TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 15
1215 King John signs the Magna Carta.
1381 The English peasant revolt is crushed in London.
1607 Colonists in North America complete James Fort in Jamestown.
1667 – Jean-Baptiste Denys administered the first fully-documented human blood transfusion. He successfully transfused the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy.
1752 Benjamin Franklin and his son test the relationship between electricity and lightning by flying a kite in a thunder storm.
1775 George Washington is named Commander-in-Chief by Congress.
1836 Arkansas is admitted into the Union as the 25th state.
1844 Charles Goodyear was granted a patent for rubber vulcanization.
1846 Great Britain and the United States agree on a joint occupation of Oregon Territory.
1864 An order to establish a military burial ground was signed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The location later became known as Arlington National Cemetery.
1877 Henry O. Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
1898 The U.S. House of representatives approves the annexation of Hawaii.
1904 Fire aboard the paddle steamer General Slocum on New York’s East River kills 1,021, mostly German-Americans.
1916 President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.
1917 The Espionage Act is passed by the U.S. Congress, creating harsh penalties for anyone found to be interfering with the United States war efforts through the sharing of information to the country’s enemies.
1920 Three African Americans are lynched in Duluth, Minnesota, by a white mob of 5,000.
1927 The growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the southern states and the increase in floggings of Negroes including women and children by the Klan has many in the north demanding the Klan be disbanded, in the latest incident in Gainsville Georgia a woman and her son were dragged from their bed and taken out of town where they were flogged and told to leave the area or more would follow, when admitted to the hospital 82 lash marks were found on the woman’s body.
1932 Gaston Means is sentenced to 15 years for fraud in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
1947 The All India Congress accepts a British plan for the partition of India.
1981 The U.S. agreed to provide Pakistan with $3 billion in military and economic aid from October 1982 to October 1987.
1983 The U.S. Supreme Court reinforced its position on abortion by striking down state and local restriction on abortions.
1992 It was ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court that the government could kidnap criminal suspects from foreign countries for prosecution.
1992 U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle instructed a student to spell “potato” with an “e” on the end during a spelling bee. He had relied on a faulty flash card that had been written by the student’s teacher. 2007 : A former Ku Klux Klan member was found guilty of the 1964 murder of two African-American teens. Seventy-one year old James Seale could face life in prison when sentenced for involvement in the murders. Seale had been arrested at the time of the murders but then released due to lack of evidence.
2012 President Obama announced that the US would immediately end the deportation of illegal immigrants who came to the country as children. The declaration means that illegal immigrants between the ages of sixteen and thirty would be eligible for work permits and could effect up to 800,000 people.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
