TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – Jan 20
820 Book of mother, published
1156 According to legend, freeholder Lalli slays English crusader Bishop Henry with an axe on the ice of Lake Köyliönjärvi in Finland
1327 Edward II of England is deposed by his eldest son, Edward II
1778 1st American military court martial trial begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts
1801 John Marshall appointed US chief justice
1809 1st US geology book published by William Maclure
1841 China cedes Hong Kong to the British during the 1st Opium War
1870 Hiram R. Revels elected to fill unexpired term of Jefferson Davis as US Senator for Mississippi
1885 LaMarcus A. Thompson of Coney Island patented the roller coaster.
1887 The U.S. Senate approved an agreement to lease Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a naval base.
1905 US begins supervising the Dominican Republic’s national and international debts, testing President Theodore Roosevelt’s “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine
1942 Nazi officials hold notorious Wannsee Conference in Berlin to organize the “final solution”, the extermination of Europe’s Jews
1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt sworn-in for an unprecedented (and never to be repeated) 4th term as US President
1949 US President Harry Truman announces his four point program
1972 Six oil exporting countries conclude meetings with Western oil companies; an agreement is reached to raise the price of crude
1979 1 million Iranians march in Tehran in a show of support for the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, fundamentalist Muslim leader
1980 President Jimmy Carter announces US boycott of Olympics in Moscow
1981 The US diplomats and citizens held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran are released and begin their journey home after 444 days
1985 The most-watched Super Bowl game in history was seen by an estimated 115.9 million people. The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Miami Dolphins, 38-16. Super Bowl XIX marked the first time that TV commercials sold for a million dollars a minute.
1986 Martin Luther King, Jr., day was celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time.
1987 Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite taken hostage in Beirut, Lebanon by Islamic militia group
1991 Sudan’s government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country’s Muslim north and Christian south.
1994 Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to attend classes at The Citadel in South Carolina. Faulkner joined the cadet corps in August 1995 under court order but soon dropped out.
1999 The China News Service announced that the Chinese government was tightening restrictions on internet use. The rules were aimed at ‘Internet Bars.’
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
