Today in History

Today in History

1774 – Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.

1790 – The U.S. Congress moved from New York to Philadelphia.

1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.

1876 – The city of Anaheim was incorporated for a second time.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramophone, with a recording of himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.

1883 – 'Ladies' Home Journal' was published for the first time.

1884 – The construction of the Washington Monument was completed by Army engineers. The project took 34 years.

1889 – Jefferson Davis died in New Orleans. He was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America.

1907 – In Monongah, WV, 361 people were killed in America's worst mine disaster.

1917 – More than 1,600 people died when two munitions ships collided in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1917 – Finland proclaimed independence from Russia.

1921 – The Catholic Irish Free State was created as a self-governing dominion of Britain when an Anglo-Irish treaty was signed.

1923 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge became the first president to give a presidential address that was broadcast on radio.

1926 – In Italy, Benito Mussolini introduced a tax on bachelors.

1947 – Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by U.S. President Truman.

1957 – AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Teamsters were readmitted in 1987.

1957 – America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed when the satellite blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, FL.

1960 – Gene Autry and Bob Reynolds were granted the Los Angeles Angels baseball franchise by the American League.

1973 – Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the vice-president of the United States after vice-president Spiro Agnew resigned.

1982 – 11 soldiers and 6 civilians were killed when a bomb exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland. The Irish National Liberation Army was responsible for planting the bomb.

1983 – In Jerusalem, a bomb planted on a bus exploded killing six Israelis and wounding 44.

1985 – Congressional negotiators reached an agreement on a deficit-cutting proposal that later became the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law.

1989 – The worst mass shooting in Canadian history occurred when a man gunned down 14 women at the University of Montreal's school of engineering. The man then killed himself.

1989 – Egon Krenz resigned as leader of East Germany.

1990 – Iraq announced that it would release all its 2,000 foreign hostages.

1992 – Germany's primary political parties agreed to tighten postwar asylum laws.

History