In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war.

In November 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months later, the Allies met with conquered Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson urged a just and lasting peace, but England and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their former enemies. The League of Nations was approved, however, and in the summer of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the U.S. Senate for ratification

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Common Sense, published on this day in 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a 50-page pamphlet that sold more than 500,000 copies within a few months and called for a war of independence that would become the American Revolution.

Source:

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

1776 – “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine was published.

1840 – The penny post, whereby mail was delivered at a standard charge rather than paid for by the recipient, began in Britain.

1861 – Florida seceded from the United States.

1863 – Prime Minister Gladstone opened the first section of the London Underground Railway system, from Paddington to Farringdon Street.

1870 – John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil.

1901 – Oil was discovered at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont, TX.

1911 – Major Jimmie Erickson took the first photograph from an airplane while flying over San Diego, CA.

1920 – The League of Nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I with Germany.

1927 – Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” was first shown, in Berlin.

1928 – The Soviet Union ordered the exile of Leon Trotsky.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Miami, FL, to Trinidad thus becoming the first American President to visit a foreign country during wartime.

1943 – The quiz show, “The Better Half,” was heard for the first time on Mutual Radio.

1946 – The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place with 51 nations represented.

1950 – Ben Hogan appeared for the first time in a golf tournament since an auto accident a year earlier. He tied ‘Slammin’ Sammy Snead in the Los Angeles Open, however, Hogan lost in a playoff.

1951 – Donald Howard Rogers piloted the first passenger jet on a trip from Chicago to New York City.

1957 – Harold Macmillan became prime minister of Britain, following the resignation of Anthony Eden.

1963 – The Chicago Cubs became the first baseball club to hire an athletic director. He was Robert Whitlow. (MLB)

1971 – “Masterpiece Theatre” premiered on PBS with host Alistair Cooke. The introduction drama series was “The First Churchills.”

1978 – The Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a redezvous with the Salyut VI space laboratory.

1981 – In El Salvador, Marxist insurgents launched a “final offensive”.

1984 – The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.

1986 – The uncut version of Jerome Kern’s musical, “Showboat”, opened at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

1990 – Chinese Premier Li Peng ended martial law in Beijing after seven months. He said that crushing pro-democracy protests had saved China from “the abyss of misery.”

1990 – Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc. completed a $14 billion merger. The new company, Time Warner, was the world’s largest entertainment company.

1994 – In Manassas, VA, Lorena Bobbitt went on trial. She had been charged with maliciously wounding her husband John. She was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity.

1997 – Shelby Lynne Barrackman was strangled to death by her grand-father when she licked the icing off of cupcakes. He was convicted of the crime on September 15, 1998.

2000 – It was announced that Time-Warner had agreed to buy America On-line (AOL). It was the largest-ever corporate merger priced at $162 billion. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the deal on December 14, 2000.

2001 – American Airlines agreed to acquire most of Trans World Airlines (TWA) assets for about $500 million. The deal brought an end to the financially troubled TWA.

2002 – In France, the “Official Journal” reported that all women could get the morning-after contraception pill for free in pharmacies.

2003 – North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.

2007 – The iTunes Music Store reached 1.3 million feature length films sold and 50 million television episodes sold.

2019 – In Venezuela, Juan Guaidó and the National Assembly declared incumbent President Nicolás Maduro “illegitimate” and started the process of attempting to remove him from office.

2020 – The green Ford Mustang from the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller “Bullitt” was sold for $3.4 million at the Mecum Auctions event in Kissimmee, FL.

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