This Week In #History ... January 17th - 23rd
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @UlaVovk
Jan 17
1861 Flush toilet patented by Mr. Thomas Crapper (Honest!)
1871 1st cable car patented, by Andrew S Hallidie (begins service in 1873)
1912 Robert Scott expedition arrives at South Pole, 1 month after Amundsen
1923 Origin of Brown lunation numbers
1928 1st fully automatic photographic film developing machine patented
1929 Popeye makes 1st appearance, in comic strip "Thimble Theater"
1955 Submarine Nautilus begins 1st nuclear-powered test voyage
1961 Eisenhower allegedly orders assassination of Congo's Lumumba
1972 Section of Memphis' Highway 51 South renamed Elvis Presley Blvd
1989 Murden and Metz are 1st women to reach South Pole overland (on skis)
1991 Operation Desert Storm begins - U.S. led allies vs Iraq
2009 Israel declares a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza War, effective January 18, as Hamas declares a ceasefire of its own
Happy birthday to Frederick III, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Benjamin Franklin, Stanislaw II August Poniatowski, James Hall, Ellen Wood, Anne Bronte, Catherine Booth, Antanas Baranauskas, Eugene Augustin Lauste, Konstantin S Stanislavski, Lucien Herr, Oscar Apfel, Noah Beery, Glenn Luther Martin, Walter Eucken, Robert M. Hutchins, Nevil Shute Al Capone, Olga Maria Nicolis di Robilant, Patsy Ruth Miller, Grant Withers, Nora Kaye, Betty White, Rock Hudson, Jacques "Jake the Snake" Plante, James Earl Jones, Toini Gustafson, H Kipchoge "Kip" Keino, Chris Montez, Jim Carrey, Michelle Obama, Naveen Andrews, Kid Rock, Zooey Deschanel.
Jan 18
1644 1st UFO sighting in America, by perplexed pilgrims in Boston
1733 1st polar bear exhibited in America (Boston)
1788 English settlers arrive in Australia's Botany Bay to setup penal colony
1896 1st demonstration of an X-ray machine in U.S. (New York City)
1911 1st shipboard landing of a plane (Tanforan Park to USS Pennsylvania)
1919 WW I Peace Congress opens in Versailles, France
1923 1st radio telegraph message from Netherlands to Dutch East Indies
1948 1st courses begin at University of Ibadan, Nigeria
1951 1st use of lie detector in Netherlands
1973 John Cleese's final episode on "Monty Python's Flying Circus," on BBC
1986 24th Space Shuttle (61-C) Mission-Columbia 7-returns to Earth
1993 Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday observed in all 50 states for 1st time
2010 China begins text message surveillance, blocking customers from the country's two largest operators for lewd messages
Happy birthday to Francois Michel le Tellier, Baron de Montesquieu, Peter Roget, Anna Paulowna Romanova, Joseph Farwell Glidden, Henry Austin Dobson, Seth Low, Thomas A. Watson, Daniel Nathan Hale Williams, Hans Goldschmidt, A. A. Milne, Sylvia Pankhurst, Cary Grant, Arno Schmidt, Ton Brandsteder, Bruce Woodcock, Constance Moore, Ray Dolby, John Boorman, John Hughes, Mable Fergerson, Larry Smith, Alison Arngrim, Devon Odessa, Samantha Mumba.
Jan 19
1861 Georgia becomes 5th state to secede
1903 1st regular transatlantic radio broadcast between U.S. and England
1915 Neon Tube sign patented by George Claude
1937 Millionaire Howard Hughes sets transcontinental air record (7h28m25s)
1955 "Scrabble" debuts on board game market
1961 1st episode for "Dick Van Dyke Show" is filmed
1966 Indira Gandhi elected India's 3rd prime minister
1971 Beatles' "Helter Skelter" is played at Charles Manson trial
1977 World's largest crowd-12.7 million-for Indian religious festival
1992 IBM announces a nearly $5B loss for 1992
2010 United States Navy troops land near the Haitian presidential palace, bringing food, water, and equipment to aid victims of the earthquake
Happy birthday to Mohammed, James Watt, Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom, Robert Edward Lee, William Williams Keen, Paul Cezanne, Johannes C. Kapteyn, Alice Eastwood, Werner Sombart, Harry Davenport, Albert Louis Wolff, James Winston Watts, Oveta Culp Hobby, Anne Schumacher Hummert, Lillian Harvey, Alvy West, Anthony Dexter, Ken Hughes, Jean Stapleton, Nina [Mary] Bawden, Ulu Grosbard, Richard Lester, Thom Mayne, Shelly Fabares, Shelley Fabares, Julian Barnes, Dolly Rebecca Parton, Katey Sagal, Anthony Edwards, Drea De Matteo, Natalie Harvey, Jodie Sweetin.
Jan 20
1778 1st American military court martial trial begins, Cambridge, Mass.
1809 1st U.S. geology book published by William Maclure
1892 1st basketball game played (Mass.)
1929 1st feature talking motion picture taken outdoors, "In Old Arizona"
1939 Hitler proclaims to German parliament to exterminate all European Jews
1953 1st live coast-to-coast inauguration address (Eisenhower)
1953 1st U.S. telecast transmitted to Canada-from Buffalo, NY
1955 1st atomic sub, USS Nautilus, launched at Groton Conn
1977 George Bush, ends term as 11th director of CIA
1986 1st federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
1997 Comet Hale-Bopp crosses Mars' orbit
2009 Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States
Happy birthday to Carlos III, Richard H Lee, Eugene Sue, Nathaniel Parker Willis, David Wilmot, W R Pettiford, Friedrich A H von Waldeck, Richard Le Gallienne, Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Charles A. Ellwood, Finlay Currie, Abraham P Merritt, Roscoe Ates, George Burns, Elmer R Diktonius, Leon Ames, Renato Caccioppoli, Paula Wessely, Wensley Pithey, Richard John Copeland Atkinson, DeForest Kelley, Ray Anthony, Ernesto Cardenal, Michael Higgins, Martin Landau, Ron Townson, Jorge Peixinho, Carol Heiss Jenkins, David Lynch, Ronald Townson, Malcolm McLaren, George Grantham, John Phillips Naber, Lorenzo Lamas.
Jan 21
1789 1st American novel, WH Brown's "Power of Sympathy," is published
1827 Freedom Journal, 1st Black paper, begins publishing
1846 1st edition of Charles Dickens' "Daily News"
1922 1st slalom ski race run, Murren, Switzerland
1941 1st commercial extraction of magnesium from seawater, Freeport, TX
1942 Bronx magistrate rules all pinball machines illegal
1954 1st gas turbine automobile exhibited (New York City)
1976 Supersonic Concorde, 1st commercial flights, by Britain and France
1988 U.S. accept immigration of 30,000 U.S. - Vietnamese children
Happy birthday to Charles V, John I Pontanus, Arnold A. Buyskes, Tsjalling Hiddes Halbertsma, Horace Wells, Oscar II Frederik, James Marcus, John Lindworsky, Roger Nash Baldwin, Wolfgang Kohler, Pitirim A. Sorokin, J Carrol Naish, Richard P Blackmur, Christian Dior, Lord Cayzer, Konrad Bloch, Alan Hewitt, Paul Scofield, Steve Reeves, Boris Shakhlin, Richie Havens, Mac Davis, Neely Bruce, Billy Ocean, Paul Allen, Jeff Koons, Geena Davis, Gabrielle Carteris, Emma Bunton.
Jan 22
1814 1st Knights Templar grand encampment in U.S. held, New York City
1850 Alta California becomes a daily paper, 1st such in Cali.
1859 Brahms' 1st piano concerto (in D minor) premieres, Hanover
1901 After 63 years England stops sale of Queen Victoria postage stamps series and begins King Edward VII series
1932 British Anglicans and Old-Catholic church merge
1939 Uranium atom 1st split, Columbia University
1941 1st mass killing of Jews in Romania
1946 U.S. president sets up CIA, Central Intelligence Agency
1947 1st commercial TV station west of Mississippi opens, Hollywood CA
1964 World's largest cheese (15,723 kg) manufactured, Wisconsin
1970 1st commercial Boeing 747 flight, New York to London in 6 hours
1983 2nd flight readiness firing of Challenger's main engines; 22 seconds
2010 Thousands of Venezuelan protesters demonstrate for and against President Hugo Chavez' policies surrounding energy shortages and currency revaluation
Happy birthday to Ivan III, Francis Bacon, Richard Blackmore, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Giuseppe Luigi Tibaldi, George Gordon Byron, Paul Vidal de la Blanche, Beatrice Webb, D. W. Griffith, Constance Collier, Ernest Holmes, Matt McHugh, Alexander Abramsky, Robert Ervin Howard, Marie Dressler, George Breakston, Andre Hodeir, Diana Douglas, J. J. Johnson, Rauno Makinen, Galina Zybina, Piper Laurie, John Hurt, Michael Cristofer, Linda Blair, Steven Adler, Olivia d'Abo, Manabu Nakanishi, Balthazar Getty.
Jan 23
1492 "Pentateuch" (Jewish holy book) 1st printed
1579 Union of Utrecht signed, forming protestant Dutch Republic
1789 Georgetown, 1st U.S. Catholic college, founded
1909 1st radio rescue at sea
1930 George Washington Birthplace National Monument, Virginia established
1933 20th amendment changes date of presidential inaugurations to 1/20
1941 Ground breaking for NACA (now NASA) Lewis Research Center
1950 3rd edition of Joseph Kane's Famous 1st Facts published
1970 U.S. launches 2nd generation weather satellite, ITOS 1
1983 Russian radioactive satellite falls into Indian Ocean
1987 Japan 1st exceeds military spending cap of 1% of GNP ($23 billion)
2010 Six Venezuelan cable television channels are taken off the air by the Venezuelan government after refusing to transmit government messages
Happy birthday to John Barclay, Joseph Hewes, John Hancock, Edouard Manet, Andrija Mohorovicic, Benjamin Delmonte, Herbert David Croly, Oton Zupancic, Antonio Gramsci, Sergei Eisenstein, David Newell, Bob Steele, Django Reinhardt, Herma Bauma, Gertrude Belle Elion, Bob Paisley, Horace Ashenfelter, Jeanne Moreau, Arlene Golonka, William E "Bill" Gibb, Gil Gerard, Thomas R. Carper, Anita Pointer, Richard Dean Anderson, Margaret Johnson Bailes, Lamont Robin Zander, Caroline Louise Marguerite Grimaldi, Gail O'Grady, Naim Suleymanoglu, Lisa Snowdon, Tiffani Thiessen, Theresa Kulikowski.
