TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 13
1521 Hernan Cortes captures the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and sets it on fire.
1680 War starts when the Spanish are expelled from Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Indians under Chief Pope.
1784 British parliament accepts East India Company Act 1784, bringing the East India Company’s rule in India under the control of the British Government.
1787 The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
1881 The first African-American nursing school opens at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
1889 The first coin-operated telephone is patented by William Gray.
1906 An all-black army unit was accused of a shooting rampage that left 1 civilian dead at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas. In 1972 they were all exonerated.
1910 British nurse Florence Nightingale, famous for her care of British soldiers during the Crimean War, dies.
1914 Carl Wickman begins Greyhound, the 1st US bus line, in Minnesota
1931 The first community hospital in the U.S. was dedicated in Elk City, OK.
1942 Henry Ford unveiled his “Soybean Car.” It was a plastic-bodied car that weighed about 1000 lbs. less than a steel car.
1963 A 17 year-old Buddhist monk burns himself to death in Saigon, South Vietnam.
1978 Bomb attack in Beirut during Second Lebanese Civil War kills more than 150 people.
1985 South African Defence Force soldiers, travelling in a convoy of more than ten armoured vehicles, surrounded the Thaba-Juluba high school in Soweto and arrest 200 students during a clampdown on school boycotts
1990 Iraq transferred $3-4 billion in bullion, currency, and other goods seized from Kuwait to Baghdad.
1993 US Court of Appeals rules Congress must save all emails.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
