This day in #history 22/02
FEBRUARY 22TH
1865 – Tennessee adopts a new constitution
abolishing slavery
1876 – Johns Hopkins University opens
1945 – Arab League forms (Cairo )
1958 – Egypt & Syria form United Arab Republic
(UAR)
1971 – Lt Gen Hafiz al – Assad becomes President of Syria
1972 – Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani becomes Amir
& Prime Minister of Qatar
1979 – St Lucia gains independence from Britain
1989 – UK physicist Stephen Hawking calls Star Wars a “deliberate fraud”
2002 – Angolan political and rebel leader Jonas
Savimbi is killed in a military ambush
FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS
1732 – George Washington, Westmoreland, Virginia , 1 st American president (1789 -97)
FAMOUS DEATHS
1512 – Amerigo Vespucci , Italian explorer
(America) , dies at 60
1940 – Johnson P Mlambo, South African leader
(Pan- African Congress)
1832 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , German writer, dies at 82
1944 – Kasturba Gandhi , wife of Mohandas Gandhi (b . 1869
1958 – Michael Todd, film magnate , killed in an
New Mexico air crash
2007 – Samuel Hinga Norman, Sierra Leonean
alleged war criminal ( b . 1940 )
FAMOUS WEDDING
1997 – Singer -actress Jennifer Lopez (27) weds
Ojani Noa on the grounds of a friend’ s Miami
home