TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 26
364 On the death of Jovian, a conference at Nicaea chooses Valentinan, an army officer who was born in the central European region of Pannania, to succeed him in Asia Minor.
1616 Roman Inquisition delivers injunction to Galileo demanding he abandon his belief in heliocentrism
1790 As a result of the Revolution, France is divided into 83 departments.
1848 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels publish The Communist Manifesto in London.
1863 U.S. President Lincoln signed the National Currency Act.
1870 A 312-ft long pneumatic subway was opened in New York City; funding for a larger version never materialized.
1901 Boxer Rebellion leaders Chi-Hsin and Hsu-Cheng-Yu are publicly executed in Peking.
1907 The U.S. Congress raised their own pay to $7500.
1917 President Wilson publicly asks congress for the power to arm merchant ships.
1919 Congress established Grand Canyon National Park which includes the Grand Canyon, a gorge of the Colorado River, considered to be one of the major natural wonders of the world in Arizona.
1924 U.S. steel industry finds claims an eight-hour day increases efficiency and employee relations.
1935 Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs a secret decree authorizing the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe as a third German military service to join the Reich army and navy.
1935 RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) first demonstrated by Robert Watson-Watt
1936 Japanese military troops march into Tokyo to conduct a coup and assassinate political leaders.
1945 Syria declares war on Germany and Japan.
1951 The 22nd Amendment is added to the Constitution limiting the Presidency to two terms.
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson signs a tax bill with $11.5 billion in cuts.
1965 Norman Butler is arrested for the murder of Malcom X.
1970 Five Marines are arrested on charges of murdering 11 South Vietnamese women and children.
1973 A publisher and 10 reporters are subpoenaed to testify on Watergate.
1987 The Tower Commission rebuked U.S. President Reagan for failing to control his national security staff in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair.
1989 Effort was made by the United States to encourage peace in Beirut, Lebanon. However, after 18 months, the U.S. had begun withdrawing their troops from this location. This was the day that the last of the United States troops were sent back home.
1991 Kuwait City is liberated by Gulf War Allies when Iraq President Saddam Hussein orders withdrawal by Iraq Troops from the city.
1991 The world’s first web browser is presented to the public The browser “WorldWideWeb” (later renamed “Nexus”) was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist best known as the inventor of the internet.
1993 A bomb rocks the World Trade Center in New York City. Five people are killed and hundreds suffer from smoke inhalation.
1998 A Texas jury rejected an $11 million lawsuit by Texas cattlemen who blamed Oprah Winfrey for price drop after on-air comment about mad-cow disease.
2001 A U.N. tribunal in The Hague in the Netherlands convicts Bosnian Croat political leader Dario Kordic of war crimes for ordering the systematic murder and persecution of Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war.
2008 The latest in Electronic / Internet Gadgets is released. Chumby a tiny computer enclosed in a stuffed leather pillow the size of two fists with a 6-inch LCD touch-sensitive screen which shows pictures, news headlines, games, incoming e-mail from the Internet.
2008 Five of American International Group’s (A.I.G’s) former insurance executives are convicted of fraud for their part in its accounting scandal. Ronald Ferguson, the former boss of reinsurance firm General Re, was among those found guilty by the jury, and could face fines and years in jail. The five were convicted in connection with a deal that A.I.G. made with General Re in 2000.
2009 President Obama has told congressional leaders that he’s planning to pull all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010. Under this scenario, all combat troops will have been withdrawn within nineteen months of Obama’s January inauguration, and three months longer than the promises he made on the campaign trail.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
