[ T O D A Y I N H I S T O R Y ] On this day in . . . • 1656, Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive • 1773, during the American Revolutionary War: The United Kingdoms East India Company tea ships cargo are burned at Annapolis • 1789, George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day • 1812, work on Londons Regents Canal starts • 1884, George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film • 1888, Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene • 1910, English aviator Claude Grahame-White lands his Farman biplane on Executive Avenue near the White House • 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former president Theodore Roosevelt is shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank. With a fresh flesh wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt still delivers his scheduled speech • 1926, the childrens book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is first published • 1933, Nazi Germany withdraws from The League of Nations • 1943, prisoners at the Sobibor death camp in Poland revolt, resulting in the death of 11 SS. About half of the camps 600 prisoners escape; about 50 survive the war • 1947, Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight • 1949, eleven leaders of the U.S. Communist Party are convicted, after a nine-month trial, of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government • 1968, first live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft, the Apollo 7. ALSO: American Jim Hines becomes the first man ever to break the ten second barrier in the 100 metres Olympic final at Mexico City with a time of 9.95 sec. He would be the only man to do so until 1983 • 1987, a 58-hour drama began in Midland, Texas, as 18-month-old Jessica McClure slid 22 feet down an abandoned well at a private day care center; she was rescued on Oct. 16 • 1994, terrorist Yasser Arafat, ymsh, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize • 2008, a grand jury in Orlando, Fla. returned charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter against Casey Anthony in the death of her 3-year-old daughter, Caylee. ALSO: Syria formally recognized Lebanon for the first time by establishing diplomatic relations with its neighbor • 2012, Daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner became the first man to shatter the sound barrier without traveling in a jet or a spacecraft, jumping from a balloon 24 miles above the New Mexico desert. ALSO: Sixty-five years after becoming the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound, 89-year-old retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager commemorated the event by smashing through the sound barrier again, this time in the backseat of an F-15.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 17:53:07 +0000
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