This date in history

[BossMark]

1654-A British attack into the Russian guns at Balaclava is immortalised as the 'Charge of the Light Brigade'.

1944-In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Japan uses Kamikaze pilots for the first time, sinking the USS 'St Lo'.

[Jimbuna]

1863 - Football Association forms in England, standardizing soccer, splitting with rugby.

[Aktungbby]

1922: The first annual celebration of Navy day took place: Arising from the activity of the Manhattan Navy Club for enlisted seamen and under the auspices of former Assistant Sec. of the Navy, 'Teddy' Roosevelt, Architect of the Great White Fleet, Victory at Manila Bay, and the Panama Canal: His slogan over the front desk at the club:" “Here you will neither be robbed, instructed, nor uplifted.” It gave to the Navy its first permanent shore club in the heart of the world’s greatest seaport. Not un-shockingly, the date, of Navy Day was Roosevelt's birthday! The club closed in the depression and the last official Navy Day was in 1949...HOWEVER...In 1972 Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt authorized recognition of OCT 13, The birth of the Navy (by act of Congress in 1775) as a celebration in lieu of Navy Day. In contrast to Navy Day, the Navy Birthday is intended as an internal activity for members of the active forces, reserves, retirees, and dependents. Since 1972 each CNO has encouraged a Navy-wide celebration of this occasion. 1864 -Lt William Cushing, brother of Alonzo Cushing of Gettysburg immortality, sinks the Confederate ironclade Albermarle in a 'suicide attack' with a spar torpedo on the bow of Picket Boat #1. Of fifteen men, only he and 1 crewman escaped by swimming. Nine others were captured. "As they approached the enemy docks, their luck turned and they were spotted in the dark. They came under heavy sentry fire from both the shore and aboard Albemarle. As they closed, they quickly discovered was defended by floating log booms; in the water for many months, and covered with heavy slime, the steam launch rode up and over them at full speed without difficulty, firing her cannon's grapeshot at the Albermarle." When her spar was fully against the ironclad's hull, directly under a huge 6.4" Brook cannon muzzle which could not depress sufficiently to prevent the ironclad's destruction!!! Lt Cushing personally detonated the torpedo: a series of lines that operated the spar torpedo that had to be carefully pulled in sequence, in the dark, and under fire. As he coolly executed the task, a bullet tore at his collar, and two more ripped through his clothing. "“The explosion took place at the same instant that 100 pounds of grapeshot, at 10 feet range, crashed among us” Cushing remembered." Both vessels sank.picket boat #1 Banzai 1864 style! IMHO Even The Albemarle's Commander, W. F. Warley, wrote of the incident saying, "... more gallant thing was not done during the war."

[Jimbuna]

312 - Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross.

[BossMark]

1940 - During World War II, Italy invaded Greece.

1944-The first B-29 Superfortress bomber mission flies from the airfields in the Mariana Islands in a strike against the Japanese base at Truk.

1965 - Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

[Jimbuna]

1904 - St Louis police try a new investigation method - fingerprints.

[Aktungbby]

1775: Commander of the British army, Major General Sir William Howe, issues a proclamation to the residents of Boston forbidding any person from leaving the city and ordered citizens to organize into military companies in order to "contribute all in his power for the preservation of order and good government within the town of Boston." The British didn't leave Boston until March 27, 1776, after Washington's occupation of Dorchester Heights; More afraid of their own cannon captured at Ft Ticonderoga, than Patriot soldiers, the British swiftly departed, allowing Bostonians to move freely in and out of their own city for the first time in six months. 1919: Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson's veto. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of the 18th Prohibition Amendment. This will result in misery: Despite vigorous efforts by law-enforcement, the Volstead Act failed to prevent the large-scale distribution of alcoholic beverages, and organized crime flourished in America. It was repealed in 1933. Jeeze! bein' able to leave town and have beer ...how inalienable is that! 1992: Duluth, Minnesota mayor cuts the ribbon at the mouth of the brand-new, 1,480-foot–long Leif Erickson Tunnel on Interstate 35. With the opening of the tunnel, that highway—which stretches 1,593 miles, from Mexico all the way to Canada—was finished at last. As a result, the Interstate Highway System was 99.7 percent complete. The tunnel pre-empted a growing discontent in cities cut by interstates as an undesirable influence, destroying nice urban environments. The Duluth Lakewalk Park alongside Lake Superior was installed over the tunnel...Those Duluthians! I tell ya!

[Jimbuna]

1929 - "Black Tuesday" Stock Market crashes triggers "Great Depression".

[Aktungbby]

1517: Priest Martin Luther nails a piece of paper to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation. By the time Luther, declared outlaw and a target for 'legal killing' by anyone, died of natural causes in 1546, his beliefs, including his German translation of the Bible, had formed the basis for the Protestant Reformation, which, over three centuries revolutionized Western civilization... 1963: Beatlemania in Heathrow Airport, London: where the Fab Four had just returned from a hugely successful tour of Sweden. Also at Heathrow that particular day, was American television impresario Ed Sullivan. The pandemonium that Sullivan witnessed as he attempted to catch his flight home to New York would play a pivotal role in making the British Invasion possible. The Beatles would arrive in the United States on February 7, 1964...and transform American civilization on the Ed Sullivan Show. 1957: the Japanese car company Toyota establishes its U.S. headquarters in an old Rambler dealership in Hollywood! Toyota executives hoped to saturate American market with their small, relatively inexpensive Toyopet Crown sedans. That one didn't go so well-but the Corona, designed for the American market and #1 Corolla did.. and transformed a nation on wheels! I went to a Lutheran college; still have my first Beatle's album; and have owned 5 Toyotas in 40+ years and am still driving the '86 Camry and an '05 Corolla: both with 200K trouble-free miles!

[Jimbuna]

1917 - World War I: Battle of Beersheba in southern Palestine- "last successful cavalry charge in history".

[Aktungbby]

1941: The USS Reuben James DD245 is sunk by U-552. Based at Iceland, she sailed from Newfoundland on 23 October, with four other destroyers to escort eastbound Convoy HX 156. At about 0525, while escorting that convoy, Reuben James was torpedoed by U-552 commanded by KptLt Erich Topp near Iceland. Reuben James was positioned between an ammunition ship and the known position of a wolfpack. She was hit forward by a torpedo meant for a merchant ship and her entire bow was blown off when a magazine exploded. The bow sank immediately. The aft section floated for five minutes before going down. Of the 159-man crew, only 44 survived. Many consider the Reuben James to have been the first US warship to be sunk in WWII, or second if you consider the Panay by Japan in 1937.... A rather remarkable song by the great Woody Guthrie (himself a merchant seaman who "went to sea in June 1943 making voyages in convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic aboard the merchant ships SS William B. Travis, SS William Floyd, and SS Sea Porpoise. He served as a mess man and dishwasher and frequently sang for the crew and troops to buoy their spirits on transatlantic voyages. His first ship William B. Travis hit a mine in the Mediterranean killing one person aboard but made it to Tunisia under her own power His last ship, Sea Porpoise, took troops from the United States for the D-Day invasion. Guthrie was aboard when the ship was torpedoed off Utah Beach by the U-390 (also immediately sunk) on July 5, 1944, injuring 12 of the crew. Guthrie was unhurt and the ship stayed afloat to be repaired at Newcastle upon Tyne in England before returning to the United States in July 1944. He was an active supporter of the National Maritime Union, the main union for wartime American sailors.)" with amazing photos of it all: Reuben James (undated)

[Jimbuna]

The Battle of Coronel

In a crushing victory, a German naval squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee sinks two British armored cruisers with all aboard off the southern coast of Chile on November 1, 1914, in the Battle of Coronel.

World War I broke out on the European continent in August 1914; within months, it had spread by sea across the globe to South America. Previously stationed in the western Pacific, near China, Spee's small East Asia Squadron made the two-month journey to Chile after Japan entered the war on August 22 and it was determined that the Germans could not stand up to the Japanese navy in the region. Neutral Chile, with its sizeable population of German immigrants and its ready supply of coal, would be a safer base from which to launch attacks against British shipping interests.

After eluding a large number of Japanese, British and Australian ships on its way, Spee's ships encountered a British squadron commanded by Sir Christopher Cradock in the late afternoon of November 1, 1914. The Germans, with their newer, lighter ships, took quick advantage, opening fire at 7 pm. Cradock's flagship, the Good Hope, was hit before its crew could return fire; it sank within half an hour. The Monmouth followed two hours later, after attempting to withdraw and being sunk by the light cruiser Nurnberg. No fewer than 1,600 British sailors, including Cradock himself, perished along with the two ships; it was the Royal Navy's worst defeat in more than a century.

The quicker British ship Glasgow escaped the fray and fled south to warn another of Cradock's ships, the Canopus, stationed in the Falkland Islands, of Spee's proximity. In response, the British dispatched two battle cruisers, Inflexible and Invincible, from its Battle Cruiser Squadron in the North Sea. The two ships, commanded by Sir Doveton Sturdee, reached the Falklands on December 7; the following day they exacted their revenge on the aggressive Spee, sinking four German ships--including the Nurnberg and Spee's flagship Scharnhorst--with 2,100 crew members aboard. Among the dead were Spee and his two sons, Otto and Heinrich. By the end of 1914, the German cruiser threat to Britain's trade routes had been virtually eliminated; for the duration of the war, Germany's chief weapon at sea would be its deadly U-boat submarines.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...tle-of-coronel

[Aktungbby]

1777: the USS Ranger, with a crew of 140 men under the command of John Paul Jones, leaves Portsmouth, NH, for the naval port at Brest, France, where it will stop before heading toward the Irish Sea to begin raids on British warships. This was the first mission of its kind during the American Revolution. 1942: General Montgomery breaks through Rommel's defensive line at El Alamein, Egypt, forcing a retreat. It was the beginning of the end of the Axis occupation of North Africa. 1947: The Hughes Flying Boat—the largest aircraft ever built—is piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight. Built with laminated birch and spruce, the massive wooden aircraft had a wingspan longer than a football field and was designed to carry more than 700 men to battle. The aircraft had many detractors, and Congress demanded that Hughes prove the plane airworthy. Hughes obliged, taking the H-4 prototype out into Long Beach Harbor, CA for an unannounced flight test. Thousands of onlookers had come to watch the aircraft taxi on the water and were surprised when Hughes lifted his wooden behemoth 70 feet above the water and flew for a mile before landing. Today, the Spruce Goose is housed at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, OR. My daughter worked as a docent at the museum and got to sit in the cockpit(for free!) enroute to her recently completed MA in museum science. I would hate to be the flight engineer on this BBYhttp://www.pbase.com/longbachnguyen/goose good photos!

[Jimbuna]

1966 - The Cuban Adjustment Act enters force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.

[Von Tonner]

Today in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first animal into space. The dog, Laika, was the only inhabitant aboard Sputnik II, whose launch sparked fury amongst animal lovers. Despite claims that the dog died painlessly when oxygen ran out on day six, it emerged many years later in 2002 that Laika had died of overheating within just a few hours of take off. Her ill-fated space excursion came at a time when little was known of the impact of space flight on living creatures.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/3191083.stm