1858 – Lyman Blake of Abington, MA, patented the shoe manufacturing machine.
1885 – Louis Pasteur, famous for discovering the pasteurization process, made history by accomplishing the first effective antirabies inoculation (on a boy bitten by an infected dog).
1905 – John Walker’s fingerprints were the first to be exchanged by police officials in Europe and the U.S. Law enforcement units in London and St. Louis, MO, completed the process.
1928 – The New York Strand Theatre presented The Lights of New York, the first all talking motion picture. The film’s transitions used 24 titles to explain them. The film told a gangster tale and introduced the phrase, “Take him for a ride.”
1942 –Anne Frank, a 13-year-old Jewish girl, and her family took refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse in Nazi-occupied Holland.
1944 – In Hartford, CT, a fire broke out under the big top of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, killing 167 people and injuring 682 others. The cause of the fire remained unknown until 1950, when a man named Robert D. Segee of Circleville, OH, confessed to starting it. He was sentenced to 2 consecutive terms of 22 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Ohio at the time.
1948 – Frieda Hennock became the first woman to serve as commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, when President Harry S. Truman appointed her.
1957 – Althea Gibson became the first black tennis star to win the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis title.
1976 – In Annapolis, MD, the United States Naval Academy admitted women for the first time.
Chief Writing Wolf 