This Date in Military History:

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

SAXTON, RUFUS
Rank and organization: Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers. P/ace and date: At Harpers Ferry, W. Va., 26 to 30 May 1862. Entered service at: Deerfield, Mass. Birth: Greenfield, Mass. Date of issue: 25 April 1893. Citation: Distinguished gallantry and good conduct in the defense.

ASTON, EDGAR R.
Rank and organization: Private, Company L, 8th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At San Carlos, Ariz., 30 May 1868. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Clermont County, Ohio. Date of issue: 28 July 1868. Citation: With 2 other men he volunteered to search for a wagon passage out of a 4,000-foot valley wherein an infantry column was immobile. This small group passed 6 miles among hostile Apache terrain finding the sought passage. On their return trip down the canyon they were attacked by Apaches who were successfully held at bay.

CUBBERLY, WILLIAM G.
Rank and organization: Private, Company L, 8th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At San Carlos, Ariz., 30 May 1868. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Butler County, Ohio. Date of issue: 28 July 1868. Citation: With 2 other men he volunteered to search for a wagon passage out of a 4,000-foot valley wherein an infantry column was immobile. This small group passed 6 miles among hostile Apache terrain finding the sought passage. On their return trip down the canyon they were attacked by Apache who were successfully held at bay.

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31 May

1634 – Massachusetts Bay colony annexed the Maine colony.

1775 – The Mecklenburg Resolves are allegedly adopted in the Province of North Carolina. The Mecklenburg Resolves, or Charlotte Town Resolves, was a list of statements drafted in the month following the fighting at Lexington and Concord. Similar lists of resolves were issued by other local colonial governments at that time, none of which called for independence from Great Britain.

1854 – Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by U.S. Congress.

1861 – General PGT Beauregard was given command of Confederate Alexandria Line.

1862 – Confederate forces strike Union troops in the Peninsular campaign. During May 1862, the Army of the Potomac, under the command of George B. McClellan, slowly advanced up the James Peninsula after sailing down the Chesapeake Bay by boat. Confederate commander Joseph Johnston had been cautiously backing his troops up the peninsula in the face of the larger Union force, giving ground until he was in the Richmond perimeter. When the Rebels had backed up to the capital, Johnston sought an opportunity to attack McClellan and halt his advance. That chance came when McClellan’s forces were straddling the Chickahominy River.

The swampy ground around the river was difficult to maneuver, and the river was now a raging torrent from the spring rains. A major storm on May 31 threatened to cut the only bridge links between the two wings of the Union army. Johnston attacked one of McClellan’s corps south of the river on May 31 in a promising assault. The plan called for three divisions to hammer the Federal corps from three sides, but the inexperienced Confederates were delayed and confused. By the time the attack came, McClellan had time to muster reinforcements and drive the Rebels back. A Confederate attack the next day also produced no tangible results. The Yankees lost 5,000 casualties to the Rebels’ 6,000. But the battle had two important consequences.

McClellan was horrified by the sight of his dead and wounded soldiers, and became much more cautious and timid in battle—actions that would eventually doom the campaign. And since Johnston was wounded during the battle’s first day, Robert E. Lee replaced him. Lee had been serving as Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ military advisor since his undistinguished service in western Virginia during the war’s first year. The history of the war in the eastern theater drastically changed as Lee ascended the ranks. His leadership and exploits soon became legend.

1863 – U.S.S. Carondelet, Lieutenant Murphy, patrolling the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, proceeded to Perkins Landing, Louisiana, where Army troops were found cut off from the Union headquarters. Murphy “shelled the woods and thus prevented the enemy from advancing and throwing an enfilading fire on the troops ashore,” while awaiting the arrival of a transport which could rescue the soldiers. As Forest Queen arrived and the Union troops began to board her, a large force of Confederates pressed an attack. Carondelet’s guns laid down a heavy fire, saving the troops and forcing the Southerners eventually to break off the assault. Carondelet remained at Perkins’ Landing after Forest Queen departed, saved those stores and material which it was possible to take on board, and destroyed the rest to prevent its capture by Confederates.

1863 – Rear Admiral Porter, accompanied by some of the fleet officers, went ashore, mounted horses and rude to Major General ‘V. T. Sherman’s headquarters before Vicksburg. Sherman reported that the Admiral, referring to the loss of U.S.S. Cincinnati on 27 May, was “willing to lose all the boats if he could do any good.” Porter also volunteered to place a battery ashore. To that end, Lieutenant Commander Selfridge visited Sherman on the first of June and reported that he was prepared to land two 8-inch howitzers and to man and work them if the Army would haul the guns in to position and build a parapet for them. On 5 June Selfridge told Porter that one gun was in position and “I shall have the other gun mounted tonight. . . Frequent joint efforts of this nature hastened the end of Vicksburg.

1863 – U.S.S. Pawnee, Commander Balch, and U.S.S. E.B. Hale, Acting Lieutenant Edgar Brodhead, supported an Army reconnaissance to James Island, South Carolina, and covered the troop landing. Balch reported: ”The landing was successfully accomplished and the reconnaissance made, or forces meeting with no opposition, and they were embarked at 9 a.m. and returned to their camps without a casualty of any kind.” Colonel Charles H. Simonton, CSA, commanding at James Island, warned: ”This expedition of the enemy removes all [their] fear of our supposed batteries on the Stono, and no doubt we will have visits from them often.”

1864 – The Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee engages the Army of the Potomac under Generals Ulysses S. Grant and George Meade.

1866 – In the Fenian Invasion of Canada, John O’Neill leads 850 Fenian raiders across the Niagara River at Buffalo, New York/Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of an effort to free Ireland from the United Kingdom. Canadian militia and British regulars repulse the invaders in over the next three days, at a cost of 9 dead and 38 wounded to the Fenian’s 19 dead and about 17 wounded.

1868 – The 1st Memorial Day parade was held in Ironton, Ohio.

1894 – The US Senate passed a resolution encouraging Hawaii to establish its own form of government without interference from the United States.

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1900 – Sailors and Marines from USS Newark and USS Oregon arrive at Peking, China with other Sailors and Marines from Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan to protect U.S. and foreign diplomatic legations from the Boxers.

1913 – The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was declared in effect.

1921 – A major race riot broke out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood, the black section of town, was burned. As many as 10,000 white men and boys attacked the black community and 35 blocks of the black business district were burned with participation by police officers. The National Guard was clled out and martial law enforced but not until the day after the violence when most of the conflict had already ended. Some 200-300 people were believed to have been killed.

1940 – President Roosevelt introduces a “billion-dollar defense program” which is designed to boost the United States military strength significantly.

1942 – In an attempt to reinforce the Pacific Fleet, battleships Colorado and Maryland sail from San Francisco.

1944 – USS England sank a record 6th Japanese submarine in 13 days.

1944 – The Canadian 1st Corps captures Frosinone; the British 10th Corps takes Sora. Around Anzio, forces of the US 6th Corps capture Velletri and Monte Artemiso while other elements attack Albano. The German loss of Velletri unhinges their defenses of the Caesar Line.

1944 – US forces reduce their perimeter near Arare. All the American beachheads on the north coast experience significant Japanese attacks. Meanwhile, to the east, Australian forces capture Bunabum.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division (part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps) encounters Japanese rearguards near Hill 46. Japanese forces pull out of Shuri.

1945 – On Negros, organized Japanese resistance ends. On Luzon, a regiment of the US 37th Division begins moving northward from Santa Fe through the Cagayan valley.

1947 – Authority of the U.S. Coast Guard for the establishment and disestablishment of prohibited, restricted, and anchorage areas, conferred by the Espionage Act (50 U.S.C. 191) and Proclamation No. 2412 of 27 June 1940 was terminated by Proclamation No. 2732, signed by the President on this date.

1948 – The Coast Guard assumed command of the former Navy base at Cape May, New Jersey, and formally established its east coast recruit training center there the next day.

1956 – In violation of the Geneva Agreements, the United States sends 350 additional military men designated Temporary Equipment Recovery Team (TERM) to Saigon under the pretext of helping to recover and redistribute equipment abandoned by the French. They will stay on as a permanent part of MAAG.

1959 – US Advisors are assigned to the regimental level of the South Vietnamese armed forces.

1959 – At the 15th plenum of the Central Committee, North Vietnam’s leaders decide to formally take control of the growing insurgency in the South. The tempo of war speeds up as more southern cadre members infiltrate back to the South along an improved Ho Chi Minh Trail. Although infiltration from the North began in 1955, not until 1959 does the CIA pick up evidence of large-scale infiltration. Hanoi’s decisions of this month along with the troop movements in preparation for an October offensive are viewed by intelligence in Washington as the beginnings of the North Vietnamese intervention.

1962 – Around 5,000 troops (including US Special Forces, or Green Berets) are serving in South Vietnam, and there are a total of 124 US aircraft including two USAF C-123 squadrons and four helicopter companies. The Communists are forming battalion-sized units in several parts of central Vietnam.

1965 – U.S. planes bomb an ammunition depot at Hoi Jan, west of Hanoi, and try again to drop the Than Hoa highway bridge. These raids were part of Operation Rolling Thunder, which had begun in March 1965. President Lyndon B. Johnson had ordered the sustained bombing of North Vietnam to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam. In July 1966, Rolling Thunder was expanded to include North Vietnamese ammunition dumps and oil storage facilities as targets.

In the spring of 1967, it was further expanded to include power plants, factories, and airfields in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. The White House closely controlled Operation Rolling Thunder and President Johnson occasionally selected the targets himself. From 1965 to 1968, about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam. A total of nearly 900 U.S. aircraft were lost during Operation Rolling Thunder. The operation continued, with occasional suspensions, until President Johnson halted it on October 31, 1968, under increasing domestic political pressure.

1971 – In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30th.

1973 – The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.

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1988 – President Ronald Reagan ends his first trip to Moscow, and his fourth summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on notes of both frustration and triumph. Although there were no breakthroughs or agreements on substantive issues, the “Great Communicator,” as Reagan was known in the United States, was a hit with Soviet audiences. The May 1988 summit between Gorbachev and Reagan was billed as a celebratory follow-up to their breakthrough summit of October 1987. At that meeting in Washington, D.C., the two leaders had signed the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles from Europe. The May meeting, however, got off to a rocky start as Reagan lectured Gorbachev about the need to improve the Soviet Union’s human rights record.

From that inauspicious start, the summit went downhill and ended with no further progress on arms control. Gorbachev’s frustration boiled over as he declared to Reagan, “Maybe now is again a time to bang our fists on the table” in order to hammer out an arms agreement. During his final day in Moscow, Reagan turned away from strictly political issues and spoke before a group of students and Russian intellectuals and then took a walking tour of some old churches. He praised Russian cultural achievements, particularly the nation’s great literary tradition and disarmed his audiences with his usual self-effacing humor.

The May 1988 summit meeting was a victory of style over substance. Both Reagan and Gorbachev kept up positive fronts in their public statements, but in fact, the meeting had been a great disappointment for both sides. No further progress on arms limitation was made, and Reagan’s efforts to push the human rights issue met a frosty response from Gorbachev. The summit indicated that despite the progress made in improving U.S.-Soviet relations in the past years, serious differences still existed.

1988 – The first search and rescue agreement with the Soviet Union was signed at a summit in Moscow. The agreement set a general line, or boundary, separating SAR regions and provided for exchange visits to SAR coordination centers in both countries, joint SAR exercises, and regular communication checks.

1988 – The CGC Fir became the oldest cutter in commission after the CGC Ingham was decommissioned this day.

1990 – President Bush and his wife, Barbara, welcomed Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in a ceremony on South Lawn of the White House. The two leaders and their aides then held talks on German reunification.

1994 – The United States announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.

1995 – President Clinton declared he was ready to permit the temporary use of American ground forces in Bosnia to help UN peacekeepers move to safer positions if necessary.

1997 – Rosie Will Monroe (76), WW II icon (Rosie the riveter), died.

1999 – During a Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery, President Clinton asked Americans to reconsider their ambivalence about Kosovo, calling it “a very small province in a small country. But it is a big test of what we believe in.”

2000 – Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rashid states that Iraq does not intend to sign more contracts with foreign oil companies to develop its oilfields until contracts previously awarded are implemented.

2001 – Veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleaded innocent to charges of spying for Moscow. He later changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

2001 – The United States and Britain win Security Council approval of a one-month extension of the United Nations oil-for-food program. A vote on the new “smart sanctions” on Iraq proposed by the United States and Britain is delayed at least one month.

2002 – The US State Dept. urged some 60,000 Americans in India to leave over concerns of war between India and Pakistan.

2002 – Bulgaria signed an agreement with the US to destroy its Cold War-era missiles. The US planned to pay the costs of destruction.

2003 – Eric Rudolph, the longtime fugitive charged in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and in attacks at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, was arrested in the mountains of North Carolina.

2003 – American forces arrested 15 members of Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath Party as they met at a police college in Baghdad.

2004 – U.S. troops clashed with Shiite militiamen in the holy city of Kufa for a second day in fighting that killed two Americans. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near the headquarters of the U.S. coalition, killing at least two people and injuring more than 20.

2005 – Vanity Fair reveals that former Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post in 1972 about the involvement of United States President Richard Nixon’s administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal.

2008 – STS-124, a Space Shuttle mission, flown by Space Shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station, is launched with a crew of seven and the main module of the Japanese laboratory Kibō.

2009 – CGC Boutwell arrived in the port of Tubruq, Libya, during her around-the-world cruise, becoming the first U.S. military ship to visit Libya in more than 40 years.

2012 – SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon capsule successfully returns to Earth following its demo mission to the International Space Station, landing intact in the Pacific Ocean. It is later recovered and shipped back to the United States.

2014 – Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, previously the only United States military prisoner held captive in Afghanistan, is released in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, by then president, Barack Hussein Obama.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

FALLON, THOMAS T.
Rank and organization: Private, Company K, 37th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Williamsburg, Va., 5 May 1862. At Fair Oaks, Va., 30-31 May 1862. At Big Shanty, Ga., 14-15 June 1864. Entered service at: Freehold, N.J. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 13 February 1891. Citation: At Williamsburg, Va., assisted in driving rebel skirmishers to their main line. Participated in action, at Fair Oaks, Va., though excused from duty because of disability. In a charge with his company at Big Shanty, Ga., was the first man on the enemy’s works.

FORMAN, ALEXANDER A.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company E, 7th Michigan Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 31 May 1862. Entered service at: Jonesville, Mich. Birth: Scipio, Mich. Date of issue: 17 August 1895. Citation: Although wounded, he continued fighting until, fainting from loss of blood, he was carried off the field.

FRENCH, SAMUEL S.
Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 7th Michigan Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 31 May 1862. Entered service at: Gifford, Mich. Birth: Erie County, N.Y. Date of issue: 24 October 1895. Citation: Continued fighting, although wounded, until he fainted from loss of blood.

GILLESPIE, GEORGE L.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army. Place and date: Near Bethesda Church, Va., 31 May 1864. Entered service at: Chattanooga, Tenn. Birth: Kingston, Tenn. Date of issue: 27 October 1897. Citation: Exposed himself to great danger by voluntarily making his way through the enemy’s lines to communicate with Gen. Sheridan. While rendering this service he was captured, but escaped; again came in contact with the enemy, was again ordered to surrender, but escaped by dashing away under fire.

O’BEIRNE, JAMES R.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company C, 37th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 31 May and 1 June 1862. Entered service at: New York. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 20 January 1891. Citation: Gallantly maintained the line of battle until ordered to fall back.

PURCELL, HIRAM W.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company G, 104th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 31 May 1862. Entered service at:——. Birth: Bucks County, Pa. Date of issue: 12 May 1894. Citation: While carrying the regimental colors on the retreat he returned to face the advancing enemy, flag in hand, and saved the other color, which would otherwise have been captured.

SHAFTER, WILLIAM R.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company I, 7th Michigan Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 31 May 1862. Entered service at: Galesburg, Mich. Birth: Kalamazoo, Mich. Date of issue: 12 June 1895. Citation: Lt. Shafter was engaged in bridge construction and not being needed there returned with his men to engage the enemy participating in a charge across an open field that resulted in casualties to 18 of the 22 men. At the close of the battle his horse was shot from under him and he was severely flesh wounded. He remained on the field that day and stayed to fight the next day only by concealing his wounds. In order not to be sent home with the wounded he kept his wounds concealed for another 3 days until other wounded had left the area.

CRAFT, CLARENCE B.
Rank and organization: Private, First Class, U.S. Army, Company G, 382d Infantry, 96th Infantry Division. Place and date: Hen Hill, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, 31 May 1945. Entered service at: Santa Ana, Calif. Birth: San Bernardino, Calif. G.O. No.: 97, 1 November 1945. Citation: He was a rifleman when his platoon spearheaded an attack on Hen Hill, the tactical position on which the entire Naha-Shuri-Yonaburu line of Japanese defense on Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, was hinged. For 12 days our forces had been stalled, and repeated, heavy assaults by 1 battalion and then another had been thrown back by the enemy with serious casualties. With 5 comrades, Pfc. Craft was dispatched in advance of Company G to feel out the enemy resistance. The group had proceeded only a short distance up the slope when rifle and machinegun fire, coupled with a terrific barrage of grenades, wounded 3 and pinned down the others.

Against odds that appeared suicidal, Pfc. Craft launched a remarkable 1-man attack. He stood up in full view of the enemy and began shooting with deadly marksmanship wherever he saw a hostile movement. He steadily advanced up the hill, killing Japanese soldiers with rapid fire, driving others to cover in their strongly disposed trenches, unhesitatingly facing alone the strength that had previously beaten back attacks in battalion strength. He reached the crest of the hill, where he stood silhouetted against the sky while quickly throwing grenades at extremely short range into the enemy positions. His extraordinary assault lifted the pressure from his company for the moment, allowing members of his platoon to comply with his motions to advance and pass him more grenades.

With a chain of his comrades supplying him while he stood atop the hill, he furiously hurled a total of 2 cases of grenades into a main trench and other positions on the reverse slope of Hen Hill, meanwhile directing the aim of his fellow soldiers who threw grenades from the slope below him. He left his position, where grenades from both sides were passing over his head and bursting on either slope, to attack the main enemy trench as confusion and panic seized the defenders. Straddling the excavation, he pumped rifle fire into the Japanese at pointblank range, killing many and causing the others to flee down the trench. Pursuing them, he came upon a heavy machinegun which was still creating havoc in the American ranks. With rifle fire and a grenade he wiped out this position.

By this time the Japanese were in complete rout and American forces were swarming over the hill. Pfc. Craft continued down the central trench to the mouth of a cave where many of the enemy had taken cover. A satchel charge was brought to him, and he tossed it into the cave. It failed to explode. With great daring, the intrepid fighter retrieved the charge from the cave, relighted the fuse and threw it back, sealing up the Japs in a tomb. In the local action, against tremendously superior forces heavily armed with rifles, machineguns, mortars, and grenades, Pfc. Craft killed at least 25 of the enemy; but his contribution to the campaign on Okinawa was of much more far-reaching consequence for Hen Hill was the key to the entire defense line, which rapidly crumbled after his utterly fearless and heroic attack.

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*SMITH, FURMAN L.
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, 135th Infantry, 34th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Lanuvio, Italy, 31 May 1944. Entered service at: Central, S.C. Birth: Six Miles, S.C. G.O. No.: 6, 24 January 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. In its attack on a strong point, an infantry company was held up by intense enemy fire. The group to which Pvt. Smith belonged was far in the lead when attacked by a force of 80 Germans.

The squad leader and 1 other man were seriously wounded and other members of the group withdrew to the company position, but Pvt. Smith refused to leave his wounded comrades. He placed them in the shelter of shell craters and then alone faced a strong enemy counterattack, temporarily checking it by his accurate rifle fire at close range, killing and wounding many of the foe. Against overwhelming odds, he stood his ground until shot down and killed, rifle in hand.

HERNANDEZ, RODOLFO P.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Company G, 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team. Place and date: Near Wontong-ni, Korea, 31 May 1951. Entered service at: Fowler, Calif. Born: 14 April 1931, Colton, Calif. G.O. No.: 40, 21 April 1962. Citation: Cpl. Hernandez, a member of Company G, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. His platoon, in defensive positions on Hill 420, came under ruthless attack by a numerically superior and fanatical hostile force, accompanied by heavy artillery, mortar, and machine gun fire which inflicted numerous casualties on the platoon.

His comrades were forced to withdraw due to lack of ammunition but Cpl. Hernandez, although wounded in an exchange of grenades, continued to deliver deadly fire into the ranks of the onrushing assailants until a ruptured cartridge rendered his rifle inoperative. Immediately leaving his position, Cpl. Hernandez rushed the enemy armed only with rifle and bayonet.

Fearlessly engaging the foe, he killed 6 of the enemy before falling unconscious from grenade, bayonet, and bullet wounds but his heroic action momentarily halted the enemy advance and enabled his unit to counterattack and retake the lost ground. The indomitable fighting spirit, outstanding courage, and tenacious devotion to duty clearly demonstrated by Cpl. Hernandez reflect the highest credit upon himself, the infantry, and the U.S. Army.

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1 June

1638 – The first earthquake was recorded in the U.S. at Plymouth, Mass.

1657 – 1st Quakers arrived in New Amsterdam (NY).

1774 – The Boston Port Bill, the first bill of the Intolerable Acts (called by the Colonists) became effective. It closed Boston harbor until restitution for the destroyed tea was made (passed March 25, 1774).

1779 – The court-martial of Benedict Arnold convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a relatively clean record in the early days of the American Revolution, Arnold was charged with malfeasance, misusing government wagons, illegally buying and selling goods, and favoritism to the British Loyalists. Although his notorious betrayal was still many months away, Arnold’s resentment over this order and the perceived mistreatment by the American Army would fuel his traitorous decision. Abruptly interrupted at its outset by a British attack north of New York City, the court-martial did not get underway again until December 23rd in Morristown, New Jersey.

Although Arnold was cleared of most charges, General George Washington issued a reprimand against him, and Arnold became increasingly angered. While on a trip to the important West Point base to make sure that it could withstand a British attack, Arnold stewed over his slight by Washington and the Americans. He thought that he had never been properly rewarded or acknowledged for his military success on their behalf. He began corresponding with British spies about the possibility of changing sides. Arnold negotiated his defection to the British and the subversion of West Point over several months. The British already held control of New York City and believed that by taking West Point they could effectively cut off the American’s New England forces from the rest of the fledgling nation.

In August 1780, Sir Henry Clinton offered Arnold £20,000 for delivering West Point and 3,000 troops. Arnold told General Washington that West Point was adequately prepared for an attack even though he was busy making sure that that it really wasn’t. He even tried to set up General Washington’s capture as a bonus. His plan might have been successful but his message was delivered too late and Washington escaped. The West Point surrender was also foiled when an American Colonel ignored Arnold’s order not to fire on an approaching British ship.

Arnold’s defection was revealed to the Americans when British officer John André, acting as a messenger, was robbed by AWOL Americans working as pirates in the woods north of New York City. The notes revealing Arnold’s traitorous agreement were stashed in his boots. Arnold and his wife Peggy, who fooled American officers into believing she had no involvement in the betrayal, escaped to New York City.

At the British surrender at Yorktown, Benedict Arnold was burned in effigy and his name has since become synonymous with traitor. The British didn’t treat him very well after the war either. After prevailing in a libel action, he was awarded only a nominal amount because his reputation was already so tarnished. He died in 1801 and was buried in England without military honor.

1779 – British commander Henry Clinton leads 6000 men up the Hudson River to capture the unfinished American forts at Stony Point and Verplank River, but fails to reach his ultimate goal of West Point, New York.

1783 – Last British troops sailed from New York Harbor.

1789 – Congress passed its first act which mandated the procedure for administering oaths of public office.

1792 – The Great State of Kentucky became the 15th state of the union. Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth (the others being Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts). Originally a part of Virginia, Kentucky is known as the “Bluegrass State”, a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the major regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky which houses two of its major cities, Louisville and Lexington.

It is a land with diverse environments and abundant resources, including the world’s longest cave system, Mammoth Cave National Park, the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States, and the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi River. Kentucky is also home to the highest per capita number of deer and turkey in the United States, the largest free-ranging elk herd east of the Mississippi River, and the nation’s most productive coalfield. Kentucky is also known for horse racing, bourbon distilleries, automobile manufacturing, tobacco, bluegrass music, college basketball, and the ubiquitous Kentucky Fried Chicken.

1794 – Protected by a French fleet, a large convoy of US ships carrying provisions to famine-stricken France is encountered by a British fleet under Admiral Sir Richard Howe. Although Howe defeats the French, the US convoy is able to escape safely during the heat of the battle.

1796 – The Great State of Tennessee became the 16th state of the union.

1796 – In accordance with the Jay Treaty, all British troops were withdrawn from U.S. soil.

1808 – The first US land-grant university was founded--Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.

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1812 – By the summer of 1812 President James Madison had grown tired of watching America’s merchant ships and sailors take a beating at the hands of the British. The nation’s maritime interests had been caught in the crossfire of the Napoleonic Wars since the early 1800s. Though France had long since begged off from interfering with U.S. economic activities, England persisted in its practice of halting U.S. ships and seizing men who were suspected of having deserted the Royal Navy. Reluctant to build up America’s military forces, Madison attempted to rebuff the British through fiscally minded measures. However, neither the Embargo Act (1807) nor successive versions of non-intercourse legislation (1809, 1810) did much to dissuade the British from their habit of harassing American ports and ships. And so on this day in 1812, Madison gave the call to Congress to declare war on Great Britain. Just three days later the hawkish House voted 79 to 49 to engage England in armed conflict; by the end of the month the United States was embroiled in the War of 1812.

1813 – The U.S. Navy gained its motto as the mortally wounded commander of the U.S. frigate “Chesapeake”, Captain James Lawrence was heard to say, “Don’t give up the ship!”, during a losing battle with a British frigate “Shannon”; his ship was captured by the British frigate. Oliver Hazard Perry honored his dead friend Lawrence when he had the motto sewn onto the private battle flag flown during the Battle of Lake Erie, 10 September 1813.

1814 – Philip Kearney, Union Civil War general, was born. He was killed at the Battle of Chantilly, Virginia. Kearney was a Union General whose lifelong romantic obsession with war culminated in his death in action. Born into a wealthy and socially prominent New York family, Kearney’s ambition was to go to West Point but his family would not allow this, so he read law. When his grandfather died in 1836 and left him independently wealthy, Kearney secured a commission in a US Army cavalry unit and spent two years with it on the western frontier. He then went to France to study their army’s cavalry tactics, and even served with them in Algiers in 1840. Returning to the United States, he served as an aide to superior officers, and when the war with Mexico began he recruited a cavalry unit that he outfitted with dapple-gray horses and trained to gallop in unison. He then took the unit to Mexico where, leading a charge, he had his left arm so shattered that it had to be amputated. This did not stop Kearney from leading an expedition against Indians in California, but in 1851 he retired from the army and devoted himself to his estate in New Jersey. Once again restless for action, he went to France in 1859 and rode into combat with the French cavalry in their battles against the Italians (for which he was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor).

When the Civil War broke out in America, Kearney rushed back to Washington and got himself appointed brigadier general in command of a New Jersey brigade. He had all the men of his unit wear a piece of scarlet cloth that became known as the ‘Kearney patch’ and instilled in them the sense of being an elite unit: ‘You must ever be in the front’, he told them. In the early months in Virginia he led his men in at least 12 major engagements. Then in September 1862, while reconnoitering a new position near Chantilly, Kearney unknowingly crossed into Confederate territory and was killed. Lee had known Kearney and sent his sword, horse and saddle to his widow; eventually Kearney’s body was buried at the National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia where New Jersey erected an equestrian statue. A man of undeniable confidence and courage, Kearney inspired respect in his fellow officers and enthusiasm in his troops, but his view of war as high adventure was also undeniably that of a man of class.

1821 – Governor Andrew Jackson officially receives the Florida territory from the Spanish. As no provisions have yet been made for a territorial government, Jackson will act as a quasi-military commander.

1831 – John B. Hood, Confederate general is born. Appointed to West Point by his congressman uncle. Hood reported on July 1, 1849. He graduated forty-fifth in a class of fifty-five and was sent to the Fourth Infantry Regiment, stationed in California. Assigned to the Second Cavalry Regiment in Texas in 1855 with Lee and George Thomas. On April 16, 1861 Hood resigns from the Union Army and four days later was commissioned First Lieutenant in Confederate cavalry. He reported to Lee in Virginia who promoted him to Major. In October of the same year he was promoted to Colonel and given command of the Fourth Texas Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia. He was known for being aggressive in battle and again promoted to Brigadier General in March 1862 in command of the Texas Brigade. In October 1862 he received a promotion to Major General and given division command under Longstreet.

On July 2, 1863 he was wounded in the arm at Gettysburg. He was on convalescence leave until his return to his division command en route to Chattanooga on September 5, 1863. John Hood was a hero at the Battle of Chickamauga. He was reported dead on the battle field on September 20 but surgeons were able to save him. His right leg was amputated. He recuperated in Atlanta for two months. Promoted to Lieutenant General by Davis February 2, 1864 with date of rank from September 20, 1863, the date he fell at Chickamauga. He reported later in the month to the to take command of Second Corps, Army of Tennessee and served under Johnson. His policy was taking the offensive at any cost, General John B. Hood brought his reduced army before the defenses of Nashville, where it was repulsed by General George H. Thomas on December 15-16 1864, in the most complete victory of the war.

After the war Hood takes up residence in New Orleans where he fails in attempts to earn a living in the cotton and insurance industries. He visits Washington where he tries to sell his war stories, this is also unsuccessful. He married Anna Marie Hennen in April 1868. They have 13 children (three sets of twins) in eleven years of marriage. General John B. Hood dies of Yellow Fever August 30, 1879.

1855 – William Walker (1824-1860), US adventurer, stormed into Granada, Nicaragua, and declared himself president. He reestablished slavery and planned an 18-mile canal from Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific.

1861 – The US and the Confederacy Governments simultaneously stopped mail interchange.

1861 – The first skirmish in the Civil War was at Fairfax Court House, Arlington Mills, Va, when a Union scouting party clashed with the local militia. It saw the first death in action of a Confederate officer, and the first wounding of a Confederate officer of field grade. The Union had sent a regular cavalry unit under Lieutenant Charles Henry Tompkins to estimate enemy numbers in the locality. At Fairfax Court House, they surprised a small Confederate rifle company under Captain John Quincy Marr, and took some prisoners. Marr rallied his unit, but was killed, and command was taken over by a civilian ex-governor of Virginia, William “Extra Billy” Smith, who forced the Union to retreat.

The engagement is judged to have been inconclusive. The Union did not gain the intelligence it was seeking, and had to delay its drive on Richmond, thus enabling the Confederates to build-up their strength at Manassas in advance of the much-bigger battle there, the following month. Tompkins was criticised for exceeding his orders, though these orders were somewhat imprecise.

1861 – British territorial waters & ports were put off-limits during Civil War.

1862 – Slavery was abolished in all U.S. possessions.

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1862 – General Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Confederate Army outside Richmond after General Joe Johnston was injured at Seven Pines. Robert E. Lee received a field command: the Army of Northern Virginia.

1863 – In seeking to stop the activities of Confederate blockade runners, vigorous naval officers were not always confined to the water. On hearing that four men engaged in blockade running were ashore near Lawson’s Bay on the Rappahannock River, Acting Master Street of U.S.S. Primrose took a landing party 4 miles inland and surrounded the house the men had been reported to be in. “On searching the house,” Street wrote, ” we found four men secreted under the bedding. We also obtained $10,635 in notes and bonds belonging to the prisoners.

1863 – The anti-Lincoln Copperhead “Chicago Times” is suppressed by order of General Ambrose Burnside, but the order is revoked on June 4th by Lincoln.

1863 – The Confederate Navy Department assumed complete control of the Selma, Alabama, Iron Works. Under the command of Commander Catesby R. Jones, the iron works became a naval ordnance works where naval guns were cast. Between June 1863 and April 1864, nearly 200 guns were cast there, most of them 6.4-inch and 7-inch Brooke rifles.

1864 – Confederates attack Union troops at the strategic crossroads of Cold Harbor, less than a dozen miles from Richmond. Since the beginning of May 1864, Ulysses S. Grant had doggedly pursued Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia along an arc around Richmond. The massive offensive was costly to the Army of the Potomac, which racked up 60,000 casualties before reaching the crossroads. After battling along the North Anna River and at Bethesda Church in late May, the armies engaged in a familiar race to the next strategic point. The Union troops arrived at Cold Harbor to find that the Confederates were already there. On May 30, Union troops under Philip Sheridan encountered Confederates led by Fitzhugh Lee around the tavern for which the crossroads was named. The Yankees attacked and took control of the intersection but could not advance toward Richmond any further. Additional troops from each army continued to arrive through the evening of May 31st.

Determined to retake the crossroads, Lee ordered a Confederate attack shortly after dawn, before more Northern troops arrived. The spirited assault was led by an inexperienced colonel named Lawrence Keitt from South Carolina, who was mortally wounded in the first Yankee volley. Soon after, the 20th South Carolina, a green regiment at the head of the attack, broke into a frantic retreat. The panic spread to other units, and the Confederate attack wilted. Sheridan’s troops held the crossroads. Grant attacked the Confederates in the late afternoon, after more Union troops had arrived. But the Yankees could not break through the Rebels’ newly constructed fortifications, and so they decided to wait until the bulk of the Army of the Potomac had arrived before launching another attack. This delay proved costly. The Rebels used the time to dig trenches and construct breastworks. When the attack came on June 3rd, it turned into one of the biggest Union disasters of the war.

1864 – Shenandoah Valley campaign began.

1864 – U.S.S. Exchange, a 210-ton wooden paddle-wheeler under Acting Master James C. Gipson, engaged two Confederate batteries on the Mississippi River near Columbia, Arkansas, sustaining serious damage. Gipson, who was wounded during the heated encounter, described the action: “They waited until I had passed by the lower battery, when they opened a destructive crossfire. As I had just rounded a point of a sand bar, I could not back down, consequently there was no other alternative but run by the upper battery if possible. . . . I opened my port broadside guns, re-plying to theirs; but unfortunately the port engine was struck and disabled, causing her to work very slow, keeping us under fire about forty-five minutes. I had barely got out of range of their guns when the engine stopped entirely. . . . I immediately let go the anchor . . . expecting every moment they would move their battery above us and open again; but we succeeded in getting out, although pretty badly damaged.”

1868 – The Texas constitutional convention met in Austin.

1868 – Fifteenth President of the United States James Buchanan dies. While serving as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature in 1814 when the British army burned Washington D.C. and started their advance on Baltimore, Buchanan quickly enlisted in a militia cavalry troop from Lancaster. His unit was soon moved to assist in the defense of Baltimore. Upon the troop’s arrival he volunteered to help gather spare mounts from behind enemy lines and bring them into the American camp. Though facing possible capture or death Buchanan performed his mission with great credit. After the British defeat and withdraw from the Chesapeake Bay, he was released from active duty. Following service in several governmental posts he was elected president in 1856.

1868 – The Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed, allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico. The treaty was concluded at Fort Sumner on June 1, 1868. Some of the provisions included establishing a reservation, restrictions on raiding, a resident Indian Agent and agency, compulsory education for children, the supply of seeds, agricultural implements and other provisions, rights of the Navajos to be protected, establishment of railroads and forts, compensation to tribal members, and arrangements for the return of Navajos to the reservation established by the treaty.

The Navajo agreed for ten years to send their children to school and the U.S. government agreed to establish schools with teachers for every thirty Navajo children. The U.S. government also promised for ten years to make annual deliveries of things the Navajos could not make for themselves. The signers of the document were: W. T. Sherman (Lt. General), S. F. Tappan (Indian Peace Commissioner), Navajos Barboncito (Chief), Armijo, Delgado, Manuelito, Largo, Herrero, Chiquito, Muerte de Hombre, Hombro, Narbono, Narbono Segundo and Ganado Mucho. Those who attested the document included Theo H. Dodd (Indian Agent) and B. S. Roberts (General 3rd Cav).

1871 – RADM Rodgers lands in Korea with a party of Sailors and Marines and captures 5 forts to secure protection for U.S. citizens after Americans were fired upon and murdered.

1877 – U.S. troops were authorized to pursue bandits into Mexico.

1890 – The US census stood at 62,622,250. The US government used the Jean Baptiste Pacard card punch to tabulate the results of the census. Herman Hollerith designed a system that used a machine with a sorter. Hollerith formed a firm that eventually became IBM.

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1914 – General Order 99 prohibits alcohol on board naval vessels, or at navy yards or stations.

1915 – The German government makes an official apology to the United States for the sinking of the tanker Gulflight by one its submarines off the Scilly Isles on May 1st.

1915 – First contract for lighter-than-air craft for Navy.

1916 – The National Defense Act increased the strength of the U.S. National Guard by 450,000 men.

1918 – 2nd Division troops dig in along a defensive line just north of the village of Lucy-le-Bocage. Marine Captain Lloyd Williams when advised to withdraw, replies, “Retreat, Hell! We just got here!” Captain Williams would not survive the ensuing battle. The line was centered on Lucy-le-Bocage. Although the initial disposition of troops was haphazard at first due the emergency, the front settled eventually with the 5th Marines to the west and the 6th Marines to the east. Most of the units deployed without machineguns in support. At Les Mares Farm, members of 2nd Bn, 5th Marines began to show the Germans the effects of long distance marksmanship.

1921 – A race riot errupts in Tulsa, Oklahoma, officially killing 85 people though the actual death toll may never be known. On the morning of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main. The white elevator operator, Sarah Page, claimed that Rowland grabbed her arm, causing her to flee in panic. Accounts of the incident circulated among the city’s white community during the day and became more exaggerated with each telling. Tulsa police arrested Rowland the following day on attempted rape charges and began an investigation. An inflammatory report in the May 31 edition of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a confrontation between black and white armed mobs around the courthouse where the sheriff and his men had barricaded the top floor to protect Rowland. Shots were fired and the outnumbered blacks began retreating to the Greenwood Avenue business district.

In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Black Tulsa was looted and burned by white rioters. Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, took imprisoned blacks out of the hands of vigilantes and imprisoned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days. Twenty-four hours after the violence erupted, it ceased. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, over 800 people were treated for injuries and estimated reports of deaths began at 36. Recently, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission released a report indicating that historians now believe close to 300 people died in the riot.

1924 – Congress establishes the Border Patrol, under the jurisdiction of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Previously, border duty was done sporadically by the Army or the militia of the border states.

1939 – Director of the Naval Research Laboratory, Captain Hollis M. Cooley, proposes research in atomic energy for future use in nuclear powered submarine.

1940 – Despite increased Luftwaffe attacks a total of 64,429 men are evacuated from Dunkirk. However, German planes sink four destroyers and damage five more as well as several of the Channel ferries and other ships, which form the backbone of the evacuation fleet. The RAF sends eight large patrols to give cover but most of the damage is done in the intervals between them. On the ground the Germans increase their efforts, breaking the defensive perimeter along the canals at Bergues and forcing retreats in other sectors as well. During the night the British authorities decide that the air attacks have made the evacuation too dangerous to continue by day.

1941 – The Navy organized the “South Greenland Patrol” that consisted of 3 cutters and a Navy vessel.

1942 – America began sending Lend-Lease materials to the Soviet Union.

1942 – The aircraft carrier USS Saratoga sails after repairs from torpedo damage. It will be too late to take part in the coming battle at Midway.

1942 – Twenty-five American submarines from various forces assume stations around Midway. 1942 – A Warsaw underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland-almost seven months after extermination of prisoners began. A year earlier, the means of effecting what would become the “Final Solution,” the mass extermination of European Jewry, was devised: 700 Jews were murdered by channeling gas fumes back into a van used to transport them to the village of Chelmno, in Poland. This “gas van” would become the death chamber for a total of 360,000 Jews from more than 200 communities in Poland. The advantage of this form of extermination was that it was silent and invisible. One month before the infamous Wannsee Conference of January 1942, during which Nazi officials decided to address formally the “Jewish question,” the gas vans in Chelmno were used to kill up to 1,000 Jews a day.

The vans provided the “Final Solution” for Adolf Eichmann and other Wannsee attendees. The mass gassings were the most orderly and systematic means of eliminating European Jewry. Eventually, more such vans were employed in other parts of Poland. There was no thought of selecting out the “fit” from the “unfit” for slave labor, as in Auschwitz. There was only one goal: utter extermination. On June 1, 1942, the story of a young Jew, Emanuel Ringelblum, (who escaped from the Chelmno death camp after being forced to bury bodies as they were thrown out of the gas vans), was published in the underground Polish Socialist newspaper Liberty Brigade. The West now knew the “bloodcurdling news … about the slaughter of Jews,” and it had a name-Chelmno.

1943 – More than 500,000 coal miners go on strike after protracted wage negotiations break down. Most return to work by June 7th when talks resume.

1944 – The British Broadcasting Corp. broadcasted a line of poetry by the 19th century French poet Paul Verlaine. It was a coded message intended to warn the French resistance that the D-Day invasion was imminent, “The long sobs of the violins of autumn.”

1944 – Gen’ls. Montgomery, Patton, Bradley, Dempsey and Crerar met in Portsmouth.

1944 – ZP-14 Airships complete first crossing of Atlantic by non-rigid lighter-than-air aircraft.

1944 – Forces of the US 5th Army advance toward Rome. The US 2nd and 6th Corps, exploiting the capture of Velletri, attack through the Alban Hills toward Albano and Valmonte. With the breach of the Caesar Line, German Army Group C (Kesselring) orders a withdrawal north of Rome. Rearguards delay the American advance.

1944 – In the evening, the BBC broadcasts the first code message intended as a warning to the French resistance that a invasion is imminent. The Germans appreciate the significance of the message and alert some units in occupied France.

1944 – On Biak Island, American forces resume their offensive and the infantry gain some ground with armored support. On the mainland, Japanese forces continue their attacks around the Aitape beachhead and the American defenders continue to fall back.

1945 – On Okinawa, after the fall of Shuri, General Mushijima orders the Japanese troops to withdraw southward, towards the Oroku peninsula and the hills of Yaeju, Yuza and Mezado in the extreme south of the island. There are reports of discontent among the Japanese troops, something previously unheard of in the Imperial Army. Elements of the US 1st Marine Division cross the Koruba river, south of Naha. The forces of the US 24th Corps pursue the retreating Japanese while elements mop up around Shuri.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 37th Division (US 1st Corps) advances rapidly in the Cagayan valley. Japanese resistance is reduced to rearguard actions. On Mindanao, American forces are engaged north of Davao.

1945 – During a thunderstorm, 27 P-51 fighters collide en route to Osaka. American aircraft drop over 3000 tons of incendiary bombs on Osaka.

1946 – The Coast Guard returned to operation under the Treasury Department after the end of World War II.

1947 – The OPA, which issued WW II rationing coupons, disbanded.

1948 – The US Coast Guard Training Center at Cape May, New Jersey, was established as a receiving center for the initial classification, outfitting, and indoctrination of recruits. The primary reason for this move from the training station at Mayport, Florida, which was then be decommissioned, was to locate more centrally the Service’s facilities for handling recruits.

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1951 – Operation PILEDRIVER began as elements of the I and IX Corps advanced towards the Wyoming Line, some 30 kilometers north in the “Iron Triangle.” Eighth Army had pushed north of the 38th parallel in most sectors. It was during PILEDRIVER the last major U.N. offensive before the commencement of truce talks, that the U.N. forces reached the limit of their advance and the war of movement came to a close.

1951 – The carrier USS Bon Homme Richard and the cruiser USS Los Angeles entered Korean waters.

1951 – One flight of F-86s from the 336th FIS escorting B-29s engaged eighteen MiG-15s, destroying two. A flight of B-29s, 343th BS, defended itself against twenty-two MiG-15s in the vicinity of Sonchon. The MiGs destroyed one B-29 and damaged another, while the defenders destroyed two enemy jets. FEAF Special Air Mission C-47s dropped fifteen Koreans into enemy held territory to retrieve parts from a crashed MiG-15. Unfortunately, communist forces captured all fifteen Koreans. Maj. Gen. Frank F. Everest, USAF, assumed command of Fifth Air Force, replacing General Timberlake.

1952 – President Truman meets with General Eisenhower after the latter returns from Europe as commander of Allied Forces.

1953 – Air battles raging over “MiG Alley” produced five F-86 Sabre jet aces during this month, more than any other month of the war.

1954 – First test of steam catapult from USS Hancock.

1954 – A three-man board reviews J. Robert Oppenheimer’s request for reinstatement ass a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission. The board denies Oppenheimer’s request on a 2-1 vote. Oppenheimer headed the Los Alamos laboratory for atomic research during World War II.

1954 – Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, USAF, arrives in Saigon as chief of the Saigon Military Mission (SMM). Called the Assistant Air Attaché at the US Embassy, Lansdale is in fact a member of the CIA assigned to run paramilitary operations against the Communist Vietnamese–specifically, covert operations to cause political-psychological disruption among the Communists (such as spreading rumors about their leaders and sabotaging North Vietnamese transportation). This ‘cold war combat team’ will be assembled by 11 August. Under the terms of the Geneva Agreements, that is the day by which each country must put a freeze on the foreign military personnel in Vietnam.

1961 – FM multiplex stereo broadcasting was 1st heard.

1962 – USAF Maj. Robert M White took the X-15 to 40,420 m.

1964 – Top U.S. officials concerned about the Vietnam War gather for two days of meetings in Honolulu. Attendees included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Gen. William Westmoreland, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, and CIA Director John McCone, among others. Much of the discussion focused on the projected air war against North Vietnam, including a list of 94 potential targets. There was also a discussion of the plan for a joint Congressional resolution. The meeting was convened to develop options for President Lyndon B. Johnson in dealing with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Vietnam. In March 1964, Secretary of Defense McNamara had reported that 40 percent of the countryside was under Viet Cong control or influence. Johnson was afraid that he would be run out of office if South Vietnam fell to the communists, but he did not want to employ American military power on a large scale because of the impact that such actions might have on his Great Society domestic programs. Upon returning from the meeting in Honolulu, several of Johnson’s advisers, led by William Bundy, developed a scenario of graduated overt pressures against North Vietnam, according to which the president, after securing a Congressional resolution, would authorize air strikes against selected North Vietnamese targets. Johnson rejected the idea of submitting the resolution to Congress because it would “raise a whole series of disagreeable questions” which might jeopardize passage of the administration’s civil rights legislation. However, the idea of such a resolution would surface again in less than two months.

In August 1964, after North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers, in what became known as the Tonkin Gulf incident, McNamara and Rusk appeared before a joint Congressional committee on foreign affairs. They presented the Johnson administration’s arguments for a resolution authorizing the president “to take all necessary measures” to defend Southeast Asia. Subsequently, Congress passed Public Law 88-408, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving President Johnson the power to take whatever actions he deemed necessary, including “the use of armed force.” The resolution passed 82 to 2 in the Senate, where Wayne K. Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) were the only dissenting votes; the bill passed unanimously in the House of Representatives. President Johnson signed it into law on August 10. It became the legal basis for every presidential action taken by the Johnson administration during its conduct of the war.

1965 – Communist China warns again that the increasing US role in the war justifies its own growing aid to North Vietnam.

1965 – US planes initiate a two week campaign of bombing raids on military installations throughout North Vietnam. Visitors to Hanoi report that the city is now encircled by anti-aircraft sites, citizens are building air-raid shelters, some 15% of the people are now enrolled in the militia, and almost one-third of Hanoi’s population has been evacuated.

1971 – In support of the Nixon Administration’s conduct of the war, a group named the Vietnam Veterans for a just peace declares it represents the majority of US Indochina veterans and calls the protests and congressional testimony of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War ‘irresponsible.’

1978 – The U.S. reported finding wiretaps in the American embassy in Moscow.

1980 – Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN), providing round-the- clock TV newscasts, made its debut as television’s first all-news service, vowing to stay on the air until the world ends. The voice of James Earl Jones identifies the station: “This is CNN.”

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1990 – At a superpowers summit meeting in Washington, D.C., U.S. President George H. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a historic agreement to end production of chemical weapons and begin the destruction of both nations’ sizable reserves of them. According to the agreement, on-site inspectors from both countries would observe the destruction process. The treaty, which called for an 80 percent reduction of their chemical weapon arsenals, was part of an effort to create a climate of change that would discourage smaller nations from stockpiling and using the lethal weapons. First developed during World War I, most countries in the world were in possession of the technology needed to build chemical weapons by 1990, and some, such as Iraq, had engaged in chemical warfare in preceding years. The United States and Russia began destroying their chemical weapons arsenals in the early 1990s. In 1993, the U.S., Russia, and 150 other nations signed a comprehensive treaty banning chemical weapons. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in 1997. The U.S. effort to destroy its sizable arsenal is slated for completion in 2004.

1991 – The United States and the Soviet Union resolved differences over the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, clearing the way for a superpower summit.

1991 – NASA scrubbed the launch of the space shuttle “Columbia” after a navigational unit failed.

1992 – The Treasury Department, responding to U.N. sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia, froze an estimated $200 million in assets of the Serb-led Yugoslav government.

1998 – In South Korea Pres. Kim Dae Jung urged the US and western nations to end sanctions against North Korea.

1999 – A peace plan for Kosovo was carried to Pres. Milosevic by Finnish Pres. Martti Ahtisaari. The plan was negotiated Strobe Talbott (53), US deputy Sec. of State, Martti Ahtisaari (61), President of Finland, and Viktor Chernomyrdin, special Russian envoy.

2000 – At Los Alamos hard drives with classified nuclear secrets were discovered missing. They were found June 16 behind a photocopier.

2001 – The Bush administration removed curbs on the sale of $800 million in goods to Iraq. A UN oil-for-food exchange was extended for 1 month rather than the normal 6 months. Iraq responded by saying it wouldn’t resume oil exports.

2002 – President Bush told West Point graduates the United States would strike pre-emptively against suspected terrorists if necessary to deter attacks on Americans, saying “the war on terror will not be won on the defensive.”

2004 – In Haiti US commanders began turning over authority to a UN force under Gen. Augusto Pereira of Brazil.

2004 – Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, a tribal chief, was named interim president of Iraq.

2007 – A United States Navy destroyer, the USS Chafee, fires on suspected terrorists staying in Puntland, in northern Somalia. The three suspects are accused in taking part in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

FARNSWORTH, HERBERT E.
Rank and organization: Sergeant Major, 10th New York Cavalry. Place and date: At Trevilian Station, Va., 11 June 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Cattaraugus County, N.Y. Date of issue: 1 April 1898. Citation: Voluntarily carried a message which stopped the firing of a Union battery into his regiment, in which service he crossed a ridge in plain view and swept by the fire of both armies.

GRANT, GABRIEL
Rank and organization: Surgeon, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 1 June 1862. Entered service at: New York. Born: Newark, N.J. Date of issue: 21 July 1897. Citation: Removed severely wounded officers and soldiers from the field while under a heavy fire from the enemy, exposing himself beyond the call of duty, thus furnishing an example of most distinguished gallantry.

HASKELL, FRANK W.
Rank and organization: Sergeant Major, 3d Maine Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 1 June 1862. Entered service at: Waterville, Maine. Born: 1843, Benton, Maine. Date of issue: 8 December 1898. Citation: Assumed command of a portion of the left wing of his regiment, all the company officers present having been killed or disabled, led it gallantly across a stream and contributed most effectively to the success of the action.

HENRY, GUY V.
Rank and organization: Colonel, 40th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 1 June 1864. Entered service at: Reading Pa. Birth: Fort Smith, Indian Ter. Date of issue: 5 December 1893. Citation: Led the assaults of his brigade upon the enemy’s works, where he had 2 horses shot under him.

HILL, EDWARD
Rank and organization: Captain, Company K, 1 6th Michigan Infantry. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 1 June 1864. Entered service at: Detroit, Mich. Birth: Liberty, N.Y. Date of issue: 4 December 1893. Citation: Led the brigade skirmish line in a desperate charge on the enemy’s masked batteries to the muzzles of the guns, where he was severely wounded.

HOWARD, OLIVER O.
Rank and organization: Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 1 June 1862. Entered service at: Maine. Born: 8 November 1830, Leeds, Maine. Date of issue: 29 March 1893. Citation: Led the 61st New York Infantry in a charge in which he was twice severely wounded in the right arm, necessitating amputation.

O’BEIRNE, JAMES R.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company C, 37th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Fair Oaks, Va., 31 May and 1 June 1862. Entered service at: New York. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 20 January 1891. Citation: Gallantly maintained the line of battle until ordered to fall back.

TOMPKINS, CHARLES H.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Fairfax, Va., 1 June 1861. Entered service at: Brooklyn, N.Y. Birth: Fort Monroe, Va. Date of issue: 13 November 1893. Citation: Twice charged through the enemy’s lines and, taking a carbine from an enlisted man, shot the enemy’s captain.

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2 June

1763 – At what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan, Chippewas capture Fort Michilimackinac by diverting the garrison’s attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort. Fort Michilimackinac was an 18th-century French, and later British, fort and trading post at the Straits of Mackinac; it was built on the northern tip of the lower peninsula of the present-day state of Michigan in the United States. Built around 1715, and abandoned in 1783, it was located along the Straits, which connected Lake Huron and Lake Michigan of the Great Lakes of North America. Present-day Mackinaw City developed around the site of the fort. After entering the fort, they killed most of the British inhabitants. They held the fort for a year before the British regained control, promising to offer more and better gifts to the native inhabitants of the area.

1774 – The Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to allow British soldiers into their houses, was reenacted.

1815 – Philip Kearny, one of the most promising generals in the Union army, is born in New York City. Raised in a wealthy family, Kearny attended Columbia University and became a lawyer. Although his grandfather refused to allow him to attend the Military Academy at West Point, Kearny joined a year after his grandfather’s death in 1836. A superb horseman, Kearny served on the frontier before being sent to study at the French Cavalry School. After serving with the French in Algiers, he returned to the U.S. Army. Kearny resigned from military duty in 1846 but quickly rescinded the request when war between the United States and Mexico erupted. Although he lost an arm at the Battle of Churubusco, Kearny earned a reputation as a brilliant and gallant cavalry officer. In 1851, Kearny retired to his New Jersey estate but could not resist the temptations of military service. He joined Napoleon III’s Imperial Guard in 1859 and fought with the French in Italy.

When the Civil War broke out, he returned to the United States and accepted a commission as brigadier general. Kearny served with the Army of the Potomac during the Seven Days’ Battles in 1862 and was promoted to major general in July 1862. Now in command of a division, Kearny was part of the Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862. On September 1, 1862, Kearny was killed when he accidentally rode behind Confederate lines at Chantilly, Virginia. Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who had witnessed Kearny’s daring battlefield exploits in Mexico, returned his body under a flag of truce. Lee later bought Kearny’s saber, saddle, and horse from the Confederate Quartermaster Department, and returned them to Kearny’s wife.

1823 – Arikara Indians attack William Ashley and his band of fur traders, igniting the most important of the early 19th century battles between Indians and mountain men. Two years before, William Ashley and his partner Andrew Henry had started the business that would eventually become the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. In 1822, Ashley advertised for “enterprising young men” to join him in an ambitious fur trapping expedition up the Missouri River into the Yellowstone country of present-day Montana. Many who signed on would later become celebrated mountain men, including Jim Bridger, the Sublette brothers, Jed Smith, and Edward Rose. For the first few years, though, Ashley and his men were greenhorns who learned to survive in the wilderness through hard experience. In the spring of 1823, Ashley led a force of about 70 men up the Missouri to begin a summer of trapping along the Yellowstone. On May 30, they reached the territory of the Arikara Indians near the present-day border between North and South Dakota. The Arikara were no friends to the fur trappers. Generally, they resented the Anglo trappers’ attempts to undercut the Indians’ central role as fur suppliers. More specifically, the Arikara were upset that several weeks earlier a group of trappers had rescued several Sioux warriors that the Arikara had been hunting.

On the morning of this day in 1823, a force of about 600 Arikara Indians attacked Ashley’s small band of trappers. Ashley later reported that the majority of the Indians were, “armed with London Fuzils [muskets] that carry a ball with great accuracy, and force, and which they use with as much expertness as any men I ever saw handle arms.” Those lacking guns attacked with bows and arrows and war axes. The fierce Arikara warriors overwhelmed Ashley’s small band of mountain men, killing 12 and wounding many more. The survivors fled downstream; luckily, the Arikara did not pursue them. After the mountain men had regrouped, Ashley dispatched a messenger to St. Louis asking for military assistance. Colonel Henry Leavenworth immediately assembled a force of about 200 men and started up the river, gathering additional fighters along the way, including about 700 Sioux Indians. By the time Leavenworth’s army reached Ashley in early August, that number had grown to at least 1,100 men. The subsequent skirmishes, later somewhat ostentatiously referred to as the Arikara Campaign, proved indecisive. Despite his overwhelming superiority in numbers and armaments, Leavenworth failed to engage the Indians.

Following a few minor encounters, the Arikara quietly withdrew under the cover of night and disappeared. Everyone knew, however, that the Indians would return after the soldiers had departed. Since Leavenworth failed to seriously damage the Arikara fighting ability, the Upper Missouri River route continued to be too dangerous for the trappers for several years to come. Desperate to keep his fledgling business alive, Ashley decided he had no choice but to abandon the traditional river routes and go overland. The next year, Ashley’s trappers headed west on horses rather than in boats. Ironically, this desperate gambit revolutionized the fur trade by vastly increasing the mobility of the fur trappers and opening up whole new regions of the American West. Three years later, Ashley retired from the fur trade a wealthy man.

1855 – The Portland Rum Riot occurs in Portland, Maine. The Portland Rum Riot, also called the Maine Law Riot, was a brief but violent period of civil unrest that occurred in Portland, Maine in response to the Maine law which prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the state the year before. Portland’s large Irish immigrant population were particularly vocal critics of the Maine Law, seeing it as thinly veiled racist attack on their culture. They already disliked and distrusted Dow, and this incident made him appear to be a hypocrite. The Maine law that Dow had sponsored had a mechanism whereby any three voters could apply for a search warrant if they suspected someone was selling liquor illegally. Three men did appear before a judge, who was compelled to issue a search warrant. That afternoon, a crowd began to gather outside the building where the spirits were being held. The crowd numbered about 200 by 5:00 p.m. and grew larger and more agitated as the day progressed as it became evident that the police had no immediate plans to seize or destroy the liquor.

Separate contemporary accounts place the crowd’s size between 1,000 and 3,000 by evening (out of a city population of about 21,000). As the crowd became larger, rock throwing and shoving began. Police were unable to deal with the growing mob, and Dow called out the militia. The exact details of the climax of the riot have been hotly debated. What is known is that after ordering the protesters to disperse, the militia detachment fired into the crowd on Dow’s orders. One man, John Robbins, an immigrant and mate of a Maine sailing vessel from Deer Isle, was killed, and seven others were wounded. The crowd was dispersed, but Dow was widely criticized for his heavy-handed tactics during the incident. In a twist of irony, Dow was later prosecuted for violation of the Maine Law for improperly acquiring the alcohol. The prosecutor was former U.S. Attorney General Nathan Clifford, and the defense attorney was later U.S. Senator and Secretary of the Treasury William P. Fessenden. Dow was acquitted, but the event was a major contributing factor to the repeal of the Maine law in 1856.

1864 – This was day 2 in the Battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia.

1864 – Landing party from U.S.S. Cowslip, Acting Ensign Canfield, captured five sloops and one steam boiler, destroyed six large boats, four salt works, and three flat boats during a raid up Biloxi Bay, Mississippi.

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1865 – In an event that is generally regarded as marking the end of the Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signs the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators. With Smith’s surrender, the last Confederate army ceased to exist, bringing a formal end to the bloodiest four years in U.S. history. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort, and on April 13 U.S. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison, surrendered. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to help quell the Southern “insurrection.” Four long years later, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate dead.

1866 – The Battle of Ridgeway (sometimes the Battle of Lime Ridge or Limestone Ridge) was fought in the vicinity of the town of Fort Erie across the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York, near the village of Ridgeway, Canada West, currently Ontario, Canada, between Canadian troops and an irregular army of Irish-American invaders, the Fenians. It was the largest engagement of the Fenian Raids, the first modern industrial-era battle to be fought by Canadians and the first to be fought only by Canadian troops and led exclusively by Canadian officers. The battlefield was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1921 and is the last battle fought in the Province of Ontario against a foreign invasion. The action at Ridgeway has the distinction of being the only armed victory for the cause of Irish independence between 1798 and 1919.

1866 – The Battle of Fort Erie was a bloody skirmish in the afternoon immediately following the Battle of Ridgeway in Canada West. The Fenian force, withdrawing from Ridgeway towards the United States, met and defeated a small force of Canadian militia at Fort Erie, then known as the village of Waterloo. In response to the Fenian occupation of the township of Fort Erie, Ontario on the night of June 1, 1866, militia units throughout the Niagara Peninsula had been mobilized or put on alert. At Port Colborne, a detachment of 51 gunners and N.C.O.s, British Royal Artillery bombardier Sergeant James McCracken and 3 officers (Captain Richard S. King M.D., Lieutenants A.K. Schofield and Charles Nimmo [Nemmo]) taken under command by Lieutenant-Colonel John Dennis, boarded a tugboat, the W.T. Robb carrying the Dunnville Naval Brigade, consisting of 19 men and 3 officers (Captain Lachlan McCallum, Lieutenant Walter T. Robb, Second Lieutenant Angus Macdonald) (a total of 71 men and 8 officers) and steamed east to the Niagara River, then scouted downriver as far as Black Creek. The Welland Field Battery did not have its four Armstrong guns with it, and were only half armed with Enfield muzzle-loading rifles while the other half with obsolete smooth-bore “Victoria” carbines that had a limited range of approximately 300 yards at best.

The Fenians apparently gone, Dennis turned back upriver to secure the village of Fort Erie and deny them an easy escape route. Dennis and a company of the Welland Field Battery,landed without difficulty, rounding up a number of stragglers. But when John O’Neill returned with the bulk of his force from his victory at Ridgeway, the volunteers – expecting to encounter only scattered bands of defeated Fenians under close pursuit – were unable to resist them. A fierce firefight followed, in which the militia soldiers and sailors were swept off the shores by the better-armed Fenians and most of the Canadians who had landed were captured. While his men were making their stand, Dennis ran away on foot and hid in a house, shedding his uniform and shaving off his luxurious sideburn whiskers. He would later be court-martialed for deserting his men but he was acquitted by two of the three officers serving on the tribunal. (George T. Denison, commanding officer of the Governor General’s Horse Guard voted to convict on some of the counts.)

Except for the verdict, the conduct of the Dennis Inquiry (unlike the one into the conduct of Colonel Booker at Ridgeway) was kept secret. The contents were not released even a year later to members of Canadian Parliament who were demanding to see the transcripts of the testimony. While the original transcripts are available to researchers today in the Canada Archives in Ottawa, their contents have never been published in print anywhere. The remaining Canadians on the gunboat steamed back to Port Colborne, leaving O’Neill and the Fenians in possession of Fort Erie once more. However, with an estimated 5,000 British regulars and Canadian militia converging on his position, and a U.S. naval detachment blocking any attempts at reinforcement, that night O’Neill hastily planned his retreat back to New York State. Some Fenians chose to desert, crossing the river on a variety of stolen or improvised craft. The remainder, 850 in number, crossed in a body and surrendered to a U.S. naval party from the USS Michigan near Buffalo, putting an end to Fenian incursions along the Niagara Peninsula. Canadian judge Kenneth Mackenzie was retained by the US Government to defend the Fenians. He secured acquittals for about half of them.

1875 – Alexander Graham Bell made his 1st complex sound transmission.

1918 – At dawn on this date, the crack German 28th Division attacked along the axis of the Paris-Metz road hitting the American 2d Division, including the 4th Marine Brigade. The Marines opened with deadly rifle fire and helped hand the German troops a setback which set the stage for the Marine victory at Belleau Wood which would soon follow, although at great cost.

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1919 – Anarchists simultaneously set off bombs in eight separate U.S. cities. The 1919 United States anarchist bombings were a series of bombings and attempted bombings carried out by anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani from April through June 1919. These bombings led to the Red Scare of 1919–20. The Galleanists managed to detonate eight large bombs nearly simultaneously in eight different U.S. cities. These bombs were much larger than those sent in April, using up to 25 pounds (11 kg) of dynamite, and all were wrapped or packaged with heavy metal slugs designed to act as shrapnel. Addressees included government officials who had endorsed anti-sedition laws and deportation of immigrants suspected of crimes or associated with illegal movements, as well as judges who had sentenced anarchists to prison.

The homes of Mayor Harry L. Davis of Cleveland; Pittsburgh’s Federal Judge W.H.S. Thompson; Immigration Chief W.W. Sibray; Massachusetts State Representative Leland Powers; Judge Charles C. Nott of New York; and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, already the recipient of a mail bomb in April, were attacked in the new wave of violence. None of the targeted men were killed, but one bomb took the life of New York City night watchman William Boehner and the bomb intended for Attorney General Palmer’s home prematurely exploded and killed Carlo Valdinoci, who was a former editor of the Galleanist publication Cronaca Sovversiva and close associate of Galleani.

Though not seriously injured, Palmer and his family were shaken by the blast, and the house itself was largely demolished. Two near-casualties of the same bomb were Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, then living across the street from Palmer. They had walked past the house just minutes before the explosion, and their residence was close enough that one of the bomber’s body parts landed on their doorstep. Each of the bombs was delivered with several copies of a pink flyer, titled “Plain Words,” that read:

War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.

The flyer was later traced to a printing shop operated by two anarchists – Andrea Salsedo, a typesetter and Roberto Elia, a compositor – who were both Galleanists according to the later memoirs of other members. Salsedo committed suicide, and Elia refused an offer to cancel deportation proceedings if he would testify about his role in the Galleanist organization. Unable to secure enough evidence for criminal trials, authorities continued to use the Anarchist Exclusion Act and related statutes to deport known Galleanists.

1924 – With Congress’ passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, the government of the United States confers citizenship on all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the country. Before the Civil War, citizenship was often limited to Native Americans of one-half or less Indian blood. In the Reconstruction period, progressive Republicans in Congress sought to accelerate the granting of citizenship to friendly tribes, though state support for these measures was often limited. In 1888, most Native American women married to U.S. citizens were conferred with citizenship, and in 1919 Native American veterans of World War I were offered citizenship. In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act, an all-inclusive act, was passed by Congress. The privileges of citizenship, however, were largely governed by state law, and the right to vote was often denied to Native Americans in the early 20th century.

1924 – The U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.

1930 – Charles Conrad (d.1999), astronaut, was born in Philadelphia. He walked on the moon during the Apollo XII mission in 1969.

1941 – First aircraft escort vessel, USS Long Island (ACG-1), commissioned, then reclassified as an auxiliary aircraft carrier (AVC-1) on 20 August and finally reclassified as an escort carrier (CVE-1) in July 1943.

1942 – The US carriers from Pearl Harbor join northeast of Midway. In total, the American force has approximately 250 planes, equal to the number in the approaching Japanese force.

1942 – US Secretary of State Hull and Chinese Foreign Minister Soong sign a Lend-Lease agreement.

1942 – Japanese Admiral Katuta’s light carrier force attacks Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians as a diversion. The Americans, aware of the Japanese plans for the invasion of Midway do not react as predicted.

1943 – 99th Pursuit Squadron flew its 1st combat mission over Italy.

1944 – As the forces of German Army Group C (Kesselring) fall back, the Allied armies advance along the entire front. The forces of the US 5th Army reach Route 6 at Valmontone, which is captured, as well as making progress in the Alban Hills.

1944 – Fighting continues on Biak Island. American forces aim to capture the airfields in the center of the island. These airfields have been used as the base for Japanese attacks on Wadke.

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1944 – American bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force launch Operation Frantic, a series of bombing raids over Central Europe, alighting from airbases in southern Italy, but landing at airbases in Poltava, in the Soviet Union, in what is called “shuttle bombing.” The Fifteenth U.S. Air Force was created solely to cripple Germany’s war economy. Operating out of Italy, and commanded by General Carl Spaatz, a World War I fighter pilot, the Fifteenth was recruited by a desperate Joseph Stalin to help the Red Army in its campaign in Romania. In exchange for the Fifteenth’s assistance, Stalin allowed the American bombers to land at airbases within the Soviet Union as they carried out Operation Frantic, a plan to devastate German industrial regions in occupied Silesia, Hungary, and Romania. Given that such bombing patterns would have made return flights to Foggia and other parts of southern Italy, the Fifteenth’s launching points, impossible because of refueling problems, the “shuttle” to Poltava was the solution that made Frantic a reality.

Before it was shortened to Frantic, the operation was dubbed Operation Frantic Joe-a commentary on Joe Stalin’s original urgent appeal for help. It was changed to avoid offending the Soviet premier. Also on this day in 1944, the date for D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, was fixed for June 5. Originally June 4, it was acknowledged by Allied strategists that bad weather would make keeping to any one day problematic. German General Karl von Rundstedt, intercepting an Allied radio signal relating the June 4 date, was convinced that four consecutive days of good weather was necessary for the successful prosecution of the invasion. There was no such pattern of good weather in sight. The general became convinced that D-Day would not come off within the first week of June at all.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 43rd Division (US 11th Corps) completes mopping up operations in the Ipoh area.

1945 – On Okinawa, mopping up continues as the US 6th Marine Division prepares to land two regiments on the Oroku peninsula.

1945 – US Task Force 38 raids airfields used by Japanese Kamikaze forces. Such raids compel the Japanese to continue operations from bases farther north.

1945 – The Soviet delegation demands a right of veto in the proposed United Nations Security Council.

1954 – Senator Joseph McCarthy charges that communists have infiltrated the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the atomic weapons industry. Although McCarthy’s accusations created a momentary controversy, they were quickly dismissed as mere sensationalism from a man whose career was rapidly slipping away. Senator McCarthy first made a name for himself in 1950 when he charged that over 200 “known communists” were in the Department of State. During the next few years, he alleged that communists were in nearly every branch of the U.S. government. His reckless accusations helped to create what came to be known as the Red Scare, a time when Americans feared that communists were infiltrating all aspects of American government and life. Despite the fact that McCarthy never managed to unearth a single communist, his ability to whip up public hysteria and smear opponents as communist sympathizers made him front-page news for several years. By 1954, however, his power was slipping. His earlier charges had been leveled at the Democratic administration of President Harry S. Truman, and Republicans had embraced McCarthy as a useful weapon.

When Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower stepped into the presidency in 1953, however, McCarthy’s wild accusations became a nuisance and source of embarrassment to the Republican Party. Sensing that his base of power was eroding, in 1954 McCarthy embarked on a spectacularly unsuccessful effort to recapture public support by opening investigations into alleged communist infiltration of the U.S. Army. By early June 1954, the McCarthy-Army hearings had been going on for nearly a month. This was the first opportunity for the American public to get a firsthand view of McCarthy, as the hearings were televised. His bullying style and hysterical behavior quickly turned off the audience. In a desperate attempt to regain momentum, McCarthy charged that communists had also infiltrated the CIA and atomic weapons industry. No one took the charges seriously, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and President Eisenhower brusquely dismissed McCarthy’s accusations as reckless and without basis. Just a few weeks later, McCarthy was thoroughly disgraced when the lawyer for the U.S. Army, Joseph Welch, gave him a devastatingly effective tongue-lashing, which ended with Welch asking the senator whether he had any sense of “decency” at all. The McCarthy-Army hearings collapsed soon thereafter, and the U.S. Senate voted to censure McCarthy. He died, still holding office, in 1957.

1965 – As US Marines and ARVN troops mount a joint operation against Vietcong forces in the vicinity of Chulai Air Base, they are supported by shells fired from the USS Canberra offshore.

1965 – The first contingent of Australian combat troops arrives by plane in Saigon. They will join the US 173rd Airborne Brigade at the Bienhoa air base. 400 more Australian combat troops will arrive by ship on June 8th.

1966 – The 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division and ARVN units begin the three-week long Operation Hawthorne/Dan Tang 61 in the Kontum province.

1966 – The US 1st Infantry Division and ARVN 5th Infantry Division begin a two-week operation, El Paso II, in Binh Long Province.

1966 – The U.S. space probe Surveyor 1 landed on the moon in Oceanus Procellarum and began transmitting detailed photographs of the lunar surface.

1967 – In Operation Union II, the 5th Marines in Quong Tin Province undertake fierce battle with two North Vietnamese regiments that ends in bunker-to-bunker fighting.

1967 – The USSR charges that US planes bombed the Soviet merchant ship Turkestan in the port of Campha, 50 miles north of Haiphong, and files a protest claiming two crewmen were wounded. The Soviets warn that ‘appropriate measures’ will be taken to ensure the safety of other ships.

1969 – Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne sliced the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half off the shore of South Vietnam. 74 people were killed.

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1971 – The Army announces that General John Donaldson, a former brigade commander in South Vietnam, has been charged with killing six Vietnamese and assaulting two others. The 42-year old West Point graduate, a top planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the highest ranking officer to be accused of killing civilians during the war, and the first general to be charged with a war crime since the Philippine Insurrection 70 years before. he is charged in connection with an incident in Quang Ngai Province in march 1969. Lieutenant Colonel William McCloskey, his operations officer in Vietnam, is accused of murdering two Vietnamese in a separate incident.

1972 – More than thirty USAF lanes and helicopters fly through heavy fire to rescue Captain R.C. Locher, who has been trapped northwest of Hanoi since his Phantom jet went down on May 10th.

1975 – Vice President Nelson Rockefeller said his commission had found no widespread pattern of illegal activities at the Central Intelligence Agency.

1979 – NASA launched its S-198 space vehicle.

1986 – For the first time, the public could watch the proceedings of the U.S. Senate on television as a six-week experiment of televised sessions began.

1989 – 10,000 Chinese soldiers were blocked by 100,000 citizens protecting students demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

1995 – A US Air Force F-16C was shot down by a Bosnian Serb surface-to-air missile while on a NATO air patrol in northern Bosnia; the pilot, Captain Scott F. O’Grady, was rescued six days later.

1997 – Timothy McVeigh, a former U.S. Army soldier, is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. On April 19, 1995, just after 9 a.m., a massive truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma City from across the country, and when the rescue effort finally ended two weeks later, the death toll stood at 168 people, including 19 young children who were in the building’s day-care center at the time of the blast.

On April 21st, the massive manhunt for suspects in the worst terrorist attack ever committed on U.S. soil resulted in the capture of Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old former U.S. Army soldier who matched an eyewitness description of a man seen at the scene of the crime. On the same day, Terry Nichols, an associate of McVeigh’s, surrendered at Herington, Kansas, after learning that the police were looking for him. Both men were found to be members of a radical right-wing survivalist group based in Michigan, and on August 8, John Fortier, who knew of McVeigh’s plan to bomb the federal building, agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols in exchange for a reduced sentence. Two days later, a grand jury indicted McVeigh and Nichols on murder and conspiracy charges.

While still in his teens, Timothy McVeigh acquired a penchant for guns and began honing survivalist skills he believed would be necessary in the event of a Cold War showdown with the Soviet Union. Lacking direction after high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and proved a disciplined and meticulous soldier. It was during this time that he befriended Terry Nichols, a fellow soldier who, though 13 years his senior, shared his survivalist interests.

In early 1991, McVeigh served in the Persian Gulf War and was decorated with several medals for a brief combat mission. Despite these honors, he was discharged from the army at the end of the year, one of many casualties of the U.S. military downsizing that came after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps also because of the end of the Cold War, McVeigh shifted his ideology from a hatred of foreign communist governments to a suspicion of the U.S. federal government, especially as its new elected leader, Democrat Bill Clinton, had successfully campaigned for the presidency on a platform of gun control. The August 1992 shoot-out between federal agents and survivalist Randy Weaver at his cabin in Idaho, in which Weaver’s wife and son were killed, followed by the April 19, 1993, inferno near Waco, Texas, which killed some 80 Branch Davidians, deeply radicalized McVeigh, Nichols, and their associates.

In early 1995, Nichols and McVeigh planned an attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which housed, among other federal agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)–the agency that had launched the initial raid on the Branch Davidian compound in 1993. On April 19, 1995, the two-year anniversary of the disastrous end to the Waco standoff, McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck loaded with a diesel-fuel-fertilizer bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and fled. Minutes later, the massive bomb exploded, killing 168 people. On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy, and on August 14, under the unanimous recommendation of the jury, he was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about McVeigh’s bombing plans. Terry Nichols was found guilty on one count of conspiracy and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to life in prison.

In December 2000, McVeigh asked a federal judge to stop all appeals of his convictions and to set a date for his execution by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana. McVeigh’s execution, in June 2001, was the first federal death penalty to be carried out since 1963.

1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery was launched and it planned to pick up astronaut Andrew Thomas from the Mir space station.

1999 – The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. atomic watchdog, reported it could no longer verify the status of North Korea’s nuclear program, prompting the United States to seek economic sanctions.

1999 – The World Court rejected Yugoslavia’s contention that NATO bombing was unlawful and that the Western alliance was committing genocide. The court also refused to call for a cessation of hostilities.

2000 – President Clinton, visiting Germany, was honored with the prestigious International Charlemagne Prize at Aachen Cathedral.

2003 – Thousands of sacked Iraqi soldiers marched on the U.S.-led administration and threatened to launch suicide attacks on American troops in Baghdad unless they were paid wages and compensation.

2003 – North Korea said it has nuclear arms.

2004 – U.S. and Afghan troops backed by American warplanes fought Taliban militants in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, killing 17 insurgents and arresting eight.

2004 – Militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr clashed with U.S. forces near a mosque in Kufa and in Baghdad. Officials said 6 Iraqis were killed and 40 others wounded.

2007 – The U.S. Navy dock landing ship USS Carter Hill confronts pirates off the coast of Somalia after they had hijacked a Danish merchant vessel, the MV Danica White.

2012 – SAS and US Delta force conduct joint operation which successfully rescues 5 foreign aid workers from a gang of insurgents in Shahr-e-Bozorg district near the Afghan – Tajikistan border. SAS and Delta Force arrived by helicopter and took part in “long march” to a cave where the 5 aid workers were being held in a maze of caves. The two teams then engaged insurgents in a firefight and overpowered the heavily armed kidnappers, and the hostages were rescued in the cave assaulted by the SAS. 11 insurgents were killed in the assault and there were no SAS fatalities or injuries.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BARRICK, JESSE T.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company H, 3d Minnesota Infantry. Place and date: Near Duck River, Tenn., 26 May-2 June 1863. Entered service at: Ft. Snelling, Rice County, Minn. Born: 18 January 1841, Columbiana County, Ohio. Date of issue: 3 March 1917. Citation: While on a scout captured single-handed 2 desperate Confederate guerrilla officers who were together and well armed at the time.

CHARETTE, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Gunner’s Mate First Class, U.S. Navy. Entered service at: Lowell, Mass. Born: 6 June 1867, Lowell, Mass. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, Charette displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

CLAUSEN, CLAUS KRISTIAN
Rank and organization: Coxswain, U.S. Navy. Born: 9 December 1869, Denmark. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, Clausen displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

DEIGNAN, OSBORN
Rank and organization: Coxswain, U.S. Navy. Born: 24 February 1873, Sheart, lowa. Accredited to: Iowa. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, Deignan displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

KELLY, FRANCIS
Rank and organization: Watertender, U.S. Navy. Born: 28 March 1879, Boston, Mass. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, Kelly displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

MONTAGUE, DANIEL
Rank and organization: Chief Master-at-Arms, U.S. Navy. Born: 22 October 1867, Wicklow, Ireland. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, Montague displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

MURPHY, JOHN EDWARD
Rank and organization: Coxswain, U.S. Navy. Born: 1869, Ireland. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish shore batteries, Murphy displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

PHILLIPS, GEORGE F.
Rank and organization: Machinist First Class, U.S. Navy. Born: 9 March 1864, Boston, Mass. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 529, 2 November 1899. Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba 2 June 1898. Despite heavy fire from the Spanish shore batteries, Phillips displayed extraordinary heroism throughout this operation.

KOBASHIGAWA, YEIKI
Technical Sergeant Yeiki Kobashigawa distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 2 June 1944, in the vicinity of Lanuvio, Italy. During an attack, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa’s platoon encountered strong enemy resistance from a series of machine guns providing supporting fire. Observing a machine gun nest 50 yards from his position, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa crawled forward with one of his men, threw a grenade and then charged the enemy with his submachine gun while a fellow soldier provided covering fire. He killed one enemy soldier and captured two prisoners. Meanwhile, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa and his comrade were fired upon by another machine gun 50 yards ahead.

Directing a squad to advance to his first position, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa again moved forward with a fellow soldier to subdue the second machine gun nest. After throwing grenades into the position, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa provided close supporting fire while a fellow soldier charged, capturing four prisoners. On the alert for other machine gun nests, Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa discovered four more, and skillfully led a squad in neutralizing two of them. Technical Sergeant Kobashigawa’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

*KRAUS, RICHARD EDWARD
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 24 November 1925, Chicago, Ill. Accredited to: Minnesota. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 8th Amphibious Tractor Battalion, Fleet Marine Force, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Peleliu, Palau Islands, on 5 October 1944. Unhesitatingly volunteering for the extremely hazardous mission of evacuating a wounded comrade from the front lines, Pfc. Kraus and 3 companions courageously made their way forward and successfully penetrated the lines for some distance before the enemy opened with an intense, devastating barrage of hand grenades which forced the stretcher party to take cover and subsequently abandon the mission.

While returning to the rear, they observed 2 men approaching who appeared to be marines and immediately demanded the password. When, instead of answering, 1 of the 2 Japanese threw a hand grenade into the midst of the group, Pfc. Kraus heroically flung himself upon the grenade and, covering it with his body, absorbed the full impact of the explosion and was instantly killed. By his prompt action and great personal valor in the face of almost certain death, he saved the lives of his 3 companions, and his loyal spirit of self-sacrifice reflects the highest credit upon himself and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his comrades.

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*NAKAMINE, SHINYEI
Private Shinyei Nakamine distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 2 June 1944, near La Torreto, Italy. During an attack, Private Nakamine’s platoon became pinned down by intense machine gun crossfire from a small knoll 200 yards to the front. On his own initiative, Private Nakamine crawled toward one of the hostile weapons. Reaching a point 25 yards from the enemy, he charged the machine gun nest, firing his submachine gun, and killed three enemy soldiers and captured two. Later that afternoon, Private Nakamine discovered an enemy soldier on the right flank of his platoon’s position. Crawling 25 yards from his position, Private Nakamine opened fire and killed the soldier.

Then, seeing a machine gun nest to his front approximately 75 yards away, he returned to his platoon and led an automatic rifle team toward the enemy. Under covering fire from his team, Private Nakamine crawled to a point 25 yards from the nest and threw hand grenades at the enemy soldiers, wounding one and capturing four. Spotting another machine gun nest 100 yards to his right flank, he led the automatic rifle team toward the hostile position but was killed by a burst of machine gun fire. Private Nakamine’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

*CHARLTON, CORNELIUS H.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company C, 24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Chipo-ri, Korea, 2 June 1951. Entered service at: Bronx, N.Y. Born: 24 July 1929, East Gulf, W. Va. G.O. No.: 30, 19 March 1952. Citation: Sgt. Charlton, a member of Company C, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. His platoon was attacking heavily defended hostile positions on commanding ground when the leader was wounded and evacuated. Sgt. Charlton assumed command, rallied the men, and spearheaded the assault against the hill. Personally eliminating 2 hostile positions and killing 6 of the enemy with his rifle fire and grenades, he continued up the slope until the unit suffered heavy casualties and became pinned down.

Regrouping the men he led them forward only to be again hurled back by a shower of grenades. Despite a severe chest wound, Sgt. Charlton refused medical attention and led a third daring charge which carried to the crest of the ridge. Observing that the remaining emplacement which had retarded the advance was situated on the reverse slope, he charged it alone, was again hit by a grenade but raked the position with a devastating fire which eliminated it and routed the defenders. The wounds received during his daring exploits resulted in his death but his indomitable courage, superb leadership, and gallant self-sacrifice reflect the highest credit upon himself the infantry, and the military service.

*GRAHAM, JAMES A.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps, Company F, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. Place and date: Republic of Vietnam, 2 June 1967. Entered service at: Prince Georges, Md. Born: 25 August 1940, Wilkinsburg, Allegheny County, Pa. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. During Operation Union 11, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, consisting of Companies A and D, with Capt. Graham’s company attached launched an attack against an enemy occupied position with 2 companies assaulting and 1 in reserve. Company F, a leading company, was proceeding across a clear paddy area 1,000 meters wide, attacking toward the assigned objective, when it came under fire from mortars and small arms which immediately inflicted a large number of casualties. Hardest hit by the enemy fire was the 2d platoon of Company F, which was pinned down in the open paddy area by intense fire from 2 concealed machine guns. Forming an assault unit from members of his small company headquarters, Capt. Graham boldly led a fierce assault through the second platoon’s position, forcing the enemy to abandon the first machine gun position, thereby relieving some of the pressure on his second platoon, and enabling evacuation of the wounded to a more secure area.

Resolute to silence the second machine gun, which continued its devastating fire, Capt. Graham’s small force stood steadfast in its hard won enclave. Subsequently, during the afternoon’s fierce fighting, he suffered 2 minor wounds while personally accounting for an estimated 15 enemy killed. With the enemy position remaining invincible upon each attempt to withdraw to friendly lines, and although knowing that he had no chance of survival, he chose to remain with 1 man who could not be moved due to the seriousness of his wounds. The last radio transmission from Capt. Graham reported that he was being assaulted by a force of 25 enemy soldiers; he died while protecting himself and the wounded man he chose not to abandon. Capt. Graham’s actions throughout the day were a series of heroic achievements. His outstanding courage, superb leadership and indomitable fighting spirit undoubtedly saved the second platoon from annihilation and reflected great credit upon himself, the Marine Corps, and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

*LAPOINTE, JOSEPH G., JR.
Rank and organization: Specialist Fourth Class, U.S. Army, 2d Squadron, 17th Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division . place and date: Quang Tin province, Republic of Vietnam, 2 June 1969. Entered service at: Cincinnati, Ohio. Born: 2 July 1948, Dayton, Ohio. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sp4c. Lapointe, Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 2d Squadron, distinguished himself while serving as a medical aidman during a combat helicopter assault mission. Sp4c. Lapointe’s patrol was advancing from the landing zone through an adjoining valley when it suddenly encountered heavy automatic weapons fire from a large enemy force entrenched in well fortified bunker positions.

In the initial hail of fire, 2 soldiers in the formation vanguard were seriously wounded. Hearing a call for aid from 1 of the wounded, Sp4c. Lapointe ran forward through heavy fire to assist his fallen comrades. To reach the wounded men, he was forced to crawl directly in view of an enemy bunker. As members of his unit attempted to provide covering fire, he administered first aid to 1 man, shielding the other with his body. He was hit by a burst of fire from the bunker while attending the wounded soldier. In spite of his painful wounds, Sp4c. Lapointe continued his lifesaving duties until he was again wounded and knocked to the ground. Making strenuous efforts, he moved back again into a shielding position to continue administering first aid. An exploding enemy grenade mortally wounded all 3 men. Sp4c. Lapointe’s courageous actions at the cost of his life were an inspiration to his comrades. His gallantry and selflessness are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

*POXON, ROBERT LESLIE
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Troop B, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. Place and date: Tay Ninh Province, Republic of Vietnam, 2 June 1969. Entered service at: Detroit, Mich. Born: 3 January 1947, Detroit, Mich. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. 1st Lt. Poxon, Armor, Troop B, distinguished himself while serving as a platoon leader on a reconnaissance mission. Landing by helicopter in an area suspected of being occupied by the enemy, the platoon came under intense fire from enemy soldiers in concealed positions and fortifications around the landing zone. A soldier fell, hit by the first burst of fire. 1st Lt. Poxon dashed to his aid, drawing the majority of the enemy fire as he crossed 20 meters of open ground. The fallen soldier was beyond help and 1st Lt. Poxon was seriously and painfully wounded. 1st Lt. Poxon, with indomitable courage, refused medical aid and evacuation and turned his attention to seizing the initiative from the enemy.

With sure instinct he marked a central enemy bunker as the key to success. Quickly instructing his men to concentrate their fire on the bunker, and in spite of his wound, 1st Lt. Poxon crawled toward the bunker, readied a hand grenade and charged. He was hit again but continued his assault. After succeeding in silencing the enemy guns in the bunker he was struck once again by enemy fire and fell, mortally wounded. 1st Lt. Poxon’s comrades followed their leader, pressed the attack and drove the enemy from their positions. 1st Lt. Poxon’s gallantry, indomitable will, and courage are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

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3 June

1539 – Hernando De Soto claimed Florida for Spain.

1621 – The Dutch West India Company received a charter for New Netherlands. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod, while the more limited settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

1770 – Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo was founded at Monterey along with the Presidio de Monterey.

1781 – Jack Jouett begins his midnight ride to warn Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of an impending raid by Banastre Tarleton. John “Jack” Jouett, Jr. (December 7, 1754 – March 1, 1822) was a politician and a hero of the American Revolution, known as the “Paul Revere of the South” for his late night ride to warn Thomas Jefferson, then the Governor of Virginia, and the Virginia legislature of coming British cavalry who had been sent to capture them. Jouett was also the father of Matthew Harris Jouett, a famous painter from Kentucky.

1785 – Order to sell last ship remaining in Continental Navy, frigate Alliance. No other Navy were ships authorized until 1794.

1800 – John Adams, the second president of the United States, becomes the first president to reside in Washington, D.C., when he takes up residence at Union Tavern in Georgetown. The city of Washington was created to replace Philadelphia as the nation’s capital because of its geographical position in the center of the existing new republic. The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land around the Potomac River to form the District of Columbia, and work began on Washington in 1791. French architect Charles L’Enfant designed the city’s radical layout, full of dozens of circles, crisscross avenues, and plentiful parks. In 1792, work began on the neoclassical White House building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue under the guidance of Irish-American architect James Hoban, whose White House design was influenced by Leinster House in Dublin and by a building sketch in James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture. In the next year, Benjamin Latrobe began construction on the other principal government building, the U.S. Capitol.

On June 3, 1800, President Adams moved to a temporary residence in the new capital as construction was completed on the executive mansion. On November 1, the president was welcomed into the White House. The next day, Adams wrote to his wife about their new home: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise men ever rule under this roof!” Soon after, Abigail Adams arrived at the White House, and on November 17 the U.S. Congress convened for the first time at the U.S. Capitol. During the War of 1812, both buildings were set on fire in 1814 by British soldiers in retaliation for the burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. troops. Although a torrential downpour saved the still uncompleted Capitol building, the White House was burned to the ground. The mansion was subsequently rebuilt and enlarged under the direction of James Hoban, who added east and west terraces to the main building along with a semicircular south portico and a colonnaded north portico. Work was completed on the White House in the 1820s and its has remained largely unchanged since.

1808 – Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederacy (1861-1865), was born in Christian County, Ky. He was imprisoned and indicted for treason, but the case was dropped.

1861 – In the first Civil War land battle, Union forces defeated Confederates at Philippi, in Western Virginia.

1863 – Gen. Lee, with 75,000 Confederates, launched a second invasion of the North. Lee led his troops into Maryland and then Pennsylvania, to meet the Army of the Potomac again, this time around a small town called Gettysburg.

1864 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant makes what he later recognizes to be his greatest mistake by ordering a frontal assault on entrenched Confederates at Cold Harbor. The result was some 7,000 Union casualties in less than an hour of fighting. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had already inflicted frightful losses upon each other as they wheeled along an arc around Richmond—from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania and numerous smaller battle sites—the previous month. On May 30th, Lee and Grant collided at Bethesda Church. The next day, the advance units of the armies arrived at the strategic crossroads of Cold Harbor, just 10 miles from Richmond, where a Yankee attack seized the intersection. Sensing that there was a chance to destroy Lee at the gates of Richmond, Grant prepared for a major assault along the entire Confederate front on June 2nd.

But when Winfield Hancock’s Union corps did not arrive on schedule, the operation was postponed until the following day. The delay was tragic for the Union, because it gave Lee’s troops time to entrench. Perhaps frustrated with the protracted pursuit of Lee’s army, Grant gave the order to attack on June 3—a decision that resulted in an unmitigated disaster. The Yankees met murderous fire, and were only able to reach the Confederate trenches in a few places. The 7,000 Union casualties, compared to only 1,500 for the Confederates, were all lost in under an hour. Grant pulled out of Cold Harbor nine days later and continued to try to flank Lee’s army. The next stop was Petersburg, south of Richmond, where a nine-month siege ensued. There would be no more attacks on the scale of Cold Harbor.

1864 – A Confederate boat expedition of some 130 officers and men under the command of Lieutenant Thomas P. Pelot, CSN, surprised and captured U.S.S. Water Witch, Lieutenant Commander Austin Pendergrast, in an early morning raid off Ossabaw Island, Georgia. In pitch darkness at 2 o’clock In the morning, Pelot silently guided his party to the anchored blockaders’ and was within 50 yards of her when discovered. Before the Union sailors could man their stations, the Confederates had boarded Water Witch and a wild hand-to-hand melee ensued. “The fight,” Rear Admiral Dahlgren recorded in his diary after learning of the incident, “was hard, but brief.” Though the Southerners overwhelmed the defenders, Pelot and five others were killed and 17 were wounded in taking the prize.

Lieutenant Joseph Price, who assumed command of the expedition when Pelot fell, said of his comrade: “In his death the country has lost a brave and gallant officer, and society one of her highest ornaments.” Water Witch, a 380-ton sidewheeler, was taken into the Vernon River and moored above the obstructions guarding Savannah. Secretary Mallory wrote: “The plan and gallant execution of the enterprise reflect great credit upon all who were associated with it, and upon the service which they adorn. The fall of Lieutenant Pelot and his gallant associates in the moment of victory, and the suffering of his companions wounded, sadden the feelings of patriotic pleasure with which this brilliant achievement is everywhere received.”

1866 – The Fenians are driven out of Fort Erie, Ontario, into the United States.

1889 – The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles (23 km) between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.

1898 – Collier Merrimac sunk in channel leading to Santiago, Cuba in unsuccessful attempt to trap Spanish fleet. The crew was captured and later received the Medal of Honor.

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1916 – The National Defense Act of 1916 is signed into law. One of the most important pieces of Guard legislation in the nation’s history, it greatly increased federal supervision of, as well as federal pay for, the National Guard. The law gave the federal government more control over what units the states could raise and how they would be equipped and trained. Most importantly for Guardsmen, it authorized federal pay for 48 days of armory drill a year, as well as for 15 days of annual training (previously the federal government paid for five days of summer camp, and nothing for drills). It established a separate Militia Bureau (re-named the National Guard Bureau in 1933) to oversee federal spending on the Guard. And it settled the issue of how to employ the National Guard outside the United States (where they were limited by the Constitution in their service as militia) by stating that, in the event of an emergency, Congress would draft the National Guard into federal service. It was by this means that the National Guard was sent to fight in World War I.

1918 – The US 3rd Division under General J.T. Dickman goes into action against the German troops threatening Chateau-Thierry on the Marne River. The division is able to prevent the German assault troops, who are part of the continuing operations code named Bluecher and Yorck, from crossing the Marne. The 3rd Division counterattacked on the 4th with French support forcing the Germans back across the Marne at Jualgonne. These are the actions that earn the division it’s nickname, Rock of the Marne.

1918 – The 4th Marine Brigade fought at Les Mares Farm, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, France.

1940 – Last British and French troops leave Dunkirk. During the day the German attacks around Dunkirk continue. The perimeter contracts, despite a brave counterattack, and German forces reach to within two miles of the harbor. The British and French naval authorities are led to believe that there are only about 30,000 soldiers left in the beachhead and plan the night’s operations accordingly. In the course of the night 26,175 men are evacuated but as the rearguard are marching down to the ships an enormous crowd of French stragglers begins to appear out of cellars and other hiding places. When the last ship leaves at 0340 hours on June 4th there are still 40,000 men left for the Germans to capture.

1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order making 2,100 US Coast Guard officers and men available to man four transports, USS Leonard Wood, Hunter Liggett, Joseph T. Dickman, and Wakefield along with 22 other ships manned by US Navy personnel.

1942 – Japan begins the Aleutian Islands Campaign by bombing Unalaska Island.

1942 – The Midway Invasion Group and their naval support (Admiral Kondo) are discovered by air reconnaissance from Midway. A group of American B-17 Flying Fortresses are launched on an unsuccessful attack of the Japanese forces.

1942 – In response to the surprise B-25 bomber attacks on Japan staged by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Dolittle in April 1942, the Japanese decided to capture Midway Island 1,000 miles northwest of Hawaii as a staging base to attack Hawaii itself. As part of their plan they deployed a small diversionary force to take several islands in the Aleutian’s chain of Alaska. Recently arrived as part of the garrison at the newly developed outpost of Dutch Harbor was Arkansas’ 206th Coast Artillery Regiment (Anti-Aircraft). The unit was armed with obsolete 3-inch anti-aircraft guns and water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns. The morning of June 3rd found thick fog lying off the Alaskan coast. The Japanese launched a surprise aerial attack from two aircraft carriers, catching the defenders off-guard. However, within a few minutes the men of the 206th were in action, shooting down one enemy plane and putting up such a heavy rate of fire that Japanese pilots missed their targets while trying to dodge the Arkansan’s barrage. The Japanese attacked again the next day, causing some casualties but failing to put the harbor out of action. This was their last attack. The 206th remained as part of the garrison until it was reassigned to the European Theater in 1944.

1943 – The United Nations Food Conference in Hot Springs, Virginia, is concluded. A number of resolutions are produced calling for fairer distribution of resources in the postwar world. United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration formed.

1943 – In Los Angeles, California, white U.S. Navy sailors and Marines clash for a second time with Latino youths in the Zoot Suit Riots. About eleven sailors got off a bus and started walking along Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles. At some point they ran into a group of young Mexicans dressed in zoot suits and got in a verbal argument. The sailors stated that they were jumped and beaten by this gang of zoot suiters. The Los Angeles Police Department responded to the incident, many of them off-duty officers calling themselves the Vengeance Squad, who went to the scene “seeking to clean up Main Street from what they viewed as the loathsome influence of pachuco gangs.”

1944 – Forces of the US 5th Army continue advancing toward Rome. US 6th Corps captures Albano and Frascati. The US 2nd Corps and the French Expeditionary Corps advance along Route 6. To the southeast, the Canadian 1st Corps (now part of British 8th Army) captures Anagni. German forces withdraw from Rome, respecting its status as an “open city” in return for a temporary truce with Italian partisans.

1944 – Japanese forces make an unsuccessful attempt to ship reinforcements to the garrison on Biak Island. US forces on Biak advance against heavy resistance.

1945 – Captured maps of German minefields are distributed to all Allied governments, in Europe, by SHAEF. These maps are from the collection of approximately four tons of such maps captured by US 7th Army in Bavaria.

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese forces are isolated in the Oroku and Chinen peninsula.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 37th Division overcomes weak Japanese resistance to advance about 6 miles north of Santa Fe.

1946 – International Military Tribunal opened in Tokyo against 28 accused Japanese war criminals.

1949 – Wesley Anthony Brown became the 1st negro to graduate from US Naval Academy.

1952 – A rebellion by North Korean prisoners in the Koje-do POW camp in South Korea was put down by American troops. General Boatner used infantrymen supported by tanks to regain control of the Koje-do compounds, dragging communist leader Col. Lee out of the compound by the seat of his pants. 31 prisoners were killed and scores wounded, but order was finally restored.

1953 – At Panmunjom, the prisoner of war question was resolved and the principle of voluntary repatriation accepted.

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1964 – In a news conference, President Johnson reasserts the US commitment to defend Vietnam but says he knows of no plans to extend the war into North Vietnam.

1964 – The US and Cambodia agree on a proposal to form a three-nation commission to visit the Cambodian border within 45 days.

1965 – One hundred and 20 miles above the earth, Major Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun, White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes. As a space walker, White had been preceded by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, who on March 18, 1965, was the first man ever to walk in space. Implemented at the height of the space race, NASA’s Gemini program was the least famous of the three U.S.-manned space programs conducted during the 1960s.

However, as an extension of Project Mercury, which put the first American in space in 1961, Gemini laid the groundwork for the more dramatic Apollo lunar missions, which began in 1968. The Gemini space flights were the first to involve multiple crews, and the extended duration of the missions provided valuable information about the biological effects of longer-term space travel. When the Gemini program ended in 1966, U.S. astronauts had also perfected rendezvous and docking maneuvers with other orbiting vehicles, a skill that would be essential during the three-stage Apollo moon missions.

1966 – Launch of Gemini 9, piloted by LCDR Eugene A. Cernan, USN. The mission included 45 orbits over 3 days. Recovery was by USS Wasp (CVS-18).

1967 – Captain Howard Levy, 30, a dermatologist form Brooklyn, is convicted by a general court-martial in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, of willfully disobeying orders and making disloyal statements about US policy in Vietnam. Levy had refused to provide elementary instruction in skin disease to Green Beret medics. Levy, invoked the so-called “Nuremberg defense,” justifying his refusal on the grounds that the Green Berets would use the training for criminal purposes. Levy’s civilian attorney also argued that training the Green Berets compelled him to violate canons of medical ethics. The Green Berets were soldiers first and aid-men second; therefore, their provision of medical treatment to civilians in order to make friends was illegitimate, for it could be taken away as easily as given. The court was not persuaded and the ten-officer jury found him guilty on all charges, sentencing him to three years at hard labor and dismissal from the service. Levy was released in August 1969 after serving 26 months and immediately became active in the “GI coffeehouse protests” in Army towns around the country.

1968 – Le Duc Tho, a member of the North Vietnam Communist Party’s Politburo, joins the North Vietnamese negotiating team as a special counselor. The Paris peace talks had begun in March 1968, but had made little headway in ending the war. In August 1969, Tho and Henry Kissinger would begin meeting secretly in a villa outside Paris in an attempt to reach a peace settlement. It was these private talks that would ultimately result in the January 1973 Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Kissinger in 1973, Tho, aware that the North Vietnamese were still planning to conquer South Vietnam, declined the honor.

1969 – Melbourne–Evans collision: off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne cuts the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half. The two ships were participating in SEATO exercise Sea Spirit in the South China Sea. At approximately 3:00 am, when ordered to a new escort station, Evans sailed under Melbourne’s bow, where she was cut in two. Seventy-four of Evans’ crew were killed. A joint RAN–USN board of inquiry was held to establish the events of the collision and the responsibility of those involved. This inquiry, which was believed by the Australians to be biased against them, found that both ships were at fault for the collision. Four officers (the captains of Melbourne and Evans, plus the two junior officers in control of Evans at the time of the collision) were court-martialled based on the results of the inquiry; while the three USN officers were charged, the RAN officer was cleared of wrongdoing.

1970 – In a televised speech, President Richard Nixon claims the Allied drive into Cambodia is the “most successful operation of this long and difficult war,” and that he is now able to resume the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had launched a limited “incursion” into Cambodia on April 29. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside Cambodia. 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 announcement of the Cambodian operation 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, resulting in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. In his speech, Nixon reaffirmed earlier pledges to bring the Cambodian operation to an end by June 30th, with “all our major military objectives” achieved and reported that 17,000 of the 31,000 U.S. troops in Cambodia had already returned to South Vietnam. After June 30th, said Nixon, “all American air support” for Allied troops in fighting in Cambodia would end, with the only remaining American activity being attacks on enemy troop movements and supplies threatening U.S. forces in South Vietnam. Nixon promised that 50,000 of the 150,000 troops, whose withdrawal from Vietnam he had announced April 20, would “be out by October 15th.”

1971 – After a 24 hour sea voyage, 13 prisoners of war seeking repatriation to the North but refused by Hanoi, are returned to Danang. The last minute refusal to take the captives back comes despite South Vietnam’s compliance with details specifically outlined by North Vietnam after Saigon offered to return 570 sick or wounded POWs. The 13 were the only ones out of 660 screened by the International Red Cross who sought repatriation.

1972 – a 260-page secret Army analysis of the Mylai Massacre, known as the Peers Report, is made public by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. The report concludes that the entire command structure of the Americal (29th) Division, including Brigadier Generals Koster and Young, wittingly and unwittingly suppressed information on the My Lai incident.

1974 – Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard Nixon, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

1975 – At a meeting of the National Assembly Premier Pham Van Dong calls for normalization of relations with the United States, conditioned on US economic aid to Hanoi, and a pledge to observe the 1973 Paris cease-fire.

1976 – The US was presented with oldest known copy of Magna Carta.

1982 – The USS Farragut towed two vessels seized by the Coast Guard to San Juan, Puerto Rico, marking the first time that a Navy ship took an active role in law enforcement and interdiction of drug smuggling in the Caribbean.

1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (89), Iran’s spiritual and supreme leader, died.

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1989 – With protests for democratic reforms entering their seventh week, the Chinese government authorizes its soldiers and tanks to reclaim Beijing’s Tiananmen Square at all costs. By nightfall on June 4, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared the square, killing hundreds and arresting thousands of demonstrators and suspected dissidents. On April 15th, the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party head who supported democratic reforms, roused some 100,000 students to gather at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate the leader and voice their discontent with China’s authoritative government. On April 22, an official memorial service for Hu Yaobang was held in Tiananmen’s Great Hall of the People, and student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The Chinese government refused the meeting, leading to a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country and widespread calls for democratic reforms. Ignoring government warnings of suppression of any mass demonstration, students from more than 40 universities began a march to Tiananmen on April 27th. The students were joined by workers, intellectuals, and civil servants, and by mid-May more than a million people filled the square, the site of Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

On May 20th, the government formally declared martial law in Beijing, and troops and tanks were called in to disperse the dissidents. However, large numbers of students and citizens blocked the army’s advance, and by May 23rd government forces had pulled back to the outskirts of Beijing. On June 3rd, with negotiations to end the protests stalled and calls for democratic reforms escalating, the troops received orders from the Chinese government to seize control of Tiananmen Square and the streets of Beijing. Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested. In the weeks after the government crackdown, an unknown number of dissidents were executed, and hard-liners in the government took firm control of the country. The international community was outraged by the incident, and economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries sent China’s economy into decline. By late 1990, however, international trade had resumed, thanks in part to China’s release of several hundred imprisoned dissidents.

1990 – President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev end their three-day summit meeting with warm words of friendship but without any concrete agreement concerning German reunification. Bush and Gorbachev held their second summit conference in Washington, D.C. The main topic of conversation was the future of a reunified Germany. Communist rule in East Germany had already crumbled and the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989. Differences arose between the United States and the Soviet Union, however, over the issue of a reunified Germany in Cold War Europe. The United States wished for the new Germany to be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had been created in 1949 as a mutual defense organization to oppose Soviet expansion into Western Europe. The Soviet Union, already somewhat fearful of a reunified and armed Germany, expressed grave concerns over German membership in NATO. Gorbachev proposed that the new Germany be a member of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the communist bloc equivalent of NATO. Also part of the discussions at the second summit was the fate of Lithuania, the Soviet republic that had proclaimed its independence in late 1989.

The Soviet government responded harshly to the Lithuanian independence movement, imposing economic sanctions and threatening military intervention. The Bush administration was clearly in favor of independence for Lithuania and asked the Soviet government to cease its threatening attitude toward the republic. No agreements were reached at the summit concerning either Germany or Lithuania, or any other issue for that matter. President Bush, however, preferred to end the meetings on a positive note, declaring, “We’ve moved a long, long way from the depths of the Cold War. I don’t quite know how to quantify it for you, but we could never have had the discussions at Camp David yesterday, or as we sat in the Oval Office a couple of days before, with President Gorbachev, 20 years ago.” Events of the next year, however, rendered moot the issues that had been raised at the summit. Economic and political turmoil in the Soviet Union led to Gorbachev’s resignation as president in December 1991, at which point the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

1994 – The US began consultations with South Korea, Japan and Russia on how to retaliate for North Korea’s removal of vital evidence about its nuclear weapons capability.

1995 – Bosnian Serb officials made contradictory statements about the whereabouts of an American pilot, a day after his Air Force jet was shot down. Bosnian Serb military sources claimed that the pilot, later identified as Captain Scott F. O’Grady, was in Bosnian Serb hands—a claim that proved false.

1996 – The FBI pulled the plug on electricity at the Freemen ranch in Montana in an attempt to persuade the occupants to negotiate an end to the 71-day-old standoff.

1996 – During joint war games in the Pacific, a Japanese destroyer mistakenly shot down an American attack plane; two Navy aviators ejected safely.

1996 – A recent announcement was made that Hughes Electronics will take over the Indianapolis Naval Air Warfare Center. The NAWC made the bombsights that helped win WW II.

1999 – Zane Floyd (23), a former Marine, killed 4 employees at an Albertsons supermarket in Las Vegas before being arrested by police.

1999 – The 15-member EU announced plans to establish itself as a military power with a 60,000-troop force. A day later the EU named Javier Solana as the 1st foreign policy and security czar of the union.

2001 – Iraq announces that it will halt crude oil exports in response to a United Nations Security Council resolution that extends the oil-for-food program by only one month, instead of the normal six-month period. The oil-for-food program affects revenues from Iraqi sales of about 2.1 million barrels per day. However, it has been reported Iraq will continue to sell several hundred thousand barrels per day to its neighbors through sales that are outside of the oil-for-food program. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces that, if need be, it will make up for lost Iraqi production. Oil prices do not change greatly in response to either announcement.

2002 – It was reported that the US planned to resume manufacturing plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads at a new $4.4 billion plant in 2020.

2002 – NASA launched the $159 million Contour space probe to study the composition of comets. Scientists lost contact on August 15th.

2007 – The Iraqi Parliament voted 85 to 59 to require the Iraqi government to consult with Parliament before requesting additional extensions of the UN Security Council Mandate for Coalition operations in Iraq. Despite this, the mandate was renewed on 18 December 2007, without the approval of the Iraqi parliament.

2011 – The United States Coast Guard closes 734 miles of the Missoiri River to recreational boating from St Louis, Missouri to Sioux City, Iowa.

2012 – United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visits a former U.S. base in Cam Ranh Bay, the first visit by an American official of cabinet rank to Vietnam since the Vietnam War.

2013 – The trial of United States Army private Bradley (Chelsea) Manning for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks begins in Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq, where he had been stationed since October 2009, after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker in the United States, provided information to Army Counterintelligence that Manning had acknowledged passing classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. Manning was ultimately charged with 22 specified offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and the most serious of the charges, aiding the enemy. Other charges included violations of the Espionage Act, stealing U.S. government property, charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and charges related to the failure to obey lawful general orders under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He (She) entered guilty pleas to 10 of 22 specified offenses in February 2013.

The trial began on June 3, 2013. It went to the judge on July 26, 2013, and findings were rendered on July 30th. Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy, for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. In addition to five or six espionage counts, she was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions. Manning had previously admitted guilt on some of the specified charges before the trial. On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment, reduction in pay grade to E-1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. He (She) may be eligible for parole after serving one third of the sentence, and together with credits for time served and good behavior could be released after eight years.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BEGLEY, TERRENCE
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company D, 7th New York Heavy Artillery. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 3 June 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 1 December 1864. Citation: Shot a Confederate color bearer, rushed forward and seized his colors, and although exposed to heavy fire, regained the lines in safety.

BOSS, ORLANDO
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company F, 25th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 3 June 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Fitchburg, Mass. Date of issue: 10 May 1888. Citation: Rescued his lieutenant, who was Iying between the lines mortally wounded; this under a heavy fire of the enemy.

CASEY, DAVID
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 25th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 3 June 1864. Entered service at: Northbridge, Mass. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 14 September 1888. Citation: Two color bearers having been shot dead one after the other, the last one far in advance of his regiment and close to the enemy’s line, this soldier rushed forward, and, under a galling fire, after removing the dead body of the bearer therefrom, secured the flag and returned with it to the Union lines.

SEITZINGER, JAMES M.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 116th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 3 June 1864. Entered service at: Worcester, Pa. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 1 March 1906. Citation: When the color bearer was shot down, this soldier seized the colors and bore them gallantly in a charge against the enemy.

TINKHAM, EUGENE M.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company H, 148th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 3 June 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Sprague, Conn. Date of issue: 5 April 1898. Citation: Though himself wounded, voluntarily left the rifle pits, crept out between the lines and, exposed to the severe fire of the enemy’s guns at close range, brought within the lines 2 wounded and helpless comrades.

WILLIAMS, LE ROY
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company G, 8th New York Heavy Artillery. Place and date: At Cold Harbor, Va., 3 June 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Oswego, N.Y. Date of issue: 1 April 1898. Citation: Voluntarily exposed himself to the fire of the enemy’s sharpshooters and located the body of his colonel who had been killed close to the enemy’s lines. Under cover of darkness, with 4 companions, he recovered the body and brought it within the Union lines, having approached within a few feet of the Confederate pickets while so engaged.

HOBSON, RICHMOND PEARSON
Rank and organization: Lieutenant, U.S. Navy. Born: 17 August 1870, Greensboro, Ala. Accredited to: New York. (Medal presented by President, 29 April 1933.) Citation: In connection with the sinking of the U.S.S. Merrimac at the entrance to the fortified harbor of Santiago de Cuba, 3 June 1898. Despite persistent fire from the enemy fleet and fortifications on shore, Lt. Hobson distinguished himself by extraordinary courage and carried out this operation at the risk of his own personal safety.

*CHRISTIAN, HERBERT F.
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, 15th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Valmontone, Italy, 2-3 June 1944. Entered service at: Steubenville, Ohio. Birth: Byersville, Ohio. G.O. No.: 43, 30 May 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. On 2-3 June 1944, at 1 a.m., Pvt. Christian elected to sacrifice his life in order that his comrades might extricate themselves from an ambush. Braving massed fire of about 60 riflemen, 3 machineguns, and 3 tanks from positions only 30 yards distant, he stood erect and signaled to the patrol to withdraw. The whole area was brightly illuminated by enemy flares. Although his right leg was severed above the knee by cannon fire, Pvt. Christian advanced on his left knee and the bloody stump of his right thigh, firing his submachine gun.

Despite excruciating pain, Pvt. Christian continued on his self-assigned mission. He succeeded in distracting the enemy and enabled his 12 comrades to escape. He killed 3 enemy soldiers almost at once. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, he made his way forward 20 yards, halted at a point within 10 yards of the enemy, and despite intense fire killed a machine-pistol man. Reloading his weapon, he fired directly into the enemy position. The enemy appeared enraged at the success of his ruse, concentrated 20-mm. machinegun, machine-pistol and rifle fire on him, yet he refused to seek cover. Maintaining his erect position, Pvt. Christian fired his weapon to the very last. Just as he emptied his submachinegun, the enemy bullets found their mark and Pvt. Christian slumped forward dead. The courage and spirit of self-sacrifice displayed by this soldier were an inspiration to his comrades and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the armed forces.

*JOHNSON, ELDEN H.
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, 15th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Valmontone, Italy, 3 June 1944. Entered service at: East Weymouth, Mass. Birth: Bivalue, N.J. G.O. No.: 38, 16 May 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Pvt. Johnson elected to sacrifice his life in order that his comrades might extricate themselves from an ambush. Braving the massed fire of about 60 riflemen, 3 machineguns, and 3 tanks from positions only 25 yards distant, he stood erect and signaled his patrol leader to withdraw. The whole area was brightly illuminated by enemy flares. Then, despite 20mm. machineguns, machine pistol, and rifle fire directed at him, Pvt. Johnson advanced beyond the enemy in a slow deliberate walk. Firing his automatic rifle from the hip, he succeeded in distracting the enemy and enabled his 12 comrades to escape.

Advancing to within 5 yards of a machinegun, emptying his weapon, Pvt. Johnson killed its crew. Standing in full view of the enemy he reloaded and turned on the riflemen to the left, firing directly into their positions. He either killed or wounded 4 of them. A burst of machinegun fire tore into Pvt. Johnson and he dropped to his knees. Fighting to the very last, he steadied himself on his knees and sent a final burst of fire crashing into another German. With that he slumped forward dead. Pvt. Johnson had willingly given his life in order that his comrades might live. These acts on the part of Pvt. Johnson were an inspiration to the entire command and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the armed forces.

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4 June

1647 – Canonicus Grand Chief Sachem of the Narragansett Indian Tribe dies. He was Chief Sachem of the Narragansett Tribe (rivals to the Wampanoag) at the time of the Pilgrims landing in Plymouth.

1738 – George III was born (died 1820). He was the King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760-1820, and the King of Hanover from 1815-1820. He was responsible for losing the American colonies. He passed the Royal Marriages Act, which made it unlawful for his children to marry without his consent.

1756 – Quakers left the assembly of Pennsylvania.

1789 – The United States Constitution, enacted as sovereign law, went into effect.

1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1794 – Congress passed a Neutrality Act that banned Americans from serving in armed forces of foreign powers.

1800 – The White House was completed and President & Mrs. John Adams moved in.

1805 – The US signed a Treaty of Peace and Amity at Tripoli. The US agreed to pay Tripoli $60,000 in war reparations and was in turn absolved of tribute demands. The treaty was ratified by the US on Apr 17, 1806.

1812 – Following Louisiana’s admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.

1825 – General Lafayette, a French officer in the American Revolutionary War, speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.

1855 – Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.

1862 – Confederate forces slip out of Fort Pillow, a key stronghold on the Mississippi River, clearing the way for the Union capture of Memphis. Fort Pillow lay south of Island No. 10, the Confederates’ key defense from a Northern assault. Although considered a backup to Island No. 10, Fort Pillow was really a significant fortification in its own right. After a Union campaign captured the island in early April, Fort Pillow was all that stood between the Yankees and Memphis. At the beginning of the war, Union military leaders had concocted the Anaconda Plan, which called for the dismemberment of the Confederacy piece by piece. The first part of the plan involved capturing the Mississippi River through operations from both the north and the Gulf of Mexico.

By mid-April, a combined Union land force and naval squadron approached Fort Pillow. Most of the land force, however, had to be diverted to serve in northern Mississippi, so only 1,200 troops remained. Although the land force was too small to take the fort, Yankee ships began a weeks-long bombardment. On May 25, an additional flotilla arrived to step up the pressure on the Confederate bastion. Events in northern Mississippi sealed the fate of Fort Pillow. The Confederates evacuated Corinth on June 4 and fell back to a more defensible position in central Mississippi, leaving Fort Pillow dangerously isolated in Union-held territory, with no support from the southeast. On June 4, the Rebel garrison slipped away from the fort, destroying what cannons and provisions they could not carry with them. That set the stage for the capture of Memphis on June 6th.

1862 – President Lincoln, with Secretaries Stanton and Chase on board, proceeded to Hampton Roads on steamer Miami to personally direct the stalled Peninsular Campaign. The following day, Lincoln informed Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough: “I shall be found either at General Wool’s [Fort Monroe] or on board the Miami.” The President directed gunboat operations in the James River and the bombardment of Sewell’s Point by the blockading squadron in the five days he acted as Commander-in-Chief in the field.

1863 – Joint Army-Navy expedition including U.S.S. Commodore Morris, Lieutenant Commander Gillis; U.S.S. Commodore Jones, Lieutenant Commander John G. Mitchell; Army gunboat Smith Briggs, and transport Winnissimet with 400 troops embarked, ascended the Mattapony River for the purpose of destroying a foundry above Walkerton, Virginia, where Confederate ordnance was being manufactured. The troops were landed at Walkerton and marched to the Ayletts area where the machinery, a flour mill, and a large quantity of grain were destroyed. Re-embarking the troops and captured livestock, the force fell down river as the gunboats “dropped shells into many deserted houses and completely scoured the banks, and sweeping all the points on the river.

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1863 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee continues to mobilize his army for an invasion of Pennsylvania by sending Richard Ewell’s corps toward the Shenandoah Valley.

1864 – With General Sherman again flanking them, Confederates under General Joseph Johnston retreated to the mountains before Marietta, Georgia.

1876 – A mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco. That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. During the early 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson first dreamed of an American nation stretching from “sea to shining sea,” it took the president 10 days to travel the 225 miles from Monticello to Philadelphia via carriage. Even with frequent changing of horses, the 100-mile journey from New York to Philadelphia demanded two days hard travel in a light stagecoach. At such speeds, the coasts of the continent-wide American nation were months apart. How could such a vast country ever hope to remain united? As early as 1802, Jefferson had some glimmer of an answer. “The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam,” he predicted, “[to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.” Though Jefferson never saw a train in his lifetime, he had glimpsed the future with the idea. Within half a century, America would have more railroads than any other nation in the world.

By 1869, the first transcontinental line linking the coasts was completed. Suddenly, a journey that had previously taken months using horses could be made in less than a week. Five days after the transcontinental railroad was completed, daily passenger service over the rails began. The speed and comfort offered by rail travel was so astonishing that many Americans could scarcely believe it, and popular magazines wrote glowing accounts of the amazing journey. For the wealthy, a trip on the transcontinental railroad was a luxurious experience. First-class passengers rode in beautifully appointed cars with plush velvet seats that converted into snug sleeping berths. The finer amenities included steam heat, fresh linen daily, and gracious porters who catered to their every whim. For an extra $4 a day, the wealthy traveler could opt to take the weekly Pacific Hotel Express, which offered first-class dining on board. As one happy passenger wrote, “The rarest and richest of all my journeying through life is this three-thousand miles by rail.” The trip was a good deal less speedy and comfortable for passengers unwilling or unable to pay the premium fares.

Whereas most of the first-class passengers traveled the transcontinental line for business or pleasure, the third-class occupants were often emigrants hoping to make a new start in the West. A third-class ticket could be purchased for only $40–less than half the price of the first-class fare. At this low rate, the traveler received no luxuries. Their cars, fitted with rows of narrow wooden benches, were congested, noisy, and uncomfortable. The railroad often attached the coach cars to freight cars that were constantly shunted aside to make way for the express trains. Consequently, the third-class traveler’s journey west might take 10 or more days. Even under these trying conditions, few travelers complained. Even 10 days spent sitting on a hard bench seat was preferable to six months walking alongside a Conestoga wagon on the Oregon Trail. Railroad promotions, however, naturally focused on the speedy express trains.

The arrival of the Transcontinental Express train in San Francisco on this day in 1876 was widely celebrated in the newspapers and magazines of the day. With this new express service, a businessman could leave New York City on Monday morning, spend 83 hours in relaxing comfort, and arrive refreshed and ready for work in San Francisco by Thursday evening. The powerful agent of steam had effectively shrunk a vast nation to a manageable size.

1896 – At approximately 1:30 a.m., Henry Ford test-drove his Quadricycle, the first automobile he ever designed or drove. Ford was working at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit at the time that he began building the Quadricycle. He had reportedly seen an article on the gasoline engine in American Machinist while in the company of friend and fellow engineer, Charles King. In King’s recollection Ford claimed, “I want to build one of these.” Ford employed the help of his friends in the Detroit engineering community to build an internal combustion engine on his kitchen table. It’s important to note to what extent Ford was a visionary and an organizer. He was an engineer, of course, but he didn’t by any means accomplish his engineering feats alone. Men like King, along with a whole slew of other engineers, volunteered their time to Ford’s projects. King provided Ford with a whole crew of workers who worked in the makeshift machine shop Ford had constructed in his garage behind his Bagley Avenue residence in Detroit. Ford even convinced his neighbor, Felix Julian, to donate his half of the shed to the cause. King was building his own vehicle at the time, and actually preempted Ford in testing the horseless carriage in March of 1896. Ford followed King’s carriage’s test run on his bicycle. Ford did make one major innovation in building his first vehicle: he decided not to attach an engine to an existing carriage, but rather to construct a four-wheel body based on the principles of bicycle manufacturing.

Ford completed his “Quadricycle” early in the morning on this day in 1896. He couldn’t wait to test the invention. Only one of his associates, Jim Bishop, was present at the time of the vehicle’s completion. In all of his enthusiasm in getting the car together, Ford failed to consider that his contraption was wider than the doors of the shed in which he built it. He and Bishop set upon the door and adjacent walls with axes in order to hack an entrance sufficient for the Quadricycle. The 500-pound, two-cylinder vehicle came to life in the alley behind Ford’s house. Ford drove it down Bagley Avenue to Grand River Avenue, to Washington Boulevard, when the Quadricycle stopped. Bishop and Ford pushed the automobile to the Edison plant, where they replaced a nut and spring that had come loose. The next month, Henry drove his vehicle to his father’s farm to show it off. His father apparently walked around it cautiously. Later he expressed his doubts to one of his neighbors: “John and William (Henry’s brothers) are all right, but Henry worries me. He doesn’t seem to settle down, and I don’t know what’s going to become of him.” Maybe he’ll become the most powerful citizen in the country !!".

1911 – Gold was discovered in Alaska’s Indian Creek.

1917 – American men begin registering for the draft.

1918 – General Erich Ludendorff calls off his twin offensives, Bluecher and Yorck, which began on 27 May. Although his assault units have advanced to a maximum depth of 20 miles over a 30 mile line they have run out of steam. He is also facing increasingly strong counterattacks from French and , newly arrived, US forces.

1919 – US Marines invaded Costa Rica.

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1934 – USS Ranger, first ship designed from the keel up as a carrier, is commissioned at Norfolk, VA.

1939 – During what became known as the “Voyage of the Damned,” the SS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast. Also denied permission to dock in Cuba, the ship eventually returned to Europe. The passengers were divided among England, France, Belgium and Holland and a number of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps. By 2003 efforts to track their fates identified 935 out of the 937 passengers. Some 260 ended in Nazi killing centers.

1942 – Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, launches a raid on Midway Island with almost the entirety of the Japanese navy. As part of a strategy to widen its sphere of influence and conquest, the Japanese set their sights on an island group in the central Pacific, Midway, as well as the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska. They were also hoping to draw the badly wounded U.S. navy into a battle, determined to finish it off. The American naval forces were depleted: The damaged carrier Yorktown had to be repaired in a mere three days, to be used along with the Enterprise and Hornet, all that was left in the way of aircraft carriers after the bombing at Pearl Harbor.

On the morning of June 4th, Admiral Nagumo launched his first strike with 108 aircraft, and did significant damage to U.S. installations at Midway. The Americans struck back time and again at Japanese ships, but accomplished little real damage, losing 65 of their own aircraft in their initial attempts. But Nagumo underestimated the tenacity of both Admiral Chester Nimitz and Admiral Raymond Spruance, commanders of the American forces. He also miscalculated tactically by ordering a second wave of bombers to finish off what he thought was only a remnant of American resistance (the U.S. forces had been able to conceal their position because of reconnaissance that anticipated the Midway strike) before his first wave had sufficient opportunity to rearm.

A fifth major engagement by 55 U.S. dive-bombers took full advantage of Nagumo’s confused strategy, and sunk three of the four Japanese carriers, all cluttered with aircraft and fuel trying to launch another attack against what they now realized-too late–was a much larger American naval force than expected.

A fourth Japanese carrier, the Hiryu was crippled, but not before its aircraft finished off the noble American Yorktown. The attack on Midway was an unmitigated disaster for the Japanese, resulting in the loss of 322 aircraft and 3,500 men. They were forced to withdraw from the area before attempting even a landing on the island they sought to conquer.

1943 – Zoot suit riots took place in LA. Rioting servicemen conduct “search and destroy” raids on Mexican Americans in the downtown area — whether their victims are wearing zoot suits or not. The servicemen employ twenty taxis to look for zoot suiters.

1944 – The U-505 became the first enemy submarine captured by the U.S. Navy under Admiral Dan Gallery. The keel for the U-505 was laid on June 12, 1940. It launched from Hamburg the following year. During its career, the U-505 gained the unwelcome but lucky distinction of being the most heavily damaged U-boat to manage to return to port. Under the command of Harald Lange, the boat was attacked by an American task group led by the USS Guadalcanal. Crewmen from the destroyer escort USS Pillsbury managed to capture the U-505 before the submariners could in scuttle her.

This represented the first time since 1815 that the US Navy captured an enemy warship on the high seas (the capture remained a secret). After the war, Navy plans to scuttle the U-boat in a gunnery exercise were themselves scrapped when the president of Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry voiced interest and a plan to use the entire submarine as part of an exhibit. The U-505 was dedicated as a permanent exhibit and war memorial at the museum on September 25, 1954.

1944 – The U.S. Fifth Army entered Rome, beginning the liberation of the Italian capital during World War II.

1944 – The Allied Expeditionary Force convoys, bound for Normandy, are called back to port because of poor weather conditions expected for June 5th. Eisenhower decides, however, that the invasion can take place on June 6th. The poor weather has also encouraged the German defenders in occupied France. Rommel, commanding Army Group B, decides to go to Germany for his wife’s birthday on June 6th and to meet with Hitler. Other German commanders in the Normandy area are at a training exercise in Brittany.

1945 – On Okinawa, two regiments of US 6th Marine Division make landings on the Oroku peninsula in an attempt to outflank Japanese defensive positions. However, many of the Japanese troops formerly in the Shuri Line have withdrawn to the Oroku peninsula. General Buckner, commanding US 10th Army, reduces the frontage of the US 3rd Amphibious Corps, which has suffered the greatest losses, and increases the frontage of the US 24th Corps.

1945 – US, Russia, England & France agreed to split occupied Germany.

1947 – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Labor Management Relations Act also known as the Taft-Hartley Act. It provided for an 80-day injunction against strikes that endangered public health and safety.

1951 – Eighth Army opened its forward command post in Seoul. The echelon at Taegu was designated at Eighth Army Main.

1953 – The communists launched nine stiff counterattacks to halt U.N. forces advancing on the logistical complexes of the Chorwon-Kumhwa-Pyonggang triangle.

1953 – An atomic bomb test explosion took place at Yucca Flats, Nevada, equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT. This was double the 1945 blast over Hiroshima.

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1961 – President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, meeting in Vienna, strike a bargain to support a neutral and independent Laos. Laos had been the scene of an ongoing communist insurgency by the Pathet Lao guerrillas. In July 1959, the North Vietnamese Politburo had formed Group 959 to furnish weapons and supplies to the Pathet Lao. By 1960, the Pathet Lao was threatening the survival of the Royal Lao government. On January 19, 1961, when President Eisenhower was about to leave office, he told Kennedy that Laos “was the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia.” Kennedy considered intervening in Laos with U.S. combat troops, but decided against it. Nevertheless, the American president did not want to lose Laos to the communists. Kennedy was prepared to accept neutrality for Laos as a solution. Eventually a 14-nation conference would convene in Geneva and an agreement was signed in July 1962, proclaiming Laos neutral. This took care of the situation in Laos for the time being, but both the communists and the United States soon ignored the declared neutrality of the area.

1964 – As a result of the report to President Johnson, Defense Secretary McNamara orders the US Army to take ‘immediate action…to improve the effectiveness and readiness status of its materiel prestocked for possible use in Southeast Asia.’ Specifically, he orders the Army to augment stocks at Korat, Thailand, near the Laotian border, to support potential combat operations by a US Army infantry brigade.

1965 – Major General Lewis Walt takes command of the 3rd Marine Division from Major General William Collins. Walt was concurrently named Commander of the III Amphibious Force (III MAF), the first corps-level Marine Corps headquarters in history. As such, Walt was in command of two Marine divisions and responsible for I Corps Tactical Zone, the northernmost region of South Vietnam, which bordered the Demilitarized Zone. His command also included serving as Chief of Naval Forces Vietnam, as well as being Senior Adviser to the commander of South Vietnam’s I Corps, who was responsible for the security of the northern portion of South Vietnam. After supervising the U.S. and South Vietnamese build up in that region from 1965 to 1967, General Walt returned to the United States and later served as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. He retired from active service on February 1, 1971.

1972 – Seymour Hersh further reports that a massacre at Mykhe 4, two miles from Mylai, was perpetrated by Bruno Company, Task Force barker, Americal Division on 16 March 1968–the same day as Myali. No prosecutions have been made because of lack of evidence. The Peers Report acknowledges that ‘a large number of non-combatants were killed during the search of the hamlet.’

1973 – The US Senate approves a bill to block funds for any US military activities in Indochina and the House of Representatives concurs. Nixon and Kissinger lobby to postpone the ban until 15 August, to enable continued bombing of Cambodia.

1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.

1987 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top-secret U.S. military intelligence information to Israel. The former Navy intelligence analyst sold enough classified documents to fill a medium-sized room. Pollard was arrested in November 1985 after authorities learned that he had been meeting with Israeli agents every two weeks for the last year. He was paid approximately $50,000 for the highly sensitive documents and expected to receive as much as $300,000 in a secret Swiss bank account. The top-secret information included satellite photos and data on Soviet weapons. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison while his wife Anne received a five-year sentence for being an accessory to the crimes.

The discovery of his betrayal put a chill on the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Viewing the U.S. as its ally, Israel believed that the information should have been passed along anyway. But the fact that some Israeli agents remained in high positions despite their involvement in the espionage angered the United States. Israel has since stuck by Pollard. During peace negotiations mediated by President Clinton in the late 1990s, the nation has made Pollard’s release from prison a key point. However, the United States has declined to work out such a deal.

1987 – The congressional Iran-Contra committees voted to grant limited immunity to former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North, following an appeal by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh to reject immunity.

1989 – Chinese troops storm through Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, killing and arresting thousands of pro-democracy protesters. The brutal Chinese government assault on the protesters shocked the West and brought denunciations and sanctions from the United States. In May 1989, nearly a million Chinese, mostly young students, crowded into central Beijing to protest for greater democracy and call for the resignations of Chinese Communist Party leaders deemed too repressive. For nearly three weeks, the protesters kept up daily vigils, and marched and chanted. Western reporters captured much of the drama for television and newspaper audiences in the United States and Europe.

On June 4, 1989, however, Chinese troops and security police stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters. Turmoil ensued, as tens of thousands of the young students tried to escape the rampaging Chinese forces. Other protesters fought back, stoning the attacking troops and overturning and setting fire to military vehicles. Reporters and Western diplomats on the scene estimated that at least 300, and perhaps thousands, of the protesters had been killed and as many as 10,000 were arrested. The savagery of the Chinese government’s attack shocked both its allies and Cold War enemies.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that he was saddened by the events in China. He said he hoped that the government would adopt his own domestic reform program and begin to democratize the Chinese political system. In the United States, editorialists and members of Congress denounced the Tiananmen Square massacre and pressed for President George Bush to punish the Chinese government. A little more than three weeks later, the U.S. Congress voted to impose economic sanctions against the People’s Republic of China in response to the brutal violation of human rights.

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1995 – French General Bernard Janvier, supreme UN military commander in the former Yugoslavia, met with Bosnian Serb military commander, Ratko Mladic. He pleaded for the release of UN captives and offered to halt future NATO air attacks. Shortly after Yasushi Akashi publicly affirmed that the UN would abide by peacekeeping principles – shorthand for no more air attacks.

1996 – US and French officials signed a secret agreement to share nuclear weapons information and facilitate joint work between scientists.

1996 – NATO foreign ministers approved plans to shift focus toward intervention in small regional conflicts and away from containing Russia, its primary focus for 47 years.

1997 – In a unanimous vote, the United Nations Security Council renews for another 180-day period its “oil-for-food” initiative with Iraq. Under the resolution, Iraq may sell $2 billion worth of oil to buy food, medicine and other necessities to alleviate civilian suffering under the sanctions imposed when it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

1998 – In Denver a federal judge sentenced Terry Nichols to life in prison without parole for conspiring in 1995 to bomb the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

1998 – Americans aboard the shuttle Discovery arrived at the Russian space station Mir to pick up U.S. astronaut Andrew Thomas, who’d spent four months in orbit.

1999 – NATO commanders met with Yugoslav army officers in Macedonia to arrange for the withdrawal of some 40,000 Serbian troops from Kosovo.

2000 – President Clinton and President Putin agreed to each dispose 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium and to establish a military center in Moscow for US and Russian officers to share early warning data on missile and space launches. Clinton then answered questions from the public at the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

2000 – NASA directed the $670 million crippled Compton Gamma Ray Observatory into a suicide plunge into the Pacific Ocean in a controlled re-entry to avoid debris over populated areas.

2001 – US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had virtually cut off all Pentagon contacts with the Chinese armed forces in displeasure over the spy plane incident. Rumsfeld announced that he had given limited permission to resume military-to-military contacts with China due to the progress in the resolution of the spy plane incident.

2002 – President Bush said the CIA and FBI had failed to communicate adequately before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks; Congress began extraordinary closed-door hearings into intelligence lapses.

2003 – In Afghanistan 40 Taliban suspects were killed in one of the deadliest exchanges between Taliban and government troops since the hardline religious regime was overthrown in late 2001. 7 government soldiers also died in the nine hours of fighting in three villages north of Spinboldak, near the border with Pakistan.

2003 – A UN-backed war crimes court indicted Liberian Pres. Charles Taylor, accusing him of “the greatest responsibility” in the vicious 10-year civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone.

2004 – In southern Afghanistan U.S. troops and warplanes attacked Taliban rebels besieging a remote checkpoint. Eight militants were killed.

2004 – American and Shiite militia forces agreed to withdraw from the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa and turn over security to Iraqi police.

2007 – The United States government arrests ten people, including former Laotian Army general Vang Pao, on charges of organizing a plot to overthrow the Laotian government.

2007 – A military judge dismisses terrorism-related charges against, Omar Khadr, a Canadian Guantanamo Bay detainee charged with killing a United States Army soldier, Sgt. Christopher Speer, in Afghanistan.

2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.

2013 – The United States expands its military presence in Jordan, sending a Patriot missile battery and an undeclared number of F-16 fighters to the area.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

HILLIKER, BENJAMIN F.
Rank and organization: Musician, Company A, 8th Wisconsin Infantry. Place and date: At Mechanicsburg, Miss., 4 June 1863. Entered service at. Waupaca Township, Wis. Born: 23 May 1843, Golden, Erie County, N.Y. Date of issue: 17 December 1897. Citation: When men were needed to oppose a superior Confederate force he laid down his drum for a rifle and proceeded to the front of the skirmish line which was about 120 feet from the enemy. While on this volunteer mission and firing at the enemy he was hit in the head with a minie ball which passed through him. An order was given to “lay him in the shade; he won’t last long.” He recovered from this wound being left with an ugly scar.

GATES, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Bugler, Company F, 8th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Picacho Mountain, Ariz., 4 June 1869. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Delaware County, Ohio. Date of issue: 3 March 1870. Citation: Killed an Indian warrior and captured his arms.

WATSON, JOSEPH
Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 8th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Picacho Mountain, Ariz., 4 June 1869. Entered service at: St. Joseph, Mich. Birth: Union City, Mich. Date of issue: 3 March 1870. Cltation: Killed an Indian warrior and captured his arms.

*DAVID, ALBERT LEROY
Rank and organization: Lieutenant, Junior Grade, U.S. Navy. Born: 18 July 1902, Maryville, Mo. Accredited to: Missouri. Other Navy award: Navy Cross with gold star. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while attached to the U.S.S. Pillsbury during the capture of an enemy German submarine off French West Africa, 4 June 1944. Taking a vigorous part in the skillfully coordinated attack on the German U-505 which climaxed a prolonged search by the Task Group, Lt. (then Lt. j.g.) David boldly led a party from the Pillsbury in boarding the hostile submarine as it circled erratically at 5 or 6 knots on the surface.

Fully aware that the U-boat might momentarily sink or be blown up by exploding demolition and scuttling charges, he braved the added danger of enemy gunfire to plunge through the conning tower hatch and, with his small party, exerted every effort to keep the ship afloat and to assist the succeeding and more fully equipped salvage parties in making the U-505 seaworthy for the long tow across the Atlantic to a U.S. port.

By his valiant service during the first successful boarding and capture of an enemy man-o-war on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since 1815, Lt. David contributed materially to the effectiveness of our Battle of the Atlantic and upheld the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

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*FLEMING, RICHARD E.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 2 November 1917, St. Paul, Minn. Appointed from: Minnesota. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as Flight Officer, Marine Scout Bombing Squadron 241, during action against enemy Japanese forces in the battle of Midway on 4 and 5 June 1942. When his Squadron Commander was shot down during the initial attack upon an enemy aircraft carrier, Capt. Fleming led the remainder of the division with such fearless determination that he dived his own plane to the perilously low altitude of 400 feet before releasing his bomb. Although his craft was riddled by 179 hits in the blistering hail of fire that burst upon him from Japanese fighter guns and antiaircraft batteries, he pulled out with only 2 minor wounds inflicted upon himself.

On the night of June 4th, when the squadron commander lost his way and became separated from the others, Capt. Fleming brought his own plane in for a safe landing at its base despite hazardous weather conditions and total darkness. The following day, after less than 4 hours’ sleep, he led the second division of his squadron in a coordinated glide-bombing and dive-bombing assault upon a Japanese battleship. Undeterred by a fateful approach glide, during which his ship was struck and set afire, he grimly pressed home his attack to an altitude of 500 feet, released his bomb to score a near miss on the stern of his target, then crashed to the sea in flames. His dauntless perseverance and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*BARKER, CHARLES H.
Rank and organization: Private First Class (then Pvt.), U.S. Army, Company K, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Sokkogae, Korea, 4 June 1953. Entered service at: Pickens County, S.C. Born: 12 April 1935, Pickens County, S.C. G.O. No.: 37, 7 June 1955. Citation: Pfc. Barker, a member of Company K, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and indomitable courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. While participating in a combat patrol engaged in screening an approach to “Pork-Chop Outpost,” Pfc. Barker and his companions surprised and engaged an enemy group digging emplacements on the slope. Totally unprepared, the hostile troops sought cover.

After ordering Pfc. Barker and a comrade to lay down a base of fire, the patrol leader maneuvered the remainder of the platoon to a vantage point on higher ground. Pfc. Barker moved to an open area firing his rifle and hurling grenades on the hostile positions. As enemy action increased in volume and intensity, mortar bursts fell on friendly positions, ammunition was in critical supply, and the platoon was ordered to withdraw into a perimeter defense preparatory to moving back to the outpost. Voluntarily electing to cover the retrograde movement, he gallantly maintained a defense and was last seen in close hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. Pfc. Barker’s unflinching courage, consummate devotion to duty, and supreme sacrifice enabled the patrol to complete the mission and effect an orderly withdrawal to friendly lines, reflecting lasting glory upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the military service.

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