TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
22 August
◆1138 Battle of the Standard: Archbishop Thurston of York defeats King David I of Scotland.
◆1485 Battle of Bosworth Field: Henry VII defeats Richard III.
◆1499 Third Naval Battle of Sapienza: Turks and Venetians clash.
◆1642 English Civil War begins: King Charles I takes up arms against Parliament.
◆1707 Daun's Austrians invest Gaeta (stormed, September 30).
◆1775 England's King George III proclaimed the American colonies in a state of open rebellion.
◆1777 With the approach of General Benedict Arnold's army, British Colonel Barry St. Ledger abandoned Fort Stanwix and returns to Canada.
◆1791 Haitian Slave Revolution begins under voodoo priest Boukman.
◆1846 The United States annexed New Mexico.
◆1862 Battle of Catlett's Station, Va.
◆1862 Santee Sioux Indians attack Fort Ridgely.
◆1863 Following 4 day's of intensive bombardment of Forts Wagner, Sumter, and Gregg from afloat and ashore, naval forces under Rear Admiral Dahlgren moved to press a close attack on heavily damaged Fort Sumter late at night. U.S.S. Passaic, Lieutenant Commander Edward Simpson, in advance of the other ironclads, grounded near the fort shortly after midnight.★
◆1902 President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile in Hartford, Conn.
◆1911 President William Taft vetoed a joint resolution of Congress granting statehood to Arizona.
◆1912 Birthday of the Navy’s Dental Corps.
◆1914 Cavalry skirmish near Mons: First Anglo-German engagement of World War I.
◆1914 German troops massacre 383 Belgian civilians at Tamines.
◆1914 The French Army suffers 27,000 men killed-in-action during the Battle of the Frontiers, its heaviest loss in a single day ever.
◆1934 H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War (1991), was born in Trenton, NJ.★
◆1942 -4th Marine Air Wing was commissioned at Ewa, Hawaii, as the 4th Marine Base Defense Air Wing.
◆1943 US forces occupy islands of the Ellice group, including Nukufetau and Namumea. There is no Japanese opposition. Work begins on constructing airfields.
◆1945 Conflict in Vietnam began when a group of Free French parachute into southern Indochina, in response to a successful coup by communist guerilla Ho Chi Minh.
◆1945 The Japanese garrison on Mili Atoll capitulated in a ceremony on an American destroyer escort; USS Levy. This is the first time a Japanese force surrenders en masse.
◆1950 During the fighting at the "Bowling Alley" near Tabudong, North Korean Lieutenant Colonel Chong Pong UK, commander of the artillery regiment supporting the North Korean 13th Division, surrendered to the ROK 1st Division. Chong, the highest-ranking communist prisoner to date, gave precise information on the location of his artillery. Eighth Army immediately launched air and artillery strikes on the enemy guns. Chong had defected in protest against what he felt was an unfair reprimand by the 13th Division commander.
◆1962 Savannah, world's 1st nuclear powered ship, completed here maiden voyage from Yorktown, Va., to Savannah, Ga.
◆1967 Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General John P. McConnell, states before a Senate Subcommittee that adopting a graduated bombing policy in North Vietnam was a mistake. Three days later, Secretary of Defense McNamara admitted that the bombing of North Vietnam had not materially affected Hanoi's "warmaking capability."
◆1968 For the first time in two months, Viet Cong forces launch a rocket attack on Saigon, killing 18 and wounding 59. Administration officials denounced the attack as a direct repudiation of President Johnson's speech of August 19, in which he appealed to the North Vietnamese to respond favorably to his limitation of the air campaign north of the DMZ.
◆1990 President Bush signed an order calling up reservists to bolster the US military buildup in the Persian Gulf.
◆1993 NASA engineers continued trying, without success, to re-establish contact with the Mars Observer, a day after losing contact.
◆1996 The US Army began operating an incinerator in Utah to destroy a 14,000 ton stockpile of chemical weapons over 7 years.
◆1997 A $64.8 million 890-lb. Lewis satellite was launched by NASA on a hoped-for 5-year mission. It went into an uncontrolled spin on Aug 22 and was expected to fall and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere in Sep.
◆2001 NATO members gave formal approval for alliance soldiers to collect weapons from Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia.