TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 23
1244 Turks expel the crusaders under Frederick II from Jerusalem.
1305 Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered in London.
1711 A British attempt to invade Canada by sea fails.
1775 King George III of England refuses the American colonies’ offer of peace and declares them in open rebellion.
1821 After 11 years of war, Spain grants Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy.
1850 1st US National Women’s Rights Convention convenes in Worcester, Massachusetts
1902 Fanny Farmer, among the first to emphasize the relationship of diet to health, opens her School of Cookery in Boston.
1905 In New Orleans yellow fever was running rampant and there were 1478 sick and 218 dead.
1927 Immigrant laborers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for a robbery they did not commit. Fifty years later, in 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis establishes a memorial in the victims’ honor.
1939 Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Adolf Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland.
1950 Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps are called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
1952 Arab League security pact linking seven Arab States in a military, political and economic alliance goes into effect.
1953 Captain George C. Davison of Staten Island, New York was thrown into a Korean prison for fifteen days because he penciled a mustache on a picture of Mao Zedong.
1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 takes first photograph of Earth from the moon.
1979 Iranian army opens offensive against Kurds.
1990 Saddam Hussein, parading some of his Western captives on TV, ruffled the hair of a British child and told the uneasy group that they are not hostages but peacemakers.
1996 Osama bin Laden issues message entitled “A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.”
2011 Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi is overthrown after National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the 2011 Libyan Civil War.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
