November 12 · This Day in America
For months the United States has been holding a single airfield on a jungle island most Americans cannot find on a map. Tonight the decision comes. A Japanese fleet steams down to crush Henderson Field; an outnumbered American force turns straight into it. The night action is so close that ships fire at point-blank range, gun flashes lighting the water like lightning, friend and enemy tangled in the same darkness. Over three days the two navies tear each other apart off Guadalcanal. The losses are terrible on both sides. But the Japanese cannot break through, cannot land their reinforcements, cannot take the field. It is the hinge of the Pacific war. After Guadalcanal, Japan is never again advancing — only being pushed back, island by island, toward home.
Source: www.history.navy.mil
Also on this day · 1775
From the farm at Braintree, with John away at Congress and the British camped near Boston, Abigail Adams puts down what many still only whisper. England, she writes, is "no longer parent State, but tyrant State." She will not pray for reconciliation. She wants the thing said plainly. Eight months before the Declaration, a farmer's wife has already drawn the line the country will cross.
Source: www.masshist.org
“Let us seperate, they are unworthy to be our Breathren. Let us renounce them.”Abigail Adams, 1775