0241 BC – The Roman fleet sank 50 Carthaginian ships in the Battle of Aegusa.
418 – Jews are excluded from public office in the Roman Empire
1496 – Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere when he left Hispaniola for Spain.
1629 – England’s King Charles I dissolved Parliament and did not call it back for 11 years.
1656 – In the American colony of Virginia, suffrage was extended to all free men regardless of their religion.
1762 – French Huguenot Jean Calas, who was wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspires Voltaire to begin campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform
1783 – USS Alliance under Captain Barry fights and wins last naval battle of US Revolutionary War off Cape Canaveral
1848 – The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico.
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful call with the telephone. He spoke the words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
1900 – Regents for the King of Uganda and leading chiefs sign a treaty with Great Britain agreeing to the organization of the government, taxation, courts, military, and other functions of their country, which is under British protection.
1903 – In New York’s harbor, the disease-stricken ship Karmania was quarantined with six dead from cholera.
1906 – In France, 1,200 miners were buried in an explosion at Courrieres.
1912 – China became a republic after the overthrow of the Manchu Ch’ing Dynasty.
1924 – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York state law forbidding late-night work for women.
1933 – Nevada became the first U.S. state to regulate drugs.
1948 – The body of Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s anti-Communist foreign minister was found. Officially a suicide, the real cause of death has never been proven.
1949 – Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as “Axis Sally,” was convicted in Washington, DC. Gillars was convicted of treason and served 12 years in prison.
1953 – North Korean gunners at Wonsan fired upon the USS Missouri. The ship responded by firing 998 rounds at the enemy position.
1966 – North Vietnamese capture US Green Beret Camp at Ashau Valley
1966 – France withdrew from NATO’s military command to protest U.S. dominance of the alliance and asked NATO to move its headquarters from Paris.
1969 – James Earl Ray pled guilty in Memphis, TN, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Ray later repudiated the guilty plea and maintained his innocence until his death in April of 1998.
1971 – The U.S. Senate approved an amendment to lower the voting age to 18.
1982 – The U.S. banned Libyan oil imports due to their continued support of terrorism.
1990 – Haitian President Prosper Avril was ousted 18 months after seizing power in a coup.
1993 – Physician David Gunn shot and killed by anti-abortionist Michael Frederick Griffin in Pensacola, Florida, first anti-abortion murder of a doctor in the US
1998 – U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf began receiving the first vaccinations against anthrax.
2002 – The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon informed the U.S. Congress in January that it was making contingency plans for the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that threaten the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq and North Korea.
2003 – North Korea test-fired a short-range missile. The event was one of several in a pattern of unusual military maneuvers.
2014 – German Chancellor Angela Merkel warns Russia’s Vladimir Putin that making Crimea part of Russia is illegal and in violation of Ukraine’s constitution
2020 – Russian lower house of Parliament passes legislation to allow Vladimir Putin to hold office of President for life
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
