THIS DAY IN HISTORY
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2008: Barack Obama is elected the first black president of the United States.
OTHER EVENTS
1530: England’s Cardinal Wolsey is arrested for being a traitor.
1547: England’s Parliament repeals the Henrican Act as the first stage in the Protestant Reformation.
1791: In what became known as St Clair’s Defeat, US General Arthur St Clair is beaten by the British-supported Northwest Indian Confederation.
1841: The first wagon train arrives in California.
1842: American socialite
Mary Todd, at age 23, weds
Illinois Congressman and lawyer Abraham Lincoln, 33 years old, in Springfield, Illinois.
1862: American inventor
Richard Jordan Gatling patents the hand-cranked Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis.
1879: African American inventor Thomas Elkins patents the rafrigerating apparatus.
James Ritty patents the first cash register, to combat stealing by bartenders in his saloon in Dayton, Ohio.
1908: The Brooklyn Academy of Music opens in New York City.
1914: Vogue holds its first model show, ‘Fashion Fete’, in New York City.
1921: Japan’s Premier Takashi Hara is assassinated.
1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamen, in
Egypt.
1924: American politician Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to be elected governor of a US state (Wyoming); she serves the remaining term of William B Ross, her husband who died in office. California legalises professional boxing, which had been illegal since 1914.
1939: The United States modifies its neutrality stance in World War II by allowing “cash and carry” purchases of arms by belligerents, a policy favouring Britain and France.
1940: American author and journalist of The Old Man and the
Sea, Ernest Hemingway divorces his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.
1944: The Allies announce that Greece has been liberated from German Nazis in World War II.
1946: UNESCO is officially established as its constitution enters into force; this specialised agency of the United Nations calls for the promotion of international collaboration in education, science, and culture.
1948: American humorist Will Rogers is commemorated by the US Postage Service on a threecent stamp.
1952: Dwight D Eisenhower is elected US president, defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
1963: John Lennon utters his infamous line at a ‘Royal Variety Performance’, “Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And for the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery…” in London.
1964: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is forcibly exiled from Iran; he settles in Iraq.
1976: Britain proposes Rhodesian independence under black majority rule by March 1, 1978.
1979: A hostage crisis in
Iran begins as the US Embassy in Tehrãn is seized by Iranian militants in a move sanctioned by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
1980: Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president of the United States.
1984: About 1,000 Sikhs, battered by Hindus outraged over the assassination of India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, take refuge in the Sis Ganj shrine.
1991: Former First Lady Imelda Marcos returns to the Philippines, ending more than five years of exile in the US; her arrival follows the Government’s decision to endorse her return so that she could be tried on corruption and tax-evasion charges.
1993: Thousands of people who received transfusions demand AIDS tests, terrified they may have been given tainted blood from a company in Germany that was accused of improper testing. Nia Peeples files for divorce from Howard Hewett.
1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, co-recipient with Shimon Peres and Yãsir Arafãt of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994, is assassinated this day in 1995 by a Jewish extremist as he leaves a pro-peace rally in Tel Aviv.
1997: The United States announces its purchase of 21 MIG-29 jet fighters from former Soviet republics to prevent the advanced planes from ending up in Iran.
1999: Aaron Mckinney, who beat gay college student Matthew Shepard and left him to die on the Wyoming prairie, avoids the death penalty by agreeing to serve life in prison without parole and promising never to appeal his conviction.
2001: Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Damascus, Syria, condemn Osama bin Laden, the fugitive believed to have masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The first film adaptation of J K Rowling’s best-selling Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, premieres in London. In presidential elections held in Nicaragua, Enrique José Bolaños Geyer (Enrique Bolaños) of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party wins a surprisingly large victory over Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
2003: Wal-mart Stores Inc is placed under investigation by a federal grand jury for its role in employing illegal immigrants; earlier, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided 61 Wal-mart stores in 21 states, arresting around 250 illegally employed cleaning workers in the largest mass immigration raid in years.
2005: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf suspends a major purchase of US fighter planes, explaining that the money is needed for recovery from a recent earthquake.
2006: 1996 summer Olympic gold medalist gymnast Dominique Moceanu, at 25 years old, weds 29-year-old podiatrist Dr Michael Canales in Houston, Texas.
2009: R&B singer Usher, at 30, divorces 38-year-old hairstylist and wardrobe stylist Tameka Foster due to an irretrievably broken marriage, after 2 years.
2010: Following a tense 95 minutes while the pilots dumped fuel after an engine caught fire and blew out, a massive doubledecker Airbus 380 jetliner — the world’s largest — returns safely to Singapore where it makes an emergency landing with 459 people aboard.
2013: In Tehran’s largest anti-us rally in years, tens of thousands of demonstrators join in chants of “death to America” as hardliners direct a major show of resolve against President Hassan Rouhani’s outreach to Washington.