TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
14 February
◆1540 Emperor Charles V enters Ghent without resistance, executes rebels.
◆1639 Battle of Turriff: drawn fight between the Marquis of Huntly and the Covenanters.
◆1645 Robert Ingle, commissioned by the English Parliament and captain of the tobacco ship Reformation, sailed to St. Mary’s (Maryland) and seized a Dutch trading ship. This marked the beginning of what came to known as “The Plundering Time.”
◆1688 The Carolina colonial assembly denies the power of the Lords Proprietor, agents of the King, to invalidate the Fundamental Constitutions of 1669.
◆1778 The American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Star and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France. The First Foreign Salute to the "Stars & Stripes": A French squadron under Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte salutes John Paul Jones' USS 'Ranger.
◆1779 American Loyalists are defeated by Patriots at Kettle Creek, Ga. Colonel James(?) Boyd and 700 loyalists set up camp along Kettle Creek on February 14, 1779, they knew to be prepared for an attack.★
◆1797 Battle of Cape St. Vincent: A British squadron under Adm. John Jervis defeats the Spanish.
◆1806 The French capture Naples.
◆1813 Essex becomes first U.S. warship to round Cape Horn and enter the Pacific Ocean.
◆1814 USS Constitution captures British Lovely Ann and Pictou.
◆1824 Winfield Scott Hancock (d.1886), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
◆1840 Officers from USS Vincennes make first landing in Antarctica on floating ice.
◆1848 James Polk became the first U.S. President to be photographed in office by Matthew Brady.
◆1859 Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.
◆1862 Galena, the 1st US iron-clad warship for service at sea, was launched in Conn.
◆1862 Gunboats U.S.S. St. Louis, Carondelet, Louisville, Pittsburg, Tyler, and Conestoga under Flag Officer Foote joined with General Grant in attacking Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River.
◆1891 William Tecumseh Sherman (b.1820), Union Civil War general, died. His famous "March to the Sea" changed the face of modern warfare.
◆1912 Arizona became the 48th state of the Union.
◆1912 The 1st US submarines with diesel engines were commissioned at Groton, Ct.
◆1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre★
◆1939 The Reich launched the battleship Bismarck.
◆1943 German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. ★
◆1944 American and New Zealand forces land on the Green Islands.
◆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).
◆1949 The United States charged the USSR with interning up to 14 million in labor camps.
◆1951 Operation ROUNDUP officially concluded and the 30-day battle of Wonju began as the 2nd Infantry Division repelled repeated attacks from seven Chinese divisions.
◆1953 U.S. Air Force Colonel Royal N. "The King" Baker, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, downed his tenth enemy aircraft and became the third double ace of the war. (An ace has five enemy kills.) His F-86 Sabre was called "Angel Face & the Babes."
◆1962 President John F. Kennedy authorizes U.S. military advisors in Vietnam to return fire if fired upon. ★
◆1971 Richard Nixon installed a secret taping system in White House.
◆1973 U.S. and Hanoi set up a group to channel reconstruction aid directly to Hanoi. In 1972 the U.S. had begun to "de-Americanize" the Vietnam war. It was a policy of gradual withdrawal.
◆1978 The 1st "micro on a chip" was patented by Texas Instruments.
◆1979 Armed guerrillas attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
◆1989 At a meeting of the presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua agrees to free a number of political prisoners and hold free elections within a year; in return, Honduras promises to close bases being used by anti-Sandinista rebels.
◆1991 The Iraqi weapons depot at Ukhaydir was bombed. Iraqi authorities revealed to US authorities in 1996 that the site stored hundreds of rockets filled with mustard gas and nerve gas.
◆1999 Iraq threatened Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with missile attacks for permitting US warplanes to fly from their countries.
◆2000 The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft began its orbit around the asteroid Eros.