TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
6 April
(US) ARMY DAY
◆46 BCE Battle of Thapsus: Caesar defeats the Senatorials and Numidians. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica, Plaetorius Rustianus, L. Manlius Torquatus, Licinius Crassus Damasippus, & thousands of other Senatorials all killed in action.
◆403 Battle of Pollentia: Stilicho's Romano-Alan Army defeats Alaric's Visigoths, on Easter Sunday.
◆610 Lailat-ul Qadar: The night that the Koran descended to Earth.
◆1199 King Richard I "Lionheart" of England (1189-99), of wounds at 41.
◆1250 Battle of Minieh: Ayyubids defeat the Crusaders.
◆1453 Sultan Mehmet II lays siege to Constantinople (falls May 29th).
◆1490 King Matthias I "the Just" Corvinus, 43, King of Hungary (1458-1490) and of Bohemia (1469-1490), Duke of Austria (1486-1490) all died on this day.
◆1664 France & Saxony conclude an alliance.
◆1672 France declares war on the Netherlands.
◆1776 Sloop-of-war Ranger, frigate Queen of France and frigate Warren capture British Hibernia and 7 other vessels.
◆1789 The first US Congress began regular sessions at Federal Hall on Wall Street, NYC.
◆1815 At Dartmoor Prison in southwest England 7 American prisoners were killed by British soldiers under the command of Captain Thomas G. Shortland. Some 6,000 prisoners were awaiting return to the US. A farmer’s jury with no victims or witnesses issued a verdict on April 8 of “justifiable homicide.”1859 US recognizes Benito Juarez and the liberal government in Mexico's War of Reform.
◆1862 BATTLE OF SHILO: Two days of bitter fighting began at the Civil War battle of Shiloh as the Confederates attacked Grant’s Union forces in southwestern Tennessee.★
◆1862 Albert Sidney Johnston (59), US and Confederate general, was killed in battle of Shiloh.
◆1865 At the Battle of Sayler’s Creek, a third of Lee’s army was cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox. Skirmish at High Bridge, VA, (Appomattox).
◆1866 G.A.R. was formed (Grand Army of the Republic). It was composed of men who served in the US Army and Navy during the Civil War. The last member died in 1956.1890 Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker, Dutch aircraft designer, was born (d. 1939).1892 Donald Douglas, USMA alumnus, aircraft designer (DC-3/C-47, etc.) was born (d. 1981).
◆1909 Explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole along with 4 Eskimos. The claim, disputed by skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation. Robert E. Peary used Ellesmere Island as a base for his expedition to the North Pole. The north coast of Ellesmere lies just 480 miles from the Pole. He was accompanied by Matthew Henson, an African-American, who had spent 18 years in the Arctic with Peary.
◆1916 German government OK’d unrestricted submarine warfare.
◆1917 The US Congress approved a declaration of war against Germany and entered World War I on the Allied side.
◆1924 Four open-cockpit biplanes took off from Seattle for a round the world flight. Two of the planes made it back. They flew 26,000 miles in 363 hours over a 175 days at an average speed of 77 mph. The US Congress had to approve the financing and the airplanes were built by Douglas Aircraft.
◆1938 Roy Plunkett, a DuPont researcher in New Jersey, discovered the polymer, polytetrafluoroethylene, later known as teflon.
◆1941 Germans bomb Belgrad, 17,000 reportedly die.
◆1941 Germans bomb the Piraeus, two old battleships sink.
◆1941 Italians surrender Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the British.
◆1942 Japanese First Air Fleet raids in the Bay of Bengal.
◆1942 Stilwell's Chinese forces prepare to defend Pyinamana.
◆1945 On Okinawa, the US 3rd Amphibious Corps continues to advance in the north, but the US 24th Corps is held by Japanese forces along the first defenses of the Shuri Line. There are numerous Kamikaze attacks on shipping during the day, as part of Operation Kikusui. The aircraft carriers USS Jacinto and HMS Illustrious are hit as well as 25 other ships including 10 small warships.
◆1945 During World War II, the Japanese warship Yamato and nine other vessels sailed on a suicide mission to attack the U.S. fleet off Okinawa; the fleet was intercepted the next day.
◆1963 The United States and Britain signed an agreement under which the Americans would sell Polaris A-3 missiles to the British.’
◆1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the use of ground troops in combat operations.★
◆1965 The United States launched the “Early Bird” communications satellite.
◆1968 USS New Jersey recommissioned for shore bombardment duty in Vietnam.★
◆1973 India invades and annexes Sikkim.◆1975 Chiang Kai-Shek, Chinese Nationalist leader, died at 87.
◆1979 The U.S. cut off aid to Pakistan, because of that country’s covert construction of a uranium enrichment facility.
◆1991 Bosnian Serbs began a war in a quest for their own ethnically pure republic.
◆1995 A seminar of international biological weapons experts convened by UNSCOM concludes that Iraq has an undeclared full-scale biological weapons program.1995 Isaac Asimov, Army veteran, author, died at 72.
◆1996 Fighting and looting began in Monrovia, Liberia, and a six year civil war resumed between rival ethnic groups.★
◆1997 NASA officials announced they were cutting short the 16-day mission of space shuttle Columbia by 12 days because of a deteriorating and potentially explosive power generator.
◆1998 Pakistan reported a successful test of medium-range missile from its Kahuta nuclear research lab. It was capable of carrying nuclear warheads with a range of 900 miles.
◆1999 NATO bombed Yugoslav forces in Montenegro.
◆2000 US and British warplanes bombed military sites in southern Iraq.
◆2001 US officials announced some progress toward the release of 24 military personnel in China and hoped to establish a joint US-China commission to examine the April 1 collision of a US spy plane and Chinese jet.
◆2001 Bosnian Croats stoned Nato peacekeepers after police and troops seized the Hercegovacka Banka and its 10 branches. The bank was believed to be used by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) to promote a separate Croatian ministate.
◆2003 In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom 18 Kurdish fighters were killed and 45 wounded in northern Iraq when a US warplane mistakenly bombed a convoy. The 1st US transport plane landed at Baghdad Airport.
◆2003 Ahmed Chalabi, Iraqi exile leader, was airlifted by the US along with 700 “freedom fighters” to southern Iraq to join coalition troops and form the nucleus of a new national army.
◆2003 Afghan officials announced a plan to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate an estimated 100,000 fighters over the next 3 years.
◆2004 First Battle of Fallujah: Insurgents and rebellious Shiites mounted a string of attacks across Iraq’s south and U.S. Marines launched a major assault on the turbulent city of Fallujah. Up to a dozen Marines were killed in Ramadi.★