TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: OCT 1
0331 Alexander the Great decisively shatters King Darius III’s Persian army at Gaugamela (Arbela), in a tactical masterstroke that leaves him master of the Persian Empire.
1569 The Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth for trying to marry Mary the Queen of Scots.
1588 The feeble Sultan Mohammed Shah of Persia, hands over power to his 17-year old son Abbas.
1791 In Paris, the National Legislative Assembly holds its first meeting.
1800 Spain ceded Louisiana to France in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso.
1814 Opening of the Congress of Vienna, which redrew Europe’s political map after the defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte
1847 Maria Mitchell, American astronomer, discovers a comet and is elected the same day to the American Academy of Arts—the first woman to be so honored. The King of Denmark awarded her a gold medal for her discovery.
1856 The first installment of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary appears in the Revue de Paris after the publisher refuses to print a passage in which the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage.
1867 Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital” published
1878 General Lew Wallace is sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and write Ben-Hur. His Civil War heroics earned him the moniker Savior of Cincinnati.
1890 The U.S. Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act. The act raised tariffs to a record level.
1908 Henry Ford introduced the first mass-produced automobile on the market—the Model T car to the market. Each car cost $825.
1919 World Series #16 begins as a best of 9 affair, White Sox intentionally throw this series to satisfy gamblers (The Black Sox Scandal)
1940 Pennsylvania Turnpike, pioneer toll thruway, opens
1948 Calif Supreme Court voids state statute banning interracial marriages
1957 B-52 bombers begin full-time flying alert in case of USSR attack
1957 Thalidomide, an anti-nausea drug and sleep-aid, was launched. For about five years it was commonly prescribed to pregnant women as a drug to deal with morning sickness. It was finally withdrawn from the market after it was determined that it caused birth defects.
1958 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) replaces the 43-year-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in the US.
1964 The first Free Speech Movement protest erupts spontaneously on the University of California, Berkeley campus; students demanded an end to the ban of on-campus political activities.
1971 Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida.
1974 Five Nixon aides–Kenneth Parkinson, Robert Mardian, Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell–go on trial for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation.
1979 The United States handed control of the Canal Zone over to Panama.
1982 EPCOT Center opens in Orlando Florida
1989 Denmark introduces the world’s first “civil union” law granting same-sex couples certain legal rights and responsibilities but stopping short of recognizing same-sex marriages.
1990 U.S. President George H.W. Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and once again condemned Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait.
1994 The National Hockey League (NHL) team owners began a lockout of the players that lasted 103 days.
1995 Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine other defendants were convicted in New York of conspiring to attack the U.S. through bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.
2001 San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban Internet filters designed to keep pornography away from children at city libraries. The board left the decision up to the Library Commission to decide whether to install filtering software in children’s areas. A federal law in the U.S. mandated the use of the filters.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
