TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
24 August
◆410 Alaric's Visigoths begin a three-day sack of Rome.
◆1179 Saladin besieges Castle Chastelet (falls 29th).
◆1217 Naval Battle of Dover: The English defeat the French, partially by pouring quicklime into the sea to create a smoke screen.
◆1346 Battle of Blanquetaque: The English defeat the French.
◆1412 Battle of Matta, Friulia: Venetians defeat the Hungarians.
◆1415 Portuguese capture Ceuta, Morocco, from the Moors.
◆1516 Battle of Marg Dabir: The Turks defeat the Mamlukes, and conquer Egypt.
◆1569 Battle of Orthez: The French Huguenots defeat the French Catholics.
◆1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: French Catholics slaughter Protestants.
◆1632 Battle of Altendorf: Gustavus Adolphus loses to the Imperialists.
◆1682 Duke James of York gave Delaware to William Penn.
◆1789 1st Battle of Ruotsinaslami/Svenksund: Russian fleet defeats Swedes.
◆1814 On the 19th of August British Major - General Robert Ross had landed his troops and started marching up the Patuxent River, with Rear - Admiral George Cockburn and a naval division of light vessels in support.
◆1814 British forces under General Robert Ross overwhelm American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and march unopposed into Washington, D.C.★
◆1862 The C.S.S. Alabama was commissioned at sea off Portugal's Azore Islands, beginning a career that would see over 60 Union merchant vessels sunk or destroyed by the Confederate raider. The ship was built in secret in the in Liverpool shipyards, and a diplomatic crisis between the US government and Britain ensued when the Union uncovered the ship’s birth place.
◆1894 Congress passed the first graduated income tax law, which was declared unconstitutional the next year. It imposed a 2% tax on incomes over $4000.
◆1904 Battle of Liao-Yang; Japanese defeat Russians.
◆1909 Workers started pouring concrete for Panama Canal.
◆1912 US passed an anti-gag law giving federal employees the right to petition government.
◆1912 Launching of USS Jupiter, first electrically propelled Navy ship. This collier will later be converted in to the first US Aircraft Carrier, the USS Langly.
◆1942 The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. US Task Force 61, commanded by Admiral Fletcher is comprised of the American aircraft carriers Saratoga, Enterprise and Wasp. The Japanese split their forces into two, Admiral Nagumo commanding the Zuikaku and Shokaku and Admiral Hara, the Ryujo. Both forces are attempting to cover the ferrying of supplies to the respective forces on Guadalcanal. American scout planes discover the Ryujo and Admiral Fletcher dispatches a strike force. When the other two Japanese carriers are sighted, he attempts to redirect the attack, but most of his planes do not receive the new orders and proceed to sink the Ryujo. Admiral Nagumo's planes find the USS Enterprise inflicting damage, however planes can still land on the carrier. Both carrier groups disengage at the end of the day without a clear result.
◆1944 The French 4th Armored Division (Leclerc), part of the US 5th Corps, reaches the outskirts of Paris as renewed fighting takes place within the city, between German forces and French resistance members.
◆1944 Elements of the US 7th Army advancing northeast along the coast capture Cannes. In the advance northward, Grenoble is occupied while forces moving west take Arles on the Rhone River, south of Avignon.
◆1945 The last Cadillac-built M-24 tank was produced on this day, ending the company's World War II effort. Civilian auto production virtually ceased after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the U.S. automotive industry turned to war production. Between 1940 and 1945, automotive firms made almost $29 billion worth of military materials, including jeeps, trucks, machine guns, carbines, tanks, helmets, and aerial bombs.
◆1949 The North Atlantic Treaty went into effect.
◆1950 The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division relieved the 24th Infantry Division on line along the Pusan Perimeter after weeks of continuous combat.
◆1954 Congress passes the Communist Control Act in response to the growing anticommunist hysteria in the United States.
◆1960 USS Bexar (APA-237) deploys to Pangahan Province in response to emergency request for aid from the Province's governor.
◆1968 France became the world's fifth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.
◆1969 Company A of the Third Battalion, 196th Light Infantry Brigade refuses the order of its commander, Lieutenant Eugene Schurtz, Jr., to continue an attack that had been launched to reach a downed helicopter shot down in the Que Son valley, 30 miles south of Da Nang. The unit had been in fierce combat for five days against entrenched North Vietnamese forces and had taken heavy casualties. Schurtz called his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Bacon, and informed him that his men had refused to follow his order to move out because they had "simply had enough" and that they were "broken." The unit eventually moved out when Bacon sent his executive officer and a sergeant to give Schurtz's troops "a pep talk," but when they reached the downed helicopter on August 25, they found all eight men aboard dead. Schurtz was relieved of his command and transferred to another assignment in the division. Neither he nor his men were disciplined. This case of "combat refusal," as the Army described it, was reported widely in U.S. newspapers.
◆1970 U.S. B-52s carry out heavy bombing raids along the DMZ.
◆1989 Voyager II passed within three thousand miles of Neptune sending back striking photographs.
◆1990 Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.
◆1990 Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sent a message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warning the Persian Gulf situation was "extremely dangerous."
◆1993 NASA’s Mars Observer, which was supposed to map the surface of Mars, was declared lost.
◆1995 Harry Wu, Chinese human rights activist and writer, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by Chinese law and then expelled from China. China expelled Harry Wu, hours after convicting him of spying.
◆1996 Four women began two days of academic orientation at The Citadel; they were the first female cadets admitted to the South Carolina military school since Shannon Faulkner.
◆2003 A 150-strong US Marine force ended an 11-day sortie and headed back to warships off the coast of Monrovia, Liberia.