January 20 During the First Opium War, China cedes the island of Hong Kong to the British with the signing of the Chuenpi Convention, an agreement seeking an end to the first Anglo-Chinese conflict. – 1841. U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only president to be elected to four terms
January 13 Pope Honorius II grants a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God. – 1128. January 14 The theologian, musician, philosopher, and Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Schweitzer is born on this day in 1875 in Upper-Alsace, Germany,
January 6 Samuel Morse’s telegraph system is demonstrated for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, N.J.. The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire, eventually would revolutionize long-distance communication, and reach the height of its popularity in the 1920s
December 30 In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, which comprises a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation, divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan, and Armenian republics. Known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the
December 23 Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, suffering from severe depression, cuts off the lower part of his left ear. During his lifetime, he was a poster boy for tortured, starving, artists, and sold only one painting. – 1888. In Tokyo, Japan, Hideki Tojo, former Japanese premier and chief of
December 16 In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor. The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a
December 9 On this day, 1,800 United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country. – 1992. December 10 The first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. –
December 2 The Enron Corporation files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a New York City court to spark one of the largest corporate scandals in the U.S.. Enron’s collapse cost investors billions of dollars, wiped out approximately 5,600 jobs, and liquidated almost $2.1 billion in pension plans. – 2001.
November 25 The so-called “storm of the century” hits the eastern part of the United States and kills hundreds and causes millions of dollars in damages. Some areas were blanketed with several feet of snow for several days and travel was impossible for nearly a week in some places. The
November 18 At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies. – 1883. Thirty-one men die on Lake Michigan
November 11 At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m., Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First
November 4 British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. – 1922. A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days earlier in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on this
October 28 The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from France to the United States, is dedicated in New York Harbor, N.Y. by U.S. president Grover Cleveland. – 1886. The Cuban Missile crisis comes to a close when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agrees to remove Russian missiles from Cuba
October 21 Approximately 100,000 demonstrators, including radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans, rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. – 1967. October 22 In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, U.S. president John F.
October 14 Prior to a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wis., Theodore Roosevelt, the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, is shot at close range. The bullet failed to mortally wound him and Roosevelt went on to deliver his scheduled speech with the bullet still in his body. – 1912. U.S.
October 7 The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin. Over the course of the next day, 1,200 individuals lose their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. – 1871. A U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by
September 30 U.S. president Woodrow Wilson gives a speech in Congress in support of guaranteeing women the right to vote. – 1918. Black farmers meet in Elaine, Ark. to establish the Progressive Farmers and Householders Union to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices. They are shot at by
September 23 Amid much public excitement, American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return to St. Louis, Mo., from the first recorded overland journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast and back. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had set off more than two years earlier to explore the
September 16 In his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste. – 1932. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Selective Service and Training Act, which requires all male citizens
September 9 Though it only had been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union, without ever even having been a territory. – 1850. A Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on an Oregon state forest, the only air attack
