05/28/2026
On this day in military history
1754 – In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeats a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania.
1917 – First underway fueling in U.S. Navy, USS Maumee fuels 6 destroyers in North Atlantic. LCDR Chester W. Nimitz served as Maumee’s executive officer and chief engineer.
1918 – US forces undertake their first attack of World War I on the second day of the German offensive along the River Aisne. The fighting centers on the village of Cantigny to the east of Montdidier on the Somme River sector in the north.
1942 – Task Force 16 sails from Oahu for Midway with the carriers Enterprise and Hornet and escorts. Admiral Fletcher’s Task Force 17 follows after miraculously quick repairs to the Yorktown.
1945 – More than 100 Japanese planes are shot down near Okinawa. This is the last major effort against the Allied naval forces surrounding the island. One American destroyer is sunk in the otherwise unsuccessful air strikes.
1951 – U.N. Forces drove the communists’ back across the 38th parallel on most of the Korean battlefields.
1971 – Audie Murphy (46), WW II hero, actor (Whispering Smiths), was killed in plane crash near Roanoke, Va.
1980 – 55 women become first women graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy.
1984 – On Memorial Day the only American Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War is laid to rest at ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC, attended by 250,000, including members of Congress and the international diplomatic community, and Vietnam veterans in fatigues. President Reagan, named honorary next-of-kin, delivers the eulogy at the hero’s funeral, and urges greater efforts to locate the more than 2,400 service members still missing
1987 – Matthias Rust, a 19-year-old amateur pilot from West Germany, takes off from Helsinki, Finland, travels through more than 400 miles of Soviet airspace, and lands his small Cessna aircraft in Red Square by the Kremlin. The event proved to be an immense embarrassment to the Soviet government and military. Rust, described by his mother as a “quiet young man…with a passion for flying,” apparently had no political or social agenda when he took off from the international airport in Helsinki and headed for Moscow. He entered Soviet airspace, but was either undetected or ignored as he pushed farther and farther into the Soviet Union.
1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein opened a two-day Arab League summit in Baghdad with a keynote address in which he said if Israel were to deploy nuclear or chemical weapons against Arabs, Iraq would respond with “weapons of mass destruction.”
2001 – President Bush honored America’s veterans with the Memorial Day signing of legislation to construct a World War II monument on the National Mall.
Other events:
1818 - Walk-in-the-Water launches, becoming the first steam vessel to sail on Lake Erie
1830 - US President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, a key law leading to the forced removal of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes out of Georgia and surrounding states, setting the stage for the Cherokee Trail of Tears
1889 - Édouard and André Michelin incorporate the Michelin tyre (tire) company which revolutionized the automotive industry where their detachable-pneumatic automobile tires.
He went on to publish the first Michelin Guide in 1900, a now famous hotel and restaurant reference guide.
1892 - Sierra Club formed by John Muir and others in San Francisco, for conservation of nature
1923 - US Attorney General says it is legal for women to wear trousers anywhere
1928 - American automobile makers Dodge Brothers Inc. and Chrysler Corporation merge
1946 - First night game at Yankee Stadium (Senators 2, Yankees 1)
1959 - Monkeys Able and Baker travel 300 miles (500 km) into space aboard a Jupiter missile and return safely to Earth as the first animals retrieved alive from a space mission
1967 - Sailor Francis Chichester arrives home at Plymouth, England, after circumnavigating the globe solo in his yacht Gipsy Moth IV, the first to do so
1971 - USSR launches Mars 3; becomes the first spacecraft to soft land on Mars on December 2
1971 – Pres. Nixon ordered John Haldeman to do more wiretapping and political espionage against the Democrats. The orders were recorded on tape
1987 - 60th US National Spelling Bee: Stephanie Petit wins spelling 'staphylococci'
1990 - David Robilliard achieves the longest bicycle wheelie at with 5 hours, 12 minutes, and 33 seconds
1997 - American mountaineer Wally Berg reaches the summit of Mount Everest for his third time
1999 - Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece "The Last Supper" is put back on display in Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work
2002 – The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City.
