TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 15
1738 Bottle opener invented
1813 U.S. troops under James Wilkinson lay siege to the Spanish-held city of Mobile in future state of Alabama.
1817 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet opened the first free American school for the deaf in Hartford, Conn.
1861 President Lincoln mobilizes Federal army.
1874 New York legislature passes compulsory education law
1912 With her band playing on the deck, the ocean liner Titanic sinks at 2:27 a.m. in the North Atlantic.
1920 A paymaster and guard were murdered in Braintree, Mass. Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of the crime.
1923 Insulin becomes generally available for people suffering with diabetes.
1945 The German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen is liberated
1948 Arab forces are defeated in battle with Israeli forces.
1955 Ray Kroc starts the McDonald’s chain of fast food restaurants.
1957 Saturday mail delivery restored after Congress givs Post Office $41 million
1962 US national debt above $300,000,000,000
1981 Janet Cooke says her Pulitzer award 8-year-old heroin addict story is a lie, Washington Post relinquishes Pulitzer Prize on fabricated story
1989 A small group of students initiates pro-democracy protest on Tiananmen Square in Beijing
1992 Billionaire Leona Helmsley is sent to jail for tax evasion
1994 The World Trade Organization is founded
2013 Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing 3 and injuring at least 170 others.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
