TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JULY 23
1215 Frederick II crowned King of the Romans (King of the Germans) in Aachen
1637 King Charles of England hands over the American colony of Massachusetts to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the founders of the Council of New England.
1664 Wealthy, non-church members in Massachusetts are given the right to vote.
1715 The first lighthouse in America was authorized for construction at Little Brewster Island, Massachusetts.
1803 Irish patriots throughout the country rebel against Union with Great Britain.
1829 William A. Burt patents his “typographer,” an early typewriter.
1840 Union Act passed by British Parliament, uniting Upper & Lower Canada
1865 William Booth founds the Salvation Army.
1868 The 14th Amendment is ratified, granting citizenship to African Americans.
1903 The Ford Motor Company sells its first automobile, the Model A.
1904 The ice cream cone was invented by Charles E. Menches during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, MO.
1952 A military coup d’etat in Egypt headed by Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser’s Society of Free Officers seizes control of the government. Following the revolution King Farouk I of Egypt abdicates
1962 The Geneva Conference on Laos forbids the United States to invade eastern Laos.
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson began pushing for a War on Poverty requesting $962,000 from Congress for improving literacy, drug rehabilitation and employment programs.
1967 One of the worst riots in U.S. history breaks out in the heart of Detroit’s predominantly African American inner city. By the time it was ended four days later on July 27th by 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned.
1972 The first satellite in the US’s LANDSAT program, the Landsat discovered an uninhabited island off the eastern coast of Canada in 1976. The island is now called Landsat Island.
1974 Following a military coup seizing power in Greece in April 1967 Constantine Karamanlis had been in self imposed exile in France . On this day the military leadership has invited him back to form a new government hoping his popularity with both the Greek people and Turkish leadership will avert an all out war over Cyprus. Turkish forces invaded Cyprus 2 days earlier.
1976 4,000 delegates from the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Legion met at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia for a four-day gathering. Several days after the event ended, many attendees became sick. By August 2nd, 22 people were dead and hundreds connected to the gathering were experiencing pneumonia-like symptoms. The cause was traced back to an aquatic microorganism bacteria at the hotel and the disease was later called Legionnaires disease.
1982 The International Whaling Commission (IWC) passed a resolution to restrict commercial whaling and ban it completely after 1986. 25 countries voted to put the restrictions and ban in place.
1984 Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, gave up her crown after sexually explicit photos of her appeared in the September issue of Penthouse magazine.
1985 Commodore unveiled the personal computer Amiga 1000.
1995 Two astronomers, Alan Hale in New Mexico and Thomas Bopp in Arizona, almost simultaneously discover a comet.Comet Hale-Bopp
2003 The Massachusetts attorney general report claims clergy members and others in the Boston Archdiocese possibly sexually abused more than 1,000 children over sixty years.
2006 Doctors in Germany continued rolling strikes with demands for better working conditions and higher wages. This strike affected up to 700 hospitals in Germany for over a month. Nearly 70,000 doctors alternated protests while still providing basic emergency care for patients in the country.
2007 A coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans sues the United States government on claims that they have been denied mental health care and disability payments. The group claimed that the Department of Veteran Affairs would purposely mislabel soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder so the government would not have to pay for treatment.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
