12 JULY

1899  - Filipino Gen. Artemio Ricarte issues a circular asking for  contributions to continue war operations against enemy American  forces, five months into the imperialistic United States invasion  of the fledgling Philippine Republic; the bloody Filipino-American War broke out in February 1899 after the Republican  administration of US President William McKinley decided to annex  the Philippines, whose revolutionary forces have already taken control of virtually most of the entire archipelago, on the ridiculous-sounding  pretext that God had supposedly spoken to him to colonize the  Southeast Asian land "to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and  Christianize them,"--this, when most of the Philippines have long been Catholic Christians.