Category Archives: History

1790 – Benjamin Franklin died at age 84 in Philadelphia.

1885 – Author Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa) was born in Rungsted, Denmark.

1894 – Nikita Khrushchev, Russian premier 1958 – 1964, was born in Kalinovka, Ukraine.

1897 – Novelist Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth) was born in Madison, WI.

1941 – Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter (or heliocopter as it was called then) lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.

1969 – A jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy the previous year.

1867 – Aviator Wilbur Wright was born in Millville, IN.

1889 – Charlie Chaplin was born in London.

1900 – The first book of U.S. postage stamps was issued.  The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.

1917 – Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd after a decade of exile to lead the Russian Revolution.

1943 – Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist, discovered the hallucinogenic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) when he accidentally consumed a synthetic version, LSD-25, he’d created in his laboratory.

1947 – In the port of Texas City, TX, a fire aboard the French freighter Grandcamp ignited ammonium nitrate and other explosive materials in the ship’s hold, causing a massive blast that destroyed much of the city, killed nearly 600 people and injured more than 3,000.  It remains the most devastating industrial accident in U.S. history.

1947 – NBC-TV in New York City demonstrated the first optically compensated zoom lens called a Zoomar lens, designed by Frank Back.

2007 – Seung Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, gunned down 32 students and staff in one of the deadliest shooting rampages in U.S. history.

1452 – Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci, Italy.

1794 – Courrier Francais became the first French daily newspaper to be published in the U.S. 

1843 – Author Henry James (The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove, The Portrait of a Lady) was born in New York City.

1865 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America, died at 7:22 A.M.  He’d been shot in the back of the head the previous evening at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. by John Wilkes Booth.

1894 – Singer Bessie Smith (St. Louis Blues, My Man’s Blues, Dixie Flyer Blues, I Ain’t Got Nobody, A Good Man is Hard to Find) was born in Chattanooga, TN.

1912 – At 2:20 A.M., the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, killing 1,517 people.

1923 – Insulin, first discovered in 1922, became available for general use.

1955 – Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, IL.

1956 – The worlds’ first all-color TV station, WNBQ-TV, was dedicated in Chicago, IL.  It’s now WMAQ-TV.

1959 – Four months after leading a successful rebellion in Cuba, Fidel Castro visited the U.S.

1971 – George C. Scott refused the Best Actor Oscar for Patton at the 43rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony.

1973 – Mickey Wright won the $25,000 first prize in the Colgate-Dinah Shore Golf Classic in Palm Springs, CA, then the richest women’s golf tournament.

1865 – John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.  Lincoln died at 7:22 A.M. the next day.

1894 – Thomas Alva Edison demonstrated the kinetoscope in New York City.  A viewer that held 50 feet of film – about 13 seconds worth – showed images of Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill.  The demonstration was actually called the first peep show, as one had to peep into the device to see what was on the film.  Movies were not projected on a screen at that time.

1902 – James Cash Penney opened his first store, dry goods and clothing store named Golden Rule, in Kemmerer, WY.

1912 – The R.M.S. Titanic of the White Star Line struck an iceberg at approximately 11:40 P.M.  The great ship, on its maiden voyage, sank just under three hours later, taking 1,517 people with it.

1912 – Stunt man Frederick Rodman Law became the first man to intentionally jump from the Brooklyn Bridge in New York without intending to take his own life.  He survived the leap.

1939 – John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath.

1956 – Ampex Corporation of Redwood City, CA demonstrated the first commercial magnetic tape recorder for sound and picture.  The videotape machine had a price tag of $75,000.

1743 – Thomas Jefferson was born in Alexandria County, Virginia.

1906 – Author Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland.

1909 – Poet Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, MS.

1943 – The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1954 – Hank Aaron debuted for the Milwaukee Braves.

1954 – Ian Fleming’s first novel about James Bond, Casino Royale, went on sale in the United Kingdom.

1958 – Van Cliburn of Kilgore, TX earned 1st prize in the Soviet Union’s Tchaikovsky International Piano Contest in Moscow.

1964 – At the 36^th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win a lead acting Oscar when he was named Best Actor for Lilies of the Field.

1633 – Physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church.

1799 – Phineas Pratt patented the comb cutting machine, a “machine for making combs.”

1833 – Charles Gaylor of New York City patented the fireproof safe.

1861 – The Civil War began when Confederate soldiers opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay.

1892 – Voters in Lockport, NY became the first in the U.S. to use voting machines.

1945 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia.  First-term Vice-President Harry S. Truman became President.

1955 – The polio vaccine of Dr. Jonas Salk was termed “safe, effective and potent” by the University of Michigan Polio Vaccine Evaluation Center.

1975 – The U.S. Navy evacuated the U.S. embassy staff in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as Khmer Rouge forces approached.

1981 – The space shuttle Columbia was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the first reusable manned craft to travel into space.

1984 – Challenger astronauts made the first satellite repair in orbit by returning a healthy Solar Max satellite to space.  The satellite had been circling the Earth for three years with all circuits dead before repairs were made.

1985 – Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns, as the circus said, but goats with horns which had been surgically implanted.  The circus was ordered to quit advertising the fake unicorns as anything else but goats.

1803 – John Stevens patented a twin-screw propeller steamboat. The boat was 25 feet long and four feet wide.

1814 – Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of Elba.

1908 – Jane Bolin, the first Black female graduate of Yale School of Law and the first Black female judge in the nation was born in Poughkeepsie, NY.

1921 – KDKA radio in Pittsburgh broadcast the first live sports event, a lightweight boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.

Johnny Ray

Johnny Dundee

1945 – The U.S. Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.

1947 – Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in major-league baseball history when he played in an exhibition game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1956 – Elvis Presley reached the top spot on the Billboard music chart with his first double-sided hit: Heartbreak Hotel and I Was the One.  The RCA Victor record stayed at number one for eight weeks.  Elvis also made the country and R&B charts.

1970 – The third lunar mission, Apollo 13, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The mission was aborted when an oxygen tank exploded aboard the spacecraft.

1979 – Ugandan dictator Idi Amin fled the capital of Kampala, as forces from Tanzania and the Uganda National Liberation Front approached.

1847 – Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher for whom the Pulitzer Prize is named, was born in Budapest.

1849 – Walter Hunt of New York City patented the safety pin.

1866 – The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was founded in New York City by philanthropist and diplomat Henry Bergh.

1882 – Frances Perkins, first female cabinet member, Secretary of Labor 1933 – 1945, was born in Boston.

1912 – The RMS Titanic departed from Southampton, England.

1919 – Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Mexican Revolution, was ambushed and killed in Morelos by government forces.

1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps.

1941 – German and Italian invaders of Yugoslavia set of the Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1953 – The first film made in 3-D, The House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, opened at New York’s Paramount Theatre.

1833 – The first municipally supported public library in the U.S. was established in Peterborough, NH. 

1865 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his 28,000 troops at Appomattox, Virginia.

1872 – S.R. Percy of New York City received a patent for dried milk.

1881 – After a one day trial, Billy the Kid was found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New México sheriff and sentenced to hang.

1905 – The first aerial ferry bridge went into operation in Duluth, Minnesota.

1939 – Opera singer Marion Anderson sung on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

1940 – Nazi Germany invaded Norway, which had been neutral during the start of World War II.

German officers stand in front of the National Theater in Oslo, 1940.

1942 – Major General Edward P. King and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans) surrendered to the Japanese in Bataan, Philippines, thus beginning the brutal “Bataan Death March.”

1959 – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduced America’s first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, John H. Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shephard and Donald Slayton.

1965 – Major-league baseball played its first indoor game.  President Lyndon B. Johnson attended the opening of the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.  The indoor stadium was termed the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World.’

536 B.C. – Buddha (Gautama Shakyamuni Buddha) was born in India.

1834 – Cornelius Lawrence became the first mayor to be elected by popular vote in a city election.  The voters of New York City decided to make him mayor.

1873 – Alfred Paraf of New York City patented the first successful oleomargarine.

1892 – Silent movie star Mary Pickford was born in Toronto, Canada.

1935 – Congress votes to approve President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA).

1953 – Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kenyan independence movement, was convicted by Kenya’s British rulers of leading the extremist Mau Mau in their violence against White settlers and the colonial government.

1969 – The Montreal Expos and the New York Mets played in Shea Stadium in New York in the first international baseball game in the major leagues.

1971 – Chicago became the first rock group to play Carnegie Hall in New York City.

1974 – Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record by collecting his 715^th home run at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium.  Aaron finished his career two years later with 755 home runs; a record that still stands.

1986 – Actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA, in a landslide victory, receiving 72.5% of the vote.