Sunday, February 27, 2011

POPnews - February 27th

Photobucket
[It was a vast and jubilantly rowdy crowd like this one who were on hand to witness Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Address - at which he opposed the pro-slavery views of Stephen A. Douglas, his greatest political rival - in advance of the Republican National Convention, which was set for mid-May.]

1594 - The famed Huguenot warrior Henri III of Navarre was crowned King Henry IV of France at Chartres Cathedral, having only recently converted to Catholicism at the behest of his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées; owing largely to his issuance of the Edict of Nantes in April 1598, which gave his former co-religionists an array of rights they had been denied, the reign of le Vert galant would mark the end of a generation of sectarian strife following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.

1617 - Sweden and Russia signed the Treaty of Stolbovo - ending the Ingrian War and shutting Russia out of the Baltic Sea.

1700 - The island of New Britain was discovered by William Dampier.

1801 - Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 Washington, DC, was placed under the jurisdiction of the US Congress.

1812 - Poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of Britain's House of Lords, one of the few ever in defense of the Luddites - a radical rabble of textile workers who had been destroying looms in his home county of Nottinghamshire. A strong advocate of social reform, during his time in the upper house Byron also supported greater rights for Catholics.

1844 - The Dominican Republic gained its independence from Haiti.

1860 - Abraham Lincoln made a speech at Manhattan's Cooper Union which was later seen as largely responsible for his election to the Presidency the following November.

1900 - The British Labour Party was founded.

1902 - Australian Harry 'Breaker' Morant was executed during the Second Boer War under controversial circumstances - accused of the summary murder of prisoners under his command which may or may not have happened. A film was made about the life and death of 'Breaker' Morant in 1980 which starred Edward Woodward as its doomed hero; the film's director, Bruce Beresford, adapted the 1978 play Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts, written by Kenneth G. Ross, for the screen and was Oscar-nominated for his efforts.

1922 - Leser v. Garnett - a challenge to the US Constitution's Nineteenth Amendment, which had allowed American women the right to vote in 1920 - was rebuffed by the Supreme Court.

1940 - Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discovered carbon-14.

1943 - The Rosenstrasse protest started in Berlin following a more general resistance to Nazi anti-Semitism by trades unionists during Fabrikaktion.

1951 - The Twenty-second Amendment to the US Constitution - limiting Presidents to two terms - was ratified.

1963 - Juan Bosch became the Dominican Republic's first democratically elected president since the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in May 1961.

1973 - The American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

1976 - The formerly Spanish territory of Western Sahara, under the auspices of the Polisario Front, declared the country's independence as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

1989 - Venezuela was rocked by the Caracazo.

1996 - Satoshi Tajiri created Pokémon.

2003 - Rowan Williams was enthroned as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
*

share on: facebook

No comments: