October 31 The priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation. In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic
October 24A 63-year-old schoolteacher, Annie Edson Taylor, becomes the first known person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel. – 1901. The first U.S. federal minimum wage, 25¢ an hour, takes effect, thanks to enactment of the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA). The law required an
More chickens have come home to roost. In a previous essay, I stated that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which ended World War I, had unintentional consequences and that those consequences were the massive conflicts currently embroiling all of Southwest Asia. Among other things, the Treaty called for the
October 17Gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000 to signal the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s. – 1931. Paris police kill more than 200 Algerians who were marching in the city in support
October 10 A former U.S. postal worker kills his former supervisor with a three-foot samurai sword, shoots the supervisor’s fiance, and shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, N.J.. His violent outburst was one of several high-profile attacks by postal workers that resulted in the
October 3 Expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln announces that the Nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday November 26. – 1863. With the admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Britain terminates its mandate over the Arab nation which makes
September 26For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic Party senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, meet in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S.
September 19Between 400,000 to 500,000 unionists converge on Washington, D.C. for a Solidarity Day march and rally to protest Republican policies. – 1981. A powerful earthquake strikes Mexico City and leaves 10,000 residents dead, 30,000 injured, and thousands more homeless. – 1985. September 20Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, sets sail from
September 12Six months after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev succeeds him with his election as first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev, in 1961, authorized construction of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. – 1960. Hurricane Gilbert slams into Jamaica. Approximately 80%
September 5Between 20,000 to 30,000 marchers participate in New York’s first Labor Day parade with the demand for an eight-hour work day. – 1882. In the early morning hours of September 5, six members of the Arab terrorist group known as Black September, dressed in the Olympic sweat suits of
August 29At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning.” – 1949. Hurricane Katrina makes landfall near New Orleans, La., as a Category 4 hurricane. It is believed that the hurricane caused more than 1,300 deaths and up
Should you happen to be standing in the middle of the intersection of Galena Boulevard and Stolp Avenue in Aurora, dear reader, one of three things is liable to occur. The first is that you will be run over by a passing vehicle. The second is that you will be
