TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 15
1582 The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.
1813 During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.
1860 Eleven-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, N.Y., wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, suggesting he could improve his appearance by growing a beard.
1880 Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.
1892 An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.
1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.
1914 Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls “labor’s charter of freedom.” The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
1917 Mata Hari, a Paris dancer, is executed by the French after being convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans.
1940 Charlie Chaplin’s satirical comedy The Great Dictator opens.
1941 Jews caught outside the Polish Ghetto walls could be put to death
1945 Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
1949 Billy Graham begins his ministry
1951 Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesizes the first oral contraceptive
1966 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale establish the Black Panther Party, an African-American revolutionary socialist political group, in the US.
1966 LBJ signs a bill creating Dept of Transportation
1969 Rallies for The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam draw over 2 million demonstrators across the US, a quarter million of them in the nation’s capital.
1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, receives Nobel Peace Prize for his work in making his country more open and reducing Cold War tensions.
1991 Clarence Thomas got a narrow (52–48) Senate confirmation of his nomination to the Supreme Court.
2007 New Zealand police arrest 17 people believed to be part of a paramilitary training camp.
2008 Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop in the Dow’s history.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
