TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MAY 29
1453 Constantinople falls to Muhammad II, ending the Byzantine Empire.
1660 Charles II is restored to the English throne, succeeding the short-lived Commonwealth.
1790 Rhode Island becomes the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution.
1848 Wisconsin becomes the thirtieth state.
1849 A patent for lifting vessels is granted to Abraham Lincoln.
1911 The Indianapolis 500 is run for the first time.
1912 Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the Turkey Trot while on the job.
1916 The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.
1916 U.S. forces invade the Dominican Republic.
1922 The U.S. Supreme Court rules organized baseball is a sport not subject to antitrust laws.
1932 As the great depression of the 30s continue World War I veterans known as the ” Bonus Army ” begin arriving in Washington to demand cash bonuses they weren’t scheduled to receive for another 13 years be paid early to allow them to survive, by late June over 20,000 World War I vets were camped in vacant government buildings and open fields around the capitol.
1953 Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal become the first explorers to reach the top of Mount Everest . Due to the amount of time it took to descend the mountain it was June 2nd before the rest of the world were told about the conquest.
1968 The (TILA) Truth In Lending Act passes into law with regulations designed to protect consumers in credit transactions requiring clear disclosure of key terms of the lending arrangement and all costs. It is part of the “Consumer Credit Protection Act”.
1972 Three gunmen open fire on crowds at Lod International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing 26 people and injuring dozens more. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility and said they had recruited the gunmen from the Japanese Red Army who committed the murders.
1974 President Richard Nixon agrees to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1985 Minutes before the start of the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, crowd Violence Erupts which causes a wall to collapse killing 39 football fans and injuring at least another 400.
1986 Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.
1988 U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.
1990 Boris Yeltsin is elected the president of Russia.
1996 Benjamin Netanyahu becomes Israel’s prime minister
The conservative politician is criticized for hampering the peace process that former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, had promoted.
2001 In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
2001 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
2004 The World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. is dedicated to veterans from World War II.
2015 The Obama adminstration removed Cuba from the U.S. terrorism blacklist. The two countries had severed diplomatic relations in January of 1961.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
