1980 – The United States ice hockey team defeats the Soviet Union team at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in an upset dubbed the “Miracle on Ice”
1295 BC – The coronation of Ramses II, on whose face the sun’s rays fall each year in Abu Simbel temple
0303 – First official Roman edict for persecution of Christians issued by Emperor Diocletian at Nicomedia, ordering all churches to be closed and scriptures burnt
1071 – Battle of Cassel-Robert I the Frisian defeats Arnulf III/I
1349 – Jews are expelled from Zurich, Switzerland
1415 – English King Henry V lays the foundation stone for Syon Abbey for nuns of the Bridgettine Order. Became one of the wealthiest abbeys in England.
1495 – King Charles VIII of France enters Naples to claim the city’s throne.
1630 – Quadequine introduced popcorn to English colonists at their first Thanksgiving dinner.
1632 – Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
1656 – New Amsterdam granted a Jewish burial site
1746 – French troops conquer Brussels
1774 – English House of Lords rules authors do not have perpetual copyright
1775 – Jews expelled from outskirts of Warsaw Poland
1784 – “Empress of China”, a U.S. merchant ship, left New York City for the Far East.
1797 – The Last Invasion of Britain, launched by the French during the Revolutionary Wars, begins near Fishguard, Wales
1813 – Lt. Col. ‘Red George’ Macdonnell leads 400 Prescott regular militia and Glengarry Light Infantry in a pre-dawn raid on US Fort Ogdensburg across the frozen St. Lawrence
1819 – The Adams–Onís Treaty between Spain and the United States is signed, ceding Florida to the US and defining the boundary between the US and New Spain
1825 – Russia and Britain establish the Alaska-Canada boundary
1854 – First meeting of the Republican Party, Michigan
1855 – The U.S. Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 for continuance of the work on the Washington Monument. The next morning the resolution was tabled and it would be 21 years before the Congress would vote on funds again. Work was continued by the Know-Nothing Party in charge of the project.
1856 – 1st national meeting of Republican Party (Pittsburgh)
1859 – U.S. President Buchanan approved the Act of February 22, 1859, which incorporated the Washington National Monument Society “for the purpose of completing the erection now in progress of a great National Monument to the memory of Washington at the seat of the Federal Government.”
1862 – Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated for a six-year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously inaugurated as a provisional president on February 18, 1861
1865 – In the U.S., Tennessee adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery.
1885 – The Washington Monument was officially dedicated in Washington, DC. It opened to the public in 1889.
1889 – President Grover Cleveland signs a bill admitting North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington as U.S. states.
1898 – Black postmaster lynched, his wife & 3 daughters shot in Lake City SC
1903 – Due to drought the US side of Niagara Falls runs short of water
1904 – The Hague Tribunal gives its decision in claims against Venezuela; it sets the sum to be paid by Venezuela and gives preferential treatment to the three powers that initiated the block – Britain, Germany, and Italy
1909 – Great White Fleet, first US fleet to circle the globe, returns to Virginia
1916 – The House-Grey Memorandum, drafted by US and Britain, states: ‘Should the Allies accept [the American idea of a conference to end the war] and should Germany refuse it, the United States would “probably” enter the war against Germany’
1920 – The first dog race track to use an imitation rabbit opened in Emeryville, CA.
1923 – The first successful chinchilla farm opened in Los Angeles, CA. It was the first farm of its kind in the U.S.
1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White House.
1935 – Airplanes are no longer permitted to fly over the White House
1939 – Netherlands recognizes Francisco Franco’s dictatorial regime in Spain
1941 – Nazi police raid Amsterdam and round up 429 young Jews for deportation to be sent to Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps
1943 – The Bulgarian government signs an agreement with the Germans to allow deportations from Macedonia and Thrace. 11,000 Jews are deported
1944 – American aircraft bombard the Dutch towns of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer by mistake, resulting in 800 dead in Nijmegen alone
1948 – Czechoslovakia becomes a communist state following a coup d’etat
1958 – Egypt & Syria form United Arab Republic (UAR)
1967 – 25,000 US & S Vietnamese troops launched Operation Junction City, offensive to smash Viet Cong stronghold near Cambodian border
1971 – Lieutenant General Hafiz al-Assad becomes President of Syria
1973 – The U.S. and Communist China agreed to establish liaison offices.
1974 – Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit conference starts in Lahore, Pakistan. Thirty-seven countries are attending. Twenty-two heads of state and government participate.
1980 – The United States ice hockey team defeats the Soviet Union team at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in an upset dubbed the “Miracle on Ice”
1983 – Hindus kill 3000 Moslems in Assam, India
1984 – The U.S. Census Bureau statistics showed that the state of Alaska was the fastest growing state of the decade with an increase in population of 19.2 percent.
1986 – The People Power Revolution begins in the Philippines, The nonviolent campaign resulted in the fall of President Ferdinand Marcos and the restoration of the country’s democracy.
1989 – Fins ministry of Public health installs sex vacation to thwart stress
1994 – The U.S. Justice Department charged Aldrich Ames and his wife with selling national secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames was later convicted to life in prison. Ames’ wife received a 5-year prison term.
1995 – Algiers police kill at least 99 prison rioters
1997 – Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut and colleagues announced that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned. Dolly was actually born on July 5, 1996. Dolly was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell.
2002 – Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in a military ambush.
2006 – At least six men stage Britain’s biggest robbery ever, stealing 53m Pounds (about $92.5 million or 78 million Euros) from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent
2010 – A copy of “Action Comics #1” sold at auction for $1 million. The comic featured the introduction of Superman.
2013 – 13 Chadian soldiers and 65 Muslim insurgents are killed in conflict in Northern Mali
2014 – Viktor Yanukovych is ousted as President of Ukraine by the parliament following the Euromaidan revolution
2016 – 10 million people are without water in Delhi after caste protests in Jat sabotage the Munak water canal
2017 – Discovery of 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting star Trappist-1 announced in Journal “Nature” – raises possibility of alien life
2018 – Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak stirs up controversy by declaring he prefers quinoa to rice, the national dish
2021 – US death toll from COVID-19 passes 500,000, higher than US deaths in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined.
2022 – Three white men convicted of killing black jogger Ahmaud Arbery found guilty of federal hate crimes, in Georgia
2023 – Astronomers reveal Webb telescope data is upending existing theories of how early galaxies were formed, after finding six massive galaxies 100x larger than expected soon after the Big Bang
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
