history… may 15


1602 – Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold.

1614 – An aristocratic uprising in France ended with the treaty of St.Menehould.

1618 – Johannes Kepler discovered his harmonics law.

1702 – The War of Spanish Succession began.

1768 – Under the Treaty of Versailles, France purchased Corsica from Genoa.

1795 – Napoleon entered the Lombardian capital of Milan.

1849 – Neapolitan troops entered Palermo, and were in possession of Sicily.

1856 – Lyman Frank Baum, author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” was born.

1862 – The U.S. Congress created the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.

1918 – Regular airmail service between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, began under the direction of the Post Office Department, which later became the U.S. Postal Service.

1926 – Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth were forced down in Alaska after a four-day flight over an icecap. Ice had begun to form on the dirigible Norge.

1926 – The New York Rangers were officially granted a franchise in the NHL. The NHL also announced that Chicago and Detroit would be joining the league in November.

1930 – Ellen Church became the first female flight attendant.

1940 – Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time in the U.S.

1941 – Joe DiMaggio began his historic major league baseball hitting streak of 56 games.

1942 – Gasoline rationing began in the U.S. The limit was 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.

1948 – Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence.

1951 – AT&T became the first corporation to have one million stockholders.

1957 – Britain dropped its first hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.

1958 – Sputnik III, the first space laboratory, was launched in the Soviet Union.

1963 – The last Project Mercury space flight was launched.

1964 – The Smothers Brothers, Dick and Tom, gave their first concert in Carnegie Hall in New York City.

1970 – U.S. President Nixon appointed America’s first two female generals.

1970 – Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, were killed when police opened fire during student protests.

1972 – Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot.

1975 – The merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

1980 – The first transcontinental balloon crossing of the United States took place.

1983 – In Boston,MA, the Madison Hotel was destroyed by implosion.

1988 – The Soviet Union began their withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan. Soviet forces had been there for more than eight years.

1990 – Vincent Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Doctor Gachet” was sold for $82.5 million. The sale set a new world record.

1997 – The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.

1999 – The Russian parliament was unable a attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin.

2014 – The National September 11 Memorial Museum was dedicated in New York City.

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1789 – The first U.S. congressional act on administering oaths became law.


ERIC - Institute of Education Sciences
The First Act of Congress: Administering Oaths for a New Kind of Government
Potter, Lee Ann
Social Education, v68 n7 p430 Nov-Dec 2004
In the spring of 1789, the first Congress faced a daunting task. Although the newly adopted Constitution provided a blueprint for the new government, Congress needed to enact legislation that would ensure a smooth transition from the Articles of Confederation and lay the groundwork for a strong national government, while simultaneously protecting individual liberties. Between March (actually April, when they reached a quorum) and late September, the first session of the first Congress met in New York City. The Congress proposed and debated numerous bills, and ultimately passed twenty-six acts. The very first act, signed into law by President George Washington on June 1, 1789, was “An Act to regulate the Time and Manner of administering certain Oaths.” The Constitution contained an oath of office only for the president. Article II, Section 1, directed the president to take the following oath before entering office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This is the same oath that every president since George Washington has taken. In this issue’s “Teaching With Documents,” a regular feature of “Social Education,” teaching suggestions include providing students with a copy of the featured document and its transcription, asking a volunteer to read it aloud while the others follow along, and leading a class discussion with the following questions: (1) What type of document is this? (2) When was it created? (3) Who created it? and (4) What was the purpose of the document? Other suggestions include asking students what issues they think a brand new government might face.
National Science Teachers Association, 1840 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22201-3000. Web site: http://www.nsta.org.
ERIC.ed.gov