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Today in History 03/01/17

Depiction of Gloria Church and aqueduct in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 19th century (© Liszt Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)(1565) Rio de Janeiro is founded
Sixty-five years after the Portuguese first explored the area, a city is founded on Guanabara Bay in the southeast Captaincy Colonies of Brazil. It will go on to be one of the most populated cities in the Americas.
Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the second-most populous municipality in Brazil and the sixth-most populous in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, the second-most populous metropolitan area in Brazil and sixth-most populous in the Americas. Rio de Janeiro is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s third-most populous state. Part of the city has been designated as a World Heritage Site, named “Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea”, by UNESCO on 1 July 2012 as a Cultural Landscape.
Website: www.rio.rj.gov.br
Population: 6.45 million (2015)
Travel tip: Whether your curiosity is piqued by the International Olympic Committee’s selection for the 2016 Games, or you’re heeding the call of the famous twin beaches Copacabana … @tripadvisor
Area: 471.43 sq miles (1,221 km²)
Host of: 2016 Summer Olympics
Nearby airports: Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport · Santos Dumont Airport
Mayor: Marcelo Crivella

wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro
Painting depicting the trial of George Jacobs for witchcraft at the Essex Institute in Salem, Mass., circa 1692 (© MPI/Getty Images)(1692) First suspects accused in Salem witch hunt
Magistrates in the colonial Massachusetts village of Salem charge Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba with witchcraft. Before the hysteria ends, more than 150 will be accused and 19 executed.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five others died in prison.
Date: Feb 1692

wiki/Salem_witch_trials
German born British physicist and spy, Dr Klaus Fuchs, in 1950 (© Keystone/Getty Images)(1950) Atomic spy Klaus Fuchs convicted in Britain
One of Britain’s top nuclear scientists is found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union, including passing them atomic bomb secrets from his time with the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who, in 1950, was convicted of supplying information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after the Second World War. While at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons, and later, early models of the hydrogen bomb.
Lived: Dec 29, 1911 – Jan 28, 1988 (age 76)
Spouse: Grete Keilson (m. 1959 – 1988)
Academic advisor: Nevill Francis Mott
Education: University of Bristol · Columbia University · University of Edinburgh · Leipzig University
Parents: Emil Fuchs (Father)
Parties: Communist Party of Germany · Social Democratic Party of Germany · Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Highlights
  • 1944: He was contacted by Harry Gold (codename: “Raymond”), an NKGB agent in early 1944.

  • 1944: In August 1944 Fuchs joined the Theoretical Physics Division at the Los Alamos Laboratory, working under Hans Bethe.

  • 1949: Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response (CIA publication), contains letter from agents in 1949 about Klaus Fuchs.

  • 1950: In January 1950, Fuchs arranged another interview with Skardon and voluntarily confessed that he was a spy.

  • 1959: In 1959, Fuchs married a friend from his years as a student communist, Grete (Margarete) Keilson.

  • 1988: He died in Berlin on 28 January 1988.

wiki/Klaus_Fuchs
A Peace Corps volunteer teacher reads a children's book to the young students gathered around her in Botswana, circa 1960s (© Paul Conklin/Getty Images)(1961) President Kennedy establishes Peace Corps
US President John F. Kennedy sends out a call to young Americans to travel to foreign lands, especially poor and developing nations, to offer humanitarian assistance. By the early 21st century, more than 200,000 will have volunteered for the Peace Corps and served in 140 countries.
The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand American culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. The work is generally related to social and economic development. Each program participant, a Peace Corps Volunteer, is an American citizen, typically with a college degree, who works abroad for a period of two years after three months of training.
Website: www.peacecorps.gov
Customer service: +1 8558551961
Founded: Mar 01, 1961
Headquarters: Washington, D.C., United States
Founders: John F. Kennedy · Sargent Shriver · Eunice Kennedy Shriver · Harris Wofford · Mark Shriver

wiki/Peace_Corps
3.3.f17

Today in History

Today in History
(1565) Spanish explorer finds site for an American settlement
1565 Rushing to beat Huguenot French settlers, Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés speeds his fleet towards what will become ‘La Florida,’ where he today sights land, and will soon settle St. Augustine. It will become one of the oldest continuously settled European-founded cities in the continental US..
St. Augustine is a city in northeastern Florida. It is the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement within the borders of the contiguous United States. The county seat of St. Johns County, it is part of Florida’s First Coast region and the Jacksonville metropolitan area. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 12,975. The United States Census Bureau’s 2013 estimate of the city’s population was 13,679, while the urban area had a population of 69,173 in 2012.
Population: 13,841 (2014)
Area: 12.74 sq miles (33 km²)
(1898) Indigestion gets an intervention with a brand-new brew
Pharmacist Caleb Bradham has developed a digestion aid at his North Carolina drug store concocted with sugar, water, caramel, lemon, nutmeg, and what he terms ‘rare oils.’ Today he names it ‘Pepsi-Cola,’ a play on the word ‘dyspepsia,’ the ailment that the drink purports to soothe.. 1898
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo. Created and developed in 1893 and introduced as Brad’s Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola on August 28, 1898, then to Pepsi in 1961, and in select areas of North America, “Pepsi-Cola Made with Real Sugar” as of 2014.
Inventor: Caleb Bradham
(1963) Dr. King delivers a speech of dreams in Washington, DC
1963 Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, his voice ringing out to some 250,000 listeners, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers a stirring speech that will galvanize the civil rights movement and be heralded as one of the greatest orations in American history..
“I Have a Dream” is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.
(1968) Protesters clash with police at Chicago convention
Tens of thousands of anti-war activists and an even larger number of police officers and federal troops meet in a fray of batons, fists, and tear gas in Chicago, and TV cameras capture the melee as it arrives on the doorstep of the Democratic National Convention at the Hilton Hotel.. 1968
Protest activity took place prior to and during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1967, counterculture and anti-Vietnam War protest groups had been promising to come to Chicago and disrupt the convention, and the city promised to maintain law and order. For eight days, the protesters and the Chicago Police Department met in the streets and parks of Chicago while the US Democratic Party met at the convention in the International Amphitheater.
Date: 1968