Category Archives: History

1776 – Juan Bautista de Anza arrived at what is now San Francisco, CA, with 247 colonists.

1797 – Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patented the washing machine.

1891 – The first world championship for amateur weightlifters was held in London.

1898 – In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States to Chinese immigrants are American citizens.

1922 – Bradley A. Fiske of Washington, D.C. patented a microfilm reading device.

1939 – The Spanish Civil War ended, as King Alfonso XIII approved elections to decide Spain’s government.

1969 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower died in Washington, D.C. at age 78.

1979 – A reactor overheated at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility near Harrisburg, PA, generating the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.

1990 – President George H. W. Bush presented the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to Jesse Owens for his humanitarian contributions.  The medal was given to Owens’ widow, Ruth S. Owens.

1841 – The first steam fire engine was tested in New York City.

1845 – Wilhelm Roentgen, who discovered x-rays, was born in Lennep, Germany.

1860 – The corkscrew was patented by M.L. Byrn of New York City.

1905 – British police used fingerprint evidence to solve the murders of Thomas and Ann Farrow, shopkeepers in South London; the first time the technology was used to solve a crime.

1912 – First Lady Helen Taft, wife of U.S. President William Howard Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted the first two cherry trees in Washington, D.C.  The trees are Yoshino cherries, and are still standing several hundred yards west of the John Paul Jones statue at the south end of 17th Street.

1958 – CBS Laboratories announced a new stereophonic record that was playable on ordinary LP phonographs, meaning monaural.

1964 – The strongest earthquake in American history, measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale, struck southern Alaska, killing 125 people and creating a deadly tsunami that swept down the Pacific coast, taking another 110 lives.

1973 – Marlon Brando turned down the Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather.

1977 – Two Boeing 747 jets, a Pan Am and a Dutch KLM, collided at an airport on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands in heavy fog.  The disaster killed 582 passengers and crew in the deadliest crash in aviation history.

1812 – A massive earthquake struck Caracas, Venezuela, killing an estimated 26,000 people. 

1885 – The first commercial moving-picture film was produced in Rochester, NY, by the Eastman Kodak company.

1920 – F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of Paradise.

1951 – The U.S. Air Force approved its new flag, which included the coat of arms, 13 white stars and the Air Force seal on a blue background.

1953 – Dr. Jonas Salk announced a new vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes polio.

1979 – Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a peace treaty at the White House, ending 3 decades of hostilities between their countries and establishing formal diplomatic and commercial ties.

1634 – British colonists arrived on St. Clement’s Island off present-day Maryland and established the settlement of St. Mary’s.

1774 – The British Parliament passed the Boston Port Act, closing the port of Boston and demanding the city’s residents pay for the tea dumped into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party the previous December.

1879 – Cheyenne leader Chief Little Wolf, who had led dozens of attacks on other Indian communities and engaged in several conflicts with the U.S. Army, surrendered to his friend, Lte. W.P. Clark.

1902 – Irving W. Colburn patented the sheet glass drawing machine.

1911 – A fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City, trapping several young, mostly female immigrant workers behind locked doors.  The 18-minute fire left 146 dead.   As a result, new labor laws were enacted to protect workers, and the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were indicted for manslaughter.

1932 – In Powell v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions of 9 young Black men who had been arrested and accused of raping 2 White women on a train in Alabama.

1941 – The first paprika mill was incorporated in Dillon, SC.

1945 – The Soviet Union announced it would withdraw its military troops from Iran.

1954 – Radio Corporation of America (RCA) began production of TV sets that were equipped to receive programs in color at a cost of $1,000 per unit.

1961 – Elvis Presley gave his first post-Army concert, a benefit for planning and building the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was assassinated by his nephew, Prince Faisal.

1603 – Queen Elizabeth I died, and King James VI of Scotland ascended to the throne, uniting England and Scotland under a single British monarch.

1792 – Artist Benjamin West became the first American artist to be selected president of the Royal Academy of London.

1874 – Harry Houdini was born in Appleton, WI.

1882 – Professor Robert Koch announced the discovery of the tuberculosis germ in Berlin, Germany.

1932 – Singer Belle Baker hosted a radio variety show on WABC in New York City from a moving train – a first for radio broadcasting.

1949 – President Harry Truman authorized a U.S. resolution for $16 million in aid to Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

1955 – The Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, opened on Broadway, ultimately running for 694 shows and winning the Critics’ Circle Award as the Best American Play.

1958 – Elvis Presley reported to draft board 86 in Memphis, TN, to begin a 2-year stint in the U.S. Army.

1960 – A U.S. appeals court ruled that D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, was not obscene and could be sent through the mail.

1980 – Capitol Records released some rare Beatles tracks, including stereo versions of Penny Lane and She Loves You, sung by the group in German, under the title, Sie Liebt Dich.

1989 – The Exxon Valdez, a 987-foot supertanker loaded with 1,264,155 barrels of North Slope crude oil, ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11.2 million gallons of oil into the sea and damaging nearly five hundred miles of shoreline.

1999 – NATO began air strikes against Yugoslavia with the bombing of Serbian military positions in Kosovo.

2002 – Halle Berry became the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar.  Denzel Washington won the Best Actor award, marking the first time African-Americans had won the year’s top acting awards.

1795 – Josiah G. Pierson received a patent for a rivet machine.

1858 – Eleazer A. Gardner of Philadelphia, PA received a patent for the cable street car.

1861 – John D. Defrees became the first Superintendent of the United States Government Printing Office.

1880 – John Stevens of Neenah, WI patented the device which was called a grain crushing mill.  The machine allowed flour production to increase by 70 percent and to sell for $2 more per barrel.

1919 – Benito Mussolini broke with Italian socialists and established the Fascist party.

1983 – Barney Clark died 112 days after becoming the world’s first recipient of a permanent artificial heart.

1986 – Martina Navratilova defeated Hana Mandlikova to win the Virginia Slims Championship.  It was the first women’s tournament to go four sets since 1901.

1998 – The movie, Titanic, won 11 Oscars at the 70^th Annual Academy Awards, tying the number of awards won by Ben-Hur in 1960.

1630 – The first legislation to prohibit gambling was enacted in Boston, Massachusetts. 

1765 – The British government passed the Stamp Act in an effort to pay off debts incurred during the Seven Years’ War with France.

1859 – A powerful earthquake in Quito, Ecuador killed 5,000 people and destroyed some of the most famous buildings in South America at the time.

Landscape in Ecuador (1859) by Louis Rémy Mignot

1911 – Hermann Jadlowker became the first opera singer to perform two major roles in the same day at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Beer and Wine Revenue Act, which levied a federal tax on all alcoholic beverages.

1945 – The Arab League is formed when representative from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen met in Cairo.

1948 – The Voice of Firestone was the first commercial radio program to be carried simultaneously on both AM and FM radio stations.

1972 – The U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification.

1981 – RCA put its Selectavision laser disc players on the market.  The units cost $500 and the video discs cost about $15 each, but the product failed in the consumer market.

1990 – Microsoft released Windows version 3.0.  The program offered dramatic performance increases for Windows applications, plus advanced ease of use and aesthetic appeal.

1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany.

1826 – The Rensselaer School in Troy, New York was incorporated.  The school, known today as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, became the first private technical school in the United States.

1868 – Writer Jane Cunningham Croly established the first club for professional women in New York City, Sorosis.

1946 – The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington, the first black player to join a National Football League team since 1933.

1960 – In the Black township of Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, South Africa, Afrikaner police open fire a group of unarmed Black demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180 with submachine-gun fire.

1963 – Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closed.

1980 – In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previous December, President Jimmy Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the upcoming Summer Olympics in Moscow.

1413 – England’s King Henry IV, the first monarch of the Lancastrian dynasty died, and his son, Henry V, ascended to the throne.

1828 – Playwright Henrik Ibsen (A Doll’s House, An Enemy of the People) was born in Skien, Norway.

1854 – Former members of the Whig Party met in Ripon, WI to establish the Republican Party and oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.

1865 – A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct President Abraham Lincoln was foiled when Lincoln changed plans and failed to appear at the Soldier’s Home near Washington, D.C.  Booth would later assassinate the President while Lincoln was attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre in the nation’s capital.

1891 – The first computing scale company, Dayton Scales, was incorporated in Dayton, OH.

1915 – Russia and Great Britain signed a secret agreement to divide the Ottoman Empire – now known as Turkey.

1948 – The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra was featured in the first televised symphonic concert on CBS station WCAU-TV 10.

1953 – Nikita Khrushchev began his rise to power, when the Soviet government announced he had been selected to the Secretariat of the Communist Party.

1965 – President Lyndon Johnson informed Alabama Governor George Wallace that he will use federal authority to call up the Alabama National Guard to supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

1995 – The Aum Shinrikyo cult unleashed several packages of deadly sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and injuring over 5,000.

1813 – David Livingstone, missionary and African explorer, was born in Blantyre, Scotland.

1831 – The first bank robbery in America was reported.  The City Bank of New York City lost $245,000 in the heist. 

1848 – Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois.

1916 – The first air combat missions in U.S. history with the launch of 8 planes from the First Aero Squadron in Columbus, New México.

1931 – The state of Nevada legalized gambling.

1949 – The American Museum of Atomic Energy opened in Oak Ridge, TN.

1953 – The Academy Awards celebrated their silver anniversary with its first television presentation.  NBC paid $100,000 for the rights to broadcast the event on both radio and TV.

1954 – Viewers saw the first televised prize fight shown in color as Joey Giardello knocked out Willie Troy in round seven of a scheduled 10-round bout at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1954 – The first rocket-driven sled that ran on rails was tested in Alamogordo, NM.

1985 – IBM announced that it was planning to stop making the PCjr consumer-oriented computer.  The machine had been expected to dominate the home computer market but didn’t quite live up to those expectations.  In the 16 months that the PCjr was on the market, only 240,000 units were sold.

2003 – The U.S. launches air strikes as the Iraq War begins.