202 BC Peking, History: The four hundred years of the Han Dynasty in China began with the coronation of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu. During this long period of stability, China prospered.
1790 Sydney, History: Governor Phillip signed John Irving’s Warrant of Emancipation, making him the first convict to be freed. He went to Norfolk Island to work as a surgeon’s assistant. Later when he returned to Port Jackson he was awarded thirty acres of land at Parramatta.
1840 Ripon (Wisconsin), Politics: In the Little White School House the Free Soil Party was born and it later morphed into the Republican party in 1852. Three of the five signatories to the minutes of the first Free Soil meeting had been members of an Associationist Fourier community inspired by French utopian socialist Charles Fourier which had flourished in what is now Fond du Lac county at Ceresco just east of Ripon. This origin is discussed on other posts on this blog. Get clickin’ for enlightenment. By the way, the term ‘Free Soil’ referred to those who worked it, free, not slaves.
1933 Washington, D.C., Politics: President Franklin Roosevelt appointed the first woman to a cabinet position, Francis Perkins, who became and remained Secretary of Labor until 1945, playing a pivotal role in Roosevelt’s make-work programs during the Depression, and an even larger role during the war. She is one of two only cabinet members to serve throughout Roosevelt’s presidency.
1953 Cambridge, Science: James Watson and Francis Crock published the double-helix structure of DNA.
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