February 16 · This Day in America
The young United States has a frigate problem: the USS Philadelphia ran aground off Tripoli and was captured, and now sits in an enemy harbor under shore guns, a prize the Barbary corsairs intend to sail against America. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, twenty-five, takes a small captured ketch, disguises his seventy-odd men as Maltese sailors, and drifts straight into the harbor at night. They board the Philadelphia, take her in minutes, set her ablaze so she can never be used against them, and slip back out under fire — without losing a single American. Britain's Lord Nelson reportedly calls it the most bold and daring act of the age. A new country with almost no navy had just told the world it would come for its own.
Source: www.history.navy.mil
Also on this day · 1862
Asked for terms by the surrounded Confederate garrison at Fort Donelson, Ulysses S. Grant replies that no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. The fort falls — the Union's first major victory of the Civil War, opening Tennessee's rivers to federal gunboats. The North, hungry for a winner, decides U. S. Grant stands for Unconditional Surrender. A little-known general had just become a household name.
Source: www.nps.gov