30 MAY-3 JUNE 1997 OPERATION “NOBLE OBELISK” The Clinton administration’s National Security Strategy emphasized “selective engagement” in world affairs where US interests were at stake. And by the mid-1990s, US armed forces had executed a dizzying succession of peacekeeping, non-combatant evacuations Read More
26 MAY 1960 GREAT SEAL BUG On 4 August 1945, as WWII ended, a Moscow school children’s group, the Young Pioneers, presented US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman with a gift of friendship–a 2-foot carved wooden likeness of the Great Seal of Read More
200th ANNIVERSARY 22 MAY 1823 AVENGING CAPTAIN PERKINS On 1 March 1823 the American merchant brig Belisarius of Kennebunk, Maine, departed Port au Prince, Haiti, bound for Mexico. The new-found independence of such former Spanish colonies as Venezuela, Colombia, and Read More
17 MAY 1987 ATTACK ON USS STARK On 22 September 1980, years of animosity between Iran and Iraq erupted into a shooting war. Early in that conflict Iranian jets destroyed Iraq’s only Persian Gulf oil terminal, greatly hindering the flow of Read More
100th ANNIVERSARY 12 MAY 1923 THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF PETE ELLIS After World War I several of defeated Germany’s Pacific island possessions passed to Japan under a League of Nations mandate. Japan’s subsequent fortification of these islands in defiance of the Read More
5 MAY 1863 QUEEN’S CREEK RAID Evasion by a Confederate blockade runner was no small embarrassment to the Union ships whose job it was to isolate the South. And when a small cutter was observed running goods up the Piankatank River Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 30 APRIL 1943 OPERATION “MINCEMEAT” When the American 7th and British 8th Armies landed on southern Sicily 10 July 1943 they found lighter than anticipated resistance. It seems the Germans had concentrated their defenses on the Read More
23 APRIL 1945 THE CONTROVERSY OF PE-56 On this day the 62 sailors aboard the Navy’s “Eagle”-class patrol craft PE-56 were carrying out the plan of the day, patrolling for German submarines off the Maine coast. Duty on board such vessels Read More
14-15 APRIL 1986 AIR RAID ON KADHAFI Before Saddam and bin Laden there was Muammar Kadhafi, and this Lidyan dictator’s continuing support of terrorism in the mid-1980s prompted ADM William J. Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to draft Read More
11 APRIL 1862 THE PLOT TO CAPTURE MONITOR The historic battle of Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862 between CSS VIRGINIA (the ex-USS MERRIMACK) and USS MONITOR ended in a draw. Plate iron had proven its value. In fact, MONITOR had Read More