#ThrowbackThursday: This week in history
- This week in history from June 7 - 13.
This week in history, from June 7 - 13, has had pivotal moments that influenced more than just Pensacola and Florida, but America and our current way of life.
Here is a brief snapshot of important U.S. historical events, from the Battle of Midway to liftoff of Discovery from Mir to President Eisenhower to the premiere of the original Ghostbusters to the launch of one of the first personal computers, the Apple II.
Information collected from Pensapedia, History.com, smithsonianmag.com, and This Day in U.S. Military History.
1712 – The Pennsylvania Assembly banned the importation of slaves.
1775 – The United Colonies changed their name to United States.
1862 – William Mumford became the 1st U.S. citizen to be hanged for treason. New Orleanian Mumford was hanged by occupying commander General Benjamin Butler for lowering the Union flag that flew over the New Orleans branch of the United States Mint.
1864 – Suspecting that Confederates were using cotton to erect breastworks on the banks of the Suwannee River, Florida, boat expedition commanded by Acting Ensign Louis R. Chester, composed of men from U.S.S. Clyde and Sagamore, proceeded upriver. They captured over 100 bales of cotton in the vicinity of Clay Landing.
1912 – US army tested the 1st machine gun mounted on a plane.
1942 – The Battle of Midway – one of the most decisive U.S. victories in its war against Japan – comes to an end.
1955 – Pres. Eisenhower became the 1st president to appear on color TV.
1845 – Seventh President Andrew Jackson dies. Born in South Carolina in 1767, Jackson gained his first military experience at the age of 15 when, as a member of a local militia company, he helped to repel a British raiding party in 1782. Later he served in the Tennessee militia, rising to the rank of major general. He was affectionately known by his troops as "Old Hickory" because of his hard but fair discipline. In 1818 -1819 he lead a combined army of Regulars and militia in his invasion of western Florida chasing raiding Indians who sought sanctuary in the then Spanish colony. In fact, his action helped induce the Spanish government to sell Florida to the US. Jackson was elected president in 1828. In 1918, the 30th Division, composed of National Guard soldiers from the Carolina's and Tennessee, proudly adopted a division shoulder patch that featured the Roman numerals "XXX" indicating the division's designation surrounded by the letters "OH" for "Old Hickory" in honor of Jackson.
1853 – Commodore Matthew Perry arrives at Uraga, Japan to begin negotiations for a treaty with Japan.
1968 – James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
1990 – Charles Freeman, the owner of E-C Records store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is charged with illegally selling the rap album As Nasty As They Wanna Be to an undercover officer.
1998 – The shuttle Discovery pulled away from Mir, ending America's three-year space partnership with Russia.
2001 – Tropical Storm Allison wreaks havoc.
1984 – The now-classic comedy Ghostbusters is released in theaters across the United States.
1956 – One of the world's top-selling crime novelists, Patricia Cornwell, best known for her forensic pathologist character Dr. Kay Scarpetta, is born in Miami, Florida.
1963 – JFK named Winston Churchill a US honorary citizen.
1973 – With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America's coveted Triple Crown–the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance.
Among his notable offspring is the 1988 Preakness and Belmont winner, Risen Star.
In 1999, ESPN ranked Secretariat No. 35 in its list of the Top 50 North American athletes of the 20th century, the only non-human on the list.
1692 – In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bridget Bishop, the first colonist to be tried in the Salem witch trials, is hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft.
1752 – Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects a charge in a Leyden jar when the kite is struck by lightning, enabling him to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning. Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor and electrician. He also invented the lightning rod, used to protect buildings and ships.
1775 – John Adams proposes to Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, that the men laying siege to Boston should be considered a Continental Army led by a general.
1848 – The 1st telegraph link between NYC & Chicago was established.
1915 – Girl Scouts were founded.
1935 – In New York City, two recovering alcoholics, one a New York broker and the other an Ohio physician, found Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), a 12-step rehabilitation program that eventually helps countless people cope with alcoholism.
1977 – The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale.
1996 – Intel released its 200 Mhz Pentium chip.
2002 – Clint Messina, 21, of Lacombe, Louisiana, is arrested and charged in the attempted murder of a police officer after driving into a patrol car while attempting to flee from sheriff's deputies. Soon after, police discovered that he was already a wanted man.
At about 3:30 a.m. on March 27, Messina and an associate, Rose Houk, 31, stole a Krispy Kreme doughnuts delivery truck in Slidell, Louisiana. The Krispy Kreme deliveryman had left the engine of the truck running and its rear doors open while he went into a convenience store to make a delivery. Upon returning to find the truck and the hundreds of doughnuts inside missing, the deliveryman called police, who pursued and caught up to the vehicle. Messina and Houk then led police on a 15-mile chase, leaving a trail of doughnuts behind them as they fled.
2007 – Almost 12 million people tune in for the series finale of HBO's critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning Mob-family drama The Sopranos on this day in 2007.
1559 – Members of Luna's expedition embark at Vera Cruz, Mexico, for their journey to establish Pensacola.
1776 – Continental Congress selects Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York to draft a declaration of independence.
1963 – Facing federalized Alabama National Guard troops, Alabama Governor George Wallace ends his blockade of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and allows two African American students to enroll.
1967 – The National Guard mobilizes to subdue a race riot in Tampa.
1970 – After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so.
2001 – Timothy McVeigh (33) was executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terra Haute, Ind., for the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing.
1849 – The gas mask was patented by L. P. Haslett.
1942 – Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, receives a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father's office. For two years, the Franks and four other families hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends. The families were discovered by the Gestapo in 1944. The Franks were taken to Auschwitz, where Anne's mother died. Friends in Amsterdam searched the rooms and found Anne's diary hidden away.
Anne and her sister were transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died of typhus a month before the war ended.
Anne's father survived Auschwitz and published Anne's diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl.
1961 – President John F. Kennedy signed a Presidential Proclamation calling for the American flag to be flown at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, "at all times during the day and night."
1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson, famous football player O.J. Simpson's ex-wife, and her friend Ron Goldman are brutally stabbed to death outside Nicole's home in Brentwood, California, in what quickly becomes one of the most highly publicized trials of the century. With overwhelming evidence against him, including a prior record of domestic violence towards Brown, O.J. Simpson became the chief suspect. Simpson was acquitted and the line "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" became an enduring motto.
1694 – The King of Spain,Charles II, gives the go ahead to settle Pensacola.
1740 – Georgia provincial governor James Oglethorpe begins an unsuccessful attempt to take Spanish Florida during the Siege of St. Augustine. Oglethorpe raised a mixed force of British regulars (the 42nd Regiment of Foot), colonial militia from the Province of Georgia and the Carolinas, and native American Creek and Chickasaw, or Uchees. Oglethorpe deployed his batteries on the island of Santa Anastasia while a British naval squadron blockaded the port.
1942 – CGC Thetis sank the German U-boat U-157 off the Florida Keys. There were no survivors.
1964 – Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, a renowned Mexican scientist, mathematician and historian Spanish Crown endorsed the settlement of Pensacola Bay on June 13, 1694. A year later, in 1695, Andrés de Arriola inspected both the mouth of the Mississippi River and Pensacola Bay but did not find the bay to be the paradise Sigüenza had described. Preoccupied with King William's War (1689–1697), the Spanish delayed settlement of Pensacola until 1698.
1966 – The Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. Now considered standard police procedure, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you," has been heard so many times in television and film dramas that it has become a cliche.
1972 – Severe weather conditions over the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico begin to converge and form a tropical depression that would become Hurricane Agnes over the next two weeks. By the time the storm dissipated, damages were in the billions and 121 people were dead. Although incredibly strong winds hit the Florida coast, it was the immense amount of rain that the storm brought to the northeastern United States that proved to be most deadly.
1972 – A NASA spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant.
1983 – After more than a decade in space, Pioneer 10, the world's first outer-planetary probe, leaves the solar system. The next day, it radioed back its first scientific data on interstellar space.
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