The First Income Tax – Today In Southern History
5 August 1861
5 August 1861
On this date in 1861…
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed and levied the first national income tax as a source of revenue to replace that lost as Southern states seceded. The tax was 3% of all incomes over $800 and was later ruled unconstitutional. However, the taxes paid were not refunded.
Other Years:
1570 – A Spanish expedition intending to start a colony on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia was forced by local Indians to abandon the effort.
1763 - At the Battle of Bushy Run on land claimed by Virginia Colony. British forces led by Henry Bouquet defeat warriors from the Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, and Huron tribes
1862 - Confederates failed to recapture Baton Rouge, Louisiana
1864 – The Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama.
1932 Clyde Barrow and two others killed Sheriff C.G. Maxwell and his deputy, Eugene C. Moore, at a dance in Stringtown, Oklahoma
1936 - Jesse Owens of Oakville, Alabama won the 200m and his third gold medal of the Berlin Olympics in a world record time
1956 - WCYB TV channel 5 in Bristol-Kingsport, Virginia (NBC) began broadcast
1966 - Protesters threw rocks and bottles at Martin Luther King Jr. during a fair housing protest march at Marquette Park in Chicago, IL
1967 - Bobby Gentry of Woodland, Mississippi released her hit record “Ode to Billie Joe”
1999 – The St. Louis Cardinals’ Mark McGwire hit his 500th career home run and also set the record for the fewest at-bats to hit the 500 home run mark.
2011 – The Juno space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral as the first solar-powered spacecraft to go to Jupiter.
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