TODAY HISTORY LESSON: FEBRUARY 26
1616 Roman Inquisition delivers injunction to Galileo demanding he abandon his belief in heliocentrism, which states the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun
1790 As a result of the Revolution, France is divided into 83 departments.
1863 Lincoln signs National Currency Act
1901 Boxer Rebellion leaders Chi-Hsin and Hsu-Cheng-Yu are publicly executed in Peking.
1907 US Congress raised their own salaries to $7500
1909 A color motion picture is shown to the general public for the first time
1917 The world’s first jazz record is created. The “Original Dixieland Jass Band” recorded “Livery Stable Blues” for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York.
1919 Grand Canyon National Park was established.
1920 The first German Expressionist film is premiered “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” by Robert Wiene is considered one of the best silent films of the horror genre.
1924 U.S. steel industry finds claims an eight-hour day increases efficiency and employee relations.
1929 U.S. President Coolidge signed a bill creating the Grand Teton National Park.
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.
1951 The 22nd Amendment is added to the Constitution limiting the Presidency to two terms.
1954 Michigan Representative Ruth Thompson (R) introduces legislation to ban mailing “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy” phonograph (rock & roll) records
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson signs a tax bill with $11.5 billion in cuts.
1968 Thirty-two African nations agree to boycott the Olympics because of the presence of South Africa.
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.
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 convicted Bosnian Croat political leader Dario Kordic and military commander Mario Cerkez of war crimes. They had ordered the systematic murder and persecution of Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war.
2005 Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, orders the constitution changed to allow multi-candidate presidential elections, asking Egyptian parliament to amend Article 76
2009 The Pentagon reveresed its 18-year policy of not allowing media to cover returning war dead. The reversal allowsd some media coverage with family approval.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
