TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 8
1494 Piero the Unfortunate of the de’ Medici family, ruler of Florence, loses his power and flees the state
1526 Jews are expelled from Pressburg Hungary by Maria of Hapsburg
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.
1853 Origin of Carrington rotation numbers for rotation of the Sun
1888 Jack the Ripper killed his last victim, Mary Jane Kelly.
1900 Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria.
1906 President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States.
1918 Germany is proclaimed a republic as the kaiser abdicates and flees to the Netherlands.
1935 Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China.
1938 Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.
1965 Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War.
1972 Bones discovered by the Leakeys push human origins back 1 million years.
1980 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declares holy war against Iran
1983 Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.
1989 The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years.
1994 The chemical element Darmstadtium, a radioactive synthetic element, discovered by scientists in Darmstadt, Germany.
1998 Largest civil settlement in US history: 37 brokerage houses are ordered to pay $1.3 billion to NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.
2002 Leon Boya, a U.S. citizen who lives a mere 500 yards from the U.S./Canadian border, marked his territory, by way of a simple declaration. Boya explained that it was possible for people to illegally cross the U.S. border, but in order to do so they “got to get by the neighbors.”
2005 Three suicide bombers carry out simultaneous attacks on three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 victims, and wounding hundreds of others
2007 German Bundestag passes controversial bill mandating storage of citizens’ telecommunications traffic date for six months without probable cause.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
