2001 – The US Coast Guard found a record 13 (8) tons of cocaine aboard a 152 -foot fishing vessel, the Svesda Maru, in a Belize -flagged vessel 1,500 miles south of San Diego. The ship’s crew were from Russia and Ukraine.
2002 – The Battle of Takur Ghar was a short but intense military engagement between United States special operations forces and al Qaeda insurgents fought in March 2002, atop Takur Ghar mountain, Afghanistan. For the U.S. side, the battle proved the deadliest entanglement of Operation Anaconda, an effort early in the war in Afghanistan to rout al Qaeda forces from the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains. The battle saw three helicopter landings by the U.S. on the mountain top, each greeted by direct assault from al Qaeda forces. Although Takur Ghar was eventually taken, seven U.S. service members were killed and many wounded. In honor of the first casualty of the battle, Navy SEAL Neil C. Roberts, the battle is also known as the Battle of Roberts Ridge.
2003 – The Army’s oldest armored division, “Old Ironsides,” got orders to head for the Persian Gulf as the total of U.S. land, sea and air forces arrayed against Iraq or preparing to go neared 300,000.
2004 – Ukrainian authorities pulled a private station off the air, four days after it began broadcasting U.S. -funded Radio Liberty’s shortwave programming.
2005 – American troops fired on a car, that had failed to respond to checkpoint indications and warnings, which was taking Giuliana Sgrena, a recently released hostage and Italian journalist, to Baghdad’s airport and wounded her. Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who negotiated her freedom, was kille by the gunfire. Sgrena returned to Italy the next day.
2007 – At least 12 civilians were killed and 33 were injured by U.S. Marines in Shinwar district in Nangrahar province of Afghanistan as the Americans reacted to a bomb ambush. The event has become known as the Shinwar Massacre. The 120 member Marine unit responsible for the attack was asked to leave the country because the incident damaged the unit’s relations with the local Afghan population.
2007 – U.S. and Iraqi forces entered Sadr City, the primary stronghold of the Mahdi Army.
2010 – The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the United States House of Representatives accepts a resolution describing the Armenian Genocide as “genocide”, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador and threatening Turkey–United States relations.
2011 – NASA’s attempt to launch the Glory satellite aboard a Taurus XL rocket fails. The Glory satellite was a planned NASA satellite mission that would have collected data on the chemical, micro-physical and optical properties—and the spatial and temporal distributions—of sulfate and other aerosols, and would have collected solar irradiance data for the long-term climate record. The science focus areas served by Glory included: atmospheric composition; carbon cycle, ecosystems, and biogeochemistry; climate variability and change; and water and energy cycles.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/march-4/
