TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MAY 14
1610 French King Henri IV (Henri de Navarre) is assassinated by François Ravaillac, a fanatical monk.
1787 Delegates gather in Philadelphia to draw up US constitution
1796 English country doctor Edward Jenner administers the first inoculation against smallpox, using cowpox pus, in Berkeley, Gloucestershire
1804 Meriwether Lewis & William Clark’s expedition commissioned by Thomas Jefferson sets out from St Louis for Pacific Coast
1853 Gail Borden applies for a patent for condensed milk.
1884 Anti-Monopoly party forms in the US
1897 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first communication by wireless telegraph.
1897 “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Phillip Sousa is performed for the first time in Philadelphia.
1904 The Olympic Games were held in the United States for the first time, in St. Louis, Missouri.
1948 Israel becomes an independent state The announcement by Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, triggered a 10-month armed conflict known as the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. It started the day after the proclamation as troops of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq invaded the young nation.
1949 Truman signs bill establishing a rocket test range at Cape Canaveral
1955 The Warsaw Pact is established Eight communist bloc countries signed the mutual defense treaty, which played an important role during the Cold War as an antagonist of NATO.
1961 A bus carrying black and white civil rights activists is bombed and burned in Alabama.
1969 Abortion & contraception legalized in Canada
1970 Harry A Blackmun appointed to the Supreme Court
1973 The U.S. space station Skylab is launched.
1973 US Supreme court approves equal rights to females in military
1980 Department of Health & Human Services begins operation
1986 After 17 days with no statement from the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev today went on Russian TV today to tell the Russian people that the death toll has reached 9 and a further 299 are hospitalized with radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl accident on April 26th. Meanwhile fallout from the nuclear accident has been identified as far away as the USA.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
