TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
31 July
◆30 BCE Skirmish outside Alexandria: Antony wins a small victory over Octavian, in the last battle of the Roman Civil Wars.
◆904 The Arabs sack Thessalonica.
◆1192 Richard I recaptures Jaffa from Saladin, who had it 17 days.
◆1291 Egyptian Mamlukes take Beirut.
◆1498 During his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus arrived at the island of Trinidad.
◆1760 In 1756 approximately 60 members of the South Carolina militia organized the Charles Town Artillery Company which was chartered on this date by the colonial government. By being chartered the men in the unit, all volunteers, agreed to undergo additional drilling over that normally expected by members of the enrolled militia. The charter also allowed the company to draw guns, powder and other supplies from the colony’s arms stores.
◆1777 The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, was made a major-general in the American Continental Army.
◆1790 The U.S. Patent Office granted its first patent to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont, developer of a new method the manufacture of pot and pearl ash, potash.
◆1803 John Ericsson was born, inventor, naval architect - USS 'Monitor', d. 1889.
◆1813 Marines landed at York, Lake Ontario, with soldiers to burn stores and barracks of the British.
◆1815 Thomas Jackson Rodman was born, artilleryman, designer of the Rodman gun, U.S., d. 1871
◆1815 Commodore Stephen Decatur concludes agreement with Bey of Tunis to compensate U.S. for seizure of merchant ships during the War of 1812.
◆1816 Union General George H. Thomas, is born in Southhampton County, Virginia.
◆1837 William Clarke Quantrill (d.1865), Confederate raider, was born. He was known as one of the most vicious butchers of the American Civil war.
◆1849 Benjamin Chambers patented a breech loading cannon.
◆1849 Battle of Segesvár: Russians defeat Hungarian nationalists.
◆1864 Ulysses S. Grant was named General of Volunteers.
◆1865 The Navy’s East India Squadron established to operate from Sunda Strait to Japan.
◆1874 Commissioning of USS Intrepid, first U.S. warship equipped with torpedoes.
◆1875 Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, died in Carter Station, Tenn., at age 66. He succeeded Abraham Lincoln and was the only president to that time to face impeachment proceedings.
◆1912 First attempt to launch an airplane by catapult made at Annapolis.
◆1914 German Kaiser Wilhelm II threatened war and ordered Russia to demobilize.
◆1917 Third battle of Ypres begins.
◆1918 The 42nd Division (26 states and DC) is ordered to capture Hill 177 in preparation for the Aisne Offensive to begin on August 1st. Elements of its 84th Infantry Brigade, including Alabama’s the 167th and Iowa’s 168th Infantry regiments supported by the 151st Machine Gun Battalion, seize the hill after being heavily engaged.
◆1932 The George Washington quarter went into circulation as a 200 year commemorative of G. Washington’s birth. It has been in use ever since.
◆1933 USS Constitution commences tour of principal U.S. seaports.
◆1941 Roosevelt establishes the Economic Defense Board under Vice-President Wallace.
◆1942 The historical background of the Transportation Corps starts with World War I. Prior to that time, transportation operations were chiefly the responsibility of the Quartermaster General. The Transportation Corps, essentially in its present form, was organized on July 31, 1942.
◆1942 American bombers attack targets on Tulagi and bomb the airfield the Japanese are building on Guadalcanal.
◆1943 The US 45th Division occupies Santo Stefano. British and Canadian units move toward Regalbuto and Centuripe.
◆1944 American 1st Army continues to advance. The US 4th Armored Division captures crossings over the Selune River near Pontaubault. The German counterattack on the left flank continues around Tessy and Percy.
◆1944 An American battalion is landed west of Cape Sansapor from the offshore islands. At Aitape, American forces counterattack the Japanese forces along the Driniumor River.
◆1944 On Tinian, American forces begin attacks on the last center of organized Japanese resistance, in the south of the island.
◆1945 US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, sends President Truman a memorandum on how to persuade Japan to surrender. As part of a package of measures which also includes conventional bombing, invasion and diplomacy, he takes for granted that America will use the atomic bombs now under production.
◆1945 The Japanese are warned by the Americans that eight cities will be leveled if the government refuses to surrender.
◆1950 The 5th Regimental Combat Team from Hawaii arrived in Korea.
◆1964 Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, takes the first close-up images of the moon--4,308 in total--before it impacts with the lunar surface northwest of the Sea of the Clouds.
◆1964 All-nuclear task force with USS Long Beach, USS Enterprise, and USS Bainbridge leaves Norfolk, VA to begin voyage, Operation Sea Orbit, to circle the globe without refueling. They returned on 3 October.
◆1971 Apollo 15 astronauts (Dave Scott) took a drive on the moon in their land rover.
◆1972 Hanoi challenges the Nixon administration on the dike controversy, claiming that since April there had been 173 raids against the dikes in North Vietnam with direct hits in 149 locations.
◆1985 The Coast Guard conducted a fleet dedication ceremony for the new 110-foot patrol boats in Lockport, Louisiana.
◆1989 A pro-Iranian group in Lebanon released a grisly videotape purportedly showing the body of American hostage William R. Higgins dangling from a rope, a day after his kidnappers threatened to kill him.
◆1990 Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence.
◆1991 President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow.
◆1991 The US Senate voted to allow women to fly combat aircraft.
◆1998 In Japan Asa Takii, the oldest person in the country and a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, died at age 114.
◆1999 The Ukraine and the US agreed to extend the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile dismantling program for 6 years.
◆2000 US and British diplomats accused the Pres. Charles Taylor of Liberia and Pres. Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso of trading arms for diamonds.
◆2003 Five Taliban fighters, two Afghan soldiers and another person were killed on Thursday in separate incidents as hundreds of Afghan security forces were trying to flush out Taliban fighters in a new operation in southern Afghanistan.
◆2003 Affordable Internet access makes its way to Afghanistan. The country, ravaged by 23 years of civil war, received what United Nations information technology workers called the first inexpensive public Internet service there. In August, five more Kabul post offices will be outfitted with Internet connections, where it costs the equivalent of $1 an hour to check e-mail and surf the Web.