TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
30 December
◆1460 Battle of Wakefield: The Duke of Somerset leads the Lancastrians in a decisive defeat of Richard of York.
◆1835 Cherokees were forced to move across the Mississippi River after gold was discovered in Georgia. A minority faction of Cherokee agreed to the emigration of the whole tribe from their lands by signing the Treaty of New Echota. The Treaty of New Echota resulted in the cession of all Cherokee land to the U.S. and provided for the transportation of the Cherokee Indians to land beyond the Mississippi. The removal of the Cherokee was completed by 1838.
◆1853 James Gadsden, the U.S. minister to Mexico, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, sign the Gadsden Purchase in Mexico City.
◆1862 The U.S.S. Monitor sinks in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
◆1922 In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan, and Armenian republics).★
◆1941 Admiral Ernest J. King assumes duty as Commander in Chief, United States Fleet.
◆1941 Japanese troops occupy Kuantan, on the east coast of Malaya.
◆1941 Allied forces fall back to their final line of prepared defense above the Bataan Peninsula.
◆1943 On New Britain, the US marine division captures the Japanese airfield at Cape Gloucester.
◆1944 The US 8th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) launches attacks northward, against the German 5th Panzer Army, from a line between Bastogne and St. Hubert with Houffalize as the objective.Meanwhile, elements of German 5th Panzer Army launch another unsuccessful attempt at cutting the American corridor into Bastogne and capture the town.
◆1944 General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, reports that the first two atomic bombs should be ready by August 1, 1945.
◆1950 Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became independent states in a French Union.
◆1950 The body of Eighth Army commander Lieutenant General Walton Walker, killed in a jeep accident on Dec. 23, was flown to the United States for burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.
◆1959 Commissioning of first fleet ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington (SSB(N)-598), at Groton, CT.
◆1970 The South Vietnamese Navy receives 125 U.S. vessels in a ceremony marking the end of the U.S. Navy's four-year role in inland waterway combat. This brings the total number of vessels turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy to 650. About 17,000 Americans remained with the South Vietnamese Navy in shore positions and as advisers aboard South Vietnamese vessels. The transfer of inland waterway combat responsibility was part of President Nixon's Vietnamization program, in which the war effort was transferred to the South Vietnam so U.S. troops could be withdrawn.
◆1981 The 14 remaining LORAN-A stations closed down at midnight, ending Loran-A coverage, which began during World War II.
◆2002 British and US warplanes flying multiple missions attacked Iraq air defense facilities after an Iraqi fighter jet penetrated the southern no-fly zone.