TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 25
1066 Battle of Stamford Bridge; English army under King Harold Godwinson defeat invading Norwegians led by King Harald Hardrada and Harold’s brother Tostig, who were both killed
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
1690 One of America’s earliest newspapers published its first and last edition. The “Publik Occurences Both Foreign and Domestik” was published at the London Coffee House in Boston, MA, by Benjamin Harris.
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.
1846 American General Zachary Taylor’s forces capture Monterey, 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.
1906 Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the Telekino at Bilbao before a great crowd, guiding a boat from the shore, considered the birth of the remote control
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.
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.
1974 Scientists warn that continued use of aerosol sprays will cause ozone depletion, which will lead to an increased risk of skin cancer and global weather changes.
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, the first female Supreme Court Justice, is sworn in.
1981 Rupert Murdoch has shut down the Sunday Times due to an industrial dispute with 101 members of the Printers Union and suspended 1,400 staff on indefinite suspension without pay.
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.
1992 NASA launches Mars Observer probe; it fails 11 months later.
1996 Ireland’s last Magdalene laundry closes; begun as asylums to rehabilitate “fallen women,” they increasingly took on prison-like qualities.
2002 U.S. forces landed in Ivory Coast to aid in the rescue foreigners trapped in a school by fighting between government troops and rebel troops. Rebels had attempted to take over the government on September 19.
2009 US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy jointly accuse Iran of building a secrecy nuclear enrichment facility.
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 grants women the right to vote and run for office in future elections.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
