TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 18
1155 German-born Frederick I, Barbarossa, is crowned emperor of Rome.
1621 The first duel in America took place in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
1667 The Dutch fleet sails up the Thames River and threatens London
1778 British troops evacuate Philadelphia.
1812 The War of 1812 begins when the United States declares war against Great Britain.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte of France is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, forcing him to abdicate the throne of France for the second and last time. [From MHQ—The Quarterly Journal of Military History]
1873 Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.
1923 The First Checker Cab is produced by the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. By 1925 the Checker Cab Company is the largest manufacturer of Cabs in the country.
1928 Aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She completed the flight from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours.
1936 Mobster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano is found guilty on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution.
1942 The U.S. Navy commissions its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.
1948 The LP record is introduced The 33⅓ rpm microgroove vinyl Long Playing record developed by Columbia Records soon became the music industry’s standard medium. It allowed for a total playing time of 20 minutes per side.
1953 South Korean President Syngman Rhee releases Korean non-repatriate POWs against the will of the United Nations.
1959 A Federal Court annuls the Arkansas law allowing school closings to prevent integration.
1976 Rioting in South Africa spreads throughout the country. At least 58 people were reported dead and 788 injured due to the spread of violence. The prime minister of the nation, John Vorster, recognized that the violence was an effort to cause panic and create a division within the black and white communities in the nation.
1979 President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the Salt II pact to limit nuclear arms.
1982 The U.S. Senate approved the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for an additional twenty-five years.
1983 The space shuttle Challenger is launched into space on its second mission. Aboard the shuttle was Dr. Sally Ride, who as a mission specialist became the first American woman to travel into space.
1998 “The Boston Globe” asked Patricia Smith to resign after she admitted to inventing people and quotes in four of her recent columns.
1999 Following the recent increase of high school shootings including the Columbine High School in Colorado, a new gun control bill has been rejected by Congress, the bill was rejected by the Republican side who felt the new controls went too far and the Democrats, who felt the new controls did not go far enough.
2007 The United Kingdom based company, Tullow, announced the discovery of a large amount of oil reserves off the shores of Ghana. The estimated 600 million barrels worth of oil was expected to be a great boost to the economy in Ghana, the country could wait up to seven years before the oil would start to flow.
2009 Greenland assumed control over its law enforcement, judicial affairs, and natural resources from the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenlandic became the official language.
2013 Prosecutors in Hungary have charged ninety-eight year old Laszlo Csatary for Nazi war crimes. Csatary was accused of assisting in the murder of Jews while serving as a Nazi police officer in Kosice. Csatary denied the charges saying that he only acted as an intermediary between German and Hungarian forces.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
