https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2005/06/22/june-22/22 June
1611 – After spending a winter trapped by ice in present-day Hudson Bay, the starving crew of the Discovery mutinies against its captain, English navigator Henry Hudson, and sets him, his teenage son, and seven supporters adrift in a small, open boat. Hudson and the eight others were never seen again. Two years earlier, in 1609, Hudson sailed to the Americas to find a northwest passage to Asia after repeatedly failing in his efforts to find a northeast ocean passage. Exploring the North American coast, he entered the present-day Chesapeake, Delaware, and New York bays, and then became the first European to ascend what is now called the Hudson River. His voyage, which was financed by the Dutch, was the basis of Holland’s later claims to the region. His fourth expedition, financed by adventurers from England, set out from London on April 17, 1610. Sailing back across the Atlantic, Hudson resumed his efforts to find the northwest passage. Between Greenland and Labrador he entered the present-day Hudson Strait and by it reached Hudson Bay. After three months of exploration, the Discovery was caught too far from open sea when winter set in, and in November Hudson’s men were forced to haul it ashore and set up a winter camp. Lacking food or supplies, the expedition greatly suffered in the extreme cold. Many of the crew held Hudson responsible for their misfortune, and on June 22, 1611, with the coming of summer, they mutinied against him. The Discovery later returned to England, and its crew was arrested for the mutiny. Although Henry Hudson was never seen again, his discoveries gave England its claim to the rich Hudson Bay region.
1775 – In the spring of 1775 colonial leaders, long since tired of the constraining yoke of British rule, led their forces into the battle against the crown. But, the American revolutionaries encountered a small problem on their way to the front: they lacked the funds necessary to wage a prolonged war. And so, on this day in 1775, Congress lent a fiscal hand to the Revolution and authorized the issue of some $2 million in bills of credit. Though hardly the colonies’ first dalliance with paper notes–the Massachusetts Bay colony issued its own bills in 1690–the large scale distribution of the Revolutionary currency was fairly new ground for America. Moreover, the bills, known at the time as “Continentals,” notably lacked the then de rigeur rendering of the British king; instead, some of the notes featured likenesses of Revolutionary soldiers and the inscription “The United Colonies.” But, whatever their novelty, the Continentals proved to be a poor economic instrument: backed by nothing more than the promise of “future tax revenues” and prey to rampant inflation, the notes ultimately had little fiscal value. As George Washington noted at the time, “A wagonload of currency will hardly purchase a wagonload of provisions.” Thus, the Continental failed and left the young nation saddled with a hefty war debt. Duly frustrated by the experience with Continental Currency, America resisted the urge to issues new paper notes until the dawn of the Civil War.
1807 – British officers of the H.M.S. Leopard boarded the U.S.S. Chesapeake after she had set sail for the Mediterranean, and demanded the right to search the ship for deserters. Commodore James Barron refused and the British opened fire with broadsides on the unprepared Chesapeake and forced her to surrender. The British provocation led to the War of 1812.
1813 – A British force attempted to take Craney Island, the fort there was one of the key defenses to Norfolk’s inner harbor and was home to the frigate “Constellation”. The attack was disastrous for the British, who lost over two hundred men and were forced to retreat, only to attack Hampton four days later.
1818 – Boarding parties from the Revenue cutter Dallas seized the privateer Young Spartan, her crew, and the privateer’s prize, the Pastora, off Savannah, Georgia. The crew of the Pastora had been set adrift and their fate remained unknown. The New York Evening Post noted that the crew of the privateer had committed offenses “that can only be expiated by making their exits on the gallows.”
1847 – The 1st doughnut with a hole in it was created.
1864 – Union forces attempt to capture a railroad that had been supplying Petersburg from the south and extend their lines to the Appomattox River. The Confederates thwarted the attempt, and the two sides settled into trenches for a nine-month siege. The struggle for Petersburg began on June 15. Union General Ulysses S. Grant spent six weeks fighting his way around Richmond. His adversary, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, had inflicted tremendous casualties on the Army of the Potomac. Most recently, at Cold Harbor, Grant ordered a disastrous attack on Rebel entrenchments and lost 7,000 men. Afterward, Grant swung south to capture the rail center of Petersburg, 23 miles from Richmond. When the troops arrived, they found the Confederates already digging trenches. For four days, Grant tried to break through the lines. On June 18, Union losses were particularly heavy. After pausing to reconsider his tactics, Grant refrained from further frontal assaults. Instead, Grant resumed the flanking movements he had followed throughout the campaign. He extended his left flank on June 21 to cut off the Weldon Railroad, which supplied Petersburg from the south. Part of the Union Second and Sixth Corps moved past the Jerusalem Plank Road, where they ran into Ambrose Powell Hill’s Confederates. Hill’s troops rolled up on the Union flank, inflicting nearly 3,000 casualties and capturing 1,700 prisoners. Hill provided breathing room for Lee’s army, and the armies settled in for a long siege.
1864 – U.S.S. Lexington, Acting Ensign Henry Booby, withstood a surprise Confederate strike on White River Station, Arkansas, and forced the attacking Confederate troops to withdraw.
1865 – Confederate raider Shenandoah fires last shot of Civil War in Bering Strait
1868 – Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.
1876 – General Alfred Terry sent Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer to the Rosebud and Little Bighorn rivers to search of Indian villages.
1884 – Navy relief expedition under CDR Winfield S. Schley rescues LT A.W. Greely, USA, and 6 others from Ellesmere Island, where they were marooned for 3 years on Arctic island.
1898 – ADM Sampson begins amphibious landing near Santiago, Cuba. Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Col. Leonard Wood led the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment, onto the beach at Daiquiri in the Spanish American War.
1933 – Germany became a one political party country as Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis.
1936 – Congress passed an act to define jurisdiction of Coast Guard. In one of of the most sweeping grants of police authority ever written into U.S. law, Congress designated the Coast Guard as the federal agency for “enforcement of laws generally on the high seas and navigable waters of the United States.”
1940 – Port Security responsibilities are undertaken again for the first time since World War I when President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the Espionage Act of 1917. The Coast Guard was to govern anchorage and movement of all vessels in U.S. waters and to protect vessels, harbors, and inland or coastal waterways of the U.S. The Dangerous Cargo Act gave the Coast Guard jurisdiction over ships with high explosives and dangerous cargoes.
1941 – Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union, begins. Despite the massive preparations spread over many months and the numerous indications Stalin receives from many sources, the Soviet forces are taken almost completely by surprise and lose very heavily in the first encounters. The Germans have assembled almost 140 of their own divisions, including 17 Panzer and 13 motorized divisions. These forces are organized in three army groups: Army Group North (Field Marshal Leeb), Army Group Center (Field Marshal Bock) and Army Group South (Field Marshal Rundstedt). Altogether, the Germans deploy over 3,000,000 men, 7100 guns, 3300 tanks, 625,000 horses and 2770 aircraft. The Red Army has 230 divisions (170 of which are in the west, 134 facing the Germans). The Soviet forces are organized into Northwest Front (Kuznetsov), West Front (Pavlov), Southwest Front (Kirpono) and South Front (Tyulenev). They include 24,000 tanks and 8000 aircraft. On the first day of the attack almost everything goes the German way. The attack begins at 0300 hours with advances on the ground and simultaneous air strikes. The Luftwaffe begins its operations very early in order to be over the Soviet bases exactly at zero hour. By noon the Soviet Air Force has lost around 1200 planes. The land battle is equally successful. The panzer spearhead Army Group North advances 40 miles during the day and Army Group Center captures most of the Bug River bridges intact. Army Group South forces based in Hungary and Romania do not attack during the day.
1942 – The first delivery of V-Mail was in 1942.
1942 – A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River.
1943 – Federal troops put down race-related rioting in Detroit that claimed more than 30 lives.
1944 – President Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights, authorizing a broad package of benefits for World War II veterans.
1944 – After a preparatory air raid on Cherbourg, in which over 1000 tons of bombs are dropped, the divisions of the US 7th Corps (part of US 1st Army) begin assaulting the city of Cherbourg. There is heavy German resistance.
1944 – On Biak, American forces conduct a series of attacks which are believed to clear Japanese resistance in the west but experience renewed Japanese activity during the night. On the mainland, fighting continues near Aitape and Sarmi.
1944 – On Saipan, forces of the US 5th Amphibious Corps advance. The US 2nd Marine Division captures Mount Tipo Pole and fight for Mount Tapotchau. The US 4th Marine Division progresses east on the Kagman Peninsula.
1945 – On Okinawa, the battle ends. American forces have lost 12,500 dead and 35,500 wounded. The US navy has had 36 ships sunk and 368 damaged. In the air, the American forces have lost 763 planes. The Japanese losses include 120,000 military and 42,000 civilian dead. For the first time in the war, there are a relatively large number of Japanese prisoners: 10,755. American reports claim the Japanese have lost 7,830 planes.
1945 – American B-29 Superfortress bombers drop about 3000 tons of bombs on Japanese munitions plants in Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and Okayama.
1953 – U.S. Air Force Colonel Robert P. Baldwin, commander of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Group, became the 35th ace of the Korean War.
1954 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the first use of the first official Marine Corps Seal.
1962 – The Hovercraft was 1st tested.
1965 – US planes bomb targets only 80 miles from the Chinese border, the deepest raids into North Vietnam so far.
1970 – President Nixon signed the 26th amendment, a measure lowering the voting age to 18.
1971 – In a major engagement near the Demilitarized Zone, some 1,500 North Vietnamese attack the 500-man South Vietnamese garrison at Fire Base Fuller. Despite U.S. B-52 raids dropping 60 tons of bombs on June 21 and a 1,000-man reinforcement on June 24, the South Vietnamese had to abandon the base since a North Vietnamese bombardment had destroyed 80 percent of their bunkers. In an attempt to clear the surrounding area of enemy mortar and rocket sites, South Vietnamese forces swept the region on June 25. On June 28, a Saigon spokesman announced that 120 South Vietnamese had reoccupied Fire Base Fuller, but would not rebuild the fortifications. Casualty figures were reported at nearly 500 North Vietnamese dead, with 135 wounded. On July 1, fighting again flared up around the base, as 300 communists were pushed back with the help of U.S. and South Vietnamese air power and with 150 additional South Vietnamese troops.
1972 – South Vietnam’s 21st Division, decimated by repeated attempts to relieve An Loc, is replaced by the 25th Division. At the same time, U.S. helicopters flew 18th Division troops to positions south of An Loc to replace badly battered 9th Division troops that had also been trying to get to the city. The 21st Division and attached units had been trying to reach the besieged city since April 9, when the group had been moved from its normal station in the Mekong Delta and ordered to attack up Highway 13 from Lai Khe to open the route to An Loc. The South Vietnamese forces had been locked in a desperate battle with a North Vietnamese division blocking the highway since the very beginning of the siege. As the 21st Division tried to open the road, the defenders inside An Loc fought off repeated attacks by two North Vietnamese divisions that had surrounded the city early in April. This was the southernmost thrust of the North Vietnamese invasion that had begun on March 30; the other main objectives were Quang Tri in the north and Kontum in the Central Highlands. The arrival of the fresh South Vietnamese soldiers would eventually result in the lifting of the siege at An Loc. The 18th Division troops successfully attacked the North Vietnamese forces surrounding the city and most of the communist troops within An Loc had been eliminated by the end of the month. The 25th Division was less successful and the North Vietnamese forces continued to block Route 13 south of the city.
1973 – Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a record 28 days in space.
1977 – Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams introduced Ensign Beverly G. Kelley and Boatswain’s Mate 3/c Debra Lee Wilson during a press conference as two of 14 women who had been assigned to sea duty. “This is the first time in Coast Guard history that women have been sent to sea.” Both women had orders to report to the Morgenthau later that year.
1982 – The first successful hostage rescue at sea occurred when a combined Coast Guard / FBI boarding party deployed from CGC Alert took control of the 890-foot Liberian-flagged motor tanker Ypapanti. The incident began on 16 May 1982 when the Ypapanti anchored off the entrance to Delaware Bay after it was denied entrance to U.S. waters by COTP Philadelphia, due to the lack of required safety equipment aboard. Initially the CGCs Hornbeam, Active and Point Franklin responded. After the situation stabilized, Active and Point Franklin departed while Hornbeam stood by the tanker to monitor the situation and to act as on scene commander; she was relieved on 29 May by Alert. During the next few days the tanker’s crew mutinied and seized control of the tanker from the master in a wage dispute. After a prolonged period of unsuccessful negotiations and threats by the crew to kill various officers and to set fire to the vessel, the Alert went alongside the tanker on 22 June 1982. A senior Coast Guard negotiating team went aboard to present one last wage / repatriation offer to the crew. When this offer was rejected a combined Coast Guard / FBI boarding team went aboard from the Alert and took control of the Ypapanti without injury. The vessel was then returned to the control of the master and 12 loyal crewmen. Twenty-four mutineers were detained on board the Alert and were transferred to the custody of the INS in Cape May.
1989 – After nearly 15 years of civil war, opposing factions in Angola agree to a cease-fire to end a conflict that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The cease-fire also helped to defuse U.S.-Soviet tensions concerning Angola. Angola was a former Portuguese colony that had attained independence in 1975. Even before that date, however, various factions had been jockeying for power. The two most important were the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which was favored by the United States, and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which was supported by the Soviets. Once independence became a reality in November 1975, the two groups began a brutal contest for control, with the Soviet-supported MPLA eventually seizing control of the nation’s capital. UNITA found support from Zaire and South Africa in the form of funds, weapons, and, in the case of South Africa, troops. The United States provided covert financial and arms support to both Zaire and South Africa to assist those nations’ efforts in Angola. The Soviets responded with increasingly heavy support to the MPLA, and Cuba began to airlift troops in to help fight against UNITA. The African nation quickly became a Cold War hotspot. President Ronald Reagan began direct U.S. support of UNITA during his term in office in the 1980s. Angola suffered through a debilitating civil war, with thousands of people killed. Hundreds of thousands more became refugees from the increasingly savage conflict. In 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev set into motion a series of events that would lead to a cease-fire the following year. Gorbachev was desperately seeking to better Soviet relations with the United States and he was facing a Soviet economy that could no longer sustain the expenses of supporting far-flung “wars of national liberation” like in Angola. He therefore announced that the Soviet Union was cutting its aid to both the MPLA and Cuba. Cuba, which depended on the Soviet subsidy to maintain its troops in Angola, made the decision to withdraw, and its forces began to depart in early 1989. South Africa thereupon suspended its aid to UNITA. The United States continued its aid to UNITA, but at a much smaller level. UNITA and the MPLA, exhausted from nearly 15 years of conflict, agreed to talks in 1989. These resulted in a cease-fire in June of that year. It was a short-lived respite. In 1992, national elections resulted in an overwhelming victory for the MPLA, and UNITA went back on the warpath.
1993 – A bomb mailed from Sacramento attributed to the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski maimed Univ. of Calif. San Francisco geneticist Charles Epstein at his home in Tiburon.
1994 – President Clinton announced North Korea had confirmed its willingness to freeze its nuclear program.
1997 – Iran and Iraq opened their border after 17 years and asked the UN for an inspection post there, giving Iraq a 4th exit point for its goods.
2001 – The US and Mexico unveiled a new border safety pact with measures to prevent migrants from crossing at deadly transit points and planned to equip US agents with nonlethal weapons.
2001 – US forces in the Middle East were put on high alert following intelligence reports on possible terrorist attacks.
2001 – The Philippine government signed a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
2002 – A bin Laden spokesman said in audiotaped remarks from Qatar that Osama bin Laden and his No. 2 man are both alive and well and their al-Qaida network is ready to attack new U.S. targets.
2003 – The Belgian government agreed on changes to narrow a war crimes law and prevent complaints against foreign leaders that have provoked vehement criticism from the US.
2003 – In Djibouti an explosion caused by a bomb dropped from a B-52 killed a U.S. Marine and wounded eight U.S. service members during a training exercise.
2003 – Iraq returned to world oil markets with its first crude oil exports since the U.S.-led invasion. A fuel pipeline exploded and caught fire west of Baghdad, a possible act of sabotage that sent flames high into the sky.
2004 – Islamic militants beheaded a South Korean who pleaded in a heart-wrenching videotape that “I don’t want to die” after his government refused to pull its troops from Iraq. Hours later, the United States launched an airstrike in Fallujah.
2004 – North Korea, the US, and four other nations agreed to discuss a freezing of the North’s nuclear program and inspections that would lead to its eventual dismantlement.
2014 – ISIS militants captured two key crossings in Anbar, a day after seizing the border crossing at Al-Qaim, a town in a province which borders Syria. According to analysts, capturing these crossings could aid ISIS in transporting weapons and equipment to different battlefields.
Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
