10.18.2005
IT HAPPENED THIS DAY OCT 16 TO OCT31

October 16
1946 Nazi War Criminals Executed
At Nuremberg, Germany, ten high-ranking Nazi officials are executed by hanging for their war crimes during World War II. Two weeks earlier, the ten were found guilty by the International War Crimes Tribunal, who also sentenced two other Nazi officials to death and seven officials to terms of imprisonment varying from ten years to life. Among those hanged are Joachim von Ribbentrop, minister of foreign affairs, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Gestapo and the S.S., Hans Frank, governor-general of occupied Poland, and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Of the other two sentenced to death, Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force, committed suicide by poison on the eve of the execution, while Nazi party chancellor Martin Bormann, who was judged in absentia, is suspected dead.
October 17
1941 U.S. Destroyer Attacked by German Sub
A German submarine torpedoes the U.S. destroyer Kearney 350 miles southwest of Iceland, killing eleven crew members and seriously wounding two. The Kearney, the first destroyer attacked by a German submarine, sustains heavy damage but manages to stay afloat under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Danis. Two days later, the Kearney arrives safely in Iceland.
October 18
1898 U.S. Takes Control of Puerto Rico
Only one year after Spain granted Puerto Rico home rule, American troops raise the U.S. flag over the Caribbean nation, formalizing U.S. authority over the island's one million inhabitants. Near the end of the Spanish-American War, U.S. troops under General Nelson A. Miles landed on Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898, and with little resistance were able to secure the island by mid-August. In December, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Spanish-American War and approving the ceding of Puerto Rico to the United States. In the first three decades of its rule, the U.S. government made efforts to Americanize its new possession, including the granting of full U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917 and the consideration of a measure that would make English the island's official language. However, during the 1930s, a nationalist movement led by the Popular Democratic Party won wide support across the island and further U.S. assimilation was prevented. Beginning in 1948, Puerto Ricans could elect their own governor, and in 1952, the U.S. Congress approved a new Puerto Rican constitution that made the island an autonomous U.S. commonwealth with its citizens retaining American citizenship. The constitution was formally adopted by Puerto Rico on July 25, 1952, the fifty-fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion. Movements for Puerto Rican statehood, along with lesser movements for Puerto Rican independence, have won supporters on the island, but popular referendums in 1967 and 1993 demonstrated that the majority of Puerto Ricans still supported their special status as a U.S. commonwealth.
October 19
1943 Allies Meet in Moscow
During World War II, the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers begins in Russia. Delegates from the U.S.S.R. meet with representatives from the Allied nations of Great Britain, the U.S., and China, in an attempt to hammer out a greater consensus on war aims, and to improve the rapidly cooling relations between the Soviet Union and its allies. The four powers agree to collaborate on surrender terms for the enemy, and recognize the need for an effective international organization to prevent future wars.
October 20
1944 MACARTHUR RETURNS:
At the age of fifty, General Douglas MacArthur was the U.S. Army's youngest chief of staff. In 1941, five months before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, he was named commander of all U.S. armed forces in the Pacific. Undaunted by his failure to hold the Philippine islands of Luzon and Corregidor after the Japanese invasion, he promised the Philippine people, "I shall return." On October 20, 1944, after advancing island by island across the Pacific Ocean, MacArthur waded ashore onto the island of Leyte, and announced to the people of the Philippines that he had returned.
October 21
1917 American Troops Enter the Trenches
During World War I, the first Americans enter combat when units from the U.S. Army's First Division are assigned to Allied trenches in the Luneville sector near Nancy, France. Each U.S. unit is attached to a corresponding French unit. Four months earlier, on June 26, 1917, the first U.S. infantry troops, numbering some 14,000 soldiers, landed in France at the port of Saint Nazaire. The "Doughboys," as the English referred to the green American troops, were untrained, ill equipped, and far from ready for the difficulties of fighting along the Western Front. One of U.S. General John J. Pershing's first duties as commander of the American Expeditionary Force was to set up training camps in France and establish communication and supply networks. On October 21, the Americans entered the trenches on the Western Front, and on October 23, Corporal Robert Bralet of Battery C of the Sixth Artillery became the first U.S. soldier to fire a shot in the war when he discharged a French 75mm gun into a German trench half-a-mile away. On November 2, Corporal James Gresham and privates Thomas Enright and Merle Hay of the Sixteenth Infantry became the first American soldiers to die when Germans raided their trenches near Bathelemont, France. After four years of bloody stalemate along the Western Front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. When the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and over fifty thousand of these men had lost their lives.
October 22
1797 The First Parachute Jump
The world's first recorded parachute jump is made by Andre-Jacques Garnerin from a hot air balloon 2,300 feet above Parc Monceau in Paris, France. Garnerin first conceived of the possibility of using air resistance to slow an individual's fall from a high altitude while a prisoner during the French Revolution. Although he never employed a parachute to escape from the high ramparts of the Hungarian prison where he spent three years, Garnerin never lost interest in the concept of the parachute. In 1797, Garnerin completed his first parachute, a canopy thirty-five feet in diameter with over thirty suspension lines. On the fateful test day, Garnerin attaches himself and the parachute to a hot air balloon, ascends to an altitude of 2,300 feet, and severs the parachute from the balloon. As he failed to include an air vent at the top of the prototype, Garnerin oscillates wildly in his descent, but nevertheless the jump is a success, and Garnerin lands shaken but unhurt half a mile from the balloon's takeoff site. In 1799, Garnerin's wife, Jeanne-Genevieve, becomes the first female parachutist, and in 1823, while preparing to test a new parachute, Garnerin dies in a balloon accident.
October 23
1962 U.S. Begins Quarantine of Cuba
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) unanimously approves the U.S. quarantine against Cuba, authorizing the U.S. to use armed force to prevent the shipment of more offensive weapons to Cuba from the Soviet Union. In response to a letter from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev expressing his concern at the gravity of the crisis, President John F. Kennedy transmits a letter to Khrushchev via the Russian embassy, urging Soviet compliance with the quarantine. After sending the letter, Kennedy agrees to give Khrushchev more time by pulling the quarantine line back 500 miles.
October 24
1962 U.S. Military Forces on High Alert
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet ships en route to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appear to have slowed down, altered, or reversed their course as they approach the U.S. quarantine line, with the exception of one ship--the tanker Bucharest. At the request of more than forty non-aligned states, U.N. Secretary General U. Thant sends private appeals to Kennedy and Khrushchev, urging that their governments "refrain from any action that may aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war." At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. military forces go to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar era, as military commanders prepare for full-scale war with the Soviet Union.
October 25
1854 Charge of the Light Brigade
In an event alternately described as one of the most heroic episodes in British military history and one of the most disastrous, Lord James Cardigan leads a charge of light cavalry over open terrain against well-defended Russian artillery at Balaclava during the Crimean War. Cardigan's brigade of cavalrymen, the majority of which are armed only with swords, are no match for the heavy Russian guns. Of the 673 cavalrymen taking part in Cardigan's disastrous charge, nearly half are killed. Although Cardigan and others survivors of the charge are hailed as heroes for their bravery, the episode is regarded today as a massacre that only occurred because of the mutual animosity between Cardigan and another senior British officer, Lord George Lucan. This mutual dislike is said to have prevented the two men discussing the implications of the attack in detail, and it is known that they merely exchanged a few words before going on with an attack that had no margin for success.
October 26
1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf Ends
During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest air-naval battle in history, concludes after four days of furious fighting with a decisive U.S. victory over the Japanese. On October 20, after a year of advancing island by island across the Pacific, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur and U.S. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz combined their forces in a massive assault on the Philippine island of Leyte. The Japanese, expecting an attack elsewhere in the Philippines, were caught unaware and the U.S. Sixth Army quickly established a beachhead. The desperate Japanese commanders decided to gamble their naval fleet in order to save the Philippines--and the war. On October 23, the U.S. and Japanese fleets collided, and for four long days, several hundred warships and thousands of aircraft battled for control of the Gulf of Leyte in several isolated battles fought simultaneously. By the evening of October 26, what remained of the devastated Japanese fleet retreated. Four Japanese aircraft carriers, three battleships, eleven destroyers, ten cruisers, and one submarine had been destroyed, in addition to scores of aircraft, thousands of men, and dozens of Kamikaze pilots. American naval losses were three aircraft carriers, three destroyers, one torpedo boat, and one submarine. After the Battle of Leyte, the Japanese fleet ceases to exist as a powerful and organized force, and the end of the Pacific phase of World War II is in sight.
October 27
1962 Missile Crisis Approaches Climax
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, pressured by Soviet military commanders, publicly calls for the dismantling of U.S. missile bases in Turkey in return for the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The statement contradicts a private proposal made by Khrushchev the day before, in which the Soviet leader stated that all offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba would be removed in exchange for a U.S. pledge to not invade Cuba. While Kennedy and his crisis advisors debate this dangerous turn in negotiations, a U.S. U-2 spy plane strays into Soviet airspace over the Chukotski Peninsula, and narrowly escapes destruction by Soviet MiG fighter planes. Hours later, a U-2 reconnaissance plane is shot down over Cuba and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, is killed. To the dismay of the Pentagon, Kennedy forbids a military retaliation unless any more surveillance planes are fired on over Cuba. Later in the day, with full-scale confrontation imminent, Kennedy and his advisors agree to dismantle the Jupiter missile sites in Turkey in exchange for the removal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, but at a later date, in order to prevent the protest of Turkey, a key NATO member. President Kennedy, meanwhile, prepares a secret letter with Secretary of State Dean Rusk to be handed over to U.N. Secretary General U. Thant if necessary, revealing their willingness to agree to an immediate public Turkey-for-Cuba missile trade in order to prevent war with the Soviet Union.
October 28
1970 Senator Opposes Illegal War in Laos
Senator James William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accuses the Nixon administration of conducting an illegal war in Laos without congressional knowledge or approval. For several years, U.S. planes had been engaged in an extensive bombing campaign of suspected Communist territory in Laos, including the Ho Chi Minh trail, where supplies moved from North Vietnam to Communist forces in Laos and South Vietnam. In 1965, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also set up a charter airline code-named Air America, to assist Laos' anti-Communist drug lords by transporting raw opium for sale outside of Indochina. In 1970, despite congressional criticism, the United States steps up its bombing campaign of eastern Laos and its military aid to Laos' anti-Communist factions.
October 29
1956 The Suez Canal Crisis Begins
In response to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal and barring of Israeli shipping, Israel launches an attack on Egypt and its Arab allies. In a lightning attack, Israeli forces under General Moshe Dayan seize the Gaza Strip and drive through the Sinai to the east bank of the Suez Canal. Two days later, Britain and France, whose diplomats are expelled from Egypt and ships also barred from the Suez, enter the conflict in a coalition with Israel, demanding the immediate evacuation of Egyptian forces from the Suez Canal Zone. The Suez Canal, which stretches 101 miles across the Isthmus of Suez connecting the Mediterranean and Red seas, was first completed under the direction of French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1869. The canal rapidly became one of the world's most heavily traveled shipping lanes, and, in 1882, British troops invaded Egypt, beginning a forty-year occupation of the country and a seventy-five-year occupation of the Suez Canal Zone. During the early 1950s, Egyptian nationalists rioted in the Canal Zone and organized attacks on British troops, and on July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdal Nasser nationalized the canal, setting off the Suez Canal Crisis. The international community expressed outrage at the hostilities, and Britain, France, and Israel agreed to withdraw as a U.N. emergency force is sent to the area. By the spring of 1957, all troops had withdrawn and the Suez Canal passed into Egyptian hands.
October 30
1861 Missouri Joins the Confederacy

Remnant of the Missouri legislature meeting at Neosho votes to join the Confederacy effectively making Missouri a state in both nations with a star in the Confederate flag

October 31
1941 First U.S. Warship Sunk by Hostile Action
Early in the morning, while escorting a convoy of war material across the North Atlantic to Britain, the U.S. Clemson Class destroyer Reuben James is torpedoed by a German submarine. The blast pierces the ship's magazine, and the boat quickly sinks, becoming the first U.S. warship to be sunk by hostile action during World War II. Forty-four men are saved, but the other ninety-six members of the crew perish in the icy waters