1996 The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, is arrested. The mathematician who was driven by anarchist ideas sent out 16 letter bombs between 1978 and 1995, killing 3 people and injuring 23.
0033 – Christ crucified (according to astronomer Humphreys & Waddington)
0628 – Chosroes II emperor of Persia (579..628), murdered by his son
1043 – Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England.
1312 – 2nd council of Vienna, Knights Templars suppressed
1559 – The Peace of Cateau-Cambrsis treaty is signed, ending the Italian Wars.
1645 – English Long Parliament passes the Self-Denying Ordinance, limiting regional armies, significant step toward New Model Army
1756 – Marquis de Montcalm sails from France for Canada; he will die at the battle of the Plains of Abraham
1776 – George Washington received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College .
1790 – Revenue Marine Service (US Coast Guard), created
1826 – Financial panic hits New Brunswick as word spreads that banks in London had failed and the timber trade had collapsed; so-called Black Monday.
1829 – James Carrington patented the coffee mill.
1834 – The generals in the Greek War of Independence stand trial for treason.
1860 – The first Pony Express riders left St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA. The trip across country took about 10 days. The Pony Express only lasted about a year and a half.
1865 – Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
1882 – The American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back and killed by Robert Ford for a $5,000 reward. There was later controversy over whether it was actually Jesse James that had been killed.
1895 – The libel trial instigated by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality
1910 – Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America was climbed.
1913 – British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is sentenced to 3 years in jail for incitement to place an explosive in a building at Walton
1917 – Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia from exile, marking the beginning of Bolshevik leadership in the Russian Revolution
1918 – US House of Representatives accepts American Creed written by William Tyler
1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1924 – Istanbul’s Ottoman Topkapi Palace is converted into a museum on orders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
1933 – First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized “3.2” beer.
1936 – Richard Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and death of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh.
1940 – Soviet troops massacre about 22,000 Polish nationals. The Katyn massacre is considered the worst massacre of prisoners of war in history. The order to execute all captive members of the Polish Officer Corps was signed by Joseph Stalin.
1941 – British troops evacuate Libyan port Bengazi during World War II.
1942 – The Japanese began their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.
1944 – Supreme Court (Smith v Allwright) “white primaries” unconstitutional
1946 – Lt. General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines.
1948 – U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to revive war-torn Europe. $12.4 billion was allocated to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II and prevent communists from seizing control.
1953 – American magazine “TV Guide” publishes 1st issue; cover features photo of Lucille Ball’s new born baby boy, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV (later professionally known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.).
1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges.
1956 – German war criminals Hinrichsen, Ruhl, Siebens and Viebahn freed
1964 – US and Panama agree to resume diplomatic relations
1967 – The U.S. State Department said that Hanoi might be brainwashing American prisoners.
1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “mountaintop” speech just 24 hours before he was assassinated.
1973 – 1st mobile phone call is made in downtown Manhattan, NYC by Motorola employee Martin Cooper to the Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey
1978 – The FBI Laboratory Division pioneered the use of laser technology to detect latent “crime scene” fingerprints. This date marks the first successful use of lasers to detect latent prints on case evidence.
1979 – Jane Byrne became the first female mayor in Chicago.
1983 – It was reported that Vietnamese occupation forces had overrun a key insurgent base in western Cambodia.
1984 – Sikh terrorists killed a member of the Indian Parliament in his home.
1985 – The U.S. charged that Israel violated the Geneva Convention by deporting Shiite prisoners.
1986 – The U.S. national debt hit $2 trillion.
1987 – Riots disrupted mass during the Pope’s visit to Santiago, Chili.
1996 – Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. He pled guilty in January 1998 to five Unabomber attacks in exchange for a life sentence without chance for parole.
1997 – Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but 1 of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas
2000 – A U.S. federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated U.S. antitrust laws by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors. Microsoft said that they would appeal the ruling.
2010 – The first Apple iPad was released.
2012 – Spanish unemployment reaches record high, youth unemployment stands at 50%
2013 – 46 people are killed and 100 are injured by a court-house suicide bombing in Farah, Afghanistan
2016 – Panama Papers published – 11.5 million confidential documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca expose widespread illegal activities including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and the violation of international sanctions by the world’s elite in the world’s largest ever data leak
2019 – Brunei brings into force new Sharia laws punishing gay sex and adultery with death by stoning, prompting widespread condemnation
2020 – US aircraft carrier captain Brett Crozier cheered off his ship after being fired for a letter demanding more help for his sailors infected with COVID-19
2022 – Pakistan plunges into constitutional crisis after Prime Minister Imran Khan dissolves parliament and calls for new elections, avoiding a no-confidence vote
2023 – NASA announces the four astronauts for 2024 Artemis II lunar mission around the Moon – Christina Hammock Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
