TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
20 April
◆1769 Ottawa Chief Pontiac (b~1720) was murdered by an Indian in Cahokia.
◆1775 British troops began the siege of Boston.
◆1789 George Washington is sworn in as the first POTUS.
◆1796 Congress authorizes completion of 3 frigates.
◆1809 Battle of Abensberg: The French defeat the Austrians.
◆1813 Battle of Bautzen (Day 1): Napoleon v. the Russo-Prussians.
◆1827 John Gibbon, Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
◆1836 The Territory of Wisconsin was established by Congress.
◆1836 Skirmish between Texian and Mexican outposts near San Jacinto.
◆1861 Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States army two days after he was offered command of the Union army and three days after his native state, Virginia, seceded from the Union.
◆1861 Thaddeus Lowe's balloon landed in South Carolina only to be surrounded by a group of incredulous Carolinians who believed he was a spy. Lowe managed to persuade the crowd that his 500-mile trip from Cincinnati, Ohio, was merely an innocent aerial journey to test his strange craft. He later tried to convince the Union to use his skill as a balloonist.
◆1861 Norfolk Navy Yard partially destroyed to prevent Yard facilities from falling into Confederate hands and abandoned by Union forces.
◆1862 U.S.S. Itasca, Lieutenant Caldwell, and U.S.S. Pinola, Lieutenant Crosby, under direction of Commander Bell, breached the obstructions below Forts Jackson and St. Philip under heavy fire, opening the way for Flag Officer Farragut's fleet.
◆1863 A joint Army-Navy attack succeeded in capturing a strong Confederate position at Hill's Point on the Nansemond River, Virginia, taking 5 howitzers and some 160 prisoners, as well as denying the South the use of an effective position from which to shell the flotilla guarding the Union Army position near Suffolk.
◆1863 U.S.S. Estrella, Lieutenant Commander Cooke, with U.S.S. Clifton, Arina, and Calhoun, engaged and received the surrender of Fort Burton, Butte a' la Rose, Louisiana.
◆1889 Adolf Hitler was born.★
◆1898 President McKinley signed a congressional resolution recognizing Cuban independence from Spain. He signed the Joint Resolution for War with Spain that authorized U.S. military intervention to Cuban independence.
◆1914 LUDLOW MASSACRE.★
◆1915 First Navy contract for lighter-than-air craft awarded.
◆1942 Malta's precarious position continues. German and Italian bombing continue. When the USS Wasp accompanied by HMS Renown, two cruisers and six destroyers attempt to deliver 47 desperately needed Spitfires to the island, thirty per cent of them are destroyed immediately after landing.
◆1944 During the night (April 20-21), the Germans use Neger (in English: Negro) human torpedoes against shipping off Anzio. A total of 37 are launched from beaches and 24 are lost. No results are achieved. Meanwhile, 6 Allied merchant ships are hit by torpedo planes near the Straits of Gibraltar.
◆1945 During World War II, Allied forces, the U.S. 7th army, took control of the German cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart.★
◆1945 On Okinawa, US 3rd Amphibious Corps completes the capture of the Motobu Peninsula and the whole of the main northern part of the island. The US 24th Corps, on the Shuri Line, continue to attack but the limited gains made cannot be held against the Japanese counterattacks.
◆1947 CAPT L.O. Fox, USN, supported by 80 Marines, accepted the surrender of LT Yamaguchi and 26 Japanese soldiers and sailors, two and one half years after the occupation of Peleliu and nearly 20 months after the surrender of Japan.
◆1953 Operation Little Switch began in Korea, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war.
◆1953 USS New Jersey shells Wonsan, Korea from inside the harbor.
◆1961 American Harold Graham made 1st rocket belt flight.
◆1962 NASA civilian pilot Neil A. Armstrong took the X-15 to 63,250 m.
◆1964 USS Henry Clay (SSBN-625) launches a Polaris A-2 missile from the surface in first demonstration that Polaris submarines could launch missiles from the surface as well as from beneath the ocean. 30 minutes later the submarine launched another Polaris missile while submerged.
◆1967 U.S. planes bombed Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War.
◆1971 The Pentagon releases figures confirming that fragging incidents are on the rise.★
◆1972 The manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.
◆1978 Soviet aircraft force a Korean Air Lines passenger jet to land in the Soviet Union after the jet veers into Russian airspace.★
◆1989 The case of Oliver North went to the jury in his Iran-Contra trial.
◆1991 US Marines landed in northern Iraq to begin building the first center for Kurdish refugees on Iraqi territory. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the US commander of Operation Desert Storm, left Saudi Arabia for home.
◆1993 President Clinton said he accepted responsibility for the decision to try to end the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Texas, yet laid "ultimate responsibility" on David Koresh for the deaths that resulted.
◆1995 In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI announced it was looking for two men suspected of renting the truck used to carry the explosive. Rescue teams suspended the search for survivors so that the remaining structure of the Alfred P. Murrah Building could be shored up.
◆1996 Russia and the leaders of the world's seven richest democracies agreed in Moscow to end nuclear tests by the fall and pledged new steps to keep nuclear materials out of the wrong hands.
◆1999 NATO bombing continued in Yugoslavia. The UN refugee agency in Macedonia declared its camps full beyond capacity and left 2,000 to 3,000 refugees at the border. Another few thousand crossed the border to the hamlet of Milana. The border with Albania was again opened but only a few crossed over. Bulgaria and Romania offered to let NATO use their airspace to bomb Yugoslavia.
◆2004 The NASA Gravity Probe B satellite, designed by Stanford researchers, was launched to test Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
◆2004 Authorities in southern Italy reported that they had seized about 7,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles and other combat-grade firearms from a Turkish-flagged ship headed for New York. The weapons were destined for a US company in Georgia.