[Featured Image: The crew of Space Shuttle Columbia‘s mission STS-107]
1800: The frigate USS Constellation (the first of four so-named American warships) under the command of Capt. Thomas Truxtun defeats the French frigate La Vengeance under Capt. F.M. Pitot in a night battle lasting several hours. The engagement, fought during America’s Quasi War with France, is – according to Truxtun – “as sharp an action as ever was fought between two frigates.”
1862: Julia Ward Howe’s poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which begins “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” is published in the Atlantic Monthly. It will become a Union Army ballad. Today, the ballad is a martial hymn sung in American military chapels worldwide and by descendents of Union and Confederate soldiers alike.
1942: Vice Adm. William Halsey Jr.’s Task Force 8 (USS Enterprise) hits Japanese facilities in the Marshall Islands, while Rear Adm. Jack Fletcher’s Task Force 17 (USS Yorktown) attacks the Gilberts. Aircraft and naval artillery inflict moderate damage to the Japanese garrisons and sink several smaller vessels. The Marshalls-Gilberts Raids are the first American offensive operation against the Japanese during the war in the Pacific.
1944: Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt’s 4th Marine Division lands at Kwajalein Island and Roi-Namur. Of the 8,000 original Japanese defenders, only 300 are captured when the islands are secured after three days of combat.
A Boeing LGM-30A Minuteman I missile launching from Cape Canaveral, Fla. in 1961
1961: The “Minuteman I” intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – the first three-staged, solid-fueled ICBM – is launched for the first time in a successful “all systems” test. The Boeing-manufactured missile can carry a 1.3 megaton thermonuclear warhead over 5,500 miles.
2003: The doomed Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) disintegrates upon reentering the earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crewmembers. Aboard are Col. Rick D. Husband (USAF), Cmdr. William C. McCool (USN), Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson (USAF), Capt. David M. Brown (USN), Capt. Laurel Clark (USN), Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, and Kalpana Chawla, a civilian mission specialist.
