TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 11
660 BC Traditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno.
1531 Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Church of England.
1752 The Pennsylvania Hospital opened as the very first hospital in America.
1805 Sixteen-year-old Sacajawea, the Shoshoni guide for Lewis & Clark, gives birth to a son, with Meriwether Lewis serving as midwife.
1808 Judge Jesse Fell experimented by burning anthracite coal to keep his house warm. He successfully showed how clean the coal burned and how cheaply it could be used as a heating fuel.
1809 Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.
1812 The term “gerrymandering” had its beginning when the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, signed a redistricting law that favored his party.
1858 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, a French miller’s daughter, claims to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.
1916 Emma Goldman who worked as a nurse and midwife among the poor in New York who was also a crusader for women’s rights and social justice, is arrested in New York City for lecturing and distributing materials about birth control.
1926 The Mexican government nationalizes all church property.
1929 Vatican City (world’s smallest country) made an enclave of Rome
1932 A novelist by the name of Waldo Frank announced that a Congressional Investigation of alleged terrorism would be demanded as of this day. Frank belonged to an association of New York writers who were subjected to comply with a certain terrorist group at Pineville, Kentucky. Waldo Frank had arrived in Kentucky early in the morning with Allen Taub, another novelist. At this time they were beaten by a mob and then were taken to the Tennessee state line. Frank and Taub were in the process of making an effort to supply striking miners with food. They were beaten so bad that Frank had to be bed-ridden. One of the two men (the writers) had suffered a broken nose.
1936 The Reich arrests 150 Catholic youth leaders in Berlin.
1937 A sit down strike against General Motors ended with the company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union.
1938 The BBC broadcasts Karel Čapek’s “R.U.R.”, the world’s first science fiction TV program
1953 Walt Disney’s film Peter Pan premieres.
1959 Iran turns down Soviet aid in favor of a U.S. proposal for aid.
1961 Adolf Eichmann ( a high-ranking Nazi and SS Obersturmbannfuhrer during World War II) was indicted today on 15 criminal charges in Jerusalem, Israel. He was convicted in December of 1961 and hanged in Jerusalem on June 1st, 1962.
1975 Mrs. Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to lead the British Conservative Party.
1979 Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power in Iran Few days after Khomeini’s triumphant return from French exile, the Iranian army steps aside, making way for the creation of an Islamic theocracy.
1989 The Episcopal Church Boston diocese consecrated Barbara Harris as the church’s first woman bishop.
1990 South African political leader Nelson Mandela is released from prison in Paarl, South Africa, after serving more than 27 years of a life sentence.
1993 Janet Reno was appointed to the position of attorney general by U.S. President Clinton. She was the first female to hold the position.
2006 Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a Harry Whittington who is in intensive care at a Corpus Christi hospital after being hit by several pellets of birdshot, during a weekend quail-hunting trip in Texas.
2008 The F.B.I have arrested four people for passing defense information to China. A former Boeing engineer is said to have given them details on the space shuttle and other programs, and two men and a woman are accused of handing over Defense Department documents about Taiwan.
2011 Egyptian Revolution culminates in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Supreme Military Council after 18 days of protests (Arab Spring)
2013 The Pentagon has announced that the US Military would extend some of the same family benefits heterosexual couples get to same-sex couples.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
