12.01.2005
IT HAPPENED THIS DAY DEC 1 TO DEC 18

HISTORY
Dec 1
1842 First Navy Officer Executed for Mutiny
Midshipman Philip Spencer, son of Secretary of War John C. Spencer, is hanged for mutiny from the yardarm of the U.S.S. Somers, a small brig of war at sea in West Indian waters. He was convicted at a court-martial held on the ship of conspiring to organize a mutiny, murder the officers, and convert the captured ship into a pirate vessel. Along with Midshipman Philip Spencer, two lesser ranked bluejackets, Boatswain Samuel Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small, are also convicted and hanged. A court of inquiry is subsequently formed to investigate the mutiny, the court-martial, and Captain Alexander Slidell MacKenzie, but the verdicts are found to be just and MacKenzie is exonerated. The incident becomes a catalyst for founding the Naval Academy, established in 1845 to provide an advanced and varied curriculum for future Navy officers.
Dec 2
1805 Battle of the Three Emperors
In the countryside between Brno and Austerlitz, Emperor Napoleon accomplishes one of the greatest victories of his military career when his outnumbered French army defeats a combined Russian and Austrian force at the Battle of Austerlitz. The battle, fought in the present-day Czech Republic, is also known as the "Battle of Three Emperors" because Austrian Emperor Francis I and Russian Tzar Alexander I had visited the Russo-Austrian army several days before to help plan its imminent confrontation with the French usurper, Emperor Napoleon. The two emperors and Russo-Austrian military command decide that their allied force of some 95,000 men would march from Olomouc toward Brno, where Napoleon's lesser force would be crushed. However, in the week before the battle, Napoleon received reinforcements and by the morning of the battle his army numbered 75,000 men. As the Russo-Austrian army prepared for the battle, Napoleon ordered an advanced reconnaissance of their positions, which allowed him to anticipate their plans of attack. Napoleon's superior organizational abilities coupled with the proficiency of his talented officers, led to a French victory after only nine hours of furious fighting, at the cost of over 40,000 casualties in the Russo-Austrian army, and just over 10,000 in the French. Napoleon's triumph at the Battle of Austerlitz broke the English, Russian, and Austria coalition against him, signaled the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and confirmed France's position as the preeminent power on the European continent.
Dec 3
1912 First Balkan War Ends
Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the first Balkan War. During the brief conflict, a military coalition between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro expelled Turkey from all of the Ottoman Empire's former European possessions, except Constantinople. In 1913, the Second Balkan War begins after Serbia demands that Bulgaria cede to it portions of Macedonia. Bulgaria is subsequently defeated by a loose alliance between Serbia, Romania, Greece, and Turkey, and Macedonia is partitioned between the four victors. However, nationalist tension persists in the Balkans and in 1914 hostility between Serbia and the Austria-Hungary Empire over Austria's possession of Bosnia-Herzegovina reaches a breaking point, precipitating the outbreak of World War I. On June 28, a Serbian nationalist assassinates Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to a declaration of war against Serbia by Austria-Hungary one month later, which sets off a chain reaction in Europe that brings every major power into the war by August.
Dec 4
During the Civil War
1862 Fighting at Cane Hill, Arkansas
1864 Engagement at Waynesborough, Georgia

Dec 5
1839 Birthday of George Armstrong Custer
1862 Engagement during the Civil War at Coffeeville, Mississippi

Dec 6
1790 Congress Convenes in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the U.S. Congress opens its legislative session, and Philadelphia replaces New York City as the capital of the United States. Congress convenes in Congress Hall, adjacent to Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution were all signed. From 1774 to the capture of Philadelphia by the British in 1777, Philadelphia served as the meeting place of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Following the recapture of the city by the Patriots in 1778, the Continental Congress returned from its exile in York, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia was officially made capital of the United States under the Articles of Confederation in 1787. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the American War for Independence, and Annapolis, Maryland, was chosen as the new nation's capital for its central location in the United States. After two years, the capital returned north to New York City, and in 1789, following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, New York became the first capital of the modern United States. One year later, Philadelphia became the second capital of the U.S. under the Constitution, a distinction it holds until the completion of the new capital city of Washington, D.C., a decade later.

Dec 7
1941 PEARL HARBOR BOMBED:
On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, peacetime in the Hawaiian Islands exploded at Pearl Harbor. In a surprise attack, some 400 planes from six Japanese carriers freely bombed the harbor and airfield. Naval intelligence thought such an attack improbable, and within two hours the fleet was rendered nearly useless. Losses were devastating: six of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than half the island's aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded. Japan's losses were twenty-nine planes and four midget submarines. The following day, Congress almost unanimously declared war against Japan.
Dec 8
1941 America Enters World War II
The day after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a U.S. declaration of war against Japan is passed by Congress, and the United States formally enters World War II. In launching the offensive against Pearl Harbor, Japanese military command hoped that, in addition to disabling the U.S. naval fleet, the surprise attack would depress American morale and push the isolationist U.S. deeper into a strictly defensive role in World War II. However, Pearl Harbor had the opposite effect. Overnight, American society rallied behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who over the last two years had been progressively pushing for an active military alliance with Great Britain against Germany and Japan. On the morning of December 8, President Roosevelt spoke before a joint session of Congress, proclaiming December 7 a "date which will live in infamy." With only one dissent, Congress granted Roosevelt's request to recognize the state of war that existed between the United States and Japan. Representative Jeannette Rankin, a Republican of Montana, cast the sole dissenting vote. An espoused pacifist, she had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I. The same day, Great Britain declared war against Japan.
Dec 9
1940 The British Attack in North Africa
During World War II, at Sidi Barrani in northeastern Egypt, the British launch their first major offensive against Italian-dominated North Africa. British Western Desert forces under Sir Richard O'Connor march around the flank of Italian forces massed at Sidi Barrani on the Mediterranean, and at dawn initiate a devastating tank attack from the rear. Italian troops commanded by Marshall Rodolfo Graziani are caught thoroughly unprepared, and within several days the Battle of Sidi Barrani ends with only 133 British soldiers killed to the nearly 40,000 Italians taken prisoner. Over the next two months, British and Australian forces devastate Italian divisions in Egypt and in Cyrenaica to the east, and after the astounding Allied victory at Beda Fomm in February of 1941, the tide seems to have turned against the Axis in North Africa. However, German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, later known as the "Desert Fox," has yet to make his appearance in North Africa as commander of his formidable Afrika Korps.
Dec 10
1898 The Spanish-American War Ends
In France, the Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Spanish-American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire. The Spanish-American War erupted in April of 1898, when the U.S. demanded the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba. Spain's brutal response to Cuban rebellion against Spanish rule, the mysterious explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor, and the heavy losses to American investment caused by the conflict, are all factors that all intensified U.S. feeling against Spain. The Spanish responded to the U.S. demand for withdrawal with a declaration of war on April 24. One week later, the U.S. Navy under Admiral George Dewey won a decisive victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines, and on June 11, six hundred U.S. marines landed at Guantanamo, Cuba, followed by a larger landing at Daiquiri on June 22. In Cuba, U.S. forces, featuring the Theodore Roosevelt-led cavalry regiment known as the "Rough Riders," triumphed at the battles of El Caney and San Juan Heights, and on July 3, the remaining Spanish fleet was destroyed near Santiago de Cuba. On July 17, Santiago de Cuba and nearly 25,000 Spanish troops surrendered, and the war had effectively ended. An armistice was signed on August 12, and representatives were sent to Paris, France, to arrange peace. The Spanish Empire was virtually dissolved by the Treaty of Paris and an American empire established. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded to the United States, and Cuba became a U.S. protectorate. Hawaii, an independent republic run by American expatriates since 1894, was also formally annexed during the Spanish-American War.
Dec 11
1941 The Axis Unites Against America
Two days after Congress passed a declaration of war against Japan, Germany and Italy declare war against the United States. The same day, Congress responds by adopting a resolution recognizing the state of war between the U.S. and Japan's Axis allies. In 1940, delegates from Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, a ten-year military and economic partnership that strengthened the Axis alliance. The pact divided the world into spheres of influence, and promised mutual assistance if any of the three nations were attacked by a power not currently engaged in World War II, namely the United States. On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, an attempt to disable the U.S. naval fleet and depress the morale of an isolationist America. However, virtually overnight, American society rallied behind President Franklin Roosevelt and his plans to transform America into the "great arsenal of democracy." Roosevelt proclaimed December 7 to be a "date which will live in infamy," and for the Axis partnership, who find the balance of power in World War II drastically shifted against their favor after Pearl Harbor, it indeed proves to be.
Dec 12
1937 USS Panay Sunk by Japanese
During the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War, the U.S. gunboat Panay is attacked and sunk by Japanese warplanes in Chinese waters. The American vessel, neutral in the Chinese-Japanese conflict, was escorting U.S. evacuees and three Standard Oil barges away from Nanking, the war-torn Chinese capital on the Yangtze River. After the Panay is sunk, the Japanese fighters machine-gunned lifeboats and survivors huddling on the shore of the Yangtze. Two U.S. sailors and a civilian passenger are killed and eleven personnel are seriously wounded, setting off a major crisis in U.S.-Japanese relations. Although the Panay's position had been reported to the Japanese as required, the neutral vessels were clearly marked, and the day was sunny and clear, the Japanese maintain that the attack was a tragic mistake, and they agree to pay two million dollars in reparations. Two neutral British vessels were also attacked by the Japanese in the final days of the battle for Nanking.
Dec 13
1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg
During the Civil War, the Union forces of General Ambrose E. Burnside, consisting of some 135,000 troops, launch an offensive against Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army of 75,000 men. After crossing the Rappahannock River, and advancing steadily through Fredericksburg, Union troops encounter the strongest Confederate position of the entire Civil War--a stone wall at Marye's Heights utilized by General Lee as a natural rifle pit for the Confederates. Wave after wave of Union soldiers advance on the impregnable position, and thousands are mowed down by the entrenched Rebels. It during this battle that Lee, watching the futile Union attack on Marye's Heights, is reported to have said, "It is well that war is so terrible--we should grow too fond of it." More than 25,000 Union soldiers are killed or wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, compared with only 5,000 Confederate casualties. The victory of Lee's vastly outnumbered army at Fredericksburg, following a year of consistent Confederate victories, is a grave defeat for the Northern war effort.
Dec 14
1799 George Washington Dies
George Washington, the American revolutionary leader and first president of the United States, dies of acute laryngitis at his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was sixty-seven years old. Washington was born in 1732 to a farm family in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and through his extensive reading was essentially self-educated. His first direct military experience came as a major in the Virginia colonial militia in 1754, when he led a small expedition against the French in the Ohio River valley on behalf of the governor of Virginia. As a colonel during the Seven Years' War between Britain and France, Washington took command of the defenses of the western Virginian frontier in 1756. After the war, he resigned from his military post and over the next two decades he openly opposed the escalating British taxation and repression of the American colonies. In 1774, Washington represented Virginia at the Continental Congress and, after the American War for Independence erupted in 1775, was appointed commander in chief of the newly established Continental army. With this inexperienced and poorly equipped army of civilian soldiers, Washington led an effective war of harassment against British forces in America, while employing his extraordinary diplomatic skills to encourage the intervention of the French into the conflict on behalf of the colonists. On October 19, 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered his massive British army at Yorktown, Virginia, and General George Washington had defeated one of the most powerful nations on earth. After the war, the victorious revolutionary general retired to his estate at Mount Vernon, but in 1787 he heeded his nation's call and returned to politics to preside over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On April 30, 1789, after being unanimously elected, Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States, and in 1792 was elected to a second term. While in office, he sought to unite the nation and protect the interests of the new republic at home and abroad. In 1797, Washington retired to Mount Vernon, where he died of natural causes two years later.

Dec 15
1961 Architect of the Holocaust Sentenced to Death
In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS colonel who organized Adolf Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish question," is condemned to death by a Jewish war crimes tribunal. During World War II, Eichmann, a fanatical Nazi, was appointed head of the Gestapo's Jewish section by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and with horrifying efficiency carried out the Fuehrer's orders. From 1942 to 1945, Eichmann oversaw the systematic abuse of Jews in German-occupied territories, organized their subsequent mass deportation to concentration camps, and then carried out Hitler's "final solution to the Jewish question"--the genocidal murder of millions of Jews in Nazi, primarily in the gas chambers of the concentration camps. In 1945, Eichmann was captured by U.S. forces and imprisoned, but he managed to escape before having to face the Nuremberg international war crimes tribunal. Eichmann traveled under an assumed identity, and in 1950 arrived in Argentina, which maintained lax immigration policies and was a safe haven for many accused war criminals. After over a decade of pursuit, Israeli agents located Eichmann living under a false name in Argentina, and in May of 1960 kidnapped him near Buenos Aires. The agents circumvented extradition procedures and transported him to Israel, where he was judged by a special war crimes tribunal in two successive trials. Known as the "human symbol" of the genocide of the Jewish people, on December 15, 1961, Eichmann was condemned to death for the abuse and murder of millions of Jews. On May 31, 1962, Eichmann was hanged. His body was subsequently cremated and his ashes thrown into the sea.

December 16
1944 BATTLE OF THE BULGE BEGINS:
On December 16, 1944, with the Allies closing in on Germany, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered a surprise attack along the western front. The German counterattack out of the densely wooded Ardennes region took the Allies by surprise, and created a "bulge" sixty miles deep in the front. Weather prevented the unleashing of Allied air superiority, and for several days Hitler's desperate gamble seemed to be paying off. However, the Americans kept up a fierce resistance, and on December 23, the skies cleared over the bulge. By January 21, the Germans had been pushed back to their original line, having lost some 120,000 men in the offensive. The Allies suffered 81,000 casualties, and all but 4,000 of these were American. It was the heaviest-single battle toll in U.S. history.
December 17
1971 Pakistani Forces Defeated in East Pakistan
Two weeks after the Indian invasion of East Pakistan, some 90,000 Pakistani troops surrender to the Indian forces and East Pakistan is subsequently declared the independent nation of Bangladesh. At the end of British rule in the Indian subcontinent in 1947, East Pakistan was declared a possession of Pakistan to the west, despite the fact that the two regions were separated by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Although the two Pakistans shared the Islamic religion, significant cultural and racial differences existed between the regions, and by the late 1960s, East Pakistan began to call for greater autonomy from West Pakistan. In March of 1971, the independent state of Bangladesh was proclaimed and West Pakistani forces were called in to suppress the revolt. An estimated one million Bengalis--the largest ethnic group in Bangladesh--were killed by the Pakistani forces over the next several months, while over ten million more took refuge in India. In December, India, which had provided substantial clandestine aid to the East Pakistani independence movement, launched a massive invasion of the region, and routed the West Pakistani occupation forces. In 1974, Pakistan agreed to recognize the independence of Bangladesh.
December 18
1939 GRAF SPEE BLOWS ITSELF UP:
The Battle of the River Plate was a ferocious sea battle off the coast of South America between the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee and the British ships Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles. On December 13, 1939, the nimble and heavily armed German ship held off the three vessels for three hours, sustaining some damage, and then fled into the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay. Over the next few days, clever maneuvering by the British deceived the Germans into believing that a large British fleet had them trapped. On December 18, as thousands watched from the shore, the Graf Spee was scuttled. Two days later, Hans Langsdorf, the German captain, killed himself