TODAY HISTORY LESSON: FEBRUARY 1
1327 Edward III is coronated King of England.
1587 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, signs the Warrant of Execution for Mary Queen of Scots.
1633 The tobacco laws of Virginia are codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.
1709 British sailor Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being marooned on a desert island (Fernandez Island) for 5 years, his story is the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”
1788 Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat.
1790 The Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time, in New York City.
1843 Oldest continuous writer of insurance in America – The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York (MONY) opens
1861 A furious Governor Sam Houston storms out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas has voted 167-7 to secede from the Union.
1862 Julia Ward Howe’s poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published in the Atlantic Monthly.
1892 Mrs William Astor invites 400 guests to a grand ball at her mansion thus beginning the use of the “400” to describe the socially elite
1902 U.S. Secretary of State John Hay protests Russian privileges in China as a violation of the “open door policy.”
1908 King Carlos I of Portugal and his heir, Prince Luis Filipe are assassinated by Republican sympathizers in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon
1909 U.S. troops leave Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president.
1913 Grand Central Terminal (also known as Grand Central Station) opened in New York City, NY. It was the largest train station in the world.
1920 Royal Canadian Mounted Police forms as Royal Northwest Mounted Police merge with Dominion Police
1945 U.S. Rangers and Filipino guerrillas rescue 513 American survivors of the Bataan Death March.
1946 A press conference announced the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was held at the University of Pennsylvania.
1960 Four black students stage a sit-in at a segregated Greensboro, N.C. lunch counter.
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson rejects Charles de Gaulle’s plan for a neutral Vietnam.
1965 Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 others are arrested in protest against voter discrimination in Alabama.
1968 Saigon police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executes Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém with a pistol shot to head. The execution is captured by photographer Eddie Adams and becomes an anti-war icon.
1978 Director Roman Polanski skips bail & fled to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl
1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 15 years in exile
1996 Visa and Mastercard announced security measures that would make it safe to shop on the Internet.
1999 Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gave a deposition that was videotaped for senators weighing impeachment charges against U.S. President Clinton.
2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
