Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist and seamstress whom the United States Congress dubbed the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement". Parks is famous for her refusal in 1955 to obey a bus driver's demand that she give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history, and launched Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the organizers of the boycott, to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Her role in American history earned her an iconic status in American culture, and her actions have left an enduring legacy for worldwide civil rights movements.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1640: John IV was declared King of Portugal, resulting in a war with Spain. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_IV_of_Portugal)

1822: Pedro I was crowned the first Emperor of Brazil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_I_of_Brazil)

1913: The world's first moving assembly line was installed in Highland Park, Michigan for the mass production of automobiles. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/assembly_line)

1958: The colony of Ubangi-Shari became an autonomous territory within the French Community and took the name Central African Republic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_Republic)

1990: Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first ground connection between the island of Great Britain and the mainland of Europe since the last ice age. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns about that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever." -- Woody Allen (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Woody_Allen)