History for the day: 1802: the US Military Academy is established

History.com has this for 16 March:

The United States Military Academy, the first military school in the United States, was founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science. Located at West Point, New York, the academy is often simply known as West Point. or The Point. 

Located on the high west bank of New York’s Hudson River, West Point was the site of a Revolutionary-era fort built to protect the Hudson River Valley from British attack. In 1780, General Benedict Arnold, the commander of the fort, agreed to surrender West Point to the British in exchange for six thousand pounds*. However, the plot was uncovered before it fell into British hands, and Arnold fled to the British for protection.

Ten years after the establishment of the Military Academy in 1802, the growing threat of another war with Great Britain resulted in congressional action to expand the academy’s facilities and increase the West Point corps. Beginning in 1817, the Military Academy was reorganized by Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, later known as the “father of West Point”, and the school became one of the nation’s finest sources of civil engineers. During the Mexican-American War, West Point graduates filled the leading ranks of the victorious American forces and, with the outbreak of the Civil War, former West Point classmates regretfully lined up against one another in the defense of their native states.In 1870, the first African-American cadet was admitted into the Academy and, in 1976, the first female cadets. The academy is now under the general direction and supervision of the Department of the Army and has an enrollment of more than four thousand students. 

Rico says he didn't attend (hey, it would have been during the Vietnam War), but he's been there; it's pretty.

*Today's equivalent would be £65,870,000, or $1,020,000,000 dollars.