TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 20
69 Vespians’s supporters enter Rome and discover Vitellius in hiding. He is dragged through the streets before being brutally murdered.
1192 Richard the Lionhearted captured in Vienna
1606 Virginia Company settlers leave London to establish Jamestown, Virginia
1803 French flag lowered in New Orleans to mark the formal transfer of the Louisiana Purchase from France to USA for $27M
1812 “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” or “Children’s and Household Tales” by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm is first published
1820 Missouri imposes a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men between 21 & 50
1860 South Carolina secedes from the Union.
1861 English transports loaded with 8,000 troops set sail for Canada so that troops are available if the “Trent Affair” is not settled without war.
1919 US House of Representatives restricts immigration
1924 Adolf Hitler is released from prison after serving less than one year of a five year sentence for treason.
1930 Thousands of Spaniards sign a revolutionary manifesto.
1933 The German government announces 400,000 citizens are to be sterilized because of hereditary defects.
1938 First electronic television system is patented.
1941 The Flying Tigers, American pilots in China, enter combat against the Japanese over Kunming.
1948 U.S. Supreme Court announces that it has no jurisdiction to hear the appeals of Japanese war criminals sentenced by the International Military Tribunal.
1957 Elvis Presley given draft notice to join US Army for National Service
1963 Four thousand cross the Berlin Wall to visit relatives under a 17-day Christmas accord.
1968 The Zodiac killer’s first attributable murders David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16 are found shot and killed in Benicia, California
1973 The Spanish Prime Minister, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, is killed in a terrorist car bomb attack in Madrid. The bomb was believed to have been planted by Basque nationalists
1988 Animal rights terrorists fire-bomb Harrod’s department store, London
1989 U.S. troops invade Panama to oust General Manuel Noriega and replace him with Guillermo Endara.
1995 NATO begins peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.
1996 NeXT merges with Apple Computer, leading to the development of groundbreaking Mac OS X.
1999 Portuguese transfer sovereignty of Macau to China
1999 The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections in the State of Vermont as wedded couples of the opposite sex.
2006 In Tripoli five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian physician were charged with knowingly giving 400 children the HIV virus.
2013 A US District Court judge ruled that Utah’s 2004 ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, stating that it was a violation of the fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution. Same-sex couples began getting married within hours of the decision.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
