1887 – Anne Sullivan teaches “water” to blind and deaf six-year-old Helen Keller by holding one of her hands under a dripping water pump and spelling out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. She goes on to learn how to read, write, speak and graduate from college.
0456 – Saint Patrick returns to Ireland as a missionary bishop
1058 – Bishop Giovanni “Minchus” [“the thin”] elected as Anti-Pope Benedict X
1242 – Russian troops repelled an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights.
1424 – Scottish King James I returns to Scotland after 18 years of detention at the English court
1603 – New English King James I (James VI of Scotland) departs Edinburgh for London
1614 – American Indian Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.
1614 – Second parliament of King James I begins session, no bills pass and lasts only 2 months and 2 days, thus its name the Addled Parliament
1621 – The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, MA, on a return trip to England.
1722 – Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen is the first European to discover Easter Island / Rapa Nui in the southeastern Pacific
1764 – British Parliament passes the Sugar Tax on the American colonies, introduced by Prime Minister George Grenville
1792 – U.S. President George Washington cast the first presidential veto. The measure was for apportioning representatives among the states.
1806 – Isaac Quintard patented the cider mill.
1818 – Battle of Maipú: Chile’s independence movement led by Bernardo O’Higgins and José de San Martín win a decisive victory over Spain, leaving 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead
1843 – Queen Victoria proclaimed Hong Kong to be a British crown colony.
1865 – As the Confederate army approaches Appomattox, it skirmishes with Union forces at Amelia Springs and Paine’s Cross Road.
1887 – Anne Sullivan teaches “water” to blind and deaf six-year-old Helen Keller by holding one of her hands under a dripping water pump and spelling out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. She goes on to learn how to read, write, speak and graduate from college.
1892 – Walter H. Coe patented gold leaf in rolls.
1892 – In New York, the Ithaca Daily Journal published an ad introducing a new 10 cent Ice Cream Specialty called a Cherry Sunday.
1895 – Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde had been accused of homosexual practices.
1908 – The Japanese Army reached the Yalu River as the Russians retreated.
1919 – Eamon de Valera became president of Ireland.
1919 – Polish Army executes 35 young Jews
1923 – Firestone Tire and Rubber Company began the first regular production of balloon tires.
1930 – Mahatma Gandhi defies British law by making salt in India instead of buying it from the British.
1932 – Dominion of Newfoundland: 10,000 rioters seize the Colonial Building leading to the end of self-government
1933 – The first operation to remove a lung was performed at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO.
1941 – German commandos secured docks along the Danube River in preparation for Germany’s invasion of the Balkans.
1943 – The British 8th Army attacks the next blocking position of the retreating Axis forces at Wadi Akarit.
1951 – Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for committing espionage for the Soviet Union.
1953 – Jomo Kenyatta was convicted and sentenced to 7 years in prison for orchestrating the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya.
1955 – Winston Churchill resigned as British prime minister.
1958 – Ripple Rock, an underwater threat to navigation in the Seymour Narrows in Canada is destroyed in one of the largest ever non-nuclear controlled explosions
1965 – Lava Lamp Day celebrated
1969 – Massive anti-Vietnam War demonstrations occur in many U.S. cities
1971 – US Lt William Calley sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre
1972 – The regular MLB season fails to open due to a player strike for the first time in history; 86 games are lost before the labor dispute settled
1985 – John McEnroe said “any man can beat any woman at any sport, especially tennis.”
1986 – A discotheque in Berlin was bombed by Libyan terrorists. The U.S. attacked Libya with warplanes in retaliation on April 15, 1986.
1987 – FOX Broadcasting Company launched “Married….With Children” and “The Tracey Ullman Show”. The two shows were the beginning of the FOX lineup.
1989 – In Poland, accords were signed between Solidarity and the government that set free elections for June 1989. The eight-year ban on Solidarity was also set to be lifted.
1992 – Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori suspends the constitution and dissolves Congress
1992 – Several hundred-thousand abortion rights demonstrators march in Washington, D.C.
1995 – Pages of Codex Argenteus (the Silver Bible), the oldest text in the Gothic language (5th century) stolen from Uppsala University Library, Sweden in broad daylight (recovered a month later)
1999 – Two Libyans suspected of bombing a Pan Am jet in 1988 were handed over so they could be flown to the Netherlands for trial. 270 people were killed in the bombing.
1999 – In Laramie, WY, Russell Henderson pled guilty to kidnapping and felony murder in the death of Matthew Shepard.
2004 – Near Mexico City’s international airport, lightning struck the jet Mexican President Vicente Fox was on.
2009 – North Korea launched the Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket, prompting an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
2012 – 77-year old pensioner’s suicide outside Greek parliament prompts further protests in Athens
2016 – PayPal announces it is cancelling a $3.6 million investment in North Carolina after the state passes anti-gay legislation
2020 – British monarch Queen Elizabeth II makes an address to the nation “we will meet again”, for only the 5th time in her 66-year reign
2021 – India records over 100,000 new daily COVID cases for the first time, more than half in the state of Maharashtra, which begins a new lockdown
2021 – Italy scraps its 1914 film censorship law that could ban films on moral and religious grounds
2022 – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urges UN Security Council to act against Russia, accusing Russian military of the worst war crimes since WWII, including execution, rape and torture of civilians
2063 – Earth’s 1st contact with the extraterrestrial Vulcan species in the Star Trek universe
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
