TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
22 June
◆217 BCE Battle of Raphia: Egypt's Ptolemy IV defeats Syria's Antiochus III; only major engagement of African vs. Asian elephants.
◆168 BCE Battle of Pydna: Lucius Aemilius Paulus defeats Perseus of Macedon.
◆1402 Battle of Nesbit Moor: the English defeat Scots raiders.
◆1402 Battle of Pilleth/Bryn Glas: Owain Glen Dwyr's Welch beat Edward Mortimer's English.
◆1476 Battle of Morat: The Swiss defeat the Burgundians.
◆1593 Battle of Sisak: Imperialists defeat the Turks.
◆1611 After spending a winter trapped by ice in present-day Hudson Bay, the starving crew of the Discovery mutinies against its captain, English navigator Henry Hudson, and sets him, his teenage son, and seven supporters adrift in a small, open boat.
◆1636 Battle of Tornavento: Charles de Crequi's Franco-Savoyard army defeats the Spanish.
◆1645 Battle of Llorens: The French defeat the Spanish in Catalonia.
◆1670 Battle of Bothweel Bridge: The Duke of Monmouth defeats the Scots Covenanters.
◆1775 In the spring colonial leaders, long since tired of the constraining yoke of British rule, led their forces into the battle against the crown.*
◆1807 British officers of the H.M.S. Leopard boarded the U.S.S. Chesapeake after she had set sail for the Mediterranean, and demanded the right to search the ship for deserters. Commodore James Barron refused and the British opened fire with broadsides on the unprepared Chesapeake and forced her to surrender. The British provocation led to the War of 1812.
◆1813 A British force attempted to take Craney Island, the fort there was one of the key defenses to Norfolk's inner harbor and was home to the frigate "Constellation". The attack was disastrous for the British, who lost over two hundred men and were forced to retreat, only to attack Hampton four days later.
◆1815 Napoleon I abdicates for the second time, after Waterloo.
◆1847 The 1st doughnut with a hole in it was created.
◆1864 Union forces attempt to capture a railroad that had been supplying Petersburg from the south and extend their lines to the Appomattox River. The Confederates thwarted the attempt, and the two sides settled into trenches for a nine-month siege.
◆1864 U.S.S. Lexington, Acting Ensign Henry Booby, withstood a surprise Confederate strike on White River Station, Arkansas, and forced the attacking Confederate troops to withdraw.
◆1865 Confederate raider Shenandoah fires last shot of Civil War in Bering Strait.
◆1868 Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.
◆1876 General Alfred Terry sent Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer to the Rosebud and Little Bighorn rivers to search of Indian villages.
◆1884 Navy relief expedition under CDR Winfield S. Schley rescues LT A.W. Greely, USA, and 6 others from Ellesmere Island, where they were marooned for 3 years on Arctic island.
◆1898 ADM Sampson begins amphibious landing near Santiago, Cuba. Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Col. Leonard Wood led the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment, onto the beach at Daiquiri in the Spanish American War.
◆1933 Germany became a one political party country as Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis.
◆1941 OPERATION BARBAROSSA, the German attack on the Soviet Union, begins. Despite the massive preparations spread over many months and the numerous indications Stalin receives from many sources, the Soviet forces are taken almost completely by surprise and lose very heavily in the first encounters.*
◆1942 The first delivery of V-Mail.
◆1942 A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River.
◆1943 Federal troops put down race-related rioting in Detroit that claimed more than 30 lives.
◆1944 President Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights, authorizing a broad package of benefits for World War II veterans.*
◆1944 After a preparatory air raid on Cherbourg, in which over 1000 tons of bombs are dropped, the divisions of the US 7th Corps (part of US 1st Army) begin assaulting the city of Cherbourg. There is heavy German resistance.
◆1944 On Biak, American forces conduct a series of attacks which are believed to clear Japanese resistance in the west but experience renewed Japanese activity during the night. On the mainland, fighting continues near Aitape and Sarmi.
◆1944 On Saipan, forces of the US 5th Amphibious Corps advance. The US 2nd Marine Division captures Mount Tipo Pole and fight for Mount Tapotchau. The US 4th Marine Division progresses east on the Kagman Peninsula.
◆1945 On Okinawa, the battle ends. American forces have lost 12,500 dead and 35,500 wounded.The US navy has had 36 ships sunk and 368 damaged. In the air, the American forces have lost 763 planes. The Japanese losses include 120,000 military and 42,000 civilian dead. For the first time in the war, there are a relatively large number of Japanese prisoners: 10,755. American reports claim the Japanese have lost 7,830 planes.
◆1945 American B-29 Superfortress bombers drop about 3000 tons of bombs on Japanese munitions plants in Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and Okayama.
◆1953 U.S. Air Force Colonel Robert P. Baldwin, commander of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Group, became the 35th ace of the Korean War.
◆1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the first use of the first official Marine Corps Seal.*
◆1962 The Hovercraft was first tested.
◆1971 In a major engagement near the Demilitarized Zone, some 1,500 North Vietnamese attack the 500-man South Vietnamese garrison at Fire Base Fuller.
◆1972 South Vietnam's 21st Division, decimated by repeated attempts to relieve An Loc, is replaced by the 25th Division.
◆1973 Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a record 28 days in space.
◆1989 ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR ENDS: After nearly 15 years of civil war, opposing factions in Angola agree to a cease-fire to end a conflict that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.*
◆2001 The US and Mexico unveiled a new border safety pact with measures to prevent migrants from crossing at deadly transit points and planned to equip US agents with nonlethal weapons.
◆2001 The Philippine government signed a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.