Dates of Note in American History

A Continuing Chronology

October

1979: Panama takes over operation of the Panama Canal from the United States, per the terms of a treaty executed the previous year by President Carter. Many of Carter's critics complain that his "giving up" the Canal compromises American national security, despite (or ignoring) the facts that the U.S. Navy has had independently operating and supported naval forces in both major oceans for decades, that the Canal Zone remains under American control, and that American military forces in Panama are not reduced significantly. Please see entry for 3 November 1903.

1943: Units of the U.S. Fifth Army, commanded by General Mark Clark, seize the city and the port of Naples, Italy, less than a month after landing at Salerno. Allied forces begin a slow, painful advance up the heavily fortified, rugged Italian peninsula. The planners believe that the Italian campaign will divert large numbers of German troops, thus weakening their defense against the planned Normandy invasion the following year and hastening the demise of the Nazi Reich. General Albert Kesselring, German commander in Italy, will later call it the Axis' largest, self-sustaining prisoner-of-war camp in view of the huge number of Allied troops tied down in the theater.

1780: British spy John Andre, captured in September with American military secrets, is hanged. His confederate, American traitor Benjamin Arnold, escapes. Andre's last request is to be executed by firing squad rather than being hanged. The Americans refuse the request George Washington will describe Andre as a figure more tragic than sinister.

1952: Great Britain test-fires its first atomic weapon in the Southwest Pacific. The successful detonation enrolls Britain as the third member of the world nuclear arms club, after the United States and the Soviet Union.

1952: Soviet authorities expel U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan, who has commented on the isolation of Western diplomats in the Communist state.

1965: President Johnson signs into law a new immagration act, eliminating the national origin quota system previously used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

1987: President Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney sign a U.S.-Canada free trade agreement. Two prominent political parties in Canada oppose the agreement, complaining that it makes Canada an economic vassal of the United States. Interestingly, similar complaints will surface, this time among American critics, when Reagan's successor George Bush proposes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), involving not only the U.S. but also Canada and Mexico. The same criticism will rise concerning President Clinton's signature of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). That criticism might even be true, but it is hard to tell, since no one seems to have read the 20,000-page document.

1943: Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, speaking at a convocation of his senior subordinates, informs them that the plan for the extermination of Jews and other "undesireables" is "well-advanced." Criticizing the progress of the so-called "final solution" because of occasional pleas to spare the "exceptional" Jew, Himmler proudly tells his minions that the secret mass-extermination system will be a "never-to-be-written page of glory" in German history. By the end of the war, nearly 20,000,000 people--Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, and anyone else who did not match up to the Nazis' view of "racial purity," will have perished in mass-murder factories like Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka.

1813: At the Battle of the Thames, in Ontario, American forces inflict a stinging defeat on combined British and Indian forces, to the extent that American supremacy in the Northwest will continue unabated throughout the rest of the War of 1812. The most notable casualty of the engagement may be the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, dead on the battlefield. He is 45. Tecumseh's death effectively ends Shawnee alliance with the British, compounding their problems in the remote region.

1973: The Yom Kippur War begins when Egyptian forces storm across the Suez Canal and blast openings in Israel's Bar-Lev defensive line on the western fringe of the Sinai Desert. Simultaneously, Syrian military forces attack Israeli positions on the strategically vital Golan Heights. The official Arab justifications for the attacks are that Israel started the war by shooting down Syrian jets the previous January, and to reclaim the lands seized by Israel in the famous Six-Day War of 1967. As the contestants are equipped with the latest arms of their superpower sponsors (the United States for Israel, the Soviet Union for the Arab states) and have been trained in accordance with those superpowers' respective doctrines, the October War is a set-piece demonstration of what a modern war in Western Europe might be.

1780: The Battle of King's Mountain is a turning point in the War for Independence. Approximately 800 volunteers from North Carolina, essentially a mounted irregular force, engages and defeats more than 900 Loyalist militia who are well trained, well equipped, and led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Ferguson, widely acclaimed as the best marksman in the British army and the inventor of a breech-loading rifle, is killed in the fighting.

1913: Henry Ford revolutionizes American and world industry with the introduction of the assembly line. Ford's production line draws on experience already in use in "disassembling lines" in meat packing plants and works by having the automobile built as it travels along a preset manufacturing path, with teams of workers at each assembly station responsible for the same activity (e.g., putting on the headlights) on each model to come past them. This process dramatically reduces the time required to assemble an automobile (from more than 12 hours to roughly an hour and a half), and makes it possible for Ford to introduce low-cost, well-constructed vehicles that working men can afford. The same production techniques will be used in building the weapons and vehicles of World War II, the automobiles and aircraft of today, and stereos, televisions, and computers.

1895: Inspired by the Erie Canal and a forerunner to the Tenessee Valley Authority, the Ohio Valley Improvement Association is organized to make the Ohio river fully navigable. Eventually, the project will involve the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and will encompass 49 locks and dams on almost a thousand miles of the river's course.

1779: Court Kazimierz Pulaski, a Polish military advisor to the Continental Army, joins American forces commanded by General Benjamin Lincoln, which are besieging the British at Savannah, Georgia. In an effort to break the siege, Pulaski leads his troops in a charge of the British positions. He sustains a mortal wound, dying on 11 October. Please see entry for 20 October 1779.

1950: The United Nations sanctions the movement of Allied military forces north of the 38th Parallel, into North Korea. Following General MacArthur's bold landing at Inchon in September, North Korean forces in the peninsula have been cut off from their supplies and are in total disarray as the Allied forces strike north out of the Pusan Perimeter to clear South Korea. Eventually, the policy of pursuit into North Korea will prompt Communist China to intervene in the war with hundreds of thousands of troops.

1774: Shawnee braves attack frontiersmen at the juncture of the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers in western Virginia. Their plan is to annihilate the settlers and thus garner territory and potential independence from Great Britain. The frontiersmen inflict a thrashing defeat on the Indians, who end up signing a peace treaty yielding hunting rights in Kentucky and permitting unfettered transportation along the Ohio River.

1973: Israeli forces on the Golan Heights, recovering from Syrian attacks at the start of the Yom Kippur War, push Syrian troops back to their start line. The war continues poorly for Israel on the Egyptian front, however.

1976: Israel and Egypt sign peace accords whereby Israel relinquishes almost 2,000 square miles of territory in the Sinai.

1776: Benedict Arnold, leading American forces on Lake Champlain, suffers a naval defeat against the British at the Battle of Valcour Island. Still, Arnold's actions in the area have delayed British efforts to move south, and although the British take Crown Point, they soon withdraw back to Canada.

1944: American carrier aircraft strike Japanese positions on Formosa, the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" of Japanese power in the Western Pacific. It is from these bases that the Japanese largely maintained air superiority over the Philippine Islands in late 1941 and 1942, during their conquest of that American territory. American military planners have focused on destruction of Japanese air power on Formosa as a necessity for the planned Leyte campaign. The carrier strikes destroy more than 300 Japanese aircraft with minimal American losses, establishing air superiority over the Philippines and enabling American sea and air forces to interdict the islands from Japanese supply and reinforcement.

1969: President Richard Nixon predicts confidently that the Vietnam War will be over in the next three years. He will be right, too; the war will end in 1972. That, interestingly enough, will be an election year, and the Paris Peace Accords, engineered by Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, will be one of many compelling reasons people vote overwhelmingly against Nixon's Democratic opponent, George McGovern. McGovern's campaign slogan in 1972, "Peace Now," will end up sounding like a complaint, "Peace Four Years Ago."

1775: The Continental Congress establishes the Continental Navy, which will become the United States Navy. Its initial strength, as authorized by Congress, is "two swift sailing vessels."

1774: The Continental Congress adopts a Declaration of Rights and Grievances against Great Britain. It does not rise to the level of a formal separation from the British crown. One of its opponents, ironically, is a gentleman named George Washington, who opines that "no thinking man in all North America desires independence." What a difference two years will make! Please see entry for 14 April 1775; Please see entry for 4 July 1776.

1832: The Chickasaw Indians cede their lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States. This cession avoids war between the two cultures, which the Chickasaw would have neither the manpower, the technology, nor the military skill to win.

1962: United States Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft overflying Cuba bring back troubling surveillance photographs. The Soviet Union is installing intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Cuba, its Caribbean vassal state. These nuclear-tipped missiles have the capability to devastate the lower reaches of the United States as well as most of Central and South America. President Kennedy immediately begins evaluating his options in the face of this dire threat: Air strikes, blockade, outright invasion, or mere diplomacy. So begins a terrifying two weeks the world will remember as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Please see entry for 22 October 1962.

1946: Federal controls on meat prices, implemented during World War II, come to an end.

1859: John Brown, a fervent abolitionist, and his band of rural terrorists (13 white and 5 black) raid the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Brown plans to use the weapons seized in the attack to arm slaves and spark a general slave rebellion, and then establish a new state (under his rule, naturally) that will be a sanctuary for former and escaped slaves. He claims his mission is under God's direction and sanction, but has a less than savory reputation in this regard; in 1856 he became notorious for the Pottawotamie Massacre of farmers living in slave-owning territory. Please see entry for 18 October 1859.

1943: Chicago opens its subway system, initially five miles long. The rapid transit system is touted not only as an engineering achievement for the city but also as a war effort; promoting subway use conserves rubber.

1941: A German U-Boat torpedoes the U.S.S. Kearny, an American destroyer. Hitler personally orders the discipline of the submarine's commander. Even though relations are very strained between the United States and the Nazi regime, largely because of U.S. assistance to Britain under the Lend-Lease Act, and even though Germany will declare war on the United States in less than two months, for now, the Reichskanzlerei is concerned about all-out American involvement in the European War.

1986: Alarmed at the spread of cocaine use in the United States, Congress passes strong new anti-drug legislation. The terms "the war on drugs," "drug czar," and "zero tolerance" come into public use. Today, more than a decade later, it is hard for the average citizen to see what, if any, progress has been made.

1859: Federal troops and U.S. Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee reach Harper's Ferry and engage John Brown and his band of abolitionists. It is a one-sided battle, and Brown loses. He will be tried and convicted of treason (please see entry for 2 December 1859) and will go to the gallows preaching his abolitionist view, completely unrepentant about the lives he has taken. His abortive uprising inflames sentiments on both sides of the slavery issue, and the song "John Brown's Body," with its chorus that his "truth goes marching on," will be a popular song first before and then during the Civil War. Its tune and those words of its chorus will eventually find more acceptable expression in the famous, "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

1867: At Sitka, Alaska, amidst much pomp and ceremony, and the firing of salutes by American and Russian artillery, the Imperial Russian flag is lowered and the Stars and Stripes is raised. Alaska changes hands from Russia to the United States for the price of $7,200,000.00, roughly two and a half cent per acre. Critics of this purchase of 584,000 square miles--approximately twice the area of the State of Texas--dub it "Seward's Icebox" or "Seward's Folly."

1955: South Vietnam's ruler, Bao Dai, dismisses his Premier. The Premier, an individual named Ngo Dinh Diem, simply refuses to resign. Please see entry for 23 October 1955.

1781: General Cornwallis surrenders his 7,000 British troops at besieged Yorktown, Virginia, ending British military opposition to the American rebellion and effectively recognizing the United States of America as an independent nation.

1971: Already in financial difficulty, Look Magazine ceases publication after thirty-four years in print. New, stringently enforced postal regulations concerning magazine formats are a major cause in the magazine's demise. Other publications shrink their formats dramatically to reduce postal costs. Thank you, U.S. Postal Service.

1774: The Continental Congress adopts an Association by which the member states pledge not to import anything from Great Britain after 1 December 1774, and not to export to Britain, Ireland, or the British West Indies after 1 September 1775. Within six months, all of the colonies except Georgia and New York ratify this resolution and join the Association. The Association vows to abrogate this boycott if the Crown will redress various trade and diplomatic grievances. British leaders, stung by the reality of a growing rebellion in their most profitable colonies, respond by becoming more retrenched. Progressively, the British colonists in American find themselves thinking of themselves more and more as a new people of a new nation--as Americans rather than Englishmen.

1779: American forces abandon the unsuccessful siege of Savannah after attempts to force the British positions fail. The withdrawal is more a respite than a victory for the British, for with France and other European nations openly assisting the United States, the British Navy is no longer able to prevent significant supplies of war from reaching the Americans. The tide continues to turn against England in the War for Independence.

1944: Elements of the United States Sixth Army land on Leyte, in the Philippine Islands, between Tacloban and Dulag. Parts of the 1st Cavalry, 7th, 24th, and 96th Divisions storm ashore against opposition by the Japanese, who have occupied the islands since mid-1942. This invasion is the beginning of the long-awaited campaign to liberate the Philippines, a subject that has been alive in American military planning since General Douglas MacArthur's pledge in 1942, "I shall return."

1979: Ill with cancer, Iranian shah-in-exile Reza Pahlevi leaves Mexico for the United States, where he hopes to undergo cancer treatment. President Carter permits his entry, citing humanitarian reasons, despite angry opposition from that prince of open-mindedness and mercy, the Ayatollah Khomeini. The fundamentalist regime in Iran will take its revenge the following month by seizing the United States embassy in Teheran and holding 66 Americans hostage. They will recover their freedom only after Ronald Reagan is elected President in 1980. Please see entry for 22 October 1979.

1836: Sam Houston is inaugurated as the President of the Republic of Texas. Texas seceded from Mexico the previous year and won its independence at the Battle of San Jacinto. Now, an independent nation, the Republic will eventually elect to become a state of the United States of America. President Clinton, please take note: Texas was not annexed!

1962: Supported by the Organization of American States, President Kennedy announces that United States military forces will impose a total blockade of the island of Cuba pending the agreement by the Soviet Union to dismantle and remove the nuclear missiles it has begun installing there. The Soviet Union responds with bellicose diatribes and directs units of the Soviet Navy to escort Soviet merchant vessels bringing more missiles to Cuba through the American blockade. The world tenses for what may well become a nuclear war. Please see entry for 26 October 1962.

1964: Canada adopts the Maple Leaf flag as its national banner (I know, this has nothing to do with American history directly. But, I thought it would be nice to honor America's northern colonies; besides, the flag must have looked very dull with only those two red stripes!).

1979: The Shah arrives in the United States and is admitted to a New York hospital for removal of his gall bladder. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and banker David Rockefeller are instrumental in President Carter's decision to admit the Shah to our country; on the other side of the debate are the officials at the United States Embassy in Teheran, Iran, who warn that the decision will have potentially violent consequences. Following medical treatment for his terminal condition, the Shah will move on to Panama. Please see entry for 4 November 1979.

1955: In a hastily called referendum, Ngo Dinh Diem receives a substantial majority of the South Vietnamese vote. Bao Dai's regime totters, then collapses as foreign powers, including France and the United States, withdraw their support from him. Please see entry for 26 October 1955.

1983: Arab terrorists drive a truck laden with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, and detonate the lethal payload. At the same time, terrorists drive a second bomb-truck into the French garrison barracks. 241 Marines and U.S. sailors, and 54 French troops, die in the combined explosions. Although sentries observed the truck approaching the Marine position, the Rules of Engagement required by a harping Congress (which seems to have gone on vacation when it comes to observing the combat conditions in Beirut) prohibit Marines from firing on the unidentified vehicle. In the aftermath of the explosion, President Reagan changes the Rules of Engagement, while Congress and the press carp about Lebanon becoming "another Vietnam."

1945: The United Nations charter comes into effect.

1949: President Truman speaks at the commemoration ceremonies for the newly formed United Nations, in New York City, and pledges continued U.S. support for the fledgling organization. American failure to join, let alone lead, the League of Nations is viewed by many as having contributed to that organization's ineffectiveness and ultimate collapse prior to World War II, and the nations of the world, having now lived through two great conflagrations in a single century, at least proclaim that they wish to seek peace. Over the ensuing 5 decades, many will come to question the role, efficacy, and continued usefulness of the U.N., but it remains today.

1812: The U.S.S. United States, a frigate under the command of Stephen Decatur, meets and defeats the British man-of-war Macedonian. In the Revolutionary War, only thirty years before, the Continental Navy was largely a sad joke. In the intervening years, however, American sailing skill has merged with naval fighting skill, and the British are never able to have naval superiority in American waters, despite their vast numerical advantages over the still young American navy.

1917: Following a large and vocal picketing of the White House by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, President Woodrow Wilson publicly endorses the principle when he speaks with New York State Woman Suffrage Party members at the White House. Please see entry for 27 October 1917.

1936: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sign an accord creating the Rome-Berlin "Axis." The Axis alliance will eventually be a German hegemony, with Hitler dictating the behavior of his increasingly unreliable and resentful Italian "allies."

1955: Ngo Dinh Diem proclaims a new Republic of South Vietnam, with himself as its president. Promises of free elections never seem to materialize as Diem, much like both his predecessors and successors, favors family appointees and excludes other ethnic and religious factions in Vietnam. Diem will die in 1963, assassinated during a coup led by General Duong Van Minh and other anti-Communist officers. Even today, many argue that American intelligence agencies played a part in the coup and are thus indirectly, if not directly, responsible for Diem's death.

1962: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has badly underestimated American resolve concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis. He has also badly underestimated our military readiness. Further, he has grossly overestimated the Soviet Union's strategic military readiness. Faced with the sudden realization that Communist bluster may spark a war his nation not only cannot win, but will be devastated for generations as a result of losing, he must swallow his Marxist arrogance and back down. He orders the Soviet naval vessels converging on the American blockade to withdraw. He agrees to President Kennedy's demands that the Soviet missiles in Cuba be removed. Although Khrushchev will attempt to dicker over concessions for the Soviets in Cuba, in the words of one American statesman, "We were eyeball to eyeball and the other fellow just blinked." Please see entry for 28 October 1962.

1787: The "Federalist Papers" begin to appear in The New York Independent Journal. Authored by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, these writings offer an explanation of the Constitution to America's citizens. In future years, courts will look to the "Federalist Papers" as evidence of the founding fathers' intent behind ambiguous (or perceived ambiguous) constitutional provisions.

1917: 20,000 members of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party march in New York, demonstrating in favor of granting women the right to vote. This protest is indicative of the growing equal suffrage movement, which will find success three years later upon the enactment and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Please see entry for 6 November 1917.

1917: American troops go into action for the first time in France, fulfilling Colonel Charles E. Stanton's proclamation in Paris when American forces entered that city the previous July, "Lafayette, we are here!"

1778: British forces under General Howe narrowly win a victory against Washington and his Continental Army at the Battle of White Plains. Washington has no choice but to retreat and regroup his forces, while Howe, surprised at how well the supposedly amateurish "rebel rabble" has fought, does not pursue effectively.

1919: Despite President Wilson's veto, the Prohibition Enforcement Act (also known as the Volstead Act) becomes law. This is the act that gives teeth to the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed that same year. It ushers in the period known now as "Prohibition," with images of speakeasies, gin mills, bootleg whiskey, smuggling alcohol in from our neighbors north and south . . . and gangsters. Among the lasting impressions from the era: Al Capone and a company name, Canada Dry.

1962: Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschchev agrees to remove all nuclear missiles from Cuba. President Kennedy agrees not to invade Cuba to oust Communist yes-man Fidel Castro. It is a highly unbalanced agreement, as the United States had no intention of invading Cuba in the first place. Castro refuses to permit American inspectors onto the missile sites, but surveillance aircraft and other intelligence sources confirm the missiles' removal. How close was the world to a nuclear war? That answer may never be declassified, but there are valid reasons to believe that at the moment the Soviet Union backed down, the United States was not only ready but very close to committing such awesome, and awful, weaponry in order to protect itself from nuclear blackmail. It is also quite likely that this loss of face plays a major part in Khruschchev being deposed as Soviet dictator two years later.

1740: James Boswell is born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the son of the Lord of Auchinleck, a well-regarded, influential, and extremely wealthy man. Sent to study at the University of Edinburgh, Boswell will run away to London, only to be recaptured by his family and returned to the family estate where his family forces him to study law under their surveillance. He will later study law in Holland, then tour Germany, Italy, and France. In his travels, he meets such luminaries as Rousseau, Voltaire, and a Corsican general leading a revolt against Genoa. Boswell's careful notes of these personalities in his diary become the basis for vivid profiles of them. In 1763, he meets Samuel Johnson, the British man of letters and philosopher who had published A Dictionary of the English Language eight years earlier. In 1768 Boswell's own work An Account of Corsica is published in four languages and makes him famous. His friendship with Dr. Johnson lasts until the latter's death, and is the foundation for Boswell's best-remembered work, The Life of Samuel Johnson, published in two volumes (1791 and 1793). Boswell will die in 1795 while working on the third volume of Johnson's biography.

1929: "Black Tuesday." In record-breaking activity, the New York Stock Exchange handles trades of stock exceeding sixteen million shares. The Dow average falls more than thirty points, and margin calls financially obliterate scores of speculators who have been trading their shares on the margin (i.e., with the payment for the shares secured by the shares themselves). In a matter of hours, more than $30,000,000,000.00--that's thirty billion dollars, more than the entire American cost of World War I--simply vanishes from the system as margin calls eliminate the players. Leading economists assure the country, as does President Hoover, that there is nothing to be concerned about, that the economy is sound, but panic ensues and the market continues to decline. It is the start of the Great Depression, and its ramifications spread worldwide. As desperate as times will become in the United States, they will be even more desperate in foreign countries. One upshot of the near-decade of economic decline: The rise of Naziism, Fascism, and Japanese militarism, and the consolidation of Stalinist Communism. In other words, World War II.

1940: President Franklin Roosevelt institutes the first peacetime military draft with the implementation of the Selective Service Act. With France having fallen to the Nazis and England defiant but alone in Western Europe, with the Soviet Union invaded and nearly prostrate before the Wehrmacht, and with a continuing tide of Japanese aggression in the Pacific, many leaders in Washington have well-justified concerns about the preparedness of the United States to defend itself should World War II continue to spread.

1862: General Ormsby MacKnight Mitchell dies of yellow fever at Beaufort, South Carolina, where he commands the Union Army's Department of the South. Born in Kentucky in 1809, Mitchell graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1829, 15th in a class of 56 cadets which include Joseph Johnston and Robert E. Lee. When the Civil War breaks out in 1861, Mitchell obtains a command in the Army of the Ohio. After participating in operations in Kentucky and Tennessee, he conducts raids into northern Alabama and captures Huntsville, Alabama in April, 1862. Mitchell is an outspoken critic of the limited approach of many Union generals, and his opposition to "soft war" earns him the enmity of some conservative Northern newspapers. Mitchell takes a tough stance against Confederate civilians and the institution of slavery, confiscating the property of prominent Southerners and protecting slaves ("contraband") that make it into the lines of his command. In July 1862 he arrives at the Sea Islands of South Carolina to take command of the Department of the South. Here, he continues the practice started by his predecessor, General David Hunter, of building schools and housing for the former slaves in the recaptured territory, a policy that is later seen as the first example of the reconstruction of the South. His efforts die along with him, however.

1975: New York City very nearly goes broke. Unable to meet its bond obligations, the city almost defaults on two billion dollars' of commitments. Only a special federal loan signed by President Ford averts the disaster.

1803: While pursuing a Tripolitanian pirate, the U.S.S. Philadelphia, the largest and best-armed Navy frigate in the Mediterranean, strikes an uncharted reef and goes aground. Her captain, William Bainbridge, does everything possible to lighten the ship and float her free, but to no avail, and with Tripolitanian gunboats circling nearer, he burns his code books, orders holes chopped in the bottom of his vessel, and surrenders. The Philadelphia is part of a United States squadron sent to the region after Tripolitanian pirates, following the custom of the various dictators of the North African states, start raiding American merchant shipping and demanding tribute from the United States. In the case of the strongman ruling Tripoli, the demand was for $500,000.00 at once and $20,000.00 a year thereafter. The frigate's loss is made that much more serious two days later when a storm floats her free. The Tripoli pirates now have one of the best-armed warships in the world as their flagship. The American squadron commander, Edward Preble, takes the counsel of one of his junior officers, Stephen Decatur, and a plan to eliminate the threat and restore American honor takes shape. Please see entry for 7 February 1804.

1941: The U.S.S. Reuben James takes a torpedo from a German U-Boat and sinks. More than a hundred sailors from the destroyer perish. The cat-and-mouse game between the supposedly neutral United States and Nazi Germany intensifies.

1968: President Johnson announces complete cessation of aerial and naval bombardment of North Vietnam. The gesture brings absolutely no productive response from the Communists in Hanoi.

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