1970 – The Hard Hat riot occurs in the Wall Street area of New York City as blue-collar construction workers clash with anti-war demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War.
0589 – Visigothic King Reccared summons the Third Council of Toledo, where he accepts the Catholic faith
1096 – Peter the Hermit and his army reached Hungary. They passed through without incident.
1348 – Ship from Bordeaux carrying the plague, lands in Melcombe Regis (now Weymouth), Dorset. The beginning of the Terrible Pestilence (Black Death) in England.
1450 – Jack Cade’s Rebellion: Kentishmen revolt begins against King Henry VI and they march towards London
1521 – Parliament of Worms installs edict against Marten Luther
1541 – Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi River. He called it Rio de Espiritu Santo.
1624 – Dutch Nassau fleet reaches port of Callao in Peru intending to ransack the annual Spanish silver ship convoy, misses them by five days
1639 – William Coddington founds Newport RI
1643 – Lady Blanche Arundell, surrenders Wardour Castle, which she had led the defense of against siege by Parliamentarian forces
1660 – English parliament asks King Charles II to resign
1787 – First US prison reform society formed, the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons led by Dr. Benjamin Rush
1794 – Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (discovered oxygen), who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Gnrale, was tried, convicted, and guillotined all on one day in Paris
1846 – The first major battle of the Mexican War was fought. The battle occurred in Palo Alto, TX. U.S. General Zachary Taylor beat back the Mexican forces.
1858 – American abolitionist John Brown holds a secret antislavery convention in Canada
1877 – The first Westminster Dog Show held
1879 – George Selden applied for the first automobile patent.
1886 – Pharmacist Dr. John Styth Pemberton invents a carbonated beverage that would later be named “Coca-Cola”
1895 – China cedes Taiwan to Japan under Treaty of Shimonoseki
1899 – Ernest Rutherford publishes his discovery of two different kinds of radiation (Alpha and Beta Particles)
1900 – 250 grave robbers shot to death
1902 – In Martinique, Mount Pele erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast
1916 – German munitions bunker in Fort Douaumont explodes killing 679 German soldiers
1919 – Edward George Honey first proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate The Armistice of World War I, leads to the creation of Remembrance Day.
1921 – Sweden abolished capital punishment.
1924 – Workers at Werkspoor in Amsterdam strike against 3rd wage cut
1927 – The White Bird and its crew mysteriously disappear – French aviators, Charles Nungesser and François Coli, had taken off from Paris in their Levasseur PL.8 biplane in an attempt to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight. Their disappearance remains a mystery. Charles Lindbergh succeeded two weeks later.
1929 – Soviet government contract Albert Kahn Associates architectural firm to design the USSR’s 1st tractor plant
1933 – Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast in protest of British oppression in India.
1942 – Aircraft carrier USS Lexington sunk by Japanese air attack in Coral Sea
1943 – The Germans suppressed a revolt by Polish Jews and destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto.
1945 – U.S. President Harry Truman announced that World War II had ended in Europe.
1946 – The Estonian school girls Aili Jgi and Ageeda Paavel blow up the Soviet memorial that preceded the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn.
1947 – Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, who had volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz to gain information about the Holocaust, is arrested by Polish communist police
1950 – President of the Republic of China Chiang Kai-shek asks the US for weapons
1951 – Dacron men’s suits introduced – Polyester fabrics are about to add a new wrinkle to fashion by removing a few wrinkles … and maybe any sense of style.
1956 – Alfred E. Neuman appeared on the cover of “Mad Magazine” for the first time.
1958 – U.S. President Eisenhower ordered the National Guard out of Little Rock as Ernest Green became the first black to graduate from an Arkansas public school.
1960 – Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union resumed.
1961 – The first practical sea water conversion plant-Freeport TX
1962 – Oskar Schindler and his wife Emilie Schindler are honored for saving 1200 Jews during WWII, in a ceremony on the Avenue of the Righteous, Jerusalem
1967 – Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction in US Army
1970 – The Hard Hat riot occurs in the Wall Street area of New York City as blue-collar construction workers clash with anti-war demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War.
1972 – Vietnam War U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announces his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation.
1973 – A 71-day standoff, between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants
1977 – David Berkowitz pleads guilty in “Son of Sam” 44-caliber shootings
1984 – Cpl. Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three and wounding 13. Ren Jalbert, sergeant-at-arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour.
1985 – “New Coke” was released to the public on the 99th anniversary of Coca-Cola.
1986 – Reporters were told that 84,000 people had been evacuated from areas near the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine.
1988 – Amateur referees work NJ Devil-Boston Bruin playoff games, as NHL referees walk-off, due to a restraining order brought by Devils
1993 – 16-year-old Keron Thomas disguises himself as a motorman & takes NYC subway train and 2,000 passengers on a 3 hour ride
1994 – President Clinton announces US will no longer repatriate boat people
1996 – South Africa adopted a constitution that guaranteed equal rights for black and white people.
1998 – A pipe burst leaving a million residents without water in Malaysia’s capital area. This added to four days of shortages that 2 million already faced.
1999 – The first female cadet graduated from The Citadel military college.
2003 – The U.S. Senate unanimously endorsed adding seven former communist nations to NATO. The countries were Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
2008 – Dmitry Medvedev appoints Vladimir Putin as Russian Prime Minister
2012 – Dmitry Medvedev is confirmed as Russian Prime Minister by the State Duma, after being nominated by Vladimir Putin
2014 – World’s oldest astrolabe (mariner’s navigator tool) c. 1498 from Portuguese shipwreck of explorer Vasco da Gama found near Al Hallaniyah Island, Oman
2018 – U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear accord with Iran and restored harsh sanctions.
2019 – Governor of Georgia Brian Kemp signs new abortion law, the so-called “heart-beat bill” (comes into effect Jan 2020)
2020 – In the U.S., it was reported that the unemployment level had reachd 14.7%. It was the highest level seen since the Great Depression.
2021 – Bombings outside a school in Kabul, Afghanistan, kill at least 50 people, mostly teenage girls, amid growing fears about US military withdrawal
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
