1962 – John Glenn made space history when he orbited the world three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes. He was the first American to orbit the Earth. He was aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. Glenn witnessed the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter while in flight.
1280 – Japanese Imperial Court orders all temples and shrines to pray for victory in the impending second Mongol invasion
1513 – Pope Julius II dies. He will lay in rest in a huge tomb sculptured by Michelangelo.
1525 – Swiss & German mercenaries desert Francois I’s army
1547 – King Edward VI of England crowned following the death of his father Henry VIII
1673 – The first recorded wine auction took place in London.
1725 – New Hampshire militiamen partake in the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites in North America.
1792 – U.S. President George Washington signed the Postal Service Act that created the U.S. Post Office.
1798 – French General Louis Alexandre Berthier forcibly removes Pope Pius VI from Rome during French occupation of Rome (Pope later dies a prisoner in Valence)
1809 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government was greater than that of any individual state.
1815 – The USS Constitution, under Captain Charles Stewart fought the British ships Cyane and Levant. The Constitution captures both, but lost the Levant after encountering a British squadron. The Constitution and the Cyane returned to New York safely on May 15, 1815. The Cyane was purchased and became the USS Cyane.
1839 – The U.S. Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.
1864 – Confederate troops defeat a Union army sent to bring Florida into the union at the Battle of Olustee, Fla.
1869 – Tennessee Governor W C Brownlow declares martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis
1877 – Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake” is premiered
1880 – The American Bell Company was incorporated.
1901 – The first territorial legislature of Hawaii convened.
1913 – Works to build Australia’s capital city commence, Canberra is an entirely planned city and was chosen as the Australian capital as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne.
1918 – The Soviet Red Army seizes Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.
1921 – Riza Khan Pahlevi seizes control of Iran
1921 – The motion picture “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” was released starring Rudolph Valentino.
1931 – The U.S. Congress allowed California to build the Oakland Bay Bridge.
1933 – The U.S. House of Representatives completed congressional action on the amendment to repeal Prohibition.
1938 – Hitler demands self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia.
1941 – Nazi Germany orders Polish Jews barred from using public transportation
1942 – Lt. Edward O’Hare downs five out of nine Japanese bombers that are attacking the carrier Lexington.
1943 – German troops of the Afrika Korps break through the Kasserine Pass, defeating U.S. forces.
1944 – Batman & Robin comic strip premieres in newspapers
1944 – “Big Week” began as U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers during World War II.
1952 – Emmett L. Ashford became the first black umpire in organized baseball. He was authorized to be a substitute in the Southwestern International League.
1953 – US Court of Appeals rules that Organized Baseball is a sport & not a business, affirming the 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling
1959 – The FCC applies the equal time rule to TV newscasts of political candidates.
1962 – John Glenn made space history when he orbited the world three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes. He was the first American to orbit the Earth. He was aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. Glenn witnessed the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter while in flight.
1965 – Ranger 8 crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of its surface.
1971 – Young people protest having to cut their long hair in Athens, Greece.
1971 – National Emergency Center erroneously orders US radio & TV stations to go off the air. Mistake wasn’t resolved for 30 minutes
1975 – A feud begins between the official Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army; the two groups assassinate a number of each other’s volunteers until the feud ends in June 1975
1979 – 11 ‘loyalists’ known as the “Shankill Butchers” are sentenced to life in prison for 19 murders; the gang was named for its late-night kidnapping, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians in Belfast
1987 – A bomb exploded in a computer store in Salt Lake City, UT. The blast was blamed on the Unabomber.
1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh War is triggered by der Autonomous Oblast’s secession from Azerbaijan
1989 – An IRA bomb destroys a section of a British Army barracks in Ternhill, England
1991 – A gigantic statue of Albania’s long-time dictator, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital, Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters
1993 – Two ten-year-old boys were charged by police in Liverpool, England, in the abduction and death of a toddler. The two boys were later convicted.
1994 – 3 Afghans take 70 Pakistani children hostage
2001 – The United States Supreme Court declines to consider an appeal by five major oil companies against Unocal’s patent on production of cleaner “reformulated” gasoline sold in California
2002 – In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire raced through a train killing at least 370 people and injuring at least 65.
2003 – In West Warwick, RI, 100 people were killed and more than 230 were injured when fire destroyed the nightclub The Station. The fire started with sparks from a pyrotechnic display being used by Jack Russel’s Great White. Ty Longley, guitarist for the band, was one of the victims in the fire.
2008 – The U.S. Navy destroyed an inoperable spy satellite with a missile from the USS Lake Erie.
2012 – Scientists successfully regenerate the flowering plant, Silene stenophylla from a 31,800 year old piece of fruit, greatly surpassing the previous record of 2,000 years
2013 – Estonia becomes the first country to establish a national system of fast chargers for electric cars
2017 – Famine is declared in Unity State, South Sudan, affecting 4.9 million
2018 – Venezuela becomes the first country to launch a virtual currency, the petro, to counteract their financial crisis
2020 – Trump associate Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months imprisonment for obstructing a congressional investigation
2021 – Bloodiest day of protests in Myanmar since its coup after security forces open fire, killing two people with 40 wounded in Mandalay
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
