TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 25
1396 – The last great Christian crusade, led jointly by John the Fearless of Nevers and King Sigismund of Hungary, ends in disaster at the hands of Sultan Bayezid I’s Ottoman army at Nicopolis.
1513 – Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses the Panama Isthmus becoming first European to see the Pacific Ocean
1775 – British troops capture Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, when he and a handful of Americans try to invade Canada.
1789 – The first Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. The first ten became the Bill of Rights.
1804 – The 12th Amendment is ratified, changing the procedure of choosing the president and vice-president.
1847 – During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces led by General Zachary Taylor captured Monterrey Mexico.
1890 – Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon church, renounced the practice of polygamy. This paved the way for Utah’s acceptance as a state in 1896.
1919 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson collapsed after a speech in Pueblo, CO. The speaking tour was in support of the Treaty of Versailles.
1937 – German Chancellor Adolf Hitler meets with Italian Premier Benito Mussolini in Munich.
1942 – The War Labor Board orders equal pay for women in the United States.
1946 – 75 ships have been quarantined until tests for radioactive contamination are completed, they are suspected to have have high radio activity due to the nuclear atom bomb testing at Bikini Atoll.
1949 – The pope has asked the worlds leaders to end this path to self destruction through the development of bigger and more destructive Nuclear weapons and use the money to help some of the worlds needy and starving.
1957 – 300 U.S. Army troops stood guard as nine black students were escorted to class at Central High School in Little Rock, AR. The children had been forced to withdraw 2 days earlier because of unruly white mobs.
1959 – President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev begin Camp David talks.
1978 – Melissa Ludtke, a writer for “Sports Illustrated”, filed a suit in U.S. District Court. The result was that Major League Baseball could not bar female writers from the locker room after the game.
1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when she was sworn in as the 102nd justice. She had been nominated the previous July by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
1983 – A Soviet military officer, Stanislav Petrov, averted a potential worldwide nuclear war. He declared a false alarm after a U.S. attack was detected by a Soviet early warning system. It was later discovered the alarms had been set off when the satellite warning system mistakenly interpreted sunlight reflections off clouds as the presence of enemy missiles
1992 – In Orlando, FL, a judge ruled in favor of 12-year-old Gregory Kingsley. He had sought a divorce from his biological parents.
1995 – Ross Perot announced that he would form the Independence Party.
2009 – The Polish parliament passed a law that made it mandatory to chemically castrate sex offenders who raped children under fifteen or relatives.
2011 – King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced that women would be given the right to vote and run in municipal elections in the country amid calls for greater women’s rights
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
