1968 – Americans Tommie Smith (gold 19.83 WR) and John Carlos (bronze) famously give the Black Power salute on the 200m medal podium during the Mexico City Olympics to protest racism and injustice against African-Americans
1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, despite being a woman
1492 – Christopher Columbus’ fleet anchors at “Fernandina” (Long Island, Bahamas)
1579 – Francis Drake sights land in the Philippines after crossing the Pacific Ocean aboard the Golden Hind
1701 – The Collegiate School was founded in Killingworth, CT. The school moved to New Haven in 1745 and changed its name to Yale College.
1775 – Portland, Maine burned by British
1780 – Royalton, Vermont and Tunbridge, Vermont last major raid of the American Revolutionary War
1793 – During the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded after being convicted of treason.
1829 – In Boston, MA, the first modern hotel in America opened. The Tremont Hotel had 170 rooms that rented for $2 a day and included four meals.
1834 – Much of the ancient structures of the Palace of Westminster (parliament) in London is burnt down
1847 – “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte was first published in London.
1854 – Abraham Lincoln presents his Peoria Speech, denouncing recent federal legislation extending slavery, on the lawn of the Peoria County Courthouse in Peoria, Illinois
1859 – Abolitionist John Brown led a raid on Harper’s Ferry, VA (now located in West Virginia).
1876 – Race riot at Cainhoy SC (5 whites & 1 black killed)
1900 – Great Britain and Germany sign the Anglo-German Treaty, agreeing to maintain territorial integrity of China and support ‘open door’ policy called for by US Secretary of State
1901 – Booker T. Washington and his family are invited to dine at the White House with Teddy and Edith Roosevelt, prompting condemnation from the South
1916 – Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in New York City, NY.
1925 – Texas School Board prohibits teaching of evolution
1926 – Mohammed Nadir Khan begins coup in Afghanistan, 1200 killed
1931 – US trunk murderess Winnie Ruth Judd murders two friends then dismembers one of them in Phoenix
1940 – Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. is promoted to brigadier general, the first African-American person to become a general in the US military
1941 – The Nazis advanced to within 60 miles of Moscow. Romanians entered Odessa, USSR, and began exterminating 150,000 Jews.
1943 – Jewish quarter of Rome surrounded by Nazis, they are sent to Auschwitz
1943 – Chicago’s new subway system was officially opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
1946 – 10 Nazi leaders are hanged as war criminals after Nuremberg war trials, including Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Alfred Jodl
1962 – U.S. President Kennedy was informed that there were missile bases in Cuba, beginning the Cuban missile crisis.
1964 – China detonated its first atomic bomb becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power.
1967 – NATO headquarters opened in Brussels.
1968 – Americans Tommie Smith (gold 19.83 WR) and John Carlos (bronze) famously give the Black Power salute on the 200m medal podium during the Mexico City Olympics to protest racism and injustice against African-Americans
1970 – Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act as a response to the October Crisis, the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act in Canadian history.
1973 – The Gulf Six (Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) unilaterally raise the posted price of Saudi Light marker crude-oil by 17 percent
1978 – First Non-Italian to Win the Papacy since 1523, Poland’s Karol Josef Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II.
1986 – US government shuts down due to disputes between President Reagan and the House
1987 – Rescuers freed Jessica McClure from the abandoned well that she had fallen into in Midland, TX. She was trapped for 58 hours.
1989 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed the Gramm-Rudman budget reduction law that ordered federal programs be cut by $16.1 billion.
1993 – Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching British National Party headquarters
1993 – The U.N. Security Council approved the deployment of U.S. warships to enforce a blockade on Haiti to increase pressure on the controlling military leaders.
1995 – The “Million Man March” took place in Washington, DC.
1997 – Charles M. Schulz and his wife Jeannie announced that they would give $1 million toward the construction of a D-Day memorial to be placed in Virginia.
1998 – Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a Spanish warrant requesting his extradition on murder charges
2002 – It was reported that North Korea had told the U.S. that it had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of an 1994 agreement with the U.S.
2002 – The Arthur Andersen accounting firm was sentenced to five years probation and fined $500,000 for obstructing a federeal investigation of the energy company Enron.
2012 – Conflict in Maiduguri, Nigeria, leads to 24 militant deaths and several structures set ablaze
2013 – The United States ends its 16-day government shut down and avoids default in a Bi-partisan deal in the Senate
2017 – Iraqi army seizes control of oil-rich Kirkuk, from Kurdish peshmerga
2018 – Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman denies knowledge of the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi according to President Trump
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
