Category Archives: History

1908 – A massive explosion erupted over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia in far eastern Russia.  Now believed to have been caused by a meteorite, the blast flattened some 850 square miles of forest and generated a shock wave that could be felt as far west as Great Britain.

1921 – The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed.

1952 – The radio soap opera, The Guiding Light, appeared on television for the first time on CBS television.  The show remains the longest running program in television and radio history, running from 1937 until 2009.

1985 – For the 13^th time since 1972, the world’s official timekeeper atomic clock ticked off one extra second at 23:59 Greenwich Mean Time (also called UCT, Universal Coordinated Time) or 7:59:59 p.m. in New York City.  The leap second was added to compensate for the gradual slowing of the Earth’s rotation.

1994 – The temperature at Death Valley, California reached 128 degrees (Fahrenheit).  The only other time it has been that hot (since 1961 when weather data was first recorded) was on July 14, 1972.

1520 – Faced with an Aztec revolt, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés and his forces withdraw from Tenochtitlan.

1858 – George Washington Goethals, chief engineer of the Panama Canal, was born in New York City.

1861 – Dr. William Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, was born in Eccles, England.

1936 – Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was published.

1955 – Billy Haley and His Comets reached the top of the pop music charts with Rock Around the Clock.  The song stayed there for eight straight weeks and was featured in the film Blackboard Jungle.  Most consider the hit song the first rock ’n’ roll single.

1995 – For the first time, a U.S. space shuttle, Atlantis, linked up with a Russian space station, Mir.

1491 – King Henry VIII of England was born at Greenwich Palace in London.

1577 – Artist Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia, Netherlands.

1712 – Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland.

1894 – President Grover Cleveland signed an act of Congress, making Labor Day a federal holiday in the U.S.

1902 – Composer Richard Rodgers (It Might as Well be Spring; with Oscar Hammerstein: The Sound of Music, Love Me Tonight, My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, Oklahoma!, State Fair, The King and I, You’ll Never Walk Alone, Carousel) was born in New York City.

1905 – Author – anthropologist Ashley Montagu (The Natural Superiority of Women, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race) was born in London.

1906 – Physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer (won 1963 Nobel Prize with J. Hans Jensen & Eugene Wigner for nuclear shell theory; 1^st American woman to win a Nobel Prize) was born in Kattowitz, Germany.

1914 – World War I began, when Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

1919 – With the signing of The Treaty of Versailles, World War I officially ended.

1953 – Workers at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, MI, assembled the first Corvette.

1969 – A police raid of the Stonewall Inn in New York City turned violent and prompted a night of rioting.  The event is generally considered the start of the modern gay rights movement.

1976 – Women entered the Air Force Academy for the first time.  President Gerald R. Ford had signed legislation on October 7, 1975 allowing women to enter the nation’s military academies.

1994 – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would begin experimenting with a UV (ultraviolet) Index, “To enhance public awareness of the effects of overexposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, and to provide the public with actions they can take to reduce harmful effects of overexposure, which may include skin cancer, cataracts and immune suppression.”

1996 – The Citadel, which had fought to keep one woman from enrolling as a cadet in its all-male military academy in 1993, abruptly ended its opposition to enrolling qualified female cadets.  The change of policy happened after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a similar all-male policy at the Virginia Military Institute was unconstitutional.

1874 – A force of some 700 Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne Indians in northwest Texas clashed with 28 White hunters and traders at an old trading post called “Adobe Walls” over buffalo hunting.

1880 – Author and educator Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, AL.

1922 – The American Library Association awarded the first Newbery Medal for children’s literature to The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

1957 – Hurricane Audrey slammed into the Texas – Louisiana coast, killing some 500 people.  It remains the only Category 4 hurricane to develop in the Atlantic / Caribbean basin in the month of June.

1976 – The first reported case of a previously-unknown hemorrhagic fever called Ebola broke out near the Ebola River in Sudan.

1541 – Spanish explorer and conqueror Francisco Pizarro was assassinated in Lima, Peru by Spanish rivals.

1819 – W.K. Clarkson, Jr. of New York City patented the bicycle.

1891 – Playwright and screenwriter Sidney Howard (Gone with the Wind) was born in Oakland, CA.

1892 – Author Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth) was born in Hillsboro, WV.

1910 – Scientist Roy Plunkett, discoverer of polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon), was born in New Carlisle, OH.

1945 – Fifty nations came together in San Francisco for the signing of the United Nations Charter.

1956 – The U.S. Congress approved the Federal Highway Act, which allocated more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways.

1959 – CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed his 500^th and final guest on Person to Person: actress Lee Remick.

1963 – In a speech in front of the Berlin Wall, President John F. Kennedy expressed his solidarity with democratic German citizens by uttering the famous line: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

1788 – The Virginia colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America, entered the United States of America as the tenth state.

1876 – Indian Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull led a successful two-hour campaign in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Montana, wiping out the army of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.  Custer, who led the battle against the Sioux Indian encampment, was among the 200+ casualties.  Custer’s horse Comanche was among the few survivors.

Chief Sitting Bull

Chief Crazy Horse

1903 – Author George Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984) was born in Bengal, India.

1910 – The U.S. Congress authorized the use of postal savings stamps.

1950 – Armed forces from communist North Korea invade its southern neighbor, setting off the Korean War.

1951 – The CBS television network broadcast the first commercial color TV program, a variety show called “Premiere.”  The hour-long program appeared only in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.

George Balanchine Ballet from “Premiere.”

1962 – In Engel v. Vitale, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that prayers in public schools violated the First Amendment to the Constitution regarding the separation of church and state.

1990 – In Cruzan v. Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 upholding the right of an individual, whose wishes are clearly made, to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment.

1993 – Kim Campbell became Canada’s 19^th and first female Prime Minister.  Campbell governed until October 25, 1993 when the Progressive – Conservative Party was defeated.  (Her term actually expired November 4, 1993.)

1998 – Microsoft released Windows 98 with the slogan, “Works better.  Plays better.”  Interest in the new release was also increased by the publicity generated by the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Microsoft.

1864 – Colorado Governor John Evans warned all Native Americans in the region to report to the Sand Creek Reservation or risk attack.  The announcement preceded the “Sand Creek Massacre.”

1916 – Actress Mary Pickford became the first cinematic performer to receive a million dollar contract, when she signed a deal that guaranteed her $250,000 per film.

1922 – The American Professional Football Association changed its name to name the National Football League.

1940 – TV cameras were used for the first time in a political convention as the Republicans convened in Philadelphia, PA.

1972 – Bernice Gera became first woman to umpire a baseball game when the Auburn Phillies and Geneva Rangers played.  She resigned just a few hours after the game, however, because male umpires refused to work with her.

1997 – The U.S. Air Force released a 231-page report officially dismissing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, NM, nearly 50 years earlier.

1868 – Christopher L. Sholes of Wisconsin patented his “type-writer.”

1894 – Dr. Alfred Kinsey (The Kinsey Report, The Sexual Behavior in the Human Male) was born in Hoboken, NJ.

1910 – Playwright Jean Anouilh (Becket, Antigone) was born in Bordeaux, France.

1929 – Singer – songwriter June Carter Cash (Jackson, If I were a Carpenter, Ring of Fire) was born in Maces Spring, VA.

1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off on a global airplane flight aboard the Winnie Mae.

Wiley Post (L) and Harold Gatty with the Winnie Mae.

1961 – The Antarctic Treaty, signed by twelve nations in 1959, took effect.  The treaty guaranteed that the continent of Antarctica would be used for peaceful, scientific purposes only. The twelve original signers of the treaty were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States.  Since that time, 28 other nations have signed the pact.

Flags of the Antarctic Treaty signatories

1972 – Title IX of the 1972 education amendments is enacted into law, prohibiting federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on gender.