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In the dark waters off Tripoli on February 16th, 1804, a young United States Navy officer, Stephen Decatur, led a small boarding party into one of the most celebrated raids in early naval history. The frigate USS Philadelphia had run aground and been captured months earlier, and Tripolitan forces now held her as a valuable prize in the First Barbary War.
On November 14th, 1910, civilian pilot Eugene Ely coaxed his fragile Curtiss pusher airplane down a narrow wooden platform built over the bow of the cruiser USS Birmingham off Hampton Roads, Virginia.
On December 16th, 1944, German forces launched a surprise offensive through the forests of the Ardennes, striking thinly held American lines in Belgium and Luxembourg.
On December 16th, 1907, a column of gleaming white-painted American battleships steamed out of Hampton Roads to begin a world cruise that would last more than a year.
The ridge near San Jose Hacienda rose steep and stubborn out of the jungle, a wall of earth and rock that dominated the valley floor. Somewhere up there, hidden in spider holes—small, camouflaged fighting pits—and pillboxes, Japanese soldiers waited behind interlocking bands of machine-gun fire. To reach the crest, Company I of the 160th Infantry Regiment had only one narrow approach, a trail that funneled men into a
On the night of November 13th, 1942, American and Japanese surface forces slammed into each other in the dark waters near Guadalcanal in one of the Pacific War’s most chaotic clashes.
On December 16th, 1998, American and British forces began a four-day air and missile campaign against Iraqi targets known as Operation Desert Fox.
Shortly before the United States entered the First World War, the Army found itself responding to a different kind of threat much closer to home. In the early hours of March 9th, 1916, fighters loyal to Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa crossed the border and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico, as well as a nearby Army camp. The raid killed soldiers and civilians, burned buildings, and shoc
In early 1916, a cross-border raid on Columbus, New Mexico by forces loyal to Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa shocked the United States and demanded a response. On March 15th, the Army launched a punitive expedition under John J. Pershing, sending columns of cavalry, infantry, trucks, and even a small aviation detachment across the desert into northern Mexico. The mission aimed to capture Villa and deter further i
On November 15th, 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led his Union army columns out of a largely destroyed Atlanta and turned them toward the Georgia coast.
On February 16th, 1862, Confederate forces at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River surrendered to Union troops under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, marking one of the first major Union victories in the Western Theater of the Civil War. The campaign had begun with the capture of nearby Fort Henry earlier that month, opening the Tennessee River and rattling Confederate defenses in the region.
On August 16th, 1812, early in the War of 1812, Brigadier General William Hull surrendered the American post at Detroit to a smaller British force under Major General Isaac Brock. Hull had crossed into Canada weeks earlier with an army of regulars and militia but retreated after supply problems, poor coordination, and concerns about Native American allies fighting alongside the British.
On November 14th, 1965, helicopters of the United States Army’s 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) began landing infantry battalions near the Chu Pong Massif in the Ia Drang Valley of South Vietnam.
On November 16th, 1776, British and Hessian forces assaulted Fort Washington, the last major Continental stronghold on Manhattan Island.
On November 11th, 1921, three years to the day after the armistice, an unknown American soldier from the First World War was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
During the Vietnam War, American units operated in a confusing environment where enemy fighters, civilians, and local political forces often mingled in the same villages and rice fields. On March 16th, 1968, a United States Army company entered the My Lai area in South Vietnam expecting to find a strong enemy presence.
In a remote stretch of New Mexico desert, the United States Army’s Manhattan Engineer District prepared to test a weapon unlike any used before. In the early hours of July 16th, 1945, scientists and soldiers watched as the “Gadget,” an experimental plutonium device, detonated atop a tower at the Trinity site. The explosion produced an intense flash, a rising fireball, and a towering mushroom cloud that confirmed the
On November 13th, 1982, after years of debate over how to remember a difficult war, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., was formally dedicated.