TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
8 July
◆1191 Saladin burns Haifa.
◆1283 Battle of Malta: Aragonese & Sicilians defeat the Angevin fleet in Malta Harbor.
◆1520 Battle of Otumba: Cortes defeats the Aztecs.
◆1573 Spanish capture Haarlem from the Dutch after a seven month siege.
◆1686 Austrian military forces push the Turks out of Budapest & annex Hungary.
◆1755 Britain broke off diplomatic relations with France as their disputes in the New World intensified.
◆1758 The British attack on Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, New York, was foiled by the French.
◆1776 In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rings out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon.★
◆1778 George Washington headquartered his Continental Army at West Point.
◆1778 Allied French fleet under Comte d'Estaing arrives in America.
◆1835 The US Liberty Bell in Philadelphia cracked while being tolled for Chief Justice John Marshall. It was never rung again.
◆1853 Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels.★
◆1863 Port Hudson, the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, falls to Nathaniel Banks' Union force.
◆1864 Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston retreated into Atlanta to prevent being flanked by Union General William T. Sherman.
◆1865 C.E. Barnes of Lowell, MA, patented the machine gun.
◆1879 The steamship USS Jeannette under Lt. George W. De Long departed San Francisco on an expedition to reach the North Pole.
◆1898 US battle fleet under Adm. Dewey occupied Isla Grande at Manila.
◆1918 Ernest Hemingway is severely wounded while carrying a companion to safety on the Austro-Italian front during World War I. Hemingway, working as a Red Cross ambulance driver, was decorated for his heroism and sent home.
◆1941 Twenty B-17s flew in their first mission with the Royal Air Force over Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
◆1943 American B-24 bombers struck Japanese-held Wake Island for the first time. An obscure U.S. Navy fighter did yeoman duty when times were toughest early in World War II.
◆1943 On New Georgia, US forces make some gains near the Barike River.
◆1943 US invasion fleet passed Bizerta, Tunisia.
◆1944 The US 1st Army is reinforced with 2 divisions arriving from Britain. There is heavy fighting along the road from Carentan to Periers.
◆1944 Japanese kamikaze attacked US lines at Saipan.
◆1944 Naval bombardment of Guam begins.
◆1945 On Mindanao, fighting continues in the Sarangani Bay area. Filipino guerrillas under American leadership engage the Japanese.
◆1947 In New Mexico the Roswell Daily Record reported the military’s capture of a flying saucer.★
◆1949 Vietta M. Bates became the first enlisted woman sworn into the U.S. Army when legislation was passed making the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps part of the regular Army.
◆1950 The day after the U.N. Security Council recommended that all U.N. forces in Korea be placed under the command of the U.S. military, General Douglas MacArthur, the hero of the war against Japan, is appointed head of the United Nations Command by President Harry S. Truman.
◆1951 The communists offered an armistice if the U.N. Command repatriated all Chinese prisoners. The U.N. Command declined.
◆1954 Col. Carlos Castillo Armas is elected president of the junta that overthrew the administration of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in late June 1954.★
◆1960 The Soviet Union charged Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the country, with espionage.
◆1963 US banned all monetary transactions with Cuba.
◆1965 President Johnson decrees that a Vietnam Service Medal be awarded to Americans serving in Vietnam, even though there had been no official declaration of war. There were 16,300 U.S. troops in South Vietnam at the end of 1964. With Johnson's decision to send U.S. combat units, total U.S. strength in South Vietnam would reach 184,300 by the end of 1965.
◆1987 Lt. Col. Oliver North became a daytime TV star as the Iran-Contra hearings were televised throughout the U.S.
◆1988 Iran's parliamentary speaker, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said his nation would not seek revenge against the United States for shooting down an Iranian jetliner over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people.
◆1994 Kim Il Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea since 1948, dies of a heart attack at the age of 82.
◆1995 A Marine tactical recovery team from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit stationed on board the USS Kearsarge rescued a downed U.S. pilot, Captain Scott O'Grady, USAF, from Bosnian-Serb territory in Bosnia.
◆1997 NATO issued formal membership invitations to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
◆1998 The US and European countries demanded an immediate cease fire in Kosovo and called for a crackdown on the flow of funds to ethnic Albanian rebels.
◆1998 In Afghanistan the Taliban decreed that television was corrupting Afghan society and issued an edict that banned televisions, videocassette recorders, videos and satellite dishes.
◆2000 The Pentagon’s missile defense project suffered its latest setback when a rocket that had taken off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific failed to intercept a target missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
◆2003 US military experts arrived in Liberia to assess the need for help in the local civil war.