On April 10, 1778, Commander John Paul Jones and his crew aboard the USS Ranger set sail from Brest, France, headed toward the Irish Sea to raid British warships, the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War. Jones is remembered as a “Father of the American Navy.”
On April 10, 1942, the day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula began a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the “Bataan Death March,” the prisoners marched 85 miles in six days, with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, which was punctuated with atrocities committed by the Japanese guards, hundreds of Americans and many more Filipinos had died.