TODAY HISTORY LESSON: FEBRUARY 3
1160 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa hurtles prisoners, including children, at the Italian city of Crema, forcing its surrender.
1451 Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror inherits the throne of the Ottoman Empire
1488 The Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Diaz landed at Mossal Bay in the Cape, the first European known to have landed on the southern extremity of Africa.
1690 The first paper money in America is issued in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1743 Philadelphia establishes a “pesthouse” to quarantine immigrants
1809 Territory of Illinois organizes (including present-day Wisconsin)
1855 Wisconsin Supreme Court declares US Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional
1870 US state of Iowa ratifies the 15th Amendment of the United States Constitution allowing suffrage for all races & colour
1874 A patent was issued to Samuel W. Francis for the spork.
1900 In Frankfort, KY, gubernatorial candidate William Goebels died from an assasin’s bullet wounds. On August 18, 1900, Ex-Sec. of State Caleb Powers was found guilt of conspiracy to murder Gov. Goebels.
1904 Colombian troops clash with U.S. Marines in Panama.
1908 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that union-sponsored boycotts are illegal, and applies the Sherman Antitrust Act to labor as well as capital.
1913 The 16th Amendment, establishing federal income tax, was ratified.
1917 A German submarine sinks the U.S. liner Housatonic off coast of Sicily. The United States severs diplomatic relations with Germany.
1927 President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission to regulate the airwaves.
1928 Paleoanthropologist Davidson Black reports his findings on the ancient human fossils found at Zhoukoudian, China in the journal Nature and declares them to be a new species he names ‘Sinanthropus pekinensis’ (now known as ‘Homo erectus’)
1941 Supreme Court upheld Federal Wage & Hour law, sets minimum wages & maximum hours
1959 Rock singers, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and Big Bopper died in a plane crash.
1962 President Kennedy bans all trade with Cuba except for food & drugs
1966 Soviet Luna 9 achieves soft landing on the moon.
1971 OPEC decides to set oil prices without consulting buyers.
1969 Yasser Arafat becomes leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
1973 President Nixon signs Endangered Species Act into law
1984 The Environmental Protection Agency orders a ban on the pesticide EDB for grain products.
1989 Paraguay’s dictator, Alfredo Stroessner, is overthrown. Stroessner had come to power in 1954 with a military coup.
1995 Col. Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot the space shuttle when the Discovery blasted off.
1998 20 people die in the Cavalese cable car disaster. The wings of a low-flying U.S. military aircraft cut the aerial tramway’s cables, causing the cabin to plunge 80 meters.
1998 Texas executed Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.
2015 The British House of Commons voted to approve letting scientist create babies from the DNA of three people.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
