TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 8
1380 Battle on Kulikovo: Moscow’s great monarch Dimitri beats Mongols beginning the decline of the Tatars
1504 Michelangelo’s 13-foot marble statue of David is unveiled in Florence, Italy.
1529 The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman re-enters Budapest and establishes John Zapolya as the puppet king of Hungary.
1565 Spanish explorers found St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.
1628 John Endecott arrives with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he will become the governor.
1760 The French surrender the city of Montreal to the British.
1892 An early version of “The Pledge of Allegiance” appeared in “The Youth’s Companion.”
1903 Between 30,000 and 50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children are massacred in Monastir by Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.
1906 Robert Turner invents the automatic typewriter return carriage.
1935 Senator Huey Long of Louisiana is shot to death in the state capitol, allegedly by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr.
1941 Germany begins the 900-day Siege of Leningrad by German forces during World War II, the siege led to the death of at least one million Russians from starvation and disease.
1950 Congress passed the Defense Production Act, which called for various economic measures, including wage and price controls.
1951 The San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed, formally ending World War II hostilities with Japan.
1955 The United States, Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand sign the mutual defense treaty that established the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
1960 Penguin Books in Britain is charged with obscenity for trying to publish the D.H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
1960 President Dwight Eisenhower dedicates NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
1966 Star Trek premiered on television.
1974 President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard M. Nixon for any crimes arising from the Watergate scandal he may have committed while in office.
1986 The dictator president of Chile General Augusto Pinochet is ambushed by rebel fighters firing on the presidential convoy with machine guns, rifles, bazookas and hand grenades.
1993 As guns continue to become easier to obtain gangs in our inner cities no longer settle disputes with fisticuffs, the normal way since the increase in the number of guns on the streets is to shoot first before the other guy. This is leading to a much higher number of gang related murders in inner cities throughout the US.
1994 USAir Flight 427 crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 people aboard; subsequent investigation leads to changes in manufacturing practices and pilot training.
2003 The Recording Industry Association of America (or RIAA) filed 261 copyright lawsuits against Internet users for trading songs online as part of the RIAA’s crackdown on peer-to-peer network users.
2011 The failure of the entire San Diego Gas & Electric system leads to the closure of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station causes blackouts in southern California, Arizona and Baja California in Mexico.
2011 President of the United States Barack Obama delivers a speech to a joint session of both houses of Congress, putting forward a new job-creation plan entailing major spending initiatives and tax cuts.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
