TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 23
1644 Areopagitica, a pamphlet by John Milton, decrying censorship, is published.
1765 Frederick County, MD, repudiated the British Stamp Act.
1785 John Hancock is elected president of the Continental Congress for the second time.
1889 The first jukebox was installed at the Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco.
1909 The Wright brothers form a million-dollar corporation for the commercial manufacture of their airplanes.
1921 President Warren G. Harding signs the Willis Campell Act, better known as the anti-beer bill. It forbids doctors to prescribe beer or liquor for medicinal purposes.
1936 The United States abandons the American embassy in Madrid, Spain, which is engulfed by civil war.
1936 First issue of Life magazine hit the newsstands. The cover photograph, by Margaret Bourke-White, featured the Fort Peck Dam.
1943 U.S. Marines declare the island of Tarawa secure.
1945 Wartime meat and butter rationing ends in the United States.
1946 Mound Metalcraft changed its name to Tonka Toys Incorporated.
1963 Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, becomes the new president of the United States
1963 Doctor Who debuts on TV
1971 People’s Republic of China was seated at the UN Security Council.
1981 US Pres. Ronald Reagan signs top secret directive giving the CIA authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1983 Soviets walked out from a Geneva Missile Talks session. Members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Association) urged the Russians to come back to the meeting table. However, the talks had already gone on for about two years, and the Russians were unlikely to be convinced very easily to return.
1985 Larry Wu-tai Chin, a retired CIA analyst, was arrested and accused of spying for China. He committed suicide a year after his conviction
1989 Lucia Barrera de Cerna, a housekeeper who claimed she had witnessed the slaying of six Jesuit priests and two other people at the Jose Simeon Canas University in El Salvador, was flown to the U.S.
1992 The first Smartphone, IBM Simon, introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1998 A U.S. federal judge rejected a Virginia county’s effort to block pornography on library computer calling the attempt unconstitutional.
2001 Convention on Cybercrime is signed by members of the council of Europe, USA, Canada, Japan and the Republic of South Africa in Budapest, Hungary. The treaty objectives is to pursue a common criminal policy aimed at the protection of society against cybercrime, including computer-related forgery and fraud, child pornography and cyber terrorism.
2006 In the second-deadliest day of sectarian violence in Iraq since the beginning of the 2003 war, 215 people are killed and nearly 260 injured by bombs in Sadr City.
2009 Considered to be the worst attack on journalists in recorded history, the massacre occurred in the southern Philippines, when 57 citizens and journalists en route to register voters in Esmael Mangudadatu for the upcoming gubernatorial elections, were killed by gunmen and buried. 34 journalists were killed on the day.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
