TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 1
0331 Alexander the Great decisively shatters King Darius III’s Persian army at Gaugamela (Arbela), in a tactical masterstroke that leaves him master of the Persian Empire.
1569 The Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth for trying to marry Mary the Queen of Scots.
1588 The feeble Sultan Mohammed Shah of Persia, hands over power to his 17-year old son Abbas.
1688 Prince Willem III of Orange accepts invitation of take up the British crown
1800 Spain ceded Louisiana to France in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso. Although Napoleon Bonaparte agreed never to alienate Louisiana, he disregarded the treaty and sold Louisiana to the United States three years later.
1856 The first installment of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary appears in the Revue de Paris after the publisher refuses to print a passage in which the character Emma has a tryst in the back seat of a carriage.
1867 Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital” published
1878 General Lew Wallace is sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and write Ben-Hur. His Civil War heroics earned him the moniker Savior of Cincinnati.
1908 Henry Ford introduces the Model T car (costs $825)
1918 Arab and British forces commanded by Lawrence of Arabia capture Damascus from Turkish forces.
1937 The US House of Representatives passed The Marihuana Tax Act, Pub. 238, 75th Congress, 50 Stat. 551 the bill was an important bill on the path that led to the criminalization of cannabis. It stipulated that pot could not be sold without a license and licenses were never issued.
1940 The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened as the first toll superhighway in the United States.
1948 Calif Supreme Court voids state statute banning interracial marriages
1949 People’s Republic of China proclaimed by Mao Tse-tung (National Day)
1964 The first Free Speech Movement protest erupts spontaneously on the University of California, Berkeley campus; students demanded an end to the ban of on-campus political activities.
1971 First CT or CAT brain scan performed, at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London.
1971 Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida, 16 years after Disneyland debuted in Anaheim, Calif.
1974 Five Nixon aides–Kenneth Parkinson, Robert Mardian, Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell–go on trial for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation.
1984 U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan announced that he was taking a leave of absence following his indictment on charges of larceny and fraud. He was later acquitted.
1989 Denmark introduces the world’s first “civil union” law granting same-sex couples certain legal rights and responsibilities but stopping short of recognizing same-sex marriages
1994 The National Hockey League (NHL) team owners began a lockout of the players that lasted 103 days.
1995 Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine other defendants were convicted in New York of conspiring to attack the U.S. through bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.
2005 Suicide bombers strike three restaurants in two tourist areas on the Indonesian island of Bali killing 22.
2013 The United States government stopped all non-essential functions after Congress failed to reach a deal on the budget.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
