The Battle of Osan was the first engagement between United States and North Korean forces during the Korean War, on July 5, 1950. A U.S. task force of 400 infantry supported by an artillery battery was moved to Osan, south of the South Korean capital Seoul, and ordered to fight as a rearguard to delay advancing North Korean forces while additional U.S. forces arrived in-country to form a defensive line. The task force lacked both anti-tank guns and effective infantry anti-tank weapons. Aside from a limited number of HEAT shells for the unit's 105-mm howitzers, crew-served weapons capable of defeating the T-34 had not been distributed to U.S. Army forces in Korea at the time. In the first encounter, a North Korean tank column overran the task force and continued its advance south. After the column had successfully breached American lines, the task force opened fire on a force of some 5,000 North Korean infantry approaching its position, temporarily holding up the North Korean advance. Eventually, North Korean troops overwhelmed American positions, and the remnants of the task force retreated in disorder.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1687:
The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton was first published, describing his laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica
1937:
The Hormel Foods Corporation introduced Spam , the canned precooked meat product that would eventually enter into pop culture, folklore, and urban legend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28food%29
1946:
Named after Bikini Atoll, the site of the nuclear weapons test Operation Crossroads in the Marshall Islands, the modern bikini was introduced at a fashion show in Paris. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bikini
1962:
The Late Late Show, the world's longest-running chat show by the same broadcaster, aired on Irish television for the first time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Late_Show
2009:
A series of violent riots broke out in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
scare quote (n): (chiefly in plural) Each of a set of inverted commas or speech marks seen as expressing the author's distance from, or unwillingness to accept, the term enclosed http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scare_quote
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Life is not theory. It is reality, with inherent duties to everything and everyone. --Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tivadar_Csontv%C3%A1ry_Kosztka
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