This Day In History

On this day in 1945, the fifth day of the battle for Iwo jima, U.S. Marines and one Navy Corpsman raised the flag on top of Mount Suribachi. They actually did it twice. The second raising was a public relations shot for the benefit of a news photographer, Joe Rosenthal. The result was one of the most celebrated and iconic pictures to emerge from the Second World War.

And on this day in 1836 another iconic battle began as approximately 1,500 Mexican troops under the command of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna invested a Texian garrison at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas. This was the beginning of the "Battle of the Alamo", which culminated on March 6th. The defenders, fewer than 300 men under the co-command of Col. William B. Travis and James Bowie, were hopelessly outmatched. An attempt to arrange an honorable surrender was rebuffed and the defenders settled in for a siege. Thirteen days later the Alamo fell. The precise circumstances of the battle have been debated ever since. All but two of the defenders were killed and stories of the massacre of the wounded and those who attempted to surrender fueled resentments throughout Texas and the U. S. A. "Remember the Alamo" became a rallying call for the Texas revolutionaries and the heroic defense of the mission became one of the great patriotic narratives of America's national myth.

One year ago today President Barak Obama promised to drastically slash the nation's budget deficit.