1660 – The books of John Milton were burned in London due to his attacks on King Charles II. 

1789 – The Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted by the French National Assembly.

1828 – Uruguay was formally proclaimed to be independent during preliminary talks between Brazil and Argentina.

1858 – The first cabled news dispatch was sent and was published by “The New York Sun” newspaper. The story was about the peace demands of England and France being met by China.

1859 – The first oil well was successfully drilled in the U.S. by Colonel Edwin L. Drake near Titusville, PA.

1889 – Charles G. Conn received a patent for the metal clarinet.

1889 – Boxer Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey was defeated for the first time of his career by George LaBlanche.

1892 – The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York was seriously damaged by fire.

1894 – The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. The provision within for a graduated income tax was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

1921 – The owner of Acme Packing Company bought a pro football team for Green Bay, WI. J.E. Clair paid tribute to those who worked in his plant by naming the team the Green Bay Packers. (NFL)

1928 – The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed by 15 countries in Paris. Later, 47 other nations would sign the pact.

1938 – Robert Frost, in a fit of jealousy, set fire to some papers to disrupt a poetry recital by another poet, Archibald MacLeish.

1939 – Nazi Germany demanded the Polish corridor and Danzig.

1945 – American troops landed in Japan after the surrender of the Japanese government at the end of World War II. 

1962 – Mariner 2 was launched by the United States. In December of the same year the spacecraft flew past Venus. It was the first space probe to reach the vicinity of another planet. 

1972 – North Vietnam’s major port at Haiphong saw the first bombings from U.S. warplanes.

1981 – Work began on recovering a safe from the Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria was a luxury liner that had sank in 1956 in the waters off of Massachusetts.

1984 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that the first citizen to go into space would be a teacher. The teacher that was eventually chosen was Christa McAuliffe. She died in the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986.

1984 – The Menetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village opened. It was the first new off-Broadway theater to be built in 50 years in New York City.

1985 – The Space Shuttle Discovery left for a seven-day mission in which three satellites were launched and another was repaired and redeployed.

1989 – The first U.S. commercial satellite rocket was launched. A British communications satellite was onboard.

1990 – The U.S. State Department ordered the expulsion of 36 Iraqi diplomats.

1991 – The Soviet republic of Moldavia declared its independence.

1996 – California Governor Pete Wilson signed an order that would halt state benefits to illegal immigrants.

1998 – “Titanic” became the first movie in North America to earn more than $600 million.

1999 – The final crew of the Russian space station Mir departed the station to return to Earth. Russia was forced to abandon Mir for financial reasons.

2001 – The U.S. military announced that an Air Force RQ-1B “Predator” aircraft was lost over Iraq. It was reported that the unmanned aircraft “may have crashed or been shot down.”

2001 – Work began on the future site of a World War II memorial on the U.S. capital’s historic national Mall. The site is between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

Prior to the Civil War (1861–1865), America’s revenue needs were met primarily through tariffs, duties, and other consumption taxes. In 1861, however, Congress adopted an income tax aimed at the nation’s most affluent to finance the Civil War. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the income tax in Springer v. U.S. (1864). And in 1871, when the need for government revenue declined, Congress repealed the income tax, thereby placing the burden of financing government again almost entirely on tariffs and duties, increasing the cost of goods paid by workers. Thus, the repeal of the income tax shifted a portion of the tax burden away from the affluent to consumers generally.

Many Americans and populist politicians saw the tariff-based tax system as protecting capitalists by immunizing their products from competition from imports. Some also resented the wealthy, who were sometimes seen as shirking their responsibility to help pay for government services. Thus, the idea and appeal of an income tax—reducing tariffs and increasing the tax burden on the affluent—never fully retreated from the American political landscape. There was, in fact, constant political pressure on Congress to restore the income tax; Congress introduced more than sixty bills between 1871 and 1894 to restore the income tax, culminating in passage of an income tax as part of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894. Less than a year after its passage, however, the U.S. Supreme Court held that portions of the income tax levied by the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894 were unconstitutional.

encyclopedia.com

The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. The amendment was the culmination of more than 70 years of struggle by woman suffragists. Its two sections read simply: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” and “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Despite the passage of the amendment, poll taxes, local laws and other restrictions continued to block women of color from voting for several more decades.

America’s woman suffrage movement was founded in the mid 19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 200 woman suffragists, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss women’s rights. After approving measures asserting the right of women to educational and employment opportunities, they passed a resolution that declared “it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” For proclaiming a women’s right to vote, the Seneca Falls Convention was subjected to public ridicule, and some backers of women’s rights withdrew their support. However, the resolution marked the beginning of the woman suffrage movement in America.

For the complete article, go to

Source: history.com

First posted 10/20/2016

These students took a knee to protest violence against Black youth. Now they’re being punished.

After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.

For these young Black kids, the plight of injustice in America is their own. Instead of supporting the boys and their protests, their executive board and league officials abandoned them. The board has decided to strip these kids of the team that they love to punish them for asking for basic rights and dignities. This is about the board reinforcing that police violence in our communities doesn’t matter, that our issues aren’t important and that speaking onthem makes you subject to punishment.

These kids are brave for refusing to give in to the executive board and for standing against injustice. We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.

Demand the executive board revoke it’s unjust punishment of these children, their parents, and coaches.

TAKE ACTION

55 B.C. – Britain was invaded by Roman forces under Julius Caesar.

1498 – Michelangelo was commissioned to make the “Pieta.”

1842 – The first fiscal year was established by the U.S. Congress to start on July 1st.

1847 – Liberia was proclaimed as an independent republic. 

1873 – The school board of St. Louis, MO, authorized the first U.S. public kindergarten.

1896 – In the Philippines, and insurrection began against the Spanish government.

1920 – The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The amendment prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in the voting booth.

1934 – Adolf Hitler demanded that France turn over their Saar region to Germany.

1937 – All Chinese shipping was blockaded by Japan.

1939 – The first televised major league baseball games were shown. The event was a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1939 – The radio program, “Arch Oboler’s Plays”, presented the NBC Symphony for the first time.

1945 – The Japanese were given surrender instructions on the U.S. battleship Missouri at the end of World War II.

1947 – Don Bankhead became the first black pitcher in major league baseball.

1957 – It was announced that an intercontinental ballistic missile was successfully tested by the Soviet Union.

1957 – The first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolled of the assembly line.

1961 – The International Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto opened.

1973 – A U.S. Presidential Proclamation was declared that made August 26th Women’s Equality Day.

1978 – Sigmund Jahn blasted off aboard the Russian Soyuz 31 and became the first German in space.

1981 – The U.S. claimed that North Korea fired an antiaircraft missile at a U.S. Surveillance plane while it was over South Korea.

1987 – The Fuller Brush Company announced plans to open two retail stores in Dallas, TX. The company that had sold its products door to door for 81 years.

1990 – The 55 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait left Baghdad by car and headed for the Turkish border.

1991 – Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised that national elections would be held.

1992 – A “no-fly zone” was imposed on the southern 1/3 of Iraq. The move by the U.S., France and Britain was aimed at protecting Iraqi Shiite Muslims.

1998 – The U.S. government announced that they were investigating Microsoft in an attempt to discover if they “bullied” Intel into delaying new technology.