TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
18 December
◆546 King Totila of the Ostrogoths recaptures Rome from the Byzantines.
◆1777 The first America Thanksgiving Day commemorated Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. A national Thanksgiving was declared by Congress after the American victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga in December 1777. For many years Thanksgiving celebrations were haphazard with Presidents Washington, Adams and Madison declaring occasional national festivities.
◆1799 George Washington's body was interred at Mount Vernon.
◆1813 British took Ft. Niagara in War of 1812.
◆1859 South Carolina declared itself an "independent commonwealth."
◆1862 Confederate cavalry leader General Nathan Bedford Forrest routs a Union force under the command of Colonel Robert Ingersoll on a raid into western Tennessee, an area held by the Union.★
◆1862 Grant announced the organization of his army in the West. Sherman, Hurlbut, McPherson, and McClernand would be Corps Commanders.
◆1902 Admiral of the Navy George Dewey receives orders to send his battleship to Trinidad and then to Venezuela to make sure that Great Britain's and Germany's dispute with Venezuela was settled by peaceful arbitration not force.
◆1903 Marines escorted American diplomats to Addis Ababa, Abyssinia.
◆1916 Battle of Verdun ends, as the German abandon their 302 day effort to destroy the French Army.
◆1939 The US Navy promises to send 40 planes to Finland.
◆1940 Hitler dictated Directive No. 21 to crush Russia in a quick campaign. Its message is simple: "The German Armed Forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign." The projected operation is given the code name Barbarossa. Hitler has modified the draft plans prepared by the army in one important respect. Although three lines of attack are still suggested, Hitler's scheme reduces the importance which has been laid on the advance to Moscow. He suggests that after the first battles the center group should swing north to help clear the Baltic States and Leningrad before moving on the capital. The preparations are to be ready by May 15, 1940.
◆1941 Defended by 610 fighting men, the American-held island of Guam fell to more than 5,000 Japanese invaders in a three-hour battle.
◆1941 British and Dutch troops occupy Portuguese Timor.
◆1941 Censorship is imposed with the passage of the 1st American War Powers Act.
◆1943 The US 5th Army captures Monte Lungo, threatening the German position at San Pietro. German forces launch counterattacks. San Pietro falls to the US 36th Division (part of 2nd Corps, 5th Army). The 6th Corps advances as the German forces withdraw.
◆1944 The Supreme Court upheld the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans, but also said undeniably loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry could not be detained.
◆1944 US Task Force 38 is caught in a typhoon while retiring to refuel and replenish. Three destroyers, "Hull," "Spence" & "Monaghan," are sunk and 3 fleet carriers, 4 escort carriers and 11 destroyers sustain damage.
◆1944 US B-29 Superfortress bombers raid Nagoya (nominally the Mitsubishi aircraft assembly works).
◆1944 Some 200 US 14th Air Force planes, and 84 B-29 bombers, attack the Japanese supply base at Hankow causing fires that burn for three days.
◆1950 US Navy Patrol Squadron 892, the first all-Reserve squadron to operate in Korea's war zone, began operations from Iwakuni, Japan.
◆1951 The U.N. command and the communists exchanged prisoner of war lists at Panmunjom. The UNC list contained 132,472 names. The communists listed 11,359.
◆1956 Japan was admitted to the United Nations.
◆1957 The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went online. It was taken out of service in 1982.
◆1965 River Patrol Force established in Vietnam.
◆1965 U.S. Marines attacked VC units in the Que Son Valley during Operation Harvest Moon.
◆1965 The Borman and Lovell splash down in the Atlantic ended a 2 week Gemini VII mission.
◆1967 Operation Preakness II begins in Mekong Delta.
◆1970 An atomic leak in Nevada forced hundreds to flee the test site.
◆1971 North Vietnamese troops captured the Plain of Jars in Laos.
◆1972 The Nixon administration announces that the bombing and mining of North Vietnam will resume and continue until a "settlement" is reached. 2002 DoD issues preliminary orders for the deployment of 50,000 troops to threaten Iraq.