TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: July 8
1099 First Crusade: 15,000 starving Christian soldiers march in religious procession around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders look on
1497 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama departs on his first voyage, becoming the 1st European to reach India by sea
1663 The British crown grants Rhode Island a charter guaranteeing freedom of worship.
1693 NYC authorizes 1st police uniforms in American colonies
1709 Peter the Great defeats Charles XII at Poltava, in the Ukraine, effectively ending the Swedish empire.
1758 The British attack on Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, New York, is foiled by the French.
1776 Col. John Nixon gave the first public reading of the U.S. Declaration of Independence to a crowd at Independence Square in Philadelphia.
1777 Vermont abolishes slavery
1795 Kent County Free School changed its name to Washington College. It was the first college to be named after U.S. President George Washington. The school was established by an act of the Maryland Assembly in 1723.
1800 Dr Benjamin Waterhouse gives 1st cowpox vaccination in the US to his son to prevent smallpox
1863 Demoralized by the surrender of Vicksburg, Confederates in Port Hudson, Louisiana, surrender to Union forces.
1864 Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston retreats into Atlanta to prevent being flanked by Union General William T. Sherman.
1870 Congress authorizes registration of trademarks
1881 Edward Berner, druggist in Two Rivers, WI, poured chocolate syrup on ice cream in a dish. To this time chocolate syrup had only been used for making ice-cream sodas.
1889 Wall Street Journal published for the first time
1889 John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain, in the last championship bare-knuckle fight. The fight lasted 75 rounds.
1918 Ernest Hemingway is wounded in Italy while working as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross.
1933 Public Works Administration becomes effective
1953 Notre Dame announced that the next five years of its football games would be shown in theatres over closed circuit TV.
1950 General Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of the United Nations forces in Korea.
1960 The Soviet Union charges American pilot Francis Gary Powers with espionage.
1969 The U.S. Patent Office issued a patent for the game “Twister.”
1986 Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria.
1994 Kim Jong-il takes office as the Supreme Leader of North Korea
1997 The Mayo Clinic and the U.S. government warned that the diet-drug combination known as “fen-phen” could cause serious heart and lung damage.
2011 The space shuttle Atlantis launches into space for the last time from the Kennedy Space Center. It is the 135th and final flight of the space shuttle program, which started in 1981. For its final mission, the Atlantis is carrying 8,000 lbs of spare parts and supplies to the International Space Station. The space shuttle program officially ends when the Atlantis returns two weeks later.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
