TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
23 February
◆1540 Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado began his unsuccessful search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest. Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of Mexico, sent Francisco Coronado overland to search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola in present day New Mexico.
◆1574 Fifth War of Religion begins in France.
◆1665 While the Second Anglo-Dutch War rages in Europe, the deputy of the Duke of York, Richard Nicolls, orders the annexation of all property belonging to the Dutch West India Company in what was formerly New Netherland.
◆1778 Baron von Steuben joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge.★
◆1795 U.S. Navy Office of Purveyor of Supplies is established. This is the Navy Supply Corps Birthday.
◆1797 Battle of Fishguard: Lord John Cawdor's 700 British troops, Welch militiamen, and sailors defeat 1,500 French & Irish under Brig Gen William Tate.
◆1822 Boston was granted a charter to incorporate as a city.
◆1822 Congress authorized the Revenue Cutter Service to protect the natural environment by preventing "scoundrels" from cutting live oak on Florida public lands.
◆1824 Lewis Cass Hunt (d.1886), Brig General (Union volunteers), was born.
◆1836 The Alamo is besieged by Santa Anna.★
◆1837 Congress called for an inspection of the coast from Chesapeake Bay to the Sabine River "with regard to the location of additional light-houses, beacons, and buoys." Captain Napoleon L. Coste, commanding the Revenue cutter Campbell was dispatched. He reported that the first addition to aids to navigation on this entire coast should be at Egmont Key, Tampa Bay. A lighthouse was authorized immediately and built the next year. The station (not the same tower) still exists as one of the three manned lights on the Gulf of Mexico.
◆1838 Gilbert Moxley Sorrel (d.1901), Brig General (Confederate Army), was born.
◆1846 Russians defeat Polish insurgents near Cracow.
◆1846 The Liberty Bell tolled for the last time, to mark George Washington’s birthday. A hairline fracture had developed since 1817 and a failed attempt to repair it resulted in the crack.
◆1847 U.S. troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico. The United States and Mexico had been at war over territorial disputes since May 1846.
◆1848 John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States (1825-1829), died of a stroke at age 80.
◆1861 Texas by popular referendum became the 7th state to secede from the Union.
◆1865 Fort White, guarding the entrance to Winyah Bay leading to Georgetown, S.C., was evacuated upon the approach of the naval squadron and was occupied by a detachment of Marines.
◆1870 Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.
◆1893 Rudolf Diesel received a German patent for the diesel engine on this day.
◆1896 Tootsie Roll was introduced by Leo Hirschfield. Tootsie rolls are still found in some of today's MREs.
◆1900 In the Philippines, Marine Captain Draper arranged with the gunboat USS Nashville, when it next came by on patrol, to shell the village of Benictican in retaliation for a raid on a marine water party 6 days before that had killed two Marines. After the bombardment, he entered the town with a force of 100 men and, finding it abandoned, destroyed it completely.1903 US leases Guantanamo Bay from Cuba for $4,000 a year; Castro has refused to cash the checks since 1959.
◆1904 US acquired control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10 million.1915 - Germany sank US ships Carib & Evelyn and torpedoed the Norwegian ship Regin.1916 - Secretary of State Lansing hinted that the U.S. might have to abandon the policy of avoiding "entangling foreign alliances".
◆1919 Fascist Party was formed in Italy by Benito Mussolini.
◆1919 Launching of Osmond Ingram (DD-255), first Navy ship named for an enlisted man.
◆1923 Red Army Day from 1923-1990 in Russia, Defender of the Fatherland Day since 1991.
◆1926 President Calvin Coolidge opposed a large air force, believing it would be a menace to world peace.
◆1940 Woody Guthrie dated his song “this Land Is Your Land” to this day. His original title was “God Bless America.”
◆1942 A Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery at Ellwood, near Santa Barbara, Calif., the first Axis bombs to hit American soil.
◆1943 German troops pulled back through the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.
◆1944 American aircraft raid Rota, Tinian and Saipan. The US forces are from Task Group 58.3 (Sherman) and Task Group 58.2 (Montgomery). The attack sinks 20,000 tons of Japanese shipping.
◆1944 Japanese resistance on Parry Island ends. American forces complete the occupation of Eniwetok Atoll. US losses are 300 killed and 750 wounded. The Japanese garrison has been wiped out. Out of 3400 troops, there are 66 prisoners.1945 - Eisenhower opened a large offensive in the Rhineland.
◆1945 During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island's highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag.★
◆1945 The US forces attacking in Manila resume their offensive after a new bombardment. The Japanese resistance is now largely confined to the old walled section of the town, the Intramuros, but the fighting there is very fierce.
◆1945 A major new offensive by US First and Ninth Armies begins with heavy attacks along the Roer, especially in the Julich and Duren areas. The river is crossed in several places. The attacks are opposed by the German 5th Panzer and 15th Armies (both part of German Army Group B). Farther south, there are also attacks by units of US 3rd and 7th Armies.
◆1951 The first B-29 mission using the more accurate MPQ-2 radar bombed a highway bridge seven miles northeast of Seoul.
◆1952 Air Force Major William T. Whisner, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, flying his F-86 Sabre "Elenore E," destroyed his fifth MiG-15 to become the war's seventh ace and his wing's first.
◆1954 The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh. Jonas Salk created the Salk vaccine against polio. It used a killed virus to induce immunization. Poliomyelitis is a viral attack of the central nervous system and can cause paralysis and death by asphyxiation.
◆1967 The 25th amendment, on presidential succession, was declared ratified.
◆1967 American troops began the largest offensive of the war, near the Cambodian border. In order to deny the Vietcong cover, and allow men to see through the dense vegetation, herbicides were dumped on the forests near the South Vietnamese borders as well as Cambodia and Laos.
◆1969 Pres. Nixon approved the bombing of Cambodia.
◆1971 Lt. William Calley confessed and implicated Captain Ernest Medina in My Lai massacre. Lt. Calley was the only one to be court marshaled.
◆1971 In Operation Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese advance into Laos grinds to a halt.
◆1990 James Gavin (82), commandant US 82nd Airborne Div (Normandy), died.
◆1991 President Bush announced that the allied ground offensive against Iraqi forces had begun (because of the time difference, it was already the early morning of February 24th in the Persian Gulf).
◆1991 French forces unofficially started the Persian Gulf ground war by crossing the Saudi-Iraqi border. Lessons learned in the savage 1972 Eastertide Offensive paid off at the Battle of Khafji in the Gulf War almost two decades later.
◆1998 Osama bin Laden declared a holy war on the US. The Al Quds Al-Arabi newspaper published a statement that announced an alliance between Dr. Zawahri, head of the Egyptian Jihad, and Osama bin Laden. “We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim…to comply with God’s order to kill Americans.”