1855 –John Moses Browning, sometimes referred to as the “father of modern firearms,” is born in Ogden, Utah. Many of the guns manufactured by companies whose names evoke the history of the American West-Winchester, Colt, Remington, and Savage-were actually based on John Browning’s designs. The son of a talented gunsmith, John Browning began experimenting with his own gun designs as a young man. When he was 24 years old, he received his first patent, for a rifle that Winchester manufactured as its Single Shot Model 1885. Impressed by the young man’s inventiveness, Winchester asked Browning if he could design a lever-action-repeating shotgun. Browning could and did, but his efforts convinced him that a pump-action mechanism would work better, and he patented his first pump model shotgun in 1888. Fundamentally, all of Browning’s manually-operated repeating rifle and shotgun designs were aimed at improving one thing: the speed and reliability with which gun users could fire multiple rounds-whether shooting at game birds or other people. Lever and pump actions allowed the operator to fire a round, operate the lever or pump to quickly eject the spent shell, insert a new cartridge, and then fire again in seconds. By the late 1880s, Browning had perfected the manual repeating weapon; to make guns that fired any faster, he would somehow have to eliminate the need for slow human beings to actually work the mechanisms. But what force could replace that of the operator moving a lever or pump? Browning discovered the answer during a local shooting competition when he noticed that reeds between a man firing and his target were violently blown aside by gases escaping from the gun muzzle. He decided to try using the force of that escaping gas to automatically work the repeating mechanism. Browning began experimenting with his idea in 1889. Three years later, he received a patent for the first crude fully automatic weapon that captured the gases at the muzzle and used them to power a mechanism that automatically reloaded the next bullet. In subsequent years, Browning refined his automatic weapon design. When U.S. soldiers went to Europe during WWI, many of them carried Browning Automatic Rifles, as well as Browning’s deadly machine guns. During a career spanning more than five decades, Browning’s guns went from being the classic weapons of the American West to deadly tools of world war carnage. Amazingly, since Browning’s death in 1926, there have been no further fundamental changes in the modern firearm industry.
1897 William Samuel Stephenson, Canadian soldier airman, entrepreneur, and spymaster, the "Man Called Intrepid", an inspiration for "James Bond," d. 1989 -
After Franklin was disabled by polio, Eleanor increasingly became his partner in politics and during his years in office became the most active First Lady in history. She had a daily newspaper column, often served as a fact finder for the President, championed unpopular causes, such as racial justice and workers’ rights, and became almost as popular as Roosevelt himself, while also becoming a major target of abuse by hate groups, hostile politicians, and the like. During World War II, Mrs. Roosevelt, who had four sons and a son-in-law in uniform, travelled extensively, visiting training camps, defense plants, military hospitals, and troops overseas. While on her travels she carried a copy of a short prayer, which reportedly had been given to her by William Stephenson (1897-1989), better known as the British intelligence maven “Intrepid.”
Dear Lord,
Lest I continue
My complacent way,
Help me to remember that somewhere, Somehow out there A man died for me today.
As long as there be war,
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?
1942 Battle of Balikpapan: Nocturnal U.S DD and Dutch sub attack on Japanese shipping, six transports sunk
1944 – U.S. troops under Major General John P. Lucas make an amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio, Italy, just south of Rome. Following the successful Allied landings at Calabria, Taranto, and Salerno in early September 1943 and the unconditional surrender of Italy that same month, German forces begun a slow, fighting withdrawal to the north and settled into the ‘Gustav Line’, a formidable and sophisticated defensive belt of interlocking positions on the high ground along the peninsula’s narrowest point. Between October 1943 and January 1944 the Allies launched numerous costly attacks against well-entrenched enemy forces at this line. Becasue of this, the Allies initiated a larger assault south of Rome that could outflank the Gustav Line: Operation SHINGLE. During the early morning hours of 22 January 1944, troops of the Fifth Army swarmed ashore on a fifteen-mile stretch of Italian beach near the prewar resort towns of Anzio and Nettuno. The landings were carried out so flawlessly and German resistance was so light that British and American units gained their first day’s objectives by noon. More to the east the key to defeating the Gustav line lay in the small town of Cassino lying on the river Rapido dominated by the historic Benedictine monastery atop the 1,693 foot massif of Monte Cassino itself. Only after four months with three battles the mountain only fell into Allied hands on May 18th. At Anzio, Allied troops only were able to break out around May 25th. Rome was entered by Clark’s Fifth Army on the 4th June. The Anzio Campaign was controversial, the operation clearly failed in its immediate objectives of outflanking the Gustav Line, restoring mobility to the Italian campaign, and speeding the capture of Rome. Allied forces were quickly pinned down and contained within a small beachhead, and they were effectively rendered incapable of conducting any sort of major offensive action for four months pending the advance of Fifth Army forces to the south. Anzio failed to be the panacea the Allies sought. As General Lucas steadfastly maintained that under the circumstances the small Anzio force accomplished all that could have been realistically expected. Lucas’ critics charge, however, that a more aggressive and imaginative commander, such as a Patton or Truscott, could have obtained the desired goals by an immediate, bold offensive from the beachhead. Lucas was overly cautious, spent valuable time digging in, and allowed the Germans to prepare countermeasures to ensure that an operation conceived as a daring Allied offensive behind enemy lines became a long, costly campaign of attrition. Yet the campaign did accomplish several goals. The presence of a significant Allied force behind the German Gustav Line, uncomfortably close to Rome, represented a constant threat. The Germans could not ignore Anzio and were forced into a response, thereby surrendering the initiative in Italy to the Allies. The 135,000 troops of the Fourteenth Army surrounding Anzio could not be moved elsewhere, nor could they be used to make the already formidable Gustav Line virtually impregnable. The Anzio beachhead thus guaranteed that the already steady drain of scarce German troop reserves, equipment, and materiel would continue unabated, ultimately enabling the 15th Army Group to break through in the south. But the success was costly.
1962 Kim Philby, long-term spy in Britain, defects to the USSR
2004 Bob Keeshan, 76, marine, actor ( "Captain Kangaroo")