TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 18
1009 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church’s foundations down to bedrock
1648 The “shoemakers of Boston”–the first labor organization in what would become the United States–was authorized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1685 French King Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes cancelling rights of French Protestants
1767 The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Mason-Dixon line, was agreed upon.
1842 Samuel Finley Breese Morse laid his first telegraph cable
1851 Moby Dick is Published for the First Time
1859 U.S.A. Harpers Ferry Raid. John Brown’s men arrived at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia in order to instigate a slave rebellion. Brown’s men were attacked by soldiers under Robert E. Lee on October 18th, 1859 after which Brown and several of his men were captured. He was hung for murder, treason against the State and for leading a revolt
1867 US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia having paid $7.2 million
1873 The first rules for intercollegiate football were drawn up by representatives from Rutgers, Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities.
1883 The weather station at the top of Ben Nevis, Scotland, the highest mountain in Britain, is declared open. Weather stations were set up on the tops of mountains all over Europe and the Eastern United States in order to gather information for the new weather forecasts.
1898 The United States takes formal possession of Island of Puerto Rico when the American flag is raised over San Juan.
1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt bans war submarines from U.S. ports and waters.
1967 A Russian unmanned spacecraft makes the first landing on the surface of Venus.
1968 US athletes Tommi Smith and John Carlos suspended by US Olympic Committee for giving “black power” salute while receiving their medals at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.
1969 The U.S. government banned artificial sweeteners due to evidence that they caused cancer.
1983 General Motors agreed to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
1985 South African authorities hanged black activist Benjamin Moloise. Moloise had been convicted of murdering a police officer.
1990 Iraq made an offer to the world that it would sell oil for $21 a barrel. The price level was the same as it had been before the invasion of Kuwait.
1997 A monument honoring U.S. servicewomen, past and present, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.
2007 Suicide attack on a motorcade in Karachi, Pakistan, kills at least 139 and wounds 450; the subject of the attack, Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is not harmed.
2011 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement release new figures showing that about 400,000 illegal immigrants were deported from the United States in the 2011 fiscal year, the most deportations ever in 1 year in United States history.
2011 Gilad Shalit, a 25-year-old Israeli soldier, is released after being held for more than five years by Hamas. He is exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Shalit had been held in Gaza since Palestinian militants kidnapped him in 2006.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
