cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 5:01:09 PM
* 1775 - John Hancock is elected president of the Second Continental Congress.
John Hancock is best known for his large signature on the Declaration of Independence, which he jested the British could read without spectacles. He was serving as president of Congress upon the declaration's adoption on July 4, 1776, and, as such, was the first member of the Congress to sign the historic document.
John Hancock graduated from Harvard University in 1754 at age 17 and, with the help of a large inherited fortune, established himself as Boston's leading merchant. The British customs raid on one of Hancock's ships, the sloop Liberty, in 1768 incited riots so severe that the British army fled the city of Boston to its barracks in Boston Harbor. Boston merchants promptly agreed to a non-importation agreement to protest the British action. Two years later, it was a scuffle between Patriot protestors and British soldiers on Hancock's wharf that set the stage for the Boston Massacre.
Hancock's involvement with Samuel Adams and his radical group, the Sons of Liberty, won the wealthy merchant the dubious distinction of being one of only two Patriots—the other being Sam Adams—that the Redcoats marching to Lexington in April 1775 to confiscate Patriot arms were ordered to arrest. When British General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to the colonists holding Boston under siege, he excluded the same two men from his offer.
While Hancock served as president of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Samuel Adams' cousin John Adams convinced Congress to place Virginian George Washington in command of the rebel army. In 1776, the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain. The next year, John Hancock returned home to Massachusetts, where he served as a major general in the militia and sat in the Massachusetts constitutional convention that adopted the world's first and most enduring constitution in 1780. Having helped to create the new state government, Hancock proceeded to serve as the state's first governor, a position he held on and off until his death in 1793.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 12:03:13 PM
Bob Dylan (1941): Musician who has been entertaining audiences for 4 decades. Dylan moved to New York at the age of 20 in hopes of meeting his idol, Woody Guthrie. After playing New York’s, Gerde’s Folk City, Dylan was signed to Columbia records. Dylan breathed new life into songs like, "Blowing in the Wind," and "Master of War," and as a result struck an emotional chord with '60s youth. Folk music began to evolve into rock and roll for Dylan as he became famous for his moving renditions of protest songs. In 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" became Dylan’s first big hit. Three of his albums topped the album charts in the 1970s: "Planet Waves," "Blood on the Tracks" and "Desire." In 1988, Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1991. Dylan's talents were recently recognized with his first Oscar, for the song "Things have Changed". In 2002, Dylan was awarded a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album for "Love and Theft."
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 11:38:32 AM
May 24, 1543: Copernicus dies.
On May 24, 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus dies in what is now Frombork, Poland. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
Prior to the publication of his major astronomical work, "Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs," in 1543, European astronomers argued that Earth lay at the center of the universe, the view also held by most ancient philosophers and biblical writers. In addition to correctly postulating the order of the known planets, including Earth, from the sun, and estimating their orbital periods relatively accurately, Copernicus argued that Earth turned daily on its axis and that gradual shifts of this axis accounted for the changing seasons.
He died the year his major work was published, saving him from the outrage of some religious leaders who later condemned his heliocentric view of the universe as heresy. By the late 18th century, the Copernican view of the solar system was almost universally accepted.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 5:55:49 AM
"What Hath God Wrought" (1844)
Samuel F.B. Morse was originally a painter, and a good one. His portraits still rank among the finest produced in the US. However, he is best remembered for having developed the telegraph and the code of dots and dashes that bears his name. In 1844, Morse demonstrated the practicability of his instrument to Congress by transmitting the famous message "What hath God wrought" over a wire from Washington, DC, to Baltimore.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 5:29:16 AM
1883 – The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 3:02:15 AM
In 1830, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ by Sarah Josepha Hale was published by the Boston printing firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon. It was inspired by an actual incident. This rhyme is also famous for being the very first recording by Thomas Edison on his newly invented phonograph in 1877.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 24, 2013 2:41:00 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 24 ...
1632 Peter Minuit reported the Zwaanendael massacre in Lewes to Holland.
1771 Future Delaware Governor Thomas Collins (1786-89) bought Belmont Hall, built in 1753, from John Moore in Smyrna.
1853 The Major Philip Reybold, a 461 ton iron-hulled steamship built by Harlan and Hollingsworth in Wilmington, made its maiden voyage on the Delaware River as a member of the Salem Line. In service 55 years, she would end her days being sold for scrap in Camden, NJ in 1908.
1917 Governor John G. Townsend, Jr. headed a ceremony in Georgetown celebrating the opening of the first 20 miles of highway from Selbyville, known as State Route 113.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 11:49:48 PM
1827 - The first nursery school in the U.S. was established in New York City.
1895 - The New York Public Library was created with an agreement that combined the city's existing Astor and Lenox libraries.
[Edited by: Joisygal at 5/23/2013 11:51:09 PM EST]
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 5:22:55 PM
* 1923 - The Crow scout Curley, the last man on the army side to see Custer and the 7th Cavalry alive, is buried at the National Cemetery of the Big Horn Battlefield in Montana.
Born around 1859 near the Little Rosebud River, Montana, from an early age Curley had participated in fights with the Crow's hated enemy, the Sioux. Like many of his people, Curley viewed the Anglo-American soldiers as allies in the Crow war with the Sioux. When he was in his late teens, he signed on as a cavalry scout to aid the army's major campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne in the summer of 1876.
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry arrived in the Powder River country of southern Montana in early June 1876. As Custer proceeded toward the Little Big Horn Valley, he found increasing signs that a large number of Indians lay ahead. On June 22, Curley and five other Crow scouts were detached from a different unit and sent to Custer to bolster his Arikara scouts.
On the morning of June 25, Curley and the other scouts warned Custer that a massive gathering of Indians lay ahead that far outnumbered his contingent of 187 men. Custer dismissed the report and made the unusual decision to attack in the middle of the day. Both the Crow and Arikara scouts believed this would be suicidal and prepared to die.
Right before the battle began, however, Custer released the Crow scouts from duty. All of the scouts, except for Curley, obeyed and rode off to relative safety. However, since the hills were now swarming with small war parties of Sioux and Cheyenne, Curley initially thought he would be safer if he remained with the soldiers. As the fighting gradually began to heat up, Curley reconsidered. He left Custer and rode to the east. Concealing himself in coulees and ravines, Curley avoided attack and made his way to a ridge about a mile and a half to the east. There he watched much of the battle through field glasses, the last man from the army side to see Custer and his men alive. When it had become clear that Custer's army was going to be wiped out, Curley abandoned his looking post and rode away to warn the approaching Generals Terry and Gibbon of the disaster.
In the weeks following the battle, Curley provided an accurate and valuable account of the final moments of Custer's 7th Cavalry. Unfortunately, some interviewers later pushed the eager-to-cooperate Curley to revise his account and others simply misrepresented his testimony to fit their own theories. Consequently, for many years Curley was dismissed as a liar. Later historians, however, have vindicated the accuracy of Curley's initial story.
Little is known about Curley's life after the Little Big Horn, but at some point he moved to the Crow Agency in Montana where he died of pneumonia on May 21, 1923. Two days later, he was buried at the National Cemetery at the Little Big Horn Battlefield.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 12:31:25 PM
May 23, 1701: Captain Kidd walks the plank.
At London's Execution Dock, British privateer William Kidd, popularly known as Captain Kidd, is hanged for piracy and murder.
Born in Strathclyde, Scotland, Kidd established himself as a sea captain before settling in New York in 1690, where he bought property and married. At various times he was commissioned by New York and other American colonies to rid the coast of enemy privateers. In 1695, while on a trip to London, the recently appointed governor of New York commissioned him to defend English ships from pirates in the Red Sea. In 1696, Kidd sailed to New York aboard the Adventure Galley, enlisted men for the mission, and set sail for the Indian Ocean. The expedition met with little success and failed to capture a major prize until February 1698, when the Quedagh Merchant, an Indian vessel allegedly sailing under a French pass, was taken. Word of Kidd's capture of the boat, which was loaded with gold, jewels, silk, sugar, and guns, aroused significant controversy in Britain, as the ship had an English captain.
Suspicions that he had turned to piracy were apparently confirmed when he sailed to St. Mary's, Madagascar, an infamous pirate haven. From there, he traveled to the West Indies on the Quedagh Merchant, where he learned of the piracy charges against him. Intending to clear his name, he sailed to New York and delivered himself to the colonial authorities, claiming that the vessels he had attacked were lawful prizes. He was arrested and taken to London.
In 1701, he was tried on five charges of piracy and one charge of murdering a crewman. The Tories used the trial as a political opportunity to embarrass his Whig sponsors, and the latter chose to give up Kidd as a scapegoat rather than back his possibly correct claims to legitimacy. Convicted on all counts, he was executed by hanging on May 23, 1701. In later years, a colorful legend grew up around the story of William Kidd, including reports of lost buried treasure that fortune seekers have pursued for centuries.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 6:22:34 AM
THIS DAY IN DELAWARE HISTORY
On This Date in Delaware, May 23 ...
1828 Congress finally appropriated $250,000 for a breakwater in Lewes, a refuge for ships in a storm.
1925 The Memorial Library opened on the campus of the University of Delaware.
1937 Facilitating access to Delaware Bay for boats docked along Lewes-Rehoboth Canal, the Roosevelt Inlet in Lewes opened to boat traffic for the first time at a cost of $230,000.
1992 Governor Michael Castle and Jane DiSabatino of Wilmington married in a private ceremony at Holy Cross Church in Dover.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 5:24:16 AM
Pro Wrestler Owen Hart Falls to His Death in the Ring (1999)
Regardless of whether one considers professional wrestling a sport or merely choreographed entertainment, one cannot deny that wrestlers often risk serious injury in the ring. High-flying stunts and feats of flamboyant showmanship are now par for the course. Tragically, the dangerous nature of wrestling was graphically illustrated in 1999, when Hart, one of professional wrestling's most respected stars, was killed during a live event.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 3:00:12 AM
In 1995, the first version of Java programming was released.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 23, 2013 1:10:21 AM
1934 – American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 11:49:40 PM
1849 - Abraham Lincoln received a patent for the floating dry dock.
1891 - The first public motion picture was given in Thomas Edison's lab.
1892 - Dr. Washington Sheffield invented the toothpaste tube.
1955 - A scheduled dance to be headlined by Fats Domino was canceled by police in Bridgeport, Connecticut because "rock and roll dances might be featured."
1955 - Jack Benny did his last live network radio broadcast after a run of 23 years. He devoted his time fully to TV.
1967 - "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" premiered on PBS.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 7:15:10 PM
May 22, 1977: Jimmy Carter reaffirms his commitment to human rights.
President Jimmy Carter, in a speech delivered at Notre Dame University, reaffirms his commitment to human rights as a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy and disparages the "inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear." Carter's speech marked a new direction for U.S. Cold War policy, one that led to both accolades and controversy.
Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, during a time when America was still reeling from the trauma of the Vietnam War and many were questioning the very basis of U.S. foreign diplomacy. Carter promised change, and during an address at Notre Dame University on May 22, 1977, he sketched out his vision for the future of American diplomacy. He began by noting the "great recent successes" in nations such as India, Greece, and Spain in bringing about democratic governments. These successes had renewed America's confidence in the strength of democracy and would now "free" the United States from the "inordinate fear of communism" that once led America to ally itself with brutal dictators who agreed to help fight the communist menace. What was needed in the "new world" that America faced was "a policy based on constant decency in its values and on optimism in our historical vision." Carter then outlined the steps he was taking to strengthen this "commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy." America's foreign policy, he concluded, should be "rooted in our moral values, which never change."
Carter's commitment to the protection and advancement of human rights as the keystone to his foreign policy brought him applause from many Americans and others around the world that believed that the United States, in battling the Soviet Union, had resorted to reprehensible actions. The Vietnam War had shattered the vision of America as a protector of the weak and defender of freedom, and Carter's accent on moral values struck a resonant chord with many disillusioned Americans. The policy also resulted in some controversy, however. When long-time dictators Anastacio Somoza of Nicaragua and the Shah of Iran fell from power in 1979, critics of Carter's human rights policy blamed the president for the demise of two governments, which had been strong allies in the war against communism. Ronald Reagan, in his successful 1980 presidential campaign against Carter, constantly reiterated his theme that his opponent's policies had severely weakened America in its struggle against the Soviet Union.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 7:05:05 PM
* 1843 - A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the "Great Emigration," the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon.
After leaving Independence, the giant wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail for some 40 miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which it followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From there, it traveled on to the Rocky Mountains, which it passed through by way of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River. The travelers then went southwest to Fort Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The Great Emigration finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey from Independence in five months.
In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and in 1845 the number of emigrants who used the Oregon Trail exceeded 3,000. Travel along the trail gradually declined with the advent of the railroads, and the route was finally abandoned in the 1870s.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 5:15:27 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 22 ...
1850 St., Philip's PE Church was consecrated in Laurel.
1865 Burton Harrison, private secretary to President Jefferson Davis, was received with other Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware.
1947 Stores in downtown Selbyville announced they would close on Wednesday afternoons for the summer to give their employees a break from the sweltering heat.
1961 With the Du Pont Company owning 1/4 of General Motors's outstanding stock, the US Supreme Court directed it to divest itself of 63 million shares of it.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 5:11:53 AM
Nuclear Submarine USS Scorpion Sinks, Cause Unknown (1968)
On May 21, 1968, the crew of the US Navy's Scorpion submarine engaged in communications with land stations. Six days later, the submarine was reported overdue. After an unsuccessful search, the Scorpion and its crew were "presumed lost." However, in October, a Navy research ship located sections of the submarine's hull in approximately 10,000 feet (3,048 m) of water about 400 miles (644 km) southwest of the Azores.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 3:00:36 AM
In 1990, Microsoft released the Windows 3.0 operating system.
In 1992, Johnny Carson at the age of 66 and after 30 years hosted The Tonight Show for the last time.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 22, 2013 2:54:08 AM
1819 – The SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, Georgia, United States, on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The ship arrived at Liverpool, England on June 20.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 21, 2013 11:51:23 PM
1819 - Bicycles were first seen in the U.S. in New York City. They were originally known as "swift walkers."
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 21, 2013 8:56:47 AM
* 1901 - Connecticut becomes the first state to pass a law regulating motor vehicles, limiting their speed to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads.
Speed limits had been set earlier in the United States for non-motorized vehicles: In 1652, the colony of New Amsterdam (now New York) issued a decree stating that "[N]o wagons, carts or sleighs shall be run, rode or driven at a gallop" at the risk of incurring a fine starting at "two pounds Flemish," or about $150 in today's currency. In 1899, the New York City cabdriver Jacob German was arrested for driving his electric taxi at 12 mph. The path to Connecticut's 1901 speed limit legislation began when Representative Robert Woodruff submitted a bill to the State General Assembly proposing a motor-vehicles speed limit of 8 mph within city limits and 12 mph outside. The law passed in May 1901 specified higher speed limits but required drivers to slow down upon approaching or passing horse-drawn vehicles, and come to a complete stop if necessary to avoid scaring the animals.
On the heels of this landmark legislation, New York City introduced the world's first comprehensive traffic code in 1903. Adoption of speed regulations and other traffic codes was a slow and uneven process across the nation, however. As late as 1930, a dozen states had no speed limit, while 28 states did not even require a driver's license to operate a motor vehicle. Rising fuel prices contributed to the lowering of speed limits in several states in the early 1970s, and in January 1974 President Richard Nixon signed a national speed limit of 55 mph into law. These measures led to a welcome reduction in the nation's traffic fatality rate, which dropped from 4.28 per million miles of travel in 1972 to 3.33 in 1974 and a low of 2.73 in 1983.
Concerns about fuel availability and cost later subsided, and in 1987 Congress allowed states to increase speed limits on rural interstates to 65 mph. The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 repealed the maximum speed limit. This returned control of setting speed limits to the states, many of which soon raised the limits to 70 mph and higher on a portion of their roads, including rural and urban interstates and limited access roads.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 21, 2013 5:14:32 AM
Rajiv Gandhi Is Assassinated (1991)
When his brother Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash in 1981, Rajiv Gandhi—then an airline pilot—was drafted into politics by his mother, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. When she was assassinated in 1984, he succeeded her as prime minister. In 1987, he sent peacekeeping forces to Sri Lanka in an unsuccessful attempt to end Tamil-Sinhalese violence. Following allegations of corruption, he resigned as prime minister in 1989. He was assassinated in 1991.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 21, 2013 3:01:27 AM
In 1881, The American Red Cross was established by Clara Barton in Washington DC.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 21, 2013 1:04:03 AM
1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 21, 2013 12:08:01 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 21 ...
1774 Methodist preacher Francis Asbury wrote: "At Newcastle on Saturday, Satan was there, diverting the people by a play.'
1918 The Delaware Aeronautical School participated in the Wilmington Red Cross parade by having one of its planes trailered in the procession.
1959 Proprietors David and Ruth Emmert of the Dinner Bell Inn in Rehoboth announced their 17 room motel costing $125,000 was nearing completion at Christian Street and Scarborough Avenue.
2003 The last segment of State Route One, Odessa to Smyrna, opened to traffic. The 51 mile highway cost almost $900 million, took 30 years to plan, and 15 years to build. The event had an enormous impact on where people lived and commuted.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 20, 2013 11:54:00 PM
1932 - Amelia Earhart took off and became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1939 - The first telecast over telephone wires was sent from Madison Square Garden to the NBC-TV studios at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The event was a bicycle race.
1939 - The first regular air-passenger service across the Atlantic Ocean began with the take-off of the "Yankee Clipper" from Port Washington, New York.
1978 - Mavis Hutchinson, at age 53, became the first woman to run across America. It took Hutchinson 69 days to run the 3,000 miles.
1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first photographs.
1993 - The final episode of "Cheers" was aired on NBC-TV.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 20, 2013 11:40:12 AM
May 20, 1873: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans.
On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans.
Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early 1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days of the Gold Rush.
In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family's firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco.
Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points--at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly--to make them stronger. As Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings"--the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them--was granted to both men on May 20, 1873.
Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for "waist overalls," as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean--known until 1890 as "XX"--was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi's denim waist overalls were the top-selling men's work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young and old, around the world.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 20, 2013 8:22:48 AM
* 1927 - At 7:52 a.m., American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris.
Lindbergh, a daring young airmail pilot, was a dark horse when he entered a competition with a $25,000 payoff to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. He ordered a small monoplane, configured it to his own design, and christened it the Spirit of St. Louis in tribute to his sponsor--the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.
On May 20, 1927, a rainy morning, he took off from Roosevelt Field, but his monoplane was so loaded down with fuel that it barely cleared the telephone wires at the end of the runway. He flew northeast up the East Coast and as night fell left Newfoundland and headed across the North Atlantic. His greatest challenge was staying awake; he had to hold his eyelids open with his fingers and hallucinated ghosts passing through the cockpit. The next afternoon, after flying 3,610 miles in 33 1/2 hours, Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget field in Paris, becoming the first pilot to accomplish the solo, nonstop transatlantic crossing. Lindbergh's achievement made him an international celebrity and won widespread public acceptance of the airplane and commercial aviation.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 20, 2013 5:18:33 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 20 ...
1756 The Delaware Colony mobilized as Britain declared war on France in what was the beginning of the French and Indian War. By the next year 4,000 militia men had been raised in the colony.
1943 Due to manpower shortages in World War II, seven women helped State Police in their clerical duties.
2007 Delaware State University awarded a record 529 degrees plus its first doctorates ever, one to Paul Gibson of Dover and the other to Ben Kamau of Middletown in math and physics.
2009 A 25 ton whale carcass washed ashore on Cape Henlopen's shores. Afloat at sea for some time, the foul smelling animal couldn't be buried fast enough.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 20, 2013 3:02:57 AM
In 1916, The Saturday Evening Post published its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting, Boy with Baby Carriage.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 20, 2013 1:16:48 AM
1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 10:23:09 PM
1911 - The first American criminal conviction that was based on fingerprint evidence occurred in New York City.
1954 - Racially segregrated public schools were declared inherently unequal by the U.S. Supreme Court. (Brown vs. the Board of Education)
1992 - In Massapequa, N.Y., Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot and seriously wounded by her husband Joey's teen-age lover, Amy Fisher.
1994 - Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in New York at age 64.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 4:45:08 PM
* 2007 - Los Angeles, California, is the first stop on a cross-country road show launched on this day in 2007 by Smart USA to promote the attractions of its "ForTwo" microcar, which it had scheduled for release in the United States in 2008.
In the early 1990s, Nicholas Hayek of Swatch, the company famous for its wide range of colorful and trendy plastic watches, went to German automaker Mercedes-Benz with his idea for an "ultra-urban" car. The result of their joint venture was the diminutive Smart (an acronym for Swatch Mercedes ART) ForTwo, which debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1997 and went on sale in nine European countries over the next year. Measuring just over eight feet from bumper to bumper, the original ForTwo was marketed as a safe, fuel-efficient car that could be maneuvered easily through narrow, crowded city streets. Despite its popularity among urban Europeans, Smart posted significant losses, and Swatch soon pulled out of the joint venture.
Undaunted, Mercedes maker DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler AG) launched the Smart ForTwo in Canada in 2004 as an initial foray into the North American market. In June 2006, DaimlerChrysler chairman Dieter Zetsche announced that the Smart would make its U.S. debut in early 2008. Between 2003 and 2006, as reported by the German newspaper Handelsblatt, DaimlerChrysler took a loss of some 3.9 billion euros (around $5.2 billion) on the Smart brand, and the company looked to the U.S. market as a way to bring the brand into profitability.
The cross-country road show that began in May 2007 allowed consumers in 50 cities nationwide to test-drive the ForTwo. On each stop on the tour, a large truck served as a mobile exhibit dedicated to the microcar, complete with interactive displays and virtual demonstrations. As Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA, put it: "The Smart ForTwo is all about urban independence and freeing people from the constraints of city driving." Under normal driving conditions, the ForTwo was designed to achieve 40 plus miles per gallon. The show was presumably a success: By September 2007, according to an article in MarketWatch, Smart USA said it had already received more than 30,000 registrations from potential buyers. The FortTwo went on sale in the United States in January 2008, at prices ranging from around $12,000 to around $21,000.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 1:18:09 PM
May 19, 1935: Lawrence of Arabia dies.
T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author, and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, Wales, in 1888. In 1896, his family moved to Oxford. Lawrence studied architecture and archaeology, for which he made a trip to Ottoman (Turkish)-controlled Syria and Palestine in 1909. In 1911, he won a fellowship to join an expedition excavating an ancient Hittite settlement on the Euphrates River. He worked there for three years and in his free time traveled and learned Arabic. In 1914, he explored the Sinai, near the frontier of Ottoman-controlled Arabia and British-controlled Egypt. The maps Lawrence and his associates made had immediate strategic value upon the outbreak of war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in October 1914.
Lawrence enlisted in the war and because of his expertise in Arab affairs was assigned to Cairo as an intelligence officer. He spent more than a year in Egypt, processing intelligence information and in 1916 accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a liaison officer.
Under Lawrence's guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. He proved a gifted military strategist and was greatly admired by the Bedouin people of Arabia. In July 1917, Arabian forces captured Aqaba near the Sinai and joined the British march on Jerusalem. Lawrence was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In November, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitering behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and sexually abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus, which fell in October 1918.
Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him.
After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries and appeared at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes. He became something of a legendary figure in his own lifetime, and in 1922 he gave up higher-paying appointments to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. He had just completed writing his monumental war memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he hoped to escape his fame and acquire material for a new book. Found out by the press, he was discharged, but in 1923 he managed to enlist as a private in the Royal Tanks Corps under another assumed name, T.E. Shaw, a reference to his friend, Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. In 1925, Lawrence rejoined the RAF and two years later legally changed his last name to Shaw.
In 1927, an abridged version of his memoir was published and generated tremendous publicity, but the press was unable to locate Lawrence (he was posted to a base in India). In 1929, he returned to England and spent the next six years writing and working as an RAF mechanic. In 1932, his English translation of Homer's Odyssey was published under the name of T.E. Shaw. The Mint, a fictionalized account of Royal Air Force recruit training, was not published until 1955 because of its explicitness.
In February 1935, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF and returned to his simple cottage at Clouds Hill, Dorset. On May 13, he was critically injured while driving his motorcycle through the Dorset countryside. He had swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles. On May 19, he died at the hospital of his former RAF camp. All of Britain mourned his passing.
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Isaihi
Champion Author
Illinois
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 7:14:13 AM
1749 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks of the Ohio River.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 6:07:20 AM
Nine-Year-Old Cynthia Ann Parker Kidnapped by Comanches (1836)
Parker was a young girl when Comanches raided Fort Parker—located in what is now Texas—and massacred its inhabitants, capturing her in the process. Raised by her captors, she was adopted into the tribe and went on to bear the last great Comanche chief, Quanah Parker. At first, Quanah led raids on frontier settlements, but after his defeat and surrender, he learned to live alongside his white neighbors and eventually became the richest Native American in the US.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 5:37:35 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 19 ...
1707 Old Presbyterian Church opened for services in New Castle.
1870 To promote drinking fountains in the city, the Wilmington Fountain Society was organized.
1944 Sgt. Gerald Francis Farren of Wilmington, waistgunner on board a B-17 bomber was killed over Germany the day after he wrote a letter to his parents telling about his last flight.
1973 Radio Station WAFL began broadcasting in Milford.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 19, 2013 3:01:16 AM
In 1962, a birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy took place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight was Marilyn Monroe singing her famous “Happy Birthday” to him.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 4:54:52 PM
* 1917 - Some six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the U.S Congress passes the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, giving the U.S. president the power to draft soldiers.
When he went before Congress on April 2, 1917, to deliver his war message, President Woodrow Wilson had pledged all of his nation's considerable material resources to help the Allies—France, Britain, Russia and Italy—defeat the Central Powers. What the Allies desperately needed, however, were fresh troops to relieve their exhausted men on the battlefields of the Western Front, and these the U.S. was not immediately able to provide. Despite Wilson's effort to improve military preparedness over the course of 1916, at the time of Congress's war declaration the U.S. had only a small army of volunteers—some 100,000 men—that was in no way trained or equipped for the kind of fighting that was going on in Europe.
To remedy this situation, Wilson pushed the government to adopt military conscription, which he argued was the most democratic form of enlistment. To that end, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which Wilson signed into law on May 18, 1917. The act required all men in the U.S. between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Within a few months, some 10 million men across the country had registered in response to the military draft.
The first troops of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under commander in chief General John J. Pershing, began arriving on the European continent in June 1917. The majority of the new conscripts still needed to be mobilized, transported and trained however, and the AEF did not begin to play a substantial role in the fighting in France until nearly a year later, during the late spring and summer of 1918. By that time, Russia had withdrawn from the conflict due to internal revolution, and the Germans had launched an aggressive new offensive on the Western Front. In the interim, the U.S. gave its allies much-needed help in the form of economic assistance: extending vast amounts of credit to Britain, France and Italy; raising income taxes to generate more revenue for the war effort; and selling so-called liberty bonds to its citizens to finance purchases of products and raw materials by Allied governments in the United States.
By the end of World War I in November 1918, some 24 million men had registered under the Selective Service Act. Of the almost 4.8 million Americans who eventually served in the war, some 2.8 million had been drafted.
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rjojo40
Champion Author
Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 2:32:50 PM
May 18, 2012: Facebook raises $16 billion in largest tech IPO in U.S. history.
On this day in history, Facebook, the world's largest social network, holds its initial public offering (IPO) and raises $16 billion. It was the largest technology IPO in American history to that date, and the third-largest IPO ever in the United States, after those of Visa and General Motors. At the time it went public, Facebook was valued at $104 billion and had some 900 million registered users worldwide.
Facebook was founded as TheFacebook in February 2004 by Harvard University sophomore Mark Zuckerberg and fellow classmates Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz. The site originally was only for students at Harvard; however, it soon opened up to other universities. In June 2004, Zuckerberg moved Facebook to Palo Alto, California, and by the end of the year several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs had invested in the business and it had almost a million registered users. In 2005, Facebook (as it officially became known that year when "the" was dropped from its name) spread to American high schools and foreign schools, and the following year, anyone who was at least 13 years old was allowed to sign up. (Facebook always has been free to join; at the time of its IPO, the bulk of the company's revenues came from advertising.)
As the site's user base grew rapidly and its functionality expanded (the "news feed" was added in 2006 and the "like" feature in 2009), Facebook helped change how people communicate and share information. During the 2008 U.S. presidential race, Barack Obama used Facebook to build a following, especially among young voters, a constituency that helped him win the White House. Additionally, during the political uprisings in the Middle East that began in late 2010 and came to be called the Arab Spring, activists used Facebook (and other social media tools, notably Twitter) to share photos and videos of atrocities their governments were committing against citizens, and also to organize protest events. (As of late June 2012, more than 80 percent of Facebook's monthly active users were outside of America and Canada.)
In 2010, "The Social Network," a feature film about the founding of Facebook, made its debut. The movie, which earned eight Academy Award nominations, chronicled the 2004 lawsuit filed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, Harvard students at the same time as Zuckerberg, who claimed he stole the original idea for Facebook from them. Facebook countersued, and in 2008, the Winklevosses and Narendra agreed to a $65 million settlement from the company.
Facebook made the Dobbs Ferry, New York, native Zuckerberg, the son of a dentist, a billionaire. At the time of the company's much-anticipated IPO on May 18, 2012, Zuckerberg was worth some $19 billion. However, despite all the fanfare surrounding Facebook's IPO, its shares closed the first day of trading at $38.23, only slightly above the $38 IPO price, which many investors considered a disappointing performance.
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crgator
Champion Author
Florida
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 10:12:06 AM
May 18, 1980:
Mount St. Helens erupts
Mount St. Helens in Washington erupts, causing a massive avalanche and killing 57 people on this day in 1980. Ash from the volcanic eruption fell as far away as Minnesota.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 6:10:41 AM
The Bath School Bombing (1927)
Over the course of several months leading up to May 18, 1927, disgruntled school board member Andrew Kehoe hid hundreds of pounds of explosives inside the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan. That day, after destroying his farm—which was slated for foreclosure—he detonated the explosives inside the school and set off a bomb in his vehicle. The massacre is considered the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in US history.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 5:22:37 AM
1910 – The Earth passes through the tail of Comet Halley.
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lvskyguy
Champion Author
Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 3:29:11 AM
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward who later became the United Secretary of State.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 12:04:02 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 18 ...
1778 Capt. Allen McLane and his Kent Co. troops set fire to British defenses in Philadelphia and prevented the Marquis de la Fayette from being ambushed at Barren Hill.
1903 Six women dressed in black and known as the Little Sisters of the Poor arrived in Delaware from France and established a settlement in Wilmington. Their Catholic mission was to love the elderly poor and shelter them like family.
1967 Fenwick Island was hit by twisters and high winds resulting in the destruction of seven homes in the Cape Windsor Trailer Park.
2003 Legislation recently passed by the General Assembly allowed liquor stores in the state to open for Sunday sales for the first time.
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Joisygal
Champion Author
New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 11:44:25 PM
1792 - The New York Stock Exchange was founded at 70 Wall Street by 24 brokers.
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cgstach
Champion Author
Chicago
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 5:30:31 PM
* 1769 - George Washington launches a legislative salvo at Great Britain's fiscal and judicial attempts to maintain its control over the American colonies. With his sights set on protesting the British policy of "taxation without representation," Washington brought a package of non-importation resolutions before the Virginia House of Burgesses.
The resolutions, drafted by George Mason largely in response to England's passage of the Townshend Acts of 1767, decried Parliament's plan to send colonial political protestors to England for trial. Though Virginia's royal governor promptly fired back by disbanding the House of Burgesses, the dissenting legislators were undeterred. During a makeshift meeting held at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia's delegates gave their support to the non-importation resolutions. Maryland and South Carolina soon followed suit with the passing of their own non-importation measures.
The non-importation resolutions lacked any means of enforcement, and Chesapeake tobacco merchants of Scottish ancestry tended to be loyal to their firms in Glasgow. However, tobacco planters supported the measure, and the mere existence of non-importation agreements proved that the southern colonies were willing to defend Massachusetts, the true target of Britain's crackdown, where violent protests against the Townshend Acts had led to a military occupation of Boston, beginning on October 2, 1768.
When Britain's House of Lords learned that the Sons of Liberty, a revolutionary group in Boston, had assembled an extra-legal Massachusetts convention of towns as the British fleet approached in 1768, they demanded the right to try such men in England. This step failed to frighten New Englanders into silence, but succeeded in rallying Southerners to their cause. By impugning colonial courts and curtailing colonial rights, this British action backfired: it created an American identity where before there had been none.
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rjojo40
Champion Author
Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 1:05:30 PM
May 17, 1973: Televised Watergate hearings begin.
In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, begins televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor.
On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into and illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. One of the suspects, James W. McCord Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon's reelection committee. Two other men with White House ties were later implicated in the break-in: E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a former White House aide, and G. Gordon Liddy, finance counsel for the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Journalists and the Select Committee discovered a higher-echelon conspiracy surrounding the incident, and a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude erupted.
In May 1973, the special Senate committee began televised proceedings on the Watergate affair. During the Senate hearings, former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, and that President Nixon had been aware of the cover-up. Meanwhile, Watergate prosecutor Cox and his staff began to uncover widespread evidence of political espionage by the Nixon reelection committee, illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens by the administration, and contributions to the Republican Party in return for political favors.
In July, the existence of what were to be called the Watergate tapes--official recordings of White House conversations between Nixon and his staff--was revealed during the Senate hearings. Cox subpoenaed these tapes, and after three months of delay President Nixon agreed to send summaries of the recordings. Cox rejected the summaries, and Nixon fired him. His successor as special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, leveled indictments against several high-ranking administration officials, including Mitchell and Dean, who were duly convicted.
Public confidence in the president rapidly waned, and by the end of July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee had adopted three articles of impeachment against President Nixon: obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and hindrance of the impeachment process. On July 30, under coercion from the Supreme Court, Nixon finally released the Watergate tapes. On August 5, transcripts of the recordings were released, including a segment in which the president was heard instructing Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation. Four days later, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign. On September 8, his successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned him from any criminal charges.
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