TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 23
1642 – The first commencement at Harvard College, in Cambridge, MA, was held.
1667 – Slaves in Virginia are banned from obtaining their freedom by converting to Christianity.
1779 – John Paul Jones declared “I have not yet begun to fight!” aboard the American warship Bonhomme Richard in the battle against the British man-of-war Serapis.
1780 – John Andre, a British spy, was captured with papers revealing that Benedict Arnold was going to surrender West Point, NY, to the British.
1805 – Lieutenant Zebulon Pike pays $2,000 to buy from the Sioux a 9-square-mile tract at the mouth of the Minnesota River that will be used to establish a military post, Fort Snelling.
1821 – Fall of Tripolitsa, Greek forces massacre 30,000 Turks during Greek War of Independence
1846 – German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovered the planet Neptune.
1884 – American Herman Hollerith patents his mechanical tabulating machine, the beginning of data processing
1889 – Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.
1912 – Mack Sennett’s first “Keystone Cop” film debuts, Cohen Collects a Debt.
1925 – President Hoover believes self supporting commercial air lines in the United States should be created and an authority to oversee the industry created with help and federal funding.
1932 – The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is Founded
1942 – The ‘Manhattan Project’ commences, under the direction of US General Leslie Groves: its aim – to deliver an atomic bomb
1952 – Richard Nixon responds to charges of a secret slush fund during his ‘Checkers Speech.’
1954 – East German police arrest 400 citizens as U.S. spies.
1957 – Nine black students “Little Rock Nine” who the police quietly slipped into Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas under the the U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling which declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional.
1973 – Juan Peron is re-elected president of Argentina after being overthrown in 1955.
1986 – Japanese newspapers quoted Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone as saying that minorities lowered the “intelligence level” of America.
1991 – U.N. weapons inspectors find documents detailing Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program. The find in Baghdad triggered a standoff with authorities in Iraq.
1992 – Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates 3,700-lb. bomb in Belfast, completely destroying the Northern Ireland forensic laboratory, injuring 20 people and damaging 700 houses.
1999 – Mars Climate Orbiter reaches Mars and when after the spacecraft passed behind Mars it never emerged or made radio contact.
2006 – A car bomb attack on a kerosene tanker in Baghdad leaves 35 dead and many more injured on Ramadan.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
