Cinco de Mayo is Spanish for "Fifth of May"… a yearly celebration
held on May 5, which commemorates the anniversary of Mexico’s
victory over the Second French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in
1862, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza (below).
Depictions of the Battle of Puebla.
On May 3, 1942, during World War II, the first modern naval
engagement in history, the Battle of the Coral Sea, began. A
Japanese invasion force succeeds in occupying Tulagi of
the Solomon Islands in an expansion of Japan’s defensive
perimeter.
The United States, having broken Japan’s secret war code
and forewarned of an impending invasion of Tulagi and Port
Moresby, attempted to intercept the Japanese armada. Four
days of battles between Japanese and American aircraft
carriers resulted in 70 Japanese and 66 American warplanes
destroyed.
USS Lexington on fire and sinking.
The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of
Guadalcanal, was fought between August 7, 1942, and
February 9, 1943 in the Pacific theater of World War II
on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the southern
Solomon Islands, and was the first major offensive
launched by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.
On November 27, 1868, without bothering to identify the village
or do any reconnaissance, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong
Custer led an early morning attack on a band of peaceful Cheyenne
living with Chief Black Kettle.
Convicted of desertion and mistreatment of soldiers earlier that year
in a military court, the government had suspended Custer from rank
and command for one year. Ten months into his punishment, in September 1868, General Philip Sheridan reinstated Custer to lead
a campaign against Cheyenne Indians who had been making raids
in Kansas and Oklahoma that summer. Sheridan was frustrated by
the inability of his other officers to find and engage the enemy, and despite his poor record and unpopularity with the men of the 7th
Cavalry, Custer was a good fighter.
George Armstrong Custer
(December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876)
On November 12, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman
ordered the business district of Atlanta, Georgia, destroyed
before he embarked on his famous March to the Sea.
When Sherman captured Atlanta in early September 1864,
he knew that he could not remain there for long.
His tenuous supply line ran from Nashville, Tennessee,
through Chattanooga, Tennessee, then one hundred miles
through mountainous northern Georgia.
The army he had just defeated, the Army of Tennessee, was
still in the area and its leader, John Bell Hood, swung around
Atlanta to try to damage Sherman’s lifeline. Of even greater
concern was the Confederate cavalry of General Nathan
Bedford Forrest, a brilliant commander who could strike
quickly against the railroads and river transports on which
Sherman relied.
Atlanta’s Union Station Destroyed by The Union Army.
A Bank Lay in Ruins After The Battle and Occupation of
Atlanta.
