1869 – Central Pacific and Union Pacific Rail Roads meet in Promontory, UT. A golden spike was driven in at the celebration of the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S.
1267 – Vienna’s church orders all Jews to wear a distinctive garb
1427 – Jews are expelled from Bern, Switzerland
1559 – Scottish Protestants under John Knox uprise against queen mother Mary
1652 – John Johnson, a free African American, is granted 550 acres in Northampton, Virginia
1768 – John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for “The North Briton” severely criticizing King George III. This action provokes rioting in London.
1774 – Louis XVI ascended the throne of France.
1775 – Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold led an attack on the British Fort Ticonderoga and captured it from the British.
1797 – 1st US Navy ship, the “United States,” is launched
1837 – Panic of 1837: New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels.
1840 – Mormon leader Joseph Smith moved his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they had experienced in Missouri.
1849 – Astor Place Riot: Backers of American actor and working class hero Edwin Forrest attempt to disrupt British actor William McReady’s performance at Astor Place Opera House in NYC; Military troops supporting police shoot at the crowd, killing between 22 and 31
1865 – Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union troops near Irvinville, GA.
1869 – Central Pacific and Union Pacific Rail Roads meet in Promontory, UT. A golden spike was driven in at the celebration of the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S.
1872 – Victoria Woodhull becomes 1st woman nominated for US presidency by Equal Rights Party at Apollo Hall, NYC
1894 – Hong Kong government declares port is infected with the plague. The outbreak will go on to kill 20,489 over 29 years.
1915 – Canadian physician Cluny MacPherson first presents his gas mask invention to the British War Office
1924 – J. Edgar Hoover appointed head of FBI
1933 – Nazis ceremonially burn about 25,000 allegedly “un-German” books – The book burnings were part of the right-wing German Student Union’s Action against the Un-German Spirit. Among the burnt books were works by Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud, and Franz Kafka.
1941 – Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, parachutes into Scotland to broker a peace agreement
1960 – US atomic submarine USS Triton completes 1st submerged circumnavigation of the globe
1962 – Marvel Comics published the first issue of “The Incredible Hulk.”
1968 – Vietnam peace talks began in Paris between the US and North Vietnam
1969 – In an interview with the ‘Belfast Telegraph’ former Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O’Neill states: “if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house, they will live like Protestants, … They will refuse to have 18 children”
1982 – WABC radio (NYC) plays its last record – John Lennon’s “Imagine” – and switches to all-talk format
1989 – General Manuel Noriega’s Panama government nullifies country’s elections, which the opposition had won by a 3-1 margin
1992 – Bible Lands Museum opens in Jerusalem Israel
1994 – Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa’s first black president
1999 – China broke off talks on human rights with the U.S. in response to NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
2001 – In Ghana, 121 people were killed in a stampede at a soccer game.
2002 – Robert Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. Hanssen, an FBI agent, had sold U.S. secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
2002 – Dr. Pepper announced that it would be introducing a new flavor, Red Fusion, for the first time in 117 years.
2005 – A hand grenade thrown by Vladimir Arutyunian lands about 65 feet (20 metres) from U.S. President George W. Bush while giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia, it malfunctions and does not detonate
2008 – Philippine court acquits Imelda Marcos in a 17-year-old case of 32 counts of illegal transfer of wealth totaling $863 million in Swiss bank accounts
2012 – Two bombings in Damascus, Syria, kill 55 people and injure 370
2017 – USGS releases a report saying that some glaciers in Montana have receded by 85% in the last 50 years
2018 – Israel fires missiles at 70 Iranian targets inside Syria after Iran fires missiles into the Golan Heights, with claims Israel struck first in attack on Baath
2019 – US begins raising tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports to 25% after trade talks fail
2021 – Violence escalates between Palestinians and Israelis after Israeli officers enter Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, rockets then fired from Gaza and airstrikes from Israel kill at least 31
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
