1753 Jean-Baptiste Kléber was a French general during the French Revolutionary Wars. After having served one year in the French Royal Army, he entered Habsburg service seven years later. But his plebeian ancestry hindered his opportunities. Eventually, he volunteered for the French Army in 1792 and quickly rose through the ranks.
1773 Isaac Hull (March 9, 1773 â February 13, 1843) was a Commodore in the United States Navy. He commanded several famous U.S. naval warships including USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) and saw service in the undeclared naval Quasi War with the revolutionary French Republic (France) 1796â1800; the Barbary Wars (1801â1805, 1815), with the Barbary states in North Africa; and the War of 1812 (1812â1815), for the second time with Great Britain. In the latter part of his career he was Commandant of the Washington Navy Yard in the national capital of Washington, D.C., and later the Commodore of the Mediterranean Squadron. For the infant U.S. Navy, the battle of USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere on August 19, 1812, at the beginning of the war, was the most important single ship action of the War of 1812 and one that made Isaac Hull a national hero.
1831 The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831. Legionnaires are highly trained infantry soldiers and the Legion is unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. When it was founded, the French Foreign Legion was not unique; other foreign formations existed at the time in France. The Foreign Legion is today known as a unit whose training focuses on traditional military skills and on its strong esprit de corps, as its men come from different countries with different cultures. Consequently, training is often described as not only physically challenging, but also very stressful psychologically. French citizenship may be applied for after three years’ service.[9] The Legion is the only part of the French military that does not swear allegiance to France, but to the Foreign Legion itself.[10] Any soldier who gets wounded during a battle for France can immediately apply to be a French citizen under a provision known as “Français par le sang versé” (“French by spilled blood”). As of 2018, members came from 140 countries.
1920 Founded in 1920, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are the federal and national police service of Canada, providing law enforcement at the federal level. The RCMP also provide provincial policing in eight of Canada’s provinces and local policing on a contract basis in the three territories and more than 150 municipalities, 600 Indigenous communities, and three international airports.
1934 Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 â 27 March 1968) was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule, Vostok 1, completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation’s highest honour. Born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (a town later renamed after him), in his youth Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme with five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, respectively the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet. Vostok 1 was Gagarin’s only spaceflight but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearing for his life, Soviet officials permanently banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy on 17 February 1968, he was allowed to fly regular aircraft. Gagarin died five weeks later when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting with his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.
1970 Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, Specialist Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, United States Army, was captured near the Kuwait/Saudi Arabia border on 30 January 1991 and was held by the Iraqis as a Prisoner of War until her release on 3 March 1991. She was one of just two female POWs in the Persian Gulf War, and she was the first female American soldier ever to be officially listed as missing in action (MIA). A 20-year-old Army truck driver, Rathbun-Nealy had joined the service two and a half years before, shortly after her high school graduation.
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