TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
26 August
◆55 BCE Julius Caesar begins his first invasion of Britain.
◆1221 Battle of Mansura: Ayyubids defeat the Crusaders.
◆1278 Battle of Durnkurut: The Habsburgs defeat the Bohemians.
◆1278 Battle of the Marchfeld: Rudolf of Habsburg defeats Ottokar II
◆1346 Battle of Crecy: English longbows defeat the French.★
◆1775 Rhode Island Resolve: Rhode Island delegates to Continental Congress press for creation of Continental Navy to protect the colonies.
◆1839 The slave ship Amistad was captured off Long Island. The U.S.S. Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad York, and escorted it to New London, Connecticut.
◆1847 Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic. Freed American slaves founded Liberia.They modeled their constitution after that of the US, copied the US flag, and named their capital Monrovia, after James Monroe, who financed early settlers. Over the decades 16,400 former slaves made the voyage. They assumed that the 16 native tribes were there to be exploited.
◆1861 Union amphibious force lands near Hatteras, NC.
◆1862 The stage is set for the Second Battle of Bull Run on this day when Confederate cavalry under General Fitzhugh Lee enter Manassas Junction and capture the rail center. Union General John Pope's Army of Virginia was soon on its way, and the two armies would clash on August 29.
◆1863 Battle of Rocky Gap, WV, (White Sulphur Springs).
◆1865 Civil War ends with Naval strength over 58,500 men and 600 ships.
◆1901 Maxwell Taylor, U.S. general and diplomat, born. As commanding general of the 8th Army in 1953, he directed U.N. forces during the latter stages of the Korean War.
◆1942 Japanese troops landed on New Guinea, Milne Bay.
◆1943 The US, Canada and Britain give limited recognition to the Free French Committee of National Liberation.
◆1943 2nd Airdrome Bn prepared to land at Ellice Islands.
◆1944 Most of the Allied armies have advance elements across the Seine River. Both US 12th Army Group and British 21st Army Group are advancing northwest.
◆1945 Japanese diplomats boarded the Missouri to receive instructions on Japan's surrender at the end of WW II.
◆1950 The 5th Regimental Combat Team (the 5th Infantry Regiment and the 555th Artillery Battalion) was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division, replacing the 34th Infantry Regiment and the 63rd Field Artillery Battalion, which were reduced to paper strength and transferred to Japan to be reconstituted. The 34th Infantry Regiment had been greatly battered in combat at Pyongtaek, Chonan and the Kum River line.
◆1950 The 65th Infantry Regiment, newly assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division to replace the 30th Infantry Regiment, sailed from Puerto Rico through the Panama Canal for Korea.
◆1957 The Soviet Union announces that it has successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of being fired "into any part of the world."★
◆1964 The Joint Chiefs of Staff send a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. It concurred with an August 19 cable from Ambassador Maxwell Taylor in Saigon who called for "a carefully orchestrated bombing attack on North Vietnam" to prevent "a complete collapse of the U.S. position in Southeast Asia."
◆1969 New Hampshire’s 3rd Battalion, 197th Artillery suffers its highest loss of life when a truck carrying seven soldiers is blown up by a landmine less than two weeks before the unit was scheduled to return home. Five men, all Guardsmen from Manchester’s Battery A, are immediately killed. The shock wave to hit the city was devastating. These deaths brought to six the total number of Guard members from the battalion killed in action. A bronze plaque now stands in front of the Manchester Armory to their memory.
◆1981 Voyager 2 took photo's of Saturn's moon Titan.
◆1987 In an attempt to eliminate a superpower stumbling block, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said his country would destroy its 72 Pershing 1A rockets if Washington and Moscow scrapped all their intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
◆1993 Manhunt begins. 3rd Battalion. 75th Ranger Regiment and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment (DELTA) deploy to Somalia to capture warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid.
◆1998 A $225 million rocket and communication satellite exploded after take-off at Cape Canaveral.
◆1999 US officials reported that its permanent military presence in Haiti would be replaced by temporary missions.
◆2001 IBM computer scientists reported that they had constructed a working logic circuit within a single molecule of carbon fiber known as a carbon nanotube.