Tag: History

May 7 Martinique’s Mount Pele, near the city of Saint Pierre, begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century. The city of Saint Pierre was buried within minutes and virtually everyone died instantly. – 1902. The German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional...

April 16 Employers lock out 25,000 New York City garment workers in a dispute over hiring practices. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union calls a general strike; after 14 weeks, 60,000 strikers win union recognition and the contractual right to strike. – 1916. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik...

April 2 The U.S. Supreme Court declares unconstitutional a 1918 Washington, D.C. law establishing a minimum wage for women. – 1923. The world’s first anthrax epidemic begins in Ekaterinburg, Russia, now Sverdlosk. By the time it ended six weeks later, 62 individuals were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. The...

March 19 The United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, U.S. president George W. Bush announces in a televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of...

March 12 In a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, U.S. president Harry S Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Some historians often have cited Truman’s address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as...

March 5 A mob of American colonists gather at the Customs House in Boston and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building. The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting the occupation of their city by British troops. The colonists threw snowballs and other objects at the British and...

February 13 Italian philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, Galileo Galilei, arrives in Rome to face charges of heresy for advocating Copernican theory, which holds that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Galileo officially faced the Roman Inquisition in April of that same year and agreed to plead guilty in exchange for...

January 30 During a funeral service in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol to honor the late U.S. representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina, a man discharged two pistols in the direction of U.S. president Andrew Jackson. Both weapons misfired, and the shooter was promptly subdued and arrested....