This Day In History
• 51 - Nero, later to become Roman Emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth)
• 1152 - Frederick I Barbarossa elected Holy Roman Emperor
• 1215 - King John of England makes an oath to the Pope as a crusader to gain the support of Innocent III.
• 1790 - France is divided into 83 départements, which cut across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on noble ownership of land.
• 1793 - French troops conquer Geertruidenberg, Netherlands
• 1804 - The Battle of Vinegar Hill, colony of New South Wales (Australia), when Irish convicts (some of whom had been involved in Ireland's Battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798) led the colony's only significant convict uprising.
• 1824 - The "National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck" founded in the United Kingdom, later to be renamed The Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1858.
• 1841 - Longest US presidential inauguration speech (8,443 words), William Henry Harrison
• 1861 - Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the 16th US President
• 1865 - Abraham Lincoln inaugurated for his 2nd term as US president
• 1870 - On command of Louis Riel, Thomas Scott is executed by a firing squad. Riel rejects all appeals and requests to intervene in an attempt to demonstrate to the Canadian government that the Métis must be taken seriously
• 1890 - The longest bridge in the Great Britain, the Forth Bridge (railway) (1,710 ft) in Scotland is opened by the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII.
• 1913 - Woodrow Wilson inaugurated as 28th US President
• 1918 - First recorded case of Spanish flu at Funston Army Camp, Kanas; start of worldwide pandemic killing 50-100 million
• 1921 - Warren G. Harding is inaugurated as the 29th President of the United States
• 1923 - Lenin's last article in Pravda (about Soviet bureaucracy)
• 1927 - Babe Ruth becomes the highest-paid player in MLB history when he signs 3-year, $70,000 per season contract with the New York Yankees
• 1933 - Chancellor Dollfuss dissolves Austrian parliament
• 1933 - Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd US President, pledges to pull US out of the Depression, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"
• 1941 - The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands, during World War II.
• 1945 - In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, joins the British Auxiliary Transport Service as a driver.
• 1947 - WWJ (now WDIV) TV channel 4 in Detroit, MI (NBC) begins broadcasting
• 1955 - 1st radio facsimile transmission sent across the continent
• 1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. announces plans for Poor People's Campaign
• 1968 - Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5 launched
• 1972 - Libya & USSR signs cooperation treaty
• 1977 - West Indian cricket fast bowler Colin Croft takes 8-29 against Pakistan in 2nd Test win at Port-of-Spain; best Test figures by a pace bowler from the West Indies
• 1977 - Earthquake in Romania kills 1,541
• 1979 - US Voyager I photo reveals Jupiter's rings
• 1980 - Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) comes to power, winning the parliamentary election in Zimbabwe, making Mugabe Zimbabwe's first black prime minister • 1982 - NASA launches Intelsat V satellite, no. 504
• 1983 - U.S. Public Health Service's publishes its guidelines for blood donors and AIDS
• 1985 - STS 51-E vehicle rolls back to Vandenberg AFB; mission cancelled • 1985 - Virtual ban on leaded gas ordered by EPA