September 14th ~
1763 – Seneca warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Devil’s Hole during Pontiac’s War. Also known as the Devil’s Hole Massacre, was fought near Niagara Gorge in present-day New York state between a detachment of the British 80th Regiment of Light Armed Foot and about 300 Seneca warriors. The Seneca warriors killed 81 British soldiers and wounded 8 before they managed to retreat.
1716 – The 1st lighthouse in US was lit in Boston Harbor.
1814 – Francis Scott Key composes the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” after witnessing the massive British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. Key, an American lawyer, watched the siege while under detainment on a British ship and penned the famous words after observing that the U.S. flag over Fort McHenry had survived the 1,800-bomb assault. After circulating as a handbill, the patriotic lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20. Set to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an English drinking song written by the British composer John Stafford Smith, it soon became popular throughout the nation. It was not until 1916, and the signing of an executive order by President Woodrow Wilson, that it was formally designated as such. In 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a Congressional act confirming Wilson’s presidential order.
1847 – During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott enter Mexico City and raise the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier. The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico.
1861 – In the early morning darkness sailors and Marines from U.S.S. Colorado, rowing in to Pensacola Harbor, boarded and burned Confederate privateering schooner Judah. and spiked guns at Pensacola Navy Yard.
1862 – General Robert E. Lee’s exhausted Confederate forces hold off the pursuing Yankees by closing two passes through Maryland’s South Mountain, allowing Lee time to gather his forces further west along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg.
1862 – A contingent of Federal troops escaped from the beleaguered Harper’s Ferry.
1872 – Britain paid US $15 million for damages during Civil War. The British government paid £3 million in damages to the United States in compensation for building the Confederate commerce-raider Alabama. The confederate navy‘s Alabama was built at the Birkenhead shipyards. Despite its official neutrality during the American Civil War, Britain allowed the warship to leave port, and it subsequently played havoc with Federal shipping. The U.S. claimed compensation, and a Court of Arbitration at Geneva agreed, setting the amount at £3 million.
1899 – Gunboat Concord and monitor Monterey capture two insurgent schooners at Aparri, Philippine Islands.
1901 – Twenty-fifth President of the United States William McKinley, Jr., dies today of an assassin’s bullet shot into him on September 6th.
1939 – In the 1930s Igor Sikorsky turned his attention again to helicopter design and on this day flew the VS-300 on its first test flight. Sikorsky, scientist, engineer, pilot and businessman, was a pioneer in aircraft design who is best known for his successful development of the helicopter. He was fascinated with flight even as a child in Russia, and a 1908 meeting with the Wright brothers determined the course of his life in aviation.
1940 – Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. It passed by one vote.
1944 – U.S. 1st Marine Division lands on the island of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands in the Pacific, as part of a larger operation to provide support for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was preparing to invade the Philippines. The cost in American lives would prove historic. The Palaus, part of the Caroline Islands, were among the mandated islands taken from Germany and given to Japan as one of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles at the close of World War I.
1944 – CGC Bedloe (ex-Antietam) and Jackson foundered off Cape Hatteras during a hurricane. 26 crewmen were lost from the Bedloe, 21 from the Jackson.
1950 – Sixty-two year old singer Al Jolson arrived in Korea to entertain the troops after paying his own way from the United States.
1958 – The 720th Missile Battalion, California National Guard, becomes operational on a 24-hour, seven day a week basis. Manning four batteries of NIKE-AJAX missiles, this is the first Army Guard unit armed with these surface-to-air missiles used to replace anti-aircraft guns in defensive positions. By 1962 a force of 17,000 Guardsmen (combined technicians and traditional) maintained 82 batteries stationed in 15 states. All were located around harbors and large cities important to national strategic interests. In the early 1960s the AJAX missiles were replaced by the longer-ranged and nuclear capable NIKE-HERCULES missile. The program, running from 1958 until it was discontinued in 1974, was one of the Guard’s most successful homeland defense missions performed in the 20th century.
1959 – The Soviet space probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.
1960 – The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was founded on this day at the Baghdad Conference of 1960, established by five core members: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Originally made up of just these five, OPEC began as an attempt to organize and unify petroleum policies, securing stable prices for the petroleum producers.
1965 – ARVN paratroopers and several U.S. advisers parachute into the Ben Cat area, 20 miles north of Saigon. This was the first major parachute assault of the war by the South Vietnamese. Although they failed to make contact with the enemy, they achieved their goal of driving the Viet Cong away from Route 13 (running between Saigon and the Cambodian border) at least temporarily.
1969 – The US Selective Service selects September 14 as the First Draft Lottery Date.
1989 – Sikorsky Aircraft unveiled the replacement for the Sikorsky HH-3F Pelican helicopter: the HH-60J. The Coast Guard planned to purchase 33 of the new helicopters and gave it the moniker “Jayhawk.”
1990 – During the Persian Gulf crisis, the US Navy reported that American troops had fired a warning shot at an Iraqi tanker, then boarded it briefly before allowing it to proceed.
1990 – The Secretary of Transportation and the Commandant of the Coast Guard authorized the first-ever deployment of a reserve port security unit overseas. PSU 303, staffed by reservists from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the first of three PSUs deployed. PSU 303 was stationed in Al-Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
1997 – An Air Force F-117A Stealth fighter broke apart in midair at a Baltimore County air show. The pilot ejected safely but about a dozen people on the ground were slightly injured.
1998 – In Miami ten people were charged in what prosecutors said was the largest Cuban spy ring uncovered in the United States since Fidel Castro came to power. Five men later pleaded guilty to lesser charges; the trial of the other five has been postponed until May 2000.
1998 – Iraq’s Parliament threatens to cut off all contacts with U.N. arms inspectors if the Security Council does not resume its review of sanctions.
2001 – The State Department, in a memo demanded that the Taliban surrender all known al-Qaeda associates in Afghanistan, provide intelligence on bin Laden and his affiliates and expel all terrorists from Afghanistan.
2001 – Congress passed legislation titled Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which was signed on 18 September 2001 by President Bush. It authorized the use of U.S. Armed Forces against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
2001 – Pres. Bush declared a national emergency and summoned as many as 50,000 military reservists. Congress authorizes President George W. Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” The number of hijackers involved in the Sep 11 attacks was raised from 18 to 19 and their names were made public.
2001 – Six chartered flights carrying mostly Saudi nationals departed from the US over the course of the next week.
2002 – President Bush said the United States was willing to take Iraq on alone if the United Nations failed to “show some backbone” by confronting Saddam Hussein.
2002 – In Lackawanna, New York, 5 men of Yemeni descent were charged with supporting foreign terrorist organizations. They trained in an al Qaeda camp run by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in the spring of 2001. A 6th member of the cell was arrested in Bahrain. All 6 were indicted Oct 21. In 2003 Mukhtar al-Bakri was sentenced to 10 years, Yasein Taher to 9 years. All terms ranged from 7-10 years.
2004 – Saboteurs blew up a junction where multiple oil pipelines cross the Tigris River in northern Iraq, setting off a chain reaction in power generation systems that left the entire country without power.
2007 – President Bush backed a limited withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Bush said 5,700 personnel would be home by Christmas 2007, and expected thousands more to return by July 2008. The plan would take troop numbers back to their level before the surge at the beginning of 2007.
2009 – U.S. special forces launch an attack on Islamist militants from Al-Shabab in Somalia. The Baraawe raid, code named Operation Celestial Balance, was a helicopter assault by United States Special Operations Forces against the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and associated al-Shabaab militants near the town of Baraawe in southern Somalia.
2012 – Fifty U.S. Marines are deployed to the American embassy in Yemen as a “precautionary measure” after clashes in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.
2012 – The bodies of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Officer Sean Smith, and former SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, killed in the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, are returned to the United States, for their eventual funerals, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in a solemn military ceremony attended by President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
2014 – North Korea holds a trial for American tourist Matthew Miller who was detained in April and sentences him to six years of hard labor.
Statistics: Posted by SHOOTER13 — Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:51 am