TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 13
1519 Hernando Cortez lands in what will become Mexico.
1639 Cambridge College was renamed Harvard University.
1660 A statute is passed limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia
1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
1781 Astronomer William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus, which he names ‘Georgium Sidus,’ in honor of King George III
1793 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin.
1852 Uncle Sam makes his debut “Uncle Sam” cartoon appeared for the first time in N.Y. Lantern weekly.
1861 Jefferson Davis signs a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the Confederacy.
1881 Czar Alexander II is assassinated when a bomb is thrown at him near his palace.
1903 Fall of the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria, the British claim supremacy on over 500,000 square miles
1918 Women are scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men.
1925 Tennessee passed a bill prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools.
1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory
1933 Josef Göbbels becomes German minister of Information & Propaganda
1942 Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps becomes the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army.
1943 Failed assassin attempt on Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight
1951 Israel demands DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany
1974 The U.S. Senate votes 54-33 to restore the death penalty.
1974 Arab nations decide to end the oil embargo on the United States.
1991 Exxon pays $1-billion dollars in fines & cleanup of Valdez oil spill (Prince William Sound, Alaska)
1992 FCC rules companies can own 30 AM & 30 FM stations (formerly 12)
1996 Thomas Hamilton kills 16 kindergardeners, their teacher & himself
2012 The Encyclopaedia Britannica discontinued its print edition after 244 years.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
