TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MAY 12
254 St. Stephen I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1588 King Henry III flees Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly enters the city.
1641 The chief advisor to Charles I, Thomas Wentworth, is beheaded in the Tower of London
1789 William Wilberforce makes his first major speech on abolition in the UK House of Commons, reasoning the slave trade morally reprehensible and an issue of natural justice
1847 – William Clayton invented the odometer.
1885 In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebel against the Canadian government.
1932 The body of Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found.
1935 Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio by “Bill W.,” a stockbroker, and “Dr. Bob S.,” a heart surgeon.
1941 The world’s first programmable, fully automatic computer is presented The Z3 was designed by German inventor, Konrad Zuse. The original machine was destroyed in an air raid. A replica can be seen at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
1949 The Berlin Blockade ends.
1966 Hundreds of thousands of College and University Students are preparing to sit the Draft Deferment Test , The test is a way for them to convince the Draft Board that they would serve the nation better in the quiet of the Classrooms than in the Jungles of Vietnam
1978 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.
1982 South Africa unveiled a plan that would give voting rights to citizens of Asian and mixed-race descent, but not to blacks.
1994 A bill has been sent to President Clinton making it a Federal Crime to block access to an abortion clinic or to use force or threats against people using these facilities. This is in response to over 1000 acts of violence at these facilities in the last 20 years.
2002 Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro becoming first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro’s 1959 revolution.
2003 In Texas, fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers went into hiding over a dispute with Republican’s over a congressional redistricting plan.
2013 Nineteen people were injured after a shooting occurred during a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans, Louisiana.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
