Today in history, Dec 3rd!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on December 3rd!

1468	Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano succeed their father, Piero de Medici, as rulers of Florence, Italy.
1762	France cedes to Spain all lands west of the Mississippi–the territory known as Upper Louisiana.
1800	The French defeat an Austrian army at the Battle of Hohenlinden, near Munich.
1818	Illinois was admitted to the union as the 21st state.
1828	Andrew Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States.
1847	Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney establish the North Star, and anti-slavery paper.
1862	Confederate raiders attack a Federal forage train on the Hardin Pike near Nashville, Tenn.
1863	Confederate General James Longstreet moves his army east and north toward Greeneville. This withdrawal marks the end of the Fall Campaign in Tennessee.
1864	Major General William Tecumseh Sherman meets with slight resistance from Confederate troops at Thomas Station on his march to the sea.
1906	The U.S. Supreme Court orders Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders extradited to Idaho for trial in the Steunenberg murder case.
1915	The United States expels German attaches on spy charges.
1916	French commander Joseph Joffre is dismissed after his failure at the Somme. General Robert Nivelle is the new French commander in chief.
1918	The Allied Conference ends in London where they decide that Germany must pay for the war.
1925	The League of Nations orders Greece to pay an indemnity for the October invasion of Bulgaria.
1926	British reports claim that German soldiers are being trained in the Soviet Union.
1947	“A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.
1948	The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
1950	The Chinese close in on Pyongyang, Korea, and UN forces withdraw southward.
1964	Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley who had stormed the administration buildingthe previous day and staged a massive sit-in.
1965	The National Council of Churches asks the United States to halt the massive bombings in North Vietnam.
1965	The album “Rubber Soul” by the Beatles was released.
1967	Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant.
1967	The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York City to Chicago.
1977	The State Department proposes the admission of 10,000 more Vietnamese refugees to the United States.
1979	Eleven are dead and eight injured in a mad rush to see a rock band (The Who) at a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1984	Toxic gas leaks from a Union Carbide plant and results in the deaths of thousands in Bhopal, India.
1989	Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta.
1989	East German Communist leader Egon Krenz, the ruling Politburo and the party’s Central Committee resigned.
1997	South Korea struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $55 billion bailout of its foundering economy.
1999	Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the red planet; the spacecraft was presumed destroyed.
2009	Comcast and GE announced joint venture plans, with Comcast owning a 51 percent controlling stake in NBC Universal.

Today in history 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.

http://hankeringforhistory.com/2012/12/03/today-in-history-dec-3rd/

Today in history, Nov 11th!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on November 11th!

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
.

http://hankeringforhistory.com/2012/11/11/today-in-history-nov-11th/

1499	Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is executed.
1620	Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact calling for a “body politick.”
1778	Indians, led by William Butler, massacre the inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y.
1831	Nat Turner, a slave who led a revolt against slave owners, is hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1889
1909	Construction begins on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
1918	The German leaders sign the armistice ending World War I.
1919	The first two-minutes’ silence is observed in Britain to commemorate those who died in the Great War.
1921	President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
1922	Canada’s Vernon McKenzie urges to fight U.S. propaganda with taxes on U.S. magazines.
1933	The first of the great dust storms of the 1930s hits North Dakota.
1935	Albert Anderson and Orvil Anderson set a new altitude record in South Dakota, when they float to 74,000 feet in a balloon.
1940	Britain’s Royal Navy attacks the Italian fleet at Taranto.
1944	Private Eddie Slovik is convicted of desertion and sentenced to death for refusing to join his unit in the European Theater of Operations.
1953	The polio virus is identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1965	Rhodesia proclaimed its independence from Britain.
1966	The United States launches Gemini 12, a two-man orbiter, into orbit.
1970	U.S. Army Special Forces raid the Son Tay prison camp in North Vietnam but find no prisoners.
1972	The U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese army, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
1973	Israel and Egypt sign a cease-fire.
1973	The Soviet Union is kicked out of World Cup soccer for refusing to play Chile.
1987	An unidentified buyer buys Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Irises” from the estate of Joan Whitney Payson for $53.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York.
1992	The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.
1998	Israel’s Cabinet narrowly ratified a land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians.
2000	Republicans went to court seeking an order to block manual recounts from continuing in Florida’s presidential election.
2000	A cable car crammed with skiers and snowboarders caught fire while being pulled through an Alpine tunnel in Austria, killing 155 people.
2004	Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in Paris at age 75.

Events that happened today in history, October 26th!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on October 26th!

1774	The first Continental Congress, which protested British measures and called for civil disobedience, concludes in Philadelphia.
1795	When General Paul Barras resigns his commission as head of France’s Army of the Interior to become head of the Directory, his second-in-command becomes the army’s commander-Napoleon Bonaparte.
1825	The Erie Canal opened, connecting Lake Erie and the Hudson River in upstate New York.
1881	Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and “Doc” Holliday confronted Ike Clanton’s gang in a gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz. Three members of Clanton’s gang were killed; Earp’s brothers were wounded. Wyatt Earp

Poliomyelitis: A Disease of Historical Proportions

I was given the following subject to cover in my Biology class:

What is polio? What is the cause of this disease? How widespread was/is it? How is this disease treated? What are the preventive measures that can be taken? What does the future look like for this disease?

I immediately looked at this as a challenge, but not because the topic was hard. The challenge was, How can I write this paper, turn it into a history piece, and still get an A? Well, I just turned it in last night, so I don’t have a grade yet, but my fingers are crossed. Anyway, here is my attempt to turn a boring biology paper into a fun history paper.