TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 18
64 Great Fire of Rome begins under the Emperor Nero
1536 The authority of the pope was declared void in England.
1789 Robespierre, a deputy from Arras, France, decides to back the French Revolution.
1812 Great Britain signs the Treaty of Orebro, making peace with Russia and Sweden.
1877 Inventor Thomas Edison records the human voice for the first time.
1872 The Ballot Act is passed in Great Britain, providing for secret election ballots.
1925 Nazi leader Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf which was a bitter and turgid narrative filled with anti-Semitic outpourings, disdain for morality, worship of power, and the blueprints for his plan of Nazi world domination.
1936 The Spanish Civil War starts as a revolt by right wing Spanish military officers in Morocco which spreads to mainland Spain. From the Canary Islands, General Francisco Franco broadcasts a message calling for all army officers to join the uprising and overthrow Spain’s leftist Republican government.
1936 The first Oscar Meyer Wienermobile rolled out of General Body Company’s factory in Chicago, IL.
1942 The German Me-262, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly in combat, made its first flight.
1947 U.S. President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
1968 Intel is founded Founded in Santa Clara, California, the Intel corporation is the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer.
1969 A car driven by Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy plunged off a narrow wooden bridge into a tidal pond after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island , Kennedy escaped the submerged car but his passenger, a secretary (Mary Jo Kopechne) who was riding with him, drowned in the accident. Kennedy was later convicted of leaving the scene of an accident.
1971 New Zealand and Australia announce they will pull their troops out of Vietnam.
1984 21 people were shot dead and 19 injured in a San Ysidro, California McDonald’s by James Oliver Huberty who had told his wife as he was leaving with 3 guns (A 9mm Uzi semi-automatic, Winchester pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun, a 9mm Browning HP) that he was “hunting humans”. The killings only ended when he was fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper.
1993 Agathe Uwilingiyimana elected as Prime Minister of Rwanda Rwanda’s only female prime minister’s tenure was cut short when she was assassinated at the outset of the Rwandan genocide.
1994 In Buenos Aires, a massive car bomb kills 96 people.
2012 Laszlo Csatary, a ninety-seven year old suspected Nazi war criminal was detained and put under house arrest in Budapest. Csatary was a Hungarian police officer who the Simon Wiesenthal Center believed took part in the deportation of 15,700 Jews from the city of Kosice to the Auschwitz death camp.
