1835 – In the first assassination attempt against an USA President; Richard Lawrence attempts to assassinate President Andrew Jackson in the United States Capitol. Both pistols misfire, and Jackson proceeds to beat his would-be assassin with his cane.
1018 – The Holy Roman Empire and Poland conclude the Peace of Bautzen
1164 – English King Henry II passes the Constitutions of Clarendon, attempting to restrict power of the papal clergy in England – only Thomas Beckett objects, the beginning of their quarrel
1349 – Jews of Freilsburg Germany are massacred
1487 – Bell chimes invented
1522 – Duke of Albany takes captured French back to Scotland
1595 – Shakespere’s “Romeo and Juilet” was first performed
1646 – Father de Nouë, a Jesuit priest, freezes to death in a blizzard on the way to Fort Richelieu
1648 – Eighty Years’ War: The Treaty of Mnster signed, ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.
1649 – England’s King Charles I was beheaded.
1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is formally executed – after having been dead for two years
1790 – The first purpose-built lifeboat was launched on the River Tyne.
1797 – Congress refuses to accept first petitions from American blacks
1798 – The first brawl in the U.S. House of Representatives took place. Congressmen Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold fought on the House floor.
1806 – The original Lower Trenton Bridge (also called the Trenton Makes the World Takes Bridge), which spans the Delaware River between Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey, is opened.”
1815 – Burned Library of Congress reestablished with Jefferson’s 6500 volumes
1835 – In the first assassination attempt against an USA President, a mentally ill man named Richard Lawrence attempts to assassinate President Andrew Jackson in the United States Capitol. Both of Lawrence’s pistols misfire, and Jackson proceeds to beat his would-be assassin with his cane.
1844 – Richard Theodore Greener became the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.
1847 – The town of Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.
1862 – The U.S. Navy’s first ironclad warship, the “Monitor”, was launched.
1889 – Rudolph, crown prince of Austria, and his 17-year-old mistress, Baroness Marie Vetsera, were found shot in his hunting lodge at Mayerling, near Vienna.
1900 – The British fighting the Boers in South Africa ask for a larger army.
1907 – Korean National Debt Redemption Movement started by Seo Sang-dong of Daegu, attempt by the Korean public to repay debt to Japan to avoid further colonization
1911 – The first airplane rescue at sea was made by the destroyer “Terry.” Pilot James McCurdy was forced to land in the ocean about 10 miles from Havana, Cuba.
1913 – House of Lords rejects Irish Home Rule Bill
1925 – Government of Turkey throws Patriarch Constantine VI out of Istanbul.
1930 – Police arrest 9 members of the Standard Exchange for fraud; including members of the 5 biggest mining companies
1933 – “The Lone Ranger” was heard on radio for the first time. The program ran for 2,956 episodes and ended in 1955.
1942 – Hitler speaks at the Sports Palace in Berlin, “The war will end with the complete annihilation of the Jews.”
1943 – Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine: German Gestapo commence mass shootings of Jews from Letychiv Ghetto. 200 surviving Jews from Letychiv slave labor camp were ordered to undress and were shot with machine-gun into a ravine. Some 7,000 Jews were murdered in Letychiv
1945 – The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest maritime disaster in known history, killing roughly 9,000 people
1948 – Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist.
1950 – NBC-TV debuted “Robert Montgomery Presents.” The show lasted for seven seasons.
1951 – Belgium refuses to allow communists to make speeches on radio
1957 – US Congress accepts “Eisenhower Doctrine” – US offer of aid to an Arab countries threatened with communist aggression
1958 – The first two-way moving sidewalk was put in service at Love Field in Dallas, TX. The length of the walkway through the airport was 1,435 feet.
1962 – Two members of the “Flying Wallendas” high-wire act were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit, MI.
1964 – In Montreal Quebec terrorists raid armoury in Montreal for weapons and ammunition; group calling itself Comité révolutionnaire du Québe
1968 – The Tet Offensive began as Communist forces launched surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals.
1972 – In Northern Ireland, British soldiers shot and killed thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers. The day is known as “Bloody Sunday.”
1973 – Jury finds Watergate defendants Liddy & McCord guilty on all counts
1975 – Ernő Rubik applies for a patent for his “Magic Cube” invention, later to be known as a Rubik’s cube
1979 – The civilian government of Iran announced it had decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to return. He had been living in exile in France.
1982 – Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called “Elk Cloner”
1989 – Former defense attorney Joel Steinberg is convicted in New York of first-degree manslaughter in the death of his daughter, Lisa, aged 6
1992 – Inventor Ray Kurzweil publishes his first book “The Age of Intelligent Machines” on artificial intelligence, predicting the popularity of the internet
1995 – The U.N. Security Council authorized the deployment of a 6,000-member U.N. peace-keeping contingent to assume security responsibilities in Haiti from U.S. forces.
1996 – Gino Gallagher, the reputed leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, was shot and killed as he queued for his unemployment benefit.
1997 – A New Jersey judge ruled that the unborn child of a female prisoner must have legal representation. He denied the prisoner bail reduction to enable her to leave the jail and obtain an abortion.
1998 – The U.S. and Japan sign a pact allowing Americans to fly to Japan and other Asian destinations from more U.S. cities.
2002 – Slobodan Milosevic accused the U.N. war crimes tribunal of an “evil and hostile attack” against him. Milosevic was defending his actions during the Balkan wars.
2005 – In Iraq, the first free Parliamentary elections since 1958 took place.
2014 – 24 hostages are killed after 6 suicide bombers temporarily take over the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation in Baghdad
2016 – Boko Haram militants on motorcycles attack Dalori village near Maiduguri, Nigeria, killing at least 65 and injuring 136
2017 – In China, scientist revealed 540-million-year-old Saccorhytus in a fossil. The actual creature would have been about a millimeter in size.
2019 – Continuous 24 hr church mass lasting 97 days to prevent deportation of Armenian asylum seekers ends after Dutch authorities reconsider at Protestant Bethel Church in The Hague
2022 – Kurdish-led militia and American forces regain control of Sinaa prison in Hasaka, Syria, after a week-log assault by ISIS fighters, with the loss of 500 lives
2023 – Suicide bomb blast kills at least 100 and injures 157 people at a mosque for police officers in Peshawar, Pakistan
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
