This is where the Daily Chronicles are posted
Washington, D.C. • November 20, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Washington, Japanese ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura presented his government’s final proposal for peace in the Asia Pacific region. Through much of 1941, Ambassador Nomura had negotiated with U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull to resolve festering bilateral issues. Chief among the issues were the…
Off Savo Island, Solomon Islands, South Pacific • November 13, 1942 Commissioned on February 14, 1942, the light antiaircraft cruiser USS Juneau (CL‑52), named after the capital city of Alaska, first saw service in the Caribbean, where it performed blockade patrol in early May off Martinique and Guadeloupe Islands to prevent the escape of Vichy French…
Bari, Italy • November 8, 1943 On this date in 1943, 13 U.S. Army flight nurses, 13 young enlisted medics, and 3 flight crew boarded a Douglas C‑53 transport in Sicily for a 90‑minute flight to Bari on the Italian mainland. As a unit of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, the team’s assignment was to…
Antwerp, Belgium • November 1, 1944 After the Allied breakout from Normandy in Northwestern France beginning on August 13, 1944, German forces stubbornly held the French and Belgian English Channel ports. Thus the Western Allies were forced to bring all supplies for their rapidly eastward advancing armies from the Mulberry artificial harbor they had opened off…
Tokyo, Japan • October 16, 1941 On this date in 1941 three-time Prime Minister of Japan Prince Fumimaro Konoe resigned from office. Konoe (also rendered Konoye) had lost the support of cabinet and Army minister Gen. Hideki Tōjō, who called for a firmer line with the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the U.S….
Berlin, Germany • October 14, 1933 On this date in 1933 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler announced that his country was pulling out of the League of Nations, predecessor to today’s United Nations. Germany had been a League member since 1926. Hitler, who had been in office less than 9 months, had recently asked the League for…
Quebec, Canada • August 18, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Quebec, Canada, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, along with their Combined Chiefs of Staff, set to work planning Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of German-occupied France. At this first of 2 Quebec conferences, codenamed…
Cairo, Egypt · June 21, 1942 After a disorderly retreat by the British Eighth Army into Egypt following Erwin Rommel’s breakthrough of the Gazala Line in mid-June, the Desert Fox (Rommel’s popular nickname) stormed the British-held Mediterranean fortress and harbor of Tobruk in Eastern Libya on this date in 1942. The newly minted German field…
Philippine Sea, North Pacific Ocean • June 19, 1944 On this date in 1944 a huge gale hit the two gigantic artificial harbors known as Mulberry harbors that the British had built in England, floated across the English Channel, and deposited on Normandy’s beaches several days after the Allies’ June 6 invasion. The gale inflicted losses…
Rotterdam, The Netherlands • May 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 in Holland, the German Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam’s medieval city center, killing nearly 1,000 people and leaving 85,000 homeless. Rather than endure more ferocious bombings—leaflets dropped on Utrecht indicated it was next Dutch city in German crosshairs—the Dutch Army surrendered the next day. The…