TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 21
1189 Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa assemble the troops for the Third Crusade.
1525 The Swiss Anabaptist Movement is born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz’s mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union
1648 In Maryland, the first woman lawyer in the colonies, Margaret Brent, is denied a vote in the Maryland Assembly.
1785 Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa and Wyandot Indians sign the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.
1789 W.H. Brown’s “Power of Sympathy” was published. It was the first American novel to be published. The novel is also known as the “Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth”.
1790 Joseph Guillotine proposes a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person’s head as painlessly as possible.
1793 The French King Louis XVI is guillotined for treason.
1853 Dr. Russell L. Hawes patented the envelope folding machine.
1861 The future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, resigned from the U.S. Senate. Four other Southerners also resigned.
1865 An oil well was drilled by torpedoes for the first time.
1919 The German Krupp plant begins producing guns under the U.S. armistice terms.
1920 Home Meal Planning classes were planned by the Red Cross in Pennsylvania. This was a series of eight sessions run by a dietician from a state college.
1924 Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died. Joseph Stalin began a purge of his rivals for the leadership of the Soviet Union.
1941 The United States lifts the ban on selling arms to the Soviet Union.
1942 In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward. While the British benefited from radio-intercept-derived Ultra information, the Germans enjoyed an even speedier intelligence source.
1954 USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine was launched.
1958 The Soviet Union calls for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries.
1968 The Battle of Khe Sanh – one of the most publicized and controversial battles of the Vietnam War – begins at the Khe Sanh Air Base
1968 U.S. Senator Monroney had introduced a plan to create a bill which would ban all tolls within the U.S. Interstate Highway System. This bill was also introduced to discourage new turnpikes from being to this U.S. highway network.
1974 The U.S. Supreme Court decides that pregnant teachers can no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.
1976 Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger meet to discuss Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).
1976 Concorde takes off on its first scheduled flights
1977 President Carter urges 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis.
1977 President Carter pardoned most Vietnam War draft evaders.
1992 The UN has ordered Libya to surrender intelligence agents accused of the Lockerbie and French airliner bombings or sanctions will be imposed against Libya
1996 An overloaded ferry sinks in an unexpected storm off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, killing 340 people
1997 Newt Gingrich was fined as the U.S. House of Representatvies voted for first time in history to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct.
2003 It was announced by the U.S. Census Bureau that estimates showed that the Hispanic population had passed the black population for the first time.
2008 Black Monday in worldwide stock markets. FTSE 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since 9/11, and Asian stocks drop as much as 15%.
2010 In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the government cannot restrict the spending of corporations for political campaigns, maintaining that it’s their First Amendment right to support candidates as they choose. This decision upsets two previous precedents on the free-speech rights of corporations.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
