TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 4
1493 Christopher Columbus discovers Guadeloupe during his second expedition.
1677 William III and Mary of England wed on William’s birthday.
1760 Following the Russian capture of Berlin, Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Torgau.
1798 Congress agrees to pay a yearly tribute to Tripoli, considering it the only way to protect U.S. shipping.
1841 First wagon train arrives in California
1846 A patent for an artificial leg was granted to Benjamin Palmer.
1847 Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson discovered the anethestic qualities of chloroform.
1854 Florence Nightingale and her nurses arrive in the Crimea.
1862 Dr Richard Gatling patents Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis
1879 African American inventor Thomas Elkins patents refrigerating apparatus
1880 James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio, patented the first cash register.
1922 The U.S. Postmaster General orders all homes to get mailboxes or relinquish delivery of mail.
1922 The entrance to King Tut’s tomb is discovered.
1924 Calvin Coolidge is elected 30th president of the United States.
1925 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first and only female governor of the state of Wyoming in the United States. In addition to being the first woman to be ever elected as a state governor in the US, she was also the first female director of the United States Mint.
1939 During World War II, the U.S. modified its neutrality stance with the Neutrality Act of 1939. The new policy allowed cash-and-carry purchases of arms by belligerents.
1946 The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is established.
1952 General Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected 34th president of the United States.
1952 In the United States, the National Security Agency (NSA) was established.
1956 Soviet tanks and troops crush protests against Soviet rule with thousands killed and wounded, and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country
1958 Pope John XXIII the son of a poor Italian farmer was crowned 262nd pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church on the balcony of St Peters Basilica with 200,000 spectators watching from St Peters Square in a 4 hour ceremony .
1970 Genie a feral child is taken to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles after her mother enters a welfare office in Temple City, California, to seek benefits for the blind. Genie had spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked in her bedroom. During the day, she was tied to a child’s potty chair in diapers and at night, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib with a cover made of metal screening. She was never allowed to talk as her father beat her every time she made any sounds. At 13 years of age her vocabulary consisted of about 20 words. The movie Mockingbird Don’t Sing was based on this tragic true story .
1973 A magazine article was published regarding the possible shortage of electricity in some areas of the United States. Americans were urged to conserve energy in case the Arab boycott would continue for an extended period of time. A gasoline shortage was also expected, and as a result a motion was made to lower speed limits. Measures were taken to help reduce the possibility of brownouts or blackouts in the U.S.
1979 At the American Embassy in Teheran, Iran, 90 people, including 63 Americans, are taken hostage by militant student followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. The students demand the return of Shah Mohammad Reza Pablavi, who is undergoing medical treatment in New York City.
1980 Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president of the United States.
1985 Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko announced he was returning to the Soviet Union. He had charged that he had been kidnapped by the CIA
1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
1999 The United Nations imposed economic sanctions against the Taliban that controlled most of Afghanistan. The sanctions were imposed because the Taliban had refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, who had been charged with masterminding the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
2006 A group of children that had been selected by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime to help create an Aryan master race has met for the first time as adults. Children from the Nazis’ ‘Lebensborn’ or ‘Font of Life’ project have gathered in the German town of Wernigerode to discuss the trauma over their origins.
2008 Senator Barack Obama of Illinois elected 44th president of the United States, the first African American to hold that position.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
