TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 13
1258 Baghdad, then a city of 1 million, falls to the Mongols as the abbasid Caliphate is destroyed, tens of thousands slaughtered, ending the Islamic Golden Age
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 which establishes the rights of parliament and places limits on the crown
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.
1935 In Flemington, New Jersey, a jury found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of the kidnapping and death of the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later executed for the crimes.
1936 First social security checks are put in the mail.
1955 Israel acquired 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls.
1949 A mob burns a radio station in Ecuador after the broadcast of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”
1953 The Pope asks the United States to grant clemency to convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
1970 General Motors is reportedly redesigning automobiles to run on unleaded fuel.
1979 Formation of Guardian Angels crime fighters in New York City
1984 Konstantin Chernenko is selected to succeed Yuri Andropov as Party General Secretary in the Soviet Union.
1984 6 year old Texan Stormie Jones gets 1st heart & liver transplant
1991 Hundreds of Iraqis were killed by two laser-guided bombs that destroyed an underground facility in Baghdad. U.S. officials identified the facility as a military installation, but Iraqi officials said it was a bomb shelter.
2000 Charles M. Schulz’s last original Sunday “Peanuts” comic strip appeared in newspapers. Schulz had died the day before.
2002 In Alexandria, VA, John Walker Lindh pled innocent to a 10-count federal indictment. He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and aiding Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
