TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
10 October
◆680 Imam Hussein, grandson of prophet Mohammed, was beheaded. He was killed by rival Muslim forces on the Karbala plain in modern day Iraq. He then became a saint to Shiite Muslims.
◆732 The Battle of Tours, France. Islam's westward spread was stopped by the Franks at Poitiers.★
◆881 Arab raiders destroy the Monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno
◆1471 Battle of Brunkeberg, Stockholm.
◆1547 Battle of Pinkie: English defeat the Scots.
◆1573 Spanish capture Tunis.
◆1798 Secretary Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy, sent the first instructions to cutters acting in cooperation with the Navy in support of the Quasi-War with France, via the various collectors of customs.
◆1806 Battle of Saalfeld: French defeat the Prussians.
◆1845 The U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Md., with fifty midshipmen students and seven professors.
◆1877 Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was buried at West Point in New York.
◆1913 Panama Canal was completed when President Woodrow Wilson triggered a blast which exploded the Gamboa Dike by pressing an electric button at the White House in Washington, D.C.
◆1923 First American-built rigid airship, Shenandoah, is christened. It used helium gas instead of hydrogen.
◆1938 Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
◆1941 The destroyer USS Kearney is attacked by a German, submarine. In the attack, ten sailors are killed and scores injured. America suffers its first war casualties in World War II. Pearl Harbor is still seven weeks away.
◆1944 Nearly two hundred of Admiral Halsey's planes struck Naha, Okinawa's capital and principal city, in five separate waves. The city was almost totally devastated. The American war against Japan was coming inexorably closer to the Japanese homeland.
◆1950 In the west, the 1st Cavalry Division's 8th Cavalry Regiment crossed the 38th parallel in the vicinity of Kaesong. The ROK 3rd Division entered Wonsan on the East Coast.
◆1950 A 3d ARS H-5 crew administered, for the first time while a helicopter was in flight, blood plasma to a rescued pilot. The crewmembers received Silver Stars for this action.
◆1954 Ho Chi Minh entered Hanoi after French troops withdraw.
◆1960 Navy assigned responsibility for program management and technical direction of Project SPASUR, the first U.S. universal satellite detection and tracking network.
◆1965 Ronald Reagan spoke at Coalinga Junior College and called for an official declaration of war in Vietnam.
◆1966 Marines launch Operation "Kent," Vietnam. (concluded 15 October)
◆1968 The 1stMarDiv and 1st MAW were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, Da Nang, Vietnam.
◆1975 Israel formally signed the Sinai accord with Egypt.
◆1979 Panama assumed sovereignty over Canal Area.
◆1982 US imposed sanctions against Poland for banning Solidarity trade union.
◆1985 U.S. fighter jets from the USS Saratoga forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the gunmen were taken into custody.
◆1990 The space shuttle "Discovery" landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California, ending a virtually flawless four-day mission.
◆2001 U.S. jets pounded the Afghan capital of Kabul.
◆2012 SGM Basil L. Plumley passed away today.