2011 – The official US military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” ends, The policy was instituted by the administration of Bill Clinton in 1994. Under the policy, openly gay personnel were not allowed to serve in the United States military, but they could serve as long as they did not reveal their LGBT status.
0622 – Islamic Prophet Muhammed/Abu Bakr arrives in Jathrib (Medina)
1187 – Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem
1378 – Robert de Geneve, “butcher of Cesena” crowned anti-pope Clemens VII
1519 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan left Spain to find a route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Magellan was killed during the trip, but one of his ships eventually made the journey.
1565 – Spaniards capture Fort Caroline Fla and massacre the French
1620 – Battle at Jassy: Turks beat king Sigismund III of Poland
1664 – Maryland enacts first anti-amaglmation law to prevent widespread intermarriage of English women and black men
1746 – Scotland’s Bonnie Prince Charlie flees to France from Scotland
1777 – Battle of Paoli; British forces under Major General Charles Grey attacks Brigadier General Anthony Wayne’s encampment. Claims the British gave no quarter leads to engagement becoming known as the “Paoli Massacre”
1797 – US frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides) launched in Boston
1830 – 1st Negro Convention of Free Men agree to boycott slave-produced goods
1850 – Slave trade abolished in DC, but slavery allowed to continue
1870 – The Papal States came under the control of Italian troops, leading to the unification of Italy.
1873 – Panic sweeps NY Stock Exchange (railroad bond default/bank failure) NY shut banks for 10 days due to a bank scandal
1881 – Chester A. Arthur became the 21st president of the U.S. President James A. Garfield had died the day before.
1884 – The Equal Rights Party was formed in San Francisco, CA.
1909 – The British Parliament passes the South Africa Act; it calls for union of Cape Colony, Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal; and both English and Dutch as official languages
1914 – John Redmond urges Irish Volunteers to enlist in the British Army
1921 – KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, started a daily radio newscast. It was one of the first in the U.S.
1926 – Bugs Moran attempts to assassinate Al Capone in a drive-by shooting but fails
1944 – Death in action, while filming American troops on Peleliu, of Australian cameraman Damien Parer Parer made what has been considered Australia’s most famous war film Kokoda Front Line
1946 – Churchill argues for a ‘United States of Europe’
1962 – James Meredith, a black student, was blocked from enrolling at the University of Mississippi by Governor Ross R. Barnett. Meredith was later admitted.
1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition to the moon in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
1966 – US Surveyor B launched toward Moon; crashed Sept 23
1967 – The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) was launched. It went out of service on November 27, 2008.
1970 – Luna 16 lands on Moon’s Mare Fecunditatis, drills core sample
1973 – Billie Jean King Wins the Battle of the Sexes, The mixed gender tennis match between top tennis player Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King was held in Houston, Texas after Riggs won another mixed gender match against Margaret Court earlier in the year.
1976 – Playboy releases US presidential candidate Jimmy Carter’s interview which includes the quote “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust.”
1977 – The first of the “boat people” arrived in San Francisco from Southeast Asia under a new U.S. resettlement program.
1979 – Lee Iacocca is elected president of the Chrysler Corporation
1982 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that the U.S., France, and Italy were going to send peacekeeping troops back to Beirut.
1985 – Curtis Strong is convicted for selling cocaine to pro baseball players
1989 – F.W. de Klerk was sworn in as president of South Africa.
1991 – U.N. weapons inspectors left for Iraq in a renewed search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
1992 – French voters approved the Maastricht Treaty.
1995 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted to drop the national speed limit. This allowed the states to decide their own speed limits.
2003 – A referendum is held in Latvia to decide the country’s accession to the European Union
2011 – The official US military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” ends, The policy was instituted by the administration of Bill Clinton in 1994. Under the policy, openly gay personnel were not allowed to serve in the United States military, but they could serve as long as they did not reveal their LGBT status.
2012 – 14 people are killed in a cafe suicide bombing in Somalia
2013 – 46 soldiers are killed in army-base attacks in Shabwah Governorate, Yemen
2015 – Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, confirms raising the price of toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim by 5,000%
2016 – Black American Keith Lamont Scott is shot dead by a black police officer in Charlotte, North Carolina, provoking violent protests in the city
2018 – Woman shoots seven people, killing three and herself at a Rite Aid distribution center near Baltimore, Maryland
2019 – Students from 185 countries stage the world’s largest-ever protest on climate change culminating in Manhattan rally led by Greta Thunberg
2020 – FinCEN files leaked – over 2,000 mostly ‘suspicious activity reports’ to the US government showing banks allowed money laundering worth $2 trillion between 2000-17
2021 – First edition of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein” sells for $1.17 million, setting new world record for a printed work by a woman
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
