TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
11 February
◆244 Battle of Misiche (near Fallujah): the Parthians defeat the Romans in what may not have been more than a skirmish.
◆1115 Battle of Welfesholz: Lothair II of Lotharingia defeats uncrowned Holy Roman Emperor Henry V.
◆1543 Battle of Wayna Daga: Ethiopians & Portuguese defeat the Sultan of Adel.
◆1573 Francis Drake sees the Pacific from a treetop in Panama.
◆1659 Battle of Copenhagen: The Danes beat off a Swedish attempt to storm the city, inflicting heavy losses.
◆1766 The Stamp Act was declared unconstitutional in Virginia.
◆1808 Anthracite coal was 1st burned as fuel, experimentally, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
◆1809 Robert Fulton patented the steamboat.
◆1811 Pres. Madison prohibited trade with Britain for 3rd time in 4 years.
◆1814 Battle of Montmirail: The French defeat the Russo-Prussians.
◆1815 News of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, finally reached the United States.
◆1854 Commodore Matthew Perry pulled into Edo Bay, Japan, 12 months early with 9 warships to begin talks for a treaty.
◆1887 President Grover Cleveland vetoes the Dependent Pension Bill.★
◆1890 President Benjamin Harrison orders 11 million acres of Sioux Reservation territory open for settlement.★
◆1904 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed strict neutrality for the U.S. in the Russo-Japanese War.
◆1904 Marines landed at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
◆1922 US "intervention army" left Honduras.
◆1922 BGen John H. Russell was appointed U.S. High Commissioner and personal representative of the President to the government of Haiti. This nine-year assignment placed this future Commandant in supreme command of both the occupying American force and the Haitian Gendarmerie.
◆1941 Erwin Rommel lands in Tripoli to assume command of the Afrika Korps.
◆1942 German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, escape from the French port of Brest and make a mad dash up the English Channel to safety in German waters.★
◆1943 General Eisenhower was selected to command the allied armies in Europe.
◆1944 At the Anzio beachhead, German forces capture "The Factory" from the British 1st Division. Meanwhile forces of the US 5th Army continue to engage German defenders around Cassino. The US 34th Division makes an unsuccessful attempt to approach the Cassino monastery from the north.
◆1945 Elements of the US 8th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) capture the important road junction at Prum.
◆1945 American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).
◆1951 U.N. forces pushed north across the 38th parallel once again. Forty-five years after shipping out to fight in Korea, Col. Harry Summers, Jr., got new insight into what the war had been all about.
◆1951 General MacArthur informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "It is evident that the enemy has lost his chance for achieving a decisive military decision in Korea." This statement came on the eve of the Chinese fourth phase offensive.
◆1951 The Chinese fourth-phase offensive was launched against X Corps in central Korea along the Hoengsong-Wonju axis. The U.S. 2nd and 7th Infantry Divisions and the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team suffered 2,018 casualties during the Battle of Hoengsong. The largest single loss of U.S. soldiers happened when 530 men of the 15th and 503rd Field Artillery Battalions were completely overrun.★
◆1952 Captain Margaret G. Blake, the first Army nurse in Korea to earn the Bronze Star Medal, and one of the very few in any service to return voluntarily to Korea, finished her second tour of duty.
◆1964 Cambodian Prince Sihanouk blamed the U.S. for a South Vietnamese air raid on a village in his country.
◆1965 Pres. Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes against targets in North Vietnam, in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on the American military in South Vietnam. The American "Rolling Thunder" bombing campaign intensified.
◆2002 In Afghanistan opium vendors shut down in Kandahar under US military orders.