TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MAY 24 2018
1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publishes proof of a sun-centered solar system. He dies just after publication.
1607 Captain Christopher Newport and 105 followers found the colony of Jamestown at the mouth of the James River on the coast of Virginia.
1610 Sir Thomas Gates institutes “laws divine moral and marshal, ” a harsh civil code for Jamestown.
1689 The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics are specifically excluded from exemption.
1738 John Wesley is converted, launching the Methodist movement; celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day
1764 Boston lawyer James Otis denounces “taxation without representation,” calling for the colonies to unite in opposition to Britain’s new tax measures.
1830 Mary had a little lamb is published Sarah Josepha Hale’s poem is one of the best-known English language nursery rhymes.
1844 Samuel Morse taps out the first telegraph message.
1856 John Brown and his Free State volunteers murdered five men that were settled on the Pottawatomie Creek in southeastern Kansas. These were members of the pro-slavery Law and Order Party, but not themselves slave owners
1861 General Benjamin Butler declares slaves to be the contraband of war.
1863 Bushwackers led by Captain William Marchbanks attack a Federal militia party in Nevada, Missouri.
1899 W.T. McCullough of Boston, Mass., opened the first public garage. One could rent space for selling, storing and repairing vehicles.
1941 The British battleship Hood is sunk by the German battleship Bismarck. There are only three survivors.
1958 The United Press and the International News Service merged to form United Press International (UPI).
1961 Civil rights activists are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.
1970 Engineers begin drilling the world’s deepest hole The Kola Superdeep Borehole had reached the unsurpassed depth of 12,262 meters (40,230 feet) before the project was abandoned due to lack of funding.
1974 Nixon has been interviewed on TV chat shows by David Frost and has defended the right that the President is within his rights to order phone tapping and burglaries if it is in the interests of public safety and has justified the use of these in the Watergate Scandal.
1980 The International Court of Justice issued a final decision calling for the release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.
1983 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate.
1993 Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posada Ocampo and six other people were killed at the Guadalajara, Mexico, airport in a shootout that involved drug gangs.
1994 The four men convicted of bombing the New York’s World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
1995 Heidi Fleiss who ran a high class prostitution operation in Hollywood was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $1,500 for running a call girl ring that catered to the rich and famous.
2000 Five people were killed and two others wounded when two gunmen entered a Wendy’s restaurant in Flushing, Queens, New York. The gunmen tied up the victims in the basement and then shot them.
2000 The U.S. House of Representatives approved permanent normal trade relations with China. China was not happy about some of the human rights conditions that had been attached by the U.S. lawmakers.
2000 Israeli troops pulled out of Lebanon after 18 consecutive years of occupation.
2007 A methane explosion in a Russian mine killed thirty-six workers and injured six in the Yubileynaya coal mine in Siberia. Over one hundred and fifty workers were successfully rescued after the blast, but two others were still missing.
2010 North and South Korea had suspended trade with each other after North Korea was blamed for sinking a South Korean warship. The South Korean government demanded an apology from the North before the freeze would be lifted. The trade suspension added further tension to the already volatile situation between the two countries.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
