TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 13
1526 Francis of France, held captive by Charles V for a year, signs the Treaty of Madrid, giving up most of his claims in France and Italy.
1601 Church authorities burn Hebrew books in Rome
1639 The first constitution of Connecticut, Fundamental Orders, was adopted.
1699 Massachusetts holds day of fasting for wrongly persecuting “witches”
1761 Third Battle of Panipat: In one of the largest battles of the century, the mostly Muslim Afghani Durrani Empire defeats the mostly Hindu Maratha Empire in Northern India. An estimated 60,000–70,000 were killed in the fighting and about 40,000 Maratha prisoners massacred afterwards.
1784 The United States ratified treaty with England ending the Revolutionary War.
1858 Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie escape unhurt after an Italian assassin throws a bomb at their carriage as they travel to the Paris Opera.
1882 The Myopia Hunt Club, in Winchester, MA, became the first country club in the United States.
1916 British authorities seize German attaché Franz von Papen’s financial records confirming espionage activities in the U.S.
1920 Berlin is placed under martial law as 40,000 radicals rush the Reichstag; 42 are dead and 105 are wounded.
1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders all aliens in the U.S. to register with the government.
1943 Italian occupation authorities refuse to deport Jews living in their territories in France.
1943 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane while in office. He flew from Miami, FL, to French Morocco where he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to discuss World War II.
1954 The Hudson Motor Car Company merged with Nash-Kelvinator. The new company was called the American Motors Corporation.
1963 George Wallace sworn in as Alabama’s governor, promising “segregation forever.”
1973 The Miami Dolphins became the first NFL team to go undefeated and have a perfect season by beating the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII.
1981 FCC frees stations to air as many commercials an hour as they wish
1994 U.S. President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed Kremlin accords to stop aiming missiles at any nation and to dismantle the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine.
1998 Whitewater prosecutors questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House for 10 minutes about the gathering of FBI background files on past Republican political appointees.
1999 The U.S. proposed the lifting of the U.N. ceilings on the sale of oil in Iraq. The restriction being that the money be used to buy medicine and food for the Iraqi people.
2004 The Republic of Georgia restores the “five cross flag” as its national flag after some 500 years of disuse
2005 A probe, from the Cassini-Huygens mission, sent back pictures during and after landing on Saturn’s moon Titan. The mission was launched on October 15, 1997.
2008 Bobby Jindal takes office as governor of Louisiana as the first elected Indian-American governor of the U.S.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
