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TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY

8 August

◆1588 English fleet battles Spanish Armada.
1589 Battle of Las Palmas: Spanish beat off an English assault.
​◆1647 Battle of Dunganhill: English rout Irish rebels.
◆1692 Battle of Steenkerke: William III defeated by the French under the Duke of Luxembourg.
◆1776 John Paul Jones was commissioned as a captain and appointed to command the Alfred. His orders were to harass enemy merchant ships and defend the American coast.
◆1786 The US Congress adopted the silver dollar and decimal system of money.
◆1806 French Marshal Massena crushes Neapolitan forces at Lauria.
◆1812 Battle of Inkovo: Russians defeat the French.
◆1831 Battle of Hasselt: Dutch drive out Belgian Army.
◆1839 Nelson Miles, one of the most successful but controversial officers in the Plains Indian Wars, is born on a farm in Massachusetts.★
◆1854 Smith and Wesson patented metal bullet cartridges.
◆1862 Minnesota’s 5th Infantry fought the Sioux Indians in Redwood, Minn., and 24 soldiers were killed.
◆1863 In the aftermath of his defeat at Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 
◆1864 Though the Union fleet under Rear Admiral Farragut controlled Mobile Bay and Forts Powell and Gaines were in Northern hands, Brigadier General Richard L. Page, formerly a U.S. naval officer and until recently a Commander in the Confederate Navy, gallantly refused to surrender Fort Morgan to the overwhelming forces opposing him.★
◆1864 Two resourceful members of the Confederate Torpedo Corps, John Maxwell and R. K. Dillard, planted a clockwork torpedo containing twelve pounds of powder on a Union transport at City Point, Virginia, causing a huge explosion which rocked the entire area. Maxwell and Dillard succeeded in getting through Union lines to the wharf area, where Maxwell convinced the trusting wharf sentry that he had been ordered by the captain of the ammunition barge to deliver a box on board. The box was accepted and the two Confederates hastily started back for Richmond. When the torpedo exploded an hour later, it set in motion a devastating chain reaction which spread the holocaust from the barges to storage buildings on shore and even to General Grant's headquarters. Grant hurried off a message to General Halleck in Washington: "Five minutes ago an ordnance boat exploded, carrying lumber, grape, canister, and all kinds of shot over this point. Every part of the yard used as my headquarters is filled with splinters and fragments of shell."
◆1864 The 1st Geneva Convention was issued on protecting the war wounded.
◆1899 Marines of "U.S.S. Yosemite" start to form garrison at Agana, Cuba.
◆1929 German airship 'Graf Zeppelin' begins a round-the-world flight.
◆1942 The invasion of Guadalcanal continues as the remainder of the first wave of American troops come ashore. Advancing rapidly inland, they capture the Japanese airstrip intact, renaming it Henderson Field. The missions on Tulagi and Gavutu are completed and the islands captured. Due to Japanese air and submarine attacks, Admiral Fletcher decides to withdraw his carriers, leaving the cruisers and transports near the island. This action is probably a mistake.
◆1942 US President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill approve the appointment of American General Eisenhower to command Operation Torch , the proposed Allied invasion of North Africa.
◆1942 During World War II, six German saboteurs who secretly entered the United States on a mission to attack its civil infrastructure are executed by the United States for spying. 
◆1943 The US 180th Regiment, of the 45th Division (OKARNG) land a small force east of Sant Agata in an amphibious operation supported by 1 cruiser and 3 destroyers. The Germans withdraw and US forces take Sant Agata and Cesaro.
◆1943 On New Georgia fighting continues. US forces are attempting to prevent further Japanese evacuations to Kolombangara.
◆1944 The German offensive toward Arromanches continues with heavy fighting around Mortain. Despite the threat posed by the German attack, US 3rd Army continues attacking south and southwest. Elements of US 15th Corps penetrate Le Mans while the new US 20th Corps advances toward Nantes and Angers. In Brittany, US 8th Corps continues attacks on the German-held ports.
◆1944 Following the American break out from Normandy in July, 1944, the Germans decided that the only way to stop the Allied advance and push them back to the sea was to launch a massive attack in the Avranches region, about 150 miles west of Paris.★
◆1944 On Guam, American troops overrun Mount Santa Rosa. The remaining Japanese garrison is compelled to withdraw to the north end of the island.
◆1945 President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. 
◆1945 The Soviet Union declares itself to be at war with Japan as of midnight (August 9th), citing the Japanese failure to respond to the Potsdam Declaration. 
◆1945 The Japanese Supreme War Council agrees, late that night, that they should accept the Potsdam Declaration if the monarchy is preserved. Some of the objections from the military are overruled by the Emperor himself.
◆1945 President Truman makes a public radio broadcast in which he threatens Japan with destruction by atomic bombs.
◆1945 The survivors of the USS Indianapolis are rescued. Only 316 of the 1196 men onboard the ship have survived.
◆1950 As part of Task Force Kean in the first American counterattack of the war, the leading 35th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division had advanced to its initial objective, the high ground just north of Munchon-ni. The regiment was then ordered to hold until the 5th Regimental Combat Team could come up on the left.
◆1953 The United States and South Korea initialed a mutual security pact.
◆1953 In Russia Georgi Malenkov reported the possession of hydrogen bomb.
◆1959 Announcement of Project Teepee, electronic system to monitor 95 percent of earth's atmosphere for missile launchings or nuclear explosions. System developed by William Thaler, Office of Naval Research physicist.
◆1972 Navy women authorized for sea duty as regular ship's company.
◆1974 In an evening televised address, President Richard M. Nixon announces his intention to become the first president in American history to resign. 
◆1976 John Roselli, hired by CIA to kill Castro, was found murdered.
◆1978 The United States launched Pioneer Venus II, which carried scientific probes to study the atmosphere of Venus.
◆1987 In the Persian Gulf, a Navy F-14 "Tomcat" fighter fired two missiles at an Iranian jet approaching an unarmed U.S. scout plane. Both missiles missed their target and the Iranian plane flew off.
◆1989 The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a secret, five-day military mission to deploy a new Pentagon spy satellite.
◆1990 As the Persian Gulf crisis deepened, American forces began taking up positions in Saudi Arabia; Iraq announced it had annexed Kuwait as its 19th province; President Bush warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that "a line has been drawn in the sand."
◆2002 Saddam Hussein organized a big military parade and then warned "the forces of evil" not to attack Iraq as he sought once more to shift the debate away from world demands that he live up to agreements that ended the Gulf War.
◆2003 A US federal judge ruled that some 264,000 square miles of submerged lands in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, belong to the United States.