TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 21
68 Vespian, a gruff-spoken general of humble origins, enters Rome and is named emperor by the Senate.
1620 The Pilgrims land at or near Plymouth Rock.
1790 Samuel Slater opens the first cotton mill in the United States (in Rhode Island).
1862 The U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor to be awarded to Navy personnel who have distinguished themselves by their gallantry in action.
1866 Indians, led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, kill Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 other men who had ventured out from Fort Phil Kearny to cut wood.
1891 The first basketball game, invented at Springfield College in Massachusetts by James E. Naismith, was played.
1898 French Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium
1919 J Edgar Hoover deports anarchists/feminist Emma Goldman to Russia
1928 President Calvin Coolidge signs the Boulder Dam bill.
1937 Disney’s Snow White, the first feature length color and sound cartoon, premiered.
1954 Dr Sam Sheppard is convicted of his wife, Marilyn’s murder
1963 The Turk minority riots in Cyprus to protest anti-Turkish revisions in the constitution.
1964 Great Britain’s House of Commons votes to ban the death penalty.
1965 Four pacifists are indicted in New York for burning draft cards — Thomas C. Cornell, 31, co-secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship; Roy Lisker, 27, a volunteer of the Catholic Worker Movement; James E. Wilson, 21, a volunteer at the Catholic Worker Movement and a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation; and M P, Edelman, a full-time worker for the War Resisters League.
1969 American draft evaders gather for a holiday dinner in Montreal, Canada.
1978 Police in Des Plaines IL, arrest John Wayne Gacy Jr for murder
1986 500,000 Chinese students gather in Shanghai’s People’s Square calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of the press.
1987 3 white New York teens convicted of manslaughter in death of a black man
1988 Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, an hour after departure. All 259 passengers were killed in the explosion caused by a bomb– hidden inside an audio cassette player — that detonated inside the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. A shower of airplane parts falling from the sky also killed 11 Lockerbie residents.
1991 Soviet Union formally dissolves as 11 of 12 republics sign treaty forming Commonwealth of Independent States
1994 Bomb goes off on #4 train on Fulton Street NYC
1995 The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
1996 After two years of denials, U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted violating House ethics rules.
2001 The Islamic militant group Hamas released a statement that said it was suspending suicide bombings and mortar attacks in Israel.
2002 Larry Mayes was released after spending 21 years in prison for a rape that maintained that he never committed. He was the 100th person in the U.S. to be released after DNA tests were performed.
2004 A suicide bomber attacks the forward operating base next to the US military airfield at Mosul, Iraq, killing 22 people; it is the deadliest suicide attack on US soldiers during the Iraq War.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
