TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
23 April
◆Feast of St. George, Patron of England and of Soldiers.
◆1014 Battle of Clontarf: The Irish defeat the Danes.★
◆1296 Battle of Spottismuir: Edward I & the Earl of Surrey defeat & depose John Balliol, King of Scotland.
◆1449 Battle of Borgomanero: Bartolomeo Colleoni defeats the French & Savoyards.
◆1521 Battle of Villalar: Spanish Crown defeats the Communero Rebels.
◆1778 US Captain John Paul Jones attempted to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk, but he only got Lady Selkirk's silverware.
◆1791 James Buchanan, was born in Franklin County, Pa. He was the fifteenth U.S. president (1857-1861) and the only president not to marry.
◆1826 The Turks capture Missolonghi, Greece, amid great slaughter.
◆1860 The Pony Express rider missed the boat at Benicia, Ca. Thomas Bedford, a 34-year-old stable keeper, was hired on the spot and boarded the ferry Carquinez with his horse. He discovered that his horse had lost a shoe and borrowed a horse from Martinez blacksmith Casemoro Briones and delivered the mail to the ferry at Oakland. The mail reached SF 9 hours and 15 minutes from the time it left Sacramento.
◆1861 Arkansas troops seized Fort Smith.
◆1861 Battle of San Antonio, TX.
◆1864 Battle of Cane River, LA (Red River Expedition, Monett's Ferry).
◆1865 Union cavalry units continued to skirmish with Confederate forces in Henderson, North Carolina and Munsford Station, Alabama.
◆1908 Congress passed legislation that created the Medical Reserve Corps, the Army's first federal reserve force.
◆1914 The 3rd Marine Regiment joined in a show of force at Vera Cruz, Mexico, after an insult to the American flag.
◆1915 ACA becomes National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA), the forerunner of NASA.
◆1918 USS Stewart destroys German submarine off France.
◆1924 The U.S. Senate passes Soldiers Bonus Bill.
◆1926 Virgil I (Gus) Grissom, was born. He was the Mercury and Gemini astronaut who was killed in a fire while preparing for the first Apollo flight.
◆1934 In first Naval movement through Panama Canal over 100 ships transited.
◆1944 Advancing US forces capture Hollandia, New Guinea, without a fight; Tadji airfield is also taken. The advance inland encounters resistance near the village of Sabron. There is congestion on the beachheads.
◆1945 Advance units of both US 5th and British 8th Armies reach the Po River. US 5th Army units manage to cross the river south of Mantua.
◆1945 Hitler receives a message from Goring, offering to take over the leadership of the country should Hitler be unable to continue with that task while besieged in Berlin. Hitler is infuriated and orders Goring arrested.
◆1945 On Okinawa, the attacks of US 24th Corps begin to achieve some gains, notably by US 96th Division.
◆1945 Units of US 37th Division reach the outskirts of Baguio.
◆1945 In only U.S. use of guided missiles in WW II, 2 BAT missiles release at Balikiapan, Borneo.
◆1950 Chaing Kai-shek evacuates Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao Zedong and the communists.
◆1951 Battle of Kapyong.★
◆1956 Project Vanguard, earth satellite launching program, assigned to DCNO (Air).
◆1982 Key West, Fla., under Mayor Dennis Wardlow declared that it was seceding from the US and would rename itself the Conch Republic. The move was in response to a state roadblock and inspection on all cars heading out of the Florida Keys.
◆1991 USSR granted republics the right to secede under certain conditions.
◆1997 The military confirmed that two pieces of wreckage found on a snowy Rocky Mountain peak were from the Air Force warplane that vanished on a training mission over Arizona.
◆1997 N. Korean defector, Hwang Jang Yop, claimed that North Korea has nuclear weapons and that the 1.2 million man army was prepared for war.
◆1999 NATO forces bombed Nis and a broad swath of Yugoslavia on the 31st day of attacks.
◆2001 A US robot spy plane completed the 1st unmanned trans-Pacific flight from California to Australia.