TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 29
1595 William Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet” is thought to have been first performed. Officially published early 1597.
1795 United States Naturalization Act The United States Naturalization Act of 1795 repealed and replaced the earlier Act of 1790 changes included increasing the period of required residence from two to five years and The Act specified that naturalized citizenship was reserved only for “free white person[s].”
1802 John Beckley became the first Librarian of Congress. He was paid $2 a day.
1820 Britain’s King George III died insane at Windsor Castle.
1845 Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is published
1850 Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.
1861 Kansas is admitted into the Union as the 34th state.
1865 William Quantrill and his Confederate raiders attack Danville, Kentucky.
1886 1st successful gasoline powered car patented by Karl Benz in Karlsruhe, Germany
1892 The Coca-Cola Company, is incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia
1926 Violette Neatley Anderson becomes the first African-American woman admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
1929 The Seeing Eye, America’s first school for training dogs to guide the blind, founded in Nashville, Tennessee.
1942 German and Italian troops take Benghazi in North Africa.
1944 The world’s greatest warship, Missouri, is launched.
1950 Riots break out in Johannesburg, South Africa, over the policy of Apartheid.
1959 Disney releases the animated film Sleeping Beauty to theatres
1976 Twelve bomb have been exploded in London’s West End during the night, most of Oxford Street is closed for the rest of the day while searches by the bomb squad continue for more bombs. The IRA later admitted it had planted the bombs as part of it’s campaign against the British government.
1979 President Jimmy Carter commutes the sentence of Patty Hearst.
1979 Brenda Spencer only 16 years old at the time kills two men and wounds nine children as they enter the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. According to one source, Spencer had blamed the killings she had done on the fact that it was Monday, and that she did not like Mondays. She was known for other violent behavior as well, such as repeatedly shooting BB guns at the windows of this school (Grover Cleveland elementary school).
1991 Iraqi forces attack into Saudi Arabian town of Kafji, but are turned back by Coalition forces.
1996 France stops nuclear testing President Jaques Chirac announced the “definite end” to France’s nuclear testing program just 1 day after the country exploded a nuclear device in the South Pacific.
1998 A bomb exploded at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama just days after the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortions within the United States.
1999 The U.S. Senate delivered subpoenas for Monica Lewinsky and two presidential advisers for private, videotaped testimony in the impeachment trial.
2002 US President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address describes “regimes that sponsor terror” an “Axis of Evil”, which includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
