On this day in 1959, the modern United States receives its crowning star when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the Union as the 50th state.
In Operation Torch, the first joint U.S.-British offensive of the war, thousands of inexperienced U.S. troops—and their untested leader, Eisenhower—face off against the hardened German Afrika Korps and the infamous Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.