2011 – Attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store kills 6 and wounds 13, including Giffords
0871 – Battle of Ashdown: Ethelred I of Wessex and his brother Alfred the Great beat invading Danish army
1297 – Monaco gains its independence.
1310 – The Great Frost: in London the Thames river froze so thickly bonfires were lit on it
1499 – Louis XII of France after papal divorce marries Anne, Duchess of Brittany to keep the duchy for the crown
1598 – Genoa Italy expels Jews
1610 – German astronomer Simon Marius independently discovers the first three moons of Jupiter one day after Galileo
1675 – The first corporation was chartered in the United States. The company was the New York Fishing Company.
1708 – Spanish armada headed by the San Jose and loaded with gold sunk after British squadron attacks off coast of Colombia (rediscovered 2015)
1790 – In the United States, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.
1798 – 11th Amendment ratified, judicial powers construed
1800 – Wild Boy of Aveyron (approx.12) discovered in southern France after possibly 7 years in the wild, later christened Victor of Aveyron
1806 – Explorer William Clark views skeleton of a 105 ft whale washed up on Cannon Beach, inhabited by the Tillamook Nation (modern Oregon)
1811 – Unsuccessful slave revolt led by Charles Deslandes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana
1815 – The Battle of New Orleans began. The War of 1812 had officially ended on December 24, 1814, with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The news of the signing had not reached British troops in time to prevent their attack on New Orleans.
1835 – US national debt is $0 for the first and only time in history
1838 – Alfred Vail demonstrated a telegraph code he had devised using dots and dashes as letters. The code was the predecessor to Samuel Morse’s code.
1853 – A bronze statue of Andrew Jackson on a horse was unveiled in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. The statue was the work of Clark Mills.
1856 – Borax (hydrated sodium borate) was discovered by Dr. John Veatch.
1877 – Crazy Horse (Tashunca-uitco) and his warriors fought their final battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana.
1889 – The tabulating machine was patented by Dr. Herman Hollerith. His firm, Tabulating Machine Company, later became International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
1900 – U.S. President McKinley placed Alaska under military rule.
1902 – New York state assemblyman Francis G. Landon gets a bill passed to criminalize men turning around on a street and “looking at a woman in that way”
1904 – Pope Pius X banned low cut dresses in the presence of churchmen
1912 – The African National Congress (ANC) is founded – The ANC, whose most famous member is Nelson Mandela, played an important role in the fight against the South African apartheid regime and it is now the country’s governing political party.
1916 – During World War I, the final withdrawal of Allied troops from Gallipoli took place.
1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points as the basis for peace upon the end of World War I.
1925 – 1st all-female US state supreme court appointed, Texas
1926 – Abdulaziz Ibn Saud becomes King of Nejd and Hejaz; forerunner of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
1935 – The spectrophotometer was patented by A.C. Hardy.
1940 – Great Britain begins the rationing of meat, butter, and sugar to help the war effort during WWII.
1941 – Federal Minister Ian Mackenzie announces that the RCMP will be registering all Japanese Canadians in British Columbia; a national security matter under the War Measures Act. They are later moved inland to detention camps
1951 – Thought extinct since 1615, a Cahow is rediscovered in Bermuda
1956 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.
1959 – Charles De Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France’s Fifth Republic.
1961 – The French vote for Algerian independence from French rule in the wake of seven years of guerrilla war
1964 – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.”
1968 – Jacques Cousteau’s first undersea special on US network TV
1973 – Secret peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resumed near Paris, France.
1975 – Ella Grasso became the governor of Connecticut. She was the first woman to become a governor of a state without a husband preceding her in the governor’s chair.
1978 – Israeli government votes to ‘strengthen’ settlements in occupied Sinai
1982 – American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) settled the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies.
1985 – Japan launches Sakigake space probe to Halley’s Comet
1986 – President Reagan freezes Libyan assets in the US
1989 – Soviet Union promises to eliminate stockpiles of chemical weapons
1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush collapsed during a state dinner in Tokyo. White House officials said Bush was suffering from stomach flu.
1993 – Bosnian President Izetbegovic visited the U.S. to plead his government’s case for Western military aid and intervention to halt Serbian aggression.
1994 Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov begins his record spaceflight, stayed aboard the Mir space station for a record-breaking 437 days and 18 hours.
1998 – Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life in prison for his role of mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing in New York.
1999 – The top two executives of Salt Lake City’s Olympic Organizing Committee resigned amid disclosures that civic boosters had given cash to members of the International Olympic Committee.
2001 – The identities of 2 boys who murdered a toddler in 1993 will be kept secret, the High Court rules
2002 – US President George W. Bush signs into law the “No Child Left Behind Act”, providing financial assistance to schools exhibiting academic improvement
2008 – New Jersey officially apologizes for slavery, becoming the first Northern state to do so.
2009 – In Egypt, archeologists entered a 4,300 year old pyramid and discovered the mummy of Queen Sesheshet.
2011 – Attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona at a Safeway grocery store kills 6 and wounds 13, including Giffords
2013 – 2,130 prisoners held by the Syrian government are exchanged for 48 Iranians kidnapped by Syrian rebels
2016 – Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announces the recapture of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, six months after he escaped prison
2018 – Self-declared Republic of Somaliland passes its first ever law against rape
2020 – Iran launches missile strike on Irbil and Al Asad bases in Iraqi housing some American troops in retaliation to assassination of General Qasem Soleimani
2021 – Twitter bans US President Donald Trump permanently “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”
2023 – Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attack Brazilian government buildings including the High Court and Presidential Palace, with over 1500 later arrested
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
