2002 – The U.S. Justice Department announced that it was pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron Corp. The company had filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001.
475 – Byzantine Emperor Zeno is forced to flee his capital at Constantinople
1317 – Phillips V, the Tall, crowned King of France
1349 – 700 Jews of Basel Switzerland, burned alive in their houses
1431 – The trial against Joan of Arc begins, She was executed on May 30, 1431, exonerated in 1456, and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.
1493 – 1st sight of manatees by Christopher Columbus
1570 – Tsar Ivan the Terrible kills 1,000-2,000 residents of Novgorod
1718 – France declares war on Spain
1768 – Philip Astley opens the world’s first modern circus, The British equestrian, who is considered the father of modern circus, opened a riding school in London where he also performed tricks for an audience in the afternoons.
1793 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard made the first successful balloon flight in the U.S.
1788 – Connecticut became the 5th state to join the United States.
1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduced income tax, at two shillings (10p) in the pound, to raise funds for the Napoleonic Wars.
1806 – Admiral Viscount Horatio Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul’s Cathedral, London
1848 – People’s uprising in Palermo, Sicily
1858 – Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, commits suicide
1861 – The state of Mississippi seceded from the United States.
1861 – A Union merchant ship, the Star of the West, is fired upon as it tries to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
1862 – The first petroleum shipment (1,329 barrels) from the U.S. to Europe arrives at Victoria Docks, London, England aboard the Elizabeth Watts
1868 – Last convict ship the Hougoumont arrives in Fremantle, ending 80 years of penal transportation to Australia
1879 – Cheyenne prisoners led by Dull Knife revolt at Ft Robinson
1894 – The New England Telephone and Telegraph Company put the first battery-operated switchboard into operation in Lexington, MA.
1903 – Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota, established
1905 – In Russia, the civil disturbances known as the Revolution of 1905 forced Czar Nicholas II to grant some civil rights.
1909 – Ernest Shackleton as part of the British Nimrod Expedition reaches a record farthest South latitude (88°23′ south)
1916 – The Ottoman Empire prevails in the Battle of Çanakkale, as the last British troops evacuated
1929 – The Seeing Eye was incorporated in Nashville, TN. The company’s purpose was to train dogs to guide the blind.
1930 – Albert Kahn Associates architectural firm become consulting architects for all industrial construction in the Soviet Union
1936 – The United States Army adopted the semi-automatic rifle.
1937 – Italian regime bans marriages between Italians & Abyssinians
1940 – Television was used for the first time to present a sales meeting to convention delegates in New York City.
1941 – 6,000 Jews murdered in a pogrom in Bucharest, Romania
1947 – Elizabeth “Betty” Short, the black dahlia, is last seen alive.
1951 – The United Nations headquarters officially opened in New York City.
1952 – Marines give notice that they will recall Ted Williams to active duty
1959 – Dam across Tera River in Northwestern Spain collapses after heavy winter rains, killing 135
1964 – Anti-US rioting broke out in Panama Canal Zone
1966 – Polish government denies exit visa to Cardinal Wyszynski, barring him from travel abroad
1969 – First trial flight of Concorde supersonic jetliner, Bristol, England
1972 – The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth was destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor.
1972 – British miners went on strike for the first time since 1926.
1975 – 600 employees of Royal Canadian Mint go on strike
1979 – K-Mart pulls Steve Martin’s “Let’s Get Small” for being in “bad taste”
1979 – Supreme Court strikes down (6-3) PA law requiring doctors performing an abortion to try to preserve lives of potentially viable fetuses
1980 – 63 beheaded in Mecca, Saudi Arabia
1984 – Clara Peller was first seen by TV viewers in the “Where’s the Beef?” commercial campaign for Wendy’s.
1986 – Kodak got out of the instant camera business after 10 years due to a loss in a court battle that claimed that Kodak copied Polaroid patents.
1987 – Chinese Vietnamese border fights, 1,500 killed
1990 – US Supreme Court strikes down Dallas’ ordinance imposing strict zoning on sexually oriented businesses
1991 – U.S. secretary of state Baker and Iraqi foreign minister Aziz met for 61/2 hours in Geneva, but failed to reach any agreement that would forestall war in the Persian Gulf.
1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Poliakov, 51, completed his 366th day in outer space aboard the Mir space station, breaking the record for the longest continuous time spent in outer space.
1997 – Tamil rebels attacked a military base in Sri Lanka. 200 soldiers and 140 rebels were killed.
1998 – Decapitated head of Danish Little Mermaid is returned
2002 – The U.S. Justice Department announced that it was pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron Corp. The company had filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001.
2003 – Archaeologists announced that they had found five more chambers in the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor. The rooms were believed to cover about 750,000 square feet.
2005 – The second Sudanese War ends, As an outcome, Southern Sudan is granted autonomy; in 2011, South Sudan becomes an independent nation.
2014 – Taliban suicide car bomb assassinates senior police officer Chaudhry Aslam and kills three others in Pakistan, Pakistan
2018 – Former White House strategist Steve Bannon leaves Breitbart News after his criticism of the White House in “Fire and the Fury” book
2018 – US President Trump cancels program allowing 200,000 Salvadorans temporary status to live in the US
2022 – At least 200 people killed and 10,000 displaced by armed bandits in northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara, after military raids on their hideouts, amid continuing struggle for order in the region
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
