This Week In #History ... March 7-13th

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Ula Vovk

Mar 7
1778 Captain James Cook 1st sights Oregon coast, at Yaquina Bay
1854 Charles Miller patents 1st U.S. sewing machine to stitch buttonholes
1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents telephone
1908 Cincinnati Mayor Mark Breith stood before city council and announces that, "women are not physically fit to operate automobiles" ('scuse me?)
1911 Willis Farnsworth, Petaluma, California, patents coin-operated locker
1912 Roald Amundsen announces discovery of the South Pole
1926 1st transatlantic telephone call, London - New York
1933 Game of "Monopoly" invented
1954 Russia wins title in their 1st international ice hockey competition
1962 Launch of OSO 1, 1st astronomy satellite (solar flare data)
1981 1st homicide at Disneyland, 18 year old is stabbed to death
1996 1st surface photos of Pluto by Hubble Space Telescope
2010 Iraqi voters take part in parliamentary elections and a referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement


Mar 8
1855 1st train crosses 1st U.S. railway suspension bridge, Niagara Falls
1887 Everett Horton, Connecticut, patents fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes
1910 Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris is 1st licensed female pilot
1911 1st International Woman's Day
1927 Pan American Airlines incorporates
1941 1st baseball player drafted into WW II (Hugh Mulcahy, Phillies)
1946 1st helicopter licensed for commercial use (New York City)
1961 U.S. nuclear submarine Patrick Henry arrives at Scottish naval base of Holy Loch from South Carolina in a record underseas journey of 66 days 22 hours
1965 1st U.S. combat forces arrive in Vietnam (3,500 Marines)
1972 1st flight of the Goodyear blimp
1986 Martina Navratilova is 1st tennis player to earn $10 million
2010 35 suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia are captured by the French Navy, the European Union's most successful mission


Mar 9
1497 Nicolaus Copernicus 1st recorded astronomical observation
1562 Kissing in public banned in Naples (punishable by death)
1798 Dr. George Balfour becomes 1st naval surgeon in the U.S. navy
1858 Albert Potts of Philadelphia patents the street mailbox
1882 False teeth patented
1907 1st involuntary sterilization law enacted, Indiana
1918 Russian Bolshevik Party becomes the Communist Party
1945 Japanese proclaim "independence" of Indo-China
1953 Josef Stalin buried in Moscow
1959 Barbie, the popular girls' doll, debuted, over 800 million sold
1964 1st Ford Mustang produced
1986 Soviet probe Vega 2 flies by Halley's Comet at 8,030 km
2010 Alphalara itadori, a Japanese insect that combats invasive Japanese knotweed, is the first biocontrol agent approved by the European Union


Mar 10
1791 John Stone, Concord, Massachusetts, patents a pile driver
1862 U.S. issues 1st paper money ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 and $1000)
1876 1st telephone call made (Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Watson)
1910 China ends slavery
1925 Walter Mittelholzer is 1st to flies over Demawend mountain, Iran
1933 Nevada becomes 1st U.S. state to regulate narcotics
1945 Japan declares Vietnam Independence
1951 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declines post of baseball commissioner
1975 Dog spectacles patented in England
1987 Vatican formal opposition to test-tube fertilization and embryo transfer
2006 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enters Mars orbit


Mar 11
1302 Romeo and Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare
1669 Volcano Etna in Italy erupts killing 15,000
1702 1st English daily newspaper "Daily Courant," publishes
1850 Woman's Medical College of Penn. (1st female medical school)
1917 British troops occupy Baghdad
1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Lend-Lease Bill to lend money to Britain
1953 1st woman army doctor commissioned (FM Adams)
1960 Pioneer 5 launched into solar orbit between Earth and Venus
1974 Rhino Store gives people 5 cents to take home Danny Bonaduce's Album
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader
1997 Ashes of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry are launched into space
2006 Slobodan Milosevic found dead in cell in the Hague


Mar 12
1365 University of Vienna founded
1642 Abel Tasman is 1st European in New Zealand
1755 1st steam engine in America installed, to pump water from a mine
1849 1st gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en route to California
1868 Congress abolishes manufacturer's tax
1896 1st movie in Netherlands (Kalverstr 220)
1904 1st main line electric train in U.K. (Liverpool to Southport)
1934 Josip Broz (Tito) freed from jail
1945 New York is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
1958 British Empire Day is renamed "Commonwealth Day"
1970 U.S. lowers voting age from 21 to 18
1981 Soyuz T-4 carries 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 6 space station
1994 Church of England ordains 1st 33 women priests


Mar 13
1519 Cortez lands in Mexico
1639 Cambridge College renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
1887 Chester Greenwood of Maine patents earmuffs
1894 J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate
1921 Mongolia (formerly Outer Mongolia) declares independence from China
1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory
1943 Failed assassin attempt on Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight
1961 John F. Kennedy sets up the Alliance for Progress
1969 Apollo 9 returns to Earth
1979 European Monetary System is established, ECU created
1987 John Gotti is acquitted of racketeering
2010 Six people are killed by a remotely operated bomb while travelling in southern Afghanistan in Tirin Kot, the capital of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province