TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: DEC 2
1697 St Paul’s Cathedral opens in London
1763 Touro shul of Newport RI dedicated (oldest existing US synagogue)
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral.
1823 President James Monroe proclaims the principles known as the Monroe Doctrine, “that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers.”
1845 US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, a widely held belief termed “manifest destiny” by newspaper editor John O’Sullivan
1859 Abolitionist John Brown was hanged for his raid on Harper’s Ferry.
1867 People wait in mile-long lines to hear Charles Dickens give his first reading in New York City.
1901 King Camp Gillette begins selling safety razor blades
1909 J.P. Morgan acquires majority holdings in Equitable Life Co. This is the largest concentration of bank power to date.
1927 The new Ford Model A is introduced to the American public.
1929 First skull of Peking man found in the caves of Zhoukoudian, 50 km outside of Peking, China. Later dated roughly 750,000 years old. [1]
1932 Bolivia accepts Paraguay’s terms for a truce in the Chaco War.
1939 LaGuardia Airport in New York City opens its doors
1942 The first controlled nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated at the University of Chicago.
1946 The United States and Great Britain merge their German occupation zones.
1954 The Senate voted to condemn Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.”
1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared in a nationally broadcast speech that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that he was going to lead Cuba to communism.
1970 The U.S. Senate votes to give 48,000 acres of New Mexico back to the Taos Indians.
1976 Communist revolutionary Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado
1980 A death squad in El Salvador murders four US nuns and churchwomen.
1982 Dentist Barney Clark receives the first permanent artificial heart, developed by Dr. Robert K. Jarvik.
1990 The Midwest section of the U.S. prepared for a massive earthquake predicted by Iben Browning. The earthquakes did not occur
1994 The U.S. government agreed not to seek a recall of allegedly fire-prone General Motors pickup trucks. A deal was made with GM under which the company would spend more than $51 million on safety and research.
1999 Protestant and Catholic cabinet convened for the first time in Northern Ireland.
2001 Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, one of the most complex bankruptcy cases in US history.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
