TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
9 April
◆1002 Battle of "Hocktide": Saxon women defeat Danish raiders.
◆1097 Norman-Italian Crusaders under Bohemund & Tancred reach Constantinople.
◆1214 Battle of Liegnitz/Wahlstadt: Mongol armies defeat the Poles & Germans.
◆1260 Battle of Montaperti: The Sienese Ghibellines defeat the Florentine Guelfs.
◆1388 Battle of Naefels: The Swiss defeat the Hapsburgs.
◆1682 The French explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the Mississippi River. La Salle returned to France after having discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River. La Salle claimed lower Mississippi River and all lands that touched it for France.
◆1731 Robert Jenkins lost an ear. The event started a war between Britain and Spain.★
◆1770 Capt James Cook discovers Botany Bay, Australia.
◆1848 Battle of Sorio: The Austrians defeat Venetian Insurgents.
◆1848 Battle of the Ponte di Goito: Piedmontese defeat the Austrians.
◆1861 Second relief convoy for Fort Sumter left New York.◆1864 The Battle of Pleasant Hill, LA, left 2,870 casualties.
◆1865 General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.★
◆1865 Federals captured Ft. Blakely, Alabama.
◆1865 Erich Ludendorff, Generalquartiermeister to Hindenburg, conspirator against the Republic, friend to Hitler, was born (d. 1937).
◆1898 Lt Andrew S. Rowan leaves for Cuba with "a message for Garcia."
◆1917 Canadian troops storm Vimy Ridge, initiating the Battle of Arras.★
◆1940 Germany invades Denmark, which promptly surrenders.
◆1940 Germany invades Norway.
◆1941 Commissioning of USS North Carolina, which carried 9 16-inch guns.
◆1941 The U.S. and Denmark signed an “agreement relating to the defense of Greenland.” The Coast Guard, because of its experience in the Arctic environment, was the principal service to carry out the agreement. The first action seen by U.S. forces in World War II was the seizure of a Nazi weather station and the seizure of a Nazi vessel by the cutter Northland just before the United States declared war.
◆1942 American General King surrenders to the Japanese. A death march begins for the prisoners as they are taken to San Fernado, 100 miles away.★
◆1943 Re-establishment of Commodore rank.
◆1945 In the attacks against the Ruhr pocket, US 9th Army units penetrate into Essen and reach the famous Krupp factories. Other British and American units, including some more from US 9th Army, are advancing near the Leine River to the east.
◆1945 The Allied spring offensive begins with attacks by British 8th Army (General McCreery). Initially, the Polish 2nd Corps advances along Route 9 toward Imola supported by British 5th and 10th Corps the right and left flanks. The objectives of the offensive include Ferrara and Bologna while the US 5th Army, which is scheduled to begin operations on April 14th, is to strike at Bologna and past Modena to the Po River.
◆1945 A Liberty ship loaded with aircraft bombs blows up in Bari harbor, Italy.★
◆1945 On Okinawa, there are unsuccessful attacks by US 24th Corps around Kakazu along the Japanese held Shuri Line. At sea there are less intense Kamikaze attacks. However, in two days of the Japanese suicide strikes have badly damaged 3 destroyers and 2 other ships.
◆1945 In the Sulu Archipelago, the US 163rd Infantry Regiment, of US 41st Division, lands on Jolo. There is no Japanese resistance. Other 41st Division units land on Busuanga in the Calamian group.
◆1951 Chinese communists opened the Hwachon Dam gates, flooding the Pukhan River Valley.
◆1953 Marines regained “Carson” Hill during fighting in Korea.
◆1959 NASA announced the selection of America’s first seven astronauts for the US first orbital flight in 1962 under the Mercury program: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.
◆1963 British statesman Winston Churchill was made an honorary U.S. citizen.
◆1981 The US sub George Washington rammed the Japanese freighter Nisso Maru.
◆1983 The space shuttle Challenger ended its first mission with a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
◆1987 The Special Forces Branch was established as a basic branch of the Army effective April 9, 1987, by General Orders No. 35, June 19, 1987.★
◆1988 The US imposed economic sanctions on Panama.
◆1993 Four U.S. warplanes fired at artillery in northern Iraq; the Baghdad government denied provoking the attack with artillery fire at the planes.
◆1994 The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on an 11 -day mission that included mapping the Earth’s surface in three dimensions.
◆1997 The CIA announced that the demolition of an Iraqi bunker filled with chemical weapons at Kamisiyah in 1991 may have led to Gulf War Syndrome.★
◆1999 A $250 million Air Force satellite, intended to warn of missile launches, went into a useless orbit after being launched aboard a Titan IV.
◆1999 NATO forces made air strikes across Yugoslavia on Orthodox Good Friday.★
◆2003 Baghdad falls, ending Saddam Hussein’s 24-year rule.★
◆2003 The US said it will move its main military base in South Korea out of the capital as soon as possible.