This Day in Coast Guard History – July 19

1883- At half past 1 in the afternoon, a boy named Frank Little, eight years old, while playing upon the Government wharf at Sand Beach, Michigan, fell overboard, and would have been drowned but for the assistance of Surfman James McCash, of Sand Beach Station (Tenth District), who hurried to the spot just in time to save him.

2001- The first set of the newly authorized Helicopter Rescue Swimmer insignia, or ‘wings’, were presented to the senior rescue swimmer in the Coast Guard, Master Chief Aviation Survival Technician (AST) Keith Jensen, at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.

(Source: USCG Historian’s Office)