1910 The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine
1915 Fire destroys most of the buildings on Santa Catalina Island, California
1932 France & USSR sign non-aggression pact
1933 1st state liquor stores authorized (Pennsylvania)
1933 Japan begins persecution of communists
1935 Physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes his famous thought experiment "Schrödinger's cat", a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics
TUESDAY:
1950 President Harry S. Truman announces during a press conference that he is prepared to authorize the use of atomic weapons in order to achieve peace in Korea.
1925 Federal Prohibition Officer Gus J. Simmons, Captain J. R. Brockus, and C.M. Arbogast were all on trial for murder. The officers claimed that the man was murdered while resisting arrest for operating an illegal liquor distillery.
1954 an Alabama woman Mrs. Hulett Hodges became the first known person today to be struck by a meteorite. The meteorite six or eight inches in diameter, fell through her roof leaving a three-foot hole. She was only slightly injured, the United States Air Force flew to the Hodge's Alabama home and took the nine-pound object back to Washington. The Hodges demanded that the rock be returned to them so their family could keep it as a souvenir.
1966 Barbados gains it's independence from that of a self-governing colony to full independence from the United Kingdom
WEDNESDAY:
1955 Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat, in violation of segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and was arrested, sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
800 Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican
1768 The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromøy in Norway (rediscovered 1974)
1940 Four sets of brothers play in one NHL game when Chicago Blackhawks beat NY Rangers, 4-1; Lynn & Muzz Patrick and Neil & Mac Colville (Rangers); Max & Doug Bentley and Bob & Bill Carse (Chicago)
1941 Japanese Emperor Hirohito signs declaration of war
THURSDAY:
1804 General Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French at the Notre Dame de Paris in a ceremony officiated by Pope Pius VII
1823 US President James Monroe declares the "Monroe Doctrine" opposing European colonialism in the Americas, arguing any European political intervention in the New World would be a hostile act against the United States
1845 US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, a widely held belief termed "manifest destiny" by newspaper editor John O'Sullivan
1929 First skull of Peking man found in the caves of Zhoukoudian, 50 km outside of Peking, China. Later dated roughly 750,000 years old
1976 Communist revolutionary Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado
FRIDAY:
1685 Charles II bars Jews from settling in Stockholm, Sweden
1689 First recorded successful separation of conjoined twins Elisabet and Catherina Meijerin, completed by Swiss surgeon Johannes Fatio in Basel
1920 Turkey & Armenia agree to peace treaty
1930 Airborn chemicals combine with fog to kill 60 (Meuse Valley, Belgium)
1931 Alka Seltzer goes on sale