This Week In #History ... January 24th - 30th
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @UlaVovk
Jan 24
1639 Connecticut colony organizes under Fundamental Orders
1722 Edward Wigglesworth appointed 1st U.S. divinity professor (Harvard)
1839 Charles Darwin elected member of Royal Society
1899 Rubber heel patented by Humphrey O'Sullivan
1900 Newcastle Badminton Club, world's oldest, forms in England
1901 1st games played in baseball's American League
1908 General Baden-Powell starts Boy-Scouts
1924 Russian city of St. Petersburg renamed Leningrad
1935 1st canned beer, "Krueger Cream Ale," is sold by Kruger Brewing Co
1975 Fastest Earth-bound object, 7200 kph, in vacuum centrifuge, England
1984 Apple Computer unveils its Macintosh personal computer
1994 Dow Jones closes above 3,900 for 1st time (3,914.48)
Happy birthday to Publius A. Hadrianus, John Vanbrugh, Frederick II, Charles James Fox, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Karl von Staudt, Abraham Czn van Stolk, Charles Kendall Adams, Estelle Winwood, Henry King, Ernst Heinrich Heinkel, Eugen Roth, Oskar Morgenstern, Ann Todd, Catherine Lucille Moore, John Corner, Ernest Borgnine, Gottfried von Einem, Neil Franklin, Marvin Kaplan, William Hudson, Desmond Morris, Ib Norholm, Zeke Carey, Neil Diamond, Michael Chapman, Julie Bennett, David Gerrold, John Belushi, James Montgomery, Mary Lou Retton, Louise McPaul, Matthew Lillard, Ed Helms, Mischa Barton.
Jan 25
1799 1st U.S. patent for a seeding machine, Eliakim Spooner, Vermont
1825 1st U.S. engineering college opens, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Troy, New York
1851 Sojourner Truth addresses 1st Black Women's Rights Convention (Akron)
1905 World's largest diamond, Cullinan - 3106 carets, found in South Africa
1924 1st Winter Olympic games open in Chamonix, France
1945 Grand Rapids, Michigan becomes 1st U.S. city to fluoridate its water
1949 1st Emmy Awards: Shirley Dinsdale and Pantomime Quiz (KTLA) win
1959 1st American transcontinental com. jet flight
1964 Echo 2, U.S. communications satellite launched
1974 Christian Barnard transplants 1st human heart without removal of old
1983 Infrared telescope satellite launched into polar orbit
1989 Michael Jordan scores his 10,000th NBA point in his 5th season
1999 Earthquake kills about 1,185 in Armenia, Colombia
Happy birthday to Giovanni Morone, Lope de Vega, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, Benedict Arnold, Rufus Jones, William Somerset Maugham, Emil Ludwig, Virginia Woolf, A J Else Mauhs, Vladimir Vladimirovich Scherbachov, Dame Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Ace Goodman, Geza Frid, Lord Iliffe, Lucius E Burch, Jr., Michael Duane, Ken Mayers, Edwin Newman, Alfred Reed, Gregg Palmer, Dean Jones, Elizabeth Allen, Ronnie Brandon, Josephine M Verspaget, Malcolm Green, Richard Finch, Edmund Theodore Sylvers, Dinah Manoff, Pepper & Chip Foster, Jesse Harte, Alicia Keys.
Jan 26
1837 Michigan admitted as 26th U.S. state
1838 Tennessee becomes 1st state to prohibit alcohol
1861 Louisiana becomes 6th state to secede
1875 Electric dental drill is patented by George F Green
1911 Glenn Curtiss pilots 1st successful hydroplane, San Diego
1924 Charles Jewtraw, U.S. 500m skater, takes 1st Winter Olympics gold medal
1926 Television 1st demonstrated (J L Baird, London)
1961 1st woman "personal physician to president" - JG Travell
1971 Charles Manson convicted of murder
1978 International Ultraviolet Explorer placed in Earth orbit
1989 AT&T reports 1st loss in 103 years; $1.67 B in 1988
1998 President Clinton says "I want to say one thing to the American people I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
2010 James Cameron's film, Avatar, surpasses his 1997 film Titanic, and becomes the highest grossing film of all time
Happy birthday to Claud-Adrian Helvetius, George Sackville Germain, Charles XIV, Johan T Buys, Mary Mapes Dodge, Ludovicus H [Lode] Baekelmans, Edward Sapir, Enrique E Ecker, Bessie Coleman, Romney Brent, Maria Augusta von Trapp, Charles Lane, Hans Selye, William Prince, Akio Morita, Anne Jeffreys, Paul Newman, William Redfield, Roger Vadim, Philip Jose Farmer, Eartha Kitt, Harry "Buddy" Melges, Jr., Noel Harrison, Henry Jaglom, Scott Glenn, Jean Knight, Jarmila Kratochvilova, Lucinda Williams, Jeanette Bolden, Allison Hossack, Octomom's octuplets
Jan 27
1662 1st American lime kiln begins operation (Providence RI)
1785 1st U.S. state university chartered, Athens Georgia
1870 1st sorority (Kappa Alpha Theta) (DePauw U in Greencastle, Indiana)
1880 Thomas Edison patents electric incandescent lamp
1926 1st public demonstration of television, John L Baird, London
1948 1st tape recorder sold
1948 1st locomotive to carry 1,000,000 pounds (450,000 kg) operates
1973 William Rogers and Nguyen Duy Trinh sign U.S. - North Vietnam treaty
1985 15th Space Shuttle (51-C) Mission-Discovery 3 returns to Earth
1991 Nadine Strossen is 1st female president of the ACLU
2010 Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, unveils a new invention, a tablet PC called the iPad, at a press conference in San Francisco
Happy birthday to Jean-Francois de Troy, Samuel Foote, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Samuel Palmer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, John Collier, Ilya Ehrenburg, Hyman G Rickover, John Eccles, Howard McNear, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., Benay Venuta, Skitch Henderson, Brian Norman Roger Rix, Doretta Morrow, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Nigel Vinson, John Hopkins, Mohamed Al Fayed, Julian Ogilvie Thompson, Gillian Beer, Troy Donahue, Petr Kotik, James Cromwell, Julia Cumberlege, Kevin Coyne, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, Joe Bob Briggs, Frank Miller, Bridget Fonda, Alan Cumming, Tamlyn Tomita, Mike Patton, Patton Oswalt.
Jan 28
1613 Galileo may have unknowingly viewed undiscovered planet Neptune
1807 London's Pall Mall is 1st street lit by gaslight
1821 Bellingshausen discovers Alexander Island off Antarctica
1878 Yale Daily News published, 1st college daily newspaper
1914 1st Millrose Games (athletics) held (New York City)
1934 1st U.S. ski tow (rope) begins operation (Woodstock Vermont)
1935 Iceland becomes 1st country to legalize abortion
1956 Elvis Presley's 1st TV appearance (Dorsey Bros Stage Show)
1958 Construction began on 1st private thorium-uranium nuclear reactor
1969 Barbara Jo Rubin becomes 1st woman jockey to win in North America
1986 Space Shuttle Challenger 10 explodes 73 sec after liftoff
2003 In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush stated that Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire 'significant quantities of uranium from Africa' (a claim substantiated only by forged documents)
Happy birthday to Henry VII, Cornelis Haga, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Anna "Ivanovna", Johann Ernst Bach, Peter the Great, Henry Stanley, William Seward Burroughs, Ozaki Koyo, Lucien H d'Azambuja, Camille Melloy, Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, John Banner, Arnold Moss, Vito Scotti, Suzanne Flon, Luis de Pablo, David Lodge, Nicholas Pryor, John M Fabian, John Beck, Brian Keenan, Arnold Muhren, Glyn Ford, Debbie Steinbach, Anicee Alvina, Harley Jane Kozak, Marnie McBean, Donald Tardy, Nick Carter, Elijah Wood.
Jan 29
1848 Sicily accepts new Constitution (choose parliament/freedom of press)
1861 Kansas becomes 34th state
1886 1st successful gasoline-driven car patented, Karl Benz, Karlsruhe
1896 Emile Grubbe is 1st doctor to use radiation treatment for breast cancer
1924 Ice cream cone rolling machine patented by Carl Taylor, Cleveland
1927 4th German government of Marx forms
1953 1st movie in Cinemascope (The Robe) premieres
1964 Unmanned Apollo 1 Saturn launcher test attains Earth orbit
1969 Jimi Hendrix and Peter Townshend wage a battle of guitars
1984 Space Shuttle 41-B (STS-11) Challenger launched
2010 The Wittelsback-Graff Diamond, a 31.06-carat Fancy Deep Blue diamond, once part of the Austrian and Bavarian Crown jewels, is placed on display at the Smithsonian
Happy birthday to Emanuel Swedenborg, Daniel Bernoulli, Thomas Paine, Earnest E Kummer, Anton Chekhov, Vicente Blasco Ibanez, John David Rockefeller, Jr., W. C. Fields, Albert Conti, Allen B DuMont, Barnett Newman, Franciscus Hin, Alan Marshal, Victor Mature, John Raitt, John Forsythe, Paddy Chayevsky, Anthony George, Abdus Salam, John Junkin, Bobby Scott, Germaine Greer, Katharine Ross, Marc Singer, Oprah Winfrey, Judy Norton-Taylor, Matthew Ashford, Gregory Efthimos Louganis, Dominik Hasek, Edward Burns, Jonny Lang.
Jan 30
1781 Articles of Confederation ratified by 13th state, Maryland
1790 Lifeboat 1st tested at sea, by Mr. Greathead, the inventor
1847 Yerba Buena renamed San Francisco
1862 U.S. Navy's 1st ironclad warship, the Monitor, launched
1894 Pneumatic hammer patented by Charles King of Detroit
1917 1st jazz record recorded (Dark Town Strutters Ball)
1922 World Law Day, 1st celebrated
1928 1st radio telephone connection between Netherlands and US
1937 2nd of Stalin's purge trials; Pyatakov and 16 others sentenced to death
1946 1st issue of Franklin Roosevelt dime
1958 House of Lords passes bill allowing women in
1965 State funeral of Winston Churchill
1973 KISS plays their 1st show (Coventry Club in Queens New York)
2007 Microsoft releases Windows Vista
Happy birthday to Arnold Geulincx, [Johann] Balthasar Neumann, Georg D Ehret, John Basil Turchin, Francis H Bradley, Gelett Burgess, Rose Melville, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alfred Schlappi, G Evelyn Hutchinson, Richard Hearne, Hugh Marlowe, Alexander George Ogston, Jadwiga Wajsowna-Marcinkiewicz, Barbara Tuchman, David Wayne, David Opatoshu, Dick Martin, Lloyd Alexander, Margaret Beda Nicholson, Mitch Leigh, Gene Hackman, Richard Brautigan, Vanessa Redgrave, Dick Cheney, Michael Dorris, Charles S. Dutton, Judith Tarr, Dexter Scott King, Julie McCullough, Christian Bale, Andy Milonakis.