1845 – Andrew Jackson’s African Grey parrot “Poll” is removed from his funeral for swearing at The Hermitage, Tennessee. Funeral attendee William Menefee Norment recorded: “Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house”
1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the Sally River while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1194 – Major fire at Chartres Cathedral, France, leads to it rebuilt as the high point of French Gothic style
1502 – Crimean Khan defeats the Great Horde in battle near Worskla, leading to disintegration of the Great Horde
1539 – Council of Trent: Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had had traveling to Venice
1605 – False Dimitri I, an impostor, crowned Russian tsar (rules 1605-1606)
1692 – Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for “”certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries
1756 – UK: Black Hole of Calcutta – 146 Britons imprisoned, most die according to British sources
1760 – NY passes first effective law regulating practice of medicine
1776 – The Continental Congress appointed a committee to write a Declaration of Independence.
1793 – The Jardin des Plantes zoo opened in Paris. It was the first public zoo.
1801 – The North African State of Tripoli declared war on the U.S. The dispute was over merchant vessels being able to travel safely through the Mediterranean.
1805 – First Barbary War: Tripolitania agrees to peace in war with US over the latter’s refusal to make tribute payments; US pays ransom for release of prisoners and lifts naval blockade
1845 – Andrew Jackson’s African Grey parrot “Poll” is removed from his funeral for swearing at The Hermitage, Tennessee. Funeral attendee William Menefee Norment recorded: “Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house”
1854 – Georg F.B. Reiman proposes that space is curved
1854 – The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, held its first graduation.
1898 – U.S. Marines landed in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
1903 – Binney & Smith Company began developing a product line of wax crayons. The product was named Crayola.
1909 – The SOS distress signal was used for the first time. The Cunard liner SS Slavonia used the signal when it wrecked off the Azores.
1916 – Mecca, under control of the Turks, fell to the Arabs during the Great Arab Revolt.
1917 – 60,000 people of Petrograd Russia welcome Prince Kropotkin (banned 41 years) returning after February Russian Revolution
1920 – The Republican convention in Chicago endorsed woman suffrage.
1924 – Fascists kidnap and kill Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
1924 – The Republican National Convention was broadcast by NBC radio. It was the first political convention to be on radio.
1925 – The state of Tennessee adopted a new biology text book that denied the theory of evolution.
1933 – Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were in a car accident on a rural road in north Texas. The third-degree burns suffered by Parker resulted in a pronounced limp for the rest of her life.
1935 – Alcoholic Anonymous was founded by William G. Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith.
1940 – Italy declared war on France and Britain. In addition, Canada declared war on Italy.
1940 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy’s actions with “”Stab in the Back”” speech from the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia
1942 – Nazis kill all inhabitants of Lidice, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Czech Republic) which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi controller of Bohemia and Moravia, to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility”; over 170 adult men were executed by firing squad on site, women and children were sent to concentration camp gas chambers, and the village was burned down and plowed under
1943 – The Allies began bombing Germany around the clock.
1944 – The youngest pitcher in major league baseball pitched his first game. Joe Nuxhall was 15 years old (and 10 months and 11 days).
1944 – World War II: 642 men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France.
1948 – Chuck Yeager exceeded the speed of sound in the Bell XS-1.
1952 – US President Harry Truman expresses a desire to nationalize the steel industry
1954 – General Motors announced the gas turbine bus had been produced successfully.
1963 – US Equal Pay Act signed into law by President John F. Kennedy
1967 – Israel and Syria agreed to a cease-fire that ended the Six-Day War.
1970 – A fifteen-man group of special forces troops began training for Operation Kingpin. The operation was a POW rescue mission in North Vietnam.
1971 – The U.S. ended a 21-year trade embargo of China.
1975 – Rockefeller panel reports on 300,000 illegal CIA files on Americans
1984 – The U.S. Army successfully tested an antiballistic missile.
1984 – The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in 117 years.
1985 – The Israeli army pulled out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation.
1990 – The Civic Forum movement won Czechoslovakia’s first free elections since 1946. The movement was founded by President Vaclav Havel.
1990 – Bulgaria’s former Communist Party won the country’s first free elections in more than four decades.
1992 – Fatal ambush of U.S. Army Humvee in Panama on eve of President George H. W. Bush’s visit to that country
1993 – It was announced by scientists that genetic material was extracted from an insect that lived when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
1994 – U.S. President Clinton intensified sanctions against Haiti’s military leaders. U.S. commercial air travel was suspended along with most financial transactions between Haiti and the U.S.
1996 – Britain and Ireland opened Northern Ireland peace talks. The IRA’s political arm Sinn Fein was excluded.
1998 – The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that poor children in Milwaukee could attend religious schools at taxpayer expense.
1999 – The Kosovo War ends, Slobodan Milošević, then President of Serbia, agreed to withdraw his troops from the disputed territory following a massive NATO bombing campaign. NATO’s involvement has been criticized for its lack of a U.N. mandate.
2000 – UK: Millennium footbridge over the Thames opens, but wobbles and is quickly declared dangerous and closed – finally reopened Feb 2002
2003 – The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission
2008 – The Gora Prai airstrike by the United States reportedly kills 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops.
2013 – 70 people are killed as a series of bombs explode across Iraq
2019 – Former Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari arrested on corruption charges
2019 – Three men sentenced to life imprisonment for rape and murder of eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua, India in high-profile case that sparked political resignations and nationwide protests
2020 – Statues of Confederate figures and explorers become focus of #BlackLivesMatter protests, with many removed including of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and of Christopher Columbus in Richmond
2020 – Swedish prosecutors close the case on the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme after 34 years, saying the probable killer is dead
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
