1947 – U.S. President Truman established the “Truman Doctrine” to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.
0515 BC – Construction is completed on the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
0538 – Witiges, king of the Ostrogoths ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of the victorious Roman general, Belisarius
1455 – First record of Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the bible printed a year before
1496 – Jews were expelled from Syria.
1609 – The Bermuda Islands became an English colony.
1619 – Dutch settlement on Java changes name to Batavia
1664 – New Jersey became a British colony. King Charles II granted land in the New World to his brother James (The Duke of York).
1689 – Former English King James II lands in Ireland
1773 – Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable found settlement now known as Chicago
1789 – The U.S. Post Office was established.
1790 – French Revolution: The National Assembly issues a decree allowing for the sale of church land by French municipalities
1809 – Britain signed a treaty with Persia forcing the French to leave the country.
1849 – The first gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en route to California
1863 – President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address.
1868 – Congress abolishes manufacturer’s tax
1894 – Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time.
1903 – The Czar of Russia issued a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout his territory.
1904 – Andrew Carnegie establishes Carnegie Hero Fund
1905 – The continuing strikes and disorders that unsettle Italy force out Premier Giovanni Giolitti, though he will return in March, 1906
1906 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations must yield incriminating evidence in anti-trust suits.
1909 – Three U.S. warships were ordered to Nicaragua to stem the conflict with El Salvador.
1911 – Dr. Fletcher of Rockefeller Institute discovered the cause of infantile paralysis.
1912 – The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the U.S..
1917 – In the wake of the February Revolution, Communist Party members Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Matvei Muranov arrive in Petrograd (St Petersburg) and seize control of the Pravda newspaper
1918 – Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint-Petersburg held this status for 215 years.
1923 – Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated phonofilm. It was his technique for putting sound on motion picture film.
1930 – Ghandi began his 200-mile march to the sea that symbolized his defiance of British rule over India.
1932 – The so-called “Swedish Match King”, Ivar Kreuger, commits suicide in Paris, leaving behind a financial empire that turns out to be worthless
1933 – President Paul von Hindenburg dropped the flag of the German Republic and ordered that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.
1934 – Communist revolutionary Josip Broz Tito freed from jail
1938 – The “Anschluss” took place: Germans enter Vienna, and 183,000 Jews in Austria fall under Nazi control. Within one month, 500 Jews commit suicide.
1940 – Finland surrendered to Russia ending the Russo-Finnish War.
1944 – Britain barred all travel to Ireland.
1945 – New York is the first to prohibit discrimination by race & creed in employment
1947 – U.S. President Truman established the “Truman Doctrine” to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/truman-doctrine-is-announced
1950 – Belgium votes (58%) for return of King Leopold III
1957 – Random House and Houghton-Mifflin co-publish “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss
1959 – The U.S. House joined the U.S. Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii.
1964 – Malcolm X resigns from Nation of Islam
1967 – Indonesian congress strips President Sukarno of authority and names General Suharto as acting President
1970 – US lowers voting age from 21 to 18
1974 – “Wonder Woman” debuted on ABC-TV. The show later went to CBS-TV.
1977 – Egypt’s Anwar Sadat pledges to regain Arab territory from Israel
1980 – Jury finds John Wayne Gacy guilty of murdering 33 in Chicago
1984 – Lebanese President Gemayel opened the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war.
1985 – The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. began arms control talks in Geneva.
1985 – Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced that he planned to drop Secret Service protection and hire his own bodyguards in an effort to lower the deficit by $3 million.
1989 – About 2,500 veterans and supporters marched at the Art Institute of Chicago to demand that officials remove an American flag placed on the floor as part of an exhibit.
1990 – LA Raiders announce their return to Oakland
1992 – Mauritius became a republic but remained a member of the British Commonwealth.
1993 – In the U.S., the Pentagon called for the closure of 31 major military bases.
1994 – A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell of the Loch Ness monster was confirmed to be a hoax. The photo was taken of a toy submarine with a head and neck attached.
1998 – Astronomers cancelled a warning that a mile-wide asteroid might collide with Earth saying that calculations had been off by 600,000 miles.
1999 – Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic became members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). All three countries were members of the former Warsaw Pact.
2002 – U.S. homeland security chief Tom Ridge unveiled a color-coded system for terror warnings.
2003 – In Utah, Elizabeth Smart was reunited with her family nine months after she was abducted from her home. She had been taken on June 5, 2002, by a drifter that had previously worked at the Smart home.
2004 – Roh Moo-hyun, President of South Korea is impeached by its national assembly for the first time in the nation’s history
2009 – It was announced that the Sears Tower in Chicago, IL, would be renamed Willis Tower.
2012 – 100 people are killed in ethnic clashes and cattle raids in South Sudan
2018 – Civilian death toll in Eastern Ghouta passes 1,000 in three weeks as Syrian government forces capture the town of Mesraba
2019 – Dozens charged in US college admission scandal by US federal prosecutors, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman
2020 – US President Trump bans travel with 26 European countries, though not the UK, due to COVID-19 (UK and Ireland added a day later)
2022 – Saudi Arabia executes 81 convicted criminals, the country’s largest known mass execution in modern times
2023 – Half a million Israeli’s protest plans by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the country’s judicial system for tenth week in a row
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
