TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: OCTOBER 8
1480 Great Stand on the Ugra river: Standoff between forces of Akhmat Khan, Khan of the Great Horde and Ivan III, Grand Prince of all Rus. Ends with a Tatar-Mongol retreat, leading to the disintegration of the Horde.
1775 Officers decide to bar slaves & free blacks from Continental Army
1855 Arrow, a ship flying the British flag, is boarded by Chinese who arrest the crew, thus beginning the Second Chinese War.
1871 Great Chicago fire begins. The fire that destroyed most of Chicago’s business district began in a barn on the evening of October 8, 1871.
1897 Journalist Charles Henry Dow, founder of the Wall Street Journal, begins charting trends of stocks and bonds.
1900 Maximilian Harden is sentenced to six months in prison for publishing an article critical of the German Kaiser.
1918 US Army corporal Alvin C. York kills 28 German soldiers and captures 132 in the Argonne Forest; promoted to sergeant and awarded US Medal of Honor and French Croix de Guerre.
1919 The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives pass the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Bill.
1945 U.S. President Truman announced that only Britain and Canada would be given the secret to the atomic bomb.
1948 World’s first internal pacemaker implanted. A 43-year-old man called Arne Larsson was the recipient of the pacemaker which worked only for a few hours. However, Larsson lived long after the pacemaker stopped working. He died in 2001 at the age of 86.
1956 Donald James Larsen (New York Yankees) pitched the first perfect game in the history of the World Series.
1962 N Korea reports 100% election turnout, 100% vote for Workers’ Party
1967 Guerrilla Che Guevara captured in Bolivia.
1969 The “Days of Rage” begin in Chicago; the Weathermen faction of the Students for a Democratic Society initiate 3 days of violent antiwar protests.
1981 Pres Reagan greeted predecessors Jimmy Carter, Gerald R Ford & Richard Nixon before sending them to Egypt for Anwar Sadat’s funeral
1991 A slave burial site was found by construction workers in lower Manhattan. The “Negro Burial Ground” had been closed in 1790. Over a dozen skeletons were found.
1993 The U.S. government issued a report absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in its final assault in Waco, TX, on the Branch Davidian compound. The fire that ended the siege killed as many as 85 people.
2001 US President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/office-of-homeland-security-founded
2002 A federal judge approved U.S. President George W. Bush’s request to reopen West Coast ports, to end a caustic 10-day labor lockout. The lockout was costing the U.S. economy an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion a day.
2005 A 7.6 magnitude earthquake centered in the Pakistani-controlled part of the Kashmir region killed more than 80,000 and injured 65,000.
2008 The National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiraling number and two new digits will be added. the photo below shows the clock with it’s two extra numbers added which allow it to display the current figure.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
