Tag: History

February 23 During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery was with...

February 16 Diamond Mine disaster in Braidwood, Ill.. The coal mine was on a marsh-like tract of land with no natural drainage. Snow melted and forced a collapse on the east side of the mine and killed 74. – 1883. In Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter enters the sealed...

February 9 Because no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to elect John Quincy Adams, who won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election, as president of the United States. Adams was the son of...

February 2 Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa.. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of Winter weather; no shadow means...

January 19 Some 3,000 members of the Filipino Federation of Labor strike the plantations of Oahu, Hawaii. Their ranks swell to 8,300 when they are joined by members of the Japanese Federation of Labor. – 1920. Following the death of Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi becomes head...

January 12 There were unseasonably-warm-weather days prior to January 12, but over the course of 24 hours the temperature plunged to 40 below zero, almost a 100 degree difference from the previous day, in much of North Dakota. The so-called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 persons, many of whom were children...

January 5 Ford Motor Company, led by Henry Ford, raises wages from $2.40 for a nine-hour day to $5 for an eight-hour day in effort to keep the unions out and give workers money to buy Ford products. – 1914. U.S. president Richard Nixon signs a bill authorizing $5.5 million...

December 29 Six months after the Congress of the Republic of Texas accepts U.S. annexation of the territory, Texas is admitted into the United States as the 28th state. – 1845. In the final chapter of America’s long Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on...

December 15 The Kansas National Guard is called out to subdue 2,000 to 6,000 protesting women who were going from mine to mine attacking non-striking miners in the Pittsburg coal fields. The women made headlines across the State and the Nation: They were christened the “Amazon Army” by The New...

December 8 A fire at the Ring Theater in Vienna, Austria, kills between 620 and 850 individuals and injures hundreds more when a stagehand lighted a row of gas lights, but inadvertently ignited some prop clouds over the stage. The stage managers panicked and shut off the gas which turned...

December 1 The Ford Motor Company introduces the continuous moving assembly line which could produce a complete car every two-and-a-half minutes. – 1913. African American Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of a Montgomery, Ala. bus, to add fuel to the growing civil rights movement’s campaign to win...

November 24 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin’s theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called natural selection. In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment...

November 17 The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. – 1869. November 18 At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the...

November 3 The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space, a dog name Laika, aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. – 1957. The Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages...

October 27 The New York City subway opens to the general public, and more than 100,000 individuals pay a nickel each to take their first ride under Manhattan that day. More than 100 workers died during the construction of the first 13 miles of tunnels and track. – 1904. October...

October 6 The surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Israel in October 1973, called the Yom Kippur War, throws the Middle East into turmoil and threatens to bring the United States and the Soviet Union into direct conflict for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in...

September 29 On the outskirts of Kiev in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine, Jews are marched in small groups to the Babi Yar ravine north of the city, ordered to strip naked, and were machine-gunned into the ravine. The massacre ended September 30 and the approximate 34,000 Jewish dead and wounded were...

September 15 The Battle of Britain reaches its climax when the Royal Air Force (RAF) shoots down 56 invading German aircraft in two dogfights lasting less than an hour. The costly raid convinced the German high command that the Luftwaffe could not achieve air supremacy over Britain. – 1940. During...

September 8 One of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history hits Galveston, Texas and kills more than 6,000 persons. The storm caused so much destruction on the Texas coast that reliable estimates of the number of victims are difficult to make. Some think that as many as 12,000 perished, which...