March 10 in Military History

King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia established the Iron Cross military decoration during the Napoleonic Wars. The award, designed by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, was revolutionary in that it could be earned by soldiers of any rank, from private to general, for acts of bravery in combat, breaking from the tradition of decorations reserved for officers and nobility.

A Prussian-Russian coalition army under Field Marshal Blücher defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Laon in northern France. Napoleon attacked with approximately 37,000 troops against over 85,000 Allies and suffered a costly repulse. The defeat was part of the cascading series of losses that led to Napoleon's first abdication one month later.

King Louis Philippe of France created the French Foreign Legion by royal ordinance, establishing what would become the world's most famous military formation of foreign volunteers. Originally intended to absorb foreign refugees into military service, the Legion has fought in every major French conflict for nearly two centuries and remains one of the few military units where foreigners can enlist and earn citizenship.

The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican-American War. Mexico ceded approximately 525,000 square miles, including California, Nevada, Utah, and most of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, to the United States for $15 million, the largest territorial acquisition since the Louisiana Purchase.

The firestorm from Operation Meetinghouse consumed 15.8 square miles of eastern Tokyo, killing more than 100,000 people, the deadliest single air raid in human history. Over one million residents were left homeless. LeMay applied the tactics to 66 more Japanese cities.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was found dead beneath his bathroom window at the Czernin Palace in Prague. Officially ruled a suicide, his death was widely believed to be murder by communist agents, completing the Soviet-backed coup that had seized power in Czechoslovakia two weeks earlier. The event shocked the West and accelerated the formation of NATO.

Mildred Gillars, an American who had broadcast Nazi propaganda to Allied troops from Berlin under the name "Axis Sally," was convicted of treason by a federal jury in Washington, D.C. She was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison, one of only a handful of Americans convicted of treason for actions during World War II.

Former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista seized power in a bloodless military coup, overthrowing President Carlos Prio Socarras. Batista's dictatorship provoked the revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro that culminated in the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the Cold War's most dangerous confrontations, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama's palace in Lhasa, fearing a Chinese attempt to abduct their spiritual leader. The uprising was crushed by the People's Liberation Army within days, killing tens of thousands of Tibetans. The Dalai Lama fled to India on March 17, beginning an exile that continues to this day. March 10 is commemorated annually as Tibetan Uprising Day.

North Vietnamese forces launched a surprise attack on Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, beginning the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, the final offensive that would culminate in the fall of Saigon seven weeks later. The loss of Ban Me Thuot triggered a chaotic South Vietnamese withdrawal that cascaded into a rout.