Yearly Archive: 2015

1787 – New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1865 – The U.S. House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in America. The amendment read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” With the passage of the amendment, the institution that had indelibly shaped American history was eradicated.

1878 – John Kehoe, the last of the “Molly Maguires,” was executed in Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society that had allegedly been responsible for some incidences of vigilante justice in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, defended their actions as attempts to protect exploited Irish-American workers. In fact, they are often regarded as one of the first organized labor groups.
Kehoe was arrested and hanged for the 1862 murder of Frank W.S. Langdon, a mine foreman, despite the fact that it was widely believed he was wrongly accused and not actually responsible for anyone’s death. Although the governor of Pennsylvania believed Kehoe’s innocence, he signed the death warrant anyway.

1944 – This is going to be lengthy but considering what is in the news lately, it has to be.
In a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of citizenship (Korematsu v. United States), the Court sided with the government in a 6-3 decision that the exclusion order was constitutional.
Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American who decided to stay in San Leandro, California and knowingly violated Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the U.S. Army. He argued that Executive Order 9066 was unconstitutional and that it violated the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He was arrested and convicted. No question was raised as to Korematsu’s loyalty to the United States. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
Six of the eight justices appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt sided with the president. The lone Republican appointee, Owen Roberts, dissented. The opinion, written by Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, held that the need to protect against espionage outweighed Fred Korematsu’s individual rights, and the rights of Americans of Japanese descent.
During the case, Solicitor General Charles Fahy suppressed evidence by keeping from the Court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence indicating that there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies or sending signals to enemy submarines.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed a special commission to investigate the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The commission concluded that the decisions to remove those of Japanese ancestry to prison camps occurred because of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. In 1988, Congress apologized and granted personal compensation of $20,000 to each surviving prisoner.
On November 10, 1983, Korematsu stood in front of U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel and said, “I would like to see the government admit that they were wrong and do something about it so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color. If anyone should do any pardoning, I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the Japanese-American people.”
Judge Patel formally vacated the conviction, but was incapable of overturning the Supreme Court’s decision.

1956 – To Tell The Truth, with host Bud Collyer, premiered on CBS.

1957 – The first nuclear facility in the United States to generate electricity, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, went online.

1968 – The musical film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opened in New York City. The movie featured Dick Van Dyke, who had made a splash four years before in the Disney musical Mary Poppins and whose TV show had been a hit since 1961. Its real star, however, was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang herself: a magical flying car that always knew how to save the day.

1969 – Britain’s Parliament abolished the death penalty for murder.

1972 – Following the breakdown of peace talks with North Vietnam just a few days earlier, President Richard Nixon announced the beginning of a massive bombing campaign to break the stalemate. For nearly two weeks, American B-52s and fighter-bombers dropped over 20,000 tons of bombs on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The United States lost 15 of its giant B-52s and 11 other aircraft during the attacks. North Vietnam claimed that over 1,600 civilians were killed.
The bombings continued until December 29, at which time the North Vietnamese agreed to resume the talks. A few weeks later, the final Paris Peace Treaty was signed and the Vietnam War came to a close.

1987 – Ivan F. Boesky was sentenced to three years in Southern California’s Lompoc Federal Prison for plotting Wall Street’s biggest insider-trading scandal. Eighteen months earlier, while speaking at the University of California, Berkeley, he had told business school students:
“Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”
Director Oliver Stone used Boesky’s speech as the inspiration for one given by the ethically challenged corporate raider Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street.
Boesky served 22 months before being released for good behavior. He provided the federal investigators with so much information on the fraud in the securities industry, that he almost single handedly ended the 1980s boom era.

1997 – Comedian/actor Chris Farley (Saturday Night Live, Tommy Boy, Beverly Hills Ninja) died of a cocaine and morphine overdose. Advanced atherosclerosis was cited as a “significant contributing factor.” He was only 33.

2003 – A jury in Chesapeake, Va., convicted teenager Lee Boyd Malvo of two counts of murder in the Washington-area Beltway Sniper shootings. He was later sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2008 – Former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, who, after denying his involvement for 30 years, admitted to being the Watergate scandal’s mysterious whistleblower “Deep Throat,” died of natural causes at the age of 95.

2008 – A U.N. court in Tanzania convicted former Rwandan army Col. Theoneste Bagosora of genocide and crimes against humanity for masterminding the killings of more than half a million people in a 100-day slaughter in 1994.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2015 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.