TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 13
167 Polycarp, a disciple of St. John and Bishop of Smyrna, is martyred on the west coast of Asia Minor.
1258 Baghdad falls to the Mongols as the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed
1542 Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, is beheaded for adultery.
1633 Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun
1689 British Parliament adopts the Bill of Rights.
1692 In the Glen Coe highlands of Scotland, thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan are murdered by soldiers of the neighboring Campbell clan for not pledging allegiance to William of Orange. Ironically the pledge had been made but not communicated to the clans. The event is remembered as the Massacre of Glencoe.
1865 The Confederacy approves the recruitment of slaves as soldiers, as long as the approval of their owners is gained.
1866 The gang that included Jesse James and Cole Younger committed their first bank robbery in Liberty, Mo.
1920 National Negro Baseball League organized
1935 Bruno Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.
1936 First social security checks are put in the mail.
1949 A mob burns a radio station in Ecuador after the broadcast of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”
1959 Barbie doll goes on sale
1968 The United States sends 10,500 more combat troops to Vietnam.
1984 Konstantin Chernenko is selected to succeed Yuri Andropov as Party General Secretary in the Soviet Union.
1990 US, England, France & England give Germany the OK to re-unify
1991 Two “smart bombs” kill at least 408 civilians in Baghdad
2000 The last “Peanuts” comic strip is published
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
