TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
31 January
◆1187 Battle of Mamgarvia Moor: King William I of Scotland defeats Donald ban MacWilliam.
◆1402 Battle of Ruthin: Owen Glendower defeats Reginald Grey, the Lord of Ruthin.
◆1578 Battle of Gembloux: Don John of Austria's Spanish defeat the Dutch under Antony de Goignies.
◆1804 VAdm William "Bounty" Bligh's squadron captures Curaçao.
◆1865 Gen. Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate armies.
◆1915 Germans stage first poison gas attack, against the Russians.
◆1916 President Woodrow Wilson refused the compromise on Lusitania reparations.
◆1917 Germany announces the renewal of unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sited in war-zone waters.
◆1942 HMS Culver (ex-CGC Mendota--she was one of the "Lake" Class cutters transferred to the Royal Navy in 1941 under the Lend-Lease program) was torpedoed with 13 survivors.
◆1944 Operation Overlord (D-Day) was postponed until June.
◆1944 American landings begin on the islands of Kwajalein Atoll. Admiral Spruance is in overall command and General Holland Smith commands the various landing forces. Elements of US 4th Marine Division (Smith) land on Roi, Namur and nearby islets. Task Force 53 (Admiral Connolly) provides transport and naval support, including battleships and escort carriers. The landing on Roi makes rapid progress. On Namur there is heavy Japanese resistance. Meanwhile, there are also landings on Majuro Atoll by the US 27th Infantry Regiment. Admiral Hill's task force provides naval support. The Majuro Atoll is captured quickly and is immediately prepared to become a base for American forces. Also, the carriers of Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) continue attacks on Eniwetok and Maleolap.
◆1944 The US 5th Army continues offensive operations against the German-held Gustav Line. Caira is captured by forces of US 2nd Corps. The Free French Corps recaptures Monte Abate.
◆1945 Units of US 18th Corps from US 1st Army enter Germany east of St. Vith as they continue their advance from the Ardennes. To the south, in Alsace, French 1st Army attacks near Colmar also make some ground.
◆1945 On Luzon, two regiments of General Swing’s 11th Airborne Division are landed by sea near Nasugbu southwest of Manila. Admiral Fechteler leads the naval support with a cruiser and eight destroyers. There is little opposition to the landing. North of Manila, the US advance is still making progress. US 14th Corps units have nearly reached Calumpit in a converging attack.
◆1945 Pvt. Eddie Slovik becomes the first American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion-and the only one who suffered such a fate during World War II.★
◆1950 U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.★
◆1954 Edwin H. Armstrong (d.1890), US radio inventor of frequency modulation (FM), committed suicide.
◆1955 A document thus dated stated that Yuri Rastvorov, a Soviet defector, told Eisenhower administration officials in a private Jan 28 meeting that US and other UN POWs were held in Siberia during the 1950-1953 Korean War.
◆1958 Explorer 1, the first successful US satellite, was launched by a Jupiter-C rocket and the United States entered the Space Age. It discovered the "Van Allen radiation belts" around Earth named after James Van Allen. Radio signals from the transmitter aboard the 30.8 pound satellite were picked up in California within a few minutes after the launch. Two months earlier, the first attempt to launch a satellite had failed.
◆1961 Ham became the 1st primate in space (158 miles) aboard Mercury-Redstone 2.
◆1966 U.S. planes resumed bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.
◆1968 As part of the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong soldiers attack the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.★
◆1971 Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned mission to the moon. On February 5, after suffering some initial problems in docking the lunar and command modules, Shepard and Mitchell descended to the lunar surface on the third U.S. moon landing. Upon stepping out of the lunar module, Shepard, who in 1961, aboard Freedom 7, was the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon. Shepard and Mitchell remained on the lunar surface for nearly 34 hours, conducting simple scientific experiments, such as hitting golf balls into space with Shepard's golf club, and collecting 96 pounds of lunar samples. On February 9, Apollo 14 safely returned to Earth.
◆1981 Era of Enlisted Naval Aviators ends when last pilot retired.
◆1989 Jury selection began in the trial of former National Security Council aide Oliver North, charged in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. He was later convicted on three counts, but those convictions were set aside, and the case was not retried.
◆1990 The Soviet Union's first McDonald's fast food restaurant opens in Moscow.★
◆1991 During the Gulf War, Army Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy and Army Specialist David Lockett were captured by Iraqi forces near the Kuwaiti-Saudi border; both were eventually released.
◆1996 The last Cubans held in refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base boarded a plane for Florida.
◆1999 A series of almost daily U.S. missile air strikes on Iraq's air defences has had a "grave impact" on President Saddam Hussein's ability to challenge allied enforcement of the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.
◆2002 It was reported that the US and Kazakstan planned a joint venture to use a former Soviet nuclear weapons plant to process uranium for power plants and absorb atomic workers.
◆2004 The Mars rover Opportunity rolled off its landing pad onto the surface of Mars.