TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 31
406 80,000 Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine at Mainz, beginning invasion of Gallia
1687 The first Huguenots set sail from France for the Cape of Good Hope, where they would later create the South African wine industry with the vines they took with them on the voyage.
1695 The window tax was imposed in Britain, which resulted in many windows being bricked up.
1744 English astronomer James Bradley announces discovery of Earth’s nutation motion (wobble)
1775 George Washington orders recruiting officers to accept free blacks into the army.
1775 The British repulsed an attack by Continental Army generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold at Quebec. Montgomery was killed in the battle.
1776 Rhode Island establishes wage & price controls to curb inflation: Limit is 70¢ a day for carpenters, 42¢ for tailors
1852 The richest year of the gold rush ends with $81.3 million in gold produced.
1862 President Lincoln signs act admitting West Virginia to the Union
1879 Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of an electric incandescent lamp.
1879 Cornerstone laid for Honolulu’s Iolani Palace (only royal palace in US)
1915 The Germans torpedo the British liner Persia without any warning killing 335 passengers.
1935 Charles Darrow patents Monopoly
1938 The first breath test for drivers, “drunkometer,” was introduced in Indianapolis.
1958 Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista tells his Cabinet he is fleeing the country
1961 The Marshall Plan expired after distributing more than $12 billion in foreign aid.
1964 The al-Fatah guerrillas of Yasser Arafat launched their first terrorist raid on Israel.
1974 Private U.S. citizens were allowed to buy and own gold for the first time in more than 40 years.
1977 Ted Bundy escapes from jail in Colorado
1981 CNN Headline News debuts
1999 Five hijackers left the airport where they had been holding 150 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane. They left with two Islamic clerics that they had demanded be freed from an Indian prison. The plane had been hijacked during a flight from Katmandu, Nepal to New Dehli on December 24.
2005 Sudan’s embassy in Baghdad was shut down in an effort to get six kidnapped workers freed. Representatives of al-Qaida warned that the Sudanese captives would be murdered if diplomatic relations between Iraq and Sudan were not cut off.
2008 The ski resort of Aspen has been virtually shut down on New Year’s Eve after two homemade gasoline bombs with threatening notes were found at two of the town’s banks and two more in an alley. Hours later, a longtime Aspen resident who is said to be bitter because he had not profited from the community’s transformation from a rural mining town into a luxury resort killed himself with a gunshot to the head. The suspect’s body was that of James C. Blanning Jr., 72, a convicted swindler, who was found early in a car on a rural county road on New Year’s Day.
2013 A giant yellow rubber duck that was put on display to float in the Keelong Port in Taiwan burst after only eleven days of being there. The duck was created as an artistic installation by a Dutch artist.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
