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17781776 Club

British sortie from Newport catches Sullivan's army mid-retreat on Aquidneck Island

Nearly 7,825 men fight to a standstill after the French fleet sails off and leaves the Americans alone.

For weeks, Major-General John Sullivan's Continental and militia forces had besieged British-held Newport, Rhode Island, counting on French warships offshore to help finish the job. On August 29, 1778, with the French fleet gone to Boston for repairs and militia melting away, Sullivan abandoned the siege and pulled his men north on Aquidneck Island. British troops under Major General Robert Pigot sortied out behind him, backed by Royal Navy guns, and struck the retreating column at Quaker Hill. The fighting, involving roughly 7,825 men in all, ended without a decision, and the Americans withdrew to the mainland the following night…

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More from August 29
1786

Farmers under arms close the Northampton court before it can sit

They call themselves Regulators and say the courts have become the enemy of the people who fought the Revolution.
1958

1,145 cadets trade Lowry's barracks for a half-built campus in Colorado Springs

Some buildings still lack finishing touches, but the Air Force Academy finally has a permanent home.
2005

Katrina comes ashore at Buras; hours later, New Orleans is drowning

Fifty-three levee and floodwall breaches put 80 percent of the city underwater by nightfall.
17791776 Club
A swamp crossing threw off the timing, but the artillery opened anyway and the ambush unraveled.
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More from Revolution & Founding
1779

Huntington takes the chair of Congress, succeeding Jay

The Connecticut delegate inherits an unpaid post with no real power, at the darkest stretch of the war.
1781

Washington surrounds Cornwallis at Yorktown; the armies sleep in the open

French troops take the left, Americans the right, as work parties bridge the marsh by torchlight.
1787

Congress votes to send the new Constitution to the states for approval

The document Washington's convention finished eleven days earlier now goes to thirteen legislatures for judgment.
1789

Congress puts a standing army under the new War Department, several hundred strong

The force is tiny by European standards, but for the first time it answers to a civilian cabinet officer, not a general.
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