TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 1
1327 Edward III is coronated King of England.
1587 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, signs the Warrant of Execution for Mary Queen of Scots.
1633 The tobacco laws of Virginia are codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.
1788 Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat.
1790 The Supreme Court of the United States convened for the first time, in New York City.
1861 A furious Governor Sam Houston storms out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas has voted 167-7 to secede from the Union.
1862 Julia Ward Howe’s poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published in the Atlantic Monthly.
1884 1st volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, published
1898 The Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, Connecticut, issue the first automobile insurance policy to an individual.
1902 U.S. Secretary of State John Hay protests Russian privileges in China as a violation of the “open door policy.”
1908 King Carlos I of Portugal and his heir, Prince Luis Filipe are assassinated by Republican sympathizers in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon
1909 U.S. troops leave Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president.
1913 Grand Central Terminal (also known as Grand Central Station) opened in New York City, NY. It was the largest train station in the world.
1919 The first Miss America was crowned in New York City.
1920 The first armored car was introduced.
1920 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the federal and national police force in Canada is established when Royal North West Mounted Police and the Dominion Police are combined as a single force .
1946 A press conference announced the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was held at the University of Pennsylvania.
1951 Three A-bomb tests are completed in the desert of Nevada.
1958 The United Arab Republic was formed by a union of Egypt and Syria. It was broken 1961.
1960 Four black students stage a sit-in at a segregated Greensboro, N.C. lunch counter.
1962 President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress on the issue of welfare. He wanted to see to it that laws were changed in order to provide an incentive for people to return to work. He also wanted to create a way for people to become more independent and to lead productive lives.
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson rejects Charles de Gaulle’s plan for a neutral Vietnam.
1965 Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 others are arrested in protest against voter discrimination in Alabama.
1968 South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu declares martial law.
1968 Saigon police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executes Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém with a pistol shot to head. The execution is captured by photographer Eddie Adams and becomes an anti-war icon.
1978 Roman Polanski skips bail and flees to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl.
1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran after 15 years in exile
1992 George W Bush and Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin proclaim an end to the cold war in a joint statement following new arms limitations agreements.
1999 Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gives deposition via interview on videotape during impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was the presiding judge.
2001 Three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Mergrahi guilty of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people. The court said that Megrahi was a member of the Libyan intelligence service. Al-Amin Khalifa, who had been co-accused, was acquitted and freed.
2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
2004 Janet Jackson’s famous “wardrobe malfunction” occurred at Super Bowl XXXVIII.
2006 George Bush says that scientists are close to a breakthrough on making ethanol from biodegradable materials. Speaking in Nashville, he says that this sort of technology will help the U.S. ‘reduce if not end’ his country’s reliance on Middle Eastern oil.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
