TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: AUGUST 12
0030 Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, commits suicide.
1480 Battle of Otranto – Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam
1624 Cardinal Richelieu was named chief minister of France by king Louis XIII.
1676 “King Phillip’s War” came to an end with the killing of Indian chief King Phillip. The war between the Indians and the Europeans lasted for two years.
1762 The British capture Cuba from Spain after a two month siege
1791 Black slaves on the island of Santo Domingo rise up against their white masters.
1851 American inventor Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine
1863 Confederate raider William Quantrill leads a massacre of 150 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas.
1867 U.S. President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him when he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
1896 Gold is discovered near Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. After word reaches the United States in June of 1897, thousands of Americans head to the Klondike to seek their fortunes.
1908 Henry Ford’s first Model T rolls off the assembly line.
1935 President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill.
1955 Pres Eisenhower raises minimum wage from $0.75 to $1 an hour
1961 The erection of the Berlin Wall begins, preventing access between East and West Germany.
1972 Last American combat ground troops leave Vietnam
1976 About 3000 refugees are killed during a massacre at a Palestinian refugee camp
1977 Steven Biko, leader of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, is arrested.
1979 Massive book burnings by press censors begin in Iran.
1981 The IBM Personal Computer is stocked in stores for the first time
1992 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, creating the world’s wealthiest trade bloc.
1994 Major league baseball players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. The strike lasted for 232 days. As a result, the World Series was wiped out for the first time in 90 years.
1998 Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle lawsuits brought by Holocaust survivors and their heirs. The banks had kept millions of dollars deposited by Holocaust victims before and during World War II.
2004 The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages that had been sanctioned in San Francisco earlier in the year.
2013 Notorious Boston gangster James (Whitey) Bulger was found guilty of 31 of the 32 charges he faced, including murder, extortion, money laundering, drug dealing and possession of weapons.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
