Articles tagged with: Today in History

Today in History, April 28th

Date: April 28, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: 1 Reply
1635 Virginia Governor John Harvey is accused of treason and removed from office.
1760 French forces besieging Quebec defeat the British in the second battle on the Plains of Abraham.
1788 Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1789 The crew of the HMS Bounty mutinies against Captain William Bligh.
1818 President James Monroe proclaims naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

President-James-Monroe

President James Monroe
1856 Yokut Indians repel an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California.
1902 Revolution breaks out in the Dominican Republic.
1910 The first night air flight is performed by Claude Grahame-White in England.
1916 British declare martial law throughout Ireland.
1919 Les Irvin makes the first jump with an Army Air Corps parachute.
1920 Azerbaijan joins the Soviet Union.
1932 A yellow fever vaccine for humans is announced.
1937 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was born near the desert town of Tikrit.
1945 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed.
1946 The Allies indict Tojo on 55 counts of war crimes
1947 Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia.

Thor-Heyerdahl-Kon-Tiki

Kon Tiki
1953 French troops evacuate northern Laos.
1965 The U.S. Army and Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
1967 Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of boxing title.
1969 Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.
1980 Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned over his opposition to the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.
1990 The musical “A Chorus Line” closed after 6,137 performances on Broadway.
1994 Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
1996 President Bill Clinton gave 4 1/2 hours of videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners.
2003 Apple Computer Inc. launched the iTunes store.
2004 The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS’ “60 Minutes II.”
2009 Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party.
2011 President Barack Obama reshuffled his national security team, with CIA Director Leon Panetta succeeding Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus replacing Panetta at the CIA.
2011 Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping Jaycee Dugard, who was abducted in California in 1991 at age 11 and rescued 18 years later. (The Garridos were sentenced to up to life in prison.)

Nancy-Phillip-Garrido

Nancy and Phillip Garrido

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, April 13th

Date: April 13, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply
1598 King Henry IV of France signed the Edict of Nantes, granting rights to the Protestant Huguenots.
1742 George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” was first performed publicly, in Dublin, Ireland.
1775 Lord North extends the New England Restraining Act to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act forbids trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.

Lord North

Lord North
1861 At the start of the Civil War, Fort Sumter in South Carolina fell to Confederate forces as the Union commander, Maj. Robert Anderson, agreed to surrender in the face of relentless bombardment.
1865 Union forces under Gen. Sherman begin their devastating march through Georgia.
1919 British forces kill hundreds of Indian nationalists in the Amritsar Massacre.
1933 The first flight over Mount Everest is completed by Lord Clydesdale.
1941 German troops capture Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson Memorial.
1945 Vienna falls to Soviet troops.
1954 Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron made his major league debut with the Milwaukee Braves.

Hank Aaron

Hank Aaron
1960 The first navigational satellite is launched into Earth’s orbit.
1961 The U.N. General Assembly condemns South Africa because of apartheid.
1964 Sidney Poitier became the first black performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award, for “Lilies of the Field.”
1970 Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.
1976 The U.S. Federal Reserve begins issuing $2 bicentennial notes.
1979 The world’s longest doubles ping-pong match ends after 101 hours.
1997 Tiger Woods, 21, became the youngest person to win the Masters Tournament.
1999 Jack Kervorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, Mich., to 10 to 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of a man whose assisted suicide was videotaped and shown on “60 Minutes.”
2011 Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons were detained for investigation of corruption, abuse of power and killings of protesters.
2011 A federal jury in San Francisco convicted Barry Bonds of obstruction of justice, but failed to reach a verdict on allegations that he’d used steroids and lied to a grand jury about it.

Today in History, April 2nd

Date: April 2, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply
1792 The United States authorizes the minting of the $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins as well as the silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime.
1796 Haitian revolt leader Toussaint L’Ouverture takes command of French forces at Santo Domingo.
1801 The British navy defeats the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen.
1805 Author Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark.

Hans-Christian-Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen
1860 The first Italian Parliament met at Turin.
1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis flees Richmond, Virginia as Grant breaks Lee’s line at Petersburg.
1910 Karl Harris perfects the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber.
1914 The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announces plans to divide the country into 12 districts.
1917 Jeannette Pickering Rankin is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1917 President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”
1931 Virne “Jackie” Mitchell becomes the first woman to play for an all-male pro baseball team. In an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, she strikes out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Virne-Jackie-Mitchell

Virne “Jackie” Mitchell
1932 Charles Lindbergh pays over $50,000 ransom for his kidnapped son.
1944 Soviet forces enter Romania, one of Germany’s allied countries.
1958 The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics is renamed NASA.
1963 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King begins the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.
1968 The science-fiction film “2001: A Space Odyssey” had its world premiere in Washington, D.C.
1982 Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands.
1992 Mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering.
2002 Israel seized control of Bethlehem; Palestinian gunmen forced their way into the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, beginning a 39-day standoff.
2007 The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. clean-air-act
2009 A 19-count federal racketeering indictment was returned against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who denied doing anything illegal.

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, March 14th

Date: March 14, 2013 Author: Today in History Comments: Leave a reply
1757 British Admiral John Byng is executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.

British Admiral John Byng being Executed

British Admiral John Byng being Executed
1883 Political philosopher Karl Marx died at age 64.
1900 United States currency goes on the gold standard.
1903 The Senate ratifies the Hay-Herran Treaty, guaranteeing the United states the right to build a canal in Panama.
1912 An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempts to kill Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome.
1915 The British Navy sinks the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.
1918 An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies a peace treaty with the Central Powers.
1923 President Warren G. Harding becomes the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.
1936 Adolf Hitler tells a crowd of 300,000 that Germany’s only judge is God and itself.
1939 The Nazis dissolve the republic of Czechoslovakia.
1943 The Germans reoccupy Kharkov in the Soviet Union.
1947 The United States signs a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.
1951 U.N. forces recapture Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.
1954 The Viet Minh launch an assault against the French Colonial Forces at Dien Bien Phu.
1964 A Dallas jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Jack Ruby Shooting Lee Harvey Oswald

Jack Ruby Shooting Lee Harvey Oswald
1964 A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
1967 President John F. Kennedy’s body was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery.
1978 An Israeli force of 22,000 invades south Lebanon, hitting the PLO bases.
1990 Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Congress.
1991 The “Birmingham Six,” imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, are set free after a court agrees that the police fabricated evidence.

Freedom for the Birmingham Six

Freedom for the Birmingham Six
2004 Opposition Socialists scored a dramatic upset win in Spain’s general election, unseating conservatives stung by charges they’d provoked the Madrid terror bombings by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
2004 Russian President Vladimir Putin captured more than 70 percent of the vote to win a second term in an election that European observers said fell short of democratic standards.
2005 A judge in San Francisco ruled that California’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional.
2005 About 1 million people rallied in Beirut, Lebanon, demanding Syrian withdrawal and the arrest of ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s killers.
2008 Protests led by Buddhist monks in Tibet turned violent, leading to an extensive crackdown by China’s military.

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.