TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 6
1540 Henry VIII of England marries his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage will last six months.
1649 The English Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial for treason and other “high crimes”
1773 Massachusetts slaves petition legislature for freedom
1838 Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of the telegraph.
1861 The Governor of Maryland, Thomas Hicks, announces his opposition to the state’s possible secession from the Union.
1907 Maria Montessori opens her first school Montessori’s revolutionary educational approach is practiced at about 30,000 schools today.
1910 Union leaders ask President William H. Taft to investigate U.S. Steel’s practices.
1912 New Mexico becomes the 47th U.S. state of the Union.
1912 Alfred Wegener, geophysicist and meteorologist, presents his controversial theory of continental drift in a lecture at a the Geological Association (Geologischen Vereinigung) at the Senckenberg-Museum, Frankfurt.
1914 Stock brokerage firm of Merrill Lynch founded
1921 The U.S. Navy orders the sale of 125 flying boats to encourage commercial aviation.
1929 Mother Theresa arrives in India
1941 US President Franklin Roosevelt makes his “Four Freedoms” speech (freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear) during his US State of Union address
1946 Ho Chi Minh wins in the Vietnamese elections.
1958 Moscow announces a reduction in its armed forces by 300,000.
1963 “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” with Marlin Perkins begins on NBC
1967 Over 16,000 U.S. and 14,000 Vietnamese troops start their biggest attack on the Iron Triangle, northwest of Saigon.
1971 Berkeley chemists announces 1st synthetic growth hormones
1973 “Schoolhouse Rock” premieres on ABC-TV with Multiplication Rock
1974 Daylight Saving Time commences nearly four months early to help in a bid to save energy during the 1973 energy crisis by reducing the requirements for residential lighting, which consumes about 3.5% of electricity in the U.S. and Canada
1980 Following strong competition from the new Japanese and European car makers President Jimmy Carter authorizes $1.2 billion in federal loans to save the failing Chrysler Corporation
1983 A gas tax increase was proposed by President Ronald Reagan. The intention was that this money would be set aside for national roads and bridges.
1987 Astronomers report sighting a new galaxy 12 billion light years away.
1994 Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan clubbed on leg by men including husband of rival skater Tonya Harding.
1995 A chemical fire caused during bomb making testing in the Doña Josefa Apartments complex in Manila, Philippines, leads to the discovery of plans for Project Bojinka, a mass-terrorist attack to blow up eleven airliners and their approximately 4000 passengers.
1996 One of the worst snow blizzards in US History started with up to 20 inches falling in a single day on the east coast in some areas and heavy wind gusts causing travel to be nearly impossible in many areas
2005 Former Ku Klux Klan organizer Edgar Ray Killen is arrested as a suspect in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi.
2014 US Senate confirms Janet Yellen as the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve Bank in the central bank’s 100-year history.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
