TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 16
1555 The Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley are burned at the stake for heresy in England.
1701 Yale University is founded as The Collegiate School of Kilingworth, Connecticut by Congregationalists who consider Harvard too liberal.
1793 Queen Marie Antoinette is beheaded by guillotine during the French Revolution.
1846 Ether was first administered in public at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston by Dr. William Thomas Green Morton during an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren.
1859 Abolitionist John Brown, with 21 men, seizes the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. U.S. Marines capture the raiders, killing several. John Brown is later hanged in Virginia for treason.
1861 Confederacy starts selling postage stamps
1901 President Theodore Roosevelt incites controversy by inviting black leader Booker T. Washington to the White House.
1916 Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in New York City.
1923 Disney Co founded
1925 Texas School Board prohibits teaching of evolution
1934 Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base in Kiangsi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. With his pregnant wife and about 30,000 Red Army troops, he sets out on the “Long March.”
1940 Benjamin O. Davis becomes the U.S. Army’s first African American Brigadier General.
1945 The Food and Agriculture Organization, popularly known as the FAO was established in Quebec City, Canada.
1946 Ten Nazi leaders were hung today after a military tribunal sentenced them to death for war crimes including crimes against humanity.
1947 Great Britain has told the United Nations that unless a UN force is agreed quickly to help with the problems in Palestine between fighting Jews and Arabs Britain will pull out completely. Current proposals include creating a partition in the area with United Nations forces controlling the border area.
1973 A roman catholic church in Buffalo, New York has started accepting donations via credit cards in an attempt to increase it’s income.
1978 The college of cardinals elects 58-year-old Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, a Pole, the first non-Italian Pope since 1523.
1986 US govt closes down due to budget problems
1986 A terrorist attack on Israeli soldiers and their families at the wailing wall by throwing grenades into the crowd yesterday caused the death of 1 person and injured a further 69. The PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) has claimed responsibility.
1991 George Jo Hennard, 35, kills 23 & himself & wounds 20 in Texas
1995 The Million Man March for ‘A Day of Atonement’ takes place in Washington, D.C.
1998 General Augusto Pinochet, former dictator of Chile, arrested in London for extradition on murder charges
2001 Twelve Senate offices were closed when a letter to Sen. Tom Daschle was found to contain anthrax.
2002 The White House announced that North Korea had disclosed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
