630 – Byzantine emperor Heraclius restores the True Cross to Jerusalem
1349 – 3,000 Jews were killed in Black Death riots in Efurt Germany.
1556 – Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1788 – Olaudah Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa), a freed slave, petitions King George III and Queen Charlotte, to free enslaved Africans
1844 – The original date predicted by William Miller of Massachusetts for the return of Christ and the end of the world
1851 – Emperor Tu Duc ordered that Christian priests be put to death.
1851 – Yosemite Valley was discovered in California.
1866 – US Congress authorizes national soldiers’ homes
1871 – Journalist Henry M Stanley began his famous expedition to Africa.
1905 – Sterilization legislation was passed in the State of Pennsylvania. The governor vetoed the measure.
1906 – Ohio passed a law that prohibited hazing by fraternities after two fatalities.
1909 – Russia withdrew its support for Serbia and recognized the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia accepted Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina on March 31, 1909.
1910 – The U.S. Senate granted ex-President Teddy Roosevelt a yearly pension of $10,000.
1925 – Tennessee governor Austin Peay passes the “Butler Act,” making Tennessee the 1st state to outlaw teaching the theory of evolution (repealed 1967)
1943 – A plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bomb fails – German Wehrmacht officer, Rudolf von Gersdorff, failed to blow up the dictator but managed to defuse his bombs just before they went off and avoid suspicion.
1947 – US President Harry Truman signs Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have allegiance to the United States
1952 – The world’s first rock and roll concert is held in Cleveland, Ohio – DJ Alan Freed presented the concert, which was closed down after only one song because of over-crowding.
1960 – About 70 people were killed in Sharpeville, South Africa, when police fired upon demonstrators.
1963 – Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, CA, closed.
1965 – More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began a march from Selma to Montgomery, AL.
1966 – US Supreme Court reverses Massachusetts ruling that “Fanny Hill” is obscene
1972 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not require one year of residency for voting eligibility.
1975 – Ethiopia abolishes its monarchy after 3,000 years
1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced to the U.S. Olympic Team that they would not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1982 – The United States, U.K. and other Western countries condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1985 – Police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. At least 21 demonstrators were killed.
1989 – Randall Dale Adams was released from a Texas prison after his conviction was overturned. The documentary “The Thin Blue Line” had challenged evidence of Adams’ conviction for killing a police officer.
1995 – New Jersey officially dedicated the Howard Stern Rest Area along Route 295.
1995 – Tokyo police raided the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo in search of evidence to link the cult to the Sarin gas released on five Tokyo subway trains.
1999 – Israel’s Supreme Court rejected the final effort to have American Samuel Sheinbein returned to the U.S. to face murder charges for killing Alfred Tello, Jr. Under a plea bargain Sheinbein was sentenced to 24 years in prison.
2002 – In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was charged with murder for his role in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pear. Three other Islamic militants that were in custody were also charged along with seven more accomplices that were still at large.
2006 – First ever tweet sent out by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey “just setting up my twttr”
2012 – Five former Guatemalan paramilitaries are sentenced to 7,710 years in jail for their role in the Plan de Sanchez massacre in 1982
2013 – A barter dispute loses control and results in 10 people being killed, 20 injured, and 4 mosques being burnt to the ground in Myanmar
2018 – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg admits they “made mistakes” after data on 50 million users is harvested by Cambridge Analytica
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
