TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
20 July
◆356 BCE Alexander III "the Great" of Macedon was born (336-323 BC) [or maybe the 21st].★
◆1187 Saladin captures Jaffa.
◆1346 Battle of Zara: The Venetians defeat the Hungarians.
◆1402 Battle of Angora: The Tatars defeat the Ottoman Turks.
◆1808 Battle of Bailen: The Spanish defeat the French.
◆1824 Alexander Schimmelfennig, Brig. General Union volunteers, was born in Prussia.
◆1846 First visit of U.S. warships (USS Columbus and USS Vincennes) to Japan is unsuccessful in negotiating a treaty.
◆1861 The New York Tribune compared Peace Democrats to the venomous Copperhead snake, which strikes without warning. During the American Civil War, Northerners who advocated restoration of the Union through a negotiated settlement with the South was referred to as Peace Democrats.
◆1861 The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in Richmond, Va.
◆1864 General John Bell Hood's Confederate force attack William T. Sherman's troops outside of Atlanta, Georgia, but are repulsed with heavy losses.
◆1881 Five years after General George A. Custer's infamous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers.★
◆1894 2000 federal troops were recalled from Chicago with the end of the Pullman strike.
◆1917 The US draft lottery in World War I went into operation.
◆1942 The first detachment of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later known as WACs, began basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.
◆1942 An Act of Congress (Public Law 671 - 77th Congress, Chapter 508, 2d Session) established the Legion of Merit.★
◆1943 American troops reach Menfi in the south of Sicily.
◆1943 Roosevelt directs that information about atomic research is to be shared with the British.
◆1943 New American forces take over the front on New Georgia. New road construction alleviates the supply problem. Two Japanese destroyers are sunk during a supply mission.
◆1944 US 15th Air Force attacked Friedrichshafen and Memmingen. Flying Fortresses of US 8th Air Force attacked Leipzig and Dessau.
◆1944 US invaded Japanese occupied Guam. Japanese aircraft carrier Hijo was sunk by US air attack.
◆1944 The bombardment of Tinian is expanded as army artillery based on Saipan becomes available, in addition to the air attacks and naval shelling.
◆1944 OPERATION VALKERIE: Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. High German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and assassination was the only way to stop him. A coup d'etat would follow, and a new government in Berlin would save Germany from complete destruction at the hands of the Allies.★
◆1945 American forces land on Balut Island, at the entrance to Sarangani Bay of Mindanao. The small Japanese garrison is eliminated.
◆1945 About 80 P-51 Mustang fighters, flying from Iwo Jima, strike targets in central Honshu.
◆1945 For the second consecutive day, more than 200 Allied bombers, flying from Okinawa, attack Japanese airfields in the area of Shanghai.
◆1948 President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months.★
◆1950 The U.S. 24th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division was bloodied in an ill-fated counterattack at Yechon.
◆1953 U.S. Air Force Major Stephen L. Bettinger qualified as the 40th and last ace of the Korean War. Because he was shot down during this engagement and subsequently captured, he was not officially credited with his fifth victory until after his repatriation.
◆1960 In first launch of Polaris missile, USS George Washington (SSBN 598) successfully fires 2 operational Polaris missiles while submerged off Florida.
◆1964 Four Navy divers enter Project SEALAB I capsule moored 192 feet on the ocean floor off Bermuda for 11 day experiment.
◆1969 At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."★
◆1969 A top-secret study, commissioned by presidential assistant Henry Kissinger, is completed by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Code-named Duck Hook, the study proposed measures for military escalation against North Vietnam.★
◆1974 Responding to attacks on Turkish residents, Turkey invades Cyprus.
◆1976 Last US troops left Thailand.
◆1976 On the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Viking 1 lander, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, becomes the first spacecraft to successfully land on the surface of Mars.★
◆1988 Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini accepted a truce with Iraq, even though he said the decision was like drinking poison.
◆1989 President Bush called for a long-range space program to build an orbiting space station, establish a base on the moon and send a manned mission to the planet Mars.
◆1990 A federal appeals court set aside Oliver North’s Iran-Contra convictions, reversing one outright.
◆2007 The Deployable Operations Group (DOG) was commissioned at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., under the command of RADM Thomas F. Atkins.