| In Philadelphia, free African Americans petition Congress to abolish slavery. The petition is defeated, and South Carolinian John Rutledge, Jr., comments that the request is one result of "this new fangled French philosophy of liberty and equality." The government reinforced their pro-slavery attitude by refusing a petition submitted by free Blacks to the Philadelphia Congress. In 1800, by a vote of 85 to 1, Congress rejected the petition to gradually abolish slavery. |
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| In an effort to prove President James Madison had acted unconstitutionally in seizing part of West Florida from Spain, Pickering overlooked a rule that protected a document from being publicly shared. One of the last members of the Federalist Party, Pickering's mistake cost him reelection to the Senate in 1811. |  |
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| In 1832, the Orchard Lake Curling Club, near Detroit, became the first curling club in the United States, organized at the home of Dr. Robert Burns. The Orchard Lake group curled on Lake St. Clair. |
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| Louis Daguerre, inventor of the pre-photographic process known as Daguerreotype, produced an image of the moon on a silvered plate. Due to the long exposure time, the image was little more than a blob. The first successful photos of the moon were taken by John William Draper in New York in 1840. |  |
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| The Fairmount Park Bridge was designed by Charles Ellet, and opened across the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia in 1842. It was the first successful wire suspension bridge erected in the United States. Ellet designed the structure with the assistance of John Roebling, but the two disagreed over the type of wire cables to be used, and Ellet completed the bridge by himself. |  |
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| In 1870 John D. Rockefeller and others organized The Standard Oil Company. By 1872 Standard Oil had purchased and thus controlled nearly all the refining firms in Cleveland, plus two refineries in the New York City area. Before long the company was refining 29,000 barrels of crude oil a day and had its own cooper shop manufacturing wooden barrels. The company also had storage tanks with a capacity of several hundred thousand barrels of oil, warehouses for refined oil, and plants for the manufacture of paints and glue. Standard prospered and, in 1882, all its properties were merged in the Standard Oil Trust, which was in effect one giant company. It had an initial capital of $70 million. |
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| McIlhenny was out hunting ducks on January 2, 1890 near the mouth of Lake Cock Bayou on Vermilion Bay when he came upon a monstrous alligator. He shot the animal but it was so massive that he and his two assistants could not extract it from the marsh and had to leave it where it lay. Using the barrel of his rifle as a measuring device of known length, he proceeded to measure the animal three times, for accuracy, and determined the total length at 19 ft 2 in length - a record that will undoubtedly stand as the all-time maximum size record for the American Alligator. |
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| The 1893 Columbus set featured women in their scenes. The stamps were the 1 cent "Columbus in sight of land" and the 5 cent "Columbus bolicting aid of Isabella." The first stamp to include a portrait of a woman was the 1902 Martha Washington 8 cent stamp. |
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| Carrier graduated from Cornell University in 1901 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Following college, he went to work for the Buffalo Forge Company, a company which manufactured heaters, blowers and air exhaust systems, in their heating engineering department. At the age of 25, he devised his first important invention, a device for keeping a printing plant in Brooklyn, New York cool and the humidity low, in order to keep its paper at a constant temperature and dryness. |
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| Berkeley was very much affected by the "progressive education" movement of these years. The school district began enforcing school attendance laws, and as a result, post-elementary enrollment substantially increased. Berkeley High expanded its facilities and curriculum, and along with an Illinois district, Berkeley pioneered in the development of the junior high school. |
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| KDKA in Pittsburgh aired the regular Sunday service of the city's Calgary Episcopal Church. |
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| Until the modern era, the Falls were receding southward owing to erosion from two to ten feet per year. This process was slowed initially by diversion of increasing amounts of flow from the Niagara River into hydroelectric plants in both the United States and Canada. On January 2, 1929 Canada and the United States reached an agreement on an action plan to preserve the Falls. |  |
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| While acknowledging that in less than six years he had accomplished a remarkable transformation of the German spirit - he is "applauded wildly and ecstatically by most Germans." If they only knew ... |  |
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| The Andrews Sisters will always be associated with World War II. Some of their most memorable numbers, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree,” and “I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time,” are inseparable from wartime culture. LaVerne, Maxene and Patty Andrews recorded "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" in Los Angeles and the song was heard in the movie, "Buck Privates", starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. |
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| "The Life of Riley", starring William Bendix. The program had aired for one season in 1949 with Jackie Gleason in the starring role of Chester A. Riley. Before that it had a long run on radio where William Bendix also starred in the Riley role (before Bendix, the original Riley on the radio was played by Lionel Stander). |
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| After his discharge from the Armed Service Fisher became immensely popular singing in top nightclubs, and on his own television series, Coke Time and The Chesterfield Supper Club, with George Gobel. A handful of his hits included "Lady Of Spain", "I'm Walking Behind You," and "Oh My Pa-Pa." |  |
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| In 1959, the first lunar space shot to escape the Earth's gravitational pull, the unmanned Luna I, was launched by the Soviet Union. It passed to within 4,600 miles of the moon before moving on to a solar orbit. |  |
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| Kennedy summarized his speech with the following: “For 18 years, I have been in the service of the United States, first as a naval officer in the Pacific during World War II and for the past 14 years as a member of the Congress. In the last 20 years, I have traveled in nearly every continent and country--from Leningrad to Saigon, from Bucharest to Lima. From all of this, I have developed an image of America as fulfilling a noble and historic role as the defender of freedom in a time of maximum peril--and of the American people as confident, courageous and persevering.” |
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| Avalon signed to Chancellor Records and in 1958 his third single for them, "DeDe Dinah", reached the US Top 10. It was the first of his 25 US chart entries. Despite the fact that he had a weak voice and his musical talent was often questioned, Avalon quickly became one of the top stars in the USA and managed two chart-toppers in 1959, "Venus" and "Why", which were his only UK Top 20 entries. |  |
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| The first note was the first time feedback was used on a record. It was created when Paul McCartney pushed his bass up against an amplifier. The Beatles taped this for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that aired September 12, 1965. They had returned to America to play their famous Shea stadium concert. It was their last appearance on the show. |  |
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| "My Sweet Lord" was Harrison's first single as a solo artist. It was his biggest hit. In 1976, Bright Tunes Music sued Harrison because this sounded too much like the 1963 Chiffons hit "He's So Fine." Bright Tunes owned the copyright to "He's So Fine" and received $587,000 when a judge ruled that Harrison "subconsciously plagiarized" the song. Harrison claimed he got the idea for this from The Edwin Hawkins Singers' "Oh Happy Day," not The Chiffons' "He's So Fine." |
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| In April 1970, Congress passed a law banning the advertising of tobacco products on television and radio starting on January 2, 1971. The Virginia Slims brand was in the last commercial shown. Smokeless tobacco ads, on the other hand, remained on the air until 1986. |
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| U.S. President Richard M. Nixon signed a bill requiring states to lower the maximum speed limit to 55 MPH. The law was meant to conserve gasoline supplies during an embargo imposed by Arab oil-producing countries. The embargo was lifted on March 13, 1974, but the speed limit lid stayed on until 1987. |  |
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| Songwriters Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick came up with this. Instead of writing about the emotions of love, they decided to write this about the physical side, which many listeners found very refreshing in a pop song. This was #1 in the US for 10 weeks. The only song to that point that stayed at #1 longer was Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog." |  |
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| This was Michael's first solo album, and second single as a solo artist (after "I Want Your Sex"). He was previously a member of the Pop duo Wham!, and was trying to change his image so he would appeal to a more adult audience and be taken seriously as an artist. The album won the Grammy for Album Of The Year. |  |
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| "Annie", closed on Broadway at the Uris Theatre after 2,377 performances: the sixth longest-running show on the Great White Way. The five longest-running shows at the time were: "Fiddler on the Roof", "Life With Father", "Tobacco Road", "Hello Dolly" and "Music Man". Now you know... |  |
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| When Stardust caught up with comet Wild-2 on 2 January 2004, both the comet and spacecraft were beyond the orbit of Mars. Although they are far from the Sun, solar heating is still sufficient to cause particles to bubble off the surface of the comet's nucleus. The spacecraft flew within 240 kilometers (149 miles) of Wild-2. Because of this "low velocity" flyby, comet dust can be captured by collectors on the spacecraft, rather than blowing right through the collectors and out the back side! Cometary debris hit the dust catcher at up to six times the speed of a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle. This comet dust can then be brought back to the Earth to be analyzed. |
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| Pope Gregory XIII corrected mistakes on the Julian calendar by dropping 10 days and directing |
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