TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 6
1014 The Byzantine Emperor Basil earns the title “Slayer of Bulgers” after he orders the blinding of 15,000 Bulgerian troops.
1536 William Tyndale, the English translator of the New Testament, is strangled and burned at the stake for heresy at Vilvorde, France.
1683 The first Mennonites arrived in America aboard the Concord. The German and Dutch families settled in an area that is now a neighborhood in Philadelphia, PA.
1848 The steamboat SS California left New York Harbor for San Francisco via Cape Horn. The steamboat service arrived on February 28, 1849. The trip took 4 months and 21 days.
1866 The Reno brothers–Frank, John, Simeon and William–commit the country’s first train robbery near Seymore, Indiana netting $10,000
1927 The first “talkie,” The Jazz Singer, opens with popular entertainer Al Jolson singing and dancing in black-face. By 1930, silent movies were a thing of the past.
1939 Adolf Hitler announces plans to regulate Jewish problem
1949 Japanese-American broadcaster, Iva Toguri D’Aquino (Tokyo Rose), was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000 for treason.
1949 Pres Truman signs Mutual Defense Assistance Act (for NATO)
1956 Dr Albert Sabin discovers oral polio vaccine
1961 President John F. Kennedy advises American families to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear war.
1965 Patricia Harris takes post as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, becoming the first African American U.S. ambassador.
1966 15 manufacturers of bathroom fixtures are indicted for price fixing by violating the restraint-of-trade section of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1969 Special Forces Captain John McCarthy is released from Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary, pending consideration of his appeal to murder charges.
1973 Israel is taken by surprise when Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan attack on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, beginning the Yom Kippur War.
1976 Pres Ford says there is “no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe”
1979 President Jimmy Carter received Pope John Paul II, the first pope to visit the White House.
1981 Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat is assassinated in Cairo by Islamic fundamentalists. He is succeeded by Vice President Hosni Mubarak.
2000 Yugoslavia’s president Slobodan Milosevic and Argentina’s vice-president Carlos Alvarez both resign from their respective offices.
2003 A new report by UN-Habitat provides startling numbers of the number of Slum Dwellers around the world with 3.5 billion (31.6%) of the worlds population living in slum conditions.
2013 Four people accused of plotting to sabotage a nuclear site were arrested in Iran. The arrests came just after moves by Iran and the United States to come to terms with the country’s nuclear program.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
