TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
21 April
◆753 BCE Romulus founds Rome.
◆1503 Battle of Seminara: The Spanish defeat the French in the Kingdom of Naples.
◆1519 Cortes lands in Mexico.
◆1738 Algerian pirates raid into the Bay of Naples.
◆1796 Battle of Mondovi: Bonaparte defeats the Austrians.★
◆1809 Battle of Landshut: Napoleon defeats the Austrians.★
◆1813 Battle of Bautzen (Day 2): Napoleon defeats the Russo-Prussians.★
◆1836 Battle of San Jacinto, ends in Texian victory.★
◆1855 The first train crossed the Mississippi River's first bridge.◆1863 Confederate victory in Rome, GA.★
◆1863 Confederate guns at Vicksburg opened fire on Union Army steamers attempting a night passage of the batteries. Tigress was sunk and Empire City was totally disabled; Moderator was badly damaged, but J. W. Cheeseman, Anglo Saxon, and Horizon passed safely.
◆1898 The Spanish-American War began.★
◆1914 U.S. marines occupied Vera Cruz, Mexico. They stayed for six months.
◆1943 Admiral Koga is appointed to succeed Yamamoto as Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet.
◆1944 US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) attacks Wakde Island, Sawar, Sarmi and Hollandia. The American force includes 12 carriers and cruisers. Aircraft strike during the day and cruisers bombard the Japanese positions at night.
◆1944 Marshal Badoglio forms a coalition government in liberated Italy.
◆1945 Bologna is captured by units of the Polish 2nd Corps (part of British 8th Army). Units of US 2nd Corps (part of US 5th Army) enter the town a few hours later. US 5th Army forces have now cleared the Appenines and advancing rapidly on the Lombard Plain. East of Bologna, British 8th Army is advancing rapidly.
◆1945 The heavy fighting near Baguio continues, with the attacks of the US 37th Division making some gains near the Irisan River and the 33rd Division advancing to the west of the city.
◆1945 The US 77th Infantry Division completes the occupation of Ie Shima. The island and its airfield have been secured after six days of heavy fighting during which about 5000 Japanese troops have been killed. The division is ferried to Okinawa to join in the battle in the south.
◆1951 Carrier-based Marine planes downed three Yaks in the first air-to-air contact of Marine air with the North Korean Air Force.
◆1951 U.S. Air Force Captain Robert J. Love, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, scored his fifth and sixth aerial victories in his F-86 Sabre "Bernie's Bo" to become the 11th ace of the Korean War.
◆1952 A tremendous internal blast from turret one rocked the cruiser USS Saint Paul, killing 30 sailors. This gunpowder fire of unknown origin caused the U.S. Navy's greatest single loss of life during the war.
◆1954 USAF flew an entire French battalion into Vietnam.
◆1965 The Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency report a "most ominous" development: a regiment of the People's Army of Vietnam--the regular army of North Vietnam--division is now operating with the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.
◆1966 Operation GEORGIA southwest of DaNang started (21 Apr - 10 May).
◆1967 Josef Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defected to the US.
◆1975 Members of the SLA robbed the Carmichael Bank in suburban Sacramento, Ca.★
◆1975 Xuan Loc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls to the communists.
◆1981 US furnished $1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia.
◆1989 Six days after the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reform-minded leader of the Chinese Communist Party, some 100,000 students gather at Beijing's Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu and voice their discontent with China's authoritative communist government.
◆1991 US Marines in northern Iraq began building the first safe-haven settlement for Kurdish refugees. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf arrived at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to a hero’s welcome.
◆1999 NATO and the US agreed to renew planning for ground troops in Kosovo as leaders converged on Washington to begin summit talks.
◆2004 U.S. forces battled Taliban holdouts in a forbidding mountain range in southern Afghanistan, killing two fighters and arresting two others.
◆2004 U.S Marines backed by tanks and helicopter gunships battled insurgents in northern Fallujah.