TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 22
1099 First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem
1298 King Edward I defeats the Scots under William Wallace at Falkirk.
1376 The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin leading rats out of town is said to have occurred on this date.
1587 A second English colony was established on Roanoke Island off North Carolina. The colony vanished under mysterious circumstances.
1789 Thomas Jefferson becomes the first head of the U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs.
1796 Cleveland, Ohio, was founded by Gen. Moses Cleaveland.
1814 Five Indian tribes in Ohio make peace with the United States and declare war on Britain.
1881 The first volume of The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, is published.
1934 John Dillinger Public Enemy number ONE career was finally ended during a shoot out with FBI agents who had been waiting outside a local Cinema following a tip off.
1937 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “court packing” scheme was rejected by the U.S. Senate.
1938 The Third Reich issues special identity cards for Jewish Germans.
1942 Warsaw Ghetto Jews (300,000) are sent to Treblinka Extermination Camp
1955 U.S. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon chaired a cabinet meeting in Washington, DC. It was the first time that a Vice-President had carried out the task.
1966 B-52 bombers hit the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam for the first time.
1975 Congress restored Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s U.S. citizenship.
1987 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that he is willing to negotiate a ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles without conditions paving the way for the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States.
1987 The U.S. began its policy of escorting re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers up and down the Persian Gulf to protect them from possible attack by Iran.
1991 Jeffrey Dahmer is caught and is considered one of the most sadistic serial killers in our time when Dahmer’s apartment was searched, the extent of his horrors was revealed, it contained pictures of body parts and the apartment was littered with human remains including human heads in the refrigerator and freezer, there was also evidence to suggest that he had been practicing cannibalism with his victims bodies, he later confessed to 17 murders in all.
2000 Astronomers at the University of Arizona announced that they had found a 17th moon orbiting Jupiter.
2002 An Israeli F-16 has dropped a one-tonne guided bomb on an apartment block in Gaza City killing 15 including innocent children in an attack designed to kill Sheikh Salah Shahada a leading member of the militant group Hamas.
2003 A raid on a compound near Mosul, Iraq by United States Army 101st Airborne Division ended with the deaths of killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay and Qusay’s 14-year old son.
2004 The September 11 commission’s final report was released. The 575-page report concluded that hijackers exploited “deep institutional failings within our government.” The report was released to White House officials the day before.
2005 A suspected terrorist is shot dead by police at Stockwell underground station in south London. A few days later the man who police had killed was Jean Charles de Menezes a Brazillian Electrician who had nothing to do with terrorist activities.
2011 Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first a bomb blast targeting government buildings in central Oslo, second a massacre at a youth camp on island of Utøya
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
