TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 3
1468 Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano succeed their father, Piero de Medici, as rulers of Florence, Italy.
1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia
1762 France cedes to Spain all lands west of the Mississippi–the territory known as Upper Louisiana.
1792 The trial of France’s King Louis XVI began. He was eventually put to death for the 33 charges.
1818 Illinois admitted into the Union as the 21st state.
1833 Oberlin College in Ohio became the first coed institution of higher learning in the U.S.
1847 Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney establish the North Star, and anti-slavery paper.
1854 Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 goldminers at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences
1906 The U.S. Supreme Court orders Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders extradited to Idaho for trial in the Steunenberg murder case.
1910 The neon lamp was displayed for the first time at the Paris Motor Show. The lamp was developed by French physicist Georges Claude.
1915 The United States expels German attaches on spy charges.
1918 The Allied Conference ends in London where they decide that Germany must pay for the war.
1921 All over the United States members of the United Societies for Christian Endeavour were advocating a war-less world. They circulated petitions to send to President Harding so he could influence members of the disarmament meeting that was being held in Washington.
1926 British reports claim that German soldiers are being trained in the Soviet Union.
1927 First Laurel & Hardy movie released
1931 Alka Seltzer was sold for the first time.
1943 In Budapest more than 2,000 citizens in cafes and restaurants were arrested allegedly to “combat a wave of defeatism” a Turkish report said. Those captured were held on trumped up charges of spreading lies about what was happening in Africa and Russia. Some prisoners were released, but most went to concentration camps.
1948 The “Pumpkin Papers” came to public light. The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
1965 An all-white jury in the southern US state of Alabama has convicted three Ku Klux Klansmen over the murder of white civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo.
1967 Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant.
1970 Ayatollah Khomeini takes office The Iranian religious leader was a leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution
1977 The State Department proposes the admission of 10,000 more Vietnamese refugees to the United States.
1979 Eleven are dead and eight injured in a mad rush to see a rock band (The Who) at a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1983 3-foot-high concrete barriers were installed at two White House entrances.
1984 A gas leak from a Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal, India killed over 2000 people and affected thousands of others. It is said to be the world’s worst industrial disaster.
1989 Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta.
1992 A test engineer for Sema Group sends the world’s first text message, using a personal computer and the Vodafone network.
1992 The UN Security Council unanimously approved a U.S.-led military mission to help starving Somalians.
1992 Two bombs planted by the IRA explode in the centre of Manchester injuring 65 people, A telephone warning of other devices force police to evacuate the whole of the city centre causing widespread disruption.
1997 South Korea received $55 billion from the International Monetary Fund to bailout its economy.
2002 Thousands of personnel files released under a court order showed that the Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused of abuse, including clergy who allegedly snorted cocaine and had sex with girls aspiring to be nuns.
2006 Iran made a show of strength by testing missiles some of which could reach Israel. The tests occurred after an American-led warship did military exercises in the Persian Gulf. Iran and the West continue to be in conflict over Iran’s nuclear power program.
2009 Suicide bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministries of the Transitional Federal Government.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
