TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 23
1490 1st dated edition of Maimonides “Mishneh Torah”, a code of Jewish religious law is published
1593 English Separatist Puritans John Greenwood and Henry Barrowe tried and sentenced to death on the charge of devising and circulating seditious books
1743 Handel’s Messiah is performed for the first time in London.
1752 Pope Stephen II elected to succeed Zacharias, dies 2 days later
1775 American revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, while addressing the House of Burgesses, declares “give me liberty, or give me death!”
1791 Etta Palm, a Dutch champion of woman’s rights, sets up a group of women’s clubs called the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.
1857 Elisha Otis installs the first modern passenger elevator in a public building, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.
1858 Eleazer A. Gardner of Philadelphia patents the cable street car, which runs on overhead cables.
1880 John Stevens of Neenah, Wis., patents the grain crushing mill. This mill allows flour production to increase by 70 percent.
1901 A group of U.S. Army soldiers, led by Brigadier General Frederick Funston, capture Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Insurrection of 1899.
1903 The Wright brothers obtain an airplane patent.
1909 British Lt. Ernest Shackleton finds the magnetic South Pole.
1909 Theodore Roosevelt begins an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
1912 The Dixie Cup was invented.
1919 Benito Mussolini establishes the Fascist Party, just 2 years later in 1922 they took over power in Italy and ruled until 1943.
1933 The Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree.
1942 More than 600 Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast assembled at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl under military orders to evacuate to a camp in Owens Valley, California.
1956 Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, although it is still within the British Commonwealth.
1970 Mafia boss Carlo Gambino is arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.
1980 – The deposed shah of Iran, Muhammad Riza Pahlavi, left Panama for Egypt.
1981 U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.
1981 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could require, with some exceptions, parental notification when teenage girls seek abortions.
1983 President Ronald Reagan proposes that the United States starts a program to develop antimissile technology that would make the country nearly impervious to attack by nuclear missiles often called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
1989 Two electrochemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, announced that they had created nuclear fusion in a test tube at room temperature.
1998 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that term limits for state lawmakers were constitutional.
2001 Mir Russia’s and the worlds first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space ended 15 yrs in space when it is decommissioned and ends with a planned fiery plunge into the South Pacific.
2002 A news report indicates that President George Bush requested an extra $27 billion from Congress for use on the war against terrorism. While Bush was visiting in El Paso, Texas he said that the “price of freedom is never too high” as far as he was concerned.
2008 The number of United States military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion has passed the 4,000 mark
2010 President Obama has signed his healthcare bill, which has been hailed as the most expansive social legislation in decades, saying it enshrines “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
