But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.



Psalm 1:2

0364: Valentinian becomes Emperor of Rome at Nicaea

0493: Surrender of the Roman Army at Ravenna to the Ostrogoths

1147: Crusaders massacre the Jews of WÅrzburg

1154: Death of Roger II, King of Sicily

1266: Death of Manfred, King of Sicily

1522: CuauhtÇmoc, last Aztec emperor, hanged by CortÇs after being tortured

1531: An earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, killed an estimated 20,000 people.

1551: Execution of Thomas Arundell

1564: Baptism of Christopher Marlowe

1616: Inquisition delivers injunction to Galileo

1797: The Bank of England issued one-pound notes for the first time.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte and 1,200 men left his exile on the Isle of Elba to start his 100-day campaign to re-gain France.

1832: The Polish constitution was abolished and replaced by one imposed by Czar Nicholas I.

1848: London, England, Karl Marx published "The Communist Manifesto."

1848: The Second French Republic was proclaimed.

1852: Wagner met one of the loves of his life. Wagner had moved to Zurich and visited with his new neighbors, the Wesendoncks. He was a rich merchant; she was a beautiful woman. The relationship inspired the opera "Tristan and Isolde."

1863: President Lincoln signs the National Currency Act.

1870: New York City's first pneumatic-powered subway line was opened to the public.

1901: The leaders of the Boxer Rebellion China, Chi-hsui and Hsu Cheng-yu, were beheaded public.

1907: The U.S. Congress raised their pay to $7,500. Both House and Senate received the same pay. The Cabinet members and the Vice President would earn $12,000.

1916: General Henri Philippe Petain takes command of the French forces at Verdun.

1916: Mutual signed Charlie Chaplin to a film contract. Three years later, the Charlie Chaplin films were released and were very successful at the box office.

1917: President Wilson publicly asks congress for the power to arm merchant ships.

1919: Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The Grand Canyon National Park covers 1,218,375 acres. It measures 18 miles across, over 200 miles long and is a mile from its top to its bottom.

1924: U.S. steel industry finds claims an eight-hour day increases efficiency and employee relations.

1929: President Coolidge signed a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park.

1933: Ground is broken for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Franscisco.

1935: RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) was first demonstrated by Robert Watson-Watt.

1936: Adolf Hitler opened the first factory for the production of the "People's Car," the Volkswagen, Saxony, Germany.

1940: The United States Air Defense Command was created.

1942: "How Green Was My Valley" won best picture of 1941 at the Academy Awards Los Angeles; John Ford won best director, Gary Cooper won best actor for "Sergeant York," Joan Fontaine won best actress for "Suspicion."

1943: Roy Harris' Fifth Symphony was premiered. It was popular during World War Two because Harris dedicated it to the Soviet people on the 25th anniversary of the Red Army. After the war, the Soviet Union changed from friend to foe and the symphony wasn't heard again for years.

1945: A midnight curfew on night clubs, bars and other places of entertainment was set to go into effect across the nation.

1945: Syria declares war on Germany and Japan.

1947: President Truman names Lewis W. Douglas as ambassador to Britain.

1951: The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, limiting a president to two terms of office.

1952: Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own atomic bomb.

1955: Billboard magazine reported that for the first time since their introduction 1949, 45-rpm discs are outselling the old standard 78-rpm records.

1957: The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was established by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

1962: After becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn told a joint meeting of Congress, "exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run."

1964: Lyndon B. Johnson signs a tax bill with $11.5 billion in cuts.

1965: Norman Butler is arrested for the murder of Malcom X.

1968: Thirty-two African nations agree to boycott the Olympics because of the presence of South Africa.

1970: Five Marines are arrested on charges of murdering 11 South Vietnamese women and children.

1972: Soviets recover Luna 20 with a cargo of moon rocks.

1973: A publisher and 10 reporters are subpoenaed to testify on Watergate.

1979: A total solar eclipse cast a moving shadow 175 miles wide from Oregon to North Dakota before moving north into Canada.

1980: Egypt and Israel established diplomatic relations, marking the end of 30 years of war between the two countries.

1983: Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, arrived San Diego Bay for a 10-day West Coast tour that included a Hollywood banquet and visits with President and Mrs. Reagan.

1984: The last American Marines the multinational peacekeeping force Lebanon left Beirut.

1985: Secretary of State George P. Shultz and U.S. arms negotiators told Congress the U.S. bargaining position would be seriously weakened if lawmakers refused to finance the MX missile.

1986: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Robert Penn Warren was named the first poet laureate of the United States by Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin.

1987: The Tower Commission declared White House chief of staff Donald Regan had "primary responsibility for the chaos" of the Iran-Contra scandal.

1988: Eric Arturo Delvalle, ousted as president of Panama by the country's National Assembly, called for a national strike to repudiate General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1988: The Soviet Union's hockey team clinched the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.

1989: President Bush's visit to China was marred by the refusal of Chinese authorities to allow dissidet Fang Lizhi to attend a banquet hosted by Bush.

1989: Defense Secretary-designate John Tower, dogged by questions about a possible drinking problem, publicly pledged not to imbibe in any alcohol during his term of office if confirmed by the Senate.

1990: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega conceded defeat to his opponent, Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, a stunning election upset.

1990: The Soviet Union agreed to withdraw all of its 73,500 troops from Czechoslovakia by July 1991.

1991: Kuwaiti resistance leaders declared themselves in control of their capital, following nearly seven months of Iraqi occupation. 

1991: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad Radio that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait. 

1992: The U-S Supreme Court ruled unanimously that sexually harassed students may sue to collect monetary damages from their schools and school officials.

1992: The Supreme Court of Ireland cleared the way for a 14-year-old girl to leave the country for an abortion.

1993: A bomb exploded in the parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than one-thousand others.

1994: A jury San Antonio acquitted 11 followers of David Koresh of murder, rejecting claims they had ambushed federal agents; five were convicted of manslaughter.

1995: The United States and China averted a major trade war by signing a comprehensive agreement.

1995: Barings PLC, Britain's oldest investment banking firm, collapsed after Nick Leeson, a 28-year-old securities dealer, lost over $1.4 billion by gambling on Tokyo stock prices.

1996: President Clinton moved to step up economic sanctions on Cuba response to Cuba's downing of two unarmed airplanes belonging to the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue. 

1997: President Clinton defended White House fund-raising tactics as "entirely appropriate," a day after the disclosure of documents putting Clinton at the center of all-out fund-raising efforts.

1997: Israel's Cabinet voted to build a new Jewish neighborhood in disputed east Jerusalem.

1997: "Change the World" won four Grammy awards, including record of the year; Celine Dion's "Falling Into You" won album of the year and best pop album.

1998: A jury in Amarillo, Texas, rejected an $11 million lawsuit brought by Texas cattlemen who blamed Oprah Winfrey's talk show for a price fall after a segment on food safety that included a discussion about mad-cow disease.

1998: White House damage-control expert Sidney Blumenthal accused independent counsel Kenneth Starr of trying to intimidate him to keep him from talking with journalists about prosecutors on Starr's team. "I never imagined that in America I would be hauled before a federal grand jury to answer questions about my conversations with members of the media," Blumenthal said after a morning of grand jury testimony.

1998: Five New York City police officers were indicted in federal court on charges of violating the civil rights of a Haitian immigrant who said he was beaten and sexually tortured in a Brooklyn precinct house.

1998: Britain's Princess Margaret was admitted to hospital in London for further medical treatment after a mild stroke.

1999: President Clinton, outlining foreign policy goals for the final two years of his administration, urged continued American engagement in the quest for peace and freedom abroad.

2000: Pope John Paul the Second visited Mount Sinai in Egypt, where he prayed for religious tolerance in a garden under the peak revered as the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.