1906 – The United States Army troops bring overwhelming force against the native Moros in the First Battle of Bud Dajo, leaving only six survivors. The First Battle of Bud Dajo, also known as the Battle of Mt. Dajo, was a counter insurgency action fought by the United States Army against native Moros in March 1906, during the Moro Rebellion phase of the Philippine–American War. While fighting was limited to ground action on Jolo Island in the Sulu Archipelago, use of naval gunfire contributed significantly to the overwhelming firepower brought to bear against the Muslim insurgents, who were mostly armed with melee weapons. The description of the engagement as a battle is disputed because of both the overwhelming firepower of the attackers and the lopsided casualties. The conflict, especially the final phase of the battle, is also known as the Moro Crater Massacre. During this battle, 790 men and officers, under the command of Colonel J.W. Duncan, assaulted the volcanic crater of Bud Dajo, which was populated by 800 to 1000 Moro villagers, including women and children. Although the battle was a victory for the American forces, it was also an unmitigated public relations disaster. It was the bloodiest of any engagement of the Moro Rebellion, with only six of the hundreds of Moro coming out of the battle alive. Estimates of American casualties range from fifteen killed to twenty-one killed and seventy-five wounded.
1927 – Some 1,000 US marines landed in China to “protect American property.”
1933 – When Franklin Roosevelt started his first term in the White House in 1933, he inherited a nation in the depths of the Depression. A record 13 million Americans were unemployed and businesses were drowning in red ink. Perhaps even more pressing was the head-spinning string of bank failures which had triggered a frantic run on the nation’s savings vaults. The wave of withdrawals by panic-stricken depositors further dried up banks’ already-depleted supply of liquid assets and pushed the nation’s banking system to the brink of disaster. On March 5–the day after being sworn into office–Roosevelt stepped into the breach and declared a “bank holiday,” which, for four days forced the closure of the nation’s banks and halted all financial transactions. The “holiday” not only helped stem the frantic run on banks, but gave Roosevelt time to push the Emergency Banking Act through the legislative chain. Passed by Congress on March 9, the act handed the president a far-reaching grip over bank dealings and “foreign transactions.” The legislation also paved the path for solvent banks to resume business as early as March 10. Three short days later nearly 1,000 banks were up and running again.
1933 – Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections. This later allows the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.
1942 – Name “Seabees” and insignia officially authorized.
1943 – USS Bogue begins first anti-submarine operations by escort carrier.
1944 – Two battalions of the US 126th Infantry Regiment land at Yalau Plantation, 30 miles west of Saidor. There is almost no Japanese opposition.
1944 – On Los Negros the forces of the US 5th Cavalry Regiment move into the northern half of the island. Destroyers escorting a further 1400 American reinforcements provide fire support for the advance.
1945 – Units of the US 8th Corps (part of US 1st Army) enter Cologne from the south and the east. The Allied advance continues along the entire line.
1946 – In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War. Churchill, who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945, was invited to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where he gave this speech. President Harry S. Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his speech. Churchill began by praising the United States, which he declared stood “at the pinnacle of world power.” It soon became clear that a primary purpose of his talk was to argue for an even closer “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain-the great powers of the “English-speaking world”-in organizing and policing the postwar world. In particular, he warned against the expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union. In addition to the “iron curtain” that had descended across Eastern Europe, Churchill spoke of “communist fifth columns” that were operating throughout western and southern Europe. Drawing parallels with the disastrous appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II, Churchill advised that in dealing with the Soviets there was “nothing which they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.” Truman and many other U.S. officials warmly received the speech. Already they had decided that the Soviet Union was bent on expansion and only a tough stance would deter the Russians. Churchill’s “iron curtain” phrase immediately entered the official vocabulary of the Cold War. U.S. officials were less enthusiastic about Churchill’s call for a “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain. While they viewed the English as valuable allies in the Cold War, they were also well aware that Britain’s power was on the wane and had no intention of being used as pawns to help support the crumbling British empire. In the Soviet Union, Russian leader Joseph Stalin denounced the speech as “war mongering,” and referred to Churchill’s comments about the “English-speaking world” as imperialist “racism.” The British, Americans, and Russians-allies against Hitler less than a year before the speech-were drawing the battle lines of the Cold War.
1947 – The 7th Marine Regiment disbanded at Camp Pendleton following their return from China. Personnel and equipment were transferred to the 3rd Marine Brigade.
1951 – The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, including the French Battalion, seized communist positions in the Pangnum area.
1953 – Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union since 1924, dies in Moscow. Like his right-wing counterpart, Hitler, who was born in Austria, Joseph Stalin was not a native of the country he ruled with an iron fist. Isoeb Dzhugashvili was born in 1889 in Georgia, then part of the old Russian empire. The son of a drunk who beat him mercilessly and a pious washerwoman mother, Stalin learned Russian, which he spoke with a heavy accent all his life, in an Orthodox Church-run school. While studying to be a priest at Tiflis Theological Seminary, he began secretly reading Karl Marx and other left-wing revolutionary thinkers. The “official” communist story is that he was expelled from the seminary for this intellectual rebellion; in reality, it may have been because of poor health. In 1900, Stalin became active in revolutionary political activism, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. Stalin joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, and became a student of its leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Stalin was arrested seven times between 1902 and 1913, and subjected to prison and exile. Stalin’s first big break came in 1912, when Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, named him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party-now a separate entity from the Social Democrats. The following year, Stalin (finally dropping Dzugashvili and taking the new name Stalin, from the Russian word for “steel”) published a signal article on the role of Marxism in the destiny of Russia. In 1917, escaping from an exile in Siberia, he linked up with Lenin and his coup against the middle-class democratic government that had supplanted the czar’s rule. Stalin continued to move up the party ladder, from commissar for nationalities to secretary general of the Central Committee-a role that would provide the center of his dictatorial takeover and control of the party and the new USSR. In fact, upon Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin began the consolidation of his power base, conducting show trials to purge enemies and rivals, even having Leon Trotsky assassinated during his exile in Mexico. Stalin also abandoned Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which would have meant some decentralization of industry. Stalin demanded-and got-absolute state control of the economy, as well as greater swaths of Soviet life, until his totalitarian grip on the new Russian empire was absolute. The outbreak of World War II saw Stalin attempt an alliance with Adolf Hitler for purely self-interested reasons, and despite the political fallout of a communist signing an alliance with a fascist, they signed a nonaggression pact that allowed each dictator free reign in their respective spheres of influence. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland, Romania, and Finland, and occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In May 1941, he made himself chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars; he was now the official head of the government and no longer merely head of the party. One month later, Germany invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads. As German troops approached, Stalin remained in the capital, directing a scorched-earth defensive policy and exercising personal control over the strategies of the Red Army. As the war progressed, Stalin sat in on the major Allied conferences, including those in Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945). His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet Empire. In fact, after Germany’s surrender in April 1945, Stalin oversaw the continued occupation and domination of much of Eastern Europe, despite “promises” of free elections in those countries. Stalin did not mellow with age; he prosecuted a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to the Gulag Archipelago (a system of forced-labor camps in the frozen north), and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign, especially Western European, influence. To the great relief of many, he died of a massive heart attack on March 5, 1953. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination-and as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 10 million of his own people.
1953 – Good weather permitted Fifth Air Force to complete 700 sorties. Sixteen F-84 ThunderJets attacked in northeastern Korea an industrial area at Chongjin, just sixty-three miles from the Siberian border, destroying buildings and two rail and two road bridges, damaging seven rail cars, and inflicting several rail and road cuts. Fighter-bombers flying ground support missions reported damage or destruction to fifty-six bunkers and gun positions, fourteen personnel shelters, and ten supply stacks.
1960 – Elvis Presley is discharged from the army after a two-year stint. Presley had already become the first big rock and roll star, gaining national fame in 1956 with his first No. 1 hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” which led to several appearances on national television. Presley’s remarkable career began in 1954, shortly after he paid $4 to record two songs, “Casual Love Affair” and “I’ll Never Stand in Your Way,” for his mother’s birthday. The office assistant at Sun Records, where he cut the record, was so impressed that she brought a copy of the recording to studio executive Sam Phillips, who signed him. A week after Presley recorded “That’s All Right” in the summer of 1954, the song hit No. 4 on the country-western charts in Memphis. Elvis soon began performing regularly on radio programs and made his television debut on a Memphis show in March 1955. That September, he had his first No. 1 country record-a rendition of Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train.” RCA purchased Presley’s contract, and he made his first RCA recordings in Nashville in 1956, including “I Got a Woman,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “I Was the One.” On January 28, 1956, television audiences met Presley on the Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show. He appeared on several variety shows before filming his first movie, Love Me Tender (1956), which took just three days to earn back its $1 million cost. All of his singles that year went gold. Elvis’ controversial dancing, with his trademark hip gyrations, upset parents but delighted teenage girls. During an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, cameras showed him only from the waist up. Elvis received his draft notice in December 1957 but took a deferment to finish filming his fourth movie, King Creole. Before his induction he recorded enough material so that a steady stream of Elvis hits were released during his tour of duty. He continued to dominate the charts through the mid-’60s and made more than 20 movies. Elvis stopped performing live in 1961 but made a comeback in the late 60s, becoming a Las Vegas fixture and releasing several top singles, including “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds” in 1969. As his popularity continued to skyrocket, the “King of Rock and Roll” allegedly turned to drugs. His final live performance was on June 25, 1977, and on August 16, 1977, the day of his next scheduled concert, his girlfriend found him dead in a bathroom at Graceland, the Memphis mansion he built and named after his mother. Congestive heart failure was initially cited as the cause of death, but prescription drug abuse was suspected as a contributing factor. He was buried at Graceland. Nine years after his death, he was one of the first 10 people inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During his life, he had earned 94 gold singles and more than 40 gold LPs.
1964 – The Joint Chiefs of Staff order a U.S. Air Force air commando training advisory team to Thailand to train Lao pilots in counterinsurgency tactics. Laos had won its independence from French control in July 1949 but the country quickly became a battleground as various factions vied for control of the government. One of the factions was the Neo Lao Hak Sat (Lao Liberation Front), communist insurgents more popularly known as the Pathet Lao. President Dwight Eisenhower believed that Laos was “the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia” and was concerned that the government would fall to the communists. The situation was defused somewhat when a conference in Geneva in July 1952 set up a coalition government for Laos and officially proclaimed the neutrality of the country. This eventually proved to be a farce when the North Vietnamese Army moved 80,000 soldiers into Laos to assist the Pathet Lao. The United States then increased its support to the Royal Lao government. The mission of the American air commandos was to train the Laotian pilots in the conduct of close air support for the Royal Lao ground forces. Since Laos was officially neutral, the training efforts were conducted in Thailand with that government’s permission. The training did not result in sufficient numbers of trained Laotian pilots, so in December 1964, U.S. pilots in American planes began flying support missions for the Laotian ground troops as part of Operation Barrel Roll. The mission continued until February 1973.
1965 – Reports are surfacing from US Servicemen regarding shortages of ammunition and equipment while some of this material is being sold on the black market.
1965 – A 500-yard zone is being cleared around the Danang Airbase, and an 8 mile deep special military sector is being established. These are considered indications that US Marines are to be sent to Vietnam.
1969 – Communist forces fire at least 7 rockets into Saigon killing at least 22 civilians and wounding scores more.
1970 – The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.
1970 – SDS Weathermen terrorist group bombed 18 West 11th St. in NYC.
1971 – The U.S. 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, less its 2nd Squadron, withdraws from Vietnam. The “Blackhorse Regiment” (named for the black horse on the regimental shoulder patch) first arrived in Vietnam in September 1966 and consisted of three squadrons, each with three armored cavalry troops, a tank troop and a howitzer battery, making it a formidable fighting force. Upon arriving in Vietnam, the regiment had 51 tanks, 296 armored personnel carriers, 18 self-propelled 155-mm howitzers, nine flamethrower vehicles, and 18 helicopters. While in Vietnam, Blackhorse conducted combat operations in the 11 provinces surrounding Saigon and participated in the Cambodian incursion in 1970. During its combat service in Vietnam, Blackhorse suffered 635 troopers killed in action and 5,521 wounded in action. Three of its troopers won the Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield. Upon its departure from Vietnam, the group was sent to Europe where it was assigned to guard the frontier in West Germany. The regiment’s 2nd Squadron remained in Vietnam until March 1972, when it departed to join the rest of the regiment in Germany. Also on this day: Premier Chou En-lai of the People’s Republic of China visits Hanoi. After lengthy consultations, Chou and North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong issued a joint communique on March 10, which vowed continued Chinese support for the North Vietnamese struggle against the United States. This support was instrumental in providing the North Vietnamese with weapons and equipment needed for the major offensive they launched in the spring of 1972.
1975 – First meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Silicon Valley which met until December 1986. Several very high-profile hackers and computer entrepreneurs emerged from its ranks. The open exchange of ideas that went on at its biweekly meetings, and the club newsletter, launched the personal computer revolution. The Homebrew Computer Club has been called “the crucible for an entire industry.”
1978 – The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Landsat program is the longest running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. On July 23, 1972 the Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched. This was eventually renamed to Landsat. The most recent, Landsat 8, was launched on February 11, 2013. The instruments on the Landsat satellites have acquired millions of images. The images, archived in the United States and at Landsat receiving stations around the world, are a unique resource for global change research and applications in agriculture, cartography, geology, forestry, regional planning, surveillance and education, and can be viewed through the USGS ‘EarthExplorer’ website.
1979 – Voyager I’s closest approach to Jupiter (172,000 miles). Voyager 1 is a 722-kilogram (1,592 lb) space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, to study the outer Solar System. Operating for 37 years, 1 month and 12 days as of October 17, 2014, the spacecraft communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of about 129.18 AU (1.933×1010 km) (approximately 12 billion miles) from Earth as of September 2014, it is the farthest spacecraft from Earth.
1984 – US accused Iraq of using poison gas.
1991 – Iraq repealed its annexation of Kuwait. The Iraqis turned over 35 prisoners of war, including 15 Americans, to the Red Cross. An anti-Saddam Hussein uprising was reported sweeping city after city in Iraq.
1993 – The White House sought new ways to inflict what a spokesman called “real pain and real price” on Serb aggressors in Bosnia by tightening the U.N. blockade on supplies and money to the region.
1997 – The United Nations approves the 36th contract for the sale of Iraqi oil and announces that the $1.07 billion limit for the first 90 day period of Iraq’s oil-for-food program has been “more or less” met. The $1.07 billion includes $70 million in pipeline fees to Turkey.
1998 – NASA officials announced that the Lunar Prospector probe found the presence of water on the moon at the north and south poles. As much as 100 million tons of water was estimated. They said that the water frozen in the loose soil of the moon might support a lunar base and a human colony.
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