The history of the U.S. Army in this chronology begins with the American Revolution, from the shot heard around the world on April 19, 1775, to the establishment of the Continental Army on June 14 and George Washington’s appointment as commander in chief on July 3, followed by Congress’s creation of the War Department in 1798. It includes service by the Louisiana Battalion of Free Men of Color in the War of 1812, Army fighting in all of the Indian Wars in coordination with the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard, and the era of the Mexican War. In the Civil War, the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, marked the start of the conflict; the Union Conscription Act was implemented in 1863; President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in November 1863; the last Confederate soldiers surrendered on May 26, 1865; Constitutional Amendment XIII was ratified on December 6, 1865, freeing all Americans; and Ulysses S. Grant became the first General of the Army on July 25, 1866. The chronology continues through the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Latin American campaigns, including Army service with the Marines in Cuba from 1906 to 1909, creation of the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1907, and Brigadier Gen. John F. Pershing’s Punitive Expedition into Mexico in March 1916. In World War I, the U.S. joined the war on April 6, 1917, and the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles established peace terms in 1919. The Army Air Corps was established on July 2, 1926, became the Army Air Force on June 20, 1941, and the Army Military Police Corps was established on September 26, 1941. In World War II, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; the Manhattan Project began on May 12, 1942; the Women’s Army Corps was formed in 1943; D-Day came on June 6, 1944; atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945; Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945; and the Army Air Force became the U.S. Air Force on September 18, 1947. The chronology then includes the Korean War, establishment of Army Special Forces units on June 11, 1952, Special Forces teams sent to Southeast Asia in the early 1960s, Operation Big Lift for Berlin in 1963, the Vietnam War from the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964, to the Paris Peace Accord ending U.S. ground-force involvement in January 1973, Army participation in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in October 1983, establishment of the Army Special Forces Branch on April 9, 1987, Army participation in Operation Just Cause in Panama in October 1989, General Norman Schwarzkopf’s defeat of the Iraqi army invasion of Kuwait in one hundred days in February 1991, the Somalia and Bosnian conflicts, the World Trade Center attack on 9-11-2001, Army Special Forces assistance to Northern Alliance tribes in overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in October 2001, and the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Special Forces attacks on Iraqi communications, weapon storage areas, and military bases in March 2003.