1914 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.
1915 – The cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington, D.C.
1918 – WW I Marines landed at Scapa Flow, Great Britain.
1924 – President Calvin Coolidge made the 1st presidential radio speech.
1935 – The USS Macon, the last U.S. Navy dirigible, crashed on its 55th flight off the coast of California, killing two people. After takeoff from Point Sur, California, a gust of wind tore off the ship’s upper fin, deflating its gas cells and causing the ship to fall into the sea. Two of Macon ‘s 83 crewmen died in the accident. The U.S. Navy lost the airships Shenandoah in 1925 and Akron in 1933. Some considered airships too dangerous for the program to continue at that point, and work on them in the United States halted temporarily. The German zeppelin Hindenburg crashed and burned in 1936.
1938 – German troops entered Austria.
1938 – Japan refused to reveal naval data requested by the U.S. and Britain.
1942 – The Anzac Squadron is formed at Suva in Fiji. It includes the cruiser Australia, USS Chicago, Achilles and Leander as well as two American destroyers.
1944 – On New Britain, US marines capture Gorissi, 25 miles east of Cape Gloucester. Meanwhile, Allied forces land on Rooke Island.
1944 – Forces of the US 5th Army are redeployed. The New Zealand Corps replaces the US 2nd Corps opposite Cassino. At Anzio, there is a lull in the battle. The British 1st Division is withdrawn from the line because of heavy losses. American General Lucas, commanding Allied forces on the beachhead, organizes an inner defensive perimeter.
1945 – The US 11th Corps has closed the neck of the Bataan Peninsula and is advancing southward to clear the Japanese forces from it.
1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).
1945 – USS Batfish (SS-310) sinks second Japanese submarine within three days.
1947 – First launching of guided missile (Loon) from a submarine, USS Cusk.
1948 – 1st Lt. Nancy Leftenant became the 1st black in the army nursing corps.
1950 – Senator Joe McCarthy claimed to have yet another list of 205 communist government employees.
1950 – Albert Einstein warned against the hydrogen bomb.
1951 – I Corps forces regrouped south of the Han River while the ROK Capital Division took Yangyang.
1953 – The Willys-Overland Company, which brought America the Jeep, celebrated its golden anniversary. The original design for an all-terrain troop transport vehicle–featuring four-wheel drive, masked fender-mount headlights, and a rifle rack under the dash–was submitted to the U.S. Armed Forces by the American Bantam Car Company in 1939. The Army loved Bantam’s design, but the production contract was ultimately given to Willys-Overland on the basis of its similar design and superior production capabilities. Mass production of the Willys Jeep began after the U.S. declaration of war in 1941. By 1945, 600,000 Jeeps had rolled off the assembly lines and onto battlefields in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The name “Jeep” is supposedly derived from the Army’s request to car manufacturers to develop a “General Purpose” vehicle. “Gee Pee” turned to “Jeep” somewhere along the battle lines. The Willys Jeep became a cultural icon in the U.S. during World War II, as images of G.I.s in Gee Pees liberating Europe saturated the newsreels in movie theaters across the country. Unlike the Hummer of recent years, the Jeep was not a symbol of technological superiority but rather of the courage of the American spirit, a symbol cartoonist Bill Mauldin captured when he drew a weeping soldier firing a bullet into his broken down Willys Jeep. In 1945, Willys-Overland introduced the first civilian Jeep vehicle, the CJ-2A.
1955 – President Eisenhower sent 1st US “advisors” to South Vietnam to aid the government under Ngo Dinh Diem.
1963 – Construction begins on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
1966 – The South Vietnamese won two big battles in the Mekong Delta.1972 – Senator Kennedy advocated amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters.
1972 – About 6,000 Cambodian troops launch a major operation to wrestle the religious center of Angkor Wat from 4,000 North Vietnamese troops entrenched around the famous Buddhist temple complex, which had been seized in June 1970. Fighting continued throughout the month. Even with the addition of 4,000 more troops, the Cambodians were unsuccessful, and eventually abandoned their efforts to expel the North Vietnamese.
1973 – The release of U.S. POWs begins in Hanoi as part of the Paris peace settlement. The return of U.S. POWs began when North Vietnam released 142 of 591 U.S. prisoners at Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport. Part of what was called Operation Homecoming, the first 20 POWs arrived to a hero’s welcome at Travis Air Force Base in California on February 14. Operation Homecoming was completed on March 29, 1973, when the last of 591 U.S. prisoners were released and returned to the United States.
1988 – Two Soviet warships bump two U.S. navy vessels in waters claimed by the Soviet Union. The incident was an indication that even though the Cold War was slowly coming to a close, old tensions and animosities remained unabated. The incident between the ships took place in the Black Sea, off the Crimean peninsula. The American destroyer Caron and cruiser Yorktown were operating within the 12-mile territorial limit claimed by the Soviet Union. They were challenged by a Soviet frigate and destroyer and told to leave the waters. Then, according to a Navy spokesman, the Soviet ships “shouldered” the U.S. ships out of the way, bumping them slightly. There was no exchange of gunfire, and the American ships eventually departed from the area. There was no serious damage to either U.S. vessel or any injuries. In many ways, the incident was an unnecessarily provocative action by the United States. For many years, the United States had challenged the Russian claim of a 12-mile territorial limit in the waters off the Crimean peninsula. However, the timing and the use of the Caron in this particular operation made this a rather foolish act. The United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in negotiations to limit long-range nuclear weapons, and in December 1987, the important INF Treaty, by which both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to eliminate their medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, had been signed. The Caron was well known as an intelligence gathering vessel and its appearance in waters claimed by the Soviets would be seen as suspicious at best. For their part, the Soviets probably overreacted. American ships regularly moved through the area and were usually unchallenged. Perhaps the Soviet military felt a message should be sent that Russia, which was experiencing severe economic and political problems, was still a nation to be taken seriously as a major military power.
1989 – The special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra case and the Justice Department reached an agreement on protecting classified materials aimed at allowing the trial of Oliver North to proceed.
1990 – President Bush rejected Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s new initiative for troop reductions in Europe, but predicted a “major success” on arms control at the superpower summit in June.
1997 – The Clinton administration gave permission to 10 U.S. news organizations to open bureaus in Cuba.
1997 – In Maine Philip Berrigan was arrested at an anti-nuclear protest. He was one of 6 activists later convicted for vandalizing a Navy guided missile destroyer at the Bath Iron Works.
1997 – The Discovery space shuttle lifted off and work was planned on the Hubble Space Telescope.
1997 – A U.S. admiral headquartered in Bahrain reports that tankers are smuggling tens of thousands of tons of fuel oil out of Iraq in violation of United Nations’ sanctions by reportedly skirting the shoals of Iran’s coast, apparently with Iranian approval.
1998 – NASA planned a rocket launch from Tortuguero base in Puerto Rico. 10 more rockets were planned for launch over the next 30 days.
1999 – Pres. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate 55-45 on a perjury charge and 50-50 on an obstruction of justice charge. He once again apologized for burdening the nation with his conduct. Clinton told Americans he was “profoundly sorry” for what he had said and done in the Monica Lewinsky affair that triggered the impeachment drama.
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