TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 12
1609 Henry Hudson sails into what is now New York Harbor aboard his sloop Half Moon.
1695 NY Jews petition governor Dongan for religious liberties
1722 The Treaty of St. Petersburg puts an end to the Russo-Persian War.
1758 French astronomer Charles Messier mistakenly identifies the Crab Nebula so begins his Messier Catalogue
1786 Despite his failed efforts to suppress the American Revolution, Lord Cornwallis is appointed governor general of India.
1909 World’s first patent for synthetic rubber granted to German chemist Fritz Hofmann
1919 Adolf Hitler joins German Worker’s Party.
1922 The Episcopal Church removed the word “Obey” from the bride’s section of wedding vows.
1930 Buenos Aires the capitol of Argentina is still in turmoil with mobs running through the streets after the President Irigoyen was overthrown by a military coup.
1933 Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives idea of a nuclear chain reaction
1940 The Lascaux Caves in France, with their prehistoric wall paintings, are discovered.
1966 “The Monkees,” premier on NBC
1969 President Richard Nixon orders a resumption in bombing North Vietnam.
1970 Palestinian Guerrillas who have hijacked three aircraft in the desert, today blew up those aircraft at the airstrip, but stated the passengers were removed first so are still safe.
1974 Violence occurred on the opening day of classes in Boston, MA, due opposition to court-ordered school “busing.”
1974 Emperor Haile Selassie who had been crowned “King of Kings of Ethiopia” in 1930 spending 5 years in exile from 1936 – 1941 is deposed by military coup.
1977 Steve Biko, a South African activist opposing apartheid, dies while in police custody.
1986 US professor Joseph Cicippio is kidnapped & held hostage in Beirut
1990 East and West Germany, along with the UK, US and USSR—the Allied nations that had occupied post-WWII Germany—sign the final settlement for reunification of Germany.
1992 Space Shuttle Endeavor takes off on NASA’s 50th shuttle mission; its crew includes the first African-American woman in space, the first married couple, and the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spacecraft.
2003 UN lifts sanctions against Libya in exchange for that country accepting responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 and paying recompense to victims’ families.
2008 The highest ranking judge in Saudi Arabia stated that it is acceptable to kill owners of certain satellite television channels while being interviewed on a radio program. He said that the owners of channels that show immoral or evil programs should be killed if they are not punished in other ways.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
