Today in History…This Stuff Happened
1215 – The Fourth Lateran Council defines the doctrine of transubstantiation.
1620 – Before officially settling in the New World, 41 of the male pilgrims aboard the ship sign the The Mayflower Compact—a social contract which established a government for the colony.
1675 – Gottfried Leibniz first uses calculus to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x). High school seniors everywhere rue the day.
1864 – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta, Georgia to the ground. This action is part of his infamous “March to the Sea” a 19th example of “total war.”
1889 – Washington “the Evergreen State” becomes the 42nd U.S. state.
1918 – “Armistice Day” World War I officially ends at 11:00 am. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is remembered in Britain and elsewhere with 2 minutes of silence.
1921 – President Warren G. Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.
1926 – The iconic US Route 66 is established.
1965 – The Ian Smith’s white-minority government declares Rhodesia’s independence sparking a long conflict with Britain and civil war.
1992 – In a vote, the Church of England decides to allow women to be ordained Anglican priests.
1993 – A sculpture honoring the women who served in the Vietnam War is dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1998— Israel narrowly ratifies a US brokered peace plan for the Middle East..
2004 – Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies.
2008 – The Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) begins her final voyage: a cruise to Dubai.
2008— Country singer Taylor Swift releases her album “Fearless” which will catapult her to music super-stardom.
