2005 – Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes controversial cartoon, The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. The publication led to riots and protests in many parts of the world.
1199 – Rambam (Maimonides) authorizes Samuel Ibn Tibbon to translate Guide of Perplexed from Arabic into Hebrew
1399 – Henry Bolingbroke became the King of England as Henry IV.
1399 – King Richard II of England’s (supposed) abdication read out in the House of Commons by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In reality deposed by his cousin and successor Henry IV
1555 – Bishop of Oxford Nicholas Ridley sentenced to death as a heretic
1659 – Peter Stuyvesant of New Netherlands forbids tennis playing during religious services (1st mention of tennis in US)
1659 – Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked (according to Daniel Defoe’s famous novel)
1730 – Duke of Savoy Victor Amadeus II abdicates his throne amid scandal after marrying his mistress Anna Canalis di Cumiana
1777 – The Congress of the United States moved to York, PA, due to advancing British forces.
1787 – The Columbia left Boston and began the trip that would make it the first American vessel to sail around the world.
1846 – Dr. William Morton performed a painless tooth extraction after administering ether to a patient.
1862 – Minister-President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck delivers his famous “Blood and Iron” speech on the unification of German territories
1868 – Spain’s Queen Isabella was deposed and fled to France.
1882 – In Appleton, WI, the world’s first hydroelectric power plant began operating.
1888 – “Jack the Ripper” murders 2 more women, Liz Stride & Kate Eddowes, in Whitechapel, London
1916 – Eleftherios Venizelos announces he is forming a Provisional Government in Crete as an alternative to the one in Athens; he is determined to bring Greece into the war on the side of the Allies
1919 – Elaine Massacre: Arkansas state militia and rioters kill over 200 hundred Black people in response to sharecroppers’ attempt to organize against landowners; trials of survivors for murder leads to Supreme Court enacted judicial reforms
1938 – Treaty of Munich signed by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Édouard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain, forces Czechoslovakia to give territory to Germany. Chamberlain infamously declares “Peace for our time” on his return to London.
1941 – Approximately 33,771 Jews are shot to death or buried alive at Babi Yar ravine (near Kiev) Ukraine by Nazi troops over two days
1942 – SS exterminates 3,500 Jews in Zelov Lodz Poland in 6 week period
1946 – An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.
1954 – The U.S. Navy commissioned the Nautilus submarine at Groton, CT. It was the first atomic-powered vessel. The submarine had been launched on January 21, 1954.
1955 – American actor and cultural icon James Dean is killed in a car crash aged 24
1960 – Premier of The Flintstones, The animated series The Flintstones premiered on TV. It was set in the stone age and it detailed the lives of the Flintstone and Rubble families. It ran for 6 years until April 1 1966.
1963 – The Soviet Union publicly declared itself on the side of India in their dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir.
1966 – Bechuanaland, in southern Africa, gains independence from Great Britain, becomes Republic of Botswana
1966 – Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were released at midnight from Spandau prison after completing their 20-year sentences. Speer was the Nazi minister of armaments and von Schirach was the founder of Hitler Youth.
1970 – New American Bible published
1971 – The Soviet Union and the United States signed pacts that were aimed at avoiding an accidental nuclear war.
1971 – A committee of nine people was organized to investigate the prison riot at Attica, NY. 10 hostages and 32 prisoners were killed when National Guardsmen stormed the prison on September 13, 1971.
1976 – California enacted the Natural Death Act of California. The law was the first example of right-to-die legislation in the U.S.
1977 – Due to US budget cuts, the Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down.
1986 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy
1986 – The U.S. released accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, one day after the Nicholas Daniloff had been released by the Soviets.
1987 – Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a shake-up at the Kremlin.
1989 – Thousands of East Germans began emigrating under an accord between the NATO nations and the Soviet Union.
1989 – Non-Communist Cambodian guerrillas claimed that they had captured 3 towns and 10 other positions from the residing government forces.
1991 – Haiti’s first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown by Brigadier General Raoul Cedras. Aristide was later returned to power.
1992 – Moscow banks distributed privatization vouchers aimed at turning millions of Russians into capitalists.
1997 – John Howard’s Australian government gun buy back scheme ends with more than 640,000 firearms compulsorily acquired, including many newly illegal semi-automatic rifles and shotguns
1997 – France’s Roman Catholic Church apologized for its silence during the persecution and deportation of Jews the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
1998 – Gov. Pete Wilson of California signed a bill into law that defined “invasion of privacy as trespassing with the intent to capture audio or video images of a celebrity or crime victim engaging in a personal of family activity.” The law went into effect January 1, 1999.
1999 – In Tokaimura, Japan, radiation escaped a nuclear facility after workers accidentally set off an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.
2005 – Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes controversial cartoon, The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. The publication led to riots and protests in many parts of the world.
2013 – 54 people are killed by a series of car bombs in Baghdad, Iraq
2014 – A case of Ebola Virus reaches Dallas, Texas
2014 – Amazon filed for a patent for a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) configured to autonomously deliver items to customers. The patent was related to Amazon’s plan for their Prime Air service.
2020 – California becomes the 1st US state to pass a law allowing for reparations for black residents and descendants of slaves
2021 – Canada observes its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, honoring victims and survivors of residential schools for indigenous children
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
