TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 21
1129 The warrior Yoritomo is made Shogun without equal in Japan.
1680 Pueblo Indians drove out the Spanish and took possession of Santa Fe, N.M.
1703 The Edirne Event: Turkish army removes Sultan Mustafa II, lessening the power of the sultans
1772 King Gustav III of Sweden completes coup d’etat by adopting a new Constitution and installing himself as an enlightened despot – ends 50 years of parliamentary rule
1831 Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia that kills close to 60 whites.
1858 The first of a series of debates begins between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Douglas goes on to win the Senate seat in November, but Lincoln gains national visibility for the first time.
1863 Confederate raiders under William Quantrill strike Lawrence, Kansas, leaving 150 civilians dead.
1879 Oldsmobile is founded by Ransom Eli Olds of Olds Motor Works
1888 American inventor William Seward Burroughs patents the adding machine
1906 Scandal rocked polite Virginia society when it was discovered that a local optician, a dentist, and a doctor performed an illegal abortion on a prominent woman. Miss Keener who had the abortion worked as a receptionist at Dr. Badgley’s dental office. Each of the doctors had to post a bond of $3,000 each and were to appear in court later.
1938 President Roosevelt publicly pledged to defend Canada should it be invaded by an enemy and in return he expected Canada to come to American aid if the U.S. was attacked. Canada and the U.S. did not have any formal allegiance, but Roosevelt said the two countries had a mutual interests in defending each other
1944 The Dumbarton Oaks conference, which lays the foundation for the establishment of the United Nations, is held in Washington, D.C.
1945 President Harry S. Truman cancels all contracts under the Lend-Lease Act.
1953 The President of Japan’s Chamber of Commerce, Aiichiro Fujiyama claimed that Japan would not need to do business with Red China if trade with the United States could be stepped up. Prior to the war, Japan’s business was done mainly with China and Southeast Asia.
1959 Hawaii became the 50th state. U.S. President Eisenhower also issued the order for the 50 star flag.
1961 In Israel, Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi henchman, was transferred from Jerusalem to a police prison near Haifa where he was to await his trial for war crimes committed during World War II.
1963 The South Vietnamese Army arrests over 100 Buddhist monks in Saigon.
1968 Soviet forces invade Czechoslovakia because of the country’s experiments with a more liberal government.
1976 Operation Paul Bunyan: after North Korean guards killed two American officers sent to trim a poplar tree along the DMZ on Aug. 18, US and ROK soldiers with heavy support chopped down the tree.
1989 Voyager 2 begins a flyby of planet Neptune.
1996 Sixty United Nations trucks plowed through mud, bringing 8,000 Rwandan refugees back to the country they left two years ago. Some of the Hutu refugees were frightened of returning to face the new Tutsi government.
1996 The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was signed by U.S. President Clinton. The act made it easier to obtain and keep health insurance.
2001 NATO decides to send a peacekeeping force to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
2002 In Pakistan, President General Pervez Musharraf unilaterally amended the Pakistani constitution. He extended his term in office and granted himself powers that included the right to dissolve parliament.
2006 South Korea sent over 230 million dollars worth of humanitarian aid to North Korea which was hit by severe flooding. The North claims only hundreds of people were killed by the floods, but South Korean aid agencies think it is more like 58,000 dead or lost.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
