TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 14
1471 The Earl of Warwick, who fought on both sides in the War of the Roses, is killed at the Battle of Barnet with the defeat of the Lancastrians.
1543 Bartolome Ferrelo returns to Spain after discovering a large bay in the New World (San Francisco).
1775 Benjamin Rush was among those who founded the first American antislavery society in Philadelphia.
1828 The first edition of Noah Webster’s dictionary is published.
1860 The first Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.
1865 President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth.
1889 The first international Conference of American States began in Washington, DC.
1894 Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope is shown to the public for the first time.
1903 Dr Harry Plotz discovers vaccine against typhoid (NYC)
1912 The passenger liner Titanic–deemed unsinkable–strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and begins to sink. The ship will go under the next day with a loss of 1,500 lives.
1933 A Milk Price War is going on and the stable prices of 10 cents per quart are currently 8 cents and in some shops 7 cents per quart.
1935 Black Sunday: Severe sandstorm ravages the US Midwest, creating the “Dust Bowl”
1956 Ampex Corp. demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder the VR-1000, which was the first of Ampex’s line of 2 inch Quadruplex videotape recorders
1959 The Taft Memorial Bell Tower is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1972 President Nixon addresses Canadian Parliament seeking free trade talks to continue between the two countries.
1984 The Texas Board of Education began requiring that the state’s public school textbooks describe the evolution of human beings as “theory rather than fact”.
1986 U.S. President Reagan announced the U.S. air raid on military and terrorist related targets in Libya.
1988 The Soviet Union agrees to withdraw from Afghanistan Soviet troops had invaded the country in 1979 to support the communist rulers. They were defeated primarily by the Mujahideen, who were groups of militant Islamists sponsored by the CIA.
1994 Two American F-15 warplanes inadvertently shot down two U.S. helicopters over northern Iraq. 26 people were killed including 15 Americans.
1998 The state of Virginia ignored the requests from the World Court and executed a Paraguayan for the murder of a U.S. woman.
2002 Hugo Chávez returned as president of Venezuela after being forced out of office two days previously.
2003 The Human Genome Project is completed The project dedicated to mapping the genes of the human genome was started in October 1990.
2003 Abu Abbas, the leader of the terrorist group Palestine Liberation Front when the group hijacked the liner Achille Lauro, was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq.
2005 The Oregon Supreme Court nullified nearly 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Portland’s Multnomah County.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
