TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 2
1781 Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.
1815 To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.
1819 Territory of Arkansas organized
1836 Texas declares independence from Mexico on Sam Houston’s 43rd birthday.
1853 The Territory of Washington is organized.
1865 President Abraham Lincoln rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.
1877 Rutherford B. Hayes was declared president by a U.S. electoral commission since the original result was too close to call. He was the only president elected this way.
1888 The Convention of Constantinople signed, guaranteeing free maritime passage through the Suez Canal during war and peace
1889 Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.
1901 Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
1917 Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans gained American citizenship.
1923 The first issue of Henry Luce’s TIME magazine appeared on newsstands.
1925 State and federal highway officials developed a nationwide route-numbering system and adopted the familiar U.S. shield-shaped, numbered marker.
1933 The film King Kong premieres
1945 MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines
1950 Silly Putty invented
1955 Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous arrest for the same offense.
1968 The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.
1969 Concorde takes off on its maiden flight
1970 Supreme Court ruled draft evaders can not be penalized after 5 years
1973 Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.
1981 The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.
1985 The U.S. government approved a screening test for AIDS that detected antibodies to the virus that allowed possibly contaminated blood to be kept out of the U.S.’s blood supply.
1995 The top quark is discovered. The existence of this elementary particle, the bottom quark’s counterpart, had been presumed since the 1970’s.
1998 Images from the American spacecraft Galileo indicated that the Jupiter moon Europa has a liquid ocean and a source of interior heat.
2000 In Great Britain, Chile’s former President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was freed from house arrest and allowed to return to Chile. Britain’s Home Secretary Jack Straw had concluded that Pinochet was mentally and physically unable to stand trial. Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland had sought the former Chilean leader on human-rights violations.
2001 The Taliban began the destruction of ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan.
2008 Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin who has never held elected office, won the Russian presidential election in a landslide. Putin remained in a position of power, serving as Medvedev’s prime minister.
2016 The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved sanctions on North Korea that included mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea, a ban on all sales and transfers of small arms and light weapons and expulsion of diplomats that engage in “illicit activities.” The sanctions were in reaction to the latest nuclear test and rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
