TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – JUNE 28
1635 The French colony of Guadeloupe is established in the Caribbean.
1776 Colonists repulse a British sea attack on Charleston, South Carolina.
1778 Mary “Molly Pitcher” Hays McCauley, wife of an American artilleryman, carries water to the soldiers during the Battle of Monmouth.
1839 Cinque and other Africans are kidnapped and sold into slavery in Cuba.
1874 The Freedmen’s Bank, created to assist former slaves in the United States, closes. Customers of the bank lose $3 million.
1884 Congress declares Labor Day a legal holiday.
1902 Congress passes the Spooner bill, authorizing a canal to be built across the Isthmus of Panama.
1911 Samuel J. Battle becomes the first African-American policeman in New York City.
1914 Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated at Sarajevo, Serbia.
1919 Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles under protest.
1938 Congress creates the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure construction loans.
1949 The last U.S. combat troops are called home from Korea, leaving only 500 advisers.
1950 General Douglas MacArthur arrives in South Korea as Seoul falls to the North.
1960 In Cuba, Fidel Castro confiscated American-owned oil refineries without compensation.
1964 Malcolm X founds the Organization for Afro-American Unity to seek independence for blacks in the Western Hemisphere.
1965 The first commercial satellite began communications service. It was Early Bird (Intelsat I).
1967 Israel annexes East Jerusalem From Israel’s point of view, the annexation effected the reunification of its capital city. However, the international community declared it illegal and views East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel.
1970 Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] stands before the Supreme Court regarding his refusal of induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.
1971 The Supreme Court overturns the draft evasion conviction of Muhammad Ali.
1972 Richard Nixon announces that no new draftees will be sent to Vietnam.
1976 The first women enter the U.S. Air Force Academy.
1978 The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the medical school at the University of California at Davis to admit Allan Bakke. Bakke, a white man, argued he had been a victim of reverse racial discrimination.
1997 Mike Tyson was disqualified for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear after three rounds of their WBA heavyweight title fight in Las Vegas, NV.
1999 Following nine straight years of economic growth in the US, the US Government says that its budget surplus will be $1,000bn which it plans to use for strengthening Medicare and paying off some of the countries $3,700bn national debt. The current National debt is $9.0 trillion or $90,000.0 billion or nearly 24 X what it was in 1990 just 9 years ago.
2000 Six-year-old Elián González returned to Cuba from the U.S. with his father. The child had been the center of an international custody dispute.
2000 The U.S. Supreme Court declared that a Nebraska law that outlawed “partial birth abortions” was unconstitutional. About 30 U.S. states had similar laws at the time of the ruling.
2001 Slobodan Milosevic was taken into custody and was handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The indictment charged Milosevic and four other senior officials, with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in Kosovo.
2004 The U.S. resumed diplomatic ties with Libya after a 24-year break.
2004 The US has transferred sovereignty of Iraq back to Iraq ending 15 months of US control in Iraq. Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his cabinet have now been sworn in and have made a televised address to the people of Iraq after formally taking office.
2010 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live.
2012 A controversial pageant was staged in Israel as contestants vied to win the title of the holocaust survivor beauty pageant. Fourteen elderly contestants paraded on stage and described the events they survived during the holocaust, organizers stated it was a celebration of life and critics stated it made light of a solemn and serious event. The winner was seventy-nine year old Hava Hershkovitz from Romania.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
