TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
8 March
◆1126 Accession of King Alfonso of Galicia (1111-1157) as Alfonso VII of Castile and León (1126-1157), later proclaimed Emperor of All the Spains (1135-1157)
◆1604 Duel between master samurai Yoshioka Seijuro and Miyamoto Musashi, who slays his opponent on the first blow.
◆1702 Accession of Queen Anne of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1702-1707), and of Great Britain and Ireland (1707-1714).
◆1722 Battle of Gulnabad: Shah Mahmud of Afghanistan defeats Persian Shah Hussain, capturing him and plunging Persia into anarchy.
◆1772 Battle of Gulnabad: Shah Mahmud of Afghanistan defeats Persian Shah Hussain, capturing him and plunging Persia into anarchy.
◆1782 In Gnadenhutten in the Ohio territory, Pennsylvania militiamen massacre 96 Christian Munsee Delaware Indians in retaliation for raids executed by other tribes.
◆1785 Congress appoints Henry Knox as secretary of war. The post has been vacant for two years since the resignation of General Benjamin Lincoln.
◆1790 George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.
◆1796 Back in the tender days of the nation’s infancy, the Supreme Court handed down an early decision on taxation in the case of Hylton v. United States. The Court, which delivered its decision on this day in 1796, ruled that the carriage tax, the issue at the heart of the case, was an indirect tax. As such, the carriage tax was deemed constitutional, marking the first time in U.S. history that Court had weighed in on the constitutionality of legislation that had been passed by Congress.
◆1801 British drive French from Abukir, Egypt.
◆1813 President Madison names Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin and Delaware Senator James A. Bayard as special peace commissioners to join US minister to Russia John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg at the invitation of Czar Alexander I, who has offered to mediate between Great Britain and the US in the War of 1812. Bayard and Gallatin will arrive in St. Petersburg 21 July.
◆1822 President Monroe sends a special message to Congress proposing US recognition of the new Latin American republics that have recently achieved independence from Spain. Among them are Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Mexico. Henry Clay has been pressing for recognition since 1818, but Monroe delayed until after ratification of the US treaty with Spain and the cession of the formerly Spanish region of Florida to the US.
◆1854 US Commodore Matthew C. Perry landed at Yokohama on his 2nd trip to Japan. Within a month, he concluded a treaty with the Japanese.
◆1861 St. Augustine, Florida, surrendered to Union armies.
◆1862 On the second day of the Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern) in Arkansas, Confederate forces, including some Indian troops, under General Earl Van Dorn surprised Union troops, but the Union troops won the battle. Pea Ridge Natl. Military Park, Arkansas, marked the site where Confederate commanders, Gen. Ben McCulloch and Gen. James McIntosh, were killed.
◆1862 Ironclad C.S.S. Virginia, Captain Buchanan, destroyed wooden blockading ships U.S.S. Cumberland and U.S.S. Congress in Hampton Roads.★
◆1862 Nat Gordon, last pirate, was hanged in NYC for stealing 1,000 slaves.
◆1865 Battle of Kingston, NC (Wilcox’s ridge, Wise’s Forks).
◆1865 The Confederacy adopts a new flag, adding a red band along the fly of the "Stainless Banner."
◆1874 Millard Fillmore (b.1800), the 13th president of the United States (1850-1853), died in Buffalo, N.Y.
◆1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes declared that the United States would have jurisdiction over any canal built across the isthmus of Panama.
◆1896 First Battle of Sebderat: Italians defeat the Sudanese Mahdists.
◆1916 US invaded Cuba for 3rd time. This time “to end corrupt Menocal regime.”
◆1917 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin died, 78, soldier, aviation pioneer.
◆1919 Reports from Paris indicated that 6,000 American men had married French women in the past year.
◆1930 William Howard Taft (72), 27th president of the United States (1909-1913), died in Washington.
◆1934 Edwin Hubble photo showed as many galaxies as Milky Way has stars.
◆1941 The Lend-Lease Bill is passed by the Senate by 60 votes to 13.
◆1942 Japanese troops occupy Rangoon.
◆1942 Netherlands Indies surrender to the Japanese.
◆1943 A change in the standard encoding machine used by the German U-boat fleet creates problems for Allied anti-submarine warfare. A fourth rotor is added to the Engima to ensure secure communications. Allied cryptographers are able to decipher the German communication, after a brief delay.
◆1943 Japanese offensive across the Yangtze, between Ichang and Yoyang.
◆1943 US Ambassador to the USSR, Admiral W.M. Standley, claims that the Soviet leaders are not telling their people about all the aid the US is sending. On March 11, Soviet Ambassador to the US, Maxim Litvinov, thanks the US for its aid.
◆1944 USAAF heavy bombers raid Berlin for a second time. About 10 percent of the force of 580 bombers is lost despite the escort of 800 fighters.
◆1944 Japanese forces attack the American beachhead on Bougainville. The US airfields at Piva are shelled by the Japanese and some of the American bombers are withdrawn. Japanese infantry infiltrate the positions of the US 37th Division. The attacking troops are most from the Japanese 6th Division (General Hyakutake).
◆1944 On New Britain, the attacks of US 1st Marine Division makes progress as does the American advance along the coast from Cape Gloucester.
◆1945 Phyllis Mae Daley received a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She was the first African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.
◆1945 During the night, German forces from the garrisons in the occupied Channel Islands mount a raid on Granville on the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula. One small US warship and 4 merchant ships are sunk. The raiders also free 67 German prisoners of war.
◆1945 American efforts to reinforce the Remagen bridgehead continue. German bombers, including some jets, begin attacks on the bridge but fail to destroy it. To the north, units of the Canadian 2nd Corps (part of Canadian 1st Army) capture Xanten.
◆1945 On Iwo Jima, the forces of US 5th Amphibious Corps continue pushing northward with heavy fire support. Japanese forces are now all within one mile of the north end of the island.
◆1950 Marshall Voroshilov of USSR announced they had developed atomic bomb.
◆1954 The U.S. signed a defense pact with Japan, offering them $100 million in aid within the next three months.
◆1958 Battleship USS Wisconsin (BB-64) is decommissioned, leaving the Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1895.
◆1961 US nuclear submarine Patrick Henry arrived at Scottish naval base of Holy Loch from SC in a record under seas journey of 66 days 22 hrs.
◆1963 Military coup in Syria initiates decades of Baathist dictatorships,
◆1965 The USS Henrico, Union, and Vancouver, carrying the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade under BG Frederick J. Karch, take up stations 4,000 yards off Red Beach Two, north of Da Nang.★
◆1968 A Soviet submarine, code-named K129, sank in the Pacific at a depth of almost 20,000 feet.★
◆1970 The Nixon administration disclosed the deaths of 27 Americans in Laos.
◆1971 Radio Hanoi broadcast Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner.”
◆1975 South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu orders the withdrawal of South Vietnamese forces from the Central Highlands.
◆1977 The U.S. Army announced that they had conducted 239 open-air tests of germ warfare.
◆1982 The United States government issues a public statement accusing the Soviet Union of using poison gas and chemical weapons in its war against rebel forces in Afghanistan.★
◆1983 President Reagan called the USSR an “Evil Empire.”★
◆1999 US warplanes dropped laser-guided bombs on northern and southern Iraq.
◆2005 China unveiled a law authorizing an attack if Taiwan moves toward formal independence, increasing pressure on the self-ruled island while warning other countries not to interfere.