TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 24
1615 French King Louis XIII married Ann of Austria. They were both 14 years old
1639 1st observation of transit of Venus by Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree – helped establish size of the Solar System
1642 Abel Tasman discovered Van Diemen’s land, later renamed Tasmania.
1859 Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. The first printing of 1,250 copies sells out in a single day.
1863 In the Battle Above the Clouds, Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s forces take Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1864 Kit Carson and his 1st Cavalry, New Mexico Volunteers, attack a camp of Kiowa Indians in the First Battle of Adobe Walls.
1871 The National Rifle Association was incorporated.
1874 Joseph Glidden receives a patent for barbed wire.
1877 Black Beauty is published
1927 Federal officials battle 1,200 inmates after prisoners in Folsom Prison revolt.
1938 Mexico seizes oil land adjacent to Texas.
1939 In Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo execute 120 students who are accused of anti-Nazi plotting.
1940 Nazis closed off the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Over the next three years the population dropped from 350,000 to 70,000 due to starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps
1940 Nazis closed off the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Over the next three years the population dropped from 350,000 to 70,000 due to starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps
1961 The United Nations adopts bans on nuclear arms over American protests.
1963 Jack Ruby fatally shoots the accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the garage of the Dallas Police Department.
1971 D. B. Cooper parachuted from a Northwest Airlines flight with $200,000.
1974 An international team of scientists working in northeastern Ethiopia has found the partial skeleton of a three-million-year-old hominid that it claims is the most complete early man discovery ever made in Africa, the skeleton is better known and referred to as Lucy.
1979 The United States admits that thousands of troops in Vietnam were exposed to the toxic Agent Orange.
1983 The Palestine Liberation Organization released six Israeli prisoners in exchange for the release of 4,500 Palestinians and Lebanese held by the Israelis.
1991 Freddie Mercury the lead singer for the rock group Queen has died aged 45, just one day after he publicly announced he was HIV positive.
1992 US Congress passes the Brady Bill requiring a 5-day waiting period for handgun sales; the bill is named for Pres. Ronald Reagan’s press secretary who was left partially paralyzed by a bullet during an assassination attempt on Reagan.
1993 Robert Thompson and Jon Venables (both 11 years old) were convicted of murdering 2-year-old James Bulger of Liverpool, England. They were both sentenced to “indefinite detention.”
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
