TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 14
1281 During Kublai Khan’s second Mongol invasion of Japan his invading Chinese fleet of 3,500 vessels disappears in a typhoon near Japan
1457 The first book ever printed is published by a German astrologer named Faust. He is thrown in jail while trying to sell books in Paris. Authorities concluded that all the identical books meant Faust had dealt with the devil.
1605 The Popham expedition reaches the Sagadahoc River in present-day Maine and settles there.
1842 Second Seminole War declared over by Colonel Worth; Indians go on to be removed from Florida to Oklahoma
1900 The European allies enter Beijing, relieving their besieged legations from the Chinese Boxers.
1917 The Chinese Parliament declares war on the Central Powers.
1935 Social Security Act is Signed into Law in the United States
1942 Dwight D. Eisenhower is named the Anglo-American commander for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa.
1945 President Truman announces Japan has accepted terms for unconditional surrender following the second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki on the August 9th just a few days before, The agreement to the terms of the Potsdam Terms had been agreed on the 10th August but not made public till this date.
1947 Pakistan becomes an independent country.
1969 British troops arrived in Northern Ireland in response to sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
1971 The controversial Stanford prison experiments to study the effects of authority in a prison setting began. The experiment had to be shut down by the 6th day because of the adverse effect on the subjects.
1980 17,000 workers go on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, marking the beginning of the Solidarity movement
1995 Shannon Faulker becomes the first female cadet in the long history of South Carolina’s state military college, The Citadel. Her presence is met with intense resistance, reportedly including death threats, and she will leave the school a week later.
1999 In the District of Columbia, the government had implemented a program to buy guns for $100.00 each. A victim of its own success, some municipal governments ran out of money and had to bribe people with running shoes and sewing machines instead of cash.
2003 A major power outage never seen before across the Eastern United States and parts of Canada and including New York with over 15 million people affected . The total number affected is thought to be the worst power cut in North American history affecting more than 50 million
2007 Four coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Yazidi towns near Mosul, Iraq, kill more than 400 people.
2008 The United States and Libya signed an agreement that would help to renew diplomatic relations by compensating victims of bombings. The deal stated that compensation would be given to victims of a 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco and to victims of the 1998 Lockerbie bombing.
2013 Pentagon officials stated that marriage benefits will extend to same-sex spouses, including healthcare and housing. The policies would not be open to unmarried same-sex couples
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
