49 BC – Julius Caesar defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering “alea iacta est” (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war which would lead to his appointment as Roman dictator for life
532 – Constantinople chariot racing green and blue supporters due to be executed escape, prompting Nika revolt
1430 – Catholic Order of the Golden Fleece founded in Bruges in celebration of the prosperous and wealthy domains of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy
1776 – “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine was published.
1801 – William Henry Harrison is appointed as the first governor of the Indiana Territory
1861 – Florida seceded from the United States.
1863 – Prime Minister Gladstone opened the first section of the London Underground Railway system, from Paddington to Farringdon Street.
1883 – Fire at uninsured Newhall Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin kills 71. General Tom Thumb of P. T. Barnum fame, escapes unhurt
1897 – Ukrainian bacteriologist Wademar Haffkine performs the first human trial for a vaccine for the plague on himself during the Bombay epidemic
1914 – Yuan Shih-k’ai, president of the new Chinese republic, dissolves parliament and prepares a constitution of his own design: he will set himself up as dictator, preparatory to an attempt to make himself emperor
1916 – In retaliation for President Woodrow Wilson’s recognition of the Carranza government, members of Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army take 17 US mining engineers from a train and shoot 16 of them in cold blood
1920 – The League of Nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I with Germany.
1927 – Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” was first shown, in Berlin. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/
1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Miami, FL, to Trinidad thus becoming the first American President to visit a foreign country during wartime.
1957 – Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick rules Bing Crosby can keep token stock in Detroit Tigers, even though he owns part of Pittsburgh Pirates
1964 – Panama severs diplomatic relations with US
1966 – The Georgia House of Representatives votes 184-12 to deny Julian Bond his seat as a result of his opposition to the Vietnam War
1971 – “Masterpiece Theatre” premiered on PBS with host Alistair Cooke. The introduction drama series was “The First Churchills.”
1973 – For the first time graduates studying from home with ‘the Open University’ receive their degrees
1984 – US re-establishes full diplomatic relations with Vatican after almost 117 years
1990 – China lifts martial law, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989
1994 – In Manassas, VA, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial. She had been charged with maliciously wounding her husband John. She was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.
2001 – The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will not be designated as a national monument, the White House announces; a move environmentalist groups had been pressing for to prevent oil drilling
2003 – North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
2020 – The green Ford Mustang from the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller “Bullitt” was sold for $3.4 million at the Mecum Auctions event in Kissimmee, FL.
2021 – America records more than 3,000 deaths a day for the first time reaching 3,249, passing 375,000 deaths in total a day later
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
