TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 12
1065 Pilgrims under bishop Günther of Bamberg reach Jerusalem
1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.
1606 England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.
1770 Parliament repeals the Townsend Acts.
1811 The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington.
1844 Texas became a US territory
1861 Fort Sumter is shelled by the Confederacy, starting America’s Civil War.
1862 James J. Andrews led the raiding party that stole the Confederate locomotive “The General,” inspiring the 1926 Buster Keaton movie.
1877 The first catcher’s mask is used in a baseball game.
1927 The British Cabinet comes out in favor of voting rights for women.
1927 General Chiang Kai-shek begins counter revolution in Shanghai
1938 1st US law requiring medical tests for marriage licenses (New York)
1945 Canadian troops liberate Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands
1951 Israeli Knesset officially designates April 13 as Holocaust Day
1954 Bill Haley records “Rock Around the Clock.”
1955 Dr. Jonas Salk’s discovery of a polio vaccine is announced.
1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth (Vostok 1)
1963 Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
1969 Lucy and Snoopy of the comic strip “Peanuts” made the cover of “Saturday Review.”
1982 3 CBS employees shot to death in NYC parking lot
1985 U.S. Senator Jake Garn of Utah became the first senator to fly in space as the shuttle Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL.
1985 Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. They were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.
1987 Texaco filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it failed to settle a legal dispute with Pennzoil Co.
1991 US announces closing of 31 major US military bases
1999 Arkansas federal judge Susan Webber Wright found President Clinton in contempt of court for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
2000 Israel’s High Court ordered the release of eight Lebanese detainees that had been held for years without a trial.
2002 It was announced that the South African version of “Sesame Street” would be introducing a character that was HIV-positive.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
