Today in History

Today in History

55 B.C. – Britain was invaded by Roman forces under Julius Caesar.

1498 – Michelangelo was commissioned to make the 'Pieta.'

1842 – The first fiscal year was established by the U.S. Congress to start on July 1st.

1847 – Liberia was proclaimed as an independent republic.

1873 – The school board of St. Louis, MO, authorized the first U.S. public kindergarten.

1896 – In the Philippines, and insurrection began against the Spanish government.

1920 – The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The amendment prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in the voting booth.

1934 – Adolf Hitler demanded that France turn over their Saar region to Germany.

1937 – All Chinese shipping was blockaded by Japan.

1939 – The first televised major league baseball games were shown. The event was a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1939 – The radio program, 'Arch Oboler’s Plays', presented the NBC Symphony for the first time.

1945 – The Japanese were given surrender instructions on the U.S. battleship Missouri at the end of World War II.

1947 – Don Bankhead became the first black pitcher in major league baseball.

1957 – The first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolled of the assembly line.

1961 – The International Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto opened.

1973 – A U.S. Presidential Proclamation was declared that made August 26th Women's Equality Day.

1978 – Sigmund Jahn blasted off aboard the Russian Soyuz 31 and became the first German in space.

1981 – The U.S. claimed that North Korea fired an antiaircraft missile at a U.S. Surveillance plane while it was over South Korea.

1987 – The Fuller Brush Company announced plans to open two retail stores in Dallas, TX. The company that had sold its products door to door for 81 years.

1990 – The 55 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait left Baghdad by car and headed for the Turkish border.

1991 – Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised that national elections would be held.

1992 – A 'no-fly zone' was imposed on the southern

1/3 of Iraq. The move by the U.S., France and Britain was aimed at protecting Iraqi Shiite Muslims.

1998 – The U.S. government announced that they were investigating Microsoft in an attempt to discover if they 'bullied' Intel into delaying new technology.

Born

1743 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry who defined the role of oxygen and named it.

1874 Lee de Forest, physicist, inventor, considered the father of radio.

1875 John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, writer and governor general of Canada, famous for his book The Thirty-Nine Steps.

1898 Peggy Guggenheim, art patron and collector.

1906 Christopher Isherwood, English novelist and playwright, author of Goodbye to Berlin, the inspiration for the play I am a Camera and the musical and film Cabaret.

1906 Albert Sabin, medical researcher, developed the polio vaccine.

1910 Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), missionary, Nobel Prize laureate for her work in the slums of Calcutta.

1922 Irving Levine, journalist; first American television correspondent to be accredited in the Soviet Union.

1944 Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard Alexander Walter George).

History