TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
1 July
◆1097 Battle of Doryleum: Crusaders defeat Seljuk Turks near Nicaea.
◆1482 Battle of Loja: the Moors defeat the Castillians & Aragonese.
◆1690 Battle of Fleurs: The French defeat the Imperialists.
◆1690 Battle of the Boyne: Protestants massacre Catholics outside Dublin.
◆1776 The Continental Congress, sitting as a committee, met on July 1, 1776, to debate a resolution submitted by Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee on June 7. The resolution stated that the United Colonies "are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." The committee voted for the motion and, on July 2 in formal session took the final vote for independence.
◆1777 British troops departed from their base at the Bouquet river to head toward Ticonderoga, New York.
◆1782 American privateers raid Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
◆1800 First convoy duty; USS Essex escorts convoy of merchant ships from East Indies to U.S.
◆1801 U.S. squadron under Commodore Dale enters Mediterranean to strike Barbary Pirates.
◆1850 Naval School at Annapolis renamed Naval Academy.
◆1851 Naval Academy adopts four year course of study.
◆1861 The US War Department decreed that Kansas and Tennessee were to be canvassed for volunteers.
◆1862 Congress gave the green light to the tax-centric Revenue Act.
◆1862 In day 7 of the 7 Days Battle Union artillery stopped a Confederate attack at Malvern Hill, Virginia. Casualties totaled: US 15,249 and CS 17,583.
◆1863 The largest military conflict in North American history begins this day when Union and Confederate forces collide at Gettysburg.✪
◆1864 Battle of Petersburg, VA, began.
◆1898 SAN JUAN HILL: As part of their campaign to capture Spanish-held Santiago de Cuba on the southern coast of Cuba, the U.S. Army Fifth Corps engages Spanish forces at El Caney and San Juan Hill. In May 1898, one month after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, a Spanish fleet docked in the Santiago de Cuba harbor after racing across the Atlantic from Spain.✪
◆1907 World's first air force was established as part of the US Army.
◆1911 Trial of first Navy aircraft, Curtiss A-1. The designer, Glenn Curtiss, makes first flight in Navy's first aircraft, A-1, at Lake Keuka, NY, then prepares LT Theodore G. Ellyson, the first naval aviator, for his two solo flights in A-1.1913 Second Balkan War: Serbia & Greece declare war on Bulgaria.
◆1916 Battle of the Somme begins (French: Bataille de la Somme,German: Sommeschlacht), also known as the Somme Offensive, took place during the First World War between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on either side of the river Sommein France.✪
◆1916 Establishment of informal school for officers assigned to submarines at New London, CT.
◆1918 USS Covington hit without warning by two torpedoes from German Submarine U-86 and sank the next day.
◆1941 Aircraft from the United States Navy start antisubmarine patrols from bases in Newfoundland.
◆1941 Commercial black and white television broadcasting began in the US.
◆1943 "Pay-as-you-go" income tax withholding began.
◆1944 Elements of the US 5th Army capture Cecina on the west coast while Pomerance falls, further inland, in the advance to Volterra.
◆1945 Some 550 B-29 Superfortress bombers -the greatest number yet to be engaged- drop 4000 tons of incendiary bombs on the Kure naval base, Shimonoseki, Ube and Kumanoto, on western Kyushu.
◆1946 The United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The energy released by any one of the ten or so major earthquakes every year is about 1,000 times as much as the Bikini atomic bomb.
◆1950 Task Force Smith, two companies of the 24th Infantry Division's 21st Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith and the first U.S. combat unit in Korea, arrived at Pusan. Major General William F. Dean, the 24th Infantry Division commander, was named commander of all U.S. forces in Korea.
◆1951 North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and Peng Teh-huai, commander of the Chinese "Volunteers," agreed to begin armistice discussions.
◆1960 USSR shot down a US RB-47 reconnaissance plane.
◆1962 Intelligence has been an essential element of Army operations during war as well as during periods of peace.✪
◆1966 The U.S. Marines launched Operation Holt in an attempt to finish off a Vietcong battalion in Thua Thien Province in Vietnam.
◆1966 U.S. Air Force and Navy jets carry out a series of raids on fuel installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong area.✪
◆1968 The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
◆2001 In China parts of the US spy plane were flown out from Hainan Island.