1943: Allied forces land on the island of Bougainville in the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean. This is part of the "island hopping" strategy developed by American military planners, its goal being not to retake every island stronghold claimed by the Japanese but rather to seize those necessary strongpoints that will allow the Allies to cut lines of communications and leave the isolated garrisons to starve. Seizure of Bougainville will play an important part in the neutralization of Rabaul, a strong Japanese fortress whose strength will be left to languish for the rest of the war.
1951: The United States conducts the first military training maneuvers involving the use of nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert, to teach soldiers how to survive, fight, and win in a nuclear environment. Over the remaining years of the decade, additional such maneuvers will occur. Decades later, despite considerable proof that the troops involved were given adequate instruction on the precautions to take to avoid radiation contamination, some veterans of these tests will allege that their exposure to the weapons caused them serious health difficulties.
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1970: The United Auto Workers orders its members to strike General Motors plants and they do so, beginning a walkout that will last sixty-seven days. Union demands play no small role in the decline of quality in domestic automobiles, which encourages many consumers to purchase foreign vehicles. The Japanes auto manufacturers, among them Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, step in with new, reliable, attractive models, and the monopoly of American automotive business is broken. Well done, UAW! No doubt your members were well served.
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1903: The U.S.S. Nashville arrives in Panamanian waters. Panama is at this time a territory of Colombia. The cruiser's presence coincides with the latest uprising of Panamanian locals who seek independence from their South American rulers. They do declare independence, and the rebellion is a fait accomplis when the Colombian troops sent to quell the revolt are refused railroad transportation. Please see entry for 6 November 1903.
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1956: The United Nations condemns Soviet military aggression in Hungary. Soviet forces have swept into the tiny nation in response to a popular rebellion against the Communist puppet regime installed there by the Soviets at the end of the Second World War.
1979: As State Department officials have warned, President Carter's humanitarian decision (urged by Henry Kissinger, among others) to admit deposed Iranian Reza Shah Mohammed Pahlevi sparks violent reprisal in Teheran. "Students" storm the United States Embassy in the Iranian capital, taking sixty-six Americans hostage and beginning a siege that will last 444 days, will cast Carter as utterly ineffective in foreign affairs, and will play a significant role in his defeat in next year's elections. In 1980, the Internal Revenue Service will graciously announce that the hostages may have an extension to file their income taxes.
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1768: The British and Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, ceding territories along the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers from the Iroquois to the British. These river routes will play a significant role in the western battles during the War of Independence.
1872: Susan B. Anthony and other suffragettes are arrested when they try to vote in the New York elections.
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1903: The United States recognizes Panamanian independence and former Frenchman Jean Bunau-Varilla, the engineer who arranged the route of what will be the Panama Canal, is named U.S. ambassador to the new country. Please see entry for 18 November 1903.
1917: New York adopts an amendment to its state constitution granting voting rights to women.
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1944: The last elements of the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions are finally relieved by British forces from the fighting line in the Netherlands. These divisions, along with the British 1st Airborne division, were part of Bernard Montgomery's much-vaunted Operation MARKET-GARDEN, his plan to liberate the northern reaches of the Netherlands, force a surprise crossing over the Rhine River, and win himself considerable glory at the expense of almost everyone else. Montgomery confidently predicted on 16 September that the next day's airborne assaults would fulfill their objectives and his XXX Corps would be inside Germany within a few hours. The battle dragged on more than a week, and XXX Corps never made it across the Rhine. American losses in the two airborne divisions were heavy, but they but they achieve all of their objectives and stay in the line and continue fighting until British strength permitted their relief. The British 1st Airborne Division shares no such ability; Montgomery inserts this, the weakest of the three airborne divisions, to seize the farthest and most difficult objective, and it is essentially destroyed at Arnhem when it drops amidst two SS panzer divisions. Montgomery terms MARKET-GARDEN "99% successful." Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands reflects that "my country cannot afford the luxury of another Montgomery 'victory.'"
1986: President Reagan signs into law a provision allowing millions of individuals who have immigrated into the United States illegally to remain but also imposing harsh penalties on employers who hire undocumented aliens.
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1910: The women in the state of Washington gain the right to vote.
1918: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates his throne after German naval personnel, many of them persuaded by communist provocateurs, mutiny and his military advisers counsel him that the war is lost. He will live out his days an exile in the Netherlands.
1949: The United States government imposes stringent controls on the shipment of strategic goods and commodities to Soviet-bloc nations. These controls will broaden over the coming decades to include many non-Communist but oppressive or unfriendly regimes.
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1942: Kaiser Shipyards launches the Robert E. Peary, the first Liberty Ship. These ships represent the pinnacle of wartime production effort in shipbuilding. They use revolutionary technology in maritime construction, including all-welded hulls and prefabricated component assembly and installation. Please see entry for 12 November 1942.
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1775: Captain Samuel Nicholas, authorized and ordered to do so by the Continental Congress, raises a brigade of sailor-soldiers at Tun Tavern, Philadelphia. His criteria for selection are simple and effective: Each must be a stout seaman, who has his own rifle and knows how to use it. Thus is born the United States Marine Corps, and Nicholas is its first Commandant. The brigade of Marines serves to protect American shipping from British and piratical depredations prior to the start of the War for Independence. In that war, as in every war America has fought since then, the Marines serve with valor and distinction, living up more than admirably to their sobriquet, "The Few, the Proud," as well as to their motto, Semper Fidelis. Today, they continue as the amphibious assault specialists of our nation's safety, and are with all the other elite forces our Army, Air Force, and Navy have the embodiment of citizenship. Indestructible men, committed to the service of their Republic. Veracruz . . . Tripoli . . . Belleau Wood . . . Wake Island . . . Guadalcanal . . . Tarawa . . . Peleliu . . . Iwo Jima . . . Inchon . . . Pork Chop Hill . . . Chosen Reservoir . . . Khe Sanh . . . Hue . . . Grenada . . . Panama . . . Lebanon . . . Kuwait. These are places as honorable and hallowed as Saratoga, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, St. Michiel, St. Lo, Nijmegen, Bastogne, Leyte, Okinawa, Pusan, or Hamburger Hill, for in those places Marines--Americans--have indeed stood the line and given "their last full measure of devotion." Well done, gentlemen, and if you will permit a non-Marine to say it, Semper Fi.
1987: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ousts the chief of the Moscow Communist Party and his predominant rival, Boris Yeltsin, after Yeltsin publicly criticizes the slow pace of Gorbachev's supposed reforms. Public criticism of the dismissal gives Gorbachev the unhappy surprise that Yeltsin has far more support than Gorbachev supposed, and eight days later he will give Yeltsin a senior post in Soviet construction. Gorbachev will eventually fall from power; his successor--Yeltsin.
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1918: Armistice Day, the day hostilities end in Europe, closing World War I. Thus ends the world's first genuine world war, which began through a combination of nationalist narrow-mindedness, the blowing out of proportion of a deranged terrorist's act, treaties designed to ensure war rather than prevent one, and gross miscalculation. The United States, neutral until the year before, is a key factor in the Allies' ultimate triumph, as the provision, sacrifice, and achievement of her fresh manpower tilts the balance irretrievably against Germany and her allies. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are wounded or pay the ultimate price to liberate western Europe in this, the "war to end all wars." Among the disaffected German veterans, the rumor will fester that they were betrayed by traitors on the home front. Less than twenty years later, one of those disaffected men, Adolf Hitler, will persuade millions of his countrymen to march into a greater, far deadlier global madness, blaming the Jews for the loss of the First World War. He will studiously ignore the fact that many German Jews fought bravely and loyally in the same army he served.
1942: Following American landings in North Africa, where Vichy French troops put up only token resistance and in many cases openly welcome the American "invaders," German military forces occupy Vichy France, the theoretically "neutral," actually collaborationist, puppet government established in southern France in 1940 following the fall of Paris to the Nazi armies.
1989: The Farabundo Martin National Liberation Front (i.e., the Communist insurgents) in El Salvador mount their "final offensive" to "secure liberation" of the country. The principal aim of this ten-year-old, progressive people's revolution seems to be the assassination of El Salvador's president and vice president. The rebels fail on both accounts. Still, as this civil war goes on the brutality escalates on both sides. Please see entry for 16 November 1989.
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1942: Kaiser Shipyards delivers the Robert E. Peary to the Navy, seven and one-half days after laying her keel.
1980: The American space probe Voyager, passing the planet Saturn on her one-way trip out of the solar system, takes stunning photographs of the second-largest planet orbiting our sun. To scientists' delighted surprise, one of the many discoveries the probe sends back to Earth are photos clearly showing that Saturn's apparent 2 rings are in reality composed of more than a thousand thinner rings.
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1970: Syrian military officers, led by Defense Minister General el-Assad, oust the civilian regime and replace it with a staunchly pro-Soviet, warlike, repressive regime. Assad's clique will be instrumental in forging an alliance with Egypt that will result in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
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1956: Soviet troops, clearly cowed by the United Nations' condemnation earlier that month, crush the last anti-communist Hungarian rebel stronghold on Csepel Island in the Danube River. Please see entry for 17 November 1956.
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1626: The Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth Plantation buy out their London creditors. The cost for what, after the American Revolution, will become the United States? 1,800 British pounds.
1846: Commodore David Conner takes his naval squadron into Tampico harbor and begins a quick bombardment that, to his surprise, triggers the surrender of the Mexican garrison in that city. The Mexican-American War is a parade of such surprises, particularly to European powers. They have been betting that the war will be quick and decisive, as the Mexican Army was trained by the Duke of Wellington and his subordinates. They are two-thirds right; the war is a quick and decisive American victory.
1908: President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first sitting President to travel abroad when he visits Panama.
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1846: General Taylor, leading several thousand American troops, captures Saltillo, the capital of the Mexican province of Coahuila. Throughout the conflict, disease and poor sanitation have been and will continue to be deadlier enemies than the Mexican army.
1933: The United States reopens diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union for the first time since it seized power in Russia in 1917. The relationship will be a very strained one, as different American presidents struggle to deal with a rankly expansionist, militaristic, totalitarian regime. Ultimately, Ronald Reagan will preside over a buildup of American military strength and, more importantly, quality of training and weaponry, while accomodating a growing consumer market, that the Soviets cannot match. Capitalism proves the far more successful entity.
1864: General William Tecumseh Sherman, commanding 62,000 Union troops, takes his army southeast from Atlanta, carrying twenty days' rations, determined to destroy the remnants of the Confederate agricultural and transportation network linking the Deep South to Richmond. His "march to the sea" will be brutally effective in this regard, cutting a swath of absolute devastation more than a mile wide between Atlanta and the Atlantic coast at Savannah. "Sherman's Neckties" will litter the route; they are made from railroad rails, which the Union troops remove from the rail lines and use a machine literally to tie in knots around tree trunks. For years afterward, the Union war song "Marching Through Georgia" will be an especially bitter melody in Southern ears.
1982: The space shuttle Columbia lands at Edwards Air Force Base, completing her maiden mission during which she launched two communications satellites.
1989: National forces in El Salvador murder Jesuit priests, prompting opponents of anti-Communist foreign aid in Washington to demand that Congress terminate all support for the El Salvadoran government.
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1956: "History is on our side. We will bury you!" These are the friendly words of understanding that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has for Western ambassadors in general, and the United States in particular. Those whom the gods would destroy they first compel to make grandiose threats. Please see entry for 22 November 1956.
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1903: The United States and Panama sign a treaty that is virtually identical to the earlier Hay-Herran Treaty proposed by the United States but rejected by Colombia. That treaty would have leased a six-mile-wide strip of land across the Isthmus of Panama to the United States for $10,000,000.00 plus annual payments of $250,000.00. The new treaty grants rights in perpetuity to the leased strip to the United States "as if [it] were the sovereign" but does not grant the U.S. sovereignty over what will become the Panama Canal Zone. Although the Canal Zone is eventually ceded back to Panama, U.S. business will retain a continuing presence there, and U.S. military forces will continue to protect it.
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1792: The National Convention, the collection of revolutionaries in France, issue a proclamation offering aid to the peoples of any nations who wish to overthrow their monarchs. The French Revolution began by patterning itself on the American Revolution, and many of its original members will pattern their own philosophies on the principles that founded our nation, but in the end the Revolution will lead to the Directorate, and the Reign of Terror, and ultimately to the rise of an imperialist named Napoleon. The combination of all these factors in Europe will be a generation of unremitting warfare, the slaughter of nearly an entire generation of Europe's manhood, and the entrenchment of monarchies in England, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Austria, and Russia.
1832: South Carolina, at a convention of its legislature, declares the Tariff of Abominations passed in 1828 null and void in South Carolina. They follow this five days later with an Ordinance of Nullification making their resolution the law in South Carolina. In the days before the American Civil War, this is an example both of the passions in conflict between the so-called "Federalist" and "states-rights" advocates. Less than thirty years later, another cause celebre, this one the morally repugnant but politically divisive issue of slavery, will prompt the two philosophical camps into the American Civil War.
1863: Inaugurating a cemetery for those who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg, President Lincoln follows a long-winded politician with a very short oration of his own. Afterward, he is despondent that he was such a poor speaker and believes no one will remember his words. Generations later, we remember them and should honor them for what they proclaim. We call it the Gettysburg Address.
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1917: British forces launch a fierce offensive at Cambrai in northeastern France. They have in their complement a new weapon, the armored fighting vehicle or "tank" (so named because, when the vehicles were being readied to ship to France, they were considered such a secret weapon that they were labeled as "water tanks" on the packing manifests). Some three hundred vehicles take part in the offensive, which initially is successful but which, like all too many other offensives in this bloody war, prove to be costly failures. Soldiers on both sides of the conflict will study the use of these revolutionary fighting vehicles in their first, primitive, endeavors, and they will revolutionize the face of war in the succeeding World War and in the conflicts that have occurred since. Among these luminaries: George Patton, Joseph Collins, and Erwin Rommel.
1943: United States Marines launch Operation GALVANIC and storm ashore on Tarawa, a tiny, lethal atoll in the western Pacific Ocean. Its defender, Japanese Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, is so confident of the abilities of his thousands of troops that he has confidently stated, "The Americans could not take Tarawa with a million men in a hundred years." The Marines have arrived to prove Shibasaki oh, so wrong. Please see entry for 21 November 1943.
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1943: Marines like Lieutenant William D. Hawkins demonstrate just how wrong Admiral Shibasaki was in his earlier prediction. Hawkins, leading a scout-sniper platoon, suffered many shrapnel wounds on the first day of the Tarawa invasion, but continued fighting. He is wounded again today and his superiors wish to evacuate him because of his loss of blood. His response is, "I came here to kill Japs; I didn't come here to be evacuated." He will fight literally until he dies from loss of blood his second night on the island, becoming one of the many legends of valor this tiny, blood-soaked coral atoll will give birth to. On the same day, Colonel David Shoup who commands the Marine landing force radios this message to his superiors offshore among the bombarding naval vessels: "Casualties: Many. Percentage dead: Not known. Combat efficiency: We are winning." The Marines will take Tarawa, killing all but a hundred of the nearly 5,000 Japanese troops on the island. Nearly one thousand Marines will give their last full measure of devotion to secure the island, however, and twice that number will be wounded. The lessons of Tarawa will shape and improve American amphibious assaults in the succeeding months.
1974: Congress passes the Freedom of Information Act, proclaimed as guaranteeing the public broader access to government records and information. Often misunderstood by the public in general and activists in particular, the Act is subordinate in many respects to statutes and regulations concerning the classification of sensitive information and the principles of national security. It will take several lawsuits against various intelligence agencies, and the 1985 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court concerning classification of documents by the C.I.A., before people begin to understand that the Act was not intended to throw every door in the government open to public scrutiny. Further, practical experiences will show that even with the Act, it may take quite a while for an inquirer to obtain the "free" information.
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1956: Soviet troops kidnap Hungarian rebel Imre Nagy in Budapest. The fact that he is in a foreign nation's embassy and thus on the soil of another sovereign power seems to matter little to them.
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1939: Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month rather than the last, establishing the date for the benefit of all future calendars, turkey salesman, and purveyors of Christmas wares.
1945: The United States government ends rationing on all food items except sugar. With most of the world devastated from the fighting in World War II and facing starvation, the United States agricultural base will have to--and will successfully--feed a good part of the planet's population. One of the most widely distributed foodstuffs to foreign lands? Peanut butter.
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1944: B-29's take off from the Pacific island of Saipan on their first long-range bombing raids of the Japanese Home Islands. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is the largest bomber in the world for its time, being 99 feet long and with a wingspan of over 141 feet. Its four radial, propeller-driven engines enable it to carry 20,000 pounds of bombs on a round trip of more than 4,000 miles, at a ceiling of more than 31,000 feet. It carries a 20mm cannon and 10 .50 caliber machine guns for its own defense, these being housed in revolutionary closed turrets that use an early form of television to track and aim the guns. B-29's will dominate the skies over Japan, systematically reducing its industry and its cities to ashen rubble, particularly after General Curtis LeMay switches tactics from high explosive bomb loads to loads composed principally of incendiary bombs. One particular B-29, the B-29-45-MO named "Enola Gay," will deliver the first atomic bomb to the doomed city of Hiroshima in August, 1945.
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1936: Japan and Germany sign an Anti-Comintern (anti-communist) pact, making Japan a de facto member of the Axis.
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1783: The United States Congress meets for the first time as the legislature of a recognized, independent nation at Annapolis, Maryland. Ah, but that those noble statesmen's goals and principles had endured to today's federal legislature!
1941: Six Japanese aircraft carriers, escorted by two battleships, two heavy cruisers, and a number of destroyers, sail secretly from Japanese waters. An elaborate deception plan goes into effect at the same time to make it appear that the carriers are still in port. This strike force, the Kido Butai, is executing the opening move of a plan long debated and prepared in Japanese military circles. Japan has decided to gain the resources and international stature it demands not through trade or reasoned discourse but by stark military aggression. It views the United States, with its large navy and air force, as the principal enemy and determines to implement a plan developed by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto to neutralize American military power in the Western Pacific for at least six months. Critical to this plan are the ships of Kido Butai. Their destination: Pearl Harbor.
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1826: Jedediah Strong Smith, leading an expedition that set out from the Great Salt Lake the previous August, arrives at San Diego and completes the first overland journey across the American West, having followed the lower Colorado River and having crossed the Mojave Desert.
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1975: Congress passes the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), strengthening an earlier federal statute addressing the rights of older workers. Today the ADEA is one of a large number of federal statutes and codes regulating almost every aspect of the employer-employee relationship in the United States.
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1956: In the face of Soviet aggression in Hungary, President Eisenhower extends political asylum to all Hungarian freedom fighters.
1990: The United Nations Security Council, led by the American ambassador to the United Nations, votes to authorize member nations to use military force to expel Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait. Iraqi troops seized the tiny, helpless nation the previous August as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein decided to impress the world with his humanitarian vision. President Bush quickly orders American planners to prepare to attack in the Persian Gulf. Operation DESERT SHIELD is about to become Operation DESERT STORM. In Baghdad, Hussein (when he is not holding small children of foreign diplomats hostage) will proclaim that the coming fight will be "the mother of all battles."
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1917: German forces at Cambrai counterattack and ultimately reclaim most of the territory the British assaults gained initially. The British offensive is a costly failure, with several hundred more corpses as payment on the butcher's bill, but the appearance of tanks on the battlefield has started an evolution that will relegate massed infantry assaults and cavalry charges to the archives of military history.
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