TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – AUG 14
1281 During Kublai Khan’s Second Invasion of Japan his invading Chinese fleet of 3,500 vessels disappears in a typhoon near Japan
1457 The first book ever printed is published by a German astrologer named Faust. He is thrown in jail while trying to sell books in Paris. Authorities concluded that all the identical books meant Faust had dealt with the devil.
1605 The Popham expedition reaches the Sagadahoc River in present-day Maine and settles there.
1842 Second Seminole War declared over by Colonel Worth; Indians go on to be removed from Florida to Oklahoma
1848 The Oregon Territory was established.
1896 Gold was discovered in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Within the next year more than 30,000 people rushed to the area to look for gold.
1900 The European allies enter Beijing, relieving their besieged legations from the Chinese Boxers.
1917 The Chinese Parliament declares war on the Central Powers.
1935 Social Security Act is Signed into Law in the United States
1945 Japan announces its unconditional surrender in World War II.
1947 Pakistan becomes an independent country.
1967 Wonderful Radio London one of the most successful pirate radio stations broadcast from the MV Galaxy 3 1/2 miles off shore from Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, closes down.
1969 British troops arrived Northern Ireland in response to sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
1971 The controversial Stanford prison experiments to study the effects of authority in a prison setting began. The experiment had to be shut down by the 6th day because of the adverse effect on the subjects.
1973 The United States ends the “secret” bombing of Cambodia.
1980 People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was incorporated.
1992 The U.S. announced that emergency airlifts of food to Somalia would begin. The action was being taken to stop mass deaths due to starvation.
1995 Shannon Faulker becomes the first female cadet in the long history of South Carolina’s state military college, The Citadel. Her presence is met with intense resistance, reportedly including death threats, and she will leave the school a week later.
1998 A U.S. federal appeals court in Richmond, VA, ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had no authority to regulate tobacco. The FDA had established rules to make it harder for minors to buy cigarettes.
1999 In the District of Columbia, the government had implemented a program to buy guns for $100.00 each. A victim of its own success, some municipal governments ran out of money and had to bribe people with running shoes and sewing machines instead of cash.
2003 A major power outage never seen before across the Eastern United States and parts of Canada and including New York with over 15 million people affected . The total number affected is thought to be the worst power cut in North American history affecting more than 50 million
2007 Four coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Yazidi towns near Mosul, Iraq, kill more than 400 people.
2008 The United States and Libya signed an agreement that would help to renew diplomatic relations by compensating victims of bombings. The deal stated that compensation would be given to victims of a 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco and to victims of the 1998 Lockerbie bombing. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/africa/14iht-libya.4.15300826.html
2015 In Havana, Cuba, the U.S. Embassy was re-opened after being closed 54 years earlier.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
