Chief Writing Wolf

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.