TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
8 April
◆1500 Battle of Novara: King Louis XII beats Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan.
◆1596 Battle of Amiens: The Spanish capture the city from the French.★
◆1812 Marines participated in the sea battle between the USS Hyder Ally and HMS General Monk.
◆1823 Marines chased pirates east of Havana, Cuba.
◆1832 Some 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry left Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk War.
◆1864 The Red River campaign of Union General Nathaniel Banks grinds to a halt when Confederate General Richard Taylor routs Banks’ army at Mansfield, Louisiana.★
◆1865 General Robert E. Lee’s retreat was cut off near Appomattox Court House. Lee requested to meet with Gen Ulysses Grant to discuss possible surrender.
◆1898 Battle of the Atbara River: Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian forces crush the Sudanese Mahdists.
◆1913 The US Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, requiring direct election of senators.
◆1914 U.S. and Columbia signed a treaty concerning Panama Canal Zone.
◆1918 The US First Aero Squadron was assigned to the Western Front for the first time on observation duty.
◆1925 First planned night landings on a carrier, USS Langley, by VF-1.
◆1940 HM Destroyer 'Glowworm' is sunk after a gallant fight with the German heavy cruiser 'Admiral Hipper.’
◆1942 Overwhelmed by numbers and short of food and equipment, the American and Filipino forces remaining on the Bataan peninsula are ordered to destroy their equipment prior to a surrender.
◆1945 On Okinawa, the forces of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, attacking northward on the island, have cut the neck of the Motobu Peninsula and US 6th Marine Division begins operations to clear it of Japanese forces. At sea, there are less intense Kamikaze attacks.
◆1945 The US forces on Negros are reinforced by the landing of a second regiment, in the northwest of the island, near Bacolod.
◆1945 US 7th Army units capture Schweinfurt. Other Allied armies farther north also advance.
◆1946 The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for the last time.
◆1950 A US Navy privateer airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane over Latvia and shot it down.
◆1951 First of four nuclear bomb detonations called Operation Greenhouse.
◆1981 General of the Army Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group who ensured Allied victory over Germany, dies.
◆1999 NATO bombing in Yugoslavia blocked freighter and barge traffic on the Danube.
◆2000 The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed that personnel action had been taken following the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy during the NATO war against Yugoslavia; one employee was reportedly fired.
◆2000 A Marine Corps aircraft, MV-22 tilt-rotor Osprey, with at least 18 people aboard crashed at the Avra Valley Airport near Tucson. All 19 Marines onboard were killed in the crash.