TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 3
1496 Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.
1521 Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
1777 General George Washington defeats the British led by British General Lord Charles Cornwallis, at Princeton, New Jersey.
1823 Stephen F. Austin received a grant from the Mexican government and began colonization in the region of the Brazos River in Texas.
1861 Delaware rejects a proposal that it join the South in seceding from the Union.
1870 Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began.
1871 Henry W. Bradley patented oleomargarine.
1888 The drinking straw was patented by Marvin C. Stone.
1910 The Social Democratic Congress in Germany demands universal suffrage.
1916 Three armored Japanese cruisers are ordered to guard the Suez Canal.
1921 Italy halts the issuing of passports to those emigrating to the United States.
1921 The Studebaker Corporation has decided to no longer manufacture farm wagons. This company had been making these wagons since the year 1852. In 1902, the company had begun producing electric cars and then in 1904 they started producing gas-powered vehicles.
1924 King Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus is uncovered near Luxor, Egypt.
1925 Benito Mussolini dissolves Italian parliament/becomes dictator
1926 General Motors introduced a new make of car to the market. It was called the Pontiac.
1931 Hundreds of farmers storm a small town in depression-plagued Arkansas demanding food.
1938 Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself a victim of polio, founds the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was later renamed the March of Dimes Foundation
1946 President Harry S. Truman calls on Americans to spur Congress to act on the on-going labor crisis.
1946 William Joyce, (Lord Haw Haw), was hanged in Britain for high treason. He had broadcast Nazi propaganda telling the British and American soldiers to surrender with the first words of every broadcast beginning with the words “Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling”.
1947 Congressional proceedings were televised for the first time.
1958 Sir Edmund Hillary reached the South Pole overland.
1959 Alaska is admitted into the Union as the 49th and largest state.
1961 The United States breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.
1973 The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) sold the New York Yankees to a 12-man syndicate headed by George Steinbrenner for $10 million
1977 Apple Computers incorporates.
1985 President Ronald Reagan condemns a rash of arson attacks on abortion clinics.
1985 Israel government confirms resettlement of 10,000 Ethiopian Jews
1993 George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
1994 Millions of people from the former Apartheid Homelands gain South African citizenship
1999 Israeli authorities detained, and later expelled, 14 members of Concerned Christians. Israili officials claimed that the Denver, CO-based cult was plotting violence in Jerusalem to bring about the Second Coming of Christ.
2000 Charles M. Schulz’s final original daily comic strip appeared in newspapers.
2001 The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) charged the “Texas 7” with weapons violations. An autopsy showed that Office Aubrey Hawkins, killed by the convicts, had been shot 11 times and run over with a vehicle.
2008 The U.S. federal Minerals Management Service has announced it will hold a lease sale for exploration rights for oil and gas in a north-western region of Alaska which include sectors of the Chukchi Sea.
2009 Chrysler recieves a $4bn emergency loan
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
