| King Charles II owed William Penn £16,000, money which Admiral Penn had lent him. Seeking a haven in the New World for persecuted Friends, Penn asked the King to grant him land in the territory between Lord Baltimore's province of Maryland and the Duke of York's province of New York. With the Duke's support, Penn's petition was granted. The King signed the Charter of Pennsylvania on March 4, 1681, and it was officially proclaimed on April 2. |
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| The Constitution was adopted in its original form on September 17, 1787 by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and later ratified by state-selected delegates representing the people of the several states. When delegates in nine of the then thirteen states ratified the document, it marked the creation of a union of sovereign states, and a federal government to administer that union. It took effect on March 4, 1789, replacing the weaker, non-centralized union that existed under the Articles of Confederation. |
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| The Kona orange is a Valencia introduced into Hawaii in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver. The ship's surgeon and naturalist, Archibald Menzies, raised the seedlings onboard and gave them to several Hawaiian chiefs. In Kailua-Kona, some of the original stocks still bear fruit. This sweet orange is tight-skinned, round, with a solid core. |
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| President Washington's second oath of office was taken in the Senate Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia on March 4, the date fixed by the Continental Congress for inaugurations. Before an assembly of Congressmen, Cabinet officers, judges of the federal and district courts, foreign officials, and a small gathering of Philadelphians, the President offered the shortest inaugural address ever given. |  |
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| Chief Justice John Marshall administered the first executive oath of office ever taken in Washington, DC in the new Senate Chamber of the partially built Capitol building. The outcome of the election of 1800 had been in doubt until late February because Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the two leading candidates, each had received 73 electoral votes. Consequently, the House of Representatives met in a special session to resolve the impasse, pursuant to the terms spelled out in the Constitution. After 30 hours of debate and balloting, Mr. Jefferson emerged as the President and Mr. Burr the Vice President. |
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| In 1826, the first chartered railroad in the U.S. was chartered as the Granite Railway in Quincy, MA. It was organized to transport granite blocks from quarries in the Blue Hills that were used to build the Bunker Hill monument. The Granite Railway was an inclined plane built to carry granite to Neponset wharf and thence to Charlestown via barges for construction of the Bunker Hill Monument.The Granite Railway also carried stone to Boston Harbor for shipping, as well as for the Minot’s Ledge lighthouse at the entrance to Boston Harbor. The three-mile track was powered by gravity in one direction and beast-powered in the other. |
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| Retired permanently—he thought—to his books and to his farm, Adams nevertheless responded dutifully when his neighbors elected him to the House of Representatives in 1830 and kept him there for nine consecutive terms. There, as "Old Man Eloquent," again and again speaking his conscience and calling the nation to respond to its highest impulses, he lived out his last, perhaps most remarkable career. In his relentless, eventually successful opposition to the so-called gag rules, which stifled antislavery petitions, Adams dramatized for the nation the repressive character of slavery. |
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| The settlement incorporated as a town in 1833, initially bounded by State, Madison, Kinzie and Desplaines streets. By 1837, helped by harbor improvements and the start of construction of the Illinois-Michigan Canal, Chicago’s population had reached 4000, and the community was incorporated as a city. |  |
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| William Henry Harrison, who served the shortest presidential term, gave the longest inaugural address. Harrison was inaugurated on March 4, 1841, on a cold, wet day and, refusing to wear a hat or coat, caught cold. He then attended three inaugural balls in the evening. Harrison's "Tippecanoe" ball was held at the District's Carusi's Saloon with approximately 1,000 people paying ten dollars each to attend. The president's cold lingered and then turned more serious. On April 4, 1841, he succumbed to pneumonia, becoming the first president to die in office. |
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| Until the 1930s, presidential and congressional terms began at noon on March 4. In 1849, that date fell on a Sunday, causing President Zachary Taylor to delay his inauguration until the next day. In 1849, the Senate president pro tempore immediately followed the vice president in line of presidential succession. To ensure that there was a president pro tempore in office during adjournment periods, the vice president customarily left the Senate chamber in an annual session's final days so that the Senate could elect this constitutional officer. Accordingly, the Senate duly elected Atchison on March 2, 1849. His supporters, to the present day, claim that the expiration of the outgoing president's and vice president's terms at noon on March 4 left Atchison with clear title to the job. For the rest of his life, Atchison enjoyed polishing this story, describing his "presidency" as "the honestest administration this country ever had." |
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| The original flag of the Confederate States of America, commonly known as the "STARS AND BARS," was approved by the Congress of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States, and first hoisted over the capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama, on the afternoon of the 4th day of March, 1861. The official version was to have the stars in a circle, with the number corresponding to the States actually admitted to the Confederacy. |
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| The Daily Graphic: An Illustrated Evening Newspaper was the first American newspaper with daily illustrations. It was founded by in New York in 1873 by a firm of Canadian engravers and began publication in March of that year. It continued publication until September 23, 1889. Highly illustrated, its lavish engravings included cartoons, reproductions of paintings, and illustrations of contemporary news events and notable personalities. |
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| Emile Berliner, the man behind so many inventions, came up with a thing called the microphone. Good thing, too, because the Bell System -- run by Alexander Graham Bell, of course -- was in desperate need of something to save it from financial ruin and to help the progress of the telephone. So, the Bell Labs came up with a compact way to put Mr. Berliner’s microphone on a wooden box, a crank, an earpiece, a cradle hook for the earpiece and some wires and called it the telephone. |
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| The American Automobile Association (AAA) was founded on March 4, 1902 in response to a lack of highways suitable for autos and widespread public disapproval of the automobile and its noise. In an effort led by the Chicago Motor Club and the Automobile Club of New York, AAA was formed by a group of regional auto and motor clubs, whose members were auto enthusiasts and typically wealthy. The auto clubs combined forces through AAA to promote the automobile as the future of personal transportation. |
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| In 1910 he broadcast a live performance by Enrico Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera in order to further popularize the new medium. The second company, the de Forest Radio Telephone Company, began to collapse in 1909, again because of some of his partners. In the succeeding legal confusion, de Forest was indicted in 1912 but later acquitted of federal charges of using the mails to defraud by seeking to promote a "worthless device" — the Audion tube. Newspaper stories show that in 1910 he used his radiotelephone to send the voices of opera singers to members of the press stationed at receiving sets. |
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| The Weeks-McLean Law (which became effective on March 4, 1913) was designed to stop commercial market hunting and the illegal shipment of migratory birds from one state to another. |
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| From a suggestion of Yankee business manager Arthur Irwin, the Yankees held spring training drills in Bermuda. In doing so, his club became the first major league baseball team to train outside the United States. Chance, a disciplinarian by nature, saw the trip as an opportunity to stamp his mark on the Yankees. |
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| Jeannette Rankin was the first woman member of the U.S. Congress (191719, 194143). She was a social worker and an active member of the woman suffrage movement. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1916, she introduced the first bill to give women the vote. A pacifist, she voted against declaring war on Germany (1917). After losing her bid for a U.S. Senate seat (1918), she returned to social work. In 1940 she was again elected to the House, where she became the only legislator to vote against the declaration of war on Japan. |
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| Coolidge made use of the new medium of radio and made radio history several times while President: his inauguration was the first presidential inauguration broadcast on radio; on February 12, 1924, he became the first President of the United States to deliver a political speech on radio. In August 1924, Coolidge was filmed on the White House lawn by Lee De Forest in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process, becoming the first President to appear in a sound film. He also went on the radio in an effort to find his lost cat "Tiger". |
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| In 1930, the Coolidge Dam on Gila River in Arizona was dedicated by dedicated by President Calvin Coolidge. Built 31 miles east of Globe, Ariz., on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, it irrigates 100,000 acres. Coolidge Dam was designed and constructed, and is owned and operated, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and was contructed between 1924 and 1928. The dam used 200,000 cu yd of concrete and consists of three domes, which are supported by massive buttresses on 100-foot centers. It rises 249 feet, with a crest length of 580 feet. Two uncontrolled ogee crest spillways are concrete lined and located on each abutment. |
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| Barber got his start in broadcasting in the 1920s while studying English education at the University of Florida. He filled in for an absent reporter on WRUF, the university's radio station, and read a scholarly paper on the air. After those few moments in front of a microphone, Barber decided to switch careers. The radio station hired him as a full-time employee in 1930, and during his tenure he announced Florida football games. Barber promptly dropped out of school to focus on his radio work. He held his position at WRUF for the next four years, eventually landing a job with the Reds. |
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| Roosevelt’s first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.” |  |
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| The Hindenburg, a giant in size and grandeur, first emerged from its shed in Friedrichshafen, Germany on March 4, 1936. After only a few test flights, the Hindenburg was ordered by the Nazi propaganda minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, to accompany the Graf Zeppelin over every German city with a population over 100,000 to drop Nazi campaign pamphlets and to blare patriotic music from loudspeakers. The Hindenburg's first real trip was as a symbol of the Nazi regime. |
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| In 1949 the Ames Brothers scored a hit, “Forever and Ever,” with Russ Morgan's orchestra, and in 1950 they had their first number one, a double-sider, “Rag Mop/Sentimental Me.” The brothers went on to chart several more hits during the early part of the decade and ended up with a regular spot on Arthur Godfrey's television show. They also became one of the first acts to appear on Ed Sullivan's original television program, “Toast of the Town.” |
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| After a successful launch Pioneer 4 achieved its primary objective (an Earth-Moon trajectory), returned radiation data and provided a valuable tracking exercise. The probe passed within 60,000 km of the Moon's surface at a speed of 7,230 km/hr. It carried a lunar radiation environment experiment using a Geiger-Mueller tube detector and a lunar photography experiment. The flyby was not close enough to trigger the photoelectric sensor. |
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| Checker’s first two singles, “The Class” and “Dancing Dinosaur” were minor hits. Cameo encouraged him to make his own version of “The Twist,” a song originally written and performed by Hank Ballard, which was already having modest success on the charts. But it was Checker’s version and his accompanying dance routine that gave the song new life. "Pony Time" (1961), a rewrite of Clarence "Pine Top" Smith's "Boogie Woogie", became Checker's second gold disc and second US number 1, before "Let's Twist Again" established him as a truly international star. |
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| In 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission announced that the first atomic power plant in Antarctica, the PM-3A, Naval Nuclear Power Unit, was in operation at McMurdo Sound. Between January 1 and March 1, 1962, the prefabricated plant was assembled on Observation Hill by a team of contractors and military technicians. This source of power was initially chosen when engineers realized that a fission power plant could operate for years without new fuel. |
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| Keith Richards and Brian Jones wrote most of this, but in keeping with Stones tradition, it was credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. This was supposed to be the B-side of "Let's Spend the Night Together," but many radio stations shied away from the sexual implications of that song, so they played this instead and made it a hit. |  |
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| The fifth Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, OGO-5, was launched on March 4, 1968. The satellite, primarily devoted to Earth observation, was in a highly elliptical initial orbit. The orbital inclination was 31.1 degrees. The satellite took 3796 minutes to complete one orbit. Two experiments aboard OGO-5 produced cosmic high-energy results, although their intended target was the Sun. |  |
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| The talented Jacksonville team was led by its own pair of superheroes, 7'2" center Artis Gilmore and guard Rex Morgan, who had been dubbed Batman and Robin by the press. |  |
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| "Without You" was originally recorded by Badfinger in 1970. It was on their second album, “No Dice.” Nilsson heard this in 1971 and thought it was a Beatles song. Badfinger was signed to Apple Records, The Beatles' label. This won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal in 1973. |  |
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| In 1977, the first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer, costing $19,000,000, was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, NM, and was used to help the defense industry create sophisticated weapons systems. This system had a peak performance of 133 megaflops and used the newest technology, integrated circuits and vector register technology. It was a cylindrical machine 7 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter, weighed 30 tons and required its own electrical substation to provide it with power (an electric bill around $35,000/month). The inventor, Seymour Cray’s innovations included vector register technology, cooling technologies, and magnetic amplifiers. |
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| Soon after the release of “Flowing Rivers,” in 1977 Andy embarked on his first American concert tour which was a huge success. His single: “I Just Want To Be Your Everything,” written by Barry, was one of the biggest selling records of 1977. His second international hit which he wrote with Barry became: “Love Is Thicker Than Water.” Both singles reached the number one spot in the U.S. charts and both became certified gold. |
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| First evidence of a ring around the planet Jupiter is seen in this photograph taken by Voyager 1 on March 4, 1979. The multiple exposure of the extremely thin faint ring appears as a broad light band crossing the center of the picture. The edge of the ring is 1,212,000 km from the spacecraft and 57,000 km from the visible cloud deck of Jupiter. The background stars look like broken hair pins because of spacecraft motion during the 11 minute 12 second exposure. The wavy motion of the star trails is due to the ultra-slow natural oscillation of the spacecraft (with a period of 78 seconds). |
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| The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is promulgating a rule to reduce the amount of lead in gasoline from its current limit of I.i0 grams per leaded gallon (gplg) to 0.50 gplg on July I, 1985 and to 0.10 gplg effective January I, 1986. EPA's primary objective in promulgating this rule is to minimize the adverse health and environmental effects of lead in gasoline. |
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| "Lost in Your Eyes," the first single from her second album, Electric Youth, became Gibson's biggest hit early in 1989, staying at number one for three weeks. Electric Youth, released in the spring of 1989, also hit number one, spending five weeks at the top of the charts. |  |
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| The 1994 strike set in motion a chain of events that Major League Baseball and its fans still feels to this day. One of them was the use of replacement players during Spring Training in 1995. Each Major League team was permitted to carry thirty-two replacement players on their rosters for Opening Day and twenty-five could be used in any game. |
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1681 King Charles II of England
granted a huge tract of land William Penn
More ...
1789 First Congress declares constitution in effect
(9 senators, 13 representatives)
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1792 Oranges introduced to Hawaii
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1793 President Washington's 2nd inauguration,
shortest speech (133 words)
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1801 First President inaugurated in Washington
DC (Thomas Jefferson)
More ...
1826 First US RR chartered, Granite Railway in
Quincy MA
More ...
1830 Former President John Quincy Adams returned
to Congress as a representative
More ...
1837 City of Chicago incorporates
More ...
1841 Longest inauguration speech (8,443 words),
William Henry Harrison
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1849 Senator David Atchison - our
President?
More ...
1861 Confederate States adopt "Stars &
Bars" flag
More ...
1873 New York Daily Graphic, first illustrated
daily newspaper in US, published
More ...
1877 Emile Berliner invents the
microphone
More ...
1902 American Automobile Association (AAA) founded
in Chicago
More ...
1910 DeForest conducted an experimental Radio
broadcast from New York City
More ...
1913 First US law regulating the shooting of migratory
birds passed
More ...
1913 New York Yankees are first to train outside
US (Bermuda)
More ...
1917 Jeannette Rankin (Representative-Republican-MT)
becomes first female member of Congress
More ...
1925 President Coolidge's inauguration broadcast
live on 21 radio stations
More ...
1930 Coolidge Dam in Arizona dedicated
More ...
1930 ‘The Redhead’, Red Barber, began
his radio career on WRUF
More ...
1933 FDR inaugrated - says "We have nothing to fear but
fear itself"
More ...
1936 First flight of airship Hindenburg, Germany
More ...
1950 "Rag Mop" by the Ames Brothers
topped the charts
More ...
1955 First radio facsimile transmission sent across
the continent
1959 Pioneer 4 makes first US lunar flyby
More ...
1961 "Pony Time" by Chubby Checker topped
the charts
More ...
1962 AEC announces first atomic power plant in
Antarctica in operation
More ...
1967 "Ruby Tuesday" by the Rolling Stones
topped the charts
More ...
1968 Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5 launched
More ...
1970 Jacksonville is first college basketball
team to average 100+ points per game
More ...
1972 "Without You" by Nilsson topped
the charts
More ...
1977 First CRAY 1 supercomputer shipped, to Los
Alamos Laboratories, New Mexico
More ...
1978 "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water"
by Andy Gibb topped the charts
More ...
1979 US Voyager I photo reveals Jupiter's rings
More ...
1985 Virtual ban on leaded gas ordered by EPA
More ...
1985 War veterans returned to the "Bridge
over the River Kwai"
1989 "Lost in Your Eyes" by Debbie Gibson
topped the charts
More ...
1995 Replacement New York Yankees beat New York
Mets 2-1
More ...
1997 Comet Hale-Bopp directly above the Sun (1.04
AU)
1997 Leonard Kasday received a patent in for a
way to handle telephone prize opportunities