TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 27
661 Rashidun Caliphate, then the largest empire in history, ends with death of Ali. Succeeded by the Umayyad Caliphate
1606 The trial of Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators began. They were executed on January 31.
1695 Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Amhed II.
1825 Congress approves Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the “Trail of Tears.”
1862 President Abraham Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1, setting in motion the Union armies.
1880 Thomas Edison was granted a patent for his incandescent light.
1888 The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. for “the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge”
1916 President Woodrow Wilson opens preparedness program.
1924 Lenin’s body is laid in a marble tomb on Red Square near the Kremlin.
1926 John Baird, a Scottish inventor, demonstrated a pictorial transmission machine called television.
1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves the sale of U.S. war planes to France.
1945 Soviet forces liberate Auschwitz The German Nazi regime murdered over 1.1 million people in the extermination camps near Oświęcim, Poland.
1951 The U.S. Air Force started atomic testing in the Nevada desert.
1959 NASA selects 110 candidates for the first U.S. space flight.
1967 Three astronauts are killed in a flash fire that engulfed their Apollo 1 spacecraft.
1967 U.S., U.K. and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty The treaty bans the deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space and limits the use of the Moon to peaceful purposes.
1973 A cease fire in Vietnam is called as the Paris peace accords are signed by the United States and North Vietnam.
1978 The State Supreme Court rules that Nazis can display the Swastika in a march in Skokie, Illinois.
1997 It was revealed that French national museums were holding nearly 2,000 works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis during World War II.
1998 U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Today” show. She charged that the allegations against her husband were the work of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
2002 A series of explosions occurred at a military dump in Lagos, Nigeria. More than 1,000 people were killed in the blast and in the attempt to escape.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
