TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 16
622 Muslim Era begins – Muhammad begins flight from Mecca to Medina (Hijra)
1519 Public debate between Martin Luther & theologist John Eck at Pleissenburg Castle in Liepzig, Luther denies the divine right of the Pope
1791 Louis XVI was suspended from office until he agreed to ratify the constitution.
1875 The new French constitution is finalized.
1918 Czar Nicholas and his family are murdered by Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg, Russia.
1935 The first parking meters were installed in Oklahoma City.
1942 French police officers rounded up 13,000 Jews and held them in the Winter Velodrome. The round-up was part of an agreement between Pierre Laval and the Nazis. Germany had agreed to not deport French Jews if France arrested foreign Jews.
1945 The United States detonates the first atomic bomb in a test at Alamogordo, N. M.
1951 The Catcher in the Rye is published
1969 Apollo 11 blasts off from Cape Kennedy, Florida, heading for a landing on the moon.
1973 During a senate investigation into the Watergate Affair a former White House aide reveals the existence of a secret taping system which would contain tapes possibly incriminating President Nixon.
1979 Iraqi president, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns The fourth president of Iraq resigned from his post citing health reasons and promoted his Vice President, Saddam Hussein to the post of President.
1995 Amazon.com Sells its First Book The e-commerce website was first founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookstore. The first book sold by the Internet giant was Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas Hofstadter.
1999 A private plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. is lost over the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
2002 President George W. Bush announces his plan for strengthening homeland security in the wake of the September 11th, 2001, (911) terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., in which nearly 3,000 people had been killed. He created the Department of Homeland Security and the color-coded warning system that identified different levels of threat.
2004 Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months in prison and a two year period of supervised release (to include five months of home confinement) by a federal judge in New York for conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators.
2009 Dongfan Chung, a former engineer employed by Boeing and Rockwell International, was found guilty of economic espionage on this day. Chung, a Chinese born naturalized United States citizen was accused of giving secretive information about space shuttle technology to China.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
