TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: SEPT 8
1380 Battle on Kulikovo: Moscow’s great monarch Dimitri defeats the Mongols beginning the decline of the Tatars
1504 Michelangelo’s 13-foot marble statue of David is unveiled in Florence, Italy.
1529 The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman re-enters Budapest and establishes John Zapolya as the puppet king of Hungary.
1565 Spanish explorers found St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.
1644 The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam surrenders to the British fleet that sails into its harbor. Five years later, the British change the name to New York.
1760 The French surrender the city of Montreal to the British.
1858 Abraham Lincoln supposedly says in a speech “You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time”
1892 1st appearance of “The Pledge of Allegiance” (Youth’s Companion)
1893 In New Zealand, the Electoral Act 1893 was passed by the Legislative Council. It was consented by the governor on September 19 giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.
1894 Employed by Thomas Edison, William K.L. Dickson films first boxing match at West Orange, New Jersey, an exhibition between world heavyweight champion James J. Corbett and Peter Courtney
1900 A hurricane struck Galveston, Texas, killing about 8,000 people.
1903 Between 30,000 and 50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children are massacred in Monastir by Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.
1916 US President Woodrow Wilson signs the Emergency Revenue Act, doubling the rate of income tax and adding inheritance and munitions profits tax
1921 Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., is named the first Miss America.
1935 U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, “The Kingfish” of Louisiana politics, was shot and mortally wounded. He died two days later.
1941 Entire Jewish community of Meretsch, Lithuania is exterminated
1945 Korea is partitioned by the Soviet Union and the United States.
1951 The San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed, formally ending World War II hostilities with Japan.
1952 Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea was published.
1960 Penguin Books in Britain is charged with obscenity for trying to publish the D.H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover
1965 A small ad in New York’s Daily Variety attracts 437 young men interested in forming the world’s first manufactured boy band, “The Monkees”
1967 Uganda abolishes traditional tribal kingdoms, becomes a republic
1970 Black September hijackings begin, three airliners hijacked and blown up by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
1974 President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard M. Nixon for any crimes arising from the Watergate scandal he may have committed while in office.
1975 In Boston, MA, public schools began their court-ordered citywide busing program amid scattered incidents of violence.
1978 Iranian army fires on Khomeini followers in Tehran, 100s killed
1991 Macedonian Independence Day; voters overwhelmingly approve referendum to form the Republic of Macedonia, independent of Yugoslavia.
1994 USAir Flight 427 crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 people aboard; subsequent investigation leads to changes in manufacturing practices and pilot training.
1999 Russia’s Mission Control switched off the Mir space station’s central computer and other systems to save energy during a planned six months of unmanned flights.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
