TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 22
1457 Gutenberg Bible became the first printed book.
1622 Indians attack a group of colonists in the James River area of Virginia, killing 350 residents.
1664 Charles II gives large tracts of land from west of the Connecticut River to the east of Delaware Bay in North America to his brother James, the Duke of York.
1733 Joseph Priestly invented carbonated water (seltzer).
1765 Stamp Act passed; 1st direct British tax on American colonists, organized by Prime Minister George Grenville
1794 Congress passes laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries although slavery remains legal in the United States.
1832 British Parliament, led by Charles Grey, passes the Reform Act, introducing wide-ranging changes to electoral system of England and Wales, increasing electorate from about 500,000 voters to 813,000
1834 Horace Greeley publishes New Yorker, a weekly literary and news magazine and forerunner of Harold Ross’ more successful The New Yorker.
1872 Illinois became the first state to require sexual equality in employment.
1903 Niagara Falls ran out of water due to a drought.
1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill legalizing the sale and possession of beer and wine.
1935 Persia is renamed Iran.
1945 The Arab League was formed in Cairo, by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
1947 President Harry S. Truman issues an executive decree establishing a sweeping loyalty investigation of federal employees who needed to demonstrate complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.
1965 US confirms its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong
1972 The U.S. Senate passes the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment fails to achieve ratification.
1978 Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death while walking a cable strung between to hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1980 People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco.
1987 A barge loaded with 32,000 tons of refuse left Islip, NY, to find a place to unload. After being refused by several states and three countries space was found back in Islip.
1991 Pamela Smart is convicted for conspiring with her 16-year-old student lover, William Flynn, and three friends to kill her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire.
1993 The Intel Corporation produces the first Pentium microprocessor
1995 Colin Ferguson who had murdered six people and injured nineteen others on when he pulled out a gun and fired on other passengers on the Long Island Rail Road in Garden City, New York on December 7th, 1993. is sentenced to life in prison.
1997 Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth in the skies over the northern hemisphere. The comet’s next pass is predicted for the year 4397.
2010 The House of Representatives has voted to pass the landmark healthcare reform bill. The bill was passed by 219 votes to 212, with no Republican backing.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
