Today in History

Today in History

1657 France and England form an alliance against Spain.

1743 Handel’s Messiah is performed for the first time in London.

1775 American revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, while addressing the House of Burgesses, declares “give me liberty, or give me death!”

1791 Etta Palm, a Dutch champion of woman’s rights, sets up a group of women’s clubs called the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.

1848 Hungary proclaims its independence of Austria.

1857 Elisha Otis installs the first modern passenger elevator in a public building, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.

1858 Eleazer A. Gardner of Philadelphia patents the cable street car, which runs on overhead cables.

1862 Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson faces his only defeat at the Battle of Kernstown, Va

1880 John Stevens of Neenah, Wis., patents the grain crushing mill. This mill allows flour production to increase by 70 percent.

1901 A group of U.S. Army soldier led by Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston capture Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Insurrection of 1899.

1903 The Wright brothers obtain an airplane patent.

1909 British Lt. Ernest Shackleton finds the magnetic South Pole.

1909 Theodore Roosevelt begins an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

1917 Austrian Emperor Charles I makes a peace proposal to French President Poincare.

1920 Great Britain denounces the United States because of its delay in joining the League of Nations.

1921 Arthur G. Hamilton sets a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.

1927 Captain Hawthorne Gray sets a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.

1933 The Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree.

1942 he Japanese occupy the Anadaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.

1951 U.S. paratroopers descend from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.

1956 Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, although it is still within the British Commonwealth.

1967 Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. calls the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.

1970 Mafia boss Carlo Gambino is arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.

1972 The United States calls a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.

1981 U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.

Born

1900 Erich Fromm, German psychologist (The Sane Society).

1907 Daniele Bovet, Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist.

1908 Joan Crawford, American actress.

1910 Akira Kurosawa, film director (Rashomon, The Seven Samurai).

1912 Werner von Braun, German-born rocket pioneer.

1929 Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes.

History