President Abraham Lincoln (above) signed into law a measure calling
for the awarding of a U.S. Army Medal of Honor (above) in the name
of Congress “to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall
most – distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other
soldier like qualities during the present insurrection.”

The first U.S. Army soldiers to receive what would become the nation’s 
highest military honor were six members of a Union raiding party who
in 1862 penetrated deep into Confederate territory to destroy bridges 
and railroad tracks between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Atlanta, 
Georgia.

In 1863, the Medal of Honor was made a permanent military decoration
available to all members, including commissioned officers, of the U.S.
military. It is conferred upon those who have distinguished themselves
in actual combat at risk of life beyond the call of duty.

TIM MAGUIRE

Two days after North Korea invaded South Korea on this day in 1950, U.S.
President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean war. The
United Nations Security Council had asked for member nations to help South
Korea repel an invasion from the North.

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972)

TIM MAGUIRE

North Korea invaded South Korea initiating the Korean War on this
day in 1950.

On this day in 1997, U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page report
dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell,
New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier.

Public interest in Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, began to flourish
in the 1940s, when developments in space travel and the dawn of the
atomic age caused many Americans to turn their attention to the skies.

The town of Roswell, located near the Pecos River in southeastern New
Mexico, became a magnet for UFO believers due to the strange events of
early July 1947, when ranch foreman W.W. Brazel found a strange, shiny
material scattered over some of his land. He turned the material over to
the sheriff, who passed it on to authorities at the nearby Air Force base.

On July 8, Air Force officials announced they had recovered the wreckage
of a “flying disk.” A local newspaper put the story on its front page,
launching Roswell into the spotlight of the public’s UFO fascination. 

On this day in 1944, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the G.I.
Bill, an act of legislation designed to compensate returning members of
the armed services for their efforts in World War ll.

As the last of its sweeping New Deal reforms, Roosevelt’s administration
created the G.I. Bill, officially the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944,
hoping to avoid a relapse into the Great Depression after the war ended.