TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
17 October
◆539 BCE Cyrus the Great of Persia captures Babylon.
◆1346 Battle of Durham: The English defeat the Scots.
◆1651 Battle of Worcester: defeated King Charles II tries to flee to France.
◆1777 General John Burgoyne with British forces of 5,000 men surrendered to General Horatio Gates, commander of the American forces at Schuylerville, NY. In the fall of 1777, the British commander Gen'l. Burgoyne and his men were advancing along the Hudson River. After Burgoyne had retreated to the heights of Saratoga, the Americans stopped and surrounded them. The surrender was a turning point in the American Revolution, demonstrating American determination to gain independence. After the surrender, France sided with the Americans, and other countries began to get involved and align themselves against Britain.
◆1781 Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown.★
◆1813 Battle of Leipzig, Day 2: Austrians, Russians, Prussians, v. Napoleon.
◆1814 Marines and Sailors landed on Grand Terre Island, Louisiana, to punish pirates.★
◆1835 The "Texas Rangers" are formed, to fight Indians and collect "stray cattle" to feed the Republic's army.★
◆1877 Brigadier General Alfred Terry met with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians' return to the United States. Sitting Bull and his followers had fled to Canada after the Little Big Horn. This meeting will fail.
◆1912 First Balkan War: Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia exchange declarations with Turkey.
◆1922 LCDR Virgil C. Griffin in Vought VE-7SF makes first takeoff from U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV-1) anchored in York River, Virginia.
◆1933 Due to rising anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Hitler's Germany, Albert Einstein immigrated to the United States. He made his new home in Princeton, N.J.
◆1941 The U.S. destroyer Kearney DD-432 was damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11 Americans were killed.
◆1941 General Hideki Tojo (1885-1948) became Premier and Minister of War in Japan. When the bellicose war minister and most powerful man in Japan, Army General Hideki Tojo, became prime minister, there no longer was a chance of avoiding war with Britain and the United States.
◆1942 A regiment of the US 32nd Division is airlifted from Port Moresby to Wanigela on the north coast.
◆1943 The last operational German auxiliary cruiser, Michel, is sunk by the American submarine Tarpon off the Japanese coast. The German raider has sunk 17 ships during its cruise.
◆1943 The advancing US 5th Army takes Liberi and Alvignano.
◆1944 US 2nd Corps (part of US 5th Army) continues attacks toward Bologna, Italy.
◆1944 As a diversion for the American attack on Leyte, the British Eastern Fleet sends 2 carriers, 1 battle cruiser and lighter ships on a raid of the Nicobar Islands. Air strikes and shelling are carried out, causing damage.
◆1944 In France, US 7th Army continues its offensive around Luneville and Bruyeres.
◆1944 US Task Group 77.4 (Admiral TF Sprague) continues air strikes on Leyte, Cebu and Mindanao. US Task Group 38.4 (Admiral Davison) arrives with 4 carriers and launches air strikes on Luzon. Also, American minesweeping in Leyte Gulf begin and there are minor landings, by elements of the US Rangers, on the islands of Suluan and Dinagat at the entrance to Leyte Gulf.
◆1945 Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose," was arrested by 3 CIC officers in her Tokyo apartment.
◆1978 President Carter signed a bill restoring U.S. citizenship to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
◆1989 An earthquake registering 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit Northern California, killing 67 people. Coast Guard units and 24 Navy and Military Sealift Command ships rendered assistance in rescue and relief operations.
◆1994 Negotiators for the Angolan government and rebels agreed to a peace treaty to end their 19-year civil war.
◆1997 The US Army used a Miracl (medium infra-red advanced chemical laser developed by TRW) laser beam to hit the MISTI-3 satellite in orbit. The laser test was prohibited by Congress in 1985, but the ban expired in 1995. The test failed to be recorded by sensors on the satellite.
◆2001 Some 100 US land and sea-base planes hit targets that included Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif.
◆2004 US forces battled insurgents around Fallujah.