TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 14
1322 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence
1586 Mary Queen of Scots goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth
1651 Laws are passed in Massachusetts forbidding the poor to adopt excessive styles of dress.
1773 Britain’s East India Company tea ships’ cargo is burned at Annapolis, Md.
1806 Napoleon Bonaparte crushes the Prussian army at Jena, Germany.
1832 Blackfeet Indians attack American Fur Company trappers near Montana’s Jefferson River, killing one.
1867 15th and last Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigns in Japan
1884 Transparent paper-strip photographic film is patented by George Eastman.
1912 Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is shot and wounded in assassination attempt in Milwaukee. He was saved by the papers in his breast pocket and, though wounded, insisted on finishing his speech.
1926 Winnie-the-Pooh Makes his Literary Debut
1933 The Geneva disarmament conference breaks up as Germany proclaims withdrawal from the disarmament initiative, as well as from the League of Nations, effective October 23. This begins German policy of independent action in foreign affairs.
1943 The Radio Corporation of America finalized the sale of the NBC Blue radio network. Edward J. Noble paid $8 million for the network that was renamed American Broadcasting Company.
1944 German Field Marshal Rommel, suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, is visited at home by two of Hitler’s staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chooses suicide and it is announced that he died of wounds.
1947 Test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier aboard a Bell X-1 rocket plane.
1950 Chinese Communist Forces begin to infiltrate the North Korean Army.
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis begins; USAF U-2 reconnaissance pilot photographs Cubans installing Soviet-made missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
1964 Rev. Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating a policy of non-violence.
1964 Nikita Khrushchev is ousted from power by Leonid Brezhnev after 10 years.
1968 US Defense Department announces 24,000 soldiers and Marines will be sent back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours of duty.
1979 The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C. demands “an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people” and draws 200,000 people.
1982 US President Reagan proclaims a war on drugs
1983 Prime Minister of Grenada Maurice Bishop overthrown and later executed by a military coup.
1987 Jessica McClure, 18 months old, fell down an abandoned well in Midland, TX. The rescue took 58 hours.
1994 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for establishing the Oslo Accords and preparing for Palestinian Self Government.
1998 Eric Robert Rudolph charged with the 1996 bombing during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; It was one of several bombing incidents Rudolph carried out to protest legalized abortion in the US.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
