TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
29 July
◆46 BCE Day 4 of Caesar's Triumph, for the defeat of Numidia.
◆1014 Battle of Cledon: Byzantines defeat the Bulgars.
◆1030 Battle of Stiklestad: Norwegian Christians triumph over pagans, in a fight punctuated by a solar eclipse.
◆1187 Saladin captures Sidon.
◆1364 Battle of Cascina: The Florentins defeat the Pisans.
◆1603 Bartholomew Gilbert was killed in the colony of Virginia by Indians, during a search for the missing Roanoke colonists.
◆1676 Nathaniel Bacon was declared a rebel for assembling frontiersmen to protect settlers from Indians.
◆1693 Battle of Neerwinden: The French defeat the English & Dutch.
◆1775 The legal origin of the Army Chaplains Corps is found in a resolution of the Continental Congress, adopted July 29, 1775, which made provision for the pay of chaplains. The Office of the Chief of Chaplains was created by the National Defense Act of 1920.
◆The Office of Judge Advocate of the Army may be deemed to have been created on July 29, 1775, and has generally paralleled the origin and development of the American system of military justice. The Judge Advocate General's Department, by that name, was established in 1884. Its present designation as a corps was enacted in 1948.
◆1813 Battle of Sorauren, Day 2: Anglo-Spanish v. the French (ends 30th).
◆1846 Sailors and Marines from U.S. sloop Cyane capture San Diego, CA.
◆1858 Japan signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the United States.
◆1862 At Moore’s Mill in Missouri, the Confederates were routed by Union guerrillas.
◆1862 Confederate spy Marie Isabella "Belle" Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C.
◆1864 During the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Va., by exploding a mine under Confederate defense lines. The attack failed. [see Jul 30]
◆1864 3rd and last day of battle at Deep Bottom Run, Virginia.
◆1864 Battle of Macon, GA (Stoneman's Raid).
◆1883 Benito Mussolini, dictator of Fascist Italy (1922-1943), was born.
◆1914 Transcontinental telephone service began with the first phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.
◆1919 A detachment of Marines from the USS New Orleans prepared to land at Tyutuke Bay (near Vladivostok), Russia, to protect American interests during a period of political disturbances.
◆1921 Adolf Hitler became the president of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis).
◆1937 China Incident: Japanese troops occupy Peking & Tientsin.
◆1942 Buna: Japanese land reinforcements, despite losses to Allied aircraft.
◆1942 Japanese retake Kokoda from the Australians, who fall back on Deniki.
◆1943 New Guinea: 43rd Div Cdr relieved, as his troops press on slowly.
◆1944 The advance of US 1st Army continues. On the left flank, the US 19th Corps approaches Torigny and Tessy. The 7th Corps reaches Percy. On the right flank, the 8th Corps crosses the Sienne River and moves toward Granville.
◆1944 On Tinian, the American forces now occupy more than half the island. Japanese resistance is increasing.
◆1944 On Biak the last pocket of organized Japanese resistance, around Ibdi, is eliminated. On the mainland, near Aitape, American forces fall back at Afua under pressure from Japanese forces.
◆1945 USS INDIANAPOLIS LOST: Japanese warships sink the American cruiser Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen in the worst loss in the history of the U.S. navy.★
◆1945 An Allied naval bombardment 5 battleships and several cruisers and destroyers targets the aircraft factories at Hamamutsu in southern Honshu.
◆1946 Elements of 11th Marines clash with Chinese communists at Anping, China.
◆1950 As the U.N. forces formed the 100-mile by 50-mile Pusan Perimeter, Lieutenant General Walton Walker issued his controversial "stand or die" order to Eighth Army, declaring, "there will be no Dunkirk, there will be no Bataan."
◆1953 Soviets shoot down US patrol bomber northeast of Vladivostok.
◆1957 The International Atomic Energy Agency was established.
◆1958 The United States Congress passes legislation formally inaugurating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
◆1965 The first 4,000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.★
◆1967 Fire sweeps the U.S. aircraft carrier Forrestal off the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was the worst U.S. naval disaster in a combat zone since World War II. The accident took the lives of 134 crewmen and injured 62 more. Of the carrier's 80 planes, 21 were destroyed and 42 were damaged.★
◆1970 Volunteers of Pennsylvania’s 193rd Tactical Electronic Warfare Group settle into their quarters having just arrived to begin their secret mission of propaganda broadcasts over enemy held territory.★
◆1999 US warplanes struck targets in northern and southern Iraq after anti-aircraft artillery shot at them. Iraq reported 8 people killed