TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
4 June
◆1362 Battle of Brignais: The Free Companions defeat the French.
◆1509 Pisa surrenders to Florence, after a siege of nearly two years.
◆1525 Battle of Ingolstat: German Tauber rebels crushed.
◆1615 Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, captures Osaka after a six month siege.
◆1738 King George III was born (d.1820).
◆1745 Battle of Hohenfriedberg: Frederick the Great defeats Austrians & Saxons.
◆1746 Battle of San Lorenzo: Austro-Sardinians defeat the French.
◆1763 The Chippewa capture Fort Michilimackinac from the English.
◆1789 The US constitution, enacted as sovereign law, went into effect.
◆1794 Congress passed a Neutrality Act that banned Americans from serving in armed forces of foreign powers.
◆1859 Battle of Magenta: Franco-Sardinian forces under Napoleon III defeat the Austrians.
◆1862 Confederate forces slip out of Fort Pillow, a key stronghold on the Mississippi River, clearing the way for the Union capture of Memphis.
◆1863 Confederate General Robert E. Lee continues to mobilize his army for an invasion of Pennsylvania by sending Richard Ewell's corps toward the Shenandoah Valley.
◆1864 With Gen. Sherman again flanking them, Confederates under General Joseph Johnston retreated to the mountains before Marietta, Georgia.
◆1876 A mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco. That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. During the early 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson first dreamed of an American nation stretching from "sea to shining sea," it took the president 10 days to travel the 225 miles from Monticello to Philadelphia via carriage.
◆1896 At approximately 1:30 a.m., Henry Ford test-drove his Quadricycle, the first automobile he ever designed or drove.
◆1917 American men begin registering for the draft.
◆1918 French and American troops halted Germany's offensive at Chateau-Thierry, France.
◆1919 US Marines invaded Costa Rica.
◆1934 USS Ranger, first ship designed from the keel up as a carrier, is commissioned at Norfolk, VA.
◆1942 BATTLE OF MIDWAY ISLAND: Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, launches a raid on Midway Island with almost the entirety of the Japanese navy.
◆1944 The U-505 became the first enemy submarine captured by the U.S. Navy.
◆1944 The U.S. Fifth Army entered Rome, beginning the liberation of the Italian capital during World War II.
◆1944 D-DAY DELAYED: The Allied Expeditionary Force convoys, bound for Normandy, are called back to port because of poor weather conditions expected for June 5th. Eisenhower decides, however, that the invasion can take place on June 6th. The poor weather has also encouraged the German defenders in occupied France. Rommel, commanding Army Group B, decides to go to Germany for his wife's birthday on June 6th and to meet with Hitler. Other German commanders in the Normandy area are at a training exercise in Brittany.
◆1945 On Okinawa, two regiments of US 6th Marine Division make landings on the Oroku peninsula in an attempt to outflank Japanese defensive positions. However, many of the Japanese troops formerly in the Shuri Line have withdrawn to the Oroku peninsula. General Buckner, commanding US 10th Army, reduces the frontage of the US 3rd Amphibious Corps, which has suffered the greatest losses, and increases the frontage of the US 24th Corps.
◆1945 US, Russia, England & France agreed to split occupied Germany.
◆1951 Eighth Army opened its forward command post in Seoul. The echelon at Taegu was designated at Eighth Army Main.
◆1953 The communists launched nine stiff counterattacks to halt U.N. forces advancing on the logistical complexes of the Chorwon-Kumhwa-Pyonggang triangle.
◆1953 An atomic bomb test explosion took place at Yucca Flats, Nevada, equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT. This was double the 1945 blast over Hiroshima.
◆1965 Maj. Gen. Lewis Walt takes command of the 3rd Marine Division from Maj. Gen. William Collins.
◆1989 Chinese troops storm through Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, killing and arresting thousands of pro-democracy protesters.
◆1996 US and French officials signed a secret agreement to share nuclear weapons information and facilitate joint work between scientists.
◆1996 NATO foreign ministers approved plans to shift focus toward intervention in small regional conflicts and away from containing Russia, its primary focus for 47 years.
◆2002 Pres. Bush said the CIA and FBI had failed to communicate adequately before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks; Congress began extraordinary closed-door hearings into intelligence lapses.
◆2004 In southern Afghanistan U.S. troops and warplanes attacked Taliban rebels besieging a remote checkpoint.