TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JAN 8
1499 Louis XII of France after papal divorce marries Anne, Duchess of Brittany to keep the duchy for the crown
1656 Oldest surviving commercial newspaper begins (Haarlem, Netherlands)
1790 George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address
1798 11th Amendment ratified, judicial powers construed
1815 A rag-tag army under Andrew Jackson defeats the British on the fields of Chalmette in the Battle of New Orleans.
1835 US national debt is $0 for the first and only time in history
1870 US mint at Carson City NV begins issuing coins
1889 Computer pioneer Herman Hollerith patents his punched card calculator His invention paved the way for modern automatic computation.
1904 Pope Pius X banned low cut dresses in the presence of churchmen
1908 A subway line opens linking the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
1918 Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points peace program.
1926 Abdulaziz Ibn Saud becomes King of Nejd and Hejaz; forerunner of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
1940 Great Britain begins rationing sugar, meat and butter.
1946 President Harry S. Truman vows to stand by the Yalta accord on self-determination for the Balkans.
1951 Thought extinct since 1615, a Cahow is rediscovered in Bermuda
1954 President Dwight Eisenhower proposes stripping convicted Communists of their U.S. citizenship.
1964 President Lyndon Johnson announced his War on Poverty.
1973 Secret peace talks between US & North Vietnam resumed near Paris
1975 Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first female governor in the US who did not come into office by succeeding her husband.
1979 The United States advises the Shah to leave Iran.
1982 AT&T agrees to divest 22 subdivisions as part of an antitrust agreement.
1982 Justice Department withdraws antitrust suit against IBM, pending since 1969
1986 President Reagan freezes Libyan assets in the US
1989 Soviet Union promises to eliminate stockpiles of chemical weapons
1992 US President George Bush gets ill & vomits on Japanese prime minister’s lap during Japanese tour
1996 Blizzard buries eastern US causing at least 50 deaths
1996 For 1st time in 25 years no one is elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
1998 Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski asks to act as his own lawyer
2002 US President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act, intended to improve America’s educational system.
2011 An attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords is part of a shooting spree in which Jared Lee Loughner kills 6 and wounds 13.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
