Today in history, Dec 8th!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on December 8th!

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/2012/12/08/today-in-history-dec-8th/

1863	Union General William Averell’s cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia.
1863	President Abraham Lincoln announced his plan for the Reconstruction of the South.
1886	The American Federation of Labor was founded in Columbus, Ohio.
1914	The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
1920	President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.
1932	Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.
1941	Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita begins his attack against the British army at Singapore.
1943	U.S. carrier-based planes sink two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands.
1944	The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.
1948	The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.
1967	In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.
1968	South Vietnam’s Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.
1980	John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.
1982	The Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.
1987	Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories began an intefadeh, or uprising.
1987	President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
1991	Russia, Belarus and Ukraine declared the Soviet national government dead, forming a new Commonwealth of Independent States.
1991	Kimberly Bergalis, who had contracted AIDS from her dentist, died in Florida at age 23.
1992	Americans saw live TV coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia as Operation Restore Hope began.
1993	President Bill Clinton signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1995	The Grateful Dead announced they were breaking up after 30 years of making music. The news came four months after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia.
2008	Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal he would confess to masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks; four other men also abandoned their defenses.

Today in history, Nov 29th!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on November 29th!

1863	The Battle of Fort Sanders, Knoxville, Tenn., ends with a Confederate withdrawal.
1864	Colonel John M. Chivington’s 3rd Colorado Volunteers massacre Black Kettles’ camp of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians at Sand Creek, Colo.
1890	Navy won the first Army-Navy football game 24-0 at West Point, N.Y.
1903	An Inquiry into the U.S. Postal Service demonstrates the government has lost millions in fraud.
1923	An international commission headed by American banker Charles Dawes is set up to investigate the German economy.
1924	Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels.
1929	Commander Richard Byrd makes the first flight over the South Pole.
1931	The Spanish government seizes large estates for land redistribution.
1939	Soviet planes bomb an airfield at Helsinki, Finland.
1947	The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews.
1948	The Metropolitan Opera is televised for the first time as the season opens with “Othello.”
1948	The popular children’s television show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, premieres.
1949	The United States announces it will conduct atomic tests at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
1952	President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his campaign promise to visit Korea to assess the conflict.
1961	NASA launches a chimpanzee named Enos into Earth orbit.
1962	Algeria bans the Communist Party.
1963	President Lyndon B. Johnson named a commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
1989	In response to a growing pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run parliament ended the party’s 40-year monopoly on power.
1990	The U.N. Security Council voted 12-2 to authorize military action if Iraq did not withdraw its troops from Kuwait and release all foreign hostages by Jan. 15, 1991.
1996	A U.N. court sentenced Bosnian Serb army soldier Drazen Erdemovic to 10 years in prison for his role in the massacre of 1,200 Muslims – the first international war crimes sentence since World War II.
1999	Protestant and Catholic adversaries formed a Northern Ireland government.
2001	Rock musician George Harrison of the Beatles died at age 58 following a battle with cancer.

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/2012/11/29/today-in-history-nov-29th/

Today in history, Nov 21st!

Some of the great historical events that happened today in history, on November 21st!

1620	Leaders of the Mayflower expedition frame the “Mayflower Compact,” designed to bolster unity among the settlers.
1783	Jean de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes make the first free-flight ascent in a balloon to over 500 feet in Paris.
1789	North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1855	Franklin Colman, a pro-slavery Missourian, guns down Charles Dow, a Free Stater from Ohio, near Lawrence, Kansas.
1864	From Georgia, Confederate General John B. Hood launches the Franklin-Nashville Campaign into Tennessee.
1904	Motorized omnibuses replace horse-drawn cars in Paris.
1906	In San Juan, President Theodore Roosevelt pledges citizenship for Puerto Rican people.
1907	Cunard liner Mauritania sets a new speed record for steamship travel, 624 nautical miles in a one day run.
1911	Suffragettes storm Parliament in London. All are arrested and all choose prison terms.
1917	German ace Rudolf von Eschwege is killed over Macedonia when he attacks a booby-trapped observation balloon packed with explosives.
1918	The last German troops leave Alsace-Lorraine, France.
1922	Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.
1927	Police turn machine guns on striking Colorado mine workers, killing five and wounding 20.
1934	A New York court rules Gloria Vanderbilt unfit for custody of her daughter.
1934	Cole Porter’s musical Anything Goes premieres at New York’s Alvin Theatre.
1949	The United Nations grants Libya its independence by 1952.
1967	President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the air quality act, allotting $428 million for the fight against pollution.
1969	The Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth.
1970	U.S. planes conduct widespread bombing raids in North Vietnam.
1973	President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.
1980	A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas killed 87 people.
1985	Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel. (He later pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.)
1986	The Justice Department begins an inquiry into the National Security Council into what will become known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
1989	The proceedings of Britain’s House of Commons were televised live for the first time.
1991	The U.N. Security Council chose Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be secretary-general.
1995	The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 5,000 for the first time.
2000	The Florida Supreme Court granted Democrat Al Gore’s request to keep the presidential election recount going.
2001	A 94-year-old Connecticut woman died of inhalation anthrax, the last of five people killed in the anthrax attacks.
2002	NATO invited seven former communist countries to join the alliance: Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria.
2004	The NBA suspended Indiana’s Ron Artest for the rest of the season following a brawl in the stands during a game against the Detroit Pistons.
2005	Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke away from the hardline Likud with the intention of forming a new party.
2007	Officials announced the recall of more than a half-million pieces of Chinese-made children’s jewelry contaminated with lead.
2010	Debt-struck Ireland applied for a massive EU-IMF loan to stem the flight of capital from its banks.

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/2012/11/21/today-in-history-nov-21st/

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

Khan Academy-You Khan Do It!

If you are a parent with a child in school, are in school yourself, or just want to learn for fun, you must check out Khan Academy. I am currently in a Biology class, and without Khan Academy my chances of passing increased from despairingly low to passing with a B. Not only did I pass, but I now have an understanding of the material. Sciences and maths are certainly not my best subjects, and without an excellent teacher, I am hopeless.

One of my assignments was to watch a video on the Khan Academy website. All I can say is that Sal is my savior. This genius, with his three degrees from MIT and his MBA from Harvard, makes learning easy and fun. After watching his videos, biology started to make sense, again. ( I took Biology in 2002, as a high-school student.)

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.