TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
24 February
◆1303 Battle of Roslin: Scots defeat the English.
◆1389 Battle at Falkoping: The Danes defeat King Albert of Sweden.
◆1525 Battle of Pavia: King Francis I of France is captured by the Spanish.
◆1739 Battle of Karnal: Nadir Shah's Persians defeat Muhammad Shah's Moghuls.
◆1761 James Otis voices opposition to English colonial rule in a speech before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.★
◆1779 George Rogers Clark captures Vincennes from the British.
◆1786 Charles Cornwallis, whose armies had surrendered to US at Yorktown, was appointed governor-general of India.
◆1793 French capture Breda in the Netherlands.
◆1797 Lord Cawdor accepts the surrender of c. 1,500 French troops & two ships near Fishguard, Wales, ending the last invasion of Britain.
◆1803 The Supreme Court ruled itself the final interpreter of constitutional issues. Chief Justice John Marshall, by refusing to rule on the case of Marbury vs. Madison, asserted the authority of the judicial branch. The US Supreme Court 1st ruled a law unconstitutional (Marbury v Madison).
◆1813 Off Guiana’s Demerara River, the American 18-gun sloop Hornet under Captain James Lawrence sinks the 20-gun British sloop Peacock. Hornet suffered few damages or casualties, but Peacock was so badly shattered that it sank during the transfer of prisoners.
◆1836 Texan Colonel William Travis sends a desperate plea for help for the besieged defenders of the Alamo, ending the message with the famous last words, "Victory or Death."★
◆1838 Thomas Benton Smith, Brig. General (Confederate Army), was born in Mechanicsville, Tennessee.
◆1841 John Phillip Holland, inventor of the modern submarine, is born to John and Mary Scanlon Holland in Liscannor, Co. Clare, Ireland.
◆1863 Arizona was organized as a territory.
◆1863 Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest made a raid on Brentwood, Tennessee.
◆1864 Union General George Thomas attacks Joseph Johnston's Confederates near Dalton, Georgia, as the Yankees probe Johnston's defenses in search of a weakness.★
◆1885 Chester Nimitz is born.★
◆1894 Nicaraguans capture Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
◆1895 Cuban insurgents are supplied with money by US sugar planters in a move designed both to assist overthrow Spanish domination of Cuba and to prevent the insurrectos from burning the sugar plantations.★
◆1903 The United States signed its first lease agreement acquiring naval stations at Guantanamo Bay and Bahia Honda in Cuba. In June the payment will be agreed upon, Pres.Roosevelt leased the site for $2,000 in gold a year. The lease was negotiated to implement an act of Congress of the United States approved 2 March 1901. The agreement had been signed by Cuban President Estrada Plama on 19 February. Bahia Honda would be abandoned after 9 years.
◆1914 Civil War soldier Joshua Chamberlain dies.
◆1917 During World War I, British authorities give Walter H. Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a copy of the "Zimmermann Note," a coded message from Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign secretary, to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico.★
◆1920 A fledgling German political party held its first meeting of importance at Hofbrauhaus in Munich; it became known as the Nazi Party, and its chief spokesman was Adolf Hitler.
◆1933 League of Nations told the Japanese to pull out of Manchuria.
◆1942 The Voice of America went on the air for the first time with broadcasts in German. The US State Dept. made William Winter (d.1999) its first Voice of America three months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
◆1942 Admiral Halsey on board the USS Enterprise leads task force in a successful attack on Wake Island.
◆1942 Some 1,600 Pittsburg, Ca., residents of Italian descent were evacuated. Nationwide some 600,000 of 5 million Italians were undocumented and deemed “enemy aliens” until Oct 12.
◆1944 Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill's guerrilla force, nicknamed "Merrill's Marauders," begin a campaign in northern Burma.★
◆1944 Attacks by the US 5th Army and the British 8th Army continue. The Canadian 1st Corps captures Pontecorvo and elements reach the Melfa River and establish a bridgehead. The US 2nd Corps takes Terracina against heavy opposition from the German 29th Panzergrenadier Division. At Anzio forces of US 6th Corps reach Route 7 near Latina, to the south of German-held Cisterna. Meanwhile, north of Rome, RAF Spitfires shoot down 8 German Fw190 fighter bombers.
◆1945 Julich is captured by units of the US 19th Corps as the US 9th Army begins to extend its advance over the Roer River. To the south, the US 1st and 3rd Armies also push forward.
◆1945 On Iwo Jima, forces of US 5th Amphibious Corps continue to advance northward and capture part of the island's second airfield.
◆1945 On Luzon, American forces eliminate desperate Japanese resistance in the Intramuros -- the old walled quarter of Manila.
◆1947 Franz von Papen was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for war crimes. Pompous scion of an old aristocratic family, he became chancellor of Germany in 1932.
◆1949 A V-2 WAC-Corporal was the 1st rocket to outer space. It was fired at White Sands, NM, and reached 400 km.
◆1951 Army Major General Bryant E. Moore, commander of IX Corps, died suddenly of a heart attack. Major General O. P. Smith assumed command, becoming the only Marine to command a major Army unit during the Korean War.
◆1951 The 315th Air Division dropped a record 333 tons of cargo to front-line troops using 67 C-119 and two C-46 aircraft.
◆1952 The U.S. 40th Infantry Division (CAARNG) launched the largest tank raid since the beginning of the Korean War. It was the largest deployment of armor without infantry support in a single engagement during the war.
◆1955 Ike Eisenhower met with newspaper publisher Roy Howard and expressed his resistance under pressure to commit American troops to Vietnam. The conversation was recorded on a dictabelt machine that Eisenhower had secretly installed in the president’s office.
◆1959 Khrushchev rejected the Western plan for the Big Four meeting on Germany.
◆1968 The Tet Offensive ends as U.S. and South Vietnamese troops recapture the ancient capital of Hue from communist forces.
◆1968 Task Force Clearwater established in I Corps.
◆1982 President Ronald Reagan announces a new program of economic and military assistance to nations of the Caribbean designed to "prevent the overthrow of the governments in the region" by the "brutal and totalitarian" forces of communism.
◆1984 Last of U.S. Marines are withdrawn from Lebanon.
◆1989 A state funeral was held in Japan for Emperor Hirohito, who died the month before at age 87.
◆1991 After six weeks of intensive bombing against Iraq and its armed forces, U.S.-led coalition forces launch a ground invasion of Kuwait and Iraq.★