TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 12
1111 King Henry V, King of Germany and Italy, arrives in Rome for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, but Pope Paschal II refuses to crown him until April owing to the Investiture Controversy
1554 Lady Jane Grey, the Queen of England for thirteen days, is beheaded on Tower Hill. She was barely 17 years old
1709 Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish seaman whose adventures inspired the creation of Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe, is taken off Juan Fernandez Island after more than four years of living there alone.
1793 The first fugitive slave law, requiring the return of escaped slaves, is passed.
1825 Creek Indian treaty signed. Tribal chiefs agree to turn over all their land in Georgia to the government & migrate west by Sept 1, 1826
1836 Mexican General Santa Anna crosses the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
1855 Michigan State University established
1870 Utah becomes the second territory in the United States to pass a law allowing women the vote, after Wyoming in 1869
1878 Frederick W. Thayer patented the baseball catcher’s mask.
1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed.
1912 China becomes a republic following the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty.
1915 The cornerstone of the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington, DC.
1940 The Soviet Union signs a trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
1959 The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the “sheaves of wheat” design
1974 The Symbionese Liberation Army asks the Hearst family for $230 million in food for the poor.
1987 A Court in Texas upholds $8.5 billion of a fine imposed on Texaco for the illegal takeover of Getty Oil.
1993 In Liverpool, England, a 2-year-old boy, James Bulger, was lured away from his mother at a shopping mall and beaten to death. Two ten-year-old boys were responsible.
1998 US district judge T Hogan declares line-item veto law unconstitutional
1999 The U.S. Senate fails to pass two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. He had been accused of perjury and obstruction of justice by the House of Representatives.
2001 NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
2002 US Secretary of Energy makes the decision that Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the United States’ nuclear waste repository
2002 Kenneth Lay, former Enron CEO, exercised his constitutional rights and refused to testify to the U.S. Congress about the collapse of Enron.
2014 Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is found guilty on corruption charges and sentenced to ten years in prison
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
