Articles tagged with: Space

Today in History, April 9th

Date: April 9, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply
1241 In the Battle of Liegnitz, Mongol armies defeat Poles and Germans.
1454 The city states of Venice, Milan and Florence sign a peace agreement at Lodi, Italy.
1682 Robert La Salle claims lower Mississippi River and all lands that touch it for France.

Robert-La-Salle

Robert La Salle
1731 British Captain Robert Jenkins loses an ear to a band of Spanish brigands, starting a war between Britain and Spain: The War of Jenkins’ Ear.
1770 Captain James Cook discovers Botany Bay on the Australian continent.
1859 Realizing that France has encouraged the Piedmontese forces to mobilize for invading Italy, Austria begins mobilizing its army.
1865 General Robert E. Lee surrenders his rebel forces to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Va.
1900 British forces route Boers at Kroonstadt, South Africa.
1916 The German army launches its third offensive during the Battle of Verdun.
1917 The Battle of Arras begins as Canadian troops begin a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.
1921 Russo-Polish conflict ends with signing of the Riga Treaty.
1939 Black singer Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after she was denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her race.

Marian-Anderson-1939-Lincoln

Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial (1939)
1940 Germany invaded Denmark and Norway during World War II.
1942 In the Battle of Bataan, American and Filipino forces are overwhelmed by the Japanese Army.
1950 Comedian Bob Hope makes his first television appearance.
1959 NASA announced the selection of America’s first seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.
1963 Winston Churchill becomes the first honorary U.S. citizen.
1966 The statue of Winston Churchill is dedicated at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Winston-Churchill-Statue-Washington

Winston Churchill Statue in Washington, D.C.
1969 The album “Nashville Skyline” by Bob Dylan was released.
1970 Paul McCartney announces the official break-up of the Beatles.
1992 Former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega was convicted in Miami of eight drug and racketeering charges.
2001 American Airlines’ parent company acquired bankrupt Trans World Airlines.
2003 Jubilant Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, beheading a toppled statue of their longtime ruler in downtown Baghdad.
2005 Britain’s Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles, who took the title Duchess of Cornwall.

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, March 25th

Date: March 25, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply
1634 Maryland was founded by English colonists sent by the second Lord Baltimore.
1668 The first horse race in America takes place.
1776 The Continental Congress authorizes a medal for General George Washington.
1807 British Parliament abolishes the slave trade.
1813 The frigate USS Essex flies the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.
1865 Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman, during the siege of Petersburg, Va.
1879 Japan invades the kingdom of Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, formerly a vassal of China.
1894 Jacob S. Coxey began leading an “army” of the unemployed from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to demand help from the federal government.

Jacob S. Coxey

Jacob S. Coxey, Sr.
1905 Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War are returned to the South.
1911 A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a sweatshop in New York City, claims the lives of 146 workers.
1915 The first submarine disaster occurs when a U.S. F-4 sinks off the Hawaiian coast.
1919 The Paris Peace Commission adopts a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign labor.
1931 Fifty people are killed in riots that break out in India. Mahatma Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.
1940 The United States agrees to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
1941 Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers.
1953 The USS Missouri fires on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
1954 RCA manufactures its first color TV set and begins mass production.
1957 The European Common Market Treaty is signed in Rome. The goal is to create a common market for all products–especially coal and steel.
1957 The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community.
1965 The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono stage a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.

John-Lennon-and-Yoko-Ono-Bed-In

John Lennon and Yoko Ono
1970 The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.
1975 Hue is lost and Da Nang is endangered by North Vietnamese forces. The United States orders a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.
1975 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness.
1981 The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador is damaged when gunmen attack, firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.
1986 President Ronald Reagan orders emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters take Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.
1988 Robert E. Chambers Jr. pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York City’s so-called “preppie murder case.”
1992 Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth from the Mir space station after a 10-month stay, during which his native country, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist.

Cosmonaut-Sergei-Krikalev

Sergei Krikalev
1994 American troops completed their withdrawal from Somalia.
1996 An 81-day standoff by the antigovernment Freemen began at a ranch near Jordan, Mont.
1996 The redesigned $100 bill went into circulation.
1998 President Bill Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that “we did not act quickly enough” to stop the slaughter of 1 million Rwandans four years earlier.
2002 A powerful earthquake rocked Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, killing as many as 1,000 people.

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 27th

Date: January 27, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply

A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 27th!

1756 Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.
1825 Congress approves Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the “Trail of Tears.”
1832 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” under the pen name Lewis Carroll, was born in Cheshire, England.

Charles-Lutwidge-Dodgson

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
1862 President Abraham Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1, setting in motion the Union armies.
1885 Broadway composer Jerome Kern was born in New York City.
1900 Foreign diplomats in Peking fear revolt and demand that the Imperial Government discipline the Boxer Rebels.
1905 Russian General Kuropatkin takes the offensive in Manchuria. The Japanese under General Oyama suffer heavy casualties.

General-Alexei-Kuropatkin

General Alexei N. Kuropatkin
1916 President Woodrow Wilson opens preparedness program.
1918 Communists attempt to seize power in Finland.
1924 Lenin’s body is laid in a marble tomb on Red Square near the Kremlin.
1935 A League of Nations majority favors depriving Japan of mandates.
1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves the sale of U.S. war planes to France.
1943 The first U.S. raids on the Reich blast Wilhelmshaven base and Emden.
1944 The Soviet Union announced the end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years.
1951 The era of atomic testing in the Nevada desert began.
1959 NASA selects 110 candidates for the first U.S. space flight.
1965 Military leaders oust the civilian government of Tran Van Huong in Saigon.
1967 Astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire during a test aboard their Apollo 1 spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Fla. chaffee-grissom-white
1967 More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.
1973 A cease fire in Vietnam is called as the Paris peace accords are signed by the United States and North Vietnam.
1978 The State Supreme Court rules that Nazis can display the Swastika in a march in Skokie, Illinois.
1985 Pope John Paul says mass to one million in Venezuela.
1998 First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, said that allegations against her husband were the work of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
2010 Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad tablet computer during a presentation in San Francisco.
2010 J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” died in Cornish, N.H. at age 91.

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 3rd!

Date: January 3, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply

A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 3rd!

1521 Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
1777 General George Washington defeats the British led by British General Lord Charles Cornwallis, at Princeton, New Jersey.
1861 Delaware rejects a proposal that it join the South in seceding from the Union.
1868 The Meiji Restoration re-established the authority of Japan’s emperor and heralded the fall of the military rulers known as shoguns.
1892 J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

John-Ronald-Reuel-Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
1903 The Bulgarian government renounces the Treaty of Commerce tying it to the Austro-Hungarian empire.
1910 The Social Democratic Congress in Germany demands universal suffrage.
1912 Plans are announced for a new $150,000 Brooklyn stadium for the Trolley Dodgers baseball team.
1916 Three armored Japanese cruisers are ordered to guard the Suez Canal.
1920 The last of the U.S. troops depart France.
1921 Italy halts the issuing of passports to those emigrating to the United States.
1924 King Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus is uncovered near Luxor, Egypt.
1930 The second conference on Germany’s war reparations begins at the Hague, in the Netherlands.
1931 Hundreds of farmers storm a small town in depression-plagued Arkansas demanding food.
1933 The Japanese take Shuangyashan, China, killing 500 Chinese.
1938 The March of Dimes campaign to fight polio was organized.

March-of-Dimes-1938

March of Dimes
1946 President Harry S. Truman calls on Americans to spur Congress to act on the on-going labor crisis.
1958 The British create the West Indies Federation with Lord Hailes as governor general.
1959 Alaska is admitted into the Union as the 49th and largest state.
1959 Fidel Castro takes command of the Cuban army.
1961 The United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba.
1966 Cambodia warns the United Nations of retaliation unless the United States and South Vietnam end intrusions.
1967 Jack Ruby, the man who fatally shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died in a Dallas hospital. lee-harvey-oswald-being-shot-by-jack-ruby-
1978 North Vietnamese troops reportedly occupy 400 square miles in Cambodia. North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops were using Laos and Cambodia as staging areas for attacks against allied forces.
1985 President Ronald Reagan condemns a rash of arson attacks on abortion clinics.
1990 Ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to U.S. forces, 10 days after taking refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City.
2000 The last new daily “Peanuts” comic strip by Charles Schulz ran in 2,600 newspapers.

Charles Shultz Last Peanut Strip, January 3, 2000

Charles Shultz Last Peanut Strip, January 3, 2000
2004 NASA’s Mars rover, Spirit, touched down on the red planet.
2006 Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion and agreed to cooperate in investigations of corruption in Congress.
2009 After seven days of pummeling the Gaza Strip from the air, Israel launched a ground offensive.

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.