1979: President Carter breaks diplomatic ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan, the first time that the United States has broken diplomatic relations with an ally. The reason? Communist China insists on this in order to establish diplomatic relations with the United States. Carter evidently falls under the Communists' reasoning that there can be only one "legitimate" China, and that must be Mao's China as it controls the mainland. Or whatever.
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1942: Following General MacArthur's decision to withdraw his forces to the Bataan Peninsula, Japanese forces enter Manila, which has been declared an open city. This unfortunately does not spare the Philippine population from the rapine and plundering of victorious Japanese troops, whose view of their vaunted "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" somehow mysteriously seems to exclude the Philippines. The Japanese will learn great frustration over the next three years, as the Filipinos almost universally resist their occupation. Large numbers of them will resist aggressively, waging a successful guerrilla war against the Japanese that will tie down troops, weapons, and equipment Japan will increasingly need against American counteroffensives throughout the Pacific region.
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1944: The First Special Service Brigade begins its attack to seize Monte Majo in Italy, in preparation for the U.S. Fifth Army's drive to the Rapido River and its assault on the heavily fortified German positions at Cassino. The 1st SSB is a unique unit in many regards. For one, it has been thoroughly trained in revolutionary assault and behind-the-lines tactics. For another, one of its two battalions is composed almost entirely of Japanese-Americans. These are American citizens who have had the misfortune to have had ancestors from Japan; in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, they volunteered to serve in the Army in large part to demonstrate to everyone exactly where their loyalties lay. The Army would not commit them to the fighting in the Pacific. It was a tremendous pity; in four days of heavy fighting the 1st SSB secures all its objectives and paves the way for the Fifth Army's future assaults. What this tightly knit force of fine men might have accomplished in the Pacific, where their talents could have been put to even greater use, will never be known, but the nation owes them a great debt nonetheless.
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1934: President Franklin Roosevelt advises Congress that his national economic recovery program will cost more than ten and a half billion dollars. For those of you who may not have a grasp on how large a billion is, think of it this way: If you spent a thousand dollars a day, it would take you almost three years to spend a million dollars. To spend a billion dollars at a thousand dollars a day, you would need three thousand years. More mind-boggling is this: More than sixty years and many times more than ten and a half billion dollars later, we are still engaged in the carryover of Roosevelt's social programs, with no end in sight.
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1781: British forces capture and burn Richmond, Virginia. They are able to do so in large part because of the aid of the traitor Benedict Arnold.
1968: The United States loses her 10,000th military aircraft over North Vietnam. Many, many more will be shot down or damaged before the end of the Vietnam War four years later, and Air Force, Marine, and Navy pilots and aircrew will make up a tragic part of our nation's 55,000 honored dead in that war. They will also comprise a disproportionate number of the prisoners of war, many of whom will endure years of barbarous treatment by the North Vietnamese, 1,500 of whom will remain unaccounted for at year's end. In large part, the extraordinarily high aircraft and aircrew losses are the result of politicians' attempts to run a military situation, requiring the military to impose ridiculous (and to the aircrews, infamous) "rules of engagement" that for example prohibit attacking surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites until they are "fully operational" (i.e., have started shooting), or that forbid engaging enemy fighters on the ground because they are not "demonstrating a hostile purpose" (as if a fighter plane can demonstrate a peaceful one). Twenty-two years later, when he commits American military force to DESERT STORM, President Bush will announce, "This will not be another Vietnam." The absence of such silly rules and the nearly immediate and total elimination of Iraqi command, control, communications, and air defense assets bears witness to his integrity on that point.
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1942: A reinforced regiment of the Japanese Fourteenth Army, pursuing American units who have retreated from Manila, encounter American elements of the 77th Division, the 26th Cavalry Regiment, and the 31st Infantry Regiment outside Layao on the main Philippine island of Luzon. The Americans, although unsupported and beginning to feel the ravages of jungle diseases, put up a spirited defense and force the Japanese to withdraw. This buys time for General MacArthur to solidify his positions on the Bataan Peninsula, where according to Plan Orange, the army will wait for the U.S. Navy to sail from Pearl Harbor, obliterate the Japanese resistance, and relieve the Philippines. There is only one problem: The Navy isn't coming.
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1942: President Franklin Roosevelt submits a budget to Congress in this, the first year of America's involvement in the Second World War. His $59,000,000,000.00 budget requests over $52,000,000,000.00 for the war effort, and envisions production of 60,000 aircraft, 45,000 tanks, and more than 6,000,000 tons of new merchant shipping. Please see entry for 11 January 1943.
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1815: British general Packenham, with 8,000 British regulars, finally reaches General Andrew Jackson's prepared positions outside the city of New Orleans. It has taken him almost two weeks to march approximately six miles since landing on the Louisiana coast; every step of the route has subjected his regulars to incessant sniping from American sharpshooters. He orders his 8,000 men forward in an all-out attack. Jackson has only 3,200 of his 5,000 men on the line, but they are behind the Rodriguez Canal and they are ready for Packenham's assault. Although a small detachment of British soldiers succeed in seizing an outlying fortification on the bank of the Mississippi River, the main attack fails utterly and the British withdraw after suffering heavy casualties. This is the last battle of the War of 1812, occurring almost a month after the Americans and British signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the hostilities.
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1917: Kaiser Wilhelm II orders his Kriegsmarine--the German navy--to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against all vessels plying the oceans. This is in an effort to strangle Great Britain by sinking neutral nations' merchant shipping carrying any cargo to the British Isles. Formerly, and under the laws of war recognized by the international community at the time, it was lawful to impound or sink a neutral ship only after boarding and inspecting it, and finding contraband (military supplies) being sent to a declared enemy. Wilhelm's prior use of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915 resulted in the sinking of the liner Lusitania, the deaths of 128 Americans aboard her, and very nearly the entry of the United States into World War I. This new order will be decisive in achieving that result. Please see entry for 16 March 1917.
1956: Concerned about the decline in U.S. farm income, President Eisenhower proposes the creation of a "soil bank," a simple-sounding term for the idea that the government will pay farmers to take land out of production. Decades later, the expensive farm subsidies continue.
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1861: President Lincoln appoints William Seward Secretary of State. Seward, also a Republican, was a candidate for that party's Presidential nomination in the 1860 election. One of the more moderate members of Lincoln's cabinet, Seward will play an important role throughout the American Civil War in countering the public perception that radical abolitionists--"hard war" men--dominate the President's council. His moderating influence with Democrats concerned about the social effects of emancipation will help Lincoln gain votes in the 1864 election against former general George McClellan. But it will be for a "folly" that Seward will be best remembered.
1861: Florida secedes from the United States. Aside from actions involving blockade runners and one brief and ill-conceived offensive by Union forces, no other Confederate state will go through the American Civil War with less military activity within its borders.
1941: President Roosevelt presents Congress with his proposal for Lend-Lease to Great Britain. Although this country is still neutral in World War II, many Americans, especially in its military and government, are increasingly concerned by the menace the Axis poses to the free world. The United States has been providing limited aid to Great Britain since June, 1940, under the "Cash and Carry" program, which requires nations wishing to purchase the goods they wish using hard currency and to transport those goods in their own merchant vessels. Great Britain's finances no longer permit such expenditures, and its merchant marine is suffering grave losses to U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. Lend-Lease will change all that. Using the analogy that, "If your neighbor's house is on fire you don't sell him your hose, you lend it to him," Roosevelt proposes to provide military hardware and other supplies to Great Britain "on loan," with the understanding that Britain will return them after the war is over. Eventually, American merchant vessels will be used to ship Lend-Lease goods, and American naval vessels will escort them.
1942: Japanese troops begin a heavy assault on the eastern side of the Bataan Peninsula. Over the next two weeks they will score limited gains on the eastern slopes of Mount Natib, but the breakthrough that General Homma demands and expects will not occur. American soldiers, though trapped and increasingly facing supply, medicine, and food shortages, will mount a defense that will be an inspiration to much of the free world in the dark days of this early year of World War II.
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1943: President Franklin Roosevelt submits a $109,000,000,000.00 budget to Congress. More than one hundred billion of those dollars are earmarked for the war effort. The wealth of the United States translates rapidly into the power of her industry which, merged with the determination and abilities of her fighting men, seal the Axis' doom. By the end of the year, our enemies will be irretrievably in retreat on all fronts, though the war will last almost two more years.
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1991: Congress votes decisively to authorize the use of offensive military force to eject Iraqi troops from tiny Kuwait, illegally and barbarically seized by Saddam Hussein the previous August. President George Bush delivers the ultimatum to Iraq's monstrous dictator: Depart Kuwait by 15 January 1990 or face the might of the American and allied military powers assembled in Saudi Arabia and in the Persian Gulf. Hussein immediately decrees that the Americans will suffer "the Mother of all defeats." He also starts putting "baby food factory" signs on poison gas manufacturing facilities, and moving civilians into the upper levels of communications bunkers, describing them as "air raid shelters." American news personalities wring their hands and predict enormous American casualties when our troops must face Hussein's Republican Guards units. "Remember," they cry, "Iraq has fought a real war with Iran!" Please see entry for 15 January 1991.
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1974: Super Bowl VIII, played in Houston, Texas, ends with Miami defeating Minnesota 24 to 7. Minnesota quarterback Fran Tarkenton will joke about the matter when he hosts NBC's "Saturday Night Live" the following week. Having the Super Bowl played in Houston is as close as that city has ever gotten to that event. Good luck, Nashville. Enjoy the Oilers. Enjoy their owner. 'Bye, Bud.
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1784: The United States Congress meets at Annapolis, Maryland and ratifies the Treaty of Paris. Thus ends the American War for Independence with Great Britain's recognition of our national and personal liberty.
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1925: As violence between warring Chinese factions escalates and belligerents increasingly threaten the lives of American civilians living there, the United States Marines land in Shanghai, China. They will remain until March of this year, protecting American citizens until the unrest diminishes.
1942: Representatives of twenty-one nations gather in Rio de Janeiro at an Inter-American Conference on the defense of the Western Hemisphere. On 21 January 1942, they will issue a resolution severing all relations with the Axis powers and setting up an Inter-American Defense Board. World War II is now a truly global war in all senses of the word.
1953: John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower's nominee for Secretary of State, tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States must seek the "liberation of captive peoples" then living under communist rule. Asked whether he supports a policy of containment, he replies, "We shall never have a secure peace or a happy world so long as Soviet communism dominates one-third of all of the peoples."
1991: The deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait expires. Iraqi military units are on full alert, ready to deliver "the Mother of all defeats" to the "great Satan America." No attack comes. Saddam Hussein immediately declares himself the victor in the war. It apparently does not occur to him or his generals that the worst possible time to attack is when the enemy expects it. Please see entry for 17 January 1991.
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1920: The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution goes into effect, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States. The Prohibition era is born. Federal and state agents begin cracking down on the illegal manufacture of beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic beverages. The age of the speakeasy, the rum runner, the bootlegger is born. This ill-defined attempt to impose the moral view of a decided minority of the country's citizens ends up costing uncounted millions of dollars, spawning the growth of numerous organized crime rackets, and ultimately ends in failure. It will end with the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth, in the early years of the Great Depression. See? Every once in a while the government is capable of recognizing that it made a mistake.
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1781: Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, leading a mixed contingent of Continental Army soldiers and South Carolina militiamen, meets a force of British regulars commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at The Cowpens, South Carolina. Tarleton's force has been raiding through South Carolina on the orders of General Cornwallis as bait to lure Nathaniel Greene and his American troops into a battle of annihilation. Not only does Green not take the bait, but in the ensuing Battle of the Cowpens, Morgan conducts an almost perfect battle of encirclement, virtually destroying Tarleton's 1,100 regulars.
1991: Three o'clock in the morning, local time. At this hour, hundreds of American and allied airplanes and helicopters announce the beginning of Operation DESERT STORM with a simultaneous, well-coordinated, devastating attack on Iraqi radar, communications, command and control, and air defense installations. The attack takes the Iraqis and the Cable News Network by surprise. Allied success in this opening stage is near-total, and television news programs soon show what reporters who understand little of combat, and who have never heard a hostile shot, describe as "heavy antiaircraft fire." What the viewers see is ragged, unaimed, sporadic bursts of gunfire into an empty sky, the Iraqis trying to shoot down stealth aircraft who have long since delivered their munitions on target and headed for home. Asked what the Americans and their allies intend to do in DESERT STORM about the Iraqi military, General Colin Powell replies, "We're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it." During the first weeks of the offensive, American and allied pilots will fly over 1,000 missions per day against Iraq, obliterating the nation's military capability and turning its main road artery to neighboring Jordan into "the highway of death."
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1957: Three United States Air Force jets become the first aircraft to circle the globe in a nonstop flight. Along the way, they average a cruising speed of better than five hundred miles per hour.
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1942: The 5,000-man-strong Kimura Detachment opens its attack on the western end of the Bataan Peninsula. MacArthur's men put up a heavy resistance, but the Japanese infiltrate positions and exploit weaknesses between the various formations. Please see entry for 22 January 1942.
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1863: After more than a month of inaction, spent licking his wounds and trying to rebuild the shaky morale of his battered Army of the Potomac, General Burnside orders his army to march upstream along the Rappahannock River, seeking an uncontested spot to cross and throw his forces against the Confederate flank. A combination of his uninspired leadership, abysmal weather, poor morale, and Confederate uncooperativeness make the planned offensive an abortive failure. Troops return to their winter garrisons, exactly where they started, and the infamous "mud march" is over. Please see entry for 25 January 1862.
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1949: His Nationalist armies having suffered serious reverses at the hands of Mao's Communist rebels, Chiang Kai-Shek resigns the presidency of China. His forces desert wholesale to the Communists. Soon there will be two Chinas, the Communists in control on the mainland and the Nationalists on the island of Formosa (renamed Taiwan). Taiwan is, and will remain, a loyal ally of the United States despite inexcusable treatment by the Carter Administration. Please see entry for 1 January 1979.
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1942: The 1st Regular (Philippine) Division, having failed in a series of counterattacks to dislodge the Kimura Detachment, falls back under heavy enemy pressure, abandoning most of its artillery and vehicles in the process. This begins a gradual dissolution of the left flank of MacArthur's main defense line on the Bataan Peninsula.
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1937: Josef Stalin opens a savage purge of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Union with the commencement of a series of kangaroo court "show trials" of suspected traitors within the Soviet military. Thousands of officers will be "liquidated," the popular term for executions in this decade, or sent to concentration camps scattered about the Soviet Union's most desolate areas. Some of the more prominent officers liquidated are innocent; they are set up by German intelligence operatives at the behest of Adolf Hitler in order to weaken the Soviet military for the war Hitler plans to have with his eastern neighbor. Even today, the number of Russians murdered as a part of Stalin's sociopathic suspicions are unknown; conservative estimates range upwards of 75,000,000 people (more than twice the total number of casualties, military and civilian, sustained in World War II, including the Holocaust). Yet the belief will persist even today, on many American campuses and in many American news and editorial departments, despite the overwhelming evidence of the monstrous nature of the Soviet system, that Stalin and the Communists were peace-loving and progressive.
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1942: MacArthur's forces in Bataan begin a general retreat from the main defense line anchored on Mount Natib.
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1862: President Lincoln relieves General Burnside from command of the Army of the Potomac and replaces him with General Joseph Hooker.
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1942: The U.S. and Filipino forces on Bataan reach an intermediate defensive line running across the peninsula from Bagac on the west coast to Orion on the east. Japanese forces follow rapidly, and more fighting will soon ensue.
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1925: Doctor Curtis Welch, a local physician living in Shatolik, Alaska, having learned of an outbreak of diphtheria in Nome and fearing a general epidemic, has wired the U.S. Public Health Service for antitoxin and has loaded a dog sled with the precious cargo. The team sets out under command of "musher" Leonard Seppala. In five and a half days--three and a half days less than the world's record for such distance on a dog sled--Seppala will cross pack ice on the Bering Sea, endure temperatures of fifty below zero and winds of eighty miles per hour, and deliver the cargo in time to prevent the epidemic. His and Doctor Welch's valiant actions have saved the lives of at least 11,000 people.
1942: Japanese forces attack the U.S.-Filipino positions on Bataan. Although attacks on the western end of the line make some gains, they are not decisive. Attacks on the eastern end of the line are even less successful for the Japanese. Over the next few months, the Americans fighting unsupported in this hopeless defense will more than earn their nickname, the Battling Bastards of Bataan. Please see entry for 2 February 1942.
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1973: A cease-fire ends United States involvement in Indo-China and draws to a close the military phase of the Vietnam War. U.S. forces begin withdrawing from the southeast Asian country and will be gone by March. Unresolved, even to this day, is the question of more than 2,000 U.S. servicemen missing in action. Many, undoubtedly, died in situations where their bodies could not be located or recovered, but far too many of the MIA's were seen alive after their capture and their fate has never been explained satisfactorily by the Communist Vietnamese. Economic and diplomatic relations have "normalized" with the Communists, despite the fact that this directly dishonors those brave men and women who served in America's most unpopular war, fought the enemy to a standstill, endured no defeats on the battlefield, kept the faith with one another and with a nation that chose, infamously, not to honor them, and in many cases gave "their last full measure of devotion."
1977: The United States "warns" the Soviet Union not to silence Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov. Delivered with all the force and strength as the Carter Administration's other foreign policy ultimata, it has about the effect one might expect. Sakharov will ultimately die under arrest in the Soviet Union.
1986: At 1138, Eastern Standard Time, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Originally scheduled for 22 January, Mission 51-L has been postponed daily, six times, for one reason or another. Challenger launches in intense cold; thick ice is visible on the exposed surfaces at the launch pad. Examination of the photographic data will later reveal a puff of smoke on one of the solid rocket boosters, occuring barely half a second into the flight. This is the first visual indication of a catastrophe underway. "O-rings," which separate sections of the SRBs' propellants, have frozen in the cold and are not performing properly, allowing superheated gases to vent against the shuttle's external fuel tank. Seventy-three seconds after launch, the inevitable happens: Challenger explodes, killing all seven of her crew. Extensive investigations and public hearings lead to redesign of the SRBs to prevent a recurrence of this problem, before shuttle missions resume.
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1988: President Reagan orders the federal government to stop disbursing funds to abortion clinics. The instruction sets off a howl of protest and vocal arguments between the pro-abortion and pro-life factions, as both sides hold their positions very strongly. Lost in the shuffle--intentionally overlooked, many claim, by an anti-Reagan news media--is the simpler issue: Whether the federal government should be funding elective medical procedures, particularly those that end life.
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1933: Adolf Hitler is inaugurated as Reichskanzler--Chancellor of Germany. With the death of President Paul Hindenburg in the near future, he will succeed to that office, as well, and will consolidate them into the office of Der Fuhrer--the Leader. So begins the most savage and brutal period of recorded human history, with Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy, plus their puppet states, slaughtering people wholesale and justifying their barbarism with pseudo-scientific terminology and half-baked racist theories. Ultimately, the free world will unite to bring down the Nazis and their allies, though it will take six long years and millions of lives to do so. At the end, sighing faintly among the desolate ruins, is a still, small voice on the wind: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And looming on the horizon is an even more monstrous power, the Soviet Union.
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1917: Imperial Germany notifies the United States that it is resuming unrestricted submarine warfare against the Allied powers. It was this policy, and the sinking of the British liner Lusitania, that very nearly brought the United States into World War I a year earlier. Please see entry for 3 February 1917.
1950: President Truman instructs the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb.
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