TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
25 August
◆716 Arab-Barbarian hordes lay siege to Constantinople (retire, 15 Aug 717).
◆1261 Michael VIII Palaeologus captures Constantinople, restoring the Byzantine Empire.
◆1499 Fourth Naval Battle of Sapienza: Turks defeat the Venetians, to begin the conquest of the Morea.
◆1540 Explorer Hernando de Alarcon traveled up the Colorado River.
◆1580 Battle of Alcantara: Spain defeats and annexes Portugal.
◆1718 Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans.
◆1758 Battle of Zorndorf: Frederick the Great defeats the Russians.
◆1765 In protest over the stamp tax, American colonists sacked and burned the home of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson.
◆1814 British forces destroyed the Library of Congress, containing some 3,000 books.
◆1829 Pres. Jackson made an offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refused.
◆1830 Belgium revolts against the Netherlands.
◆1843 Steam frigate Missouri arrives at Gibralter completing first Trans-Atlantic crossing by U.S. steam powered ship.
◆1861 John LaMountain began balloon reconnaissance ascensions at Fort Monroe, Virginia.
◆1862 Union and Confederate troops skirmished at Waterloo Bridge, Virginia, during the Second Bull Run Campaign.
◆1864 Confederate troops secure a vital supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, when they halt destruction of the Weldon and Petersburg Railroad by Union troops. The railroad, which ran from Weldon, North Carolina, was a major supply line for General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
◆1901 Clara Maass (25), army nurse, sacrificed her life to prove that the mosquito carries yellow fever.
◆1921 The United States, which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally signed a peace treaty with Germany.
◆1942 Five Navy nurses who became POWs on Guam repatriated .
◆1943 U.S. forces completed the occupation of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands during World War II. Losing Hill 700 to the Japanese meant defeat for the American forces on Bougainville. To the men of the 37th Infantry Division, that was unthinkable.
◆1944 After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris' landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation.★
◆1944 In Brittany, the US 8th Corps launches an attack on Brest were the German garrison continues to resist. The HMS Warspite shells the town.
◆1944 American forces of US 7th Army capture Avignon in the advance westward. Most of the German 19th Army is withdrawing northward up the Rhone valley. The garrisons in Marseilles and Toulon continue to resist.
◆1945 Captain John Birch of the US Army is killed in a scuffle with Chinese Communist soldiers.★
◆1945 General Yamashita informs the commander of the US 32nd Division that he has ordered all Japanese troops in the Philippines to lay down their arms.
◆1945 Vice-Admiral Willis A. "Ching" Lee Jr. Dies of a heart attack at age 56.
◆1947 Marion Carl, US Navy test pilot, set a world speed record of 651 mph in a D-558-I at Muroc Field (later Edwards AFB), Ca. He was shot to death in Oregon by a house robber in 1998 at age 82.
◆1950 President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike. The railroads were returned to their owners 2 years later.
◆1950 Major General William F. Dean, 24th Infantry Division commander, was taken prisoner by the North Koreans after evading capture for 46 days after the fall of Taejon.
◆1950 The Army organized the Japan Logistical Command to provide the supplies and equipment needed to support the Korean War, relieving Eighth Army of theater logistical support missions.
◆1951 23 Navy Banshee and Panther fighters from USS Essex (CV-9) escort Air Force heavy bombers attacking Najin, Korea since target, the rail marshaling yards at Rashin located on the extreme northeast Korean border, was beyond range of land-based fighters.
◆1967 Defense Secretary McNamara concedes that the U.S. bombing campaign has had little effect on the North's "war-making capability." At the same time, McNamara refuses a request from military commanders to bomb all MIG bases in North Vietnam. In Hanoi, North Vietnam's Administrative Committee orders all workers in light industry and all craftsmen and their families to leave the city; only persons vital to the city's defense and production were to remain.
◆1971 U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, among the first U.S. ground units sent to Vietnam, ceases combat operations and prepares to redeploy to the United States as part of Nixon's troop withdrawal plan. As the redeployment commenced, the communists launched a new offensive to disrupt the upcoming General Assembly elections in South Vietnam. The height of the new offensive occurred from August 28 to August 30, when the Communists executed 96 attacks in the northern part of South Vietnam. U.S. bases also came under attack at Lai Khe, Cam Ranh Bay, and other areas. Nixon's troop reduction plans were supposedly tied to the level of enemy activity on the battlefield, but once they began, very little attention was paid to what the enemy was doing and the withdrawals continued unabated.
◆1981 The U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet.
◆1985 STS 51-I was scrubbed at T –9 min because of an onboard computer problem.
◆1988 NASA launched space vehicle S-214.
◆1989 NASA scientists received stunning photographs of Neptune and its moons from Voyager 2.
◆1990 The United Nations gave the world’s navies the right to use force to stop vessels trading with Iraq.
◆1993 The United States applied limited sanctions against China and Pakistan after concluding the Chinese had sold missile technology to the Pakistanis. After China sold some M-11 missile components to Pakistan, the US imposed limited sanctions.
◆1997 NASA sent a Delta rocket aloft with the Ace solar observatory, Advanced Composition Explorer. The 5-year $110 million project will go into orbit at a point 1 million miles from Earth and 92 million miles from the Sun where the gravity of Earth and Sun balance.
◆1998 Iraq asks the United Nations to prevent Richard Butler from making public statements about searches for weapons in Iraq.
◆2000 German intelligence confirmed that it had discovered a secret Iraqi missile factory near Baghdad. Some 250 technicians were reported working on ARABIL-100 short-range missiles.
◆2002 A U.S.-British air raid in southern Iraq destroyed a major military surveillance site that monitors American troops in the Persian Gulf
◆2002 Up to 10 guerrillas from a Philippine Marxist rebel group blacklisted by the United States were killed when the military clashed with a 40-man New People's Army (NPA) band in Rodriguez town, a Manila suburb.
◆2003 NASA launched the largest-diameter infrared telescope ever in space. NASA showed the 1st images from the $670 million Spitzer Space Telescope on Dec 18.