TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
25 March
◆1199 King Richard I "Lionheart" mortally wounded by a crossbow bolt at Chalus.
◆1306 Robert the Bruce is crowned King of Scots (1306?-1329).
◆1584 Sir Walter Raleigh, English explorer, courtier, and writer, renewed Humphrey Gilbert’s patent to explore North America. He went on to settle the Virginia colony on Roanoke Island, naming it after the virgin queen.
◆1609 Henry Hudson embarked on an exploration for Dutch East India Co.
◆1655 Puritans jailed Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.
◆1774 English Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill.
◆1776 The Continental Congress authorized a medal for General George Washington.
◆1799 First Battle of Stockach: Austrians defeat the French.
◆1799 French capture Florence.
◆1804 The Secretary of the Navy approved the first formal uniform of the Marine Corps.
◆1809 Battle of Medellin: The French defeat the Spanish.
◆1813 USS Essex takes Neryeda, first capture by U.S. Navy in Pacific.★
◆1836 Texians win a small skirmish at Rocky Creek.
◆1843 Seventeen Texans, who picked black beans from a jar otherwise filled with white beans, were executed by a Mexican firing squad.★
◆1856 A.E. Burnside patented the Burnside carbine.
◆1862 C.S.S. Pamlico, Lieutenant William G. Dozier, and C.S.S. Oregon, Acting Master Abraham L. Myers, engaged U.S.S. New London, Lieutenant Read, at Pass Christian, Mississippi.
◆1863 The first Army Medal of Honor is presented to PVT Jacob Parrott of the 33rd Ohio Infantry. Four others are so honored this day as well.★
◆1865 Battle of Bluff Spring, FL.
◆1879 Little Wolf, often called “the greatest of the fighting Cheyenne,” surrenders to his friend Lieutenant W. P. Clark.★
◆1901 Cubans are beginning to fear annexation.
◆1905 Rebel battle flags that were captured during the war were returned to the South.
◆1928 James A. Lovell Jr, USN, astronaut (Gemini 7, 12, Apollo 8, 13), was born in Cleveland, Oh.
◆1936 Britain, the U.S. and France signed a naval accord in London.
◆1940 The U.S. agreed to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
◆1943 By nightfall the US 1st Armored Division has nearly reached the Tebaga Gap. Von Arnim is worried about this attack and the threat from US troops at Makanssy, and therefore begins to pull his German and Italian infantry out of the Mareth Line.
◆1944 On Manus, a final drive by US forces eliminates most of the remaining Japanese forces. On Los Negros, Japanese resistance has been reduced to scattered groups and isolated individuals.
◆1944 Japanese patrols sight large American naval forces heading for Palau Island.
◆1945 US 1st Army units, principally from US 3rd Corps, begin to break out of the Remagen bridgehead. The US 8th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) begins to cross the Rhine River near Boppard. To the south, Darmstadt is taken by US 12th Corps units who crossed at Nierstein. Other units have advanced farther east to the Main near Hanau and Aschaffenburg.
◆1945 A 300-man Japanese force launched a vicious final counterattack in the vicinity of Airfield Number 2. Army pilots, Seabees and Marines of the 5th Pioneer Battalion and 28th Marines fought the fanatical Japanese force.★
◆1945 US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) conduct air raids on Okinawa. US TF52 (Admiral Dungin), with 17 escort carriers begin air raids on the same targets.★
◆1945 American B-24 Liberator bombers of the US 5th Air Force destroy a hydroelectric power station on the island of Formosa (Taiwan).
◆1945 Bombers of the US 8th Air Force bomb Hamburg with the nominal objective of striking the underground oil stores.
◆1952 The U.S., Britain, and France rejected the Soviet proposal for an armed, reunified, neutral Germany.
◆1952 Three hundred and seven U.N. fighter-bombers dropped 260 tons of bombs on the rail line between Chongju and Sinanju.
◆1953 The USS Missouri fired on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
◆1955 E. Germany was granted full sovereignty by occupying power, USSR.
◆1960 A guided missile, a Regulus I, was launched from a nuclear powered submarine, the USS Halibut, for the first time.★
◆1975 Hue was lost and Da Nang was endangered. The U.S. ordered a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.
◆1981 The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador was damaged when gunmen attacked, firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.
◆1986 President Ronald Reagan ordered emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters took Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.
◆1986 Supreme Court ruled that the Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes.
◆1994 At the end of a largely unsuccessful 15-month mission, the last U.S. troops depart Somalia, leaving 20,000 U.N. troops behind to keep the peace and facilitate “nation building” in the divided country.
◆1996 An 81-day standoff by the anti-government Freemen. A group of 18 people including 3 children, who call themselves the Freeman, shut themselves up on a 960 acre farm near Jordan, Montana. Many of them are wanted on state and federal charges that include writing bad checks and threatening a federal judge. Ongoing negotiations have proved fruitless and the FBI ordered in 3 armored vehicles and a helicopter.
◆1996 China halted its 18-day intimidating naval exercises around Taiwan led by the new guided-missile destroyer Harbin.
◆1996 France, Britain and the US signed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons from the South Pacific.
◆1998 Russia promised to support a comprehensive arms embargo against Yugoslavia, but did not support new sanctions urged by the US.
◆1999 NATO forces struck Serbian air defenses and other sites for a second night as Serb forces stepped up their efforts to crush resistance in Kosovo. The village of Goden was burned by Serb forces and 174 residents were forced to leave. 20 men were kept back and presumed killed.
◆2003 The US Navy brought in 2 specially trained bottle-nosed Atlantic dolphins to help ferret out mines in the approaches of the port of Umm Qasr.
◆2003 In the 7th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US aircraft dropped more than 2,000 precision-guided bombs on Iraq since the war’s start.★
◆2003 Six satellite jamming devices, which Iraq was using to try to thwart American precision guided weapons, were destroyed in the last 2 nights.
◆2003 Some 150-500 Iraqi fighters were killed in fighting east of Najaf.
◆2004 The United States used its veto power to quash a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for killing Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin in a missile strike.
◆2005 Washington announced it would sell F-16 fighters to Pakistan.