TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
18 February
◆1248 Battle of Parma: HRE Frederick II's army is routed by the Lombards, lifting his siege of the city.
◆1268 Battle of Rakvere: Lithuanian Prince Dovmont of Pskov defeats the Livonian Brothers of the Sword.
◆1574 Dutch rebels capture Zeeland from the Spanish.
◆1622 English & Persians lay siege to Portuguese-held Hormuz (falls 3 May).
◆1814 The British schooner Phoenix fell to Marines of the USS Constitution.
◆1814 Battle of Montereau: Napoleon defeats the Austrians & Wurtemburgers.
◆1823 Mexican Emperor Augustin de Iturbide reconfirms the land grant made by the governor of New Spain to the late Moses Austin, made transferable to his son, Stephen F. Austin. This tract along the Rio Grande will become home to over 300 families brought in by Austin in 1825.
◆1827 Confederate General Lewis Armistead is born in New Bern, North Carolina. Armistead is best known for leading Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, where he was mortally wounded.★
◆1846 Navy Department General Order, the word "Port" is hereafter to be substituted for "Larboard."★
◆1850 The city of SF was incorporated.
◆1861 Jefferson F. Davis was inaugurated as the Confederacy’s provisional president at a ceremony held in Montgomery, Ala., where the Confederate constitutional convention was held. Davis was sworn in on Feb 22 in Virginia.
◆1861 Southern Arapaho Indian Agent, Albert Boone, held a council attended by some of the Southern bands of the Arapaho tribe and a few Cheyenne. He reported he had gotten consent for the cession of their land in exchange for a small reservation on Colorado's Sand creek. At Sand Creek, the Cheyenne were to have the eastern half and the Arapaho the western. The Northern Arapaho did not consent to the cession.★
◆1864 President Lincoln ended the blockade of Brownsville, Texas, and opened the port for trade.
◆1865 Federals attacked Fort Anderson, NC from the land and river. After three days of fighting, the Confederates evacuated the fort at night. Union gunboats started firing at first light, unaware that Federal soldiers were breaching the walls of the fort. The infantry frantically waved sheets and blankets to stop the deadly fire from their own forces.★
◆1865 Battle of Ft. Moultrie, SC.
◆1927 The U.S. and Canada established diplomatic relations independently of Great Britain.
◆1932 Manchurian independence was formally declared. In 1928 the Japanese army unilaterally instigated armed clashes in China's Manchuria region to justify full-scale intervention. In 1931 the Japanese army invaded Manchuria without its own government's consent.
◆1940 The American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, applies the American "moral embargo" to the USSR.
◆1941 CINCUS Husband Kimmel writes, "I feel that an attack . . . on Pearl Harbor is a possibility."
◆1942 The Free French submarine Surcouf (then the largest submarine in the world) is sunk in a collision with a US merchant ship.
◆1943 The new American 6th Army, commanded by General Krueger, become operational in the southwest Pacific.
◆1943 A US Task Group (Admiral McMorris) with 2 cruisers and 4 destroyers bombards Japanese positions on Attu Island.
◆1943 Rommel took three towns in Tunisia, North Africa. The intercepted communications of an American in Cairo provided a secret ear for the Desert Fox.
◆1944 Following the usual pre-landing procedures, an intense bombardment and air strike look place on Engebi beginning at 0843.★
◆1944 The Germans commit 26th Panzer and 29th Panzergrenadier Divisions to the attack on Anzio.★
◆1944 President Roosevelt vetoes the Bankhead Bill which proposed to end food subsidies. The veto is upheld by the House of Representatives.1944 Bismarcks: Allied destroyers shell Japanese bases at Rabaul and Kavieng.
◆1944 American forces continue their raid on the Japanese base at Truk. Over the course of the two days, US aircraft log 1250 sorties. The Japanese lose 1 cruiser, 2 destroyers, several other warships and 140,000 tons of shipping to air attack. The battleships Iowa and New Jersey sink 1 cruiser and 2 destroyers. In addition 250 Japanese aircraft are reported destroyed. American submarines sink several more vessels. The US forces lose less than 30 planes and damage is sustained to the carrier Intrepid.
◆1945 All US 3rd Army units are attacking. The German Siegfried Line is broken north of Echternach by US 8th Corps while both US 12th and 20th Corps, to the south, are advancing.
◆1945 US Task Force 54 and TF52 continue the preliminary bombardment of Iwo Jima.
◆1945 There are new attacks by US 4th Corps (part of US 5th Army) in the area of the front just west of the Bologna-Pistoia road.
◆1945 While most of US Task Force 58 is replenishing, one group of four carriers commanded by Admiral Radford attacks Haha Jima and Chichi Jima.
◆1945 Burma: British troops land behind Japanese lines in the Arakan.
◆1951 An enemy shore battery scored a hit on the destroyer USS Ozbourn and wounded two sailors. This was the first time a U.S. Navy ship operating in the vicinity of Wonsan had been hit by gunfire from a shore battery.
◆1954 East and West Berlin dropped thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of a month long truce.
◆1955 Operation Teapot begins.★
◆1956 The US lifted its arms ban and shipped tanks to Saudi Arabia.
◆1962 Robert F. Kennedy said that U.S. troops would stay in Vietnam until Communism was defeated.
◆1964 The United States cuts off military assistance to Britain, France, and Yugoslavia in retaliation for their continuing trade with the communist nation of Cuba.
◆1967 J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," dies in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 62.★
◆1968 Three U.S. pilots who were held by the Vietnamese arrived in Washington. Today, the Vietnamese people are pressuring Hanoi to account for their own 300,000 MIAs.
◆1977 The space shuttle Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its maiden "flight" above the Mojave Desert.
◆1985 GEN William Westmoreland and CBS, INC. reach an out-of-court settlement in Westmoreland's $120 million libel suit in which he charged that a CBS documentary falsely accused him of misrepresenting the strength of Vietcong forces.
◆1994 President Clinton notified Congress he was prepared to order bombing by U.S. warplanes in Bosnia.
◆2003 Turkey asked the US to nearly double its multibillion dollar aid package as a condition for allowing U.S. troops on its soil in a war against neighboring Iraq.
◆2004 Scientists reported that X-rays from galaxy RX J1242-11 indicated a black hole tearing apart a star and gobbling up a share of its gaseous mass.
◆2005 Indonesia welcomed efforts by the US to restore full military training ties with Jakarta, saying the time was ripe to resume links that were downgraded 13 years ago.
◆2005 Libya refused to extend the deadline of the Lockerbie compensation deal in a possible bid to pressure Washington to drop it from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.