TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
12 August
◆30 BCE Cleopatra VII died, 39
◆1071 Battle of Manzikert: Turks inflict a massive defeat on the Byzantines, & capture Emperor Romanus IV.
◆1099 Battle of Ascalon: Crusaders defeat the Fatimids.
◆1332 Battle of Dupplin Moor: Edward Valiol's English defeat King David of Scots.
◆1499 First Naval Battle of Sapienza: Turks & Venetians clash.
◆1508 Ponce de Leon arrived in Puerto Rico. Spain had appointed him to colonize Puerto Rico. He explored Puerto Rico and Spanish ships under his command began to capture Bahamanian Tainos to work as slaves on Hispaniola. His settlement at Caparra, 2 miles south of San Juan Bay, was plagued by Taino Indians and cannibalistic Carib Indians.
◆1554 Battle of Renty: Imperialists defeat the French.
◆1658 The first US police corps formed in New Amsterdam.
◆1676 In colonial New England, King Philip's War effectively comes to an end when Philip, chief of the Wampanoag Indians, is assassinated by a Native American in the service of the English.
◆1687 Battle of Harkany/Mohacs: Charles V of Lorraine routs the Turks.
◆1774 Battle of Velletri II: Charles IV's Neapolitans defeat the Austrians.
◆1759 Battle of Kunersdorf: Russo-Austrian forces almost defeat Frederick the Great.
◆1762 The British capture Havana from the Spanish after a 54 day siege.
◆1812 Battle of Gorodeczno: French and Austrians defeat the Russians.
◆1812 USS Constitution captures and destroys brig Adeona.
◆1817 The Revenue Cutter Active captured the pirate ship Margaret in the Chesapeake Bay.
◆1862 Confederate cavalry leader General John Hunt Morgan captures a small Federal garrison in Gallatin, Tennessee, just north of Nashville.★
◆1863 Confederate raider William Quantrill led a massacre of 150 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrill's last ride.
◆1898 Hawaii was formally annexed to the United States.
◆1898 SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR ENDS: The brief and one-sided Spanish-American War comes to an end when Spain formally agrees to a peace protocol on U.S. terms: the cession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Manila in the Philippines to the United States pending a final peace treaty.
◆1914 Great Britain declared war on Austria-Hungary.
◆1914 First British Offensive of WW I: Advancing about three miles from the Gold Coast, British troops capture Lome, capital of German Togoland.
◆1918 SECNAV approves acceptance of women as yeoman (F) in U.S. Navy.
◆1918 The Secretary of the Navy authorized the enlistment of women into the Marine Corps Reserve.
◆1941 The House passes an extension of the draft period from one year to thirty months (and a similar increase for service in the National Guard) after considerable debate. The bill is passed by one vote (203-202) in the House, so it would be incorrect to suggest that American political opinion is strongly in favor of a more aggressive international policy at this point.
◆1942 Strong American forces are landed on Espiritu Santu to build a supply base for the Guadalcanal campaign.
◆1942 German First Panzer Armee captures Elista, southeast of Stalingrad.
◆1942 USS Cleveland (CL-55) demonstrates effectiveness of radio-proximity fuze (VT-fuze) against aircraft by successfully destroying 3 drones with proximity bursts fired by her five inch guns.
◆1944 The first PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) becomes operational carrying fuel from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg.
◆1944 The US 15th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) captures Alencon and advances to the outskirts of Argentan where the German 116th Panzer Division is located.
◆1944 Italian based American bombers attack the Bordeaux-Merignac airfield and then fly on to Britain.
◆1944 Elements of US 5th Army complete the capture of Florence.
◆1944 LT Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., USNR, the older brother of John F. Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot in a mid-air explosion after taking off from England in a PB4Y from Special Attack Unit One (SAU-1). Following manual takeoff, they were supposed to parachute out over the English Channel while the radio-controlled explosive filled drone proceeded to attack a German V-2 missile-launching site. Possible causes include faulty wiring or FM signals from a nearby transmitter.
◆1945 The Chinese-American headquarters cancels the operations against Fort Bayard, Hong Kong and Canton, in light of the imminent capitulation of Japan.
◆1945 Over Japan, B-29 Superfortress bombers continue attacks on targets.
◆1945 The battleship USS Pennsylvania is damaged by an attack from a Japanese torpedo bomber off the island of Okinawa. Meanwhile, A Japanese submarine sinks the American destroyer Thomas F. Nickel and the landing craft Oak Hill.
◆1950 The U.S. Army's 5th Regimental Combat Team and the 25th Infantry Division's 35th Infantry Regiment joined forces east of Chinju to continue the Task Force Kean counteroffensive that pushed the North Koreans back 20 miles.
◆1951 Charles E. Brady Jr., USN Commander, astronaut, was born in, Pinehurst, NC.
◆1952 For three days a reinforced rifle company of the 1st Marine Division on Hill 122 (Bunker Hill) fought off repeated enemy assaults, up to battalion size in strength.
◆1953 The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
◆1957 In first test of Automatic Carrier Landing System, LCDR Don Walker is landed on USS Antietam.
◆1958 USS Nautilus (SSN-571) arrives Portland, England completing first submerged under ice cruise from Pacific to Atlantic Oceans.
◆1959 The 1st ship firing of a Polaris missile was from Observation Island.
◆1960 USAF Major Robert M White takes X-15 to 41,600 m.
◆1960 The first balloon satellite, the Echo 1, was launched by the US from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It bounced phone calls from JPL in California to the Bell Labs in New Jersey.
◆1961 In an effort to stem the tide of refugees attempting to leave East Berlin, the communist government of East Germany begins building the Berlin Wall to divide East and West Berlin. Construction of the wall caused a short-term crisis in U.S.-Soviet bloc relations, and the wall itself came to symbolize the Cold War.★
◆1969 Viet Cong forces launch a new offensive with attacks on 150 cities, towns, and bases, including Da Nang and Hue. The heaviest attacks were aimed at the area adjacent to the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon; an estimated 2,000 Communists attacked Tay Ninh, Quan Loi, Loc Ninh, and An Loc. Further north, North Vietnamese commandos fought their way into the U.S. First Marine Division headquarters in Da Nang. They were eventually driven out by the Marines, who killed 40 Communist soldiers, sustaining five killed and 23 wounded in the process.
◆1972 As the last U.S. ground troops left Vietnam, B-52's made their largest strike of the war.
◆1977 High Energy Astronomy Observatory 1 was launched into Earth orbit.
◆1977 The space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test by taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating and then touching down in California's Mojave Desert.
◆1981 President Reagan, citing alleged Libyan involvement in terrorism, ordered U.S. jets to attack targets in Libya.
◆1981 IBM introduces the PC and PC-DOS version 1.0.
◆1998 A Lockheed Martin Titan 4A rocket exploded after takeoff at Cape Canaveral. The $300 million rocket carried a spy satellite for the Air Force valued at $800 to $1 billion. The explosion was blamed on a momentary loss of power.
◆2000 British and US bombers struck southern Iraq for a 2nd day.
◆2003 At least 20 combatants died in a gunbattle between suspected Taliban fighters and Afghan government soldiers.
◆2003 El Salvador sent 360 peacekeepers to Iraq.
◆2004 In Najaf thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers launched a major assault on militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric al-Sadr.