TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
11 August
◆1162 Battle of Cantu: Lombards skirmish with Frederick Barbarossa's rear guards, as he retreats.
◆1306 Battle of Dalry: the Lord of Lorne defeats Robert I the Bruce.
◆1480 The Ottomans capture Otranto, Naples, amid great slaughter.
◆1664 Battle of Seneffe: Louis II Conde's French defeat William III's Spanish & Dutch.
◆1718 Battle of Cape Passero: Sir George Byng crushes a Spanish squadron off Sicily.
◆1806 While hunting for elk along the Missouri River, Meriwether Lewis is shot in the hip, probably by one of his own men.
◆1812 USS Constitution captures and destroys brig Lady Warren.
◆1856 A band of rampaging settlers in California killed four Yokut Indians. The settlers had heard unproven rumors of Yokut atrocities.
◆1860 The first US successful silver mill began operation near Virginia City, Nev.
◆1862 President Abraham Lincoln appointed Union General Henry Halleck to the position of general in chief of the Union Army.
◆1864 Confederate General Jubal Early pulls out of Winchester, Virginia, as Union General Philip Sheridan approaches the city.★
◆1877 Professor Asaph Hall of Naval Observatory discovers first of two satellites of Mars. He found the second one within a week.
◆1909 The SOS distress signal was first used by an American ship, the Arapahoe, off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
◆1914 France declares war on Austria-Hungary.
◆1918 Battle of Amiens ends, the British break the German Army in a combined arms attack.
◆1921 Carrier arresting gear first tested at Hampton Roads.
◆1923 MCRD transferred from Mare Island to its present location at San Diego.
◆1929 Russo-Chinese border clashes.
◆1942 The SS began exterminating 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz, Poland.
◆1943 German forces begin a six-day evacuation of the Italian island of Sicily, having been beaten back by the Allies, who invaded the island in July.
◆1944 Elements of US 3rd Army cross the Loire River.
◆1944 German troops abandoned Florence, Italy, as Allied troops closed in on the historic city.
◆1945 On Mindanao, American mopping up operations are completed.
◆1952 The 1stMarDiv participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Korean War.
◆1960 USNS Longview, using Navy helicopters and frogmen, recovers a Discover satellite capsule after 17 orbits. This is first recovery of U.S. satellite from orbit.
◆1965 What should have been a routine traffic stop in the Watts neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles developed into one of the worst racial riots in American history.
◆1967 For the first time, U.S. pilots are authorized to bomb road and rail links in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, formerly on the prohibited target list. This permitted U.S. aircraft to bomb targets within 25 miles of the Chinese border and to engage other targets with rockets and cannon within 10 miles of the border. The original restrictions had been imposed because of Johnson's fear of a confrontation with China and a possible expansion of the war.
◆1970 As part of the Vietnamization effort, South Vietnamese troops relieve U.S. units of their responsibility for guarding the Cambodian and Laotian borders along almost the entire South Vietnamese frontier.
◆1972 The last U.S. ground combat unit in South Vietnam, the Third Battalion, Twenty-First Infantry, departs for the United States. The unit had been guarding the U.S. air base at Da Nang. This left only 43,500 advisors, airmen, and support troops left in-country. This number did not include the sailors of the Seventh Fleet on station in the South China Sea or the air force personnel in Thailand and Guam.
◆1975 Anthony C. McAuliffe (77), US General, commandant 101st div (Nuts!), died.
◆1984 A joke about "outlawing" the Soviet Union by President Ronald Reagan turns into an international controversy.★
◆1987 Britain and France ordered minesweepers to the Persian Gulf, but said they would not be used in combined operations with the United States as it escorted reflagged Kuwaiti ships.
◆1990 Egyptian and Moroccan troops arrived in Saudi Arabia to join US forces in helping to protect the desert kingdom from possible Iraqi attack.
◆1997 It was reported that the US Energy Dept. was short of tritium for nuclear weapons and would borrow space from a civilian power plant for its production.
◆2000 British and US bombers struck southern Iraq.
◆2003 In Afghanistan NATO took command of the 5,000-strong international peacekeeping force in Kabul, its 1st deployment outside Europe.
◆2004 U.S. jet fighters bombed the turbulent city of Fallujah.