1770 – Boston Massacre (Incident on King Street): British soldiers kill 5 men in a crowd throwing snowballs, stones and sticks at them. African American Crispus Attucks 1st to die; later held up as early black martyr. Massacre galvanizes anti-British feelings.
0363 – Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign that brings about his own death
1046 – Persian scholar Naser Khosrow begins the 7 year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama
1496 – English King Henry VII grants John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) a commission to explore for new lands
1558 – Smoking tobacco introduced into Europe by Spanish physician Francisco Fernandes
1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus’ revolutionary book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is banned by the Catholic Church. In the book, Copernicus claimed that the Earth revolves around the sun. The Church maintained Ptolemy’s geocentric system. The book is considered a milestone in the history of astronomy.
1623 – The first alcohol temperance law in the colonies was enacted in Virginia.
1624 – In the American colony of Virginia, the upper class was exempted from whipping by legislation.
1731 – Mission San Francisco de la Espada, first of the San Antonio missions, reestablished by Spanish missionaries on the bank of the San Antonio River
1766 – The first Spanish governor of Louisiana, Antonio de Ulloa, arrived in New Orleans.
1770 – Boston Massacre (Incident on King Street): British soldiers kill 5 men in a crowd throwing snowballs, stones and sticks at them. African American Crispus Attucks 1st to die; later held up as early black martyr. Massacre galvanizes anti-British feelings. https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/massacre.html
1793 – Austrian troops defeated the French and recaptured Liege.
1842 – A Mexican force of over 500 men under Rafael Vasquez invaded Texas for the first time since the revolution. They briefly occupied San Antonio, but soon headed back to the Rio Grande.
1845 – The U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to ship camels to the western U.S.
1867 – An abortive Fenian uprising against English rule took place in Ireland.
1868 – The U.S. Senate was organized into a court of impeachment to decide charges against President Andrew Johnson.
1900 – Two U.S. battleships left for Nicaragua to halt revolutionary disturbances.
1902 – In France, the National Congress of Miners decided to call for a general strike for an 8-hour day.
1907 – In St. Petersburg, Russia, the new Duma opened. 40,000 demonstrators were dispersed by troops.
1910 – In Philadelphia, PA, 60,000 people left their jobs to show support for striking transit workers.
1912 – The Italians became the first to use dirigibles for military purposes. They used them for reconnaissance flights behind Turkish lines west of Tripoli.
1918 – The Soviets moved the capital of Russia from Petrograd to Moscow.
1921 – The Durban Land Alienation Ordinance passes, enabling the Durban City Council to exclude Indians from ownership or occupation of property in white areas, South Africa
1923 – Old-age pension laws were enacted in the states of Montana and Nevada.
1928 – Hitler‘s National Socialists win the majority vote in Bavaria.
1933 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a four-day bank holiday in order to stop large amounts of money from being withdrawn from banks.
1934 – In Amarillo, TX, the first Mother’s-In-Law Day was celebrated.
1935 – 1st premature baby health law in US
1943 – Germany called fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds for military service due to war losses.
1946 – Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, popularizes the term and draws attention to the division of Europe https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/
1946 – The U.S. sent protests to the U.S.S.R. on incursions into Manchuria and Iran.
1953 – Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died. He had been in power for 29 years.
1956 – The U.S. Supreme Court affirms the ban on segregation in public schools in Brown vs. Board of Education.
1959 – Iran & US sign economic & military treaty
1960 – Alberto Korda takes his famous picture of revolutionary Che Guevara
1964 – Emergency crisis proclaimed in Ceylon due to social unrest
1970 – A nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it. Nuclear powers China, Russia, U.S., U.K., and France initiated the treaty in 1968. It has since been ratified by 190 nations around the world.
1970 – SDS Weathermen terrorist group bomb 18 West 11th St in NYC
1976 – Britain gives up on the Ulster talks and decides to retain rule in Northern Ireland indefinitely.
1977 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter appeared on CBS News with Walter Cronkite for the first “Dial-a-President” radio talk show.
1979 – Iran resumes petroleum exports
1981 – The home computer ZX81 is launched, The British ZX81 was one of the world’s first home computer and was sold over 1.5 million times.
1981 – US government grants Atlanta $1 million to search for black boy murderer
1984 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities had the right to display the Nativity scene as part of their Christmas display.
1984 – The U.S. accused Iraq of using poison gas.
1985 – Mexican authorities find the body of US drug agent Enrique “Kike” Camarena Salaazar
1997 – North Korea and South Korea met for first time in 25 years for peace talks.
1998 – NASA announced that an orbiting craft had found enough water on the moon to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
1998 – It was announced that Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins would lead crew of Columbia on a mission to launch a large X-ray telescope. She was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.
2001 – In Mecca, 35 Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
2003 – In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed by a Hamas suicide bomb in the Haifa bus 37 massacre.
2012 – 27 members of Iraq’s security force are killed by gunmen disguised as police in Haditha
2013 – Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolás Maduro assumes the presidency after the death of Hugo Chávez
2014 – A survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reports that about 1/3 of women in the European Union have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15
2016 – US air strike kills 150 Al-Shabaab militants north of Mogadishu, Somalia
2017 – US President Donald Trump in a tweet accuses former President Obama without offering any evidence of wiretapping Trump Towers during the presidential campaign
2019 – Bugatti announces the most expensive new car ever made – the La Voiture Noire costing €16.7 million (almost $19 million), only one will be made
2019 – Major study into the MMR vaccine involving over 650,000 children in Denmark finds it does not increase the risk of autism
2022 – Explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance that sank in 1915, rediscovered in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica in excellent condition
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
