1st
1946. The U.S. Coast Guard, which operated as a service under the U.S. Navy since 1 November 1941, returned to the control of the U .S. Treasury Department.

1962. Navy SEALs created.

2nd
1944. Navy lands troops in New Guinea.

1960. Marine Corps Air Facility commissioned at Okinawa.

3rd
1777. Continental Army defeats the British in a surprise raid at Princeton, NJ.

1918. Naval Overseas Transportation Service begins.

4th
1910. First dreadnaught battleship USS Michigan commissioned.

5th
1904. Marines land to protect U.S. Legation in Seoul, Korea.

6th
1864. Militia Colonel Kit Carson begins winter campaign against the Navahos at Canyon de Chelly, New Mexico Territory. It will bring an end to the war against that tribe.

7th
1947. Coast Guard Icebreaker Northwind successfully completed first major rescue mission involving a submarine. Stennet and supply ships Yance and Merrick were stuck in ice flow at Antarctic Circle.

8th
1815. A defensive Army of regulars, militia, and volunteers under Gen. Andrew Jackson inflicts bloody defeat on the British at New Orleans. Neither side knew a treaty had been signed.

1958. The Coast Guard LORAN Station at Johnston Island began transmitting on a 24-hour basis, thus establishing a new LORAN rate in the Central Pacific.

9th
1847. A joint Army-Navy force inflicts final defeat on Californians resisting American occupation at San Gabriel.

1945. Invasion of Luzon, Philippines. WWII.

10th
1784. Continental Congress ratifies Treaty of Paris, ending the American revolution.

11th
1944. Navy TBF-1C Avenger crews against a German submarine make the first U.S. use of forward-firing rockets.

12th
1861. Confederate forces seize Pensacola Navy Yard.

13th
1865. A major joint Army-Navy-Marine force successfully seizes the last Confederate port on the Atlantic, Fort Fisher, NC.

14th
1920. Caco insurrectionists defeated at Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

15th
1993. Coast Guard begins Operation Able Manner, the largest search and rescue operation ever undertaken, in response to a massive increase in the number of Haitians fleeing their country.

16th
1990. CGC Merrick becomes first cutter to fire harpoon missile.

17th
1966. A B-52 loaded with four hydrogen bombs collides with a KC-135 while refueling near Palomares, Spain. Seven of the eleven crew members involved are killed. Three of the four weapons are quickly recovered. The fourth, which falls into the Mediterranean Sea, is not recovered until early Spring.

18th
1911. Navy Lt. Eugene Ely, flying a Curtiss pusher, makes the first landing on a ship. He touches down on a 119-foot-long wooden platform on the stern of the cruiser USS Pennsylvania, riding at anchor in San Francisco Bay.

1957. Commanded by Maj. Gen. Archie J. Old, Jr., USAF, three B-52 Stratofortresses complete a 24,325-mile round-the-world nonstop flight in forty-five hours, nineteen minutes, with an average speed of 534 mph. It is the first globe-circling non-stop flight by a jet aircraft.

19th
1910. Signal Corps Lt. Paul Beck, flying as a passenger with Louis Paulhan in a Farman biplane, drops three two-pound sandbags in an effort to hit a target at the Los Angeles Flying Meet. This is the first bombing experiment by an Army officer.

1946. Staged jointly by the USCG and USN, the first public demonstration of LORAN was held at Floyd Bennett Field, NY.

20th
1914. The Navy's aviation unit from Annapolis, Md., arrives at Pensacola, FL, to establish the first naval air station.

21st
1918. The first Marine unit overseas in WWI arrives in the Azores.

22nd
1959. Air Force Capt. William B. White sets a record for the longest nonstop flight between points in the US, as he flies a Republic F-105 Thunderchief 3,850 miles from Eielson AFB, Alaska, to Eglin AFB, in five hours and twenty-seven minutes.

23rd
1968. North Korean patrol boats capture the USS Pueblo.

24th
1925. The Navy airship USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), with twenty-five scientists and astronomers on board, is used to make observations of a solar eclipse.

25th
1949. The U.S. Air Force adopts blue uniforms.

1960. In what is billed as the “first known kill of a ballistic missile, an Army MIM-23 HAWK antiaircraft missile downs an unarmed MGR-1 Honest John surface-to-surface unguided rocket.

26th
1953. Chance Vought Aircraft completes the last F4U Corsair. In production for thirteen years (and built by two other manufacturers during World War II), almost 12,700 Corsairs were built in a number of versions, making one of the longest and largest production runs in history.

27th
1943. The first American air raid on Germany is made by Eighth Air Force B-17 crews against Wilhelmshaven and other targets in the Northwestern part of the country.

1967. Astronauts USAF LCOL Virgil I. Grissom, Navy LCDR Roger B. Chaffee, and USAF LCOL Edward H. White are killed in a flash fire aboard their Apollo 1 command module during a ground test. The disaster sets the Moon landing back two years.

28th
1914. Marines land in Haiti with British, French and German units.

29th
1986. Challenger Space Shuttle explodes shortly after liftoff.

30th
1948. Orville Wright dies in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, at 76.

31st
1950. President Truman announces that he has directed the Atomic Energy Commission “to continue its work on all forms of atomic-energy weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super bomb. This is the first confirmation of U.S. H-bomb work.

1958. The Army launches Explorer I, the first US satellite, at Cape Canaveral. The satellite, launched on a Jupiter-C rocket, will later play a key role in the discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belt.