TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – FEB 5
1428 King Alfonso V, orders Sicily’s Jews to attend conversion sermons
1576 Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV of France) abjures Catholicism at Tours
1597 A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society
1762 Martinique, a major French base in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, surrenders to the British.
1817 1st US gas co incorporated, Baltimore (coal gas for street lights)
1846 The first Pacific Coast newspaper, Oregon Spectator, is published
1861 Samuel Goodale patented the moving picture peep show machine.
1900 The United States and Great Britain sign the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the United States the right to build a canal in Nicaragua but not to fortify it.
1917 U.S. Congress nullifies President Woordrow Wilson’s veto of the Immigration Act; literacy tests are required.
1917 The last of the American troops commanded by General John Pershing leave Mexico; President Carranza will be assassinated within the next year
1937 FDR proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices—”packing” the court.
1962 Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all within 16 degrees
1969 US population reaches 200 million
1971 Apollo 14, 3rd US manned Moon expedition, lands near Fra Mauro; Alan Shepard & Edward Mitchell (Apollo 14) walk on Moon for 4 hours
1981 Military jury in North Carolina convicts Robert Garwood of collaborating with the enemy during the Vietnam War
1983 Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie brought to trial
1994 Medgar Evers’ murderer Byron De La Beckwith sentenced to life, in Jackson, Mississippi, 30 years after the crime
1997 Under international pressure, three of Switzerland’s biggest banks created a fund worth 100 million Swiss francs for Holocaust victims and their families.
2003 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence to the U.N. concerning Iraq’s material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441.
2016 Computer hackers try to steal 1 billion from Federal Reserve Bank of New York using Bangladesh banking codes, steal 81 million before a typo alerts authorities
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
