On 17 April 1961 Brigade 2506, Cuban exiles trained and funded by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro. Cuban forces under Castro's direct command defeated the brigade within two days. On the same date in 1794 Warsaw rose against its Russian garrison.
Landing at the Bay of Pigs
In March 1960 President Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the CIA to prepare a covert program to overthrow Fidel Castro's government in Cuba. The agency recruited, trained and funded Cuban exiles, who formed Brigade 2506. John F. Kennedy, elected president in November 1960, allowed the plan to go ahead.1
On 15 April 1961 the brigade's B-26 bombers struck Cuban airfields at Havana, San Antonio de los Baños and Santiago de Cuba. Late on 16 April the further air strikes planned for the morning of the landing were called off for political reasons. The landings began at 1 a.m. on 17 April. Castro still had aircraft, and they attacked the invasion ships: by mid-morning the freighter Rio Escondido had been sunk and the Houston hit.2
Cuban forces under Castro's direct command closed in on the beachhead, and within two days the brigade was beaten; the landing force surrendered on the afternoon of 19 April. Kennedy then asked General Maxwell Taylor and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, among others, to examine what had gone wrong. The State Department's historians conclude that the defeat strengthened Castro's government.3
The fall of Phnom Penh, 1975: the Khmer Rouge take Cambodia
17 April 1975 · 51 years ago
The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, the Khmer Republic's capital, effectively ending the Cambodian Civil War. Captured soldiers of the Republic were executed and the victors ordered the whole city emptied of its inhabitants.
Read the full story of The fall of Phnom Penh, 1975: the Khmer Rouge take Cambodia ›Warsaw Uprising
17 April 1794 · 232 years ago
Warsaw, 1794: a capital under occupation
On the same date in 1794, Warsaw rose against its Russian garrison. The Russian commander there, general en chef and ambassador, was Otto Heinrich Igelström. Irena Siwińska of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) names his decision to halve the Polish army as the direct cause of the rising. Vadzim Anipiarkou, working from Igelström's letters, reads it differently: in his view Igelström was hurrying to take the recruits he wanted out of the country before "riots" made it impossible, not trying to provoke a rising, and Catherine II's last rescript to him was a veiled order to leave the capital that came too late.4
Armed townspeople led by Jan Kiliński attacked Igelström's residence. The Russians were driven out and the capital was freed. Kościuszko's life and campaigns are told in our biography of Tadeusz Kościuszko, and his first victory in our article on Racławice.5
The shoemaker who became a hero
Jan Kiliński (1760-1819), a shoemaker from Wielkopolska, made his fortune in Warsaw and became a city councilor.6
His monument was unveiled in Warsaw in 1936. During World War II the Germans took it down in reprisal for an action of the Polish underground, and it survived the occupation in the National Museum. In 1959 it was moved to a new site.7
