 100 miles. Three miles aft of Ticonderoga, and without enough fuel for a second approach, he disengaged from the tanker and executed a precise approach to a fiery arrested landing. On 26 April 1967, in support of a coordinated strike against the vital fuel facilities in Haiphong, he led an attack on a threatening SAM site, during which his aircraft was seriously damaged by an exploding SAM; nevertheless, he regained control of his burning aircraft and courageously launched his SHRIKE missiles before departing the area. By his inspiring courage and unswerving devotion to duty in the face of grave personal danger, Captain Estocin upheld the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*LEE, MILTON A.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company B, 2d Battalion, 502d Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile). place and date: Near Phu Bai, Thua Thien province, Republic of Vietnam, 26 April 1968. Entered service at: San Antonio, Tex. Born: 28 February 1949, Shreveport, La. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Pfc. Lee distinguished himself near the city of Phu Bai in the province of Thua Thien. Pfc. Lee was serving as the radio telephone operator with the 3d platoon, Company B. As lead element for the company, the 3d platoon received intense surprise hostile fire from a force of North Vietnamese Army regulars in well-concealed bunkers. With 50 percent casualties, the platoon maneuvered to a position of cover to treat their wounded and reorganize, while Pfc. Lee moved through the heavy enemy fire giving lifesaving first aid to his wounded comrades. During the subsequent assault on the enemy defensive positions, Pfc. Lee continuously kept close radio contact with the company commander, relaying precise and understandable orders to his platoon leader.

While advancing with the front rank toward the objective, Pfc. Lee observed 4 North Vietnamese soldiers with automatic weapons and a rocket launcher Lying in wait for the lead element of the platoon. As the element moved forward, unaware of the concealed danger, Pfc. Lee immediately and with utter disregard for his own personal safety, passed his radio to another soldier and charged through the murderous fire. Without hesitation he continued his assault, overrunning the enemy position, killing all occupants and capturing 4 automatic weapons and a rocket launcher. Pfc. Lee continued his 1-man assault on the second position through a heavy barrage of enemy automatic weapons fire. Grievously wounded, he continued to press the attack, crawling forward into a firing position and delivering accurate covering fire to enable his platoon to maneuver and destroy the position.

Not until the position was overrun did Pfc. Lee falter in his steady volume of fire and succumb to his wounds. Pfc. Lee’s heroic actions saved the lives of the lead element and were instrumental in the destruction of the key position of the enemy defense. Pfc. Lee’s gallantry at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on himself, the 502d Infantry, and the U.S. Army.

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27 April

1677 – Colonel Jeffreys became the governor of Virginia.

1773 – The British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and thus granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the so-called Boston Tea Party with about 60 members of the radical Sons of Liberty. On December 16, 1773, the Patriots boarded the British ships disguised as Mohawk Indians and dumped the tea chests, valued at ₤18,000, into the water. Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in the following year. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

1777 – At the Battle of Ridgefield, a British invasion force engages and defeats Continental Army regulars and militia irregulars at Ridgefield, Connecticut. The Battle of Ridgefield was a battle and a series of skirmishes between American and British forces during the American Revolutionary War. The main battle was fought in the village and more skirmishing occurred the next day between Ridgefield and the coastline near modern Westport, Connecticut. On April 25, 1777 a British force under the command of the Royal Governor of the Province of New York, Major General William Tryon landed between Fairfield and Norwalk (in what is now Westport), and marched from there to Danbury. There they destroyed Continental Army supplies after chasing off a small garrison of troops. When word of the British troop movements spread, Connecticut militia leaders sprang into action. Major General David Wooster, Brigadier General Gold S. Silliman, and Brigadier General Benedict Arnold raised a combined force of roughly 700 Continental Army regular and irregular local militia forces to oppose the British, but could not reach Danbury in time to prevent the destruction of the supplies. Instead, they set out to harass the British on their return to the coast. The company led by General Wooster twice attacked Tryon’s rear guard during their march south on April 27th. In the second encounter, Wooster was mortally wounded; he died five days later.

The main encounter then took place at Ridgefield, where several hundred militia under Arnold’s command confronted the British and were driven away in a running battle down the town’s main street, but not before inflicting casualties on the British. Additional militia forces arrived, and the next day they continued to harass the British as they returned to Compo Beach, where the fleet awaited them. Arnold regrouped the militia and some artillery to make a stand against the British near their landing site, but his position was flanked and his force scattered by artillery fire and a bayonet charge. The expedition was a tactical success for the British forces, but their actions in pursuing the raid galvanized Patriot support in Connecticut. While the British again made raids on Connecticut’s coastal communities (including a second raiding expedition by Tryon in 1779 and a 1781 raid led by Arnold after his defection to the British side), they made no more raids that penetrated far into the countryside.

1805 – After marching 500 miles from Egypt, U.S. agent William Eaton leads a small force of U.S. Marines and Berber mercenaries against the Tripolitan port city of Derna. The Marines and Berbers were on a mission to depose Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States. The First Barbary War had begun four years earlier, when U.S. President Thomas Jefferson ordered U.S. Navy vessels to the Mediterranean Sea in protest of continuing raids against U.S. ships by pirates from the Barbary states–Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripolitania. American sailors were often abducted along with the captured booty and ransomed back to the United States at an exorbitant price. After two years of minor confrontations, sustained action began in June 1803, when a small U.S. expeditionary force attacked Tripoli harbor in present-day Libya.

In April 1805, a major American victory came during the Derna campaign, which was undertaken by U.S. land forces in North Africa. Supported by the heavy guns of the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, Marines and Arab mercenaries under William Eaton captured Derna and deposed Yusuf Karamanli. Lieutenant Presley O’ Bannon, commanding the Marines, performed so heroically in the battle that Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The phrase “to the shores of Tripoli,” from the official song of the U.S. Marine Corps, also has its origins in the Derna campaign.

1813 – After surviving two dangerous exploratory expeditions into uncharted areas of the West, Zebulon Pike dies during a battle in the War of 1812. By the time he became a general in 1812, Pike had already faced many perilous situations. He joined the army when he was 15, and eventually took various military posts on the American frontier. In 1805, General James Wilkinson ordered Pike to lead 20 soldiers on a reconnaissance of the upper Mississippi River. Expecting to return before the rivers froze, Pike and his small band departed up the Mississippi in a 70-foot keelboat in early August. Slow progress, however, meant Pike and his men spent a hard winter near present-day Little Falls, Minnesota, before returning the following spring. Less than three months later, Wilkinson ordered Pike to head west again. This time, Pike and his men explored the headwaters of the Arkansas River, a route that took them into Colorado.

There, Pike saw the towering peak that now bears his name, and he made an ill-advised attempt to climb it. Grossly underestimating the height of the mountain and dressed only in thin cotton uniforms, Pike and his men struggled with deep snow and sub-zero temperatures before finally abandoning the ascent.

During this second expedition, Pike also became lost and wandered into Spanish-controlled territory. A Spanish patrol arrested him and took him into custody. Although Pike had indisputably lost his way, he had also hoped the Spanish would capture him so he could see more of their territory. This risky strategy paid off. Failing to recognize they were providing Pike with a golden opportunity to spy on the territory, the Spanish obligingly moved their prisoner first to Santa Fe and then to Chihuahua, before finally releasing him near the U.S. boundary at Louisiana. Impressed with his daring and his reputation as an efficient officer, the military promoted Pike to brigadier general during the War of 1812. Having survived two perilous journeys into the Far West, Pike was killed on this day in 1813 while leading an attack on British troops in Toronto. He was 34 years old.

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1813 – American troops capture the capital of Upper Canada in the Battle of York (present day Toronto, Canada). The Battle of York was fought in York (present-day Toronto), the capital of the province of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), between United States forces and the British defenders of York during the War of 1812. U.S. forces under Zebulon Pike were able to defeat the defenders of York, comprising a British-led force under the command of Roger Hale Sheaffe, combined with a small group of Ojibway allies. An American force supported by a naval flotilla landed on the lake shore to the west, defeated the defending British force and captured the fort, town and dockyard. The Americans themselves suffered heavy casualties, including Brigadier General Zebulon Pike who was leading the troops, when the retreating British blew up the fort’s magazine. The American forces subsequently carried out several acts of arson and looting in the town before withdrawing. Though the Americans won a clear victory, it did not have decisive strategic results as York was a less important objective in military terms than Kingston, where the British armed vessels on Lake Ontario were based.

1822 – Ulysses S. Grant, general and 18th U.S. president (1869-1877), was born in Point Pleasant [Hiram], Ohio.

1860 – Thomas J Jackson (the future “Stonewall”) was assigned to command Harpers Ferry.

1861 – President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

1861 – West Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union.

1861 – President Lincoln extended blockade of Confederacy to VA and NC ports.

1861 – US Secretary of the Navy Welles issued order for Union ships to seize Confederate privateers upon the high seas.

1862 – Fort Livingston, Bastian Bay, Louisiana, surrendered to the Navy Boat crew from U.S.S. Kittatinny who raised the United States flag over the fort.

1863 – Battle of Streight’s raid: Tuscumbia to Cedar Bluff, Alabama.

1863 – The Army of the Potomac began marching on Chancellorsville.

1864 – Attempting to reach Alexandria, Union gunboats under Rear Admiral Porter fought a running engagement with Confederate troops and artillery along the Red River. Wooden gunboats U.S.S. Fort Hindman, Acting Lieutenant John Pearce, U.S.S. Cricket, Acting Master Henry Gorringe, U.S.S. Juliet, Acting Master J. S. Watson, and two pump steamers were attacked by a large force while making final preparations to blow up U.S.S. Eastport. The Confederates charged Cricket in an attempt to carry her by boarding, but were driven back by a heavy volley of grape and canister from the gunboats. Later in the day, near the mouth of the Cane River at Deloach’s Bluff, Louisiana, Southern troops, this time with artillery as well as muskets, again struck Porter’s ships, wreaking havoc.

Cricket, the Admiral’s flagship, was hit repeatedly by the batteries, but finally succeeded in rounding a bend in the river downstream and out of range. Pump Steamer Champion No. 3 took a direct hit in her boiler, drifted out of control, and was captured. Juliet’s engine was disabled by Confederate shot, but Champion No. 5, though badly hit, succeeded in towing her upstream out of range. Fort Hindman covered the withdrawal of the disabled vessels, and the night of April 26 was spent in making urgent repairs. Confederate Major General Richard Taylor, commanding forces along the river, described his plans as follows: ‘My dispositions for the day are to . . . keep up a constant fight with the gunboats, following them with sharpshooters and killing every man who exposes himself.”

On 27 April the ships made a second attempt to pass the batteries. Fort Hindman took a shot which partially disabled her steering, and she drifted past the Confederate guns. Champion No. 5 was so damaged that she grounded, was abandoned, and burned. Juliet succeeded in getting through, but was severely damaged. Ironclad U.S.S. Neosho, Acting Lieutenant Samuel Howard, attempting to assist the embattled gunboats, arrived after the riddled ships had passed the batteries, having endured what Porter later described as “the heaviest fire I ever witnessed.” By day’s end on the 27th, Porter had reassembled his squadron at Alexandria and began to plan means to pass the Red River rapids.

1865 – The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing 1,700 passengers including many discharged Union soldiers. The Sultana was launched from Cincinnati in 1863. The boat was 260 feet long and had an authorized capacity of 376 passengers and crew. It was soon employed to carry troops and supplies along the lower Mississippi River. The Sultana left New Orleans on April 21st with 100 passengers. It stopped at Vicksburg, Mississippi, for repair of a leaky boiler. R. G. Taylor, the boilermaker on the ship, advised Captain J. Cass Mason that two sheets on the boiler had to be replaced, but Mason order Taylor to simply patch the plates until the ship reached St. Louis. Mason was part owner of the riverboat, and he and the other owners were anxious to pick up discharged Union prisoners at Vicksburg.

The federal government promised to pay $5 for each enlisted man and $10 for each officer delivered to the North. Such a contract could pay huge dividends, and Mason convinced local military authorities to pick up the entire contingent despite the presence of two other steamboats at Vicksburg. When the Sultana left Vicksburg, it carried 2,100 troops and 200 civilians, more than six times its capacity.

On the evening of April 26th, the ship stopped at Memphis before cruising across the river to pick up coal in Arkansas. As it steamed up the river above Memphis, a thunderous explosion tore through the boat. Metal and steam from the boilers killed hundreds, and hundreds more were thrown from the boat into the chilly waters of the river. The Mississippi was already at flood stage, and the “Sultana” had only one lifeboat and a few life preservers.

Only 600 people survived the explosion. A board of inquiry later determined the cause to be insufficient water in the boiler–overcrowding was not listed as a cause. The Sultana accident is still the largest maritime disaster in U.S. history.

1877 – President Hayes removed Federal troops from LA. Reconstruction ended.

1897 – President Ulysses S .Grant’s Tomb was dedicated.

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1940 – Himmler orders the construction of Auschwitz concentration camp.

1942 – The 1st convoys of Japanese detainees arrived at the Tanforan detention center south of San Francisco. The assembly center remained in operation for 169 days after which detainees were transferred to relocation camps. Most of the Tanforan detainees were transferred to Abraham, Utah.

1944 – During the night (April 27-28), 3 American LST landing craft, conducting an invasion exercise (Exercise “Tiger”), are torpedoed by German E-boats in Lyme Bay. A total of 638 troops are killed. This incident is kept secret for fear of damaging Anglo-American relations.

1944 – US troops occupy the main airstrip at Hollandia, New Guinea.

1945 – Forces of US 5th Army liberate Genoa, which is already substantially controlled by Italian partisan forces.

1945 – Italian partisans captured Mussolini and his mistress trying to flee Italy.

1945 – US forces capture Baguio, on Luzon. Fighting continues in the Bicol Peninsula.

1945 – A squadron of 3 cruisers and 6 destroyers, commanded by Admiral Berkey, make a preparatory bombardment of targets in the Tarakan area in the northeast of the island of Borneo.

1946 – 1st radar installation aboard a commercial ship was installed.

1951 – Munsan fell to communist forces as the CCF (Chinese Communist Forces) Spring Offensive continued.

1953 – Operation Moolah is initiated by U.S. General Mark W. Clark against Communist pilots in the Korean War. Operation Moolah was a United States Air Force (USAF) effort during the Korean War to obtain through defection a fully capable Soviet MiG-15 jet fighter. Communist forces introduced the MiG-15 to Korea on November 1, 1950. USAF pilots reported that the performance of the MiG-15 was superior to all United Nations (U.N.) aircraft, including the USAF’s newest plane, the F-86 Sabre.

The operation focused on influencing Communist pilots to defect to South Korea with a MiG for a financial reward. The success of the operation is disputable since no Communist pilot defected before the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. However, on September 21, 1953, North Korean pilot Lieutenant No Kum-Sok flew his MiG-15 to the Kimpo Air Base, South Korea, unaware of Operation Moolah.

1955 – After a meeting with General J. Lawton Collins in Washington, Secretary Dulles reluctantly agrees to replace Diem and cables the embassy in Saigon to find an alternative. CIA Colonel Lansdale, who has already helped foil General Hinh’s coup against Diem by organizing an effective palace guard, rallies to Diem’s side. he presses the embassy to support Diem and takes ‘all measures possible under narrow limits permitted by US policy.’

1959 – US State Dept. announced small arms stored in Canal Zone will be provided to Panamanian forces to repel Cuban invaders.

1960 – The 1st atomic powered electric-drive submarine was launched at Tullibee.

strong>1965 – President Johnson renews his offer of ‘unconditional discussions…with any governments concerned,’ and defends US bombing raids. “Our restraint was viewed as weakness. We could no longer stand by while attacks mounted.”

1966 – After a US Air Force B-57 became reported overdue, the US Coast Guard Eastern Area Commander commenced an intensive air search. The 2-day, large-scale, over water search for the missing aircraft, all of which was coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard, unfortunately, yielded negative results.

1968 – Vice-President Hubert Humphrey announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. In an interview he supports the current US policy of sending troops ‘where required by our own national security.’

1972 – Official Vietnam peace talks, suspended on 23 March, resume in Paris.

1972 – Apollo 16 returned to Earth.

1972 – North Vietnamese troops shatter defenses north of Quang Tri and move to within 2.5 miles of the city. Using Russian-built tanks, they took Dong Ha, 7 miles north of Quang Tri, the next day and continued to tighten their ring around Quang Tri, shelling it heavily. South Vietnamese troops suffered their highest casualties for any week in the war in the bitter fighting. This was the northern-most front of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, launched on March 30th when more than 120,000 North Vietnamese troops invaded South Vietnam. The attacks on Quang Tri were followed by attacks on Binh Long province, just 75 miles north of Saigon, and Kontum in the Central Highlands.

Hanoi’s 304th Division, supported by tanks, artillery, and antiaircraft units, swept across the Demilitarized Zone and routed the South Vietnamese division that had been guarding outlying positions on the approach to Quang Tri. The attackers quickly overwhelmed the South Vietnamese troops, who fell back toward the city of Quang Tri. The North Vietnamese encircled the city and continued to pound it with artillery and rockets.

On May 1st, the North Vietnamese captured the city as the South Vietnamese 3rd Division collapsed as a fighting force. This was the first provincial capital to fall during the North Vietnamese offensive and ultimately the North Vietnamese controlled the entire province. Hanoi claimed 10,000 South Vietnamese and Allied casualties were captured during the battle for Quang Tri.

1975 – Saigon was encircled by North Vietnamese troops.

1978 – Afghanistan President Sardar Mohammed Daoud is overthrown and murdered in a coup led by procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political upheaval in Afghanistan that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later. Daoud had ruled Afghanistan since coming to power in a coup in 1973. His relations with the neighboring Soviet Union had grown progressively worse since that time as he pursued a campaign against Afghan communists.

The murder of a leading Afghan Communist Party leader in early April 1978 may have encouraged the communists to launch their successful campaign against the Daoud regime later that month. In the political chaos that followed the death of Daoud, Nur Mohammed Taraki, head of the Afghan Communist Party, took over the presidency.

In December 1978, Afghanistan signed a 20-year “friendship treaty” with the Soviet Union, by which increasing amounts of Russian military and economic assistance flowed into the country. None of this, however, could stabilize the Taraki government. His dictatorial style and his decision to turn Afghanistan into a one-party state alienated many people in the heavily Moslem country.

In September 1979, Taraki was himself overthrown and murdered. Three months later, Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan and installed a government acceptable to the Russians, and a war between Afghan rebels and Soviet troops erupted. The conflict lasted until Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew the Soviet forces in 1988. In the years following the Soviet intervention, Afghanistan became a Cold War battlefield.

The United States responded quickly and harshly to the Soviet action by freezing arms talks, cutting wheat sales to Russia, and boycotting the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. Tension increased after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. The United States provided arms and other assistance to what Reagan referred to as the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan. For the Soviets, the Afghanistan intervention was a disaster, draining both Soviet finances and manpower. In the United States, commentators were quick to label the battle in Afghanistan “Russia’s Vietnam.”

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1978 – Former United States President Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman is released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes.

1981 – Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse.

1989 – In China more than 150,000 students and workers calling for democracy marched, cheered and sang as they took over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

1989 – President George Bush dedicated the Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Center East, otherwise known as C3I, in south Florida. The facility, manned by Coast Guard and Customs personnel, was designed to give law enforcement agencies instant access to air and marine smuggling information.

1990 – The aperture door of the Hubble Space Telescope was opened by ground controllers as the space shuttle Discovery, which had carried the Hubble into orbit, prepared to return home.

1991 – A group of 250 Kurds became the first refugees to move into a new US-built camp in northern Iraq.

1997 – A Texas militia group, called Republic of Texas, took 2 hostages at the Davis Mountain Resort community in a standoff with 300 police officers. They advocated independence for the state. The hostages were released later the next day in exchange for a jailed comrade, but the standoff continued. Richard McLaren and Robert Otto were later captured, convicted and sentenced to 99 and 50 years in prison.

1998 – A Pentagon panel said remains of the Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery should be exhumed to determine whether they belonged to Air Force 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, as his family believed. The remains were later positively identified as Blassie’s.

1998 – The UN extended security sanctions against Iraq but agreed to reviews every 60 days. It was earlier reported that Iraq recently had executed 1,500 political prisoners.

1999 – The US Pentagon announced a call for 33,102 reservists for active duty in Kosovo.

2001 – In Puerto Rico the US Navy resumed bombing exercises on Vieques Island where 14 protesters were arrested.

2002 – South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth arrived at the international space station for an eight-day, seven-night cruise that cost him $20 million.

2002 – The last successful telemetry received from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10. 33 minutes of clean data received from a distance of 80.22 AU.

2003 – Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin al-Yasin (6 of clubs in the Most Wanted Deck), chief Iraqi liaison with UN weapons inspectors, surrendered to US forces.

2003 – The U.S. military arrested the self-anointed mayor of Baghdad, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, reflecting U.S. determination to brook no interlopers in its effort to build a consensus for administering Iraq.

2004 – U.S. troops fought gun battles with militiamen overnight near the city of Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents.

2005 – In Vietnam, six people are arrested for trying to sell human remains as remains of MIA US soldiers.

2006 – Construction begins on the Freedom Tower in New York City breaking a deadlock between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and private developer Larry Silverstein. The 1,776-foot tower is the centerpiece of the rebuilding effort for the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

2007 – CIA arrested a senior al-Qaeda operative, Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, and transferred him to the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Hadi was a key paramilitary commander in Afghanistan during the late 1990s, before taking charge of cross-border attacks against US and coalition troops from 2002 to 2004. He was accused of commanding attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, and of involvement in plots to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

2009 – A low-flying Boeing VC-25, Air Force One, causes momentary panic in New York City, New York, United States. It was intended as a photo opportunity, a showcase of Air Force One alongside the sweep of New York City skyline. Director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, ultimately takes responsibility for approving the mission and failing to notify authorities in New York City. Caldera resigned as a result, on 22 May 2009.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BURRITT, WILLIAM W.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 113th Illinois Infantry. Place and date: At Vicksburg, Miss., 27 April 1863. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Birth: Campbell, N.Y. Date of issue: 8 July 1896. Citation: Voluntarily acted as a fireman on a steam tug which ran the blockade and passed the batteries under a heavy fire.

WEISBOGEL, ALBERT (Second Award)
Citation: For gallant conduct in jumping overboard from the U.S.S. Plymouth, at sea, and rescuing from drowning one of the crew of that vessel on 27 April 1876.

FUNSTON, FREDERICK
Rank and organization: Colonel, 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: At Rio Grande de la Pampanga, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 27 April 1899. Entered service at: Iola, Kans. Birth: Springfield, Ohio. Date of issue: 14 February 1900. Citation: Crossed the river on a raft and by his skill and daring enabled the general commanding to carry the enemy’s entrenched position on the north bank of the river and to drive him with great loss from the important strategic position of Calumpit.

TREMBLEY, WILLIAM B.
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: At Calumpit, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 27 April 1899. Entered service at: Kansas City, Kans. Birth: Johnson, Kans. Date of issue: 11 March 1902. Citation: Swam the Rio Grande de Pampanga in face of the enemy’s fire and fastened a rope to the occupied trenches, thereby enabling the crossing of the river and the driving of the enemy from his fortified position.

WHITE, EDWARD
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: At Calumpit, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 27 April 1899. Entered service at: Kansas City, Kans. Birth: Seneca, Kans. Date of issue: 11 March 1902. Citation: Swam the Rio Grande de Pampanga in face of the enemy’s fire and fastened a rope to occupied trenches, thereby enabling the crossing of the river and the driving of the enemy from his fortified position.

QUICK, JOSEPH
Rank and organization: Coxwain, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Yokohama, Japan, 27 April 1902. Entered service at: New York. Birth: New York. G.O. No.: 93, 7 July 1902. Citation: For heroism in rescuing Walenty Wisnieroski, Machinist Second Class, from drowning at Yokohama, Japan, 27 April 1902, while serving on board the U.S.S. Yorktown.

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28 April

1635 – Virginia Governor John Harvey was accused of treason and removed from office.

1758 – James Monroe (d.1831), later secretary of state and the fifth president of the United States (1817-1825), was born in Westmoreland County, Va. He created the Monroe Doctrine, warning Europe not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere.

1760 – French forces besieging Quebec defeated the British in the second battle on the Plains of Abraham.

1788 – Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the constitution.

1810 – Union General Daniel Ullmann is born in Wilmington, Delaware. Ullmann was best known as an advocate for black troops. Ullman was educated at Yale University and practiced law in New York City. He was an active Whig before the party’s collapse around 1850, and he ran for governor of New York on the American, or “Know-Nothing,” ticket in 1854. Ullmann became a colonel in command of the 78th New York regiment when the war began. He was sent to Virginia and served in the Shenandoah Valley, where he was given command of a brigade. He was captured at the Battle of Cedar Mountain and incarcerated at Richmond’s Libby Prison for a month before he was exchanged in October 1862.

Promoted to brigadier general in January 1863, Ullmann was sent to New Orleans to recruit black troops. His efforts were met by much resistance among his fellow officers. Ullmann often complained that his men were given work details and not seriously considered for military duty. He finally got his wish, and his brigade was sent to assist in the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, in May 1863. After Ullmann’s men bravely made several unsuccessful attacks on Port Hudson, one Union officer warned, “We must not discipline them, for if we do, we will have to fight them some day ourselves.” Ullmann spent most of the war at Port Hudson after the Confederates surrendered it in July 1863. After the war, he traveled extensively, and studied literature and science. He died in Nyack, New York, in 1892.

1815 – Andrew Jackson Smith (d.1897), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1818 – President Monroe proclaimed naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

1856 – Yokut Indians repelled an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California.

1862 – Forts Jackson and St. Philip, isolated since being passed by Flag Officer Farragut’s fleet and the fall of New Orleans, surrendered to the Navy; the terms of capitulation were signed on board U.S.S. Harriet Lane, Commander D. D. Porter’s flagship. C.S.S. Louisiana, Defiance, and McRae were destroyed to prevent their capture.

1864 – Rear Admiral Porter, stranded above the rapids at Alexandria, advised Secretary Welles of the precarious position in which his gunboats found themselves due to the falling water level of the Red River and the withdrawal forced upon Major General Banks: “. . . I find myself blockaded by a fall of 3 feet of water, 3 feet 4 inches being the amount now on the falls; 7 feet being required to get over; no amount of lightening will accomplish the object. . . . In the meantime, the enemy are splitting up into parties of 2,000 and bringing in the artillery . . to blockade points below here. . . . Porter faced the distinct possibility of having to destroy his squadron to prevent its falling into Confederate hands. “. . you may judge of my feelings,” he wrote Welles,” at having to perform so painful a duty.”

Only by the most ingenious planning and the strenuous efforts of thousands of soldiers and sailors was such a disaster avoided. The Admiral summed up the results of “this fatal campaign” which “has upset everything” to date: “It has delayed 10,000 troops of General Sherman, on which he depended to open the State of Missis-sippi; it has drawn General Steele from Arkansas and already given the rebels a foothold in that country; it has forced me to withdraw many light-clad vessels from points on the Mississippi to protect this army.

1897 – The Chickasaw and Choctaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes, become the first to agree to abolish tribal government and communal ownership of land. The other tribes soon followed, finally throwing open all of Indian Territory to white settlement. Representatives of the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes had been negotiating the future of their people with the Dawes Commission since 1893. President Grover Cleveland created the Dawes Commission to realize the goals of the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act. Backers of the Dawes Severalty Act believed Indians would be better able to integrate into mainstream society if they abandoned tribal governments and ownership of land. Instead, every male Indian received a plot of land to own privately. Any tribal land that remained-which in most cases was a substantial amount-would be open to settlement by Anglo-Americans. Most Native American tribes were forced to abide by the Dawes Severalty Act regardless of their wishes.

However, a treaty from 1830 promised the Five Civilized Tribes living in Oklahoma Indian Territory their land for “as long as the grass grows and water runs,” and the Dawes Act did not apply to them. Instead, the Dawes Commission was formed to convince them to adopt its principles voluntarily. At the same time, Congress also threatened to make it harder for the Five Civilized Tribes to maintain their traditional ways of life. The Curtis Act, for example, invalidated the authority of all tribal courts. Recognizing that they had little hope of maintaining their old ways, in 1897, the Choctaws and Chickasaws became the first to agree voluntarily to abandon tribal government and land ownership. By 1902, the other three tribes-the Cherokees, Seminoles, and Creeks-had followed suit.

Despite the sincere humanitarian goals of the Dawes Act and Commission, the ultimate effect was to deprive Indians of most of their landholdings. Fraud was rampant, and some Indians either did not know they needed to apply for their private acreage or refused to do so in protest. From 1887 to 1934, Indian landholdings declined from 138 million to 47 million acres. Since the Dawes Act was rescinded in 1934, however, tribal ownership and government have again become legal.

1898 – U.S. warships engage Spanish gunboats and shore batteries at Cienfuegos, Cuba.

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1918 – CGC Seneca saves 81 survivors from the torpedoed British naval sloop Cowslip while on convoy route to Gibraltar. Cowslip was attacked by three German U-boats.

1919 – The first jump with an Army Air Corps (rip-cord type) parachute was made by Les Irvin.

1932 – A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans. In 1927, scientists had isolated the yellow fever virus in West Africa. Following this, vaccines were developed in the 1930s. The vaccine 17D was developed by the South African microbiologist Max Theiler at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City. This vaccine was widely used by the U.S. Army during World War II.

1937 – Saddam Hussein, future president of Iraq, was born in the village of al-Oja near the desert town of Tikrit. His invasion of Kuwait prompted the Persian Gulf War. This became a state holiday under Hussein’s rule and was abolished in 2003.

1943 – The German 8th Panzer Regiment counterattacks the British forces that have occupied Djebel Bou Aoukaz. American forces make some gains in “Mousetrap Valley.”

1944 – Fast carrier task force (12 carriers) commence 2 day bombing of Truk Archipelago.

1944 – American and Japanese forces, moving west from Wewak, engage near Aitape in New Guinea.

1944 – Nine German E-boats attacked US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 946.

1945 – “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country.

He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.

1945 – The US 7th Army captures Augsburg in its advance south toward Austria. Other Allied units are crossing the Elbe River in the north and others are advancing on Munich in the south.

1945 – On Okinawa, fighting along the Shuri Line continues. American forces employ tanks, flame-throwers and artillery in an effort to destroy Japanese defensive positions.

1946 – Allies indicted Hideki Tojo, former premier and war minister of Japan, with 55 counts of war crimes. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East meted out justice to Japanese war criminals at locations throughout Asia.

1952 – The United States occupation of Japan ends as the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified September 8, 1951, comes into force.

1952 – At his own request, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, was relieved of his post as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1942, General Eisenhower commanded American forces in Great Britain, in 1943, led the invasions of North Africa and Italy, and in 1944, was appointed supreme commander of the Allied invasion of Western Europe.

After the war, he briefly served as president of Columbia University, before returning to military service in 1951 as supreme commander of NATO–a permanent military alliance established in 1949 by the democracies of Western Europe and North America as a safeguard against the threat of Soviet aggression. However, pressure on Eisenhower to run for the U.S. presidency was great, and in April of 1952, he relinquished his NATO command to campaign on the Republican ticket. In November 1952, “Ike” won a resounding victory in the presidential elections, and in 1956, he was reelected by a landslide.

1955 – The US Embassy is told to burn Dulles’ order of the preceding day. Diem has succeeded in fighting in Saigon, but most of the more than 2000 Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao fighters who withdrew into the Mekong Delta will remerge to continue opposition to Diem as Vietcong.

1956 – Last French troops left Vietnam.

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1965 – In an effort to forestall what he claims will be a “communist dictatorship” in the Dominican Republic, President Lyndon B. Johnson sends more than 22,000 U.S. troops to restore order on the island nation. Johnson’s action provoked loud protests in Latin America and skepticism among many in the United States. Troubles in the Dominican Republic began in 1961, when long-time dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated. Trujillo had been a brutal leader, but his strong anticommunist stance helped him retain the support of the United States. His death led to the rise of a reformist government headed by Juan Bosch, who was elected president in 1962. The Dominican military, however, despised Bosch and his liberal policies. Bosch was overthrown in 1963. Political chaos gripped the Dominican Republic as various groups, including the increasingly splintered military, struggled for power. By 1965, forces demanding the reinstatement of Bosch began attacks against the military-controlled government. In the United States government, fear spread that “another Cuba” was in the making in the Dominican Republic; in fact, many officials strongly suspected that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was behind the violence.

On April 28, more than 22,000 U.S. troops, supported by forces provided by some of the member states of the Organization of American States (a United Nations-like institution for the Western Hemisphere, dominated by the United States) landed in the Dominican Republic. Over the next few weeks they brought an end to the fighting and helped install a conservative, non-military government. President Johnson declared that he had taken action to forestall the establishment of a “communist dictatorship” in the Dominican Republic. As evidence, he provided American reporters with lists of suspected communists in that nation. Even cursory reviews of the list revealed that the evidence was extremely flimsy–some of the people on the list were dead and others could not be considered communists by any stretch of the imagination. Many Latin American governments and private individuals and organizations condemned the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic as a return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the early-20th century, when U.S. Marines invaded and occupied a number of Latin American nations on the slightest pretexts. In the United States, politicians and citizens who were already skeptical of Johnson’s policy in Vietnam heaped scorn on Johnson’s statements about the “communist danger” in the Dominican Republic. Such criticism would become more and more familiar to the Johnson administration as the U.S. became more deeply involved in the war in Vietnam.

1965 – CIA director John A. McCone sends a personal memo to President Johnson stating his view that unless the United States is willing to further intensify bombing, there is no use in committing more US ground troops.

1967 – Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army and was stripped of his boxing title.

1967 – General Westmoreland addresses a joint session of Congress and receives a standing ovation, declaring, “Backed at home by resolve, confidence, patience, determination, and continued support, we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggressor.”

1970 – President Richard Nixon gives his formal authorization to commit U.S. combat troops, in cooperation with South Vietnamese units, against communist troop sanctuaries in Cambodia. Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had continually argued for a downsizing of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, were excluded from the decision to use U.S. troops in Cambodia. Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabled Gen. Creighton Abrams, senior U.S. commander in Saigon, informing him of the decision that a “higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam.”

Nixon believed that the operation was necessary as a pre-emptive strike to forestall North Vietnamese attacks from Cambodia into South Vietnam as the U.S. forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the fighting. Nevertheless, three National Security Council staff members and key aides to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger resigned in protest over what amounted to an invasion of Cambodia. When Nixon publicly announced the Cambodian incursion on April 30, it set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations.

A protest at Kent State University resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops. Another student rally at Jackson State College in Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.

1972 – The North Vietnamese offensive continues as Fire Base Bastogne, 20 miles west of Hue, falls to the communists. Fire Base Birmingham, 4 miles to the east, was also under heavy attack. As fighting intensified all across the northern province of South Vietnam, much of Hue’s civilian population tried to escape south to Da Nang. Farther south in the Central Highlands, 20,000 North Vietnamese troops converged on Kontum, encircling it and cutting it off. Only 65 miles north of Saigon, An Loc lay under siege and continued to take a pummeling from North Vietnamese artillery, rockets, and ground attacks. To the American command in Saigon, it appeared that South Vietnam was on the verge of total defeat by the North Vietnamese, but the South Vietnamese were able to hold out.

1975 – Operation Frequent Wind...the evacuation from Vietnam begins.

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1977 – In Stuttgart, West Germany, the lengthy trial of the leaders of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, ends with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe being found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder. Each defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment, Germany’s most severe punishment. The Red Army Faction was founded by ultra-left revolutionaries Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof in 1968. Advocating communist revolution in West Germany, the group employed terrorist tactics against government, military, and corporate leaders in an effort to topple capitalism in their homeland. Baader was imprisoned in 1970 but escaped, and Meinhof was captured in 1972. In 1976, Baader was recaptured, and Meinhof hanged herself in her cell. During the trial of Baader and his associates, the few Red Army Faction members still at large continued their program of violence and assassination.

In 1976, two Baader-Meinhof guerrillas took part in the Palestinian hijacking of an Air France jetliner that ended with the Israeli raid on the Entebbe airport in Uganda. Both Germans were killed. In April 1977, Baader and the others were sentence to life. Six months later, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner to Somalia and demanded the release of imprisoned Red Army Faction members. On October 17, West German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, releasing the captives and killing the hijackers. The next day, Baader and three others were found shot in their jail cells, presumably suicides. Red Army Faction violence continued until 1992, when the group officially called off its terrorist campaign. It was later discovered that the East German secret police had provided training, supplies, and protection to the Red Army Faction during the 1970s.

1980 – President Carter accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (1917-2002), who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran. The decision to proceed had been spearheaded by Zbigniew Brzeninski.

1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.

1987 – Contra rebels in Nicaragua killed Benjamin Ernest Linder, an American engineer working on a hydroelectric project for the Sandinista government.

1989 – President Bush announced the U.S. and Japan had concluded a deal on joint development of a new Japanese jet fighter, the FSX, despite concerns that U.S. technology secrets would be given away.

1993 – Coast Guard PACAREA LEDETs (Pacific Area Law Enforcement Detachments), operating from the USS Valley Forge and USS Cleveland, boarded the St. Vincent-flagged 225-foot freighter Sea Chariot about 300 miles southwest of Panama. The boarding team discovered bales of cocaine in some of the containers aboard and then seized the vessel. The vessel was escorted through the Panama Canal to Station Miami Beach where a search of the vessel’s containers turned up 11,233 pounds of cocaine.

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. They then prepared for the squadron’s transition to the F/A-18D and eventual movement from Cherry Point to Beaufort, South Carolina.

1993 – Secretary of Defense Les Aspin issues a directive allowing women to fly fighter aircraft in combat. It only takes the Air Guard three days to bring its first female fighter pilot on board when Major Jackie Parker transfers from the Regular Air Force to New York’s 138th Fighter Squadron on May 1st. Other women will follow her example so that by January 2005 there are ten female fighter pilots flying Air Guard combat aircraft.

1994 – Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. His wife Rosario also pleaded guilty.

1998 – Despite direct appeals for relief from Iraq’s foreign minister and oil minister, the United Nations Security Council decides to continue economic sanctions on Iraq, imposed in 1990 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The Security Council also announces that it will once again begin reviewing the sanctions every 60 days. The Council suspended60-day reviews in October 1997 after Iraq expelled American members of U.N. weapons inspection teams.

1999 – The US House voted 249-180 that congressional approval would be required to send troops to Yugoslavia. A Democratic resolution supporting NATO air strikes tied 213-213.

1999 – The US announced that it would allow US firms to sell food and medicine to Iran, Sudan and Libya.

2000 – In a sharp repudiation of President Clinton’s policies, the House rejected, on a tie vote of 213-to-213, a measure expressing support for NATO’s five-week-old air campaign against Yugoslavia; the House also voted 249-to-180 to limit the president’s authority to use ground forces in Yugoslavia.

2001 – A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off for the Int’l. Space Station with two cosmonauts and California businessman Dennis Tito (60), who paid some $20 million, for the experience. Tito was the founder of the Wilshire Associates investment firm.

2001 – A LEDET assigned to the USS Rodney M. Davis, with later assistance from the USCGC Active made the largest cocaine seizure in maritime history when they boarded and seized the Belizean F/V Svesda Maru 1,500 miles south of San Diego. The fishing vessel was carrying 26,931 pounds of cocaine.

2003 – US soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at a nighttime demonstration against the American presence there after people shot at them with automatic rifles. The director of the local hospital said 13 people were killed and 75 injured. Amer Mohammed Rashid (6 of spades), known to UN weapons inspectors as the “Missile Man” and ranked 47th on the US most-wanted list of 55 members of Saddam’s inner circle, surrendered.

2003 – The US moved an air operation center from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.

2003 – The United States pledged $4 million to help keep peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast in addition to the $5 million it has already given to ECOWAS.

2003 – On Saddam Hussein’s 66th birthday, some 300 prominent Iraqis met in Baghdad under US direction to convene a national conference to create an interim government.

2003 – The Soyuz space capsule carrying a U.S.-Russian space crew docked with the international space station.

2004 – CBS broadcast photos on “60 Minutes” showing US abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

2004 – In Iraq a series of explosions and gunfire rocked Fallujah in new fighting the day after a heavy battle in which U.S. warplanes and artillery pounded the city in a show of force against Sunni insurgents. Elsewhere 1 US and 2 Ukrainian soldiers were killed.

2004 – The six nations involved in resolving the North Korea nuclear arsenal dispute — the United States, China, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan —scheduled to begin working level talks May 12 in Beijing, China.

2004 – The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution requiring all 191 UN states to pass laws to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.

2006 – U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan becomes the highest-ranking officer to have charges brought against him in connection with the Abu Ghraib abuse.
2011 – U.S. president Barack Obama nominates General David Petraeus, current head of the war on Afghanistan, as his new CIA chief, and names outgoing CIA chief Leon Panetta as head of The Pentagon.

2014 – President Barack Obama calls for an investigation into the situation at the Phoenix VA hospital.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

HEYL, CHARLES H.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, 23d U.S. Infantry. Place and date: Near Fort Hartsuff, Nebr., 28 April 1876. Entered service at: Camden, N.J. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 26 October 1897. Citation: Voluntarily, and with most conspicuous gallantry, charged with 3 men upon 6 Indians who were entrenched upon a hillside.

LEONARD, PATRICK (Second Award)
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company A, 23d U.S. Infantry. Place and date: Near Fort Hartsuff, Nebr., 28 April 1876. Entered service at:——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 26 August 1876. Citation: Gallantry in charge on hostile Sioux.

LYTTON, JEPTHA L.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company A, 23d U.S. Infantry. Place and date: Near Fort Hartsuff, Nebr., 28 April 1876. Entered service at:——. Birth: Lawrence County, Ind. Date of issue: 26 August 1876. Citation: Gallantry in charge on hostile Sioux.

*MINUE, NICHOLAS
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, Company A, 6th Armored Infantry, 1st Armored Division. Place and date: Near MedjezelBab, Tunisia, 28 April 1943. Entered service at: Carteret, N.J. Birth: Sedden, Poland. G.O. No.: 24, 25 March 1944. Citation: For distinguishing himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the loss of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy on 28 April 1943, in the vicinity of MedjezelBab, Tunisia. When the advance of the assault elements of Company A was held up by flanking fire from an enemy machinegun nest, Pvt. Minue voluntarily, alone, and unhesitatingly, with complete disregard of his own welfare, charged the enemy entrenched position with fixed bayonet.

Pvt. Minue assaulted the enemy under a withering machinegun and rifle fire, killing approximately 10 enemy machinegunners and riflemen. After completely destroying this position, Pvt. Minue continued forward, routing enemy riflemen from dugout positions until he was fatally wounded. The courage, fearlessness and aggressiveness displayed by Pvt. Minue in the face of inevitable death was unquestionably the factor that gave his company the offensive spirit that was necessary for advancing and driving the enemy from the entire sector.

RUIZ, ALEJANDRO R. RENTERIA
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, 165th Infantry, 27th Infantry Division. Place and date: Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, 28 April 1945. Entered service at: Carlsbad, N. Mex. Birth: Loving, N. Mex. G.O. No.: 60, 26 June 1946. Citation: When his unit was stopped by a skillfully camouflaged enemy pillbox, he displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. His squad, suddenly brought under a hail of machinegun fire and a vicious grenade attack, was pinned down. Jumping to his feet, Pfc. Ruiz seized an automatic rifle and lunged through the flying grenades and rifle and automatic fire for the top of the emplacement. When an enemy soldier charged him, his rifle jammed.

Undaunted, Pfc. Ruiz whirled on his assailant and clubbed him down. Then he ran back through bullets and grenades, seized more ammunition and another automatic rifle, and again made for the pillbox. Enemy fire now was concentrated on him, but he charged on, miraculously reaching the position, and in plain view he climbed to the top. Leaping from 1 opening to another, he sent burst after burst into the pillbox, killing 12 of the enemy and completely destroying the position. Pfc. Ruiz’s heroic conduct, in the face of overwhelming odds, saved the lives of many comrades and eliminated an obstacle that long would have checked his unit’s advance.

*NEGRON, JUAN E.
Rank and Organization: Sergeant. U.S. Army. Place and Date: April 28, 1951, Kalma-Eri, Korea. Born: September 26, 1929, Corozal, Puerto Rico . Departed: Yes (03/29/1996). Entered Service At: . G.O. Number: . Date of Issue: 03/18/2014. Accredited To: . Citation: Then-Sgt. Juan E. Negron distinguished himself on April 28, 1951, for actions near Kalma-Eri, Korea. Negron held the most vulnerable position on his company’s exposed right flank after an enemy force had overrun a section of the line. He held the position throughout the night, accurately hurling hand grenades at short range when hostile troops approached his position.

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April 29

Feast Day of Saint Catherine of Sienna, Patron Saint of the Nurse Corps: Catherine, the daughter of a humble tradesman, was raised up to be the guide and guardian of the Church in one of the darkest periods of its history, the fourteenth century. As a child, prayer was her delight. She would say the “Hail Mary” on each step as she mounted the stairs, and was granted in reward a vision of Christ in glory. When but seven years old, she made a vow of virginity, and afterwards endured bitter persecution for refusing to marry. Our Lord gave her His Heart in exchange for her own, communicated her with His own hands, and stamped on her body the print of His wounds. At the age of fifteen she entered the Third Order of St. Dominic, but continued to reside in her father’s shop, where she united a life of active charity with the prayer of a contemplative Saint. From this obscure home the seraphic virgin was summoned to defend the Church’s cause. Armed with Papal authority, and accompanied by three confessors, she travelled through Italy, reducing rebellious cities to the obedience of the Holy See, and winning hardened souls to God.

In the face well-nigh of the whole world she sought out Gregory XI at Avignon, brought him back to Rome, and by her letters to the kings and queens of Europe made good the Papal cause. She was the counselor of Urban VI, and sternly rebuked the disloyal cardinals who had part in electing an antipope. Long had the holy virgin foretold the terrible schism which began ere she died. Day and night she wept and prayed for unity and peace. But the devil excited the Roman people against the Pope, so that some sought the life of Christ’s Vicar. With intense earnestness did St. Catherine beg Our Lord to prevent this enormous crime. In spirit she saw the whole city full of demons tempting the people to resist and even slay the Pope. The seditious temper was subdued by Catherine’s prayers; but the devils vented their malice by scourging the Saint herself, who gladly endured all for God and His Church. She died at Rome, in 1380, at the age of thirty-three.

1781 – British and French ships clash in the Battle of Fort Royal off the coast of Martinique. The Battle of Fort Royal was a naval battle fought off Fort Royal, Martinique in the West Indies during the American War of Independence between fleets of the British Royal Navy and the French Navy. After an engagement lasting four hours, the British squadron under Sir Samuel Hood broke off and retreated. De Grasse offered a desultory chase before seeing the French convoys safely to port.

1814 – USS Peacock captures HMS Epervier.

1856 – During the Tule River War Yokut Indians repelled a second attack by the ‘Petticoat Rangers,’ a band of civilian Indian fighters-some wearing body armor-at Four Creeks, California. The Yokuts lived along the shores of Tulare Lake in the Central Valley, which disappeared by 1900 due to water diversion and farming.

1861 – The Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.

1861 – U.S.S. United States ordered commissioned as the first ship in the Virginia navy by Major General Rob¬ert E. Lee, Commander in Chief Military Forces of Virginia.

1862 – 100,000 federal troops prepared to march into Corinth, Mississippi.

1862 – Expedition under Lieutenant Alexander C. Rhind in U.S.S. E. B. Hale landed and destroyed Confederate battery at Grimball’s, Dawho River, South Carolina, and exchanged fire with field pieces near Slann’s Bluff.

1862 – Union troops officially take possession of New Orleans, completing the occupation that had begun four days earlier. The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico. In early 1862, the Confederates concentrated their forces in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee to stave off the Yankee invasion. Many of these troops fought at Shiloh on April 6 and 7. Eight Rebel gunboats were dispatched up the great river to stop a Union flotilla above Memphis, leaving only 3,000 militia, two uncompleted ironclads, and a few steamboats to defend New Orleans. The most imposing obstacles for the Union were two forts, Jackson and St. Phillip. In the middle of the night of April 24, Admiral David Farragut led a fleet of 24 gunboats, 19 mortar boats, and 15,000 soldiers large fleet of ships in a daring run past the forts.

Now, the River was open to New Orleans except for the rag-tag Confederate fleet. The mighty Union armada plowed right through, sinking eight ships. At New Orleans, Confederate General Mansfield Lovell surveyed his tiny force and realized that resistance was futile. If he resisted, Lovell told Mayor John Monroe, Farragut would bombard the city and inflict severe damage and casualties. Lovell pulled his troops out of New Orleans and the Yankees began arriving on April 25. The troops could not land until Forts Jackson and St. Phillip were secured. They surrendered on April 29, and now New Orleans had no protection. Crowds cursed the Yankees as all Confederate flags in the city were lowered and stars and stripes were raised in their place. The Confederacy lost a major city, and the lower Mississippi soon became a Union highway for 400 miles to Vicksburg, Mississippi.

1863 – May Union Army and Navy expedition feigned an attack on Confederate batteries at Haynes’ Bluff on the Yazoo River. The force consisted of U.S.S. Tyler, Choctaw, DeKalb, Signal, Romeo, Linden, Petrel, Black Hawk, and 3 mortar boats under Lieutenant Commander Breese and 10 large transports carrying troops under command of Major General W. T. Sherman. The feint was made to prevent Confederates from reinforcing Grand Gulf. On the 29th the expedition proceeded as far as Chickasaw Bayou. As the force departed on the morning of the 30th, Petrel, remained at Old River on station; the remaining vessels moved up the Yazoo with Choctaw and DeKalb opening fire on the main works at Drumgould’s Bluff and Tyler and Black Hawk opening on the fieldworks and batteries.

Though instructed not to conduct an actual assault, the feint was so vigorously prosecuted that Choctaw, Lieutenant Commander Ramsay, was struck 53 times by Confederate guns. The soldiers were landed and “marched up toward Haynes’ Bluff on the only roadway, the levee, making quite a display, and threatening one also.” Naval gunfire supported the soldiers throughout the demonstration, which lasted through 1 May. The evening of the 1st, the expedition returned to the mouth of the Yazoo. Porter reported to Secretary Welles: ”The plan succeeded admirably, though the vessels were more exposed than the occasion called for; still as they met with no casualties, with the exception of the hulls, it mattered but little.”

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1864 – Major General Taylor, CSA, seeking to take full advantage of the vulnerable position of Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboats above the Alexandria rapids sought “to convert one of the captured transports into a fire ship to burn the fleet now crowded above the upper falls.” This date, however, Union Army and Navy commanders accepted a daring plan proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey to raise the water level of the Red River and enable the vessels to pass the treacherous rapids. Bailey’s proposal was to construct a large dam of logs and debris across the river to back up water level to a minimum depth of seven feet. The dams would be broken and the ships would ride the crest of the rushing waters to safety.

Work on the dam commenced early the next day. Porter later wrote: “This proposition looked like madness, and the best engineers ridiculed it, but Colonel Bailey was so sanguine of success that I requested General Banks to have it done . . . two or three regiments of Maine men were set to work felling trees. . . . every man seemed to be working with a vigor seldom seen equalled. . . . These falls are about a mile in length, filled with rugged rocks, over which at the present stage of water it seemed to be impossible to make a channel.”

1864 – An expedition up the Rappahannock River including boats from U.S.S. Yankee, Acting Lieutenant Edward Hooker, and U.S.S. Fuchsia, assisted by U.S.S. Freeborn and Tulip, engaged Confederate cavalry and destroyed a camp under construction at Carter’s Creek, Virginia.

1865 – Acting Master W. C. Coulson, commanding U.S.S. Moose on the Cumberland River, led a surprise attack on a Confederate raiding party, numbering about 200 troops from Brigadier General Abraham Buford’s command. The raiders under the command of a Major Hopkins, were crossing the Cumberland River to sack and burn Eddyville, Kentucky. Coulson sank two troop laden boats with battery gunfire and then put a landing party ashore which engaged the remaining Con-federates. The landing force dispersed the detachment after killing or wounding 20 men, taking 6 captives, and capturing 22 horses.

1898 – U.S. warships engage Spanish gunboats and shore batteries at Cienfuegos, Cuba.

1918 – America’s WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scored his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall. He eventually racked up 26 victories before the end of the war.

1942 – Despite a desperate defense, the Japanese take Lashio, terminus of the Burma Road. All supplies to China must now go by air as China has been cut off by land. General Alexander decides to remove his troops to new position in the Chinwin and Irrawaddy Valley.

1942 – On Mindanao, Filipino resistance continues but they are pushed back from their positions when the invading Japanese receive reinforcements and greater air support. The Japanese continue to bomb the remaining American troops who have retreated to Corregidor.

1944 – Fast carrier task force (12 carriers) commence 2 day bombing of Truk.

1945 – U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau sub camp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division. Established five weeks after Adolf Hitler took power as German chancellor in 1933, Dachau was situated on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich. During its first year, the camp held about 5,000 political prisoners, consisting primarily of German communists, Social Democrats, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. During the next few years, the number of prisoners grew dramatically, and other groups were interned at Dachau, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, and repeat criminals.

Beginning in 1938, Jews began to comprise a major portion of camp internees. Prisoners at Dachau were used as forced laborers, initially in the construction and expansion of the camp and later for German armaments production. The camp served as the training center for SS concentration camp guards and was a model for other Nazi concentration camps. Dachau was also the first Nazi camp to use prisoners as human guinea pigs in medical experiments.

At Dachau, Nazi scientists tested the effects of freezing and changes to atmospheric pressure on inmates, infected them with malaria and tuberculosis and treated them with experimental drugs, and forced them to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding. Hundreds of prisoners died or were crippled as a result of these experiments. Thousands of inmates died or were executed at Dachau, and thousands more were transferred to a Nazi extermination center near Linz, Austria, when they became too sick or weak to work.

In 1944, to increase war production, the main camp was supplemented by dozens of satellite camps established near armaments factories in southern Germany and Austria. These camps were administered by the main camp and collectively called Dachau. With the advance of Allied forces against Germany in April 1945, the Germans transferred prisoners from concentration camps near the front to Dachau, leading to a general deterioration of conditions and typhus epidemics.

On April 27, 1945, approximately 7,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to begin a death march from Dachau to Tegernsee, far to the south. The next day, many of the SS guards abandoned the camp. On April 29, the Dachau main camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry after a brief battle with the camp’s remaining guards. As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated.

Some of the American troops who liberated Dachau were so appalled by conditions at the camp that they machine-gunned at least two groups of captured German guards. It is officially reported that 30 SS guards were killed in this fashion, but conspiracy theorists have alleged that more than 10 times that number were executed by the American liberators.

The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp. In the course of Dachau’s history, at least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp, and 90,000 through the sub camps. Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates perished at Dachau and its sub camps, but countless more were shipped to extermination camps elsewhere.

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1945 – The unofficial surrender of German forces in Italy is signed at Caserta. The German representatives are present here because of a secret negotiation between the head of the OSS mission in Switzerland, Allan Dulles, and SS General Wolff. These talks have been going on since much earlier in the year, but because of their clandestine nature, the German representatives at Caserta cannot guarantee that the surrender will be ratified by Vietinghoff, commanding German forces in Italy.

1945 – Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the following day. Eva Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple was married only hours before they both committed suicide.

1945 – The US 185th Regiment (General Brush) lands near Padan Point with naval support by a destroyer force commanded by Admiral Struble. There is little Japanese resistance.

1945 – The last convoy battle of the Second World War begins as 14 German U-boats attack convoy RA-66 which consists of 24 ships with an escort including 2 escort carriers, 1 cruiser, 9 destroyers and 13 other ships.

1946 – Also on this day in 1946, Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, is indicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found guilty of war crimes.

1948 – Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force authorized a medal pendant to be established for the Commendation Ribbon. The design was approved by both Secretaries on 8 July 1948 and on 20 March 1950, the Secretary of the Navy approved the Navy Commendation Ribbon, and authorized use of the same pendant with a different ribbon on 6 April 1950. DA General Order No. 10 renamed the Commendation Ribbon with Medal Pendant to the Army Commendation Medal. President Kennedy, in a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense authorized the award of the Army Commendation Medal to members of the Armed Forces of friendly foreign nations who, after 1 June 1962, distinguished themselves by an act of heroic, extraordinary achievement, or meritorious service.

1950 – In response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s charge that former State Department consultant and university professor Owen Lattimore was a top Soviet spy in the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state deny that Lattimore had any influence on U.S. foreign policy. The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the “red scare” in the United States. In February 1950, Senator McCarthy gave a speech in which he charged that there were over 200 “known communists” in the Department of State. McCarthy was asked to appear before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to provide details about his accusation. During the course of the hearing, the senator charged that Owen Lattimore was a top spy for the Soviet Union and had been “the principal architect of our Far Eastern policy.”

The implication of McCarthy’s testimony was clear: Lattimore, acting as a virtual Soviet agent, had helped design a policy that resulted in the loss of China to the communists in 1949. In fact, Lattimore, a well-known specialist in the field of Chinese history, had merely served as a consultant to the Department of State during and after World War II. Like many others, he had come to the conclusion that the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek was hopelessly inefficient and corrupt, and that continued U.S. support of such a government was useless. In the harsh Cold War atmosphere of America, though, the “loss” of China to the communists encouraged suspicion that spies and sympathizers were to blame. In response to McCarthy’s charge, the chair of the subcommittee, Senator Millard Tydings, wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state, Cordell Hull, James Byrnes, and George C. Marshall, asking whether the accusations were true.

The men answered that Lattimore had absolutely no impact on U.S. foreign policy toward Asia. Indeed, each of them went to great lengths to make clear that they had never even met Lattimore. Byrnes and Marshall went further, declaring McCarthy’s charges were particularly harmful to America’s foreign relations. Lattimore was cleared by a congressional investigation in 1950, but in 1951-1952 the attacks against the professor were renewed and he was charged with perjury in connection with his 1950 testimony. These charges were eventually dismissed, but not before Lattimore’s academic career in the United States had been destroyed.

1953 – Marine Corps Colonel Katherine A. Towle, Director of Women Marines, became the first woman line officer to retire from U.S. military service upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 55.

1954 – At a press conference, President Eisenhower denies US plans for massive air strikes or other intervention in Vietnam. “You certainly cannot hope…for a completely satisfactory answer with the Communists. The most you can work out is a practical way of getting along.”

1957 – The 1st military nuclear power plant was dedicated at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

1966 – An article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda assets that the television program Batman is brainwashing American children into becoming ‘murderers’ in Vietnam.

1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.

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1970 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launch a limited “incursion” into Cambodia. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. The operation began with South Vietnamese forces attacking into the “Parrot’s Beak” area of Cambodia that projects into South Vietnam above the Mekong Delta. During the first two days, an 8,000-man South Vietnamese task force, including two infantry divisions, four ranger battalions, and four armored cavalry squadrons, killed 84 communist soldiers while suffering 16 dead and 157 wounded. The second stage of the campaign began on May 2 with a series of joint U.S.-South Vietnamese operations. These operations were aimed at clearing communist sanctuaries located in the densely vegetated “Fishhook” area of Cambodia (across the border from South Vietnam, immediately north of Tay Ninh Province and west of Binh Long Province, 70 miles from Saigon).

The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with the South Vietnamese 3rd Airborne Brigade, killed 3,190 communists in the action and captured massive amounts of war booty, including 2,000 individual and crew-served weapons, 300 trucks, and 40 tons of foodstuffs. By the time all U.S. ground forces had departed Cambodia on June 30, the Allied forces had discovered and captured or destroyed 10 times more enemy supplies and equipment than they had captured inside South Vietnam during the entire previous year.

Many intelligence analysts at the time believed that the Cambodian incursion dealt a stunning blow to the communists, driving main force units away from the border and damaging their morale, and in the process buying as much as a year for South Vietnam’s survival. However, the incursion gave the antiwar movement in the United States a new rallying point. News of the incursion set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops and another at Jackson State in Mississippi that resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion also angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.

1974 – President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of some secretly made White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

1975 – Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation on record, begins removing the last Americans from Saigon. The North Vietnamese had launched their final offensive in March 1975 and the South Vietnamese forces had fallen back before their rapid advance, losing Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Xuan Loc in quick succession. With the North Vietnamese attacking the outskirts of Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the commencement of Frequent Wind. In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore.

Cpl. Charles McMahon, Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge, USMC, were the last U.S. military personnel killed in action in Vietnam, when shrapnel from a North Vietnamese rocket struck them as they were guarding Tan Son Nhut Airbase during the evacuation.

At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the rook of the embassy and headed out to sea. Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled). The Vietnam War was over.

1990 – The space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a mission which included deploying the Hubble Space Telescope.

1990 – Wrecking cranes began tearing down Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate.

1991 – US troops continued airlifting Iraqi refugees from a camp in southern Iraq to Saudi Arabia.

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1992 – Deadly rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. White truck driver Reginald Denny was beaten by a mob in south Central LA angered by the acquittal of 4 police officers caught on video tape in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Three days of violence ensued with 55 people killed, 2,300 injured and an estimated $1 billion [$717 million] in property damages. Rioters tore through the city following the not guilty verdicts on state charges for Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Stacey C. Koon and officer Laurence M. Powell for beating Rodney King. 1093 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Of these, 764 retail stores were owned by Koreans. The US Congress later authorized $1 billion to revitalize south central Los Angeles.

1992 – The CGC Storis’ 3-inch/.50 caliber main battery was removed from the cutter. It was the last 3-inch/.50 caliber gun in service aboard any U.S. warship. The 3-inch/.50 was a dual-purpose weapon (surface and anti-aircraft) that had been in U.S. service since the 1930s. It was shipped to Curtis Bay where is was made inoperable and was then donated as a lawn ornament to a VFW club.

1997 – Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. Sentenced to 25 years in prison, he was dishonorably discharged.

1997 – Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.

1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.

1998 – The United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed to eliminate tariffs on items accounting for $1 billion in trade at a meeting in Paris of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

1998 – The US and European powers decided to impose new sanctions and agreed to freeze the assets of Yugoslavia. A ban on investments would follow in 10 days if security police was not withdrawn from Kosovo.

1999 – The US decided to sell an early-warning radar system to Taiwan.

1999 – US planes bombed sites in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq after being attacked by missiles and anti-aircraft fire. Iraq said 20 civilians were injured in Mosul and 4 in separate attacks in the south.

1999 – NATO jets struck Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade and the federal interior ministry. A telecommunications tower was hit and knocked Serbian TV off the air.

1999 – In Bulgaria an errant NATO HARM missile hit a home in Gorna Banya on the outskirts of Sofia. There were no casualties.

2000 – Iraq’s oil ministry states that it expects to export more than $8.5 billion of oil in the current six-month phase of the United Nations “oil-for-food” program.

2001 – NASA scientists reported that they had contacted the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, launched in 1972, after 8 months of no communication.

2001 – China offered to allow US officials to inspect the US Navy spy plane on Hainan Island.

2002 – US forces in Afghanistan engaged al Qaeda fighters near the Pakistan border and killed 4.

2002 – The 1st 20 of some 2000 US soldiers landed in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

2002 – Britain decided to treat al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as prisoners of war and turn them over to the interim Afghan government.

2002 – Turkey officially agreed to take command of the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

2003 – The US said it would withdraw all combat forces from Saudi Arabia.

2003 – The leaders of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, all critics of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, agreed to beef up their military cooperation in an effort to make Europe’s defense less reliant on the US.

2003 – Pakistani police arrested six men linked to al-Qaeda, including a Yemeni man, Tawfiq Attash Khallad (Waleed bin Attash), wanted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole.

2004 – A national monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public in Washington DC. Official dedication was set for May 29th.

2004 – U.S. Marines announced an agreement to end a bloody, nearly month long siege of Fallujah, saying American forces will pull back and allow an all-Iraqi force commanded by one of Saddam Hussein’s generals to take over security.

2006 – United States-Iran relations continue to deteriorate after US officials called Iran one of the world’s most active sponsors of terrorism, as IAEA reveals that Tehran has successfully enriched uranium and is racing ahead with its nuclear program. Iran says it does not “give a damn” about the verdict from the IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei and what it might lead to.

2008 – Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) started their operations with an attack on the Taliban-held town of Garmsir. The operation was in conjunction with British troops of the 16 Air Assault Brigade.[5] They met almost no resistance, because the Taliban had already observed in the previous days the movements of the Marines before the operation and expected an assault so withdrew to take up positions a few kilometers outside the town.[6] For the next few days there was no contact between the US Marines and the Taliban.

2010 – The United States Coast Guard begins a controlled burn to remove oil spilled in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

GUERIN, FITZ W.
Rank and organization: Private, Battery A, 1st Missouri Light Artillery. Place and date: At Grand Gulf, Miss., 28-29 April 1863. Entered service at: St. Louis, Mo. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 10 March 1896. Citation: With two comrades voluntarily took position on board the steamer Cheeseman, in charge of all the guns and ammunition of the battery, and remained in charge of the same for a considerable time while the steamer was unmanageable and subjected to a heavy fire from the enemy.

HAMMEL, HENRY A.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Battery A, 1st Missouri Light Artillery. Place and date: At Grand Gulf, Miss., 28-29 April 1863. Entered service at: St. Louis, Mo. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 10 March 1896. Citation: With two comrades voluntarily took position on board the steamer Cheeseman, in charge of all the guns and ammunition of the battery, and remained in charge of the same for considerable time while the steamer was unmanageable and subjected to a heavy fire from the enemy.

PESCH, JOSEPH
Rank and organization: Private, Battery A, 1st Missouri Light Artillery. Place and date: At Grand Gulf, Miss., 28_29 April 1863. Entered service at: St. Louis, Mo. Birth: Prussia. Date of issue: 10 March 1896. Citation: With 2 comrades voluntarily took position on board the steamer Cheeseman, in charge of all the guns and ammunition of the battery, and remained in charge of the same, although the steamer became unmanageable and was exposed for some time to a heavy fire from the enemy.

WOON, JOHN
Rank and organization: Boatswain’s Mate, U.S. Navy. Born: 1823, England. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 17, 10 July 1863. Citation: Serving on board the U.S.S. Pittsburg, Mississippi River, 29 April 1863. Engaging the enemy batteries at Grand Gulf, the U.S.S. Pittsburg, although severely damaged and suffering many personnel casualties, continued to fire her batteries until ordered to withdraw. Taking part in a similar action after nightfall, the U.S.S. Pittsburg received further damage, but receiving no personnel casualities in the latter action. Woon showed courage and devotion to duty throughout these bitter engagements.

REED, JAMES C.
Rank and organization: Private, Company A, 8th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Arizona, 29 April 1868. Entered service at:——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 24 July 1869. Citation: Defended his position (with 3 others) against a party of 17 hostile Indians under heavy fire at close quarters, the entire party except himself being severely wounded.

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30 April

1492 – Spain gives Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

1494 – Christopher Columbus arrived in Guantanamo Bay on his 2nd voyage to the Americas.

1629 – John Endecott became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1789 – In New York City, George Washington, the great military leader of the American Revolution, is inaugurated as the first president of the United States. In February 1789, all 69 presidential electors unanimously chose Washington to be the first U.S. president. In March, the new U.S. constitution officially took effect, and in April Congress formally sent word to Washington that he had won the presidency. He borrowed money to pay off his debts in Virginia and traveled to New York. On April 30, he came across the Hudson River in a specially built and decorated barge. The inaugural ceremony was performed on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street, and a large crowd cheered after he took the oath of office. The president then retired indoors to read Congress his inaugural address, a quiet speech in which he spoke of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

The evening celebration was opened and closed by 13 skyrockets and 13 cannons. As president, Washington sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. Of his presidency, he said, “I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.” He successfully implemented executive authority, made good use of brilliant politicians such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in his cabinet, and quieted fears of presidential tyranny. In 1792, he was unanimously re-elected but four years later refused a third term. In 1797, he finally began a long-awaited retirement at his estate in Virginia. He died two years later. His friend Henry Lee provided a famous eulogy for the father of the United States: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

1798 – Congress established the Department of the Navy on this date in 1798, however, the United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress established on 13 October 1775 by authorizing the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in America. In 1972 Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt authorized recognition of the 13 October 1775 date as the Navy’s “official” birthday.

1803 – During the early moments of the nineteenth century, the United States government wheeled and dealed its way into what is generally regarded as the “greatest land bargain” in the nation’s history, the Louisiana Purchase. The deal, which was dated April 30, 1803, though it was in fact signed on May 2, had been in the works since the spring of 1802. It was then that President Thomas Jefferson had learned of Spain’s decision to quietly transfer Spanish Louisiana to the French; fearful of the strategic and commercial implications of the Spanish swap, Jefferson ordered Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister in Paris, to broker a deal with the French either for a slice of land on the lower Mississippi or a “guarantee” of unmolested transport for U.S. ships. Negotiations dragged on for months, but took a crucial turn when Spanish and U.S. trade relations collapsed in the fall of 1802.

With Spain now barring American merchant ships from transferring goods at the port in New Orleans, Jefferson set his sights on purchasing a far larger chunk of land. In early 1803, James Monroe headed to Paris to broker Jefferson’s deal. With France teetering on the brink of war with Great Britain, and mindful not only of the fiscal repercussions of such a conflict, but of the possibility of a renewed U.S.-English alliance, Napoleon’s negotiators acceded to a deal to sell the whole of Louisiana. All told, the Louisiana Purchase cost the U.S. $15 million: $11.25 million was earmarked for the land deal, while the remaining $3.75 million covered France’s outstanding debts to America. Thus, for the prime price of 3 cents an acre, the United States bought 828,000-square miles of land, which effectively doubled the size of the young nation.

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1812 – The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana. Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its capital is Baton Rouge. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties. Much of the state’s lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp. The two “Deltas” are located in Monroe, the parish seat of Ouachita Parish, Shreveport, the parish seat of Caddo Parish, and Alexandria, the parish seat of Rapides Parish, for the small Delta, and Monroe, Lake Charles, and New Orleans for the large Delta. They are referred to as Deltas because they form a perfect triangle shape when the points are lined up. These contain a rich southern biota; typical examples include birds such as ibis and egrets. There are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape, and has produced extensive areas of longleaf pine forest and wet savannas. These support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of orchids and carnivorous plants.

Some Louisiana urban environments have a multicultural, multilingual heritage, being so strongly influenced by a mixture of 18th-century French, Spanish, Native American, and African cultures that they are considered to be exceptional in the US. Before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the current Louisiana State had been both a French colony and a Spanish one. In addition, colonists imported numerous African slaves as laborers in the 18th century. Many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. In the post-Civil War environment, Anglo-Americans increased the pressure for Anglicization, and in 1915, English was made the only official language of the state. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other southern state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized, and four that have not yet received recognition.

1818 – Congress authorized use of “land and naval forces of the United States to compel any foreign ship to depart United States in all cases in which, by the laws of nations or the treaties of the United States, they ought not to remain within the United States.” This was the basis of neutrality enforcement.

1832 – All commissions of naval officers in Revenue Cutter Service revoked. Vacancies filled by promotion for first time.

1860 – Navajo Indians attacked Fort Defiance (Canby).

1861 – President Lincoln ordered Federal Troops to evacuate Indian Territory.

1863 – Major General Grant ferried his troops across the Mississippi River at Bruinsburg to commence the work of isolating Vicksburg from reinforcements.

1864 – Work began on the Dams along the Red River which would allow Union General Nathaniel Banks’ troops to sail over the rapids above Alexandria, Louisiana.

1864 – Union troops under General Frederick Steele fight off a Confederate army under General Edmund Kirby Smith as the Yankees retreat towards Little Rock, Arkansas. Jenkin’s Ferry came at the end of a major Union offensive in Arkansas. While a Federal force under General Nathaniel Banks moved up the Red River in Louisiana towards Shreveport, Steele led his troops from Little Rock into southwestern Arkansas. The combined effort promised to secure northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas for the Union before the armies moved west to invade Texas. In April, however, the plans ran afoul when Banks was defeated at Mansfield, Louisiana, and Steele found himself dangerously low on supplies. Steele occupied Camden, Arkansas, on April 15. Over the next ten days, Steele lost more than 400 supply wagons and 2,500 troops at the Battles of Poison Springs and Mark’s Mills. Now, Steele was surrounded by hostile armies and running low on food. He headed back to Little Rock with Smith in hot pursuit. A heavy rain began to fall, lasting for nearly a day and bringing Steele’s retreat to a grinding halt.

At Jenkin’s Ferry on April 30, Smith attacked Steele as the Yankees were trying to cross the flooded Saline River. General Samuel Rice directed the Union defense, and his men held off a series of Rebel attacks before Rice was mortally wounded. Fighting in knee-deep water, the Confederates could not penetrate the Union lines. Steele was able to remove his force across the Saline River. He destroyed the pontoon bridge and left Smith on the other side of the river before escaping to Little Rock. The Union suffered 700 men killed, wounded, and missing out of 4,000, while the Confederates lost about 1,000 out of 8,000. Some of the Rebel dead included wounded troops who were killed by members of the 2nd Kansas Colored regiment, exacting a measure of revenge for dozens of comrades from the 1st Kansas Colored murdered on the battlefield at Poison Springs. When it was over, Smith and the Confederates controlled the field but they had failed to destroy Steele’s army.

1865 – The eight suspects in the Lincoln assassination plot who had been imprisoned on monitors U.S.S. Montauk and Saugus were transferred to the Arsenal Penitentiary, located in the compound of what is today Fort McNair. This was also the site of their trial by a military tribunal which returned its verdict on 30 June 1865. Three of the eight, along with Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, were hanged in the prison yard of the penitentiary on 7 July-Lewis Paine who made the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Secretary of State Seward; George A. Atzerodt who had been designated by Booth to murder Vice President Johnson; and David E. Herold who had accompanied Booth in his escape from the city. Michael O’Laughlin and Samuel B. Arnold, boyhood friends of Booth and conspirators in the actor’s earlier plans to abduct President Lincoln and in his later plans to assassinate the government’s top officials, were sentenced to life in prison. Another accomplice, Edward Spangler, stagehand at the Ford Theater was sentenced to six years in prison. The remaining two of the eight who had been incarcerated on the monitors-Ernest Hartman Richter, a cousin of Atzerodt, and Joao Celestino, a Portuguese sea captain were released without being brought to trial.

1865 – General Tecumsah Sherman’s “Haines’s Bluff” at Snyder’s Mill, Virginia.

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1871 – Apaches in Arizona surrendered to white and Mexican adventurers; 144 died. The Camp Grant massacre was an attack on Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches who surrendered to the United States Army at Camp Grant, Arizona, along the San Pedro River. The massacre led to a series of battles and campaigns fought between the Americans, the Apache, and their Yavapai allies, which continued into 1875, the most notable being General George Crook’s Tonto Basin Campaign of 1872 and 1873. On the afternoon of April 28, six Americans, 48 Mexicans, and 92 O’odham gathered along Rillito Creek and set off on a march to Aravaipa Canyon; one of the Americans was William S. Oury, the brother of Granville Henderson Oury.

At dawn on Sunday, April 30, they surrounded the Apache camp. The O’odham were the main fighters, while the Americans and Mexicans picked off Apaches who tried to escape. Most of the Apache men were off hunting in the mountains. All but eight of the corpses were women and children. Twenty-nine children had been captured and were sold into slavery in Mexico by the Tohono O’odham and the Mexicans themselves. A total of 144 Aravaipas and Pinals had been killed and mutilated, nearly all of them scalped. Lieutenant Whitman searched for the wounded, found only one woman, buried the bodies, and dispatched interpreters into the mountains to find the Apache men and assure them his soldiers had not participated in the “vile transaction”. The following evening, the surviving Aravaipas began trickling back to Camp Grant.

Within a week of the slaughter, a local businessman, William Hopkins Tonge, wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs stating, “The Indians at the time of the massacre being so taken by surprise and considering themselves perfectly safe with scarcely any arms, those that could get away ran for the mountains.” He was the first person to refer to what had taken place as a massacre. The military and the Eastern press called it a massacre, so President Grant informed Governor A.P.K. Safford that if the perpetrators were not brought to trial, he would place Arizona under martial law.

In October 1871, a Tucson grand jury indicted 100 of the assailants with 108 counts of murder. The trial, two months later, focused solely on Apache depredations; it took the jury just 19 minutes to pronounce a verdict of not guilty. Western Apache groups soon left their farms and gathering places near Tucson in fear of subsequent attacks. As pioneer families arrived and settled in the area, Apaches were never able to regain hold of much of their ancestral lands in the San Pedro River Valley. Many groups of Apaches joined up with the Yavapais in Tonto Basin, and from there, a guerilla war began which lasted until 1875.

1875 – The first Gold Life Saving Medal ever awarded was presented to Captain Lucien M. Clemens of the U.S. Life-Saving Service in Marblehead, Ohio, who was captain of one of the first life saving stations on the Great Lakes. Medals were also given to his brothers, Al and Hubbard. They rescued six crew and a female cook from the sinking schooner Consuelo in an open rowboat.

1889 – Washington’s inauguration became the first U.S. national holiday.

1894 – Coxey’s Army reaches Washington, D.C. to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893. Coxey’s Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time. Officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, its nickname came from its leader and was more enduring. It was the first significant popular protest march on Washington and the expression “Enough food to feed Coxey’s Army” originates from this march.

1900 – Hawaii was organized as a U.S. territory. After William McKinley won the presidential election in 1896, Hawaii’s annexation to the U.S. was part of the agenda. McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaiʻi. He met with three annexationists from Hawaii: Lorrin Thurston, Francis March Hatch and William Ansel Kinney. After negotiations, in June 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaii. The treaty was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Instead, despite the opposition of a majority of Native Hawaiians, the Newlands Resolution was used to annex the Republic to the United States and it became the Territory of Hawaii. The Newlands Resolution was passed by the House June 15, 1898, by a vote of 209 to 91, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21. In 1900, Hawaii was granted self-governance and retained ʻIolani Palace as the territorial capitol building. Despite several attempts to become a state, Hawaii remained a territory for sixty years. Plantation owners and key capitalists, who maintained control through financial institutions, or “factors”, known as the “Big Five”, found territorial status convenient, enabling them to continue importing cheap foreign labor; such immigration was prohibited in various states.

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1943 – As part of a deception plan for the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky), the British submarine Seraph releases a corpse into the sea off the Spanish port of Huelva hoping it will be picked up and the papers carried passed on to the Germans. The body purports to be that of a Major Martin of the Royal Marines and he is carrying letters from General Nye, Vice-Chief of the British General Staff, and Admiral Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, to Eisenhower, Alexander and Cunningham referring to Allied plans for an invasion of Greece. The Germans do receive the information and it contributes to their lack of appreciation of the true Allied strategy.

1943 – The Germans retake Djebel Bou Aoukaz, Tunisia. Farther north, the Americans gain a foothold on Hill 609.

1944 – The 8th and 9th US Army Air Forces and Royal Air Force Bomber Command began to fly sorties into France and the Low Countries in preparation for the Allied Expeditionary Force landing on June 6th.

1944 – US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) raids the Japanese base at Truk for a second day. Over the two days, the Japanese lose 93 aircraft out of a total 104 while the Americans lose 35 planes. Meanwhile, American Admiral Oldendorf leads a force of 9 cruisers and 8 destroyers to bombard targets in the Sawatan Islands, southeast of Truk.

1945 – US troops attacked at the Elbe River.

1945 – Der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, burrowed away in a refurbished air-raid shelter, consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol, on this day in 1945, as his “1,000-year” Reich collapses above him. Hitler had repaired to his bunker on January 16, after deciding to remain in Berlin for the last great siege of the war. Fifty-five feet under the chancellery (Hitler’s headquarters as chancellor), the shelter contained 18 small rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. He left only rarely (once to decorate a squadron of Hitler Youth) and spent most of his time micromanaging what was left of German defenses and entertaining such guests as Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. At his side were Eva Braun, whom he married only two days before their double suicide, and his dog, an Alsatian named Blondi.

Warned by officers that the Russians were only a day or so from overtaking the chancellery and urged to escape to Berchtesgarden, a small town in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler owned a home, the dictator instead chose suicide. It is believed that both he and his wife swallowed cyanide capsules (which had been tested for their efficacy on his “beloved” dog and her pups). For good measure, he shot himself with his service pistol. The bodies of Hitler and Eva were cremated in the chancellery garden by the bunker survivors (as per Der Fuhrer’s orders) and reportedly later recovered in part by Russian troops. A German court finally officially declared Hitler dead, but not until 1956.

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese counterattacks and infiltration attempts along the Shuri Line area are defeated. There is heavy fighting in the Maeda and Kochi Ridge positions. The US 1st Marine and 77th Divisions replace the US 27th and 96th Divisions in the line.

1945 – The preparatory bombardment of targets in the Tarakan area in the northeast of the island of Borneo continues. A small American landing force goes ashore on the island of Sadan.

1951 – U.N. Forces, having withdrawn to a new defense line, halted the Chinese offensive north of Seoul and the Han River.

1951 – Far East Air Forces accumulated 1,277 sorties, the largest number to date. Fifth Air Force accounted for a record breaking 960 of them.

1952 – The destroyers USS Maddox and Laffey participated in the most protracted gun duel of the Korean War as the engaged enemy shore batteries in Wonsan Harbor. Heavy coastal artillery fire was received, but neither of the two U.S. ships was damaged.

1964 – Secretary of State Rusk flies to Ottawa, Canada, to make secret arrangements with J. Blair Seaborn, Canada’s new representative on the International Control Commission. Seaborn has a scheduled visit to Hanoi in June and Rusk asks him to convey to the North Vietnamese Government and offer of US economic aid if it calls off its forces and support for the Vietcong.

1965 – The Joint Chiefs present a detailed plan for deploying 48,000 US and 5250 third-country troops in Vietnam. This is more than the numbers agreed to in the earlier Honolulu conference.

1968 – The US embassy releases a report that during the Tet Offensive in Hue, the NVA and Vietcong executed more than 1000 civilians and buried them in mass graves. 19 such grave sites have recently been uncovered.

1968 – U.S. Marines attacked a division of North Vietnamese in the village of Dai Do.

1969 – US troops in Vietnam peaked at 543,000. Over 33,000 had already been killed.

1969 – Prince Sihanouk withdraws his assent to the resumption of diplomatic relations with the US over the US stand on the status of a group of offshore islands, including Dao Phu Duoc, claimed by both Cambodia and South Vietnam.

1970 – President Nixon makes a nationally televised speech to announce his decision to send US troops into Cambodia to destroy Communist sanctuaries and supply bases. The announced objective is the “Fishhook area,” 50 miles northwest to Saigon, which is believed to be a ‘key control center” for the enemy and its ‘headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam.’ Nixon denies an intent to occupy Cambodian territory. Nixon argues that ‘plaintive diplomatic protests’ no longer are sufficient since they would only destroy American credibility in the areas of the world ‘where only the power of the United States deters aggression.’ Nixon warns that ‘if, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.’

1972 – The North Vietnamese launched an invasion of the South.

1973 – President Nixon announced the resignations of his aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean.

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