Today In History - Tuesday - May 24, 2011
1689 - The English Parliament passed Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics were specifically excluded from exemption.
1738 - The Methodist Church was established.
1764 - Bostonian lawyer James Otis denounced "taxation without representation" and called for the colonies to unite in demonstrating their opposition to Britain’s new tax measures.
1798 - Believing that a French invasion of Ireland was imminent, Irish nationalists rose up against the British occupation.
1830 - The first passenger railroad service in the U.S. began service.
1844 - Samuel F.B. Morse formally opened America's first telegraph line. The first message was sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD. The message was "What hath God wrought?"
1863 - Bushwackers led by Captain William Marchbanks attacked a U.S. Federal militia party in Nevada, Missouri.
1878 - The first American bicycle race was held in Boston.
1883 - After 14 years of construction the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to traffic.
1913 - The U.S. Department of Labor entered into its first strike mediation. The dispute was between the Railroad Clerks of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
1931 - B&O Railroad began service with the first passenger train to have air conditioning throughout.
1954 - The first moving sidewalk in a railroad station was opened in Jersey City, NJ.
1958 - United Press International was formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.
1961 - The Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.
1967 - California Governor Ronald Reagan greeted Charles M. Schulz at the state capitol in observance of the legislature-proclaimed "Charles Schulz Day."
1974 - The last "Dean Martin Show" was seen on NBC. The show had been aired for 9 years.
1976 - Britain and France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.
1980 - The International Court of Justice issued a final decision calling for the release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.
1983 - The Brooklyn Bridge's 100th birthday was celebrated.
1983 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate.
1993 - The Ethiopian province of Eritrea declared itself an independent nation.
1994 - The four men convicted of bombing the New York's World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
1999 - 39 miners were killed in an underground gas explosion in the Ukraine.
2000 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved permanent normal trade relations with China. China was not happy about some of the human rights conditions that had been attached by the U.S. lawmakers.
2000 - A Democratic Party event for Al Gore in Washington brought in $26.5 million. The amount set a new record, which had just been set the previous month by Republicans for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
2001 - Temba Tsheri, 15, became the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.



Today In History - Wednesday - May 25, 2011
1787 - The Constitutional convention opened in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding.
1810 - Argentina declared independence from Napoleonic Spain.
1844 - The gasoline engine was patented by Stuart Perry.
1844 - The first telegraphed news dispatch, sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, MD, appeared in the Baltimore "Patriot."
1895 - Oscar Wilde, a playwright, poet and novelist, was convicted of a morals charge and sentenced to prison in London.
1895 - James P. Lee first published "Gold in America -- A Practical Manual."
1925 - John Scopes was indicted for teaching the Darwinian theory in school.
1927 - Ford Motor Company announced that the Model A would replace the Model T.
1946 - Jordan gained independence from Britain.
1953 - In Nevada, the first atomic cannon was fired.
1961 - America was asked by U.S. President Kennedy to work toward putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
1968 - The Gateway Arch, part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, MO, was dedicated.
1970 - Boeing Computer Services was founded.
1977 - An opinion piece by Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs appeared in "The Washington Post." The article called for a national memorial to "remind an ungrateful nation of what it has done to its sons" that had served in the Vietnam War.
1979 - An American Airlines DC-10 crashed during takeoff at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. 275 people were killed.
1981 - Daredevil Daniel Goodwin scaled Chicago's Sears Tower, while wearing a "Spiderman" costume, in 7 1/2 hours.
1985 - Bangladesh was hit with a hurricane and tidal wave that killed more than 11,000 people.
1986 - Approximately 7 million Americans participated in "Hands Across America."
1992 - Jay Leno debuted as the new permanent host of NBC's "Tonight Show."
1996 - In Nimes, France, Christina Sanchez became the first woman to achieve the rank of matadore in Europe.
1997 - In Sierra Leone a military coup overthrew the popularly elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. He was replaced with Major Johnny Paul Koromah.
1997 - U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond became the longest-serving senator in U.S. history (41 years and 10 months).
1997 - Poland adopted a constitution that removed all traces of communism.
1999 - A report by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China concluded that China had "stolen design information on the U.S. most-advanced thermonuclear weapons" and that China's penetration of U.S. weapons laboratories "spans at least the past several decades and almost certainly continues today."
2001 - Erik Weihenmeyer, 32, of Golder, CO, became the first blind climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
2001 - Sherman Bull, 64, of New Canaan, CT, became the oldest climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
2008 - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander landed in the arctic plains of Mars.
2009 - North Korea announced that it had conducted a second successful nuclear test in the province of North Hamgyong. The UN Security Council condemned the reported test.




Today In History - Thursday - May 26, 2011
1736 - The British and Chickasaw Indians defeated the French at the Battle of Ackia.
1791 - The French Assembly forced King Louis XVI to hand over the crown and state assets.
1805 - Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned King of Italy in Milan Cathedral.
1835 - A resolution was passed in the U.S. Congress stating that Congress has no authority over state slavery laws.
1836 - The U.S. House of Representatives adopted what has been called the Gag Rule.
1864 - The Territory of Montana was organized.
1865 - Arrangements were made in New Orleans for the surrender of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi.
1868 - U.S. President Andrew Johnson was acquitted, by one vote, of all charges in his impeachment trial.
1896 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average appeared for the first time in the "Wall Street Journal."
1908 - In Persia, the first oil strike was made in the Middle East.
1940 - The evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II.
1946 - A patent was filed in the United States for an H-bomb.
1946 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed a military pact with Russian leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin promised a "close collaboration after the war."
1948 - The U.S. Congress passed Public Law 557 which permanently established the Civil Air Patrol as the Auxiliary of the new U.S. Air Force.
1958 - Union Square, San Francisco became a state historical landmark.
1959 - The word "Frisbee" became a registered trademark of Wham-O.
1961 - Civil rights activist group Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was established in Atlanta, GA.
1961 - A U.S. Air Force bomber flew across the Atlantic in a record time of just over three hours.
1969 - The Apollo 10 astronauts returned to Earth after a successful eight-day dress rehearsal for the first manned moon landing.
1972 - The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) was signed by the U.S. and USSR. The short-term agreement put a freeze on the testing and deployment of intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles for a 5-year period.
1975 - American stuntman Evel Knievel suffered severe spinal injuries in Britain when he crashed while attempting to jump 13 buses in his car.
1978 - The first legal casino in the Eastern U.S. opened in Atlantic City, NJ.
1987 - Sri Lanka launched Operation Liberation. It was an offensive against the Tamil rebellion in Jaffra.
1994 - U.S. President Clinton renewed trade privileges for China, and announced that his administration would no longer link China's trade status with its human rights record.
1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ellis Island was mainly in New Jersey, not New York.
1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police officers in high-speed chases are liable for bystander injuries only if their "actions shock the conscience."
1998 - The Grand Princess cruise ship made its inaugural cruise. The ship measured 109,000 tons and cost approximately $450 million, making it the largest and most expensive cruise ship ever built.




Today In History - Friday - May 27, 2011
1813 - Americans captured Fort George, Canada.
1901 - The Edison Storage Battery Company was organized.
1907 - The Bubonic Plague broke out in San Francisco.
1919 - A U.S. Navy seaplane completed the first transatlantic flight.
1926 - Bronze figures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were erected in Hannibal, MO.
1931 - Piccard and Knipfer made the first flight into the stratosphere, by balloon.
1933 - Walt Disney's "Three Little Pigs" was first released.
1933 - In the U.S., the Federal Securities Act was signed. The act required the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.
1935 - The U.S. Supreme Court declared that President Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.
1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge connected San Francisco and Marin County.
1941 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed an "unlimited national emergency" amid rising world tensions.
1941 - The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by British naval and air forces. 2,300 people were killed.
1944 - U.S. General MacArthur landed on Biak Island in New Guinea.
1960 - A military coup overthrew the democratic government of Turkey.
1964 - Indian Prime Minister Jawaharla Nehru died.
1968 - After 48 years as coach of the Chicago Bears, George Halas retired.
1969 - Construction of Walt Disney World began in Florida.
1988 - The U.S. Senate ratified the INF treaty. The INF pact was the first arms-control agreement since the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) to receive Senate approval.
1994 - Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He had been in exile for two decades.
1995 - In Charlottesville, VA, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed after being thrown from his horse during a jumping event.
1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones could continue while President Clinton was in office.
1998 - Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison for not warning anyone about the plot to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building.
1999 - In The Hague, Netherlands, a war crimes tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo. It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been charged with such a crime.

Today In History - Monday - May 30, 2011 - Memorial Day
1783 - The first daily newspaper was published in the U.S. by Benjamin Towner called "The Pennsylvania Evening Post"
1814 - The First Treaty of Paris was declared, which returned France to its 1792 borders.
1848 - W.G. Young patented the ice cream freezer.
1854 - The U.S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.
1868 - Memorial Day was observed widely for the first time in the U.S.
1879 - William Vanderbilt renamed New York City's Gilmore’s Garden to Madison Square Garden.
1896 - The first automobile accident occurred in New York City.
1903 - In Riverdale, NY, the first American motorcycle hill climb was held.
1912 - The U.S. Marines were sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.
1913 - The First Balkan War ended.
1921 - The U.S. Navy transferred the Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of the Interior.
1922 - The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC.
1943 - American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.
1958 - Unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflicts were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
1967 - Daredevil Evel Knievel jumped 16 automobiles in a row in a motorcycle stunt at Ascot Speedway in Gardena, CA.
1981 - In Chittagong, Bangladesh, President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated.
1982 - Spain became the 16th NATO member. Spain was the first country to enter the Western alliance since West Germany in 1955.
1983 - Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry declared a state of emergency and suspended civil rights after bombings by leftist rebels.
1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and the former Sarah Ferguson were granted an uncontested decree ending their 10-year marriage.
1997 - Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, NJ, of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka. The 1994 murder inspired "Megan's Law," requiring that communities be notified when sex offenders move in.
1998 - A powerful earthquake hit northern Afghanistan killing up to 5,000.
2003 - Peter Jennings was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

 

Today In History - Tuesday - May 31, 2011
1854 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed by the U.S. Congress.
1859 - The Philadelphia Athletics were formally organized to play the game of Town Ball.
1859 - In London, Big Ben went into operation. The name Big Ben initially referred to the bell inside the tower but later came to the refer to the tower.
1870 - E.J. DeSemdt patented asphalt.
1879 - New York's Madison Square Garden opened.
1880 - The first U.S. national bicycle society was formed in Newport, RI. It was known as the League of American Wheelman.
1884 - Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented "flaked cereal."
1889 - In Johnstown, PA, more than 2,200 people died after the South Fork Dam collapsed.
1900 - U.S. troops arrived in Peking to help put down the Boxer Rebellion.
1902 - The Boer War ended between the Boers of South Africa and Great Britain with the Treaty of Vereeniging.
1907 - The first taxis arrived in New York City. They were the first in the United States.
1910 - The Union of South Africa was founded.
1913 - The 17th Amendment went into effect. It provided for popular election of U.S. senators.
1915 - A German zeppelin made an air raid on London.
1941 - The first issue of the still popular "Parade: The Weekly Picture Newspaper" went on sale.
1947 - Communists seized control of Hungary.
1955 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that all states must end racial segregation "with all deliberate speed."
1961 - South Africa became an independent republic.
1962 - Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel. Eichmann was a Gestapo official and was executed for his actions in the Nazi Holocaust.
1970 - An earthquake in Peru killed tens of thousands of people.
1977 - The trans-Alaska oil pipeline was finished after 3 years of construction.
1979 - Zimbabwe proclaimed its independence.
1994 - The U.S. announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.
1995 - Bob Dole singled out Time Warner for "the marketing of evil" in movies and music. Dole later admitted that he had not seen or heard much of what he had been criticizing.
2003 - In North Carolina, Eric Robert Rudolph was captured. He had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for five years for several bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing.

Today In History - Tuesday - June 1 2011
1774 - The British government ordered the Port of Boston closed.
1789 - The first U.S. congressional act on administering oaths became law.
1792 - Kentucky became the 15th state of the U.S.
1796 - Tennessee became the 16th state of the U.S.
1861 - The first skirmish of the U.S. Civil War took place at the Fairfax Court House, Virginia.
1869 - Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric voting machine.
1877 - U.S. troops were authorized to pursue bandits into Mexico.
1915 - Germany conducted the first zeppelin air raid over England.
1916 - The National Defense Act increased the strength of the U.S. National Guard by 450,000 men.
1938 - Superman, the world's first super hero, appeared in the first issue of Action Comics.
1939 - The Douglas DC-4 made its first passenger flight from Chicago to New York.
1941 - The German Army completed the capture of Crete as the Allied evacuation ended.
1942 - The U.S. began sending Lend-Lease materials to the Soviet Union.
1943 - During World War II, Germans shot down a civilian flight from Lisbon to London.
1944 - The French resistance was warned by a coded message from the British that the D-Day invasion was imminent.
1944 - Siesta was abolished by the government of Mexico.
1958 - Charles de Gaulle became the premier of France.
1961 - Radio listeners in New York, California, and Illinois were introduced to FM multiplex stereo broadcasting. A year later the FCC made this a standard.
1963 - Governor George Wallace vowed to defy an injunction that ordered the integration of the University of Alabama.
1968 - Helen Keller died. She had been deaf and blind since the age of 18 months. During her life she learned to speak, ride horses, and the waltz. She also graduated from Radcliffe cum laude.
1978 - The U.S. reported the finding of wiretaps in the American embassy in Moscow.
1980 - Cable News Network (CNN) made its debut as the first all-news station.
1995 - At Disneyland Paris, the attraction "Space Mountain: From The Earth to the Moon" opened.
199 - In the U.S., the FDA approved a urine-only test for the AIDS virus.
1998 - A $124 million suit was brought against Goodyear Tire & Rubber that alleged discrimination towards black workers.
2008 - The Phoenix Mars Lander became the first NASA spacecraft to scoop Martian soil.
2009 - The first event, a George Strait concert, was held at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX.
Today in Texas History 2009 - General Motors filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. The filing made GM the largest U.S. industrial company to enter bankruptcy protection.

Today In History - Wednesday - June 2, 2011
1774 - The Quartering Act, which required American colonists to allow British soldiers into their houses, was reenacted.
1851 - Maine became the first U.S. state to enact a law prohibiting alcohol.
1883 - The first baseball game under electric lights was played in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
1886 - Grover Cleveland became the second U.S. president to get married while in office. He was the first to have a wedding in the White House.
1910 - Charles Stewart Roll became the first person to fly across the English Channel.
1924 - All American Indians were granted U.S. citizenship by the U.S. Congress.
1933 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the first swimming pool to be built inside the White House.
1935 - George Herman "Babe" Ruth announced that he was retiring from baseball.
1941 - Lou Gehrig died in New York of the degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
1953 - Elizabeth was crowned queen of England at Westminster Abbey.
1954 - U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that there were communists working in the CIA and atomic weapons plants.
1957 - Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was interviewed by CBS-TV.
1966 - Surveyor 1, the U.S. space probe, landed on the moon and started sending photographs back to Earth of the Moon's surface. It was the first soft landing on the Moon.
1969 - The National Arts Center in Canada opened its doors to the public.
1969 - Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne sliced the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half off the shore of South Vietnam.
1979 - Pope John Paul II arrived in his native Poland on the first visit by a pope to a Communist country.
1985 - The R.J. Reynolds Company proposed a major merger with Nabisco that would create a $4.9 billion conglomerate.
1995 - Captain Scott F. O'Grady's U.S. Air Force F-16C was shot down by Bosnian Serbs. He was rescued six days later.
1997 - Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in which 168 people were killed.
1998 - Royal Caribbean Cruises agreed to pay $9 million to settle charges of dumping waste at sea.
1998 - Voters in California passed Proposition 227. The act abolished the state's 30-year-old bilingual education program by requiring that all children be taught in English.
1999 - In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) won a major victory. ANC leader Thabo Mbeki was to succeed Nelson Mandela as the nation's president.
2003 - In Seville, Spain, a chest containing the supposed remains of Christopher Columbus were exhumed for DNA tests to determine whether the bones were really those of the explorer. The tests were aimed at determining if Columbus was currently buried in Spain's Seville Cathedral or in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
2003 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that companies could not be sued under a trademark law for using information in the public domain without giving credit to the originator. The case had originated with 20th Century Fox against suing Dastar Corp. over their use of World War II footage.
2003 - William Baily was reunited with two paintings he had left on a subway platform. One of the works was an original Picasso rendering of two male figures and a recreation of Picasso's "Guernica" by Sophie Matisse. Sophie Matisse was the great-granddaughter of Henri Matisse.

Today In History - Thursday - June 3, 2011
1784 - The U.S. Congress formally created the United States Army to replace the disbanded Continental Army. On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress had created the Continental Army for purposes of common defense and this event is considered to be the birth of the United States Army.
1800 - John Adams moved to Washington, DC. He was the first President to live in what later became the capital of the United States.
1805 - A peace treaty between the U.S. and Tripoli was completed in the captain's cabin on board the USS Constitution.
1864 - About 7,000 Union troops were killed within 30 minutes during the Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia during the U.S. Civil War.
1871 - Jesse James, then 24, and his gang robbed the Obocock bank in Corydon, Iowa. They stole $15,000.
1923 - In Italy, Benito Mussolini granted women the right to vote.
1928 - Manchurian warlord Chian Tso-Lin died as a result of a bomb blast set off by the Japanese.
1940 - German bombed Paris, killing 254 people. Most of the people killed were civilians and school children.
1952 - A rebellion by North Korean prisoners in the Koje prison camp in South Korea was put down by American troops.
1959 - The first class graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO.
1965 - Edward White became the first American astronaut to do a "space walk" when he left the Gemini 4 capsule.
1968 - Andy Warhol was shot and critically wounded in his New York film studio by Valerie Solanas.
1974 - Charles Colson, an aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, pled guilty to obstruction of justice.
1989 - Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died.
1989 - Chinese army troops positioned themselves to began a sweep of Beijing to crush student-led pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
1991 - Mount Unzen in southern Japan erupted killing 40 people.
1998 - In Germany, a train veered off its tracks and hit a road bridge. 101 people were killed and 80 were injured.
1999 - Slobodan Milosevic's government accepted an international peace plan concerning Kosovo. NATO announced that air strikes would continue until 40,000 Serb forces were withdrawn from Kosovo.
2003 - Toys "R" Us, Inc. announced that it had signed a multi-year agreement with Albertson to become the exclusive toy provider for all of all of Albertson's food and drug stores.