Portal:Military of the United States/Selected anniversaries/October

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Selected anniversaries in October

October 1

• 1880 - John Philip Sousa becomes leader of the United States Marine Corps Band.
• 1942 - USS Grouper torpedoes Lisbon Maru not knowing she was carrying British PoWs from Hong Kong
• 1943 - World War II: Naples falls to Allied soldiers.

October 2

• 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Saltville - Union forces attack Saltville, Virginia, but are defeated by Confederate troops.

October 3

• 1873 - Captain Jack and companions are hanged for their part in the Modoc War
• 1993 - Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organization in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Army Rangers and about 1000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.

October 4

• 1777 - Battle of Germantown: Troops under George Washington are repelled by British troops under Sir William Howe
• 2004 - SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.

October 5

• 1877 - Chief Joseph surrenders his Nez Perce band to General Nelson A. Miles.
• 2001 - Tom Ridge resigned as Governor of Pennsylvania to become President Bush's Homeland Security Advisor.

October 6

• 1884 - The Naval War College of the United States Navy was founded in Newport, Rhode Island.

October 7

• 1777 - American Revolutionary War: Americans beat the British in the Battle of Second Saratoga and the Battle of Bemis Heights.
• 1780 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Kings Mountain American Patriot militia defeat Loyalist irregulars led by British colonel Patrick Ferguson in South Carolina.
• 1864 - Battle of Darbytown Road (American Civil War): the Confederate forces' attempt to regain ground that had been lost around Richmond is thwarted.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Capture of the C.S.S. "Florida" — Union Warship captures the U.S.S. "Wachusett" — Confederate raider ship while in port in Bahia, Brazil.
• 1950 - United States forces cross the 38th parallel.
• 1963 - John F. Kennedy signs ratification for Partial Test Ban Treaty.
• 1970 - Richard Nixon announces a new five-point peace proposal to end the Vietnam War.
• 2001 - The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan starts with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.

October 8

• 1862 - American Civil War: Battle of Perryville - Union forces under General Don Carlos Buell halt the Confederate invasion of Kentucky by defeating troops led by General Braxton Bragg at Perryville, Kentucky.
• 1918 - World War I - In the Argonne Forest in France, United States Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: Operation Sealords - United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
• 1970 - Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon's October 7 peace proposal as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion."
• 2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security, which will be headed by Tom Ridge.

October 9

• 1812 - War of 1812: In a naval engagement on Lake Erie, American forces capture two British ships; the HMS Detroit and the HMS Caledonia.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Tom's Brook - Union cavalrymen in the Shenandoah Valley defeat Confederate forces at Tom's Brook, Virginia.
• 1957 - Neil H. McElroy was sworn in as the 6th Secretary of Defense of United States.
• 1969 - In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection to the trial of the "Chicago Eight".

October 10

• 1845 - In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.
• 1877 - Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer is given a funeral with full military honors.
• 1985 - United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they are arrested.

October 11

• 1776 - American Revolution: Battle of Valcour Island - On Lake Champlain 15 American gunboats are defeated but give Patriot forces enough time to prepare defenses of New York City.
• 1862 - American Civil War: In the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his men loot Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, during a raid into the north.
• 1890 - In Washington, DC, the Daughters of the American Revolution is founded.
• 1942 - World War II: Battle of Cape Esperance - On the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, United States Navy ships intercept and defeat a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.
• 1986 - Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.

October 12

• 1775 - The United States Navy is formed.
• 1933 - The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice
• 1942 - The USS Duncan is sunk by Japanese naval gunfire at the Battle of Cape Esperance
• 1967 - Vietnam War: US Secretary of State Dean Rusk states during a news conference that proposals by the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition
• 1970 - Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas
• 1972 - En route to the Gulf of Tonkin, a racial brawl involving more than 100 sailors breaks out aboard the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk
• 2000 - The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.

October 13

• 1775 - The United States Continental Congress orders the establishment of the Continental Navy (later renamed the United States Navy).
• 1812 - War of 1812: Battle of Queenston Heights - As part of the Niagara campaign in Ontario, Canada, United States forces under General Stephen Van Rensselaer are repulsed from invading Canada by British and native troops led by Sir Isaac Brock.

October 14

• 1773 - Revolutionary War: The United Kingdom's East India Company tea ships' cargo are burned at Annapolis, Maryland.
• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Bristol Station - Confederate General Robert E. Lee forces fail to drive the Union Army out of Virginia.
• 1942 - Japanese battleship strikes Henderson Field.
• 1943 - U.S. 8th Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortresses during assault on Schweinfurt.
• 1947 - Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.
• 1958 - The U.S. conducts an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: 27 soldiers are arrested at the Presidio in San Francisco for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.

October 15

• 1863 - American Civil War: The first submarine to sink a ship, and first to sink an enemy warship, CSS H. L. Hunley sinks during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.
• 1965 - Vietnam War: The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam stages the first public burning of a draft card in the United States to result in arrest under a new law.
• 1969 - Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of people take part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations across the United States.

October 16

• 1775 - Portland, Maine burned by the British
• 1780 - Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War
• 1781 - George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia
• 1940 - Benjamin O. Davis Sr. named first African American general in the United States Army
• 2001 - U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: U.S. warplanes mistakenly bomb International Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan.

October 17

• 1777 - American troops defeat the British in the Battle of Saratoga.
• 1781 - General Charles Cornwallis offers his surrender to the American revolutionaries at Yorktown, Virginia.
• 1941 - For the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship.

October 18

• 1945 - The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the USA's plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory

October 19

• 1781 - At Yorktown, Virginia, British commander Lord Cornwallis surrendered to a Franco-American force led by George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War.
• 1864 - Battle of Cedar Creek - Union Army under Philip Sheridan destroys Confederate Army under Jubal Early.
• 1864 - Confederate raiders launch an attack on Saint Albans, Vermont from Canada.
• 1944 - United States forces land in the Philippines.
• 1987 - In retaliation for Iranian attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy disables three of Iran's offshore oil platforms.

October 20

• 1818 - The Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the US-Canada border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
• 1944 - General Douglas MacArthur fulfills his promise to return to the Philippines when he commands an Allied assault on the islands, reclaiming them from the Japanese during the Second World War.

October 21

• 1774 - First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.
• 1797 - In Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched.
• 1861 - American Civil War: Battle of Ball's Bluff - Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.
• 1944 - The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.
• 1959 - US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order transferring Wernher von Braun and other German scientists from the United States Army to NASA.
• 1967 - Vietnam War: More than 100,000 war protesters gather in Washington, DC. A peaceful rally at the Lincoln Memorial is followed by a march to The Pentagon and clashes with soldiers and United States Marshals protecting the facility (event lasts until October 23; 683 people were arrested). Similar demonstrations occurred simultaneously in Japan and Western Europe.

October 22

• 1957 - Vietnam War: First United States casualties in Vietnam.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy announces that American spy planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.
• 1972 - Vietnam War: In Saigon, Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet to discuss a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out between Americans and North Vietnamese in Paris. Thieu rejects the proposal and accused the United States of conspiring to undermine his regime.

October 23

• 1694 - American colonial forces, led by Sir William Phips, fail to seize Quebec.
• 1861 - President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Westport - Union forces under General Samuel R. Curtis defeat Confederate troops led by General Sterling Price at Westport, near Kansas City.
• 1944 - World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf begins - The largest naval battle in history begins in Leyte Gulf, the Red Army enters Hungary.
• 1965 - Vietnam War: Operation Silver Bayonet - The 1st Cavalry Division (United States) (Airmobile) in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launch a new operation, seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleku Province in II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).
• 1973 - Watergate Scandal: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations about the scandal.
• 1983 - Lebanon Civil War: U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut hit by truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. servicemen. French barracks also hit the same morning, killing 58.

October 24

• 1954 - Dwight D. Eisenhower pledges United States support to South Vietnam
• 1957 - the USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program.
• 1977 - Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. (The holiday is once again observed on November 11 beginning the following year.)

October 25

• 1813 - War of 1812: Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of Chateauguay.
• 1944 - The USS Tang (SS-306) under Richard O'Kane (the top submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by her own torpedo.
• 1962 - Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.
• 1983 - Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters were executed in a coup d'état.

October 26

• 1940 - The P-51 Mustang makes it maiden flight.
• 1942 - World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier is sunk and another heavily damaged.
• 1944 - The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends.
• 2001 - The United States passes the controversial USA PATRIOT Act into law.

October 27

• 1954 - Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force.
• 1962 - Major Rudolph Anderson of the US Air Force became the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane was shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

October 28

• 1775 - American Revolutionary War A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston.
• 1776 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of White Plains - British Army forces arrive at White Plains, attack and capture Chatterton Hill from the Americans.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Second Battle of Fair Oaks ends - Union Army forces under General Ulysses S. Grant withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond, Virginia.
• 1942 - The Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway) is completed through Canada to Fairbanks, Alaska.
• 1943 - The alleged Philadelphia Experiment supposedly occurred.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
• 1964 - Vietnam War: U.S. officials deny any involvement in bombing North Vietnam.

October 29

• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie - Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant ward-off a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: Vietnamization - The total number of American troops still in Vietnam drops to a record low of 196,700 (the lowest level since January 1966).
• 1980 - Demonstration flight of a secretly modified C-130 for an Iran hostage crisis rescue attempt ends in crash landing at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, Florida leading to cancellation of Operation Credible Sport.

October 30

• 1831 - In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.
• 1941 - World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
• 1953 - Cold War: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
• 1965 - Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions was found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.

October 31

• 1861 - American Civil War: Citing failing health, Union General Winfield Scott resigns as Commander of the United States Army.
• 1941 - World War II: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors.
• 1968 - Vietnam War October surprise:Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.