TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 11
1138 Earthquake in Aleppo, Syria, kills an estimated 230,000
1531 The Catholics defeat the Protestants at Kappel during Switzerland’s second civil war.
1727 George II of England crowned.
1779 Polish patriot and American Revolutionary War commander Casimir Pulaski was killed in the battle of Savannah.
1795 In graditude for putting down a rebellion in the streets of Paris, France’s National Convention appoints Napoleon Bonaparte second in command of the Army of the Interior.
1862 The Confederate Congress in Richmond passes a draft law allowing anyone owning 20 or more slaves to be exempt from military service. This law confirms many southerners opinion that they are in a ‘rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.’
1869 Thomas Edison filed for a patent on his first invention. The electric machine was used for counting votes for the U.S. Congress, however the Congress did not buy it.
1877 Outlaw Wild Bill Longley, who killed at least a dozen men, is hanged, but it took two tries; on the first try, the rope slipped and his knees drug the ground.
1890 – The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in Washington, DC.
1899 South African Boers, settler from the Netherlands, declare war on Great Britain.
1906 San Francisco school board orders the segregation of Oriental schoolchildren, inciting Japanese outrage.
1915 English nurse Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans.
1939 A letter from Albert Einstein was delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt concerning the possibility of atomic weapons.
1945 Negotiations between Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung break down. Nationalist and Communist troops are soon engaged in a civil war.
1950 The Federal Communications Commission authorizes the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to begin commercial color TV broadcasts.
1972 Race riot breaks out aboard carrier USS Kitty Hawk off Vietnam during Operation Linebacker.
1975 Saturday Night Live comedy-variety show premiers on NBC, with guest host comedian George Carlin and special guests Janis Ian, Andy Kaufman and Billy Preston; at this writing (2013) the show is still running.
1976 The so-called “Gang of Four,” Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s widow and three associates, are arrested in Peking, setting in motion an extended period of turmoil in the Chinese Communist Party.
1984 Astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan, part of the crew of Space Shuttle Challenger, becomes the first American woman to walk in space.
1986 Reagan & Gorbachev open talks at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland
1987 Hundreds of thousands march for lesbian and gay rights marched by the White House and then assembled on the national Mall below the U.S. Capitol. The march was led by about 3,000 people with AIDS, some in wheelchairs, others in chartered buses.
1991 Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas begin.
1991 President Bush today vetoed a bill that would have provided up to an additional 20 weeks unemployment benefit calling it poorly designed and unnecessarily expensive.
1994 The Colorado Supreme Court declared that the anti-gay rights measure in the state was unconstitutional.
2002 Kenneth Bridges filling up his car at a gas station near Fredericksburg, Va., was shot to death in the eighth murder linked to the Washington Area sniper. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were finally captured on October 24th.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
