#TodayInHistory – May 12

May 12 – Some important events on this day

1215 👉🏼 English barons serve ultimatum on King John which eventually leads to the creation and signing of the Magna Carta.
1777 👉🏼 1st ice cream advertisement (Philip Lenzi in the NY Gazette) 🍦
1789 👉🏼 William Wilberforce makes his first major speech on abolition in the UK House of Commons, reasoning the slave trade morally reprehensible and an issue of natural justice
1792 👉🏼 Toilet that flushes itself at regular intervals is patented 🚽
1888 👉🏼 Crouching start 1st used in track and field by Charles Sherrill of Yale
1940 👉🏼 Nazi blitzkrieg and conquest of France begins with the crossing of the Muese River
1941 👉🏼 Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world’s first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin
1943 👉🏼 Axis forces in North Africa surrender
2002 👉🏼 Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro becoming first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro’s 1959 revolution.

2008 👉🏼 Wenchuan earthquake, measuring 7.8 in magnitude occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 87,000, injuring 374,643 and leaving homeless between 4.8 million and 11 million people.