TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 26
363 Roman Emperor Julian dies, ending the Pagan Revival.
1483 Richard III usurped himself to the English throne.
1541 Former followers murder Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of Peru.
1804 The Lewis and Clark Expedition reaches the mouth of the Kansas River after completing a westward trek of nearly 400 river miles.
1819 The bicycle was patented by W. K. Clarkson.
1843 Hong Kong was proclaimed a British crown colony.
1900 The United States announces it will send troops to fight against the Boxer Rebellion in China.
1908 Shah Muhammad Ali’s forces squelch the reform elements of Parliament in Persia.
1926 A memorial to the first U.S. troops in France is unveiled at St. Nazaire.
1924 After eight years of occupation, American troops leave the Dominican Republic.
1936 The world’s first practical helicopter lifts off
The twin-rotor Focke-Wulf Fw 61 was first tested in Bremen, Germany. None of the first prototypes survived World War II but a replica can be seen at the Hubschraubermuseum in Bückeburg, Germany
1945 The U.N. Charter is signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, California.
1960 Congress is planning to cut the amount of sugar imported from Cuba and in retaliation Castro has stated Cuba will seize US assets
1961 A Kuwaiti vote opposes Iraq’s annexation plans.
1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy holds his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech
The speech was a welcome gesture of support for the people of West Berlin. East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall just two years earlier to stop mass emigration to the West.
1971 The U.S. Justice Department issues a warrant for Daniel Ellsberg, accusing him of giving away the Pentagon Papers.
1974 At a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a consumer purchased a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum. And for the first time, a laser beam in an NCR checkout terminal with a bar code reader read a UPC bar code symbol on the package and automatically rang up the purchase.
1975 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is convicted of election fraud.
1985 Wilbur Snapp was ejected after playing “Three Blind Mice” during a baseball game. The incident followed a call made by umpire Keith O’Connor.
1996 The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.
1997 The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that made it illegal to distribute indecent material on the Internet.
2000 The first map of the human genome, which required decoding more than 3 billion biochemical “letters” of human DNA, is completed.
2003 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is increasing it’s policing and increasing the number of lawsuits on those caught file sharing music and committing copyright violations. It is estimated that over 1 billion songs are file swapped each month.
2009 During a hearing on poppy crop security, the attorney general for Tasmania, Lara Giddings, reported that wallabies had been creating crop circles in poppy fields. She reported findings that wallabies had been eating opium poppies grown legally for medicinal purposes, getting high off of the poppies, and then wandering around the fields and crashing, creating crop circles and causing damage.
2013 Justices on the US Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma) discriminates against same-sex couples. The court also kept in place a lower court’s striking down of California’s Proposition 8, paving the way for same-sex marriage in states that recognize it.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
