TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 12
1096 Crusaders under Peter the Hermit reach Sofia in Hungary.
1543 England’s King Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr.
1679 Britain’s King Charles II ratifies Habeas Corpus Act allowing prisoners right to be imprisoned to be examined by a court
1691 William III defeats the allied Irish and French armies at the Battle of Aughrim, Ireland.
1862 Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.
1933 A minimum wage of 40 cents an hour was established in the U.S.
1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposes a highway modernization program, with costs to be shared by federal and state governments.
1957 The U.S. surgeon general, Leroy E. Burney, reports that there is a direct link between smoking and lung cancer.
1960 The first Etch-A-Sketch went on sale.
1963 The infamous moors murderers begin their killing spree when 16 yr old Pauline Reade is abducted by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the so-called “Moors Murderers,” launching a series of cruel murders lasting over two years.
1967 Race riots break out in Newark, New Jersey, killing 26 people and injuring several others
1974 G. Gordon Liddy, John Ehrlichman and two others are convicted of conspiracy and perjury in connection with the Watergate scandal.
1982 The last of the distinctive-looking Checker taxicabs rolled off the assembly line in Kalamazoo, MI.
1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale chooses Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.
1990 After the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as head of the Soviet Communist Party, Boris Yeltsin, president of the Republic of Russia, announces his resignation from the Soviet Communist Party. This was a blow to Gorbachev who was hoping to keep all parts and factions of the Communist party working together.
1995 A heat wave that effects Illinois and Wisconsin starts when a heat advisory is issued in Chicago, Illinois, warning of an impending record-breaking heat wave. By the time the heat wave ends one week later, nearly 2,000 people are dead in Illinois and Wisconsin with temperatures being recorded in Chicago up to 106 degrees Fahrenheit.
2008 The IndyMac Bank, based in California, failed on this day. The bank became the fifth to fail in the United States in 2008, and became one of the largest financial institutions to fail in United States history.
2013 Ireland’s lower house in parliament voted in favor of legalizing abortion in cases where it would save the life of the mother. This is the first time the Irish government has voted in favor of any type of abortion.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
