TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 31
1517 Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg in Germany. Luther’s theories and writings inaugurate Protestantism, shattering the external structure of the medieval church and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe.
1541 Michelangelo Buonarroti finishes painting “The Last Judgement” in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
1803 Congress ratifies the purchase of the entire Louisiana area in North America, adding territory to the U.S. which will eventually become 13 more states.
1815 Sir Humphrey Davy of London patents miner’s safety lamp
1838 A mob of about 200 attacks a Mormon camp in Missouri, killing 20 men, women and children.
1846 A heavy snowfall trapped the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
1864 Nevada becomes the 36th state.
1918 Spanish flu-virus kills 21,000 people in the US in a single week
1941 Work on the Mount Rushmore monument was completed.
1952 The United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
1971 Saigon begins the release of 1,938 Hanoi POW’s.
1983 The U.S. Defense Department acknowledged that during the U.S. led invasion of Grenada, that a U.S. Navy plane had mistakenly bombed a civilian hospital.
1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated in New Delhi by two Sikh members of her bodyguard.1992 Pope John Paul II admitted that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in convicting Galileo of heresy 350 years earlier.
1992 In Liberia, it was announced that five American nuns had been killed near Monrovia. Rebels loyal to Charles Taylor were blamed for the murders.
1999 Leaders from the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The event ended a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation.
1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 crashes into Atlantic Ocean killing all 217 people on board.
2002 Former Enron Corp. CEO Andrew Fastow convicted on 78 counts of conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction of justice and wire fraud; the Enron collapse cost investors millions and led to new oversight legislation
2008 Distribution Video Audio, Inc. shipped its final shipment of VHS tapes to stores. The company was the last major United States supplier of pre-recorded VHS tapes.
2011 The world population reaches 7 billion inhabitants according to the United Nations
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
