On this day in 1944, after advancing island by island across the
Pacific Ocean, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur wades ashore
onto the Philippine island of Leyte, fulfilling his promise to
return to the area he was forced to flee in 1942.
A statue in the Philippines commemorating the promised
return of American commander Douglas MacArthur.
Douglas MacArthur (1880 – 1964)
On August 19, 1791, the accomplished American mathematician
and astronomer Benjamin Banneker wrote a letter to then-
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson corresponded prolifically with luminaries from around
the world, but Banneker is unique among them: the son of a free
Black American woman and a formerly enslaved African man from Guinea, Banneker criticizes Jefferson’s hypocritical stance on
slavery in respectful but unambiguous terms, using Jefferson’s
own words to make his case for the abolition of slavery.
Banneker himself was born free in what is now Ellicott City,
Maryland, and was encouraged in his studies of astronomy
and mathematics by the Ellicotts, a Quaker family who owned
a mill and much of the land in the area.
On July 26, 1775, the U.S. postal system was established by the
Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its
first postmaster general. Franklin (1706-1790) put in place
the foundation for many aspects of today’s mail system.
On June 27, 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced he is
ordering U.S. air and naval forces to South Korea to aid the
democratic nation in repulsing an invasion by communist
North Korea.
The United States was undertaking the major military operation,
he explained, to enforce a United Nations resolution calling for
an end to hostilities, and to stem the spread of communism in
Asia.
In addition to ordering U.S. forces to Korea, Truman also deployed
the U.S. 7th Fleet to Formosa (Taiwan) to guard against invasion
by communist China and ordered an acceleration of military aid
to French forces fighting communist guerrillas in Vietnam.
The total U.S. dead in the Korean War
numbers 36,516.
June 14, 1777: During the American Revolution, the
Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating
that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate
stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen
stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”
The national flag, which became known as the “Stars and Stripes,
” was based on the “Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white
stripes. According to legend, Philadelphia seamstress Betsy
Ross designed the new canton for the Stars and Stripes, which
consisted of a circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the
request of General George Washington. Historians have been
unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.
With the entrance of new states into the United States after independence, new stripes and stars were added to represent
new additions to the Union. In 1818, however, Congress enacted
a law stipulating that the 13 original stripes be restored and that
only stars be added to represent new states.
Elizabeth Griscom Ross
(January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836)
