TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: SEPTEMBER 20
0622 Islamic Prophet Muhammed/Abu Bakr arrives in Jathrib (Medina)
1519 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan left Spain to find a route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Magellan was killed during the trip, but one of his ships eventually made the journey.
1664 Maryland enacts 1st anti-amaglmation law to prevent widespread intermarriage of English women & black men
1784 Packet and Daily, the first daily publication in America, appears on the streets.
1830 The National Negro Convention convenes in Philadelphia with the purpose of abolishing slavery.
1870 Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of modern Italy, seized the Papal States from the French.
1881 Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, succeeding James A. Garfield, who had been assassinated.
1921 KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, started a daily radio newscast. It was one of the first in the U.S.
1958 Martin Luther King Jr stabbed in chest by a deranged black woman in NYC
1971 Hurricane Irene becomes the first hurricane known to cross from the Atlantic to Pacific, where it is renamed Hurricane Olivia.
1973 Billy Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in battle-of-sexes tennis match
1982 U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that the U.S., France, and Italy were going to send peacekeeping troops back to Beirut.
1990 Both East and West Germany ratify reunification
1995 The U.S. House of Representatives voted to drop the national speed limit. This allowed the states to decide their own speed limits.
2000 Independent Counsel Robert Ray announced the end of the Whitewater investigation, saying there was insufficient evidence to charge President Clinton and his wife, Hillary.
2000 British MI6 Secret intelligence Service building in London attacked by unidentified group using RPG-22 anti-tank missile.
2001 In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, US President George W. Bush declares a “war on terror”
2008 A truck loaded with explosives detonates by Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 45 and injuring 226.
2011 US military ends its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and allows gay men and women to serve openly.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
