TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: OCT 23
42 BC Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Brutus’s army is decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian. Brutus commits suicide.
1641 Rebellion in Ireland. Catholics, under Phelim O’Neil, rise against the Protestants and massacred men, women and children to the number of 40,000 (some say 100,000).
1679 Meal Tub Plot against James II of England
1775 Continental Congress approves resolution barring blacks from army
1783 Virginia emancipates slaves who fought for independence during the Revolutionary War.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C. for all military-related cases.
1911 1st aerial reconnaissance mission is flown by an Italian pilot over Turkish lines during the Italo-Turkish War
1915 25,000 women marched in New York City, demanding the right to vote.
1954 In Paris, an agreement is signed providing for West German sovereignty and permitting West Germany to rearm and enter NATO and the Western European Union.
1956 Hungarian citizens began an uprising against Soviet occupation. On November 4, 1956 Soviet forces enter Hungary and eventually suppress the uprising.
1973 President Richard Nixon agreed to turn White House tape recordings requested by the Watergate special prosecutor over to Judge John J. Sirica.
1973 A U.N. sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the Yom Kippur war between Israel and Syria.
1977 Paleontologist Elso Barghoorn announces discovery of a 3.4-billion year old one-celled fossil, one of the earliest life forms on Earth
1981 US national debt hits $1 trillion
1983 A truck filled with explosives, driven by a Moslem terrorist, crashes into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The bomb kills 237 Marines and injures 80. Almost simultaneously, a similar incident occurs at French military headquarters, where 58 die and 15 are injured.
1984 NBC airs BBC footage of Ethiopian famine
1991 Dr Jack Kevorkian’s suicide machine kills 2 women
1998 The Swiss watch company Swatch invented a new unit of time called the .beat, which corresponds to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Under the Internet Time system, a day is divided into 1000 .beats.
1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a “land for peace” agreement.
2001 Apple announces the first iPod Player
2001 NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft began orbiting Mars. In 2010, it became the longest-operating spacecraft ever sent to Mars.
2002 Chechen terrorists take 700 theater-goers hostage at the House of Culture theater in Moscow.
4004 According to 17th century divine James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and Dr. John Lightfoot of Cambridge, the world was created on this day, a Sunday, at 9 a.m.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
