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Year
1965
Month Day
February 13

Lyndon Johnson approves Operation Rolling Thunder

President Lyndon B. Johnson decides to undertake the sustained bombing of North Vietnam that he and his advisers have been contemplating for a year.

Called Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign was designed to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam. The first Rolling Thunder mission took place on March 2, 1965, when 100 U.S. Air Force and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) planes struck the Xom Bang ammunition dump 100 miles southeast of Hanoi.

From 1965 to 1968, about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam, and a total of nearly 900 U.S. aircraft were lost during Operation Rolling Thunder. The operation continued, with occasional suspensions, until President Johnson, under increasing domestic political pressure, halted it on October 31, 1968.

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ALSO ON THIS DAY

Sports
1923

First all-Black professional basketball team organized

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Great Britain
1689

William and Mary proclaimed joint sovereigns of Britain

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19th Century
1861

First Medal of Honor action

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Inventions & Science
1633

Galileo arrives in Rome to face charges of heresy

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World War I
1920

League of Nations recognizes perpetual Swiss neutrality

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Sports
1998

Downhill skier Hermann Maier crashes in Olympics

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U.S. Presidents
1905

Teddy Roosevelt discusses America’s race problem

On February 13, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a speech to the New York City Republican Club. Roosevelt had just won reelection, and in this speech, he discussed the country’s current state of race relations and his plan for improving them. In 1905, many white ...read more

Art, Literature, and Film History
1914

ASCAP is founded

“If music did not pay, it would be given up.” So wrote Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1917. Holmes wasn’t referring to musicians themselves in that statement, but to places of business in which copyrighted musical works could be ...read more

Crime
1982

Serial killer strikes in Colorado

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Russia
1984

Chernenko becomes general secretary of Soviet Communist Party

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World War II
1945

Firebombing of Dresden

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