TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
10 May
◆1307 Battle of Loudon Hill: Robert the Bruce defeats the Earl of Pembroke.
◆1318 Battle of Dyset o'Dea: The Irish defeat the English.
◆1497 Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci left for his first voyage to New World.
◆1655 England captures Jamaica from Spain, gaining its first colony.
◆1676 Bacon's Rebellion begins in Virginia.
◆1772 British Parliament passed the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the colonies.
◆1773 To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passed the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.
◆1775 The Second Continental Congress convened in Pennsylvania and named George Washington as supreme commander.
◆1775 FORT TICONDEROGA CAPTURED.
◆1796 Battle of Lodi: Bonaparte defeats the Austrians.
◆1797 The 1st American Navy ship, the "United States," was launched.
◆1800 USS Constitution captures Letter of Marque Sandwich.
◆1823 The 1st steamboat to navigate the Mississippi River arrived at Ft. Snelling (between St. Paul and Minneapolis).
◆1845 During a celebrated round-the-world tour in 1844-46, the USS Constitution dropped anchor in the bay outside of Tourane, Cochin China (Da Nang, Vietnam). While there, an imprisoned French missionary requested the assistance of the ship’s captain, “Mad Jack” Percival. The Americans attempted to negotiate with the Cochin Chinese, to no avail. Frustrated, they set sail from Cochin and continued on their course on May 26 without further word about or from the missionary, who was eventually retrieved by his own countrymen.
◆1861 The border state of Missouri was an integral part of the violent tug-of-war over the secession issue.
◆1862 Confederate River Defense Fleet C.S.S. General Bragg, General Sumter, General Sterling Price, General Earl Van Dorn, General M. Jeff Thompson, General Lovell, General Beauregard, and Little Rebel--made a spirited attack on Union gunboats and mortar flotilla at Plum Point Bend, Tennessee.
◆1862 Norfolk Navy Yard set afire before being evacuated by Confederate forces in a general withdrawal up the peninsula to defend Richmond. Union troops under Major General Wool crossed Hampton Roads from Fort Monroe, landed at Ocean View, and captured Norfolk.
◆1862 Pensacola reoccupied by Union Army and Navy forces. Military installations in the area, includ-ing the Navy Yard, Forts Barrancas and McRee, C.S.S. Fulton, and an ironclad building on the Escambia River, were destroyed by the Confederates the preceding day before withdrawing.
◆1863 “STONEWALL” JACKSON DIES.
◆1864 Battles at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia.
◆1869 In a remote corner of Utah, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads and makes transcontinental railroad service possible for the first time in U.S. history.
◆1880 War of the Pacific: Chilean fleet bombards Callao, Peru.
◆1922 The 1,000th Rickenbacker car was produced. Named after the company co-founder, American World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, the Rickenbacker Car Company took off in 1922.
◆1933 The Nazis staged massive public book burnings at Opernplatz in Berlin, Germany. Some 40,000 people watched or took part. In the great Nazi book-burning frenzy Freud’s work went up in flames, with the declaration: "Down with the soul-devouring exaggeration of instinctive life, up with the nobility of the human soul!" Also burned were books by "un-German" writers such as: Marx, Brecht, Bloch, Hemingway, Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.
◆1933 Chaco War: Paraguay declares war on Bolivia.
◆1940 GERMAN BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST.
◆1942 In the Philippines, American General Sharp commanding the few remaining resisting American forces issues orders of surrender. Some American troops continue with guerilla actions for the next several weeks.
◆1943 The last organized Axis resistance in Tunisia is eliminated. Large scale surrenders, of Axis troops, begin.
◆1945 Allies captured Rangoon from the Japanese.
◆1945 On Luzon, the advance of US 43rd Division, part of US 11th Corps, loses momentum. On Mindanao, part of the US 40th Division lands on the coast of Macalajar Bay, in the north of the island. The naval support group is commanded by Rear-Admiral Struble. The landing is successful. Filipino guerrillas provide additional support and the beachhead is rapidly consolidated and extended. Some elements advance some 5 miles to the southeast and link up with units of the US 31st Division. There is heavy fighting between the American and Japanese forces already present on the island. Units of the US 19th Division begin to eliminate a number of Japanese pockets of resistance around Davao.
◆1945 The 22d Marines, 6th Marine Division, executed a pre-dawn attack south across the Asa River Estuary and seized a bridgehead from which to continue the attack toward Naha, the capital of Okinawa. The bridgehead is about 1 mile wide and 400 yards deep. During the night a Bailey bridge is built to allow tanks and artillery to cross the river. The US 1st Marine Division makes slight progress towards Shuri, facing heavy Japanese opposition. At sea, Japanese Kamikaze strikes hit 1 American destroyer and 1 mine layer.
◆1945 The forces of the Soviet 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts join up as they reach Klagenfurt and Linz in Austria. They establish contact with American forces.
◆1945 The government announces plans to withdraw 3.1 million American troops from Europe.
◆1949 First shipboard launching of LARK, guided missile by USS Norton Sound.
◆1951 The Battle of Bunker Hill began with action by the 38th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division.
◆1960 USS Triton (SSRN-586) completes submerged circumnavigation of world in 84 days following many of the routes taken by Magellan and cruising 46,000 miles.
◆1969 ATTACK ON HAMBURGER HILL BEGINS.
◆1972 President Richard Nixon's decision to mine North Vietnamese harbors is condemned by the Soviet Union, China, and their Eastern European allies, and receives only lukewarm support from Western Europe.
◆1984 The International Court of Justice said the U.S. should halt any actions to blockade Nicaragua's ports. The U.S. had already said it would not recognize World Court jurisdiction on this issue.
◆1999 The US approved the export of 2 Motorola Iridium satellites to China.
◆1999 NATO announced that it would begin launching strikes from Turkey and Hungary in addition to current launch sites in Western Europe, the US and carriers in the Adriatic.