TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
19 October
◆202 BCE Battle of Zama: Scipio defeats Hannibal, effectively ending the Second Punic War.
◆439 Genseric's Vandals take Carthage from the Romans.
◆1448 Second Battle of Kosovo: Ottomans defeat the Hungarians.
◆1453 French capture Bordeaux from the English: The Hundred Years' War ends.
◆1540 Battle of Mobile: de Soto's Spaniards defeat the Choctaw.
◆1739 England declared war on Spain over borderlines in Florida. The War is known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear because a Member of Parliament waved a dried ear and demanded revenge for alleged mistreatment of British sailors. British seaman Robert Jenkins had his ear amputated following a 1731 barroom brawl with a Spanish Customs guard in Havana and saved the ear in his sea chest.
◆1765 The Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York, drew up a declaration of rights and liberties.
◆1781 Major General Lord Charles Cornwallis, surrounded at Yorktown, Va., by American and French regiments numbering 17,600 men, surrendered to George Washington and Count de Rochambeau. Cornwallis surrendered 7,157 troops, including sick and wounded, and 840 sailors, along with 244 artillery pieces. Losses in this battle had been light on both sides. Cornwallis sent Brig. Gen. Charles O'Hara to surrender his sword. At Washington's behest, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln accepted it. Washington himself is seen in the right background of “The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown” by artist John Trumbull. After conducting an indecisive foray into Virginia, Lt. Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis retired to Yorktown on August 2, 1781. On August 16, General Washington and Maj. Gen. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, began marching their Continental and French armies from New York to Virginia. The arrival of a French fleet, and its victory over a British fleet in Chesapeake Bay, sealed the trap.
◆1800 Marines participated in a tribute to the Dey of Algiers.
◆1812 Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow.
◆1813 Battle of Leipzig, Day 4: Napoleon routed by the Austrians, Russians, & Prussians.
◆1818 US and Chickasaw Indians signed a treaty. Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby represented American interests. The Chickasaws ceded their claims to lands in Tennessee.
◆1842 The Capture of Monterey. After hearing false news that war had broken out between the United States and Mexico, the commander of the Pacific Squadron Thomas ap Catesby Jones sailed from Lima, Peru with three warships to Monterey, California.★
◆1843 CAPT Robert Stockton in Princeton, the first screw propelled naval steamer, challenges British merchant ship Great Western to a race off New York, which Princeton won easily.
◆1848 John "The Pathfinder" Fremont moved out from near Westport, Missouri, on his fourth Western expedition--a failed attempt to open a trail across the Rocky Mountains along the 38th parallel.
◆1864 Philip Sheridan and his gelding horse Rienzi made their most famous ride to repulse an attack led by Lt. General Jubal A. Early at Cedar Creek, Virginia. Sheridan had been on his way back from a strategy session in Washington, D.C. when Early attacked. The Union scored a narrow victory which helped it secure the Shenandoah Valley. Thomas Buchanan Read later wrote a poem, “Sheridan‘s Ride,” and created a painting immortalizing the Union general and his steed. 1864 - The northernmost action of the American Civil War took place in the Vermont town of St. Albans. Some 25 escaped Confederate POWs led by Kentuckian Bennett Young (21) raided the town near the Canadian border with the intent of robbing three banks and burning the town. While they managed to leave town and hide out in Canada with more than $200,000, their attempts to burn down the town failed. Most of the raiders were captured and imprisoned in Canada and later released after a court ruled the robberies in St. Albans were acts of war.
◆1901 Arleigh A. Burke, admiral (WW II, Solomon Islands, Navy Cross), was born in Colorado.
◆1915 US recognized General Venustiano Carranza (opposing Pancho Villa) as the president of Mexico, and imposed an embargo on the shipment of arms to all Mexican territories except those controlled by Carranza.
◆1915 Establishment of Submarine Base at New London, Connecticut. In 1868, Connecticut gave the Navy land and, in 1872, two brick buildings and a "T" shaped pier were built and officially declared a Navy Yard. Today the Naval Submarine Base New London (SUBASE NLON), located on the east side of Thames River in Groton, CT, proudly claims its motto to be "The First and Finest."
◆1917 The first doughnut was fried by Salvation Army (who would found the United Service Organization) volunteer women for American troops in France during World War I.
◆1919 The US Distinguished Service Medal was awarded to a woman for the 1st time. Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, the first Director of the WAC, was the first woman to receive The U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.
◆1926 John C. Garand patented a semi-automatic rifle.★
◆1939 Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering began plundering art treasures throughout Nazi occupied areas.
◆1942 The Japanese submarine I-36 launched a floatplane for a reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor. The pilot and crew reported on the ships in the harbor, after which the aircraft was lost at sea.
◆1942 The War Department agrees to provide equipment for another thirty Chinese divisions.★★
◆1943 German forces defending Dragoni, Italy withdraw before a scheduled attack by elements of the US 5th Army begins.
◆1944 The American escort carriers of TG77.4 continue air strikes on Leyte. The US 15th Air Forces raids targets on Mindanao. The Japanese air forces suffer substantial losses in the ongoing American operations. Remaining aircraft are concentrated on Luzon in 1st Air Fleet (Admiral Onishi).
◆1944 American attacks on Aachen continue. Farther south, forces of the US 7th Army capture Bruyeres. Nearby, other units prepare to assault St. Die.
◆1950 Nine Chinese armies, totaling over 300,000 men, began to cross the Yalu River. By traveling at night and hiding during the day, the largely foot-mobile Communist Chinese Forces avoided detection by U.N. aerial surveillance.★★
◆1950 Pyongyang, the capital of the People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), fell to the ROK 1st Infantry Division and the US 1st Cavalry Division.
◆1951 President Truman signed an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.
◆1960 The United States imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.
◆1968 Operation Maui Peak, a combined regimental-sized operation which began on 6 October, ended 11 miles northwest of An Hoa, Vietnam. More than 300 enemy were killed in the 13-day operation.
◆1993 Two US Blackhawk helicopters are fired upon with RPG's over Mogadishu.
◆1999 A 2-year Rand analysis concluded that the drug pyridostigmine bromide could not be excluded as a contributor to Gulf War syndrome. The drug was an experimental nerve gas antidote given to as many as 300,000 US troops during the Persian Gulf War.
◆2001 US Special Forces attacked a Taliban stronghold in Kandahar in the 1st known ground action involving US troops.