CARLATA BRADLEY

A Russian nuclear submarine sank to the bottom of the Barents
Sea on August 12, 2000; all 118 crew members are later found
dead. The exact cause of the disaster remains unknown.

Kursk left port on August 10 to take part in war games with the
Russian military. Russian ships, planes and submarines met
up in the Barents Sea, which is above the Arctic Circle, to
practice military maneuvers.

On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declared war on
Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers the following
day into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to
take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.

On August 7, 1942, U.S. forces, primarily the 1st Marine
Division, launched Operation Watchtower, the first major
Allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II, by
landing on Guadalcanal.

This airfield, later named Henderson Field, became a
crucial strategic point in the Pacific campaign. The
invasion marked the beginning of the lengthy and
brutal Guadalcanal Campaign, a six-month struggle
for control of the island.

In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower (above) appointed Florence Blanchfield to
be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first
woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank.

A member of the Army Nurse Corps since 1917, Blanchfield secured
her commission following the passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act
of 1947 by Congress.

Blanchfield had served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II and was instrumental in securing passage of
the Army-Navy Nurse Act.

In 1951, Blanchfield received the Florence Nightingale Award from
the International Red Cross. In 1978, a U.S. Army hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was named in her honor.

Florence Aby Blanchfield (April 1, 1884 in Shepherdstown,
West Virginia – May 12, 1971)

A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division left Saigon in the
initial withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the
first of 25,000 troops that were withdrawn in the first stage
of the U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam War.

There would be 14 more increments in the withdrawal, but
the last U.S. troops did not leave until after the Paris Peace
Accords were signed in January 1973.