Today in History: March 31

Thanks for sharing significant events of March 31 Maj Marty Hogan
Personally what was significant to me was 1917: the United States purchased the Danish West Indies
which we now know as the US Virgin Islands.
Not listed in this summary but important nonetheless
Civil War
1862 – Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces took place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.
1863 – Confederate troops opened a sustained attack and siege of the Union position at Washington, North Carolina. The assaulting forces erected numerous batteries along the Pamlico River in an effort to check the Union Navy. Nonetheless, the senior naval officer, Commander Daven-port, moved quickly to aid the beleaguered Union soldiers. He dispatched all but two gunboats guarding New Bern to Washington and left only one at Plymouth, before the attack was broken up on 16 April, the warships’ heavy gunfire support swung the balance in stopping the Con-federates. In addition, small boats transported desperately needed ammunition to the troops and ultimately it was the waterborne supplies reaching the garrison that induced the Confederates to withdraw.
1865 – The final offensive of the Army of the Potomac gathers steam when Union General Phil Sheridan moves against the left flank of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The limited action set the stage for the Battle of Five Forks on April 1. This engagement took place at the end of the Petersburg line. For 10 months, the Union had laid siege to Lee’s army at Petersburg, but the trenches stretched all the way to Richmond, 25 miles north of Petersburg. Lee’s thinning army attacked Fort Stedman on March 25 in a futile attempt to break the siege, but the Union line held. On March 29, General Ulysses S. Grant, General-in-Chief of the Union Army and the field commander around Petersburg, began moving his men past the western end of Lee’s line. Torrential rains almost delayed the move. Grant planned to send Sheridan against the Confederates on March 31, but called off the operation. Sheridan would not be denied a chance to fight, though. “I am ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things!” he told his officers. They encouraged him to meet with Grant, who consented to begin the move. Near Dinwiddie Court House, Sheridan advanced but was driven back by General George Pickett’s division. Pickett was alerted to the Union advance, and during the night of March 31, he pulled his men back to Five Forks. This set the stage for a major strike by Sheridan on April 1, when the Yankees crushed the Rebel flank and forced Lee to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg.
WWII
1943 – An American battalion occupies positions around Province of central Papua New Guinea (PNG) at the mouth of the Waria River.
1945 – The U.S. and Britain barred a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from entering the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.
1945 – US naval forces, including Task Force 58 and TF52, continue air strikes on Okinawa while TF54 continues bombarding the island. Japanese Kamikaze and submarine attacks continue.
1945 – A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/march-31/

Thank you for the great history share, I believe Japan grudgingly accepted the ban on whaling.

THANKS FOR SHARING