TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
23 December
◆1776 Continental Congress negotiated a war loan of $181,500 from France.
◆1776 Thomas Paine wrote "These are the times that try men's souls."
◆1779 Benedict Arnold was court-martialed for improper conduct. He followed the time-honored military tradition of using government carts to transport his personal items. He was routinely sentenced to be censured by Gen. Washington- a formality which the thin-skinned Arnold took personally, ultimately leading him to switch allegiance to the British cause.
◆1783 George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Army and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Va.
◆1788 Maryland voted to cede a 100-square-mile area for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia.
◆1823 The poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement C. Moore, often called “Twas the night before Christmas,” was published in the Troy, N.Y., Sentinel. Recent scholarship reveals the original to have been written by Major Henry Livingston (1748-1828).
◆1826 Captain Thomas ap Catesby Jones of USS Peacock and King Kamehameha negotiate first treaty between Hawaii and a foreign power.
◆1861 Lord Lyons, The British minister to America presented a formal complaint to secretary of state, William Seward, regarding the Trent affair.
◆1864 President Lincoln signed a bill passed the preceding day by Congress which created the rank of vice admiral.
◆1910 LT Theodore G. Ellyson becomes first naval officer sent to flight training.
◆1919 The first hospital ship built to move wounded naval personnel was launched.
◆1933 Marinus van der Lubbe was sentenced to death for Reichstag "Fire."
◆1939 A Pan-American protest is issued to the governments of Britain, France and Germany about the fighting inside the "security zone" during the battle of the River Plate. The detention and destruction of German merchant ships by British warships is also noted.
◆1941 Japanese forces launched a predawn landing, their second attempt, on Wake Island and Wilkes Island, while their carriers launched air strikes against Wilkes, Wake, and Peale islands in support of the landing force. After nearly 12 hours of desperate fighting, the three islands were surrendered.
◆1941 The first Japanese air attacks on Rangoon, Burma. The city's air defense consist of only two fighter squadrons, one from the RAF, the other an American Volunteer Group
◆1941 The 440-foot tanker Montebello was sunk off the California coast near Cambria by a Japanese submarine. The crew of 38 survived and in 1996 it was found that the 4.1 million gallon cargo of crude oil appeared intact.
◆1944 Although the American defenders of Bastogne continue to hold out against German attacks, elements of the German 5th Panzer Army have by-passed the town and are advancing to the west and northwest. These attacks have reached beyond Rochefort and Laroche. However, improved weather conditions allows Allied ground attack aircraft to harass the German columns. A sudden improvement in the weather permits Allied fighter-bombers to conduct about 900 sorties against German forces in "the Bulge".
◆1944 Gen. Dwight Eisenhower endorses the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorizes his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.
◆1947 Truman granted a pardon to 1,523 who had evaded the World War II draft.
◆1947 John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, unveiled what was soon to be called the transistor, short for the electrical property known as trans-resistance, which paved the way to a new era of miniaturized electronics.
◆1950 Lieutenant General Walton Walker, Eighth Army commander, was killed in a jeep accident. Major General Frank W. Milburn assumed temporary command of Eighth Army.
◆1951 The communists rejected any prisoner exchange until an armistice was signed. The U.N. Command alleged that 65,363 U.N. soldiers had been captured during the first nine months of the war and demanded an explanation of why the communist list did not include over 50,000 names.
◆1961 Fidel Castro announced Cuba he would release 1,113 prisoners from failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in exchange for $62M worth of food and medical supplies.
◆1962 Cuba started returning US prisoners from Bay of Pigs invasion.
◆1967 U.S. Navy SEALs were ambushed during an operation southeast of Saigon.
◆1968 The crew and captain of the U.S. intelligence gathering ship Pueblo are released after 11 months imprisonment by the government of North Korea.
◆1970 The NY World Trade Center reached its highest point. The World Trade Center was completed at a cost of $350 million. The twin 110-story towers housed 55,000 employees working for 350 firms.
◆1972 The East German Embassy and the Hungarian commercial mission in Hanoi are hit in the eighth day of Operation Linebacker II.
◆2003 The South Korean Cabinet approved a plan to send 3,000 troops to the northern oil town of Kirkuk as early as April.
◆2004 US Marines battled insurgents in Fallujah with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions.