TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 9
490 B.C. The Battle of Marathon took place between the invading Persian army and the Athenian Army. The marathon race was derived from the events that occurred surrounding this battle.
0337 Constantine’s three sons, already Caesars, each take the title of Augustus. Constantine II and Constans share the west while Constantius II takes control of the east.
1000 Battle of Svolder, Baltic Sea: King Olaf on board the Long Serpent defeated in one of the greatest naval battles of the Viking Age.
1087 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England, dies in Rouen while conducting a war which began when the French king made fun of him for being fat.
1776 The term “United States” is adopted by the Continental Congress to be used instead of the “United Colonies.”
1786 George Washington calls for the abolition of slavery.
1850 Territories of New Mexico & Utah created
1850 California, in the midst of a gold rush, enters the Union as the 31st state.
1914 First fully mechanized unit in the British Army created – the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade (WWI)
1926 The Radio Corporation of America creates the National Broadcasting Co.
1942 Japan dropped incendiaries over NE in an attempt to set fire to the forests in Oregon and Washington. The forest did not ignite.
1945 First bug discovered in Computer Software Program when operators at the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory traced an error in the Mark II Computer to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book September 9th 1945.
1948 Kim Il-sung declares the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
1965 US Department of Housing and Urban Development established.
1969 Canada’s Official Languages Act takes effect, making French equal to English as a language within the nation’s government.
1971 Attica Prison Riot; the 4-day riot leaves 39 dead.
1990 Sri Lankan Army massacres 184 civilians of the Tamil minority in the Batticaloa District of Sri Lanka.
1993 Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization exchange letters of mutual recognition
1994 The U.S. agreed to accept about 20,000 Cuban immigrants a year. This was in return for Cuba’s promise to halt the flight of refugees.
1998 Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr delivered to the U.S. Congress 36 boxes of material concerning his investigation of U.S. President Clinton.
2001 Two al Qaeda assassins kill Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
