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This Day In History

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: 2005 Dec. ~ 2006 Feb.: Free Expression: This Day In History users admin

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Legalboxer
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11-17-2003

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - 5:56 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
APRIL 19th

Oklahoma City Bombing Remembered 10 Years Later

Mourners in Oklahoma City stood still for 168 seconds of silence -- one for each of the victims -- on Tuesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building by right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh.

Inside the First United Methodist Church that was badly damaged by McVeigh's truck bomb, former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Dick Cheney were among the 1,600 people who stood with heads bowed and eyes closed as the seconds ticked away.

The silence began at 9:02 a.m. (10:02 EDT/1400 GMT), the exact moment of the blast on April 19, 1995.

Outside, on bronze chairs erected to remember each of the victims at a memorial on the site of the destroyed building, friends and family of the dead placed flowers, photos and teddy bears to remember them.

link

MORE ...

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usokla0420,0,401542.story



Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - 6:01 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 20

1841 First detective story is published


Edgar Allen Poe's story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, first appears in Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine. The tale is generally considered to be the first detective story.

The story describes the extraordinary "analytical power" used by Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris. Like the later Sherlock Holmes stories, the tale is narrated by the detective's roommate.

link


Native_texan
Member

08-24-2004

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 9:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Native_texan a private message Print Post    
April 21, 1836 - The Battle of San Jacinto

During the Texan War for Independence, the Texas militia under Sam Houston launches a surprise attack against the forces of Mexican General Santa Anna along the San Jacinto River. The Mexicans were thoroughly routed, and hundreds were taken prisoner, including General Santa Anna himself.

After gaining independence from Spain in the 1820s, Mexico welcomed foreign settlers to sparsely populated Texas, and a large group of Americans led by Stephen F. Austin settled along the Brazos River. The Americans soon outnumbered the resident Mexicans, and by the 1830s attempts by the Mexican government to regulate these semi-autonomous American communities led to rebellion. In March 1836, in the midst of armed conflict with the Mexican government, Texas declared its independence from Mexico.

The Texas volunteers initially suffered defeat against the forces of Santa Anna--Sam Houston's troops were forced into an eastward retreat, and the Alamo fell. However, in late April, Houston's army surprised a Mexican force at San Jacinto, and Santa Anna was captured, bringing an end to Mexico's effort to subdue Texas. In exchange for his freedom, Santa Anna recognized Texas's independence; although the treaty was later abrogated and tensions built up along the Texas-Mexico border.

The citizens of the so-called Lone Star Republic elected Sam Houston as president and endorsed the entrance of Texas into the United States. However, the likelihood of Texas joining the Union as a slave state delayed any formal action by the U.S. Congress for more than a decade. Finally, in 1845, President John Tyler orchestrated a compromise in which Texas would join the United States as a slave state. On December 29, 1845, Texas entered the United States as the 28th state, broadening the irrepressible differences in the U.S. over the issue of slavery and igniting the Mexican-American War.



Legalboxer
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11-17-2003

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 12:46 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
1918 Also On This Day...
Bertangles France - German air ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen 1881-1918 shot down and killed over the Western Front during a dogfight with Captain Roy Brown 1893-1944 of Carleton Place, Ontario, a flight leader in the 209th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. It is likely that Australian ground fire downed the Red Baron, victor over 80 Allied planes. The tail of von Richthofen's plane is on display at Toronto's Royal Military Institute.



ETA : I know this is in Canada's thread too but it deserves a double mention :-)

Native_texan
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08-24-2004

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 12:49 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Native_texan a private message Print Post    
Legal, love it, love it, love it!!! Snoopy the Red Baron has always been my absolute favorite cartoon strip character.

Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 12:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
as some on TV would say, Snoopy is the DAWG! :-)

i do hope "discussion" and "free expression" can be included in these history threads as well as the actual events. :-)

Legalboxer
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11-17-2003

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 12:55 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
753 -BC- Traditional date of the foundation of Rome

1649 Maryland Toleration Act passed, allowing all freedom of worship

1789 John Adams sworn in as 1st US Vice President (9 days before Washington)


Native_texan
Member

08-24-2004

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 1:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Native_texan a private message Print Post    
1989 - Chinese students begin protests at Tiananmen Square

Historychannel.com is terrific. You can even sign up to receive a daily newsletter for "This Day in History."



Twiggyish
Member

08-14-2000

Thursday, April 21, 2005 - 7:03 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Twiggyish a private message Print Post    
These are great!

Native_texan
Member

08-24-2004

Friday, April 22, 2005 - 7:33 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Native_texan a private message Print Post    
APRIL 22

1970 The first Earth Day

1937 Jack Nicholson born

1889 The Oklahoma land rush begins

This one really caught my eye:

}1886 Seduction is made illegal

Ohio passes a statute that makes seduction unlawful. Covering all men over the age of 21 who worked as teachers or instructors of women, this law even prohibited men from having consensual sex with women (of any age) whom they were instructing. The penalty for disobeying this law ranged from two to 10 years in prison.

Ohio's seduction law was not the first of its kind. An 1848 New York law made it illegal for a man to have an "illicit connexion (sic) with any unmarried female of previous chaste character" if the man did so by promising to marry the girl. Georgia's version of the seduction statute made it unlawful for men to "seduce a virtuous unmarried female and induce her to yield to his lustful embraces, and allow him to have carnal knowledge of her."

These laws were only sporadically enforced, but a few men were actually prosecuted and convicted. In Michigan, a man was convicted of three counts of seduction, but the appeals court did everything in its power to overturn the decision. It threw out two charges because the defense reasoned that the woman was no longer virtuous after the couple's first encounter. The other charge was overturned after the defense claimed that the woman's testimony-that they had had sex in a buggy-was medically impossible.

On many occasions, women used these laws in order to coerce men into marriage. A New York man in the middle of an 1867 trial that was headed toward conviction proposed to the alleged victim. The local minister was summoned, and the trial instantly became a marriage ceremony.




Legalboxer
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11-17-2003

Friday, April 22, 2005 - 8:23 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 22

1876 In the first National League game ever played, 3000 fans watch the hometown Philadelphia Athletics lose to the Boston Red Caps, 6-5

1994 - The thirty-seventh president of the United States, Richard Milhouse Nixon, died.

Quote of the Day
I am just going outside and may be some time.
- Lawrence Oates, when he left his tent and disappeared into the Antarctic blizzard, 1912.


Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Friday, April 22, 2005 - 8:27 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 22
2000: Swat team grabs tug-of-love Cuban boy
US federal agents have seized six-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez in an early morning raid on the home of his relatives in Miami.
About 25 officers broke down the door of the house and re-emerged minutes later with Elian wrapped in a blanket.

They bundled the screaming boy into a vehicle and drove him away, as the crowd outside the house shouted protests.

Chaotic scenes followed as the officers retreated and pepper spray was used to keep back the crowd.

Elian was put on a plane and flown to Andrews Air force base outside Washington where he was reunited with his father for the first time in five months.

Elian has been at the centre of a bitter custody battle between his Miami relatives and his father in Cuba since being shipwrecked off the Florida coast last November.

His mother, and 10 other people attempting to enter the US as illegal immigrants, drowned

link



Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Saturday, April 23, 2005 - 9:34 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 23
SLAY A DRAGON DAY

In Greek mythology, Perseus slew a monster that threatened Andromeda. Not to be outdone, the Crusaders from the 1300s told the story of Saint George. George used his magic sword to kill a dragon ... just in the nick of time to save the king’s daughter from being sacrificed to the fire-breathing beast. As the story goes, this dragon had an insatiable appetite and it was only through his deep faith that George was able to accomplish this deed.
Little factual information is known about Saint George other than his becoming a soldier and rising to a high rank under Diocletian. Because of his strong and open belief in Christianity, he was arrested, tortured and put to death at Nicomedia on this day in 303 A.D.

He was so revered by the Crusaders, that George was named Patron Saint of England in 1350 A.D. For many years, English soldiers wore the red cross of St. George on a white background as a badge; and it remains a part of the British Union flag.

The martyred hero is still honored throughout England on this day, Saint George Feast Day.



Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 9:08 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 24

Today, the Library of Congress celebrates its birthday. On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved the appropriation of $5,000 for the purchase of "such books as may be necessary for the use of congress."

The books, the first purchased for the Library of Congress, were ordered from London and arrived in 1801. The collection of 740 volumes and three maps was stored in the U.S. Capitol, the Library's first home. President Thomas Jefferson approved the first legislation defining the role and functions of the new institution on January 26, 1802.1

In the almost two centuries since its founding, the Library has taken on the mission of making its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people, and sustaining and preserving a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. The vast holdings of the Library now number well over 110 million items.

Log on. Play around. Learn something. As a birthday present for children and their families, the Library of Congress unveiled a new Web site for its year 2000 bicentenial: America's Story from America's Library is designed to let you have fun with history while learning at the same time. The Library wants to put the story back in history, and show you some things that you've never heard or seen before. What you see comes from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Library, the largest in the world, has millions of amazing things that will surprise you.




Native_texan
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08-24-2004

Monday, April 25, 2005 - 12:41 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Native_texan a private message Print Post    
April 25

1990 Space telescope in orbit

1983 Andropov writes to an American fifth-grader

1989 A father is exonerated after 21 years

1995 Ginger Rogers dies

1719 Robinson Crusoe is published

1831 A play lionizing Davy Crockett opens

1964 Johnson announces appointment of Westmoreland

1945 Americans and Russians link up, cut Germany in two


Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Thursday, April 28, 2005 - 11:45 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 28 1788

Maryland became the 7th State!

In 1608, Capt. John Smith explored Chesapeake Bay. Charles I granted a royal charter for Maryland to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, in 1632, and English settlers, many of whom were Roman Catholic, landed on St. Clement's (now Blakistone) Island in 1634. Religious freedom, granted all Christians in the Toleration Act passed by the Maryland assembly in 1649, was ended by a Puritan revolt, 1654–1658.

From 1763 to 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed Maryland's northern boundary line with Pennsylvania. In 1791, Maryland ceded land to form the District of Columbia.

In 1814, during the British attempt to capture Baltimore, the bombardment of Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” During the Civil War, Maryland was a slave state but remained in the Union. Consequently, Marylanders fought on both sides and many families were divided.




Motto: Fatti maschii, parole femine (Manly deeds, womanly words)

State Symbols:
bird Baltimore oriole (1947)
boat skipjack (1985)
crustacean Maryland blue crab (1989)
dinosaur Astrodon johnstoni (1998)
dog Chesapeake Bay retriever (1964)
beverage milk (1998)
flower black-eyed susan (1918)
fish rockfish (1965)
folk dance square dance (1994)
fossil shell ecphora gardnerae gardnerae (Wilson) (1994)
insect Baltimore checkerspot butterfly (1973)
reptile Diamondback terrapin (1994)
song “Maryland! My Maryland!” (1939)
sport jousting (1962)
team sport lacrosse (2004)
tree white oak (1941)


Nicknames: Free State; Old Line State

Origin of name: In honor of Henrietta Maria (queen of Charles I of England)



Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Saturday, April 30, 2005 - 9:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
April 30

1803 That Land Grab in Louisiana

During the early moments of the nineteenth century, the United States government wheeled and dealed its way into what is generally regarded as the "greatest land bargain" in the nation's history, the Louisiana Purchase. The deal, which was dated April 30, 1803, though it was in fact signed on May 2, had been in the works since the spring of 1802. It was then that President Thomas Jefferson had learned of Spain's decision to quietly transfer Spanish Louisiana to the French; fearful of the strategic and commercial implications of the Spanish swap, Jefferson ordered Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister in Paris, to broker a deal with the French either for a slice of land on the lower Mississippi or a "guarantee" of unmolested transport for U.S. ships. Negotiations dragged on for months, but took a crucial turn when Spanish and U.S. trade relations collapsed in the fall of 1802. With Spain now barring American merchant ships from transferring goods at the port in New Orleans, Jefferson set his sights on purchasing a far larger chunk of land. In early 1803, James Monroe headed to Paris to broker Jefferson's deal. With France teetering on the brink of war with Great Britain, and mindful not only of the fiscal repercussions of such a conflict, but of the possibility of a renewed U.S.-English alliance, Napoleon's negotiators acceded to a deal to sell the whole of Louisiana. All told, the Louisiana Purchase cost the U.S. $15 million: $11.25 million was earmarked for the land deal, while the remaining $3.75 million covered France's outstanding debts to America. Thus, for the prime price of 3 cents an acre, the United States bought 828,000-square miles of land, which effectively doubled the size of the young nation.


Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Sunday, May 01, 2005 - 4:39 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
May 1

On May 1, 1931, with the press of a button in Washington, D.C., President Herbert Hoover turned on the lights of the Empire State Building. This event officially opened the edifice, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in New York City, to the public. At 102 stories, it reigned as the world's tallest skyscraper until 1974.

In 1929, a corporation which included Alfred E. Smith (former Governor of New York) and John Jacob Raskob (financial captain behind the growth of General Motors), and others formed to construct the Empire State Building. Excavation began in January of the following year, construction commenced in March, and Smith laid its cornerstone in September. The steel framework rose at a rate of 4 1/2 stories per week. The building's construction was completed in a phenomenal one year and 45 days.

Upon its completion, the 1454-foot Empire State Building became an icon for all things New York. Its Art Deco lobby presented 10,000 square feet of marble and its mast, currently a TV tower, was originally intended as a mooring for dirigibles. It has been featured in scores of stories and films, perhaps the most the most famous being the 1933 production of King Kong starring Fay Wray.



(i personally like two other movies it was featured in ..... :-))



Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Thursday, May 05, 2005 - 7:09 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
May 5

1862 Cinco de Mayo


During the French-Mexican War, a poorly supplied and outnumbered Mexican army under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeats a French army attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. Victory at the Battle of Puebla represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolizing the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation.

In 1861, the liberal Mexican Benito Juarez became president of a country in financial ruin, and he was forced to default on his debts to European governments. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to carve a dependent empire out of Mexican territory. Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juarez and his government into retreat.

Certain that French victory would come swiftly in Mexico, 6,000 French troops under General Charles Latrille de Lorencez set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles. From his new headquarters in the north, Juarez rounded up a rag-tag force of loyal men and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Zaragoza, the 2,000 Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On the fifth of May, 1862, Lorencez drew his army, well-provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, before the city of Puebla and began their assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers to the fewer than 100 Mexicans killed.

Although not a major strategic victory in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza's victory at Puebla tightened Mexican resistance, and six years later France withdrew. The same year, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who had been installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon in 1864, was captured and executed by Juarez' forces. Puebla de Los Angeles, the site of Zaragoza's historic victory, was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza in honor of the general. Today, Mexicans celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla as Cinco de Mayo, a national holiday in Mexico.



Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 7:09 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
May 17

1954 Brown v. Board of Education


In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down an unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. The historic decision, which brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl who had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" accommodations in railroad cars conformed to the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. That ruling was used to justify segregating all public facilities, including elementary schools. However, in the case of Linda Brown, the white school she attempted to attend was far superior to her black alternative and miles closer to her home. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took up Linda's cause, and in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reached the Supreme Court. African American lawyer (and future Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall led Brown's legal team, and on May 17, 1954, the high court handed down its decision.

In an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the nation's highest court ruled that not only was the "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional in Linda's case, it was unconstitutional in all cases because educational segregation stamped an inherent badge of inferiority on African American students. A year later, after hearing arguments on the implementation of their ruling, the Supreme Court published guidelines requiring public school systems to integrate "with all deliberate speed."

The Brown v. Board of Education decision served to greatly motivate the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately led to the abolishment of racial segregation in all public facilities and accommodations.




Vee
Member

02-23-2004

Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 4:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Vee a private message Print Post    
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country's future.~The History Channel

Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Monday, May 30, 2005 - 10:31 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
May 30

1806 Andrew Jackson wins duel


In Logan County, Kentucky, future president Andrew Jackson participates in a duel, killing Charles Dickinson, a lawyer regarded as one of the best pistol shots in the area.

The proud and volatile Jackson, a former senator and representative of Tennessee, called for the duel after his wife Rachel was slandered as a bigamist by Dickinson, who was referring to a legal error in the divorce from her first husband in 1791. Jackson met his foe at Harrison's Mills on Red River in Logan, Kentucky, on May 30, 1806. In accordance with dueling custom, the two stood 24 feet apart, with pistols pointed downward. After the signal, Dickinson fired first, grazing Jackson's breastbone and breaking some of his ribs. However, Jackson, a former Tennessee militia leader, maintained his stance and fired back, fatally wounding his opponent.

It was one of several duels Jackson was said to have participated in during his lifetime, the majority of which were allegedly called in defense of his wife's honor. None of the other rumored duels were recorded, and whether he killed anyone else in this manner is not known. In 1829, Rachel died, and Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States.




Legalboxer
Member

11-17-2003

Monday, May 30, 2005 - 7:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Legalboxer a private message Print Post    
how could i forget....

STEVE PREFONTAINE • DIED MAY 30 1975

Charismatic, handsome and brashly confident, Prefontaine was one of the leading American distance runners of the early 1970s. He won seven NCAA championships while running for the University of Oregon from 1969-73 (three cross-country, four in the three-mile race) and finished fourth in the 5000 meters at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Prefontaine set more than a dozen American records at distances from 2000 meters to six miles before his sudden 1975 death in a one-car accident.

Extra credit: Prefontaine's story was told in two unrelated feature films: Prefontaine (1997, with actor Jared Leto as Prefontaine) and Without Limits (1998, with Billy Crudup as Prefontaine). He is also the topic of the 1995 documentary Fire on the Track... The winner of the 1972 Olympic 5000 meters was Finland's Lasse Viren... At Oregon Prefontaine was coached by Bill Bowerman, who along with U of O alumnus Phil Knight designed the first Nike running shoes... In 1974 Prefontaine became the first athlete to sign a contract with Nike.




Redstar
Member

07-08-2005

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 10:33 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Redstar a private message Print Post    
Today in History:

1789: The U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

1829: London's reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty.

1918: Allied forces scored a decisive breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line during World War I.

1943: General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice aboard the British ship Nelson off Malta.

1978: Pope John Paul I was found dead in his Vatican apartment just over a month after becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.

1982: Seven people in the Chicago area died after unwittingly taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide.

1995: The O.J. Simpson trial was sent to the jury. Three U.S. servicemen were indicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and handed over to Japanese authorities. (They were later convicted.)


Redstar
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07-08-2005

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 3:32 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Redstar a private message Print Post    
September 30

1889 Wyoming legislators write the first state constitution to grant women the vote


On this day in 1889, the Wyoming state convention approves a constitution that includes a provision granting women the right to vote. Formally admitted into the union the following year, Wyoming thus became the first state in the history of the nation to allow its female citizens to vote.

That the isolated western state of Wyoming should be the first to accept women's suffrage was a surprise. Leading suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were Easterners, and they assumed that their own more progressive home states would be among the first to respond to the campaign for women's suffrage. Yet the people and politicians of the growing number of new Western states proved far more supportive than those in the East.

In 1848, the legislature in Washington Territory became the first to introduce a women's suffrage bill. Though the Washington bill was narrowly defeated, similar legislation succeeded elsewhere, and Wyoming Territory was the first to give women the vote in 1869, quickly followed by Utah Territory (1870) and Washington Territory (1883). As with Wyoming, when these territories became states they preserved women's suffrage.

By 1914, the contrast between East and West had become striking. All of the states west of the Rockies had women's suffrage, while no state did east of the Rockies, except Kansas. Why the regional distinction? Some historians suggest western men may have been rewarding pioneer women for their critical role in settling the West. Others argue the West had a more egalitarian spirit, or that the scarcity of women in some western regions made men more appreciative of the women who were there while hoping the vote might attract more.

Whatever the reasons, while the Old West is usually thought of as a man's world, a wild land that was "no place for a woman," Westerners proved far more willing than other Americans to create states where women were welcomed as full and equal citizens.



1955: Heading westbound on Highway 466 just outside Cholame, California, movie star James Dean is killed in a head-on collision with another driver. University student Donald Turnupseed was driving home in his Ford when he swerved into the oncoming lane, smashing into Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder. The actor gave us an oeuvre of just three films, but at least he left a damn good looking corpse.


1962: James Meredith, escorted by Federal Marshals, attempts to enroll as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi. A riot erupts on campus and continues throughout the night. Two people are killed and many are injured.


Redstar
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07-08-2005

Saturday, October 01, 2005 - 6:57 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Redstar a private message Print Post    
October 1

1880: John Philip Sousa becomes new director of U.S. Marine Corps Band

1890: Yosemite National Park is dedicated in California.

1903: The first-ever game of the World Series is played in Boston between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1908: Henry Ford introduces Model T car (costs $825)

1961: Roger Maris slammed home run number 61 into the stands. In the last game of the regular season, Maris broke the long-standing 1927 record of baseball legend Babe Ruth for the most home runs in a single season.

1974: Watergate cover-up trial opens in Washington D.C.

1996: Theodore Kaczynski was charged by a U.S. federal grand jury with mailing a bomb that killed advertising executive Thomas Mosser in 1994. Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, pleaded guilty in January 1998 to mail bombings that killed three people and injured 23. He was sentenced in July 1997 to life without possibility of parole by a federal court in Sacramento, California.

Redstar
Member

07-08-2005

Friday, October 07, 2005 - 9:25 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Redstar a private message Print Post    
OCTOBER &

1777: the second Battle of Saratoga began during the American Revolution. (British forces under Gen. John Burgoyne surrendered 10 days later.)

1806: Englishman Ralph Wedgwood secured the first patent for carbon paper, which he described as an "apparatus for producing duplicates of writings."

1849: author Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore at age 40.

1949: the Republic of East Germany was formed.

1954: Marian Anderson became the first black singer hired by the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York.

1959: Far side of Moon seen for 1st time, compliments of USSR's Luna 3

1985: Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean with more than 400 people aboard. (The hijackers killed an elderly Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, and threw his body overboard; they surrendered two days after taking the ship.)

1993: Toni Morrison received the Nobel Prize for literature. She is acclaimed as one of the most celebrated American writers of the twentieth-century.

1998: Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten and left tied to a wooden fencepost outside of Laramie, Wyo.; he died five days later. (Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving life sentences for Shepard's murder.)

2004: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney conceded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

Vacanick
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07-12-2004

Wednesday, December 07, 2005 - 12:03 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Vacanick a private message Print Post    
December 07 ... Pearl Harbor Day

The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.

Eighteen months earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese agression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable.

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead. Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya.

These great Japanese successes, achieved without prior diplomatic formalities, shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since. For the next five months, until the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, Japan's far-reaching offensives proceeded untroubled by fruitful opposition. American and Allied morale suffered accordingly. Under normal political circumstances, an accomodation might have been considered.

However, the memory of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor fueled a determination to fight on. Once the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 had eliminated much of Japan's striking power, that same memory stoked a relentless war to reverse her conquests and remove her, and her German and Italian allies, as future threats to World peace.