This Day In Texas History - February 1
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 3:00 pm
1836 - William Oury is sent out of the Alamo with a plea for help from General Houston.
1836 - Delegates were elected to The Convention of 1836, and wrote the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, organized the ad interim government, and named Sam Houston commander in chief of the military forces of the republic. The call for the convention to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos was issued by the General Council of the provisional government over the veto of Governor Henry Smith in December 1835, and the delegates were elected on February 1, 1836. There were 44 delegates to the convention.
1941 - Camp Wallace in Galveston was formally opened. It designed as a training center for antiaircraft units in World War II. For two years Camp Wallace served as an antiaircraft replacement training center. On April 15, 1944, the camp was officially transferred to the United States Navy as a naval training and distribution center and was used as a boot camp. After the war it became the Naval Personnel Separation Center. It was declared surplus in 1946.
1845 - Governor Anson Jones signed the bill founding Baylor, Texas' first University. First classes are at Independence in 1846. It is 1886, with mergers and other changes, that the University locates in Waco. Judge R.E.B Baylor, one of the founders, never thought himself deserving of such as honor as having the University named after him.
1861 - After an election that saw 3 out of 4 Texas voters approve of secession, Texas officially seceded from the Union. Governor Sam Houston, refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy is forced to resign by the new government put in place by the Secession Convention. A month later, Texas will officially join the Confederacy.
1866 - General George Armstrong Custer was mustered out of the volunteer militia in Austin that he commanded. He was assigned to duty in Texas as part of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's effort to prevent Confederate retrenchment in Mexico under the emperor Maximilian.
1872 - Henry Lindsley is born. He becomes mayor of Dallas and the first national commander of the American Legion.
1882 - Building commissioners Nimrod Norton and Joseph Lee turned the first shovelful of dirt for the present Texas Capitol. Construction was financed by the sale of three million acres of public land in the Panhandle, under the auspices of the XIT Ranch. The main building material is red granite from Marble Mountain, west of Austin. The Renaissance Revival structure, for which the Capitol in Washington was the model, was dedicated in 1888. The total cost was $3.75 million. The cost of restoration in the 1990s was $200 million.
1927 - The mockingbird was named Texas' official state bird.
1933 - The United States and Mexico signed the Rio Grande Rectification Treaty, which called for construction of a 590-foot-wide floodway and 66-foot-wide normal flow channel along a stretch of the river from Cordova Island to below Fort Quitman. The agreement became necessary after the 1916 completion of Elephant Butte Dam near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. he agreement made the international boundary the middle of the deepest channel of the Rio Grande within the rectified channel.
1971 - William John Marsh, the composer of "Texas, Our Texas," died in Fort Worth. He composed the music in 1924 to lyrics that he cowrote with Gladys Yoakum Wright. Their entry won a statewide contest and was officially adopted as the state song in 1929. John Philip Sousa extolled the piece as the finest state song he had ever heard. [how many of us know the state song? here it is: http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/statesong.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ]
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia Explodes over Texas. For the next hour and a half, debris rained down from the Panhandle to Louisiana. Nacogdoches, which had sustained the most damage from falling debris, became ground zero for news crews and search teams. Within weeks the world learned that a piece of heavy foam from the booster rocket broke off upon launch knocking a heat shield tile off the forward edge of the left wing. Without the heat shield, the wing overheated upon re-entry, and eventually disintegrated.
1836 - Delegates were elected to The Convention of 1836, and wrote the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, organized the ad interim government, and named Sam Houston commander in chief of the military forces of the republic. The call for the convention to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos was issued by the General Council of the provisional government over the veto of Governor Henry Smith in December 1835, and the delegates were elected on February 1, 1836. There were 44 delegates to the convention.
1941 - Camp Wallace in Galveston was formally opened. It designed as a training center for antiaircraft units in World War II. For two years Camp Wallace served as an antiaircraft replacement training center. On April 15, 1944, the camp was officially transferred to the United States Navy as a naval training and distribution center and was used as a boot camp. After the war it became the Naval Personnel Separation Center. It was declared surplus in 1946.
1845 - Governor Anson Jones signed the bill founding Baylor, Texas' first University. First classes are at Independence in 1846. It is 1886, with mergers and other changes, that the University locates in Waco. Judge R.E.B Baylor, one of the founders, never thought himself deserving of such as honor as having the University named after him.
1861 - After an election that saw 3 out of 4 Texas voters approve of secession, Texas officially seceded from the Union. Governor Sam Houston, refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy is forced to resign by the new government put in place by the Secession Convention. A month later, Texas will officially join the Confederacy.
1866 - General George Armstrong Custer was mustered out of the volunteer militia in Austin that he commanded. He was assigned to duty in Texas as part of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's effort to prevent Confederate retrenchment in Mexico under the emperor Maximilian.
1872 - Henry Lindsley is born. He becomes mayor of Dallas and the first national commander of the American Legion.
1882 - Building commissioners Nimrod Norton and Joseph Lee turned the first shovelful of dirt for the present Texas Capitol. Construction was financed by the sale of three million acres of public land in the Panhandle, under the auspices of the XIT Ranch. The main building material is red granite from Marble Mountain, west of Austin. The Renaissance Revival structure, for which the Capitol in Washington was the model, was dedicated in 1888. The total cost was $3.75 million. The cost of restoration in the 1990s was $200 million.
1927 - The mockingbird was named Texas' official state bird.
1933 - The United States and Mexico signed the Rio Grande Rectification Treaty, which called for construction of a 590-foot-wide floodway and 66-foot-wide normal flow channel along a stretch of the river from Cordova Island to below Fort Quitman. The agreement became necessary after the 1916 completion of Elephant Butte Dam near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. he agreement made the international boundary the middle of the deepest channel of the Rio Grande within the rectified channel.
1971 - William John Marsh, the composer of "Texas, Our Texas," died in Fort Worth. He composed the music in 1924 to lyrics that he cowrote with Gladys Yoakum Wright. Their entry won a statewide contest and was officially adopted as the state song in 1929. John Philip Sousa extolled the piece as the finest state song he had ever heard. [how many of us know the state song? here it is: http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/statesong.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ]
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia Explodes over Texas. For the next hour and a half, debris rained down from the Panhandle to Louisiana. Nacogdoches, which had sustained the most damage from falling debris, became ground zero for news crews and search teams. Within weeks the world learned that a piece of heavy foam from the booster rocket broke off upon launch knocking a heat shield tile off the forward edge of the left wing. Without the heat shield, the wing overheated upon re-entry, and eventually disintegrated.
