1775: (featured image) Gen. George Washington, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, takes formal command of his troops in Cambridge, Mass.
1778: A force of 1,000 Loyalists and Iroquois warriors commanded by Col. John Butler attacks American fortifications and settlements in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley, killing some 360 militiamen and destroying 1,000 houses. Reportedly, women and children are also killed in Butler’s “Wyoming massacre,” and those that escape the slaughter will die of starvation and exposure.
1863: During the third – and final – day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Gen. Robert E. Lee orders three divisions of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s Confederate soldiers across open ground to assault the Union position on Cemetery Ridge. Union fire shatters the rebels, inflicting thousands of casualties before the troops can return to the Confederate lines after the failed attack, which becomes known as “Pickett’s Charge.”
Pickett’s Charge, Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., U.S.A, from Robert N. Dennis
Barlows Knoll after first day’s battle, Gettysburg, July 1, 1863
Fearing a Union counter-attack, Lee orders Maj. Gen. George Pickett to rally what is left of his division, Pickett replies, “General, I have no division.”
Maj. Gen. George Pickett
1898: Rear Adm. William T. Sampson cables the Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, declaring that the Atlantic Squadron has decisively defeated the Spanish Navy in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, offering the captured fleet as a “Fourth of July present” to the nation. The Americans suffer only two casualties in the engagement, but Adm. Pascual Cervera’s force of four armored cruisers and two destroyers is wiped out.
1950: Off the coast of Korea, carriers from both the United States and Britain begin combat operations against North Korea. F9F “Panther”, AD “Skyraiders”, and F4U “Corsairs” launch from the deck of USS Valley Forge (CV-45) and strike the airfield at Pyongyang. The raid marks the first time the Panther and Skyraider see combat, and is the first-ever combat strike by a jet aircraft.
F9F “Panther”
USS Valley Forge Skyraiders
F4U Corsairs
USS Valley Forge (CV-45)
