Search & discovery
Find a person, battle, citation, article, book or episode. Start with a name or identifier, then explore the connections.
Showing 667–684
Not all significant dates in military history involve combat with a foreign enemy. On April 19th, 1989, a devastating explosion ripped through the Number Two sixteen-inch gun turret aboard the battleship USS Iowa during a gunnery exercise in the Atlantic. The blast killed dozens of sailors inside the turret and surrounding spaces, shocking both the fleet and the public.
On February 10th, 1967, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, quietly reshaping how the nation would manage presidential disability and succession in an era of nuclear weapons and global commitments. The amendment clarified what would happen if a president died, resigned, became incapacitated, or needed to temporarily transfer power, and it formalized the process for filling a vac
A story of reach and persistence told through the pilots who rode the thin air and the targets they photographed far below.
Decades later, questions of war and peace shifted to New York, where the United Nations Security Council voted on a resolution addressing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
By the summer of the Second World War, Allied forces were fighting their way up the Italian boot while strategic air forces targeted the infrastructure that kept Axis armies supplied. On July 19th, 1943, hundreds of bombers from the United States Army Air Forces and the Royal Air Force attacked rail yards and communications nodes in and around Rome. The strikes aimed to disrupt German logistics and pressure Italy’s l
In the wake of the September 11th attacks, defense planners reexamined how the United States organized its military commands to protect the homeland.
During the Second World War, Allied planners launched a raid on the German-held French port of Dieppe to test defenses and gather experience in amphibious operations. Among the mostly Canadian and British troops who went ashore that August morning were several dozen members of the newly formed United States Army Rangers, making their first combat appearance in Europe.
A story of a silent campaign against merchant ships and how it helped choke an island empire’s war effort.
A story of reach, survivability, and adaptation told through the pilots, crews, and troops who lived and fought under the Huey’s rotors.
During the War of 1812, a newspaper account connected the initials “U.S.” on Army supply barrels with a contractor named Samuel Wilson of Troy, New York.
By December 15th, 1862, the Army of the Potomac was pulling back across the Rappahannock River after the bloody defeat at Fredericksburg.
After months of siege warfare around Petersburg, Virginia, General Grant ordered a major assault on the overstretched Confederate lines protecting both Petersburg and the capital at Richmond. Union forces, including troops from several corps that had been steadily probing and extending the siege lines, attacked at multiple points along the defensive works. The Confederate positions, manned by weary soldiers of Genera
During the American Civil War, control of rivers was as important as control of railroads, and Union commanders in the Western Theater understood that geography could be a weapon. On February 6th, 1862, combined Union army and navy forces under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew Foote attacked Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, a Confederate strongpoint guarding access into the Deep South.
The day after the fighting at Jonesborough, Union troops moved into Atlanta and took control of one of the Confederacy’s most important industrial and railroad hubs.
Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and months after the main Confederate armies had surrendered, Union military authority was still spreading across the far corners of the former Confederacy. On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, at the head of Union troops and read General Order No. 3, announcing that enslaved people in Texas were free under federal law.
The day after Petersburg’s defenses collapsed, Union troops marched into Richmond, the long-sought Confederate capital that had withstood years of pressure. Fires, some set deliberately to destroy supplies and prevent their capture, raged through parts of the city as Federal soldiers moved in to restore order and secure key facilities.
On February 22nd, 1865, Union forces completed the capture of Wilmington, North Carolina, after earlier seizing nearby Fort Fisher and fighting their way up the Cape Fear River. Wilmington had been the Confederacy’s last major Atlantic port, a vital outlet for blockade runners bringing in weapons, cloth, and other supplies from overseas. Once the harbor’s ring of forts fell and Union gunboats controlled the approache
During the American Civil War, control of the North Carolina coast offered powerful leverage over Confederate supply lines. On March 14th, 1862, Union forces under Ambrose Burnside attacked Confederate defenses near the town of New Bern. After an approach up the Neuse River supported by naval gunfire, blue-coated infantry pushed inland against earthworks that were strong on paper but undermanned and poorly coordinate