Marc talks about what happened on this day in history, including the day the NSA was established in the United States, the birthday of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and the day The Western Confederacy of American Indians won a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.
DAY IN HISTORY
1783 – W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria.
1791 – The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.
1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.
1884 – Grover Cleveland won election and became the first Democratic president of the United States since the Civil War.
1918: The German Revolution began when forty-thousand sailors took over the port in Kiel. During the revolt, the Communist Party which included “Jewish members” would try and seize power much as their counterparts in Russia had done a year earlier. The revolt would fail and eventually the Weimar Republic which also had Jewish leaders would come to power in the 1920’s. Hitler would use the German fear of disorder and the presence of Jews in both of these movements to whip anti-Semitism and justify the Final Solution.
1921 – Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi is assassinated in Tokyo.
1933 – Some 3,000 dairy farmers demonstrate in Neillsville, Wisc., ultimately leading to the freeing of jailed leaders of a milk strike over low prices set by large dairy plants. Tons of fresh milk were dumped on public roads, trains carrying milk were stopped, some cheese plants were bombed during the fight
1939 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
1952 – The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.
1956 – Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union, that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
1960 – At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.
1969 – Howard N. Lee and Charles Evers are elected the first African American mayors of Chapel Hill, N.C. and Fayette, Miss., respectively
1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: a mob of Iranians, mostly students, overruns the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).
1981 – Zena Garrison becomes the 1st African American player to win the junior singles tennis championship at Wimbledon, England
1994 – San Francisco: First conference that focuses exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.
1995 – Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Orthodox Israeli.
1996 – After a struggle lasting more than two years, 6,000 Steelworkers members at Bridgestone/Firestone win a settlement in which strikers displaced by scabs got their original jobs back. The fight started when management demanded that the workers accept 12-hour shifts
1997 – In a low-turnout election on this day, Chuck E. Burris defeated the incumbent, Pat Wheeler, by 278 votes to 260; a third candidate won 30, to become the first Black mayor of Stone Mountain, Georgia which is the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.
2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.
1879 – Will Rogers, American actor (d. 1935)
1884 – Harry Ferguson, Irish engineer, invented the Tractor (d. 1960)
1916 – Walter Cronkite, American journalist (d. 2009)
1916 – Ruth Handler, American businesswoman, created Barbie (d. 2002)
1946 – Laura Bush, American educator, 45th First Lady of the United States
1946 – Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer (d. 1989)
1960 – Kathy Griffin, American comedian and actress
1969 – Sean Combs, American rapper, producer, and actor (Diddy – Dirty Money)
1931 – Luigi Galleani, Italian activist and insurrectionary anarchist (b. 1861)
1955 – Cy Young, American baseball player (b. 1867)
1994 – Fred “Sonic” Smith, American guitarist and songwriter (MC5 and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band) (b. 1949)
1995 – Gilles Deleuze, French philosopher (b. 1925)
1995 – Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli politician, 5th Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1922)
2011 – Andy Rooney, American radio and television host (b. 1919)
Sources: The People History; This Day in Labor History; Wikipedia List of Historical Anniversaries; This Day in Women’s History; This Day in African History;History.com; History Orb; Yenoba; Selected Black Facts; Phil Konstantin’s North American Indian History; and This Day in Music