TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: NOV 13
1002 English king Ethelred II launches massacre of Danish settlers
1775 U.S. forces, under the command of Gen. Richard Montgomery, captured Montreal during the American Revolution.
1789 Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a friend in which he said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
1805 Johann George Lehner, a Viennese butcher, invented a recipe and called it the “frankfurter.”
1830 Oliver Wendell Holmes publishes “Old Ironsides”
1835 Texans officially proclaim independence from Mexico, and calls itself the Lone Star Republic, after its flag, until its admission to the Union in 1845.
1860 South Carolina’s legislature calls a special convention to discuss secession from the Union.
1862 Lewis Carroll writes in his diary, “Began writing the fairy-tale of Alice–I hope to finish it by Christmas.”
1878 New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace offers amnesty to many participants of the Lincoln County War, but not to gunfighter Billy the Kid.
1887 Bloody Sunday in London
Protests by poor and unemployed Londoners over their hardships in Trafalgar Square took a violent turn when the police charged on those protesting with batons. By the end of the day, 2 or 3 people were killed and several hundred protestors were injured.
1914 The brassiere, invented by Caresse Crosby, is patented.
1927 The world’s first long, mechanically ventilated underwater tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, opened between New York and New Jersey.
1940 U.S. Supreme Court rules in Hansberry v. Lee that African Americans cannot be barred from white neighborhoods.
1940 Walt Disney’s Fantasia debuted.
1952 Harvard’s Paul Zoll becomes the first man to use electric shock to treat cardiac arrest.
1956 The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strikes down two Alabama laws requiring racial segregation on public buses.
1969 VP Spiro T Agnew accused network TV news depths of bias & distortion
1969 Anti-war protesters stage a symbolic “March Against Death” in Washington, DC.
1971 The U.S. spacecraft Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mars.
1980 US spacecraft Voyager 1 sends back 1st close-up pictures of Saturn
1982 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedicated in Washington, DC.
1986 U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly acknowledged that the U.S. had sent “defensive weapons and spare parts” to Iran. He denied that the shipments were sent to free hostages, but that they had been sent to improve relations.
1989 Compact of Free Association: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau—places US troops wrested from Japanese control in WWII—become sovereign nations, associated states of the United States.
2001 U.S. President George W. Bush signed an executive order that would allow for military tribunals to try any foreigners captured with connections to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. It was the first time since World War II that a president had taken such action.
2001 The Taliban abandoned Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul when the Northern Alliance entered the city.
2009 NASA announced that water had been discoved on the moon. The discovery came from the planned impact on the moon of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS).
2015 Terrorist attacks in Paris
A series of coordinated terrorist attacks that included suicide bombs and mass shootings took place in France’s capital city. Venues attacked included the Stade de France and the Bataclan theater during a concert. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or Daesh (ISIL) took responsibility for the attacks that killed about 130 people.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
