TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: JULY 12
1096 Crusaders under Peter the Hermit reached Sofia, Bulgaria. There they met their Byzantine escort, which brought them safely the rest of the way to Constantinople. by August 1.
1290 Jews are expelled from England by order of King Edward I
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
1690 Battle of Boyne: in Ireland, Protestant King William III defeats English Catholic King James II
1862 President Abraham Lincoln signs into law a measure calling for the awarding of a U.S. Army Medal of Honor, in the name of Congress, “to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities during the present insurrection.” The previous December, Lincoln had approved a provision creating a U.S. Navy Medal of Valor, which was the basis of the Army Medal of Honor created by Congress in July 1862.
1913 150,000 Ulstermen gather and resolve to resist Irish Home Rule by force of arms; since the British Liberals have promised the Irish nationalists Home Rule, civil war appears imminent
1933 Congress passes 1st minimum wage law (33 cents per hour)
1951 Mob tries to keep black family from moving into all-white Cicero Ill
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.
1975 São Tomé and Príncipe gains independence from Portuguese rule
1979 Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands, gained its independence from the United Kingdom.
1982 FEMA promises survivors of a nuclear war will get their mail
1982 The last of the distinctive-looking Checker taxicabs rolled off the assembly line in Kalamazoo, MI.
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
1995 Heat Wave Wisconsin and Illinois kills 1,000
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.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
