1917 – USS Ericsson fires first US torpedo of World War I.
1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
1940 – Nazis surrounded the British Army at Dunkirk.
1941 – The first U.S. ship, the SS Robin Moor, was sunk by a U-boat. Roosevelt describes the sinking of the Robin Moor as “an act of intimidation” to which “we do not propose to yield.”
1944 – A small American force lands at Sperlonga, having embarked at Gaeta. Meanwhile, forces of the US 5th Army continue attacking. The US 2nd Corps captures Fondi while the French Expeditionary Corps takes Campodimele. German resistance in the Liri Valley and around Pico prevents significant gains in these areas.
1944 – The American beachhead at Arare is reinforces and the airfield at Wadke is repaired.
1944 – The Coast Guard-manned USS LST-69 exploded at Pearl Harbor. None of her crew were killed but 13 were seriously injured.
1945 – On Okinawa, US 3rd Amphibious Corps reports advances near the Horseshoe, Half Moon and Wana positions, on the western flank. On the east-side, US 7th and 96th Divisions (parts of US 24th Corps) attack near Yonabaru. Japanese forces begin to pull out of the Shuri Line.
1945 – Hermann Goring, former Reichsmarshal of the Luftwaffe, is transferred from the prisoner of war camp at Augsburg to the Palace Hotel at Mondorf where he joins other senior Nazi officials awaiting Allied interrogation.
1945 – The Japanese supply base at Malaybalay on Mindanao is captured by elements of the US 31st Division.
1951 – The U.S. Eighth Army counterattacked to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea.
1951 – The Coast Guard announced the formation, within the Washington, DC area, of a new Organized Reserve Training Unit (Vessel Augmentation). The mission of this new unit was to develop a force of experienced personnel, well-trained in all shipboard billets, with particular emphasis on anti-submarine warfare, and the use of radar, radio, and other branches of electronics. Training was to be directed towards readying personnel of the unit for immediate assignment to ships of the Coast Guard and Navy in the event of mobilization.
1956 – The first known airborne US hydrogen bomb was tested over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
1961 – Governor Patterson declared martial law in Montgomery, Alabama.
1964 – The Navy initiates a the standing carrier presence at “Yankee Station” in the South China Sea.
1964 – The UN Security Council meets to consider Cambodia’s charge that the United States directs South Vietnamese raids into Cambodia. US Ambassador Adali Stevenson calls for a clear marking of the border and the stationing of some force to police it.
1968 – The allied command in Saigon announces the start of a new program, Operation Hearts Together, designed to resettle Saigon area families.
1968 – The nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
1970 – The National Guard was mobilized to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.
1980 – Ensign Jean Marie Butler became the first woman to graduate from a U.S. service academy as she accepted her degree and commission from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.
1987 – In the wake of the Iraqi attack on the U.S. frigate Stark that claimed 37 lives, the Senate approved a proposal requiring President Reagan to send Congress a report detailing the threat to U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.
1992 – The Coast Guard announced that high-seas interdiction of Haitian refugees was being drastically scaled back because refugee camps at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, were filled.
1997 – The space shuttle Atlantis undocked from the Russian Mir space station.
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