TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 2
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral.
1805 Napoleon Bonaparte celebrates the first anniversary of his coronation with a victory at Austerlitz over a Russian and Austrian army.
1816 The first savings bank in the U.S., the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opened for business
1823 President James Monroe proclaims the principles known as the Monroe Doctrine, “that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers.”
1845 Manifest Destiny: US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West
1859 Abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harper’s Ferry.
1867 People wait in mile-long lines to hear Charles Dickens give his first reading in New York City.
1901 Gillette patented the KC Gillette Razor. It was first razor to feature a permanent handle and disposable double-edge razor blades.
1927 The new Ford Model A is introduced to the American public.
1929 First skull of Peking man found, 50 km out of Peking at Tsjoe Koe Tien
1930 President Herbert Hoover goes before Congress to make a plea for a $150 million public works program to work on various construction projects and help to put America back to work.
1942 The first controlled nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated at the University of Chicago.
1943 In early 1943 rationing of food was to take place starting with meat and then including canned foods. Each household was limited to 48 points in a ration book. Rationing had been in effect in England for a year before it took place in America.
1946 The United States and Great Britain merge their German occupation zones.
1947 Following the vote by the United nations to create two states, one Jewish and one Arab in Palestine (1947 UN Partition Plan), riots break out in Jerusalem when the Arab Higher Committee declare a three-day strike and public protest against the United nations ruling.
1954 The Senate voted to condemn Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
1954 The yacht Granma arrives on the shores of Cuba after travelling from Mexico where Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the Cuban Revolution movement disembark to begin the Cuban Revolution.
1964 Students storm the administration building (Sproul Hall) on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley which protesters took over in a massive sit-in as part of the Free Speech Movement (FSM).
1969 The Boeing 747 ( Often Known as Jumbo Jet ) a long-haul, wide body commercial airliner receives its FAA airworthiness certificate paving the way for its introduction into commercial service in 1970.
1970 The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established.
1970 The U.S. Senate votes to give 48,000 acres of New Mexico back to the Taos Indians.
1979 A mob in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, has burned the US Embassy to the ground, killing a US marine.
1980 A death squad in El Salvador murders four US nuns and churchwomen.
1982 Dentist Barney Clark receives the first permanent artificial heart, developed by Dr. Robert K. Jarvik.
1995 Nick Leeson a former general manager of Barings future tradings operations who broke Barings Bank with his reckless trading receives 6 1/2 years jail time in Singapore when he is found guilty of two charges of fraud.
1997 U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of telephone fund-raising by President Clinton and Vice President Gore. She had concluded that they had not violated election laws.
2001 Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, one of the most complex bankruptcy cases in US history.
2006 Donald Rumsfeld’s classified memo to the White House that acknowledges how ineffective the administration’s strategy in Iraq is, and calls for change in direction, is published in the New York Times. The memo is dubious of there being an alternative course of action or tactics. In order to limit the political fallout of changing the strategy, he suggests that the administration lowers the publics’ expectations on Iraq.
2008 An Iraqi court has sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid to death. He was known as Chemical Ali, for his role in crushing a Shi’ite uprising in 1991, and this is the second death sentence passed on him. He is a cousin of Saddam Hussein. The court has also condemned another senior Baath Party official, Abdulghani Abdul Ghafour, to hang for the same crime. In February, al-Majid had been condemned to hang for genocide over the killing of one hundred thousand people during the 1988 Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
