1861: Confederate coastal-artillery batteries – including a four-gun battery manned by cadets under the command of Maj. Peter F. Stevens of the Citadel (the Military College of South Carolina) – open fire on the U.S. commercial paddlesteamer Star of the West in Charleston harbor. The shots – the first of the American Civil War – repel the Star, forcing the ship to abort its mission of resupplying the besieged U.S. Army garrison at Fort Sumter.
Star of the West
That same day, Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union.
1918: (Featured Image) Near the Mexican border, a group of Yaqui Indians open fire on “Buffalo Soldiers” of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry (before the U.S. Border Patrol’s founding in 1924, the Army handled border security). After the brief firefight, the leader of the Yaqui lay dead and nine are captured in what is the last engagement of the “American Indian Wars.”
“Buffalo Soldiers” of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry
1945: On the beaches of Luzon Island, 68,000 soldiers of Gen. Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army storm ashore at Luzon Island. During the Battle of Lingayen Gulf, Japanese kamikaze pilots will sink 24 Allied warships and damage 67 with their desperate – and devastating – new tactic.
The battleships Pennsylvania and Colorado lead three heavy cruisers into the Lingayen Gulf
