Vietnam War

Timeline

7 May 1954 France's ass kicked at Dien Bien Phu.
8 Jul 1959 First American combat death.
22 Mar 1962 The Strategic Hamlet Program commences with Operation Sunrise.
31 May 1963 Buddhist monk Nun Nu Thanh Quang immolates himself at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam.
11 Jun 1963 Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolates himself in downtown Saigon.
16 Aug 1963 A Buddhist monk immolates himself in Phanthiet, Vietnam.
1 Nov 1963 President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Deim, assassinated.
2 Aug 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, wherein the U.S.S. Maddox is "attacked".
Oct 1964 Red China, Vietnam's principal ally, successfully detonates an atomic bomb.
21 Oct 1964 "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." President Lyndon B. Johnson.
10 Feb 1965 The Qui Nonh Hotel is destroyed by a VC bomb, killing 23 Americans.
May 1966 Buddhist nun Thich Nu Thanh Quang immolates herself at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam.
16 Mar 1968 My Lai Massacre.
30 Jan 1968 Tet Offensive. While technically a loss for the North Vietnamese, it caught the Americans offguard, and the tide of American public opinion begins to change.
29 Feb 1968 Robert McNamara resigns as Secretary of Defense, apparently deciding the Vietnam War was unwinnable.
4 Nov 1968 "Let me give you the promise of the future... Prosperity without war, progress without inflation." Nixon.
22 Jan 1969 Richard M. Nixon takes office.
Feb 1969 Nixon authorizes the secret bombing of Cambodia. Don't tell anyone. It's a secret.
3 Sep 1969 Ho Chi Minh dead of natural causes.
29 Apr 1970 South Vietnamese Army invades Cambodia. Three U.S. divisions follow 48 hours later.
4 May 1970 Kent State Massacre, in which National Guardsmen open fire on American college students, killing four.
9 Dec 1970 President Richard M. Nixon orders more illegal bombing in Cambodia. "I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there[...] Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war, and that's probably what we are going to have to do because we are not going to do anything at the conference table."
21 Feb 1972 Only Nixon could go to China. Vulcan proverb.
22 Jan 1973 Ex-President Lyndon B. Johnson dies of a heart attack.
27 Jan 1973 Cease fire signed in Paris.
Nov 1973 War Powers act passed by Congress.
10 Dec 1973 Henry Kissinger accepts the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord. The irony of that particular individual accepting that particular award cannot be understated.
9 Aug 1974 Nixon resigns the presidency. Gerald Ford assumes office.
29 Apr 1975 Final evacuation of Saigon.
18 Jul 1984 James Oliver Huberty opens fire at a San Ysidro McDonald's, leaving 20 dead and 16 wounded. He held off police for an hour, sometimes taking time to finish off victims already wounded. A witness reported Huberty, a recently dismissed security guard, as saying that he'd "killed many people in Vietnam and wanted to kill more."


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