TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
3 November
◆1354 Battle of Modon/Sapienza: Venetian fleet defeats the Genovese off the Pelopnessos.
◆1741 The Augusta County Regiment was organized on this date. Men from this regiment would fight under Lieutenant Colonel George Washington during the French and Indian War (1755-1763); again under Washington during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783); and under General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson during the Civil War, where the regiment earned the nickname “Stonewall Brigade” it still carries today. Its descendant unit, the 116th Infantry, became part of the 29th Infantry Division in 1917 and saw heavy fighting with it in both world wars, including leading the assault wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day. In the War on Terror different battalions of the 116th Infantry, still part of the 29th Division, have served on missions ranging from guarding the perimeter (but not the prisoners) of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to teaching soldier skills and combat tactics to the members of the newly organized Afghan army.
◆1755 Massachusetts offers bounties for Indian scalps: £30 for Warriors, £20 for women & boys.
◆1783 Washington ordered the Continental Army disbanded from its cantonment at New Windsor, NY, where it had remained since defeating Cornwallis in 1781.
◆1793 Stephen Fuller Austin was born. Often referred to as the Father of Texas, for the hundreds of families he brought into this state due to the relatively poor economic conditions in the United States at the time, Stephen F. Austin was very successful in recruiting families to move to Texas. On the death (1821) of his father, Moses Austin, he took over a grant to bring U.S. settlers into Spanish Texas. Under the terms of a special act in 1824 and additional contracts in 1825, 1827, and 1828--all granted by the newly independent Mexican government--the colonizer was responsible for the settlement of more than 1,200 American families in Mexican Texas. In 1835, following a period of imprisonment in Mexico City, Austin urged Texans to join federalists in Mexico in revolt against the centralist dictatorship of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. During the Texas Revolution (1835-36), Austin briefly commanded Texas volunteers and then went to the United States to gain support for the Texan cause. He served as secretary of state of the republic.
◆1794 Thomas Paine was released from a Parisian jail with help from American ambassador James Monroe. He was arrested for having offended the Robespierre faction.
◆1796 John Adams was elected president.
◆1812 Battle of Fiordoroivskoy: Russians defeat the French.
◆1813 American troops destroy the Indian village of Tallushatchee in the Mississippi Valley. US troops under Gen Coffee destroyed an Indian village at Talladega, Ala. The Creeks having assembled at the town of Tallasehatche, thirteen miles from the camp, the commander-in-chief despatched Coffee, now promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, with one thousand men, with one-half of whom he was directed to attack the enemy, and with the other half to scour the country near the Ten Islands, for the purpose of covering his operations. Richard Brown, with a company of Creeks and Cherokees, wearing on their heads distinguishing badges of white feathers and deer's tails, accompanied the expedition. Fording the Coosa at the Fish Dam, four miles above the islands, Coffee advanced to Tallasehatche, surrounded it at the rising of the sun, and was fiercely met by the savages with whoops and the sounding of drums--the prophets being in advance. Attacking the decoy companies they were soon surrounded by the troops, who charged them with great slaughter. After a short but terrible action, eighty-four women and children were made prisoners, while the bodies of one hundred and eighty-six warriors were counted upon the field, where some women also perished.
◆1816 Jubal Anderson Early (d.1891), Lt. General (Confederate Army), was born.★
◆1839 First Opium War: British frigates engage several Chinese junks.
◆1840 A British squadron bombards and captures Acre.
◆1853 USS Constitution seizes suspected slaver H. N. Gambrill.
◆1862 There was a battle between gunboats at Bayou Teche, Louisiana.
◆1868 Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected 18th president.
◆1883 U.S. Supreme Court declared American Indians to be "dependent aliens."
◆1896 Republican William McKinley was elected 25th president.
◆1908 Republican William Howard Taft was elected the 27th president, outpolling William Jennings Bryan.
◆1918 There was a mutiny of the German fleet at Kiel. This was the first act leading to German's capitulation in World War I.
◆1918 III Corps on the right forces a crossing of the Meuse south of Dun-sur-Meuse with the 5th Division forcing the bridgehead.
◆1931 Dirigible USS Los Angeles makes 10 hour flight out of NAS Lakehurst, NJ, carrying 207 persons, establishing a new record for the number of passengers carried into the air by a single craft.
◆1936 President Roosevelt, the 32nd president, was re-elected for second term in a landslide over Republican challenger Alfred M. "Alf" Landon. Landon ran on a “wrong-headed” economic program. Roosevelt received 60.8% of the popular vote and an astounding 98.5% of the Electoral College defeating Republican Alfred Landon, the governor of Kansas. In terms of winning the largest percentage of electoral votes, the presidential election of 1936 was the biggest landslide of the 20th century.
◆1941 The Combined Japanese Fleet receive Top-Secret Order No. 1: In 34 days time, Pearl Harbor is to be bombed, along with Mayala, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines. Relations between the United States and Japan had been deteriorating quickly since Japan's occupation of Indochina in 1940 and the implicit menacing of the Philippines (an American protectorate), with the occupation of the Cam Ranh naval base only eight miles from Manila. American retaliation included the seizing of all Japanese assets in the States and the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping. In September 1941, Roosevelt issued a statement, drafted by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that threatened war between the United States and Japan should the Japanese encroach any further on territory in Southeast Asia or the South Pacific. The Japanese military had long dominated Japanese foreign affairs; although official negotiations between the U.S. secretary of state and his Japanese counterpart to ease tensions were ongoing, Hideki Tojo, the minister of war who would soon be prime minister, had no intention of withdrawing from captured territories. He also construed the American "threat" of war as an ultimatum and prepared to deliver the first blow in a Japanese-American confrontation: the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And so Tokyo delivered the order to all pertinent Fleet commanders, that not only the United States-and its protectorate the Philippines--but British and Dutch colonies in the Pacific were to be attacked. War was going to be declared on the West.
◆1942 On Guadalcanal, the expected Japanese landing at Koli Point occurs with a force of 1500 landing to the east of the point. The American forces engage, but soon must pull back. The Americans then halt their advances to the west, to supply reinforcements against the landings.
◆1943 Battleship Oklahoma, sunk at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, is refloated.
◆1943 Elements of US 5th Army capture Sessa Aurunca, Italy.
◆1943 The US 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion withdraws from Choiseul.
◆1944 The US 1st Army captures Schmidt, near Aachen.
◆1950 The 25th Infantry Division was driven back from the Yalu area. Eighth Army fell back to defend the vital Chongchon Bridgehead.
◆1956 USS Chilton (APA-38), USS Thuban (AKA-19), and USS Fort Snelling (LSD-30) evacuate more than 1,500 U.S. and foreign nationals from Egypt and Israel because of the fighting.
◆1957 The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space--a dog name Laika--aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft.
◆1959 Pres. Eisenhower laid the cornerstone for the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Va.
◆1964 President Johnson soundly defeated Republican challenger Barry Goldwater to win a White House term as the 36th president.
◆1967 In some of the heaviest fighting seen in the Central Highlands area, heavy casualties are sustained by both sides in bloody battles around Dak To, about 280 miles north of Saigon near the Cambodian border.★
◆1979 63 Americans were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Teheran, Iran.★
◆1986 The Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.
◆1990 Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third embarked on a fast-paced tour of seven countries to “lay the foundation” for possible military action against Iraq.
◆1992 (William Jefferson) Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, was elected as the 42nd president of the United States, defeating President Bush who won 38% of the popular vote.
◆1994 The space shuttle Atlantis blasted into orbit on a mission to survey Earth's ozone layer.