TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 2
1492 Catholic forces under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella take the town of Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain.
1570 Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s march to Novgorod begins
1788 Georgia was admitted to the Union as the 4th state.
1839 Photography pioneer Louis Daguerre takes the first photograph of the moon.
1842 In Fairmount, PA, the first wire suspension bridge was opened to traffic.
1860 Urban Le Verrier announces the discovery of the planet Vulcan and despite a thorough search, the planet was never actually sighted.
1872 Brigham Young, the 71-year-old leader of the Mormon Church, was arrested on a charge of bigamy. He had 25 wives.
1882 The Standard Oil Trust agreement was completed and dated. The document transferred the stock and property of more than 40 companies into the control of nine trustees lead by John D. Rockefeller. This was the first example of what became known as a holding company.
1900 U.S. Secretary of State John Hay announced the Open Door Policy to prompt trade with China.
1903 President Theodore Roosevelt closes a post office in Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to hire a Black postmistress.
1904 U.S. Marines are sent to Santo Domingo to aid the government against rebel forces.
1921 The first religious broadcast on radio was heard on KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, PA, as Dr. E.J. Van Etten of Calvary Episcopal Church preached.
1923 The African-American town of Rosewood, Fla., was burned by a white mob.
1935 The Bruno R. Hauptmann trial began for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.
1936 In Berlin, Nazi officials claim that their treatment of Jews is not the business of the League of Nations.
1942 World War II: the 28 nations at war with Axis powers pledge to make no separate peace deals
1963 In Vietnam, the Viet Cong down five U.S. helicopters in the Mekong Delta. 30 Americans are reported dead.
1967 Ronald Reagan is sworn in as Governor of California
1968 Fidel Castro announced petroleum and sugar rationing in Cuba.
1973 The United States admits the accidental bombing of a Hanoi hospital.
1974 New speed limit laws were set by Richard Nixon. The new speed limit on all national highways was set at 55 mph as of this time. Before 1974, individual states had set their own speed limits-which were from 40 to 80 mph.
1979 Sex Pistols /Sid Vicious, a former member of the Sex Pistols was put on trial for murdering his girlfriend. This murder incident had taken place in 1978.
1980 President Jimmy Carter asks the U.S. Senate to delay the arms treaty ratification in response to Soviet action in Afghanistan.
1981 The “Yorkshire Ripper” is caught when Peter Sutcliffe confessed to murdering 13 women and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
2006 A coal mine explosion in Sago, West Virginia, kills 12 miners and critically injures another. This accident and another within weeks lead to the first changes in federal mining laws in decades.
2011 An oil pipeline running directly between China, the world’s largest enegery consumer, and Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, is opened. The pipeline runs between Siberia and Northeastern China and is the first to connect between the two countries
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
