History
878 verified facts in this category, showing 501–600.
- Senate Democrats restricted the filibuster for circuit-court nominees in 2013.
- Senate Republicans used a party-line vote to reduce the allowed delay time for considering judicial or low-level executive nominees from 30 hours to two hours.
- Archaeologists discovered a human arm bone at the Ness of Brodgar excavation site in Orkney, Scotland.
- Guy Burgess left behind a battered leather briefcase when he fled to Moscow in 1951.
- A 1999 amendment to 50 USC 435(a)(3), enacted via Pub. L. 106-120, added a requirement covering consent to access computers used in the performance of government duties, in addition to financial and travel records.
- 50 USC 435 Note, which concerns information about US personnel classified as POW/MIA during the Vietnam and Korean conflicts, is known as the McCain Bill.
- Douglas Scott's 2004 book 'Finding Sand Creek: History, Archaeology, and the 1864 Massacre Site' describes the search for the location of a peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho camp that was overrun by more than 700 U.S. volunteer troops commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington.
- During the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria initially overwhelmed Israel before U.S. support helped Israel turn the tide.
- The U.S. federal budget surplus for full fiscal year 1999 was projected at $100 billion to $120 billion, or more than 1 percent of GDP, compared with deficits approaching 5 percent of GDP in the early 1990s.
- Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent in the birthright citizenship case was 91 pages long, more than three times the length of Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion for the court.
- Mark Mazzetti and The New York Times were the first to uncover the existence and destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes.
- In 849, the Frankish king Lothar commissioned a copy of the Gospels from the monks of St. Martin in Tours to commemorate reconciliation with his brother Charles.
- Baseball cards were included in boxes of Cracker Jack in 1914 and 1915.
- Baseball stars Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson appeared in cigarette advertisements during the 20th century.
- Charles Lang Freer left school at age 14 to work in a cement factory before becoming a railroad clerk.
- The U.S. Copyright Office has been housed in the Library of Congress since 1870, when copyright applicants began being required to submit two copies of their works.
- On August 24, 1814, British forces burned the U.S. Capitol during the War of 1812, destroying the Library of Congress's original collection of 3,000 volumes.
- The Austrian National Library holds manuscripts from the library of Matthias I Corvinus, whose collection was dispersed after the Turks captured his capital, Buda, in 1526.
- British troops bombarded the Capitol and caused a fire in 1814, destroying many books in the Library of Congress.
- During the 1960s, the FBI covertly targeted civil-rights leaders, women's movements and anti-war protestors in the name of domestic security.
- On July 21, 2025, the National Archives released more than 230,000 pages of records related to the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- The President's Intelligence Checklist (PICL), created after the Bay of Pigs invasion, was first delivered on 17 June 1961 and remained President John F. Kennedy's primary written intelligence source for the rest of his administration.
- In the 1980s, the U.S. Congress passed a law shutting down American support to the Contras in Nicaragua.
- Soviet penetration of the Middle East is said to have begun with a 1955 arms deal between Czechoslovakia and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
- The CIA's amphibious, paramilitary invasion of Cuba in April 1961 (the Bay of Pigs) was defeated by Fidel Castro's forces within two days.
- Across six public releases, approximately 3,000 translated VENONA messages were made public.
- President George W. Bush said of the 2007 NIE's public release, 'The NIE had a big impact—and not a good one.'
- President George W. Bush described the 2007 NIE's language about Iran's nuclear program as 'eye-popping.'
- In a 2015 case upholding the constitutionality of Arizona's independent redistricting commission, a Supreme Court majority consisting of the four liberal justices and Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected the independent state legislature theory.
- In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no authority to review partisan-gerrymandering cases, while Chief Justice John Roberts said state statutes and state constitutions could provide standards for state courts.
- At age 75, Mike Gravel and his wife Whitney used public transportation in 2006 to announce his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 election.
- The Supreme Court's online oral argument audio files begin only with October Term 2010.
- The Supreme Court began audio recording oral arguments in 1955.
- Jebel Sahaba is considered the oldest cemetery discovered so far in the Nile Valley.
- Archaeologists uncovered tens of thousands of broken animal bones at Göbekli Tepe, including gazelles and aurochs.
- Mass human migrations into the Americas occurred around 13,400 years ago, roughly 1,000 years before the onset of the Younger Dryas.
- Since 1998, archaeozoologist Joris Peters of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich has examined more than 100,000 bone fragments from Göbekli Tepe, of which gazelle bones account for more than 60 percent of the total.
- The Capsian industry was a Mesolithic cultural complex dating from 8000 to 2700 BCE, prominent in the inland regions of North Africa.
- Some megaliths at Göbekli Tepe are carved with elaborate images of foxes, scorpions, lions, and other animals.
- Apollo 7 splashed down on October 22, 1968, about 200 nautical miles south-southwest of Bermuda and roughly 1 to 2 miles from its target point.
- About 30 hours after launch, Apollo 7 rendezvoused with its spent Saturn IB second stage, coming within 70 feet of the tumbling rocket.
- By October 1964, Grumman's lunar module design had grown to 33,000 pounds, up from the original 22,000-pound, two-stage design.
- Ferdinand Magellan named the Pacific Ocean in 1520 after sailing through a calm patch of water, deriving the name from 'pacify' or 'peaceful.'
- Poppy Northcutt was hired in 1965 through NASA contractor TRW after graduating early from the University of Texas with a degree in mathematics.
- Harrison H. Schmitt introduced Eric M. Jones to the other 11 Apollo astronauts who had walked on the Moon, leading them to participate in recorded mission-review sessions.
- New electronic forms of reconnaissance emerged as a sub-type of aerial reconnaissance during World War II.
- During WWII, aerial reconnaissance advanced mainly through new tactics, procedures, and technology, rather than through specialized aircraft types.
- The expansion of aerial reconnaissance during WWII was driven mostly by trial and error rather than by planned development.
- Early aerial photographic reconnaissance in World War I relied on an aircrew member, usually the observer, to operate heavy, awkward hand-held cameras.
- In antiquity, the term 'aspis' referred to any one of several venomous snake species found in the Nile region.
- The ancient city of Phacusa was located on the site of what is today the city of Faqous.
- The Arabia Nome was a province in Ancient Egypt.
- The Annals of Thutmose III provide the largest and most detailed account of military exploits of any ancient Egyptian king.
- The Annals of Thutmose III are inscribed on the inside walls of the chamber housing the 'holy of holies' at the Karnak Temple of Amun.
- ORP Czapla was raised (salvaged) by the Germans after being sunk.
- The Axis powers were originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis.
- A majority of the 60 to 75 million people who died in World War II were civilians.
- The French word 'paléontologie' was introduced in 1822.
- In the rhetorical stage of mathematical notation, calculations were described purely using words rather than symbols.
- The history of mathematical notation is commonly divided into three stages: rhetorical, syncopated, and symbolic.
- Japan's Waste Cleaning Act of 1900 established the principle that municipalities are responsible for collecting and disposing of household garbage.
- The Judiciary Act of 1801 created sixteen new federal circuit judge positions.
- Great Ormond Street Hospital was the first hospital in the UK to offer dedicated inpatient care to children.
- The America Invents Act, signed into law on September 16, 2011, implemented the 'first inventor to file' standard in the U.S. patent system.
- The CIA's Daily Summary began production in February 1946 and continued until February 1951.
- Of the $290 million in civil sanctions imposed on Salomon Inc. in 1992, up to $100 million could be used to satisfy civil damage claims.
- The 1992 settlement against Salomon Brothers also encompassed charges that were or could have been brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
- On May 20, 1992, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the filing and simultaneous settlement of charges against Salomon Inc. and its subsidiary Salomon Brothers Inc. for securities law violations tied to trading in the U.S. government securities market.
- The FDA began establishing food Standards of Identity in 1939 to promote honesty and fair dealing and to standardize the characteristics, ingredients, and production processes of specific foods.
- The CORONA documents and imagery were declassified by a special working group involving officers from the National Reconnaissance Office, Central Imagery Office, CIA Directorate of Science and Technology, and National Photographic Interpretation Center.
- CORONA: America's First Satellite Program was the fourth volume in the CIA Cold War Records Series, launched in 1992 by Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates.
- Oxygen tank No. 2 on Apollo 13 exploded nine minutes after the crew finished a 49-minute television broadcast, at about 55 hours and 55 minutes into the mission, causing oxygen tank No. 1 to fail as well while the spacecraft was roughly 200,000 miles from Earth.
- The Current Intelligence Bulletin began production on 28 February 1951 and was renamed the Central Intelligence Bulletin in 1958.
- In 2001, CDC received its first funding from Congress for stroke and established the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Registry.
- In 1998, CDC received its first funding from Congress for states to develop comprehensive heart disease and stroke prevention programs.
- With German unity in 1990, the Basic Law became the definitive constitution of Germany.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was infected with smallpox at some point in his life.
- Afshana, where Avicenna was born, is located in an area that is part of present-day Uzbekistan.
- The dog weighed approximately 19 kilograms and was of medium build.
- The 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Olympics were the first Winter Games to be broadcast on television.
- As of 2018, 40 further editions of Gray's Anatomy had been produced since the first edition.
- In 1867 Joseph Lister published his antiseptic method; in 1870 he reported that deaths after amputation on his wards fell from about 45% to 15%, figures that were disputed for years.
- The Cosmonaut Training Centre changed its name to Zvyozdny Gorodok (Star City) in 1968.
- The Soviet Cosmonaut Training Centre had the code name Military Unit 26266 and was also known by the initials TsPK (Tsentr Podgotovki Kosmonavtov).
- Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight preceded Alan Shepard's spaceflight by about three weeks.
- Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge died at 8:10 p.m. on September 17, 1908, from injuries sustained in a Wright Military Flyer crash at Fort Myer, Virginia.
- Uruk has yielded some of the earliest known writing, dating to about 3300–3200 B.C.; early Egyptian inscriptions are of similar age.
- The city of Ashur was besieged and destroyed by the Medes in 614 B.C.
- King Hammurabi posted a legal code containing 282 laws around 1750 B.C.
- ISIS blew up a bridge in Fallujah during its 2016 retreat.
- The Air Commerce Act of 1926 declared the navigable airspace of the United States to be free for use.
- The Maya developed the Long Count Calendar.
- On October 14, 1962, CIA U-2 overflights of Cuba photographed and confirmed the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States.
- President Eisenhower approved the development of the U-2 spy plane on November 25, 1954.
- In 1986, Italy introduced a law making helmet use mandatory for motorcyclists of all ages and for moped riders up to 18 years old.
- In 2017, Senate Republicans extended the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court justice nominations.
- In 2013, Senate Democrats used the nuclear option to allow most executive branch and judicial nominees to be approved by a simple majority.
- In 1975, the US Senate voted to lower the cloture threshold to three-fifths of senators serving overall, establishing the current 60-vote requirement.
- In 1917, the US Senate voted to create a cloture process by which a two-thirds supermajority of senators present and voting could cut off a filibuster.
- The Senate filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 lasted 60 days and ended when the Senate invoked cloture by a vote of 71 to 29.