TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
8 May
◆1307 Battle of Sanquhar: James "the Black" Douglas defeats the English.
◆1373 Battle of Montechiari: Anti-Visconti League defeats the Visconti.
◆1450 Jack Cade's Rebellion begins: Kentish revolt against King Henry VI.
◆1541 HERNANDO DE SOTO: South of present-day Memphis, Tennessee, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River, one of the first European explorers to ever do so.
◆1792 US established a military draft.
◆1792 British Capt. George Vancouver sighted and named Mt. Rainier, Wash.
◆1808 Marine Barracks, Charleston was established under Lt Pinckney and 22 Marines.
◆1824 William Walker, American filibuster, President of Nicaragua (1856-57).
◆1848 Battle of Cornuda: Austrians defeat Veneto-Papal forces.
◆1859 Battle of Casale: Garibaldi defeats the Austrians.
◆1846 MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR: Before the United States formally declared war on Mexico, General Zachary Taylor defeats a superior Mexican force in the Battle of Palo Alto north of the Rio Grande River.
◆1861 Richmond, Va, was named the capital of the Confederacy.
◆1862 General 'Stonewall' Jackson repulsed the Federals at the Battle of McDowell, in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign.
◆1864 BATTLE OF SPOTSYLVANIA: Yankee troops arrive at Spotsylvania Court House to find the Rebels already there.
◆1864 The Atlanta Campaign saw severe fighting at Rocky Face Ridge.
◆1884 Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States (1945-1953), was born near Lamar, Mo.
◆1886 Confederate veteran John S. Pemberton invents Coca Cola.
◆1895 China cedes Taiwan to Japan.
◆1904 U.S. Marines landed in Tangier to protect the Belgian legation.
◆1911 Navy ordered its first airplane, Curtiss A-1, Birthday of Naval Aviation.
◆1942 BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA: Both the Japanese and the American fleets become aware of each others positions due to aerial reconnaissance.
◆1943 Three Japanese destroyers are sunk by the American mines surrounding New Georgia Island.
◆1944 General Eisenhower selects June 5th as D-Day for the Normandy invasion.
◆1945 Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day).
◆1945 On Luzon, the US 145th Infantry Regiment captures the ridge near Guagua, southeast of Mount Pacawagan and blocks a track along the Mariquina river. On Mindanao, units of the US 24th Division establish a bridgehead over the Talomo river, north of Mintal. The US 31st Division clears the Colgan woods, reaching the Maramag airfield. American units land on Samar. On Negros, American forces in the south continue to progress against strong Japanese resistance.
◆1945 On Okinawa, torrential rain restricts military operations. The US 1st Marine Division eliminates several Japanese held cave positions on Nan Hill, with explosives.
◆1950 Chiang Kai-shek asked US for weapons.
◆1951 North Korea charged the U.N. Command with the use of germ warfare.
◆1952 Allied fighter-bombers staged the largest raid of the war on North Korea.
◆1967 Boxer Muhammad Ali was indicted for refusing induction in U.S. Army.
◆1972 President Richard Nixon announces that he has ordered the mining of major North Vietnamese ports, as well as other measures, to prevent the flow of arms and material to the communist forces that had invaded South Vietnam in March.
◆1973 On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) surrender to federal authorities, ending their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890.
◆1979 Radio Shack released TRSDOS 2.3.
◆1980 The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that smallpox had been eradicated.
◆1984 Claiming that its athletes will not be safe from protests and possible physical attacks, the Soviet Union announces that it will not compete in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
◆1985 The largest cocaine seizure by the Coast Guard (to date) was made when Coast Guard units seized the Goza Now with 1,909 pounds of cocaine.
◆1989 Former President Carter, a leader of an international team observing Panama's elections, declared that the armed forces were defrauding the opposition of victory.
◆1991 General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf War, received a hero’s welcome as he addressed Congress.
◆1993 The Muslim-led government of Bosnia-Herzegovina and rebel Bosnian Serbs signed an agreement for a nationwide cease-fire.
◆1999 The Citadel, South Carolina's formerly all-male military school, graduated its first female cadet, Nancy Ruth Mace.
◆2000 In Puerto Rico the US Navy resumed practice bombing on Vieques Island with dummy bombs.
◆2001 China rejected a US plan to repair EP-3 the spy plane and fly it away. China protested the resumption of U.S. surveillance flights off its coast and said it would refuse to let the United States fly out a crippled Navy spy plane.
◆2002 US Sec. of State Rumsfeld said the Pentagon would kill the $11 billion Crusader artillery system.
◆2003 The US Senate unanimously endorsed adding to NATO seven former communist nations: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.