TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 14
1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence
1651 Laws are passed in Massachusetts forbidding the poor to adopt excessive styles of dress.
1773 Britain’s East India Company tea ships’ cargo is burned at Annapolis, Md.
1832 Blackfeet Indians attack American Fur Company trappers near Montana’s Jefferson River, killing one.
1879 Thomas Alva Edison filed his first patent application for “Improvement In Electric Lights” on October 14, 1878 (U.S. Patent 0,214,636)
1912 Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is shot and wounded in assassination attempt in Milwaukee. He was saved by the papers in his breast pocket and, though wounded, insisted on finishing his speech.
1913 A tremendous explosion ripped through the Sengenhydd coal mine near Cardiff in one of the worst mining disasters in Great Britain and over 400 minors are killed.
1926 Winnie-the-Pooh Makes his Literary Debut The book followed his adventures in the forest with his friends Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, and Eeyore.
1933 The Geneva disarmament conference breaks up as Germany proclaims withdrawal from the disarmament initiative, as well as from the League of Nations, effective October 23. This begins German policy of independent action in foreign affairs.
1936 The first SSB (Social Security Board) office opened in Austin, TX. From this point, the Board’s local office took over the assigning of Social Security Numbers.
1938 Adolf Hitler’s deputy has attacked the catholic clergy during a massive Nazi rally in Austria telling the cheering crowd of 100,000 that the clergy are seeking to instigate people against the state.
1944 German Field Marshal Rommel, suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, is visited at home by two of Hitler’s staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chooses suicide and it is announced that he died of wounds.
1947 Test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier aboard a Bell X-1 rocket plane.
1960 U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy first suggested the idea of a Peace Corps.
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis begins; USAF U-2 reconnaissance pilot photographs Cubans installing Soviet-made missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
1964 Rev. Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating a policy of non-violence.
1968 US Defense Department announces 24,000 soldiers and Marines will be sent back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours of duty.
1972 In Iraq, oil was struck for the first time just north of Kirkuk.
1979 The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C. demands “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people” and draws 200,000 people.
1982 US President Reagan proclaims a war on drugs
1986 Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev charged that the U.S. wanted to “bleed the Soviet Union economically” with the arms race in space.
1987 Jessica McClure, 18 months old, fell down an abandoned well in Midland, TX. The rescue took 58 hours
1998 Eric Robert Rudolph charged with the 1996 bombing during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; It was one of several bombing incidents Rudolph carried out to protest legalized abortion in the US
2013 A court in Malaysia ruled that non-Muslims would not be allowed to use the word Allah.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
