Articles tagged with: on this day

Today in History, May 4th

1471 In England, the Yorkists defeat the Landcastians at the battle of Tewkesbury.
1626 Indians sell Manhattan Island for $24 in cloth and buttons to Dutch Explorer Peter Minuit.

Peter-Minuit

Peter Minuit

1715 A French manufacturer debuts the first folding umbrella.
1776 Rhode Island declares independence from England.
1795 Thousands of rioters enter jails in Lyons, France, and massacre 99 Jacobin prisoners.
1814 Napoleon Bonaparte disembarks at Portoferraio on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean.
1863 The Battle of Chancellorsville ends when Union Army retreats.
1864 Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces cross the Rapidan River and meet Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army.
1886 A labor demonstration for an eight-hour workday at Haymarket Square in Chicago turned into a riot when a bomb exploded.
1927 A balloon soars over 40,000 feet for the first time.
1927 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.
1930 Mahatma Gandhi is arrested by the British.
1942 The Battle of the Coral Sea commences.
1942 The United States begins food rationing.
1961 A group of Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.
1970 Ohio National Guardsmen open fire on student protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine others.
1980 Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito died at age 87.

Josip-Broz-Tito

Josip Broz Tito

1994 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed an accord on Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1998 Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.
2000 Londoners elected their mayor for the first time.
2006 A federal judge sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
2007 Paris Hilton was sentenced to jail for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. (The hotel heiress served 23 days behind bars.)

Today in History facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.

Today in History, January 31st

A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 31st!

1606 Guy Fawkes is hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up Parliament.
1620 Virginia colony leaders write to the Virginia Company in England, asking for more orphaned apprentices for employment.
1788 The Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart dies.
1797 Composer Franz Schubert was born in Vienna, Austria. franz-schubert
1865 House of Representatives approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.
1865 Robert E. Lee was named general-in-chief of the Confederate armies.
1911 The German Reichstag exempts royal families from tax obligations.
1915 Germans use poison gas on the Russians at Bolimov.
1915 German U-boats sink two British steamers in the English Channel.
1916 President Woodrow Wilson refuses the compromise on Lusitania reparations.
1917 Germany resumes unlimited sub warfare, warning that all neutral ships that are in the war zone will be attacked.
1919 Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, who broke the sport’s color barrier in 1947, was born in Cairo, Ga.
1935 The Soviet premier tells Japan to get out of Manchuria.
1943 The Battle of Stalingrad ends as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army surrender to the victorious Red Army forces.
1944 U.S. forces invaded the Japanese-held Marshall Islands during World War II.
1945 Private Eddie Slovik became the only U.S. soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion. Eddie-Slovik-executed
1949 The first TV daytime soap opera, “These Are My Children,” was broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago.
1950 Paris protests the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1950 President Harry S. Truman announced that he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb.
1966 U.S. planes resume bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.
1968 In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attack strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam.
1971 Astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart A. Roosa blasted off aboard Apollo 14 on the third successful manned mission to the moon.
1976 Ernesto Miranda, famous from the Supreme Court ruling on Miranda vs. Arizona is stabbed to death. Ernesto-Miranda-mugshot
1981 Lech Walesa announces an accord in Poland, giving Saturdays off to laborers.
1990 McDonald’s Corp. opened its first fast-food restaurant in Moscow.
2000 An Alaska Airlines jet plunged into the ocean off Southern California on a flight from Mexico to San Francisco, killing all 88 people on board.
2001 A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted one Libyan and acquitted a second in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
2006 Samuel Alito was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
2006 The Senate approved Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
2011 Egypt’s military promised not to fire on peaceful protests and recognized “the legitimacy of the people’s demands.”
2011 Myanmar opened its first parliament in more than two decades.

Today in History facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.

Today in History, January 21st

A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 21tst!

1189 Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa assemble the troops for the Third Crusade.
1648 In Maryland, the first woman lawyer in the colonies, Margaret Brent, is denied a vote in the Maryland Assembly.
1785 Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa and Wyandot Indians sign the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.
1790 Joseph Guillotin proposes a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person’s head as painlessly as possible. Joseph-Guillotin
1793 The French King Louis XVI is guillotined for treason.
1861 Five Southerners resigned from the U.S. Senate, including Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, the future president of the Confederacy.
1910 Japan rejects the American proposal to neutralize ownership of the Manchurian Railway.
1915 The first Kiwanis Club was founded, in Detroit. Kiwanis-Club
1919 The German Krupp plant begins producing guns under the U.S. armistice terms.
1921 J.D. Rockefeller pledges $1 million for the relief of Europe’s destitute.
1924 Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died of a stroke at age 53.
1930 An international arms control meeting opens in London.
1933 The League of Nations rejects Japanese terms for settlement with China.
1941 The United States lifts the ban on arms to the Soviet Union.
1942 In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward. While the British benefited from radio-intercept-derived Ultra information, the Germans enjoyed an even speedier intelligence source.
1943 A Nazi daylight air raid kills 34 in a London school. When the anticipated invasion of Britain failed to materialize in 1940, Londoners relaxed, but soon they faced a frightening new threat.
1950 A federal jury in New York City found former State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury.
1951 Communist troops force the UN army out of Inchon, Korea after a 12-hour attack.
1954 The first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Conn.
1958 The Soviet Union calls for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries.
1964 Carl T. Rowan is named the director of the United States Information Agency (USIA).
1968 In Vietnam, the Siege of Khe Sanh begins as North Vietnamese units surround U.S. Marines based on the hilltop headquarters.
1974 The U.S. Supreme Court decides that pregnant teachers can no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.
1976 Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger meet to discuss Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).
1976 The supersonic Concorde jet was put into service by Britain and France.
1977 President Jimmy Carter urges 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis.

Jimmy-Carter-1977

Jimmy Carter in 1977.

1977 President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.
1993 Congressman Mike Espy of Mississippi is confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture.
1994 A jury in Manassas, Va., acquitted Lorena Bobbitt by reason of temporary insanity of maliciously wounding her husband, John, whom she’d accused of sexually assaulting her.
1997 Speaker Newt Gingrich was reprimanded and fined as the House voted for first time in history to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct. Newt-Gingrich
1998 Pope John Paul II began his first visit to Cuba.
2003 The Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America’s largest minority group.
2004 The recording industry sued 532 computer users it said were illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
2010 A bitterly divided Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, vastly increased the power of big business and labor unions to influence government decisions by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.
2010 Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally admitted fathering a child during an affair before his second White House bid.

Today in history facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.

Today in History, January 8th!

A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 8th!

1642 Astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy.
1681 The Treaty of Radzin ends a five year war between the Turks and the allied countries of Russia and Poland.
1745 England, Austria, Saxony and the Netherlands form an alliance against Russia.
1815 U.S. forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.
1871 Prussian troops begin to bombard Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
1892 A coal mine explosion kills 100 in McAlister, Oklahoma.
1900 The Boers attack the British in Ladysmith, South Africa, but are turned back.
1908 A subway line opens linking the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
1912 The African National Congress was founded in Bloemfontein, South Africa. African-National-Congress
1918 President Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points for peace after World War I.
1940 Great Britain begins rationing sugar, meat and butter.
1946 President Harry S. Truman vows to stand by the Yalta accord on self-determination for the Balkans.
1954 President Dwight Eisenhower proposes stripping convicted Communists of their U.S. citizenship.
1959 Charles De Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France’s Fifth Republic. Charles-De-Gaulle-Politics
1963 President John F. Kennedy attends the unveiling of the Mona Lisa.
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty.
1979 The United States advises the Shah to leave Iran. (A great guest post about the Shah of Iran.)
1982 AT&T settled the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies.
1987 The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 2,000 for the first time, ending the day at 2,002.25.
1998 Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sentenced in New York to life in prison.

Ramzi-Yousef

Ramzi Yousef

2007 A Moroccan man convicted of aiding three of the four pilots who committed the 9/11 attacks was sentenced by a German court to the maximum 15 years in prison.
2011 Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot and critically wounded when a gunman opened fire as the congresswoman met with constituents in Tucson; six people were killed and 12 others were injured. (Jared Lee Loughner has pleaded not guilty to 49 charges in connection with the shooting.)

Today in history facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.

Today in History, January 7th!

A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 7th!

1327 King Edward II of England is deposed.
1558 The French, under the Duke of Guise, finally take the port of Calais from the English.
1785 Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American Dr. John Jeffries make the first crossing of the English Channel in a hydrogen balloon. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American Dr. John Jeffries
1800 Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States, was born in Summerhill, N.Y.
1807 Responding to Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempted blockade of the British Isles, the British blockade Continental Europe.
1865 Cheyenne and Sioux warriors attack Julesburg, Colo., in retaliation for the Sand Creek Massacre.
1901 New York stock exchange trading exceeds two million shares for the first time in history.
1902 Imperial Court of China returns to Peking. The Empress Dowager resumes her reign.

Empress-Dowager

Empress Dowager

1918 The Germans move 75,000 troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front.
1927 Commercial transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and London.
1934 Six thousand pastors in Berlin defy the Nazis insisting that they will not be silenced.
1942 The World War II siege of Bataan began.
1944 The U.S. Air Force announces the production of the first jet-fighter, Bell P-59 Airacomet.
1945 U.S. air ace Major Thomas B. McGuire, Jr. is killed in the Pacific.
1952 French forces in Indochina launch Operation Violette in an effort to push Viet Minh forces away from the town of Ba Vi.
1953 President Harry S. Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.
1955 Singer Marian Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, becoming the first black person to perform there as a member.
1959 The United States recognized Fidel Castro’s new government in Cuba.
1972 Lewis F. Powell Jr. and William H. Rehnquist were sworn in as the 99th and 100th members of the Supreme Court.
1975 Vietnamese troops take Phuoc Binh in new full-scale offensive.
1979 Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge are overthrown when Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
1985 Vietnam seizes the Khmer National Liberation Front headquarters near the Thai border.
1989 Japanese Emperor Hirohito died at age 87.
1996 A major blizzard paralyzed the eastern United States, claiming more than 100 lives.
1997 Newt Gingrich became the first Republican re-elected House speaker in 68 years.
1999 President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial began in the Senate.
2005 Actor Brad Pitt and actress Jennifer Aniston announced they were separating after four years of marriage.

Brad-Pitt-Jennifer-Aniston

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston

2006 American journalist Jill Carroll was abducted in Iraq and a translator was killed. (Carroll was released unharmed after 82 days.)
2006 Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, facing corruption charges, stepped down as House majority leader.

Today in history facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.