TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 12
1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.
1606 England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.
1770 Parliament repeals the Townsend Acts.
1782 The British navy wins its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.
1811 The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington.
1861 Fort Sumter is shelled by the Confederacy, starting America’s Civil War.
1877 The first catcher’s mask is used in a baseball game.
1892 Voters in Lockport, New York, became the first in the U.S. to use voting machines. 1916 American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clash at Parral, Mexico.
1927 The British Cabinet comes out in favor of voting rights for women.
1934 Senate votes to make all income tax returns subject to public inspection in the hope of stopping Tax Dodging.
1938 The first U.S. law requiring a medical test for a marriage license was enacted in New York.
1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Spring, Georgia. Harry S. Truman becomes president.
1955 Dr. Jonas Salk’s discovery of a polio vaccine is announced.
1957 Following the opening up of the Suez Canal to international traffic President Nasser of Egypt has warned that any Israel ship entering the Canal will be sunk , and if any further attempt was made to break the oil embargo to Israel an embargo would be placed on oil to the west.
1961 Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin becomes first man to orbit the Earth.
1963 Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
1975 The US admits defeat in Cambodia and removed its remaining embassy personnel from the capital, Phnom Penh.
1980 US Olympic Committee endorses a boycott of the Moscow Olympic games
1981 The Space Shuttle blasts off into space for the first time Two astronauts took off for Space Shuttle Columbia’s first orbital test flight.
1982 Three CBS employees were shot to death in a New York City parking lot.
1984 Israeli troops stormed a bus that had been hijacked the previous evening by four Arab terrorists. All the passengers were rescued and 2 of the hijackers were killed.
1985 Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. They were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.
1994 A Bomb Exploded on a crowded bus today in Northern Israel Killing 6 people and wounding 25 others a radical extremist Islamic Group HAMAS claimed responsibility.
1999 Arkansas federal judge Susan Webber Wright found President Clinton in contempt of court for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
2000 Israel’s High Court ordered the release of eight Lebanese detainees that had been held for years without a trial.
2002 It was announced that the South African version of “Sesame Street” would be introducing a character that was HIV-positive.
2009 Captain Richards is held hostage by 3 Pirates on a lifeboat under tow by the USS Bainbridge (DDG-96) approximately 25 to 30 yards astern U.S. Navy SEAL marksmen open fire and kill the three pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips on the lifeboat and rescue him.
2009 The U.S. Mexican ambassador has asked America to stop the flow of guns and cash into his country, saying that they fuel the country’s drug wars.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
