TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
9 October
◆1000 Leif Eriksson "Discovers" America.★
◆1638 Second Battle of Barkam: Poles & Imperialists defeat the Turks.
◆1708 Battle of Liesna: Russians defeat the Swedes.
◆1781 General George Washington commenced a bombardment of the Lord Cornwallis's encircled British forces at Yorktown, Virginia (Battle of Yorktown Revolutionary War). For eight days Lord Cornwallisendured the Americans heavy bombardment and had no choice but to surrender his 9,000 troops. It was considered that Washington had achieved the inconceivable with victory at Yorktown and that the British were defeated.
◆1812 American Lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliot captured two British brigs, the Detroit and Caledonia on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Elliot set the brig Detroit ablaze the next day in retaliation for the British capture seven weeks earlier of the city of Detroit.
◆1822 George Sykes (d.1880), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
◆1835 Texians occupy Goliad.
◆1863 Confederate cavalry raiders returned to Chattanooga having attacked Union General William Rosecrans’ supply and communication lines all around east Tennessee.
◆1864 At the Battle of Tom's Brook the Confederate cavalry that harassed Sheridan's campaign was defeated by Custer and Merrit's cavalry divisions.
◆1867 The Russians formally transferred Alaska to the US. The U.S. had bought Alaska for $7.2 million in gold.
◆1873 LT Charles Belknap calls a meeting at the Naval Academy to establish the U.S. Naval Institute for the purpose of disseminating scientific and professional knowledge throughout the Navy.
◆1895 Battle of Debra Aial: Italians defeat the Abyssinians.
◆1906 Joseph F. Glidden, inventor (barbed wire), died.
◆1914 Germans capture Antwerp, as Belgians & British withdraw.
◆1917 The 8th Marines was activated at Quantico, Virginia. Although the regiment would not see combat in Europe during World War I, the officers and enlisted men of the 8th Marines participated in operations against dissidents in Haiti for over five years during the 1920s. During World War II, the regiment was assigned to the 2d Marine Division and participated in combat operations on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, and earned three Presidential Unit Citations.
◆1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested congressional approval for arming U.S. merchant ships.
◆1942 First three schools for enlisted WAVES open at Stillwater, OK (Yeoman), Bloomington, IN (Storekeepers), and Madison, WI (Radiomen).
◆1942 Guadalcanal: Japanese destroyers land elms 2nd Div.
◆1942 Guadalcanal: Marines encircle Japanese 4th Inf Regt.
◆1945 Anti-submarine Patrol Craft USS PC -590 (Coast Guard -manned) grounded and sank in typhoon off Okinawa.
◆1945 Parade in New York City honors FADM Chester W. Nimitz and 13 other Navy and Marine Corps Medal of Honor winners.
◆1950 Major Eighth Army units assembled along the 38th parallel. Tenth Corps' 1st Marine Division began embarkation at Inchon for sea movement to Wonsan on the East Coast. The 1st Cavalry Division crossed the 38th parallel north of Kaesong and attacked northward toward Pyongyang.
◆1952 Vice Admiral Joseph J. "Jocko" Clark, the last commander of the Navy's 7th Fleet during the Korean War and a Cherokee descendent, became famous for his self-proclaimed "Cherokee Strikes."
◆2001 The US declared air supremacy over Afghanistan. In the first daylight raids since the start of U.S. -led attacks on Afghanistan, jets bombed the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
◆2002 Newly -declassified Pentagon reports acknowledge that the United States used deadly chemical and biological warfare agents during Cold War military tests on American soil and in Britain and Canada from 1962 -1971.