TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – Nov 7
1492 Ensisheim Meteorite strikes a wheat field near the village of Ensisheim in Alsace, France. Oldest meteorite with a known date of impact.
1637 Anne Hutchinson, the first female religious leader in the American colonies, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy.
1811 Rebellious Indians in a conspiracy organized in defiance of the United States government by Tecumseh, Shawnee chief, are defeated during his absence in the Battle of the Wabash (or Tippecanoe) by William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory.
1814 Andrew Jackson attacks and captures Pensacola, Florida, defeating the Spanish and driving out a British force.
1837 In Alton, IL, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot to death by a mob (supporters of slavery) while trying to protect his printing shop from a third destruction.
1846 Zachary Taylor, one of the heroes of the Mexican War, is elected president.
1872 Cargo ship Mary Celeste sails from Staten Island for Genoa; mysteriously found abandoned four weeks later
1874 The Republican Party was first symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly magazine.
1876 Rutherford B. Hayes is elected 19th president of the United States.
1881 Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, two participants in Tombstone, Arizona’s, famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, are jailed as the hearings on what happened in the fight grow near.
1914 The “New Republic” magazine was printed for the first time.
1916 President Woodrow Wilson is re-elected, but the race is so close that all votes must be counted before an outcome can be determined, so the results are not known until November 11.
1916 Jeannette Rankin (R-Montana) is elected the first congresswoman.
1917 The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, take power in Russia.
1921 Benito Mussolini declares himself to be leader of the National Fascist Party in Italy.
1933 Voters in Pennsylvania eliminated sports from Pennsylvanian “Blue Laws.”
1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to a fourth term by defeating Thomas Dewey.
1954 It was made known this day in 1954 that the upcoming holiday normally celebrated on November 11th would be Veteran’s Day. This used to be called Armistice Day, in order to celebrate the end of World War I.
1967 The U.S. Selective Service Commission announced that college students arrested in anti-war demonstrations would lose their draft deferments.
1973 Congress overrides Pres. Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution that limited presidential power to wage ware without congressional approval.
1983 A bomb explodes in the US Capitol’s Senate Chambers area, causing $250,000 damages but no one is harmed; a group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit claimed the bomb was retaliation for US military involvement in Grenada and Lebanon.
1985 Half-dozen American hostages were being held, presumably in Lebanon. An anonymous caller had said that an Islamic Jihad had planned to take the lives of these Americans. Then, a second caller indicated that these hostages were dead. However, this report was proven to be unsubstantiated, so the hostages in question were reported missing at this time.
1989 Richard Ramirez, convicted of California’s “Night Stalker” killings, was sentenced to death.
1991 Actor Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman, pled no contest to charges of indecent exposure. Reubens had been arrested in Sarasota, FL, for exposing himself in a theater.
1991 Magic Johnson (NBA) announced that he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, and that he was retiring from basketball.
2000 Controversial US presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore which is eventually resolved in Bush’s favor by the Supreme Court
2006 A list of 13 ‘enemies of the Internet’ has been released by the human rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The list consists of countries that the RSF believes are suppressing freedom of expression on the Internet. Egypt has been added to the list while Nepal, Libya and the Maldives have all been taken off it. The complete list of blacklisted states is: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
2007 Pekka-Eric Auvinen a student at Jokela Secondary School goes on a shooting rampage armed with a SIG Mosquito .22 calibre pistol killing nine people including students and the school principal before turning the gun on himself. He had uploaded a video to Youtube announcing the “massacre” hours prior to the shooting and his earlier profile had included interests of “natural selection and hate for humanity”
2009 The House of Representatives has approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system, advancing legislation that could stand as one of the Democrats most important social policy achievements. The legislation has achieved what has been a Democratic goal for decades, and lawmakers have voted 220 to 215 to approve the plan that will cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
