June 3 : This Day in U.S. Military History

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3 June
1539 – Hernando De Soto claimed Florida for Spain.
 1621 – The Dutch West India Company received a charter for New Netherlands. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod, while the more limited settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
 1770 – Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo was founded at Monterey along with the Presidio de Monterey.
 1781 – Jack Jouett begins his midnight ride to warn Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of an impending raid by Banastre Tarleton. John “Jack” Jouett, Jr. (December 7, 1754 – March 1, 1822) was a politician and a hero of the American Revolution, known as the “Paul Revere of the South” for his late night ride to warn Thomas Jefferson, then the Governor of Virginia, and the Virginia legislature of coming British cavalry who had been sent to capture them. Jouett was also the father of Matthew Harris Jouett, a famous painter from Kentucky.
 1785 – Order to sell last ship remaining in Continental Navy, frigate Alliance. No other Navy were ships authorized until 1794.
 1800 – John Adams, the second president of the United States, becomes the first president to reside in Washington, D.C., when he takes up residence at Union Tavern in Georgetown. The city of Washington was created to replace Philadelphia as the nation’s capital because of its geographical position in the center of the existing new republic. The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land around the Potomac River to form the District of Columbia, and work began on Washington in 1791. French architect Charles L’Enfant designed the city’s radical layout, full of dozens of circles, crisscross avenues, and plentiful parks. In 1792, work began on the neoclassical White House building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue under the guidance of Irish-American architect James Hoban, whose White House design was influenced by Leinster House in Dublin and by a building sketch in James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture. In the next year, Benjamin Latrobe began construction on the other principal government building, the U.S. Capitol. On June 3, 1800, President Adams moved to a temporary residence in the new capital as construction was completed on the executive mansion. On November 1, the president was welcomed into the White House. The next day, Adams wrote to his wife about their new home: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise men ever rule under this roof!” Soon after, Abigail Adams arrived at the White House, and on November 17 the U.S. Congress convened for the first time at the U.S. Capitol. During the War of 1812, both buildings were set on fire in 1814 by British soldiers in retaliation for the burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. troops. Although a torrential downpour saved the still uncompleted Capitol building, the White House was burned to the ground. The mansion was subsequently rebuilt and enlarged under the direction of James Hoban, who added east and west terraces to the main building along with a semicircular south portico and a colonnaded north portico. Work was completed on the White House in the 1820s and its has remained largely unchanged since.
 1808 – Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederacy (1861-1865), was born in Christian County, Ky. He was imprisoned and indicted for treason, but the case was dropped.
 1861 – In the first Civil War land battle, Union forces defeated Confederates at Philippi, in Western Virginia.
 1863 – Gen. Lee, with 75,000 Confederates, launched a second invasion of the North. Lee led his troops into Maryland and then Pennsylvania, to meet the Army of the Potomac again, this time around a small town called Gettysburg.
 1864 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant makes what he later recognizes to be his greatest mistake by ordering a frontal assault on entrenched Confederates at Cold Harbor. The result was some 7,000 Union casualties in less than an hour of fighting. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had already inflicted frightful losses upon each other as they wheeled along an arc around Richmond—from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania and numerous smaller battle sites—the previous month. On May 30, Lee and Grant collided at Bethesda Church. The next day, the advance units of the armies arrived at the strategic crossroads of Cold Harbor, just 10 miles from Richmond, where a Yankee attack seized the intersection. Sensing that there was a chance to destroy Lee at the gates of Richmond, Grant prepared for a major assault along the entire Confederate front on June 2. But when Winfield Hancock’s Union corps did not arrive on schedule, the operation was postponed until the following day. The delay was tragic for the Union, because it gave Lee’s troops time to entrench. Perhaps frustrated with the protracted pursuit of Lee’s army, Grant gave the order to attack on June 3—a decision that resulted in an unmitigated disaster. The Yankees met murderous fire, and were only able to reach the Confederate trenches in a few places. The 7,000 Union casualties, compared to only 1,500 for the Confederates, were all lost in under an hour. Grant pulled out of Cold Harbor nine days later and continued to try to flank Lee’s army. The next stop was Petersburg, south of Richmond, where a nine-month siege ensued. There would be no more attacks on the scale of Cold Harbor.
 1864 – A Confederate boat expedition of some 130 officers and men under the command of Lieutenant Thomas P. Pelot, CSN, surprised and captured U.S.S. Water Witch, Lieutenant Commander Austin Pendergrast, in an early morning raid off Ossabaw Island, Georgia. In pitch darkness at 2 o’clock In the morning, Pelot silently guided his party to the anchored blockaders’ and was within 50 yards of her when discovered. Before the Union sailors could man their stations, the Confederates had boarded Water Witch and a wild hand-to-hand melee ensued. “The fight,” Rear Admiral Dahlgren recorded in his diary after learning of the incident, “was hard, but brief.” Though the Southerners overwhelmed the defenders, Pelot and five others were killed and 17 were wounded in taking the prize. Lieutenant Joseph Price, who assumed command of the expedition when Pelot fell, said of his comrade: “In his death the country has lost a brave and gallant officer, and society one of her highest ornaments.” Water Witch, a 380-ton sidewheeler, was taken into the Vernon River and moored above the obstructions guarding Savannah. Secretary Mallory wrote: “The plan and gallant execution of the enterprise reflect great credit upon all who were associated with it, and upon the service which they adorn. The fall of Lieutenant Pelot and his gallant associates in the moment of victory, and the suffering of his companions wounded, sadden the feelings of patriotic pleasure with which this brilliant achievement is everywhere received.”
 1866 – The Fenians are driven out of Fort Erie, Ontario, into the United States.
 1889 – The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles (23 km) between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.
 1898 – Collier Merrimac sunk in channel leading to Santiago, Cuba in unsuccessful attempt to trap Spanish fleet. The crew was captured and later received the Medal of Honor.
 1916 – The National Defense Act of 1916 is signed into law. One of the most important pieces of Guard legislation in the nation’s history, it greatly increased federal supervision of, as well as federal pay for, the National Guard. The law gave the federal government more control over what units the states could raise and how they would be equipped and trained. Most importantly for Guardsmen, it authorized federal pay for 48 days of armory drill a year, as well as for 15 days of annual training (previously the federal government paid for five days of summer camp, and nothing for drills). It established a separate Militia Bureau (re-named the National Guard Bureau in 1933) to oversee federal spending on the Guard. And it settled the issue of how to employ the National Guard outside the United States (where they were limited by the Constitution in their service as militia) by stating that, in the event of an emergency, Congress would draft the National Guard into federal service. It was by this means that the National Guard was sent to fight in World War I.
 1918 – The US 3rd Division under General J.T. Dickman goes into action against the German troops threatening Chateau-Thierry on the Marne River. The division is able to prevent the German assault troops, who are part of the continuing operations code named Bluecher and Yorck, from crossing the Marne. The 3rd Division counterattacked on the 4th with French support forcing the Germans back across the Marne at Jualgonne. These are the actions that earn the division it’s nickname, Rock of the Marne.
 1918 – The 4th Marine Brigade fought at Les Mares Farm, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, France.
 1940 – Last British and French troops leave Dunkirk. During the day the German attacks around Dunkirk continue. The perimeter contracts, despite a brave counterattack, and German forces reach to within two miles of the harbor. The British and French naval authorities are led to believe that there are only about 30,000 soldiers left in the beachhead and plan the night’s operations accordingly. In the course of the night 26,175 men are evacuated but as the rearguard are marching down to the ships an enormous crowd of French stragglers begins to appear out of cellars and other hiding places. When the last ship leaves at 0340 hours on June 4th there are still 40,000 men left for the Germans to capture.
 1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order making 2,100 US Coast Guard officers and men available to man four transports, USS Leonard Wood, Hunter Liggett, Joseph T. Dickman, and Wakefield along with 22 other ships manned by US Navy personnel.
 1942 – Japan begins the Aleutian Islands Campaign by bombing Unalaska Island.
 1942 – The Midway Invasion Group and their naval support (Admiral Kondo) are discovered by air reconnaissance from Midway. A group of American B-17 Flying Fortresses are launched on an unsuccessful attack of the Japanese forces.
 1942 – In response to the surprise B-25 bomber attacks on Japan staged by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Dolittle in April 1942, the Japanese decided to capture Midway Island 1,000 miles northwest of Hawaii as a staging base to attack Hawaii itself. As part of their plan they deployed a small diversionary force to take several islands in the Aleutian’s chain of Alaska. Recently arrived as part of the garrison at the newly developed outpost of Dutch Harbor was Arkansas’ 206th Coast Artillery Regiment (Anti-Aircraft). The unit was armed with obsolete 3-inch anti-aircraft guns and water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns. The morning of June 3rd found thick fog lying off the Alaskan coast. The Japanese launched a surprise aerial attack from two aircraft carriers, catching the defenders off-guard. However, within a few minutes the men of the 206th were in action, shooting down one enemy plane and putting up such a heavy rate of fire that Japanese pilots missed their targets while trying to dodge the Arkansan’s barrage. The Japanese attacked again the next day, causing some casualties but failing to put the harbor out of action. This was their last attack. The 206th remained as part of the garrison until it was reassigned to the European Theater in 1944.
 1943 – The United Nations Food Conference in Hot Springs, Virginia, is concluded. A number of resolutions are produced calling for fairer distribution of resources in the postwar world. United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration formed.
 1943 – In Los Angeles, California, white U.S. Navy sailors and Marines clash for a second time with Latino youths in the Zoot Suit Riots. About eleven sailors got off a bus and started walking along Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles. At some point they ran into a group of young Mexicans dressed in zoot suits and got in a verbal argument. The sailors stated that they were jumped and beaten by this gang of zoot suiters. The Los Angeles Police Department responded to the incident, many of them off-duty officers calling themselves the Vengeance Squad, who went to the scene “seeking to clean up Main Street from what they viewed as the loathsome influence of pachuco gangs.”
 1944 – Forces of the US 5th Army continue advancing toward Rome. US 6th Corps captures Albano and Frascati. The US 2nd Corps and the French Expeditionary Corps advance along Route 6. To the southeast, the Canadian 1st Corps (now part of British 8th Army) captures Anagni. German forces withdraw from Rome, respecting its status as an “open city” in return for a temporary truce with Italian partisans.
 1944 – Japanese forces make an unsuccessful attempt to ship reinforcements to the garrison on Biak Island. US forces on Biak advance against heavy resistance.
 1945 – Captured maps of German minefields are distributed to all Allied governments, in Europe, by SHAEF. These maps are from the collection of approximately 4 tons of such maps captured by US 7th Army in Bavaria.
 1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese forces are isolated in the Oroku and Chinen peninsula.
 1945 – On Luzon, the US 37th Division overcomes weak Japanese resistance to advance about 6 miles north of Santa Fe.
 1946 – Intl. Military Tribunal opened in Tokyo against 28 accused Japanese war criminals.
 1949 – Wesley Anthony Brown became the 1st negro to graduate from US Naval Academy.
 1952 – A rebellion by North Korean prisoners in the Koje-do POW camp in South Korea was put down by American troops. General Boatner used infantrymen supported by tanks to regain control of the Koje-do compounds, dragging communist leader Col. Lee out of the compound by the seat of his pants. 31 prisoners were killed and scores wounded, but order was finally restored.
 1953 – At Panmunjom, the prisoner of war question was resolved and the principle of voluntary repatriation accepted.
 1964 – In a news conference, President Johnson reasserts the US commitment to defend Vietnam but says he knows of no plans to extend the war into North Vietnam.
 1964 – The US and Cambodia agree on a proposal to form a three-nation commission to visit the Cambodian border within 45 days.
 1965 – One hundred and 20 miles above the earth, Major Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun, White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes. As a space walker, White had been preceded by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov, who on March 18, 1965, was the first man ever to walk in space. Implemented at the height of the space race, NASA’s Gemini program was the least famous of the three U.S.-manned space programs conducted during the 1960s. However, as an extension of Project Mercury, which put the first American in space in 1961, Gemini laid the groundwork for the more dramatic Apollo lunar missions, which began in 1968. The Gemini space flights were the first to involve multiple crews, and the extended duration of the missions provided valuable information about the biological effects of longer-term space travel. When the Gemini program ended in 1966, U.S. astronauts had also perfected rendezvous and docking maneuvers with other orbiting vehicles, a skill that would be essential during the three-stage Apollo moon missions.
 1966 – Launch of Gemini 9, piloted by LCDR Eugene A. Cernan, USN. The mission included 45 orbits over 3 days. Recovery was by USS Wasp (CVS-18).
 1967 – Captain Howard Levy, 30, a dermatologist form Brooklyn, is convicted by a general court-martial in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, of willfully disobeying orders and making disloyal statements about US policy in Vietnam. Levy had refused to provide elementary instruction in skin disease to Green Beret medics. Levy, invoked the so-called “Nuremberg defense,” justifying his refusal on the grounds that the Green Berets would use the training for criminal purposes. Levy’s civilian attorney also argued that training the Green Berets compelled him to violate canons of medical ethics. The Green Berets were soldiers first and aid-men second; therefore, their provision of medical treatment to civilians in order to make friends was illegitimate, for it could be taken away as easily as given. The court was not persuaded and the ten-officer jury found him guilty on all charges, sentencing him to three years at hard labor and dismissal from the service. Levy was released in August 1969 after serving 26 months and immediately became active in the “GI coffeehouse protests” in Army towns around the country.
 1968 – Le Duc Tho, a member of the North Vietnam Communist Party’s Politburo, joins the North Vietnamese negotiating team as a special counselor. The Paris peace talks had begun in March 1968, but had made little headway in ending the war. In August 1969, Tho and Henry Kissinger would begin meeting secretly in a villa outside Paris in an attempt to reach a peace settlement. It was these private talks that would ultimately result in the January 1973 Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Kissinger in 1973, Tho, aware that the North Vietnamese were still planning to conquer South Vietnam, declined the honor.
 1969 – Melbourne–Evans collision: off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne cuts the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half. The two ships were participating in SEATO exercise Sea Spirit in the South China Sea. At approximately 3:00 am, when ordered to a new escort station, Evans sailed under Melbourne’s bow, where she was cut in two. Seventy-four of Evans’ crew were killed. A joint RAN–USN board of inquiry was held to establish the events of the collision and the responsibility of those involved. This inquiry, which was believed by the Australians to be biased against them, found that both ships were at fault for the collision. Four officers (the captains of Melbourne and Evans, plus the two junior officers in control of Evans at the time of the collision) were court-martialled based on the results of the inquiry; while the three USN officers were charged, the RAN officer was cleared of wrongdoing.
 1970 – In a televised speech, President Richard Nixon claims the Allied drive into Cambodia is the “most successful operation of this long and difficult war,” and that he is now able to resume the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had launched a limited “incursion” into Cambodia on April 29. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside Cambodia. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. The announcement of the Cambodian operation gave the antiwar movement in the United States a new rallying point. News of the incursion set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops and another at Jackson State in Mississippi, resulting in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. In his speech, Nixon reaffirmed earlier pledges to bring the Cambodian operation to an end by June 30, with “all our major military objectives” achieved and reported that 17,000 of the 31,000 U.S. troops in Cambodia had already returned to South Vietnam. After June 30, said Nixon, “all American air support” for Allied troops in fighting in Cambodia would end, with the only remaining American activity being attacks on enemy troop movements and supplies threatening U.S. forces in South Vietnam. Nixon promised that 50,000 of the 150,000 troops, whose withdrawal from Vietnam he had announced April 20, would “be out by October 15.”
 1971 – After a 24 hour sea voyage, 13 prisoners of war seeking repatriation to the North but refused by Hanoi, are returned to Danang. The last minute refusal to take the captives back comes despite South Vietnam’s compliance with details specifically outlined by North Vietnam after Saigon offered to return 570 sick or wounded POWs. The 13 were the only ones out of 660 screened by the International Red Cross who sought repatriation.
 1972 – a 260-page secret Army analysis of the Mylai Massacre, known as the Peers Report, is made public by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. The report concludes that the entire command structure of the Americal (29th) Division, including Brigadier Generals Koster and Young, wittingly and unwittingly suppressed information on the Mylai incident.
 1974 – Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard Nixon, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.
 1975 – At a meeting of the National Assembly Premier Pham Van Dong calls for normalization of relations with the United States, conditioned on US economic aid to Hanoi, and a pledge to observe the 1973 Paris cease-fire.
 1976 – The US was presented with oldest known copy of Magna Carta.
 1982 – The USS Farragut towed two vessels seized by the Coast Guard to San Juan, Puerto Rico, marking the first time that a Navy ship took an active role in law enforcement and interdiction of drug smuggling in the Caribbean.
 1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (89), Iran’s spiritual and supreme leader, died.
 1989 – With protests for democratic reforms entering their seventh week, the Chinese government authorizes its soldiers and tanks to reclaim Beijing’s Tiananmen Square at all costs. By nightfall on June 4, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared the square, killing hundreds and arresting thousands of demonstrators and suspected dissidents. On April 15, the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party head who supported democratic reforms, roused some 100,000 students to gather at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate the leader and voice their discontent with China’s authoritative government. On April 22, an official memorial service for Hu Yaobang was held in Tiananmen’s Great Hall of the People, and student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The Chinese government refused the meeting, leading to a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country and widespread calls for democratic reforms. Ignoring government warnings of suppression of any mass demonstration, students from more than 40 universities began a march to Tiananmen on April 27. The students were joined by workers, intellectuals, and civil servants, and by mid-May more than a million people filled the square, the site of Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. On May 20, the government formally declared martial law in Beijing, and troops and tanks were called in to disperse the dissidents. However, large numbers of students and citizens blocked the army’s advance, and by May 23 government forces had pulled back to the outskirts of Beijing. On June 3, with negotiations to end the protests stalled and calls for democratic reforms escalating, the troops received orders from the Chinese government to seize control of Tiananmen Square and the streets of Beijing. Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested. In the weeks after the government crackdown, an unknown number of dissidents were executed, and hard-liners in the government took firm control of the country. The international community was outraged by the incident, and economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries sent China’s economy into decline. By late 1990, however, international trade had resumed, thanks in part to China’s release of several hundred imprisoned dissidents.
 1990 – President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev end their three-day summit meeting with warm words of friendship but without any concrete agreement concerning German reunification. Bush and Gorbachev held their second summit conference in Washington, D.C. The main topic of conversation was the future of a reunified Germany. Communist rule in East Germany had already crumbled and the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989. Differences arose between the United States and the Soviet Union, however, over the issue of a reunified Germany in Cold War Europe. The United States wished for the new Germany to be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had been created in 1949 as a mutual defense organization to oppose Soviet expansion into Western Europe. The Soviet Union, already somewhat fearful of a reunified and armed Germany, expressed grave concerns over German membership in NATO. Gorbachev proposed that the new Germany be a member of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the communist bloc equivalent of NATO. Also part of the discussions at the second summit was the fate of Lithuania, the Soviet republic that had proclaimed its independence in late 1989. The Soviet government responded harshly to the Lithuanian independence movement, imposing economic sanctions and threatening military intervention. The Bush administration was clearly in favor of independence for Lithuania and asked the Soviet government to cease its threatening attitude toward the republic. No agreements were reached at the summit concerning either Germany or Lithuania, or any other issue for that matter. President Bush, however, preferred to end the meetings on a positive note, declaring, “We’ve moved a long, long way from the depths of the Cold War. I don’t quite know how to quantify it for you, but we could never have had the discussions at Camp David yesterday, or as we sat in the Oval Office a couple of days before, with President Gorbachev, 20 years ago.” Events of the next year, however, rendered moot the issues that had been raised at the summit. Economic and political turmoil in the Soviet Union led to Gorbachev’s resignation as president in December 1991, at which point the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
 1994 – President Clinton, continuing his tour of Italy, visited the graves of American soldiers killed in the Anzio landing during World War II.
 1994 – The US began consultations with South Korea, Japan and Russia on how to retaliate for North Korea’s removal of vital evidence about its nuclear weapons capability.
 1995 – Bosnian Serb officials made contradictory statements about the whereabouts of an American pilot, a day after his Air Force jet was shot down. Bosnian Serb military sources claimed that the pilot, later identified as Captain Scott F. O’Grady, was in Bosnian Serb hands—a claim that proved false.
 1996 – The FBI pulled the plug on electricity at the Freemen ranch in Montana in an attempt to persuade the occupants to negotiate an end to the 71-day-old standoff.
 1996 – During joint war games in the Pacific, a Japanese destroyer mistakenly shot down an American attack plane; two Navy aviators ejected safely.
 1996 – A recent announcement was made that Hughes Electronics will take over the Indianapolis Naval Air Warfare Center. The NAWC made the bombsights that helped win WW II.
 1997 – Reinforcements from a peace-keeping force in Liberia were sent in to help Nigerian troops against the insurrectionist troops of Sierra Leone. After a bloody coup, 1,200 foreigners fled Sierra Leone aboard an American warship.
 1999 – Zane Floyd (23), a former Marine, killed 4 employees at an Albertsons supermarket in Las Vegas before being arrested by police.
 1999 – The 15-member EU announced plans to establish itself as a military power with a 60,000-troop force. A day later the EU named Javier Solana as the 1st foreign policy and security czar of the union.
 1999 – Pres. Milosevic agreed to end the Kosovo conflict on the 72nd day of bombing. The key elements included: an end to fighting in Kosovo; a quick and verifiable withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serb forces; deployment a security force “with essential NATO participation;” disarmament of the KLA; and the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees. Separately it was reported that over 5,000 members of the Yugoslav security forces had been killed by NATO air strikes.
 2001 – Iraq announces that it will halt crude oil exports in response to a United Nations Security Council resolution that extends the oil-for-food program by only one month, instead of the normal six-month period. The oil-for-food program affects revenues from Iraqi sales of about 2.1 million barrels per day. However, it has been reported Iraq will continue to sell several hundred thousand barrels per day to its neighbors through sales that are outside of the oil-for-food program. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces that, if need be, it will make up for lost Iraqi production. Oil prices do not change greatly in response to either announcement.
 2002 – It was reported that the US planned to resume manufacturing plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads at a new $4.4 billion plant in 2020.
 2002 – NASA launched the $159 million Contour space probe to study the composition of comets. Scientists lost contact on Aug 15.
 2003 – The G-8 in Evian, France, issued closing statements. These included: confidence in the global economic future; they put North Korea and Iran on notice that member countries will not stand by and let them acquire nuclear weapons; they committed to further improve cooperation with African nations to lift the world’s poorest continent out of civil war, disease and poverty; and adopted a plan to help halve the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation by 2015.
 2004 – In Pakistan police and Shiite Muslim protesters clashed the northern city of Gilgit, killing one man. Investigators named an al-Qaida-linked militant group as their chief suspect in the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in Karachi that triggered mass rioting.
 2007 – The Iraqi Parliament voted 85 to 59 to require the Iraqi government to consult with Parliament before requesting additional extensions of the UN Security Council Mandate for Coalition operations in Iraq. Despite this, the mandate was renewed on 18 December 2007, without the approval of the Iraqi parliament.
 2011 – The United States Coast Guard closes 734 miles of the Missoiri River to recreational boating from St Louis, Missouri to Sioux City, Iowa.
 2012 – United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visits a former U.S. base in Cam Ranh Bay, the first visit by an American official of cabinet rank to Vietnam since the Vietnam War.
 2013 – The trial of United States Army private Chelsea (Bradley) Manning for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks begins in Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq, where she had been stationed since October 2009, after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker in the United States, provided information to Army Counterintelligence that Manning had acknowledged passing classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. Manning was ultimately charged with 22 specified offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and the most serious of the charges, aiding the enemy. Other charges included violations of the Espionage Act, stealing U.S. government property, charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and charges related to the failure to obey lawful general orders under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. She entered guilty pleas to 10 of 22 specified offenses in February 2013. The trial began on June 3, 2013. It went to the judge on July 26, 2013, and findings were rendered on July 30. Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy, for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. In addition to five or six espionage counts, she was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions. Manning had previously admitted guilt on some of the specified charges before the trial. On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment, reduction in pay grade to E-1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. She may be eligible for parole after serving one third of the sentence, and together with credits for time served and good behavior could be released after eight years.
Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day


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