Hankering For History

Here are some of the great historical events that happened today, October 11th, in history!

1531	The Catholics defeat the Protestants at Kappel during Switzerland’s second civil war.
1540	Charles V of Milan puts his son Philip in control.
1727	George II of England crowned.
1795	In graditude for putting down a rebellion in the streets of Paris, France’s National Convention appoints Napoleon Bonaparte second in command of the Army of the Interior.
1811	The first steam-powered ferryboat was put into operation between New York City and Hoboken, N.J.
1862	The Confederate Congress in Richmond passes a draft law allowing anyone owning 20 or more slaves to be exempt from military service. This law confirms many southerners opinion that they are in a ‘rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.’
1877	Outlaw Wild Bill Longley, who killed at least a dozen men, is hanged, but it took two tries; on the first try, the rope slipped and his knees drug the ground.
1884	First lady Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City.
1899	South African Boers, settler from the Netherlands, declare war on Great Britain.
1906	San Francisco school board orders the segregation of Oriental schoolchildren, inciting Japanese outrage.
1915	Despite international protests, Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, is executed by Germans for aiding the escape of Allied prisoners.
1942	In the Battle of Cape Esperance, near the Solomon Islands, U.S. cruisers and destroyers decisively defeat a Japanese task force in a night surface encounter.
1945	Negotiations between Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung break down. Nationalist and Communist troops are soon engaged in a civil war.
1950	The Federal Communications Commission authorizes the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to begin commercial color TV broadcasts.
1958	The lunar probe Pioneer 1 was launched; it failed to go as far as planned, fell back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.
1962	Pope John XXIII opens the 21st Ecumenical Council (Vatican II) with a call for Christian unity. This is the largest gathering of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in history; among delegate-observers are representatives of major Protestant denominations, in itself a sign of sweeping change.
1968	Apollo 7 was launched with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard.
1972	A French mission in Vietnam is destroyed by a U.S. bombing raid.
1975	“Saturday Night Live” debuted on NBC.
1976	The so-called “Gang of Four,” Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s widow and three associates, are arrested in Peking, setting in motion an extended period of turmoil in the Chinese Communist Party.
1986	President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened two days of talks on arms control and human rights in Reykjavik, Iceland.
1991	Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, law professor Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her; Thomas reappeared before the panel to denounce the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching.”
1998	Pope John Paul II canonized the first Jewish-born saint of the modern era: Edith Stein, a Catholic nun killed at Auschwitz.
2001	Trinidad-born writer V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize in literature.
2002	The Senate joined the House in approving the use of America’s military might against Iraq.
2002	Former President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his 1970s Middle East diplomacy.

Today’s historical facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, HistoryOrb.com, and On This Day blogs from my blogroll.