TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 12
539 BC The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon
1492 Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall on a Caribbean island he names San Salvador (likely Watling Island, Bahamas). The explorer believes he has reached East Asia
1576 Rudolf II, the king of Hungary and Bohemia, succeeds his father, Maximillian II, as Holy Roman Emperor.
1609 The song “Three Blind Mice” is published in London, believed to be the earliest printed secular song.
1722 Shah Sultan Husayn surrenders the Persian capital of Isfahan to Afgan rebels after a seven month siege.
1809 Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, dies under mysterious circumstances in Tennessee.
1899 The Anglo-Boer War begins.
1915 Despite international protests, Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, is executed by Germans for aiding the escape of Allied prisoners.
1933 Alcatraz Island is made a federal maximum security prison.
1945 The Nazi party is ordered to dissolve by The Allied Control Council and stated that any attempt at it’s revival in any guise would be considered a criminal offense.
1949 Eugenie Anderson becomes the first woman U.S. ambassador.
1960 Inejiro Asanuma, leaders of the Japan Socialist Party, is assassinated during a live TV broadcast.
1960 Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev created a disturbance at the U.N. General Assembly by pounding his desk with his shoe.
1970 President Richard Nixon announces the pullout of 40,000 more American troops in Vietnam by Christmas.
1971 The House of Representatives passes the Equal Rights Amendment 354-23.
1973 Nixon nominates Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew as VP
1977 US Supreme Court heard arguments in “reverse discrimination” case of Allan Bakke, white student denied admission to U of Calif Med School
1978 Punk Rocker Sid Vicious arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen found in their New York hotel room . While on bail he overdosed on heroin and died before any trial in February 1979.
1983 Former Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka is convicted of taking $2.2 million in bribes from American manufacturer Lockheed Aircraft Corp.
1984 The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonates at bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; 5 others are killed and 31 wounded.
1999 Chief of Army Staff Perez Musharraf seizes power in Pakistan through a bloodless military coup.
2000 Suicide bombers at Aden, Yemen, damage USS Cole; 17 crew members killed and over 35 wounded.
2002 Terrorist bombers kill over 200 and wound over 300 more at the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
