TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – DEC 6
1240 Mongols under Batu Khan occupy and destroy Kiev; out of 50,000 people in the city only 2,000 survive
1648 Pride’s Purge: Thomas Pride prevents 96 presbyterians from sitting in English parliament
1776 Phi Beta Kappa, the first scholastic fraternity, is founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
1790 Congress meets in Philadelphia, new temporary US capitol
1862 President Abraham Lincoln orders the hanging of 39 of the 303 convicted Indians who participated in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. They are to be hanged on December 26.
1863 The monitor Weehawken sinks in Charleston Harbor.
1865 The 13th Amendment is ratified, abolishing slavery.
1876 Jack McCall is convicted for the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and sentenced to hang.
1876 US Electorial College picks Representative Hayes as President (although Tilden won)
1877 Thomas A. Edison makes the first sound recording when he recites “Mary had a Little Lamb” into his phonograph machine.
1884 Construction of the Washington Monument was completed.
1917 The Bolsheviks imprison Czar Nicholas II and his family in Tobolsk.
1921 Ireland’s 26 southern counties become independent from Britain forming the Irish Free State.
1922 Benito Mussolini threatens Italian newspapers with censorship if they keep reporting “false” information.
1938 France and Germany sign a treaty of friendship.
1945 The United States extends a $3 billion loan to Great Britain to help compensate for the termination of the Lend-Lease agreement.
1948 The “Pumpkin Spy Papers” are found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers. They become evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss is spying for the Soviet Union.
1957 AFL-CIO votes to expel Teamsters (readmitted in October 1987)
1967 World’s first pediatric heart transplant Adrian Kantrowitz and his team of surgeons performed United States’ first heart transplant and the world’s first pediatric heart transplant at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.
1969 Hells Angels, hired to provide security at a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, beat to death concert-goer Meredith Hunter.
1973 US House of Representatives confirms Gerald Ford as Vice-President of the United States, 387–35.
1975 A Provisional IRA unit takes a couple hostage in Balcombe Street, London, and a 6-day siege begins.
1976 Democrat Tip O’Neill is elected speaker of the House of Representatives. He will serve the longest consecutive term as speaker.
1989 Worst Canadian mass murder: Marc Lepine kills 14 women at University of Montréal
1990 Saddam anounces release of all foreign hostages
1992 The destruction of a mosque in India by Hindu extremists set off two months of Muslim-Hindu fighting that claimed at least 2,000 lives.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
