TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 15
1588 The Spanish Armada, which attempted to invade England, is destroyed by a British fleet.
1616 First non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy
1776 The British occupy Manhattan.
1835 HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin on board reaches the Galapagos Islands
1858 The Butterfield Overland Mail Company begins delivering mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. The company’s motto is: “Remember, boys, nothing on God’s earth must stop the United States mail!”
1891 The Dalton gang holds up a train and takes $2,500 at Wagoner, Oklahoma.
1914 President Woodrow Wilson orders the Punitive Expedition out of Mexico. The Expedition, headed by General John Pershing, had been searching for Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary.
1916 Armored tanks are introduced by the British during the Battle of the Somme.
1928 Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers, by accident, that the mold penicillin has an antibiotic effect.
1935 The Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of their citizenship and made the Swastika the official emblem of Nazi Germany.
1941 Nazis kill 800 Jewish women at Shkudvil Lithuania
1950 U.N. Forces, lead by the U.S. Marine Corps, invade occupied Korea at the port of Inchon. Considered the greatest amphibious attack in history, it is the zenith of General Douglas MacArthur’s career.
1959 Nikita Khrushchev becomes first Soviet leader to visit the US.
1963 Four young African-American girls are killed by the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama.
1964 The Mirror Group is replacing it’s morning newspaper the Daily Herald with The Sun promising the paper will be a “radical” and “independent” newspaper
1966 US President Lyndon Johnson urges Congress to adopt gun control legislation in the wake of Charles Whitman’s sniper attack from the University of Texas’s Texas Tower; in all, Whitman shot and killed 15 people before being shot dead himself by an Austin police officer.
1971 The environmental group Greenpeace is founded.
1981 Sandra Day O’Connor is unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee to become the first female justice on the US Supreme Court.
1982 1st issue of “USA Today” published by Gannett Co Inc
1990 France announces it will send 4,000 troops to join those of other nations assembling in the Persian Gulf to protect Saudi Arabia and force Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein to withdraw troops from occupied Kuwait.
2004 National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces a lockout of the players union.
2005 President George W. Bush admits to the nation the government had failed to respond adequately to the devastation caused to New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and urged Congress to approve a massive reconstruction program.
2008 The largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US history is filed by Lehman Brothers financial services firm.
2011 Fifteen Ethiopian athletes went missing after competing in the All Africa Games in Mozambique.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
