From the Navy News Service
1845 - The Naval School, later the Naval Academy, opens in Annapolis, Md., with 50 midshipmen and seven faculty.
1923 - First American-built rigid airship, Shenandoah, is christened. It used helium gas instead of hydrogen.
1944 - The Leyte campaign begins with the attack of four carrier task groups of Task Force 38 on Okinawa and Ryukyus.
1960 - Navy assigned responsibility for program management and technial direction of Project SPASUR, the first U.S. universal satellite detection and tracking network.
1985 - Fighters from USS Saratoga (CV 60) force an Egyptian airliner, with the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro aboard, to Italy, where the hijackers were taken into custody.