TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: JUNE 14
1381 The Peasants’ Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, climaxes when rebels plunder and burn the Tower of London and kill the Archbishop of Canterbury.
1642 Massachusetts passes the first compulsory education law in the colonies.
1645 Battle of Naseby, Leicestershire: “New Model Army” under Oliver Cromwell & Thomas Fairfax beat royalists forces of English King Charles I
1775 The United States Army was founded.
1777 The Continental Congress authorizes the “stars and stripes” flag for the new United States.
1789 Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty arrives in Timor in a small boat. He had been forced to leave his ship when his crew mutinied.
1821 Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrenders his throne and realm to Ismail Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, bringing the 300 year old Sudanese kingdom to an end
1822 Charles Babbage proposes a “difference engine” in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled “Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables”
1846 A group of settlers declare California to be a republic.
1881 Player piano patented by John McTammany, Jr, Cambridge, Mass
1927 Nicaraguan President Porfirio Diaz signs a treaty with the U.S. allowing American intervention in his country.
1932 Representative Edward Eslick dies on the floor of the House of Representatives while pleading for the passage of the bonus bill.
1934 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet in Vienna
1940 Auschwitz concentration camp opens in Nazi controlled Poland with Polish POWs (approx. 3 million would die within its walls)
1941 Estonia loses 11,000 inhabitants as a consequence of mass deportations into Siberia
1942 The Supreme Court rules that requiring students to salute the American flag is unconstitutional.
1949 Albert II becomes the first monkey in space
1951 The first commercial computer, Univac I, was unveiled.
1953 Eisenhower condemns McCarthy’s book burning proposal
1954 Americans take part in the first nation-wide civil defense test against atomic attack.
1954 President Eisenhower signed the order inserting the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance.
1967 Mariner 5 was launched from Cape Kennedy, FL. The space probe’s flight took it past Venus.
1967 California Governor Ronald Reagan signs the Therapeutic Abortion Act, legalizing abortions in the state under certain circumstances, the second state after Colorado to do so
1973 US President Richard Nixon administration imposes 60-day economy-wide price freeze, superseding Special Rule No. 1 for oil companies
1982 The Falklands War ends After 74 days of fighting, British troops captured the capital, Stanley, prompting the Argentine forces to surrender and return the islands to British control.
1985 Lebanese Shiite Moslem gunmen hijack TWA 847 after Athens’ takeoff
1990 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld police checkpoints that are used to examine drivers for signs of intoxication.
1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is nominated to the United States Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton
1995 Chechen rebels take 2,000 people hostage in a hospital in Russia.
2012 The world’s first stem-cell assisted vein transplant is undertaken by Swedish doctors on a 10 year old girl
2013 The US government charges NSA leaker Edward Snowden with violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
