TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
26 December
◆1481 Battle of Westbrook: Holland defeats Utrecht.
◆1776 The British suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Trenton during the Revolutionary War.★
◆1786 Daniel Shay led a rebellion in Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt. Shay was a Revolutionary War veteran who led a short-lived insurrection in western Massachusetts to protest a tax increase that had to be paid in cash, a hardship for veteran farmers who relied on barter and didn‘t own enough land to vote. The taxes were to pay off the debts from the Revolutionary War, and those who couldn‘t pay were evicted or sent to prison.
◆1792 Battle of Geisberg: the French defeat the Austrians.
◆1798 Neapolitans begin three day skirmish with the French Polish Legion, near Itri.
◆1799 The late George Washington was eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
◆1806 Battles of Pultusk & Golymin: the Russian fight Napoleon to a draw.
◆1820 Hoping to recover from bankruptcy with a bold scheme of colonization, Moses Austin meets with Spanish authorities in San Antonio to ask permission for 300 Anglo-American families to settle in Texas.★
◆1837 George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy, was born: Spanish-American War: hero of Manila: “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.”
◆1860 Following the secession of South Carolina (20 December) Major Robert Anderson, USA, removed his loyal garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, on an island in Charleston Harbor; this created special need for sea-borne reinforcements of troops and supplies.
◆1862 38 Santee Sioux were hanged in Mankato, Minn., for their part in the Sioux Uprising.
◆1865 James H. Mason of Franklin, Mass., received a patent for a coffee percolator.
◆1866 Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke, head of the Department of the Platte received word of the Dec 21 Fetterman Fight in Powder River County in the Dakota territory.
◆1917 As a wartime measure, President Wilson placed railroads under government control, with Secretary of War William McAdoo as director general.
◆1925 Six U.S. destroyers were ordered from Manila to China to protect interests in the civil war that was being waged there.
◆1941 Less than three weeks after the American entrance into World War II, Winston Churchill becomes the first British prime minister to address Congress. Churchill, a gifted orator, urged Congress to back President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal that America become the "great arsenal of democracy" and warned that the Axis powers would "stop at nothing" in pursuit of their war aims.
◆1941 General Douglas MacArthur declared Manila an open city in the face of the onrushing Japanese Army.
◆1943 Count Claus von Stauffenberg tried in vain to plant a bomb in Hitler's headquarters.
◆1943 The US 5th Army clears Monte Sammucro and the surrounding hills of German forces.
◆1944 General George S. Patton employs an audacious strategy to relieve the besieged Allied defenders of Bastogne, Belgium, during the brutal Battle of the Bulge.★
◆1944 In Italy two platoons of the segregated 92nd Infantry Division fought the German 14th Army at Sommocolonia. Of 70 “Buffalo Soldiers” and 25 Italian Partisans only 18 survived. In 1977 Lt. John Fox and 6 other black Americans were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. By the end of the war 2,916 Buffalo soldiers fell breaking the Gothic Line.
◆1944 Japanese naval force arriving from Indochina bombards the American beachhead on Mindoro. The force consists of 2 cruisers and 6 destroyers. An American PT Boat sinks one of the destroyers. This is the last sortie by a Japanese naval force in the Philippines.
◆1953 The U.S. announced the withdrawal of two divisions from Korea.
◆1967 Laotian Premier Souvanna Phouma reports that North Vietnamese troops have started a general offensive against government forces in southern Laos.
◆1971 In the sharpest escalation of the war since Operation Rolling Thunder ended in November 1968, U.S. fighter-bombers begin striking at North Vietnamese airfields, missile sites, antiaircraft emplacements, and supply facilities.★
◆1972 The 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, died in Kansas City, Mo.
◆1979 The Soviet Union flew 5,000 troops into the Afghanistan conflict.
◆1991 Jack Ruby's gun sold for $220,000 in auction.
◆2002 The Int'l. Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said North Korea had moved 1,000 fresh fuel rods to a nuclear reactor that produces plutonium used in nuclear warheads.
◆2004 The Russian unmanned cargo ship, Progress M-51,docked at the international space station, ending a shortage that forced astronauts to ration supplies.