TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: DEC 22
1135 Stephen of Blois is crowned the king of England.
1772 Construction of the first schoolhouse west of the Allegheny Mountains was started in Schoenbrunn, Ohio, by Moravian missionaries.
1775 Esek Hopkins takes command of the Continental Navy — a total of seven ships.
1807 Congress passes the Embargo Act, which halts all trading completely. It is hoped that the act will keep the United States out of the European Wars.
1815 Spaniards execute Mexican revolutionary priest José Maria Morelos
1829 The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opens the first passenger railway line.
1864 During the Civil War, Union general William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln saying, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”
1877 Thomas Edison’s Phonograph is announced by Scientific American
1882 First Christmas tree to be illuminated by electric lights displayed
1891 First asteroid discovered through astrophotography
1894 French officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialed for treason, triggers worldwide charges of anti-Semitism (Dreyfus later vindicated)
1918 The last of the food restrictions, enforced because of the shortages during World War I, are lifted.
1937 Lincoln Tunnel opens. The 1.5-mile-long (2.4 km) long tunnel passes under the Hudson River and connects New Jersey to New York City.
1944 During the Battle of the Bulge, General Anthony McAuliffe responds to a German surrender request with a one word answer: “Nuts!”
1961 James Davis became the first U.S. soldier to die in Vietnam, while U.S. involvement was still limited to the provision of military advisers.
1963 Official 30-day mourning period for President John F Kennedy ends
1966 The United States announces the allocation of 900,000 tons of grain to fight the famine in India.
1984 Bernhard Goetz shoots 4 black youths (muggers) on a NYC subway train
1989 The Romanian government of Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown, ending 42 years of communist rule.
1989 The division of East and West Germany effectively ends when the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin reopens for the first time in nearly 30 years.
1991 The body of Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, an American hostage murdered by his captors, was found along a highway in Lebanon.
1992 What became known as the Archives of Terror are discovered in a police station near the capital of Paraguay. The records detail tens of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly imprisoned, tortured and / or killed by the security services of several South American governments.
1998 A unit of RJR Nabsico pled guilty to attempting to smuggle cigarettes into Canada.
2001 A passenger on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris, Richard Reid, unsuccessfully attempts to destroy the plane in flight by igniting explosives he’d hidden in his shoes.
2008 Some 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry flood part of Tennessee after an ash dike breaks at a solid waste containment area in Roane County, in the eastern part of the state.
2010 US President Barack Obama signs a law officially repealing the 17-year-old policy known as “Don’t ask, don’t tell”; the new law permits homosexuals to serve openly in the US military.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
