TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 26
1027 Pope John XIX crowns Conrad II Holy Roman Emperor, founder of the Salian dynasty
1150 Tichborne family of Hampshire England started tradition of giving a gallon of flour to each resident to keep deathbed promise
1790 Congress passes Naturalization Act, requires 2-year residency
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.
1804 Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
1804 The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase.
1812 Earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale destroys 90% of Caracas, Venezuela and kills an estimated 15,000–20,000 people
1845 Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, precusor of bandaid
1859 1st sighting of Vulcan, a planet thought to orbit inside Mercury
1885 Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
1909 In support of Mohammed Ali Shah’s coup d’etat against the constitutional government in Persia, a Russian military force invades northern Persia to relieve the siege of Tabriz
1910 The U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the 1907 Immigration Act that barred criminals, paupers, anarchists and carriers of disease from settling in the U.S.
1938 Hermann Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.
1942 The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
1950 Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
1951 The United States Air Force flag design is approved.
1953 Dr. Jonas Salk announces that he has successfully tested a vaccine to prevent Polio, clinical trials began the next year
1962 Supreme Court backs 1-man-1-vote apportionment of seats in state legislature
1966 Large-scale anti-Vietnam War protests take place in the United States, including in New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago
1971 East Pakistan proclaimed its independence, taking the name Bangladesh.
1973 Soap opera “The Young and the Restless” premieres
1979 In a ceremony at the White House, President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel signed a peace treaty ending 30 years of war between the two countries.
1982 Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989 The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.
1995 Seven of the 15 European Union states abolished border controls.
1997 The 39 bodies of Heaven’s Gate members are found in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, CA. The group had committed suicide thinking that they would be picked up by a spaceship following behind the comet Hale-Bopp.
1998 Unisys Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. pay a $3.15 million fine for selling spare parts at inflated prices to the U.S. federal government.
1999 In Michigan, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder for giving a terminally ill man a lethal injection and putting it all on videotape on September 17, 1998 for “60 Minutes.”
2000 Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
