• 1783 – The Peace Treaty of Versailles was signed between the USA, Britain, France, and Spain, ending the American Revolution.

• 1787 – United States Constitution Approved.

• 1814 – US Naval Captain Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a British flotilla in the Battle of Lake Erie (War of 1812).

• 1814 – During a British naval attack on the City of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key composed a poem entitled “The Star Spangled Banner.”

• 1847 – American forces captured Mexico City, effectively ending the Mexican War.

• 1864 – Confederate troops abandoned Atlanta in the face of continuing attacks by federals under General W.S. Sherman (Civil War).

• 1899 – Founding of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.

• 1908 – LT Thomas E. Selfridge was killed at Ft. Myer, VA, in a plane flown by Orville Wright. Selfridge was the first man to die in an airplane accident.

• 1939 – German troops invaded Poland, beginning World War II.

• 1939 – Britain and France declared war on Germany (World War II).

• 1941 – British Naval forces sank the German battleship Bismarck off the French coast (World War II).

• 1943 – The allied invasion of Italy began (World War II).

• 1945 – V-J Day, Japan signed formal surrender (World War II).

• 1951 – Battle of Heart Break Ridge began (Korean War).

• 1962 – United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps Incorporated.

• 1967 – Siege of Con Thien Began (Vietnam War).

• 1969 – President Richard Nixon ordered resumption of heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets (Vietnam War).

• 1994 – Operation Uphold Democracy began (Haiti).

[Source: VetJobs Veteran Eagle Newsletter 1 Sep 08 ++]

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Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) has introduced the Frank Buckles World War I Memorial Act to renovate the memorial and rededicate it as a national shrine in 2018, when America observes the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Buckles said the 21st-century commitment was needed to make the memorial “what it should be” by honoring all who’d gone before him. “I just feel there should be some recognition,” he said. Buckles was born in 1901 in Harrison County, Mo. He lied about his age to enlist, telling a skeptical recruiter that Missouri didn’t keep birth records when he was born. He was dispatched to England, then France, where he served as an ambulance driver. After the armistice, he delivered German POWs back to their home country. Buckles spent the next 20 years as a merchant seaman before he was entangled in another world war. He was working in the Philippines in 1941 and was captured by the Japanese shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He spent the next three and a half years in Japanese prison camps. After World War II, he returned to the United States, married and settled down on a 33-acre West Virginia farm, where he still lives. His wife died in 1999.

The D.C. Preservation League and a newly formed World War I Memorial Foundation will take the lead in planning, designing and raising money. Refurbishing the monument is expected to cost just under $1 million but planners said it was too early to project a total cost. The circular memorial, composed of Vermont marble, was intended as a bandstand for memorial concerts to World War I participants. It stands on a 4-foot-high circular marble platform around which are inscribed the names of the 499 Washington residents who died in the war. Planners said they hoped to pay for much of the work through private donations. One priority, they said, will be to preserve and improve the existing monument as a “place of peace and reflection” without trying to rival or surpass the scope of more opulent monuments such as the World War II Memorial. [Source: McClatchy Newspapers Dave Montgomery article 9 Sep 08 ++]

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