TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 19
1539 Emperor Charles V reaches a truce with German Protestants at Frankfurt, Germany.
1689 Residents of Boston oust their governor, Edmond Andros.
1713 Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which gave women the rights of succession to Hapsburg possessions
1764 The English Parliament bans the American colonies from printing paper money.
1775 The “shot heard around the world” was fired. Colonial Minute Men took on British Army regulars at Lexington and Concord, Mass., starting the American Revolution.
1782 The Netherlands recognizes the United States.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln orders a blockade of Confederate ports.
1880 The Times war correspondent telephones a report of the Battle of Ahmed Khel, the first time news is sent from a field of battle in this manner.
1909 Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church
1933 The United States went off the gold standard.
1938 General Francisco Franco declares victory in the Spanish Civil War.
1939 Connecticut finally approves the Bill of Rights.
1943 The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule begins.
1951 General Douglas MacArthur gave his “Old Soldiers” speech before the U.S. Congress after being relieved by U.S. President Truman. In the address General MacArthur said that “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
1969 Militant black students at Cornell Univ. use force to take over Willard Straight Hall demanding a black studies program, after a deal was reached with the administration the news showed students leaving the hall carrying rifles although they were never used.
1977 Alex Haley receives a special Pulitzer Prize for his book Roots.
1981 In Davao, Philippines, thirteen people were killed when members of the New People’s Army threw hand grenades into the Roman Catholic cathedral during Easter services.
1982 NASA names Sally Ride to be the first woman astronaut.
1987 The last California condor known to be in the wild was captured and placed in a breeding program at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
1987 The first installment of The Simpsons is aired The hugely popular animated sitcom debuted on the Tracey Ullman Show in the form of one-minute shorts.
1989 The battleship USS Iowa’s number 2 turret explodes, killing sailors.
1989 On the 19th approximately 30 teenage perpetrators committed several attacks, assaults, and robberies in the northernmost part of New York City’s Central Park. Around the same time an attack on Trisha Meili occurred, who was jogging on her own on her usual path in Central Park shortly before 9 pm. She was raped and beaten almost to death, at 1:30 AM she was found naked, gagged, and tied up, covered in mud and blood. Five juveniles (called the “Central Park 5”) were interviewed for hours about the crime and intimidated into confessions. Since no DNA evidence tied the suspects to the crime, the prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on the confessions. They were all found guilty but the convictions were overturned in 2002 after Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer, confessed to the crime and was linked to it with DNA evidence. The city was forced to pay out $41 million in damages.
1993 The FBI ends a 51-day siege by storming the Branch Davidian religious cult headquarters in Waco, Texas.
1994 A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to Rodney King for violation of his civil rights.
1995 168 die in the Oklahoma City bombing Timothy McVeigh, the mastermind behind the attack, was executed on June 11, 2001. The motives for the bombing, which also killed 19 babies and children, remain somewhat unclear.
2001 The world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies bring legal action to fight legislation which would allow generic versions of their patented drugs being made in or imported to South Africa.
2002 The USS Cole was relaunched. In Yemen, 17 sailors were killed when the ship was attacked by terrorists on October 12, 2000. The attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.
2010 An American businessman has been sentenced to ten years in prison for trying to send money to an Afghan militant training camp. Abdul Alishtari had admitted charges of financing terrorism at an earlier hearing in New York.
2011 Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba’s central committee after 45 years of holding the title.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
