TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
23 August
◆406 Battle of Faesulae: Stilicho's Romans defeat the Goths.
◆1242 Battle of Taillebourg: The French defeat the English.
◆1305 William Wallace died, c. 33, Scottish patriot, half-hanged, castrated, eviscerated, and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, and then cut into four parts.
◆1328 Battle of Cassel: The French defeat the Flemings.
◆1514 Battle of Chaldiran: Gun-armed Turks defeat the Persians.
◆1784 Eastern Tennessee settlers declared their area an independent state and named it Franklin; a year later the Continental Congress rejected it.
◆1813 Battle of Grossbeeren: von Bulow's Prussians repulse the French.
◆1819 Oliver Hazard Perry, naval hero, died on his 34th birthday.
◆1820 The Revenue Cutter Louisiana captured four pirate vessels.
◆1839 Opium Wars: The British capture Hong Kong.
◆1861 Allen Pinkerton, head of the new secret service agency of the Federal government, places Confederate spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow under house arrest in Washington, D.C.
◆1863 A ruthless band of guerrillas attacks the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
◆1883 Jonathan Wainwright, U.S. General, who fought against the Japanese on Corregidor in the Philippines and was forced to surrender, was born.
◆1889 The 1st ship-to-shore wireless message was received in US in SF.
◆1939 Lloyd's of London advanced war-risk rates as the Nazis threatened to invade Poland and Europe braced itself for war. The Dow responded to the news with a 3.25 drop to close the day at 131.82.
◆1939 Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies.
◆1942 The first American flights landed on Guadalcanal.
◆1942 In an attempt to cover the ferrying of supplies to their forces at Guadalcanal, both the Japanese and the American send major warships.
◆1943 American destroyers bombard Finschafen in support of air operations against Wewak.
◆1944 US 1st Army (part of US 12th Army Group) also drives forward to the Seine. The US 19th Corps captures Evreux. French forces are employed as the spearhead of the US 5th Corps advance toward Paris. On the Atlantic coast, elements of the US 3rd Army link up with French resistance members near Bordeaux.
◆1944 Elements of the French 2nd Corps (part of US 7th Army) reach the outskirts of Marseilles and Toulon.
◆1944 The last Japanese resistance on the island of Numfoor is overcome and most of the American force is redeployed.
◆1945 A US B-24 crashed into a school in Freckelton, England, and 76 were killed.
◆1945 British, American and French troops enter Vienna.
◆1945 General MacArthur orders the release of some 5000 Filipinos interned for security reasons.
◆1950 Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps were called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
◆1951 The Navy recommissioned the battleship USS Iowa under the command of Captain William R. Smedberg, III.
◆1958 In Taiwan Straits Crisis, Units of 7th Fleet move into Taiwan area to support Taiwan against Chinese Communists. This massive concentration of the Pacific Fleet in Quemoy-Matsu area prevents invasion of islands by China. Marines from Okinawa prepare to reinforce Chinese Nationalists at Taiwan.
◆1963 The first satellite communications ship, USNS Kingsport (T-AG-164) in Lagos, Nigeria, connected President John F. Kennedy with Nigerian Prime Minister Balewa who was aboard for the first satellite (Syncom II) relayed telephone conversation between heads of state.
◆1966 The American cargo ship Baton Rouge Victory strikes a mine laid by the Viet Cong in the Long Tao River, 22 miles south of Saigon. The half-submerged ship blocked the route from the South Vietnamese capital to the sea. Seven crewmen were killed.
◆1968 Communist forces launch rocket and mortar attacks on numerous cities, provincial capitals, and military installations. The heaviest shelling was on the U.S. airfield at Da Nang, the cities of Hue and Quang Tri. North Vietnamese forces numbering between 1200 and 1500 troops attacked the U.S. Special Forces camp at Duc Lap, 130 miles northeast of Saigon near the Cambodian border. The camp fell but was retaken by an allied relief column led by U.S. Special Forces on August 25. A reported 643 North Vietnamese troops were killed in the battle.
◆1979 The keel of the first of the new 270-foot class medium endurance cutters, the CGC Bear, was laid.
◆1984 The last Marines to serve peace-keeping duty in Lebanon arrived home. The 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) arrived off the coast of Lebanon on 9 April to relieve Marines of the 22d MAU who were guarding the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The 24th MAU left Beirut on 31 July, marking the last presence of U.S. combat troops in Beirut since Marines entered almost two years earlier.
◆1990 US began to call up of 46,000 reservists to the Persian Gulf.
◆1990 East and West Germany announced that they would unite Oct 3.
◆1991 In the wake of a failed coup by hard-liners in the Soviet Union, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin acted to strip the Communist Party of its power and take control of the army and the KGB.
◆1999 US and British warplanes attacked targets in northern Iraq after being fired upon by an Iraqi military radar station.
◆1999 It was reported that the US was training a 950-man Colombian army counter narcotics battalion to regain control of guerrilla controlled territory.
◆2000 Boeing made the first successful launch of its Delta III rocket.
◆2001 NATO soldiers streamed into Macedonia as part of a mission to help end 6 months of ethnic hostilities by collecting and destroying rebel weapons.
◆2002 U.S. warplanes bombed an air defense site in northern Iraq after being targeted by an Iraqi missile guidance radar system.