Today in World War II History—July 2, 1944

US Marines in Garapan, Saipan, 2 July 1944 (US Marine Corps photo)
75 Years Ago—July 2, 1944: US Army troops land on Noemfoor Island in Geelvink Bay, New Guinea.
US Marines take Garapan, Saipan; Japanese fall back to final defensive line on northern Saipan.
Lt. Grace Hopper reports for duty, as a member of the WAVES, at the US Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard, to work on Mark 1 Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC); in 1947 she will discover a moth stuck in a relay, leading to the term “computer bug.”

Lt. Grace Hopper at Harvard, 1940s (public domain via WW2 Database)