https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/april-29/April 29
Feast Day of Saint Catherine of Sienna, Patron Saint of the Nurse Corps: Catherine, the daughter of a humble tradesman, was raised up to be the guide and guardian of the Church in one of the darkest periods of its history, the fourteenth century. As a child, prayer was her delight. She would say the “Hail Mary” on each step as she mounted the stairs, and was granted in reward a vision of Christ in glory. When but seven years old, she made a vow of virginity, and afterwards endured bitter persecution for refusing to marry. Our Lord gave her His Heart in exchange for her own, communicated her with His own hands, and stamped on her body the print of His wounds. At the age of fifteen she entered the Third Order of St. Dominic, but continued to reside in her father’s shop, where she united a life of active charity with the prayer of a contemplative Saint. From this obscure home the seraphic virgin was summoned to defend the Church’s cause. Armed with Papal authority, and accompanied by three confessors, she travelled through Italy, reducing rebellious cities to the obedience of the Holy See, and winning hardened souls to God. In the face well-nigh of the whole world she sought out Gregory XI at Avignon, brought him back to Rome, and by her letters to the kings and queens of Europe made good the Papal cause. She was the counselor of Urban VI, and sternly rebuked the disloyal cardinals who had part in electing an antipope. Long had the holy virgin foretold the terrible schism which began ere she died. Day and night she wept and prayed for unity and peace. But the devil excited the Roman people against the Pope, so that some sought the life of Christ’s Vicar. With intense earnestness did St. Catherine beg Our Lord to prevent this enormous crime. In spirit she saw the whole city full of demons tempting the people to resist and even slay the Pope. The seditious temper was subdued by Catherine’s prayers; but the devils vented their malice by scourging the Saint herself, who gladly endured all for God and His Church. She died at Rome, in 1380, at the age of thirty-three.
1781 – British and French ships clash in the Battle of Fort Royal off the coast of Martinique. The Battle of Fort Royal was a naval battle fought off Fort Royal, Martinique in the West Indies during the American War of Independence between fleets of the British Royal Navy and the French Navy. After an engagement lasting four hours, the British squadron under Sir Samuel Hood broke off and retreated. De Grasse offered a desultory chase before seeing the French convoys safely to port.
1814 – USS Peacock captures HMS Epervier.
1856 – During the Tule River War Yokut Indians repelled a second attack by the ‘Petticoat Rangers,’ a band of civilian Indian fighters-some wearing body armor-at Four Creeks, California. The Yokuts lived along the shores of Tulare Lake in the Central Valley, which disappeared by 1900 due to water diversion and farming.
1861 – The Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.
1861 – U.S.S. United States ordered commissioned as the first ship in the Virginia navy by Major General Rob¬ert E. Lee, Commander in Chief Military Forces of Virginia.
1862 – 100,000 federal troops prepared to march into Corinth, Miss.
1862 – Expedition under Lieutenant Alexander C. Rhind in U.S.S. E. B. Hale landed and destroyed Confederate battery at Grimball’s, Dawho River, South Carolina, and exchanged fire with field pieces near Slann’s Bluff.
1862 – Union troops officially take possession of New Orleans, completing the occupation that had begun four days earlier. The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico. In early 1862, the Confederates concentrated their forces in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee to stave off the Yankee invasion. Many of these troops fought at Shiloh on April 6 and 7. Eight Rebel gunboats were dispatched up the great river to stop a Union flotilla above Memphis, leaving only 3,000 militia, two uncompleted ironclads, and a few steamboats to defend New Orleans. The most imposing obstacles for the Union were two forts, Jackson and St. Phillip. In the middle of the night of April 24, Admiral David Farragut led a fleet of 24 gunboats, 19 mortar boats, and 15,000 soldiers large fleet of ships in a daring run past the forts. Now, the River was open to New Orleans except for the rag-tag Confederate fleet. The mighty Union armada plowed right through, sinking eight ships. At New Orleans, Confederate General Mansfield Lovell surveyed his tiny force and realized that resistance was futile. If he resisted, Lovell told Mayor John Monroe, Farragut would bombard the city and inflict severe damage and casualties. Lovell pulled his troops out of New Orleans and the Yankees began arriving on April 25. The troops could not land until Forts Jackson and St. Phillip were secured. They surrendered on April 29, and now New Orleans had no protection. Crowds cursed the Yankees as all Confederate flags in the city were lowered and stars and stripes were raised in their place. The Confederacy lost a major city, and the lower Mississippi soon became a Union highway for 400 miles to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
1863 – May Union Army and Navy expedition feigned an attack on Confederate batteries at Haynes’ Bluff on the Yazoo River. The force consisted of U.S.S. Tyler, Choctaw, DeKalb, Signal, Romeo, Linden, Petrel, Black Hawk, and 3 mortar boats under Lieutenant Commander Breese and 10 large transports carrying troops under command of Major General W. T. Sherman. The feint was made to prevent Confederates from reinforcing Grand Gulf. On the 29th the expedition proceeded as far as Chickasaw Bayou. As the force departed on the morning of the 30th, Petrel, remained at Old River on station; the remaining vessels moved up the Yazoo with Choctaw and DeKalb opening fire on the main works at Drumgould’s Bluff and Tyler and Black Hawk opening on the fieldworks and batteries. Though instructed not to conduct an actual assault, the feint was so vigorously prosecuted that Choctaw, Lieutenant Commander Ramsay, was struck 53 times by Confederate guns. The soldiers were landed and “marched up toward Haynes’ Bluff on the only roadway, the levee, making quite a display, and threatening one also.” Naval gunfire supported the soldiers throughout the demonstration, which lasted through 1 May. The evening of the 1st, the expedition returned to the mouth of the Yazoo. Porter reported to Secretary Welles: ”The plan succeeded admirably, though the vessels were more exposed than the occasion called for; still as they met with no casualties, with the exception of the hulls, it mattered but little.”
1864 – Major General Taylor, CSA, seeking to take full advantage of the vulnerable position of Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboats above the Alexandria rapids sought “to convert one of the captured transports into a fire ship to burn the fleet now crowded above the upper falls.” This date, however, Union Army and Navy commanders accepted a daring plan proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey to raise the water level of the Red River and enable the vessels to pass the treacherous rapids. Bailey’s proposal was to construct a large dam of logs and debris across the river to back up water level to a minimum depth of seven feet. The dams would be broken and the ships would ride the crest of the rushing waters to safety. Work on the dam commenced early the next day. Porter later wrote: “This proposition looked like madness, and the best engineers ridiculed it, but Colonel Bailey was so sanguine of success that I requested General Banks to have it done . . . two or three regiments of Maine men were set to work felling trees. . . . every man seemed to be working with a vigor seldom seen equalled. . . . These falls are about a mile in length, filled with rugged rocks, over which at the present stage of water it seemed to be impossible to make a channel.”
1864 – An expedition up the Rappahannock River including boats from U.S.S. Yankee, Acting Lieutenant Edward Hooker, and U.S.S. Fuchsia, assisted by U.S.S. Freeborn and Tulip, engaged Confederate cavalry and destroyed a camp under construction at Carter’s Creek, Virginia.
1865 – Acting Master W. C. Coulson, commanding U.S.S. Moose on the Cumberland River, led a surprise attack on a Confederate raiding party, numbering about 200 troops from Brigadier General Abraham Buford’s command. The raiders under the command of a Major Hopkins, were crossing the Cumberland River to sack and burn Eddyville, Kentucky. Coulson sank two troop laden boats with battery gunfire and then put a landing party ashore which engaged the remaining Con-federates. The landing force dispersed the detachment after killing or wounding 20 men, taking 6 captives, and capturing 22 horses.
1898 – U.S. warships engage Spanish gunboats and shore batteries at Cienfuegos, Cuba.
1918 – America’s WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scored his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall. He eventually racked up 26 victories before the end of the war.
1942 – Despite a desperate defense, the Japanese take Lashio, terminus of the Burma Road. All supplies to China must now go by air as China has been cut off by land. General Alexander decides to remove his troops to new position in the Chinwin and Irrawaddy Valley.
1942 – On Mindanao, Filipino resistance continues but they are pushed back from their positions when the invading Japanese receive reinforcements and greater air support. The Japanese continue to bomb the remaining American troops who have retreated to Corregidor.
1944 – Fast carrier task force (12 carriers) commence 2 day bombing of Truk.
1945 – U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division. Established five weeks after Adolf Hitler took power as German chancellor in 1933, Dachau was situated on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich. During its first year, the camp held about 5,000 political prisoners, consisting primarily of German communists, Social Democrats, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. During the next few years, the number of prisoners grew dramatically, and other groups were interned at Dachau, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, and repeat criminals. Beginning in 1938, Jews began to comprise a major portion of camp internees. Prisoners at Dachau were used as forced laborers, initially in the construction and expansion of the camp and later for German armaments production. The camp served as the training center for SS concentration camp guards and was a model for other Nazi concentration camps. Dachau was also the first Nazi camp to use prisoners as human guinea pigs in medical experiments. At Dachau, Nazi scientists tested the effects of freezing and changes to atmospheric pressure on inmates, infected them with malaria and tuberculosis and treated them with experimental drugs, and forced them to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding. Hundreds of prisoners died or were crippled as a result of these experiments. Thousands of inmates died or were executed at Dachau, and thousands more were transferred to a Nazi extermination center near Linz, Austria, when they became too sick or weak to work. In 1944, to increase war production, the main camp was supplemented by dozens of satellite camps established near armaments factories in southern Germany and Austria. These camps were administered by the main camp and collectively called Dachau. With the advance of Allied forces against Germany in April 1945, the Germans transferred prisoners from concentration camps near the front to Dachau, leading to a general deterioration of conditions and typhus epidemics. On April 27, 1945, approximately 7,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to begin a death march from Dachau to Tegernsee, far to the south. The next day, many of the SS guards abandoned the camp. On April 29, the Dachau main camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry after a brief battle with the camp’s remaining guards. As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated. Some of the American troops who liberated Dachau were so appalled by conditions at the camp that they machine-gunned at least two groups of captured German guards. It is officially reported that 30 SS guards were killed in this fashion, but conspiracy theorists have alleged that more than 10 times that number were executed by the American liberators. The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp. In the course of Dachau’s history, at least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp, and 90,000 through the subcamps. Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates perished at Dachau and its subcamps, but countless more were shipped to extermination camps elsewhere.
1945 – The unofficial surrender of German forces in Italy is signed at Caserta. The German representatives are present here because of a secret negotiation between the head of the OSS mission in Switzerland, Allan Dulles, and SS General Wolff. These talks have been going on since much earlier in the year, but because of their clandestine nature, the German representatives at Caserta cannot guarantee that the surrender will be ratified by Vietinghoff, commanding German forces in Italy.
1945 – Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the following day. Eva Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple was married only hours before they both committed suicide.
1945 – The US 185th Regiment (General Brush) lands near Padan Point with naval support by a destroyer force commanded by Admiral Struble. There is little Japanese resistance.
1945 – The last convoy battle of the Second World War begins as 14 German U-boats attack convoy RA-66 which consists of 24 ships with an escort including 2 escort carriers, 1 cruiser, 9 destroyers and 13 other ships.
1946 – Also on this day in 1946, Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, is indicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found guilty of war crimes.
1948 – Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force authorized a medal pendant to be established for the Commendation Ribbon. The design was approved by both Secretaries on 8 July 1948 and on 20 March 1950, the Secretary of the Navy approved the Navy Commendation Ribbon, and authorized use of the same pendant with a different ribbon on 6 April 1950. DA General Order No. 10 renamed the Commendation Ribbon with Medal Pendant to the Army Commendation Medal. President Kennedy, in a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense authorized the award of the Army Commendation Medal to members of the Armed Forces of friendly foreign nations who, after 1 June 1962, distinguished themselves by an act of heroic, extraordinary achievement, or meritorious service.
1950 – In response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s charge that former State Department consultant and university professor Owen Lattimore was a top Soviet spy in the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state deny that Lattimore had any influence on U.S. foreign policy. The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the “red scare” in the United States. In February 1950, Senator McCarthy gave a speech in which he charged that there were over 200 “known communists” in the Department of State. McCarthy was asked to appear before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to provide details about his accusation. During the course of the hearing, the senator charged that Owen Lattimore was a top spy for the Soviet Union and had been “the principal architect of our Far Eastern policy.” The implication of McCarthy’s testimony was clear: Lattimore, acting as a virtual Soviet agent, had helped design a policy that resulted in the loss of China to the communists in 1949. In fact, Lattimore, a well-known specialist in the field of Chinese history, had merely served as a consultant to the Department of State during and after World War II. Like many others, he had come to the conclusion that the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek was hopelessly inefficient and corrupt, and that continued U.S. support of such a government was useless. In the harsh Cold War atmosphere of America, though, the “loss” of China to the communists encouraged suspicion that spies and sympathizers were to blame. In response to McCarthy’s charge, the chair of the subcommittee, Senator Millard Tydings, wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state, Cordell Hull, James Byrnes, and George C. Marshall, asking whether the accusations were true. The men answered that Lattimore had absolutely no impact on U.S. foreign policy toward Asia. Indeed, each of them went to great lengths to make clear that they had never even met Lattimore. Byrnes and Marshall went further, declaring McCarthy’s charges were particularly harmful to America’s foreign relations. Lattimore was cleared by a congressional investigation in 1950, but in 1951-1952 the attacks against the professor were renewed and he was charged with perjury in connection with his 1950 testimony. These charges were eventually dismissed, but not before Lattimore’s academic career in the United States had been destroyed.
1953 – Marine Corps Colonel Katherine A. Towle, Director of Women Marines, became the first woman line officer to retire from U.S. military service upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 55.
1954 – At a press conference, President Eisenhower denies US plans for massive air strikes or other intervention in Vietnam. “You certainly cannot hope…for a completely satisfactory answer with the Communists. The most you can work out is a practical way of getting along.”
1957 – The 1st military nuclear power plant was dedicated at Fort Belvoir, Va.
1966 – An article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda assets that the television program Batman is brainwashing American children into becoming ‘murderers’ in Vietnam.
1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.
1970 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launch a limited “incursion” into Cambodia. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. 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 operation began with South Vietnamese forces attacking into the “Parrot’s Beak” area of Cambodia that projects into South Vietnam above the Mekong Delta. During the first two days, an 8,000-man South Vietnamese task force, including two infantry divisions, four ranger battalions, and four armored cavalry squadrons, killed 84 communist soldiers while suffering 16 dead and 157 wounded. The second stage of the campaign began on May 2 with a series of joint U.S.-South Vietnamese operations. These operations were aimed at clearing communist sanctuaries located in the densely vegetated “Fishhook” area of Cambodia (across the border from South Vietnam, immediately north of Tay Ninh Province and west of Binh Long Province, 70 miles from Saigon). The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with the South Vietnamese 3rd Airborne Brigade, killed 3,190 communists in the action and captured massive amounts of war booty, including 2,000 individual and crew-served weapons, 300 trucks, and 40 tons of foodstuffs. By the time all U.S. ground forces had departed Cambodia on June 30, the Allied forces had discovered and captured or destroyed 10 times more enemy supplies and equipment than they had captured inside South Vietnam during the entire previous year. Many intelligence analysts at the time believed that the Cambodian incursion dealt a stunning blow to the communists, driving main force units away from the border and damaging their morale, and in the process buying as much as a year for South Vietnam’s survival. However, the incursion 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 that resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion also angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.
1974 – President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of some secretly made White House tape recordings related to Watergate.
1975 – Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation on record, begins removing the last Americans from Saigon. The North Vietnamese had launched their final offensive in March 1975 and the South Vietnamese forces had fallen back before their rapid advance, losing Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Xuan Loc in quick succession. With the North Vietnamese attacking the outskirts of Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the commencement of Frequent Wind. In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore. Cpl. Charles McMahon, Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge, USMC, were the last U.S. military personnel killed in action in Vietnam, when shrapnel from a North Vietnamese rocket struck them as they were guarding Tan Son Nhut Airbase during the evacuation. At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the rook of the embassy and headed out to sea. Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled). The Vietnam War was over.
1990 – The space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a mission which included deploying the Hubble Space Telescope.
1990 – Wrecking cranes began tearing down Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate.
1991 – US troops continued airlifting Iraqi refugees from a camp in southern Iraq to Saudi Arabia.
1992 – Deadly rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. White truck driver Reginald Denny was beaten by a mob in south Central LA angered by the acquittal of 4 police officers caught on video tape in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Three days of violence ensued with 55 people killed, 2,300 injured and an estimated $1 billion [$717 million] in property damages. Rioters tore through the city following the not guilty verdicts on state charges for Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Stacey C. Koon and officer Laurence M. Powell for beating Rodney King. 1093 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Of these, 764 retail stores were owned by Koreans. The US Congress later authorized $1 billion to revitalize south central Los Angeles.
1992 – The CGC Storis’ 3-inch/.50 caliber main battery was removed from the cutter. It was the last 3-inch/.50 caliber gun in service aboard any U.S. warship. The 3-inch/.50 was a dual-purpose weapon (surface and anti-aircraft) that had been in U.S. service since the 1930s. It was shipped to Curtis Bay where is was made inoperable and was then donated as a lawn ornament to a VFW club.
1997 – Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. Sentenced to 25 years in prison, he was dishonorably discharged.
1997 – Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.
1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.
1998 – The United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed to eliminate tariffs on items accounting for $1 billion in trade at a meeting in Paris of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1998 – The US and European powers decided to impose new sanctions and agreed to freeze the assets of Yugoslavia. A ban on investments would follow in 10 days if security police was not withdrawn from Kosova.
1999 – The US decided to sell an early-warning radar system to Taiwan.
1999 – US planes bombed sites in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq after being attacked by missiles and anti-aircraft fire. Iraq said 20 civilians were injured in Mosul and 4 in separate attacks in the south.
1999 – NATO jets struck Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade and the federal interior ministry. A telecommunications tower was hit and knocked Serbian TV off the air.
1999 – In Bulgaria an errant NATO HARM missile hit a home in Gorna Banya on the outskirts of Sofia. There were no casualties.
2000 – Iraq’s oil ministry states that it expects to export more than $8.5 billion of oil in the current six-month phase of the United Nations “oil-for-food”program.
2001 – Nasa scientists reported that they had contacted the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, launched in 1972, after 8 months of no communication.
2001 – China offered to allow US officials to inspect the US Navy spy plane on Hainan Island.
2002 – US forces in Afghanistan engaged al Qaeda fighters near the Pakistan border and killed 4.
2002 – The 1st 20 of some 2000 US soldiers landed in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
2002 – Britain decided to treat al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as prisoners of war and turn them over to the interim Afghan government.
2002 – Turkey officially agreed to take command of the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
2003 – The US said it would withdraw all combat forces from Saudi Arabia.
2003 – The leaders of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, all critics of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, agreed to beef up their military cooperation in an effort to make Europe’s defense less reliant on the US.
2003 – Pakistani police arrested six men linked to al-Qaeda, including a Yemeni man, Tawfiq Attash Khallad (Waleed bin Attash), wanted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole.
2004 – A national monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public in Washington DC. Official dedication was set for May 29.
2004 – U.S. Marines announced an agreement to end a bloody, nearly month long siege of Fallujah, saying American forces will pull back and allow an all-Iraqi force commanded by one of Saddam Hussein’s generals to take over security.
2006 – United States-Iran relations continue to deteriorate after US officials called Iran one of the world’s most active sponsors of terrorism, as IAEA reveals that Tehran has successfully enriched uranium and is racing ahead with its nuclear program. Iran says it does not “give a damn” about the verdict from the IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei and what it might lead to.
2008 – Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) started their operations with an attack on the Taliban-held town of Garmsir. The operation was in conjunction with British troops of the 16 Air Assault Brigade.[5] They met almost no resistance, because the Taliban had already observed in the previous days the movements of the Marines before the operation and expected an assault so withdrew to take up positions a few kilometers outside the town.[6] For the next few days there was no contact between the US Marines and the Taliban.
2010 – The United States Coast Guard begins a controlled burn to remove oil spilled in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
