| In 1755, a steam engine was first reported used in America, at a copper mine in New Barbados Neck (now North Arlington), NJ. It was imported from England by Josiah Hornblower and put to use pumping water from the mine of Colonel John Schuyler. |
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| With the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the Mint decided to also issue larger denominations.The coin inaugurated the series of gold 20 dollars, nicknamed "double eagles," which were issued from 1850 to 1907. The term "double eagle" is derived from the fact that the $10 coin is called an "eagle." |
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| The "Great White Hurricane," as it was called, paralyzed the East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Canada from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine, through to the Maritime provinces of Eastern Canada. Telegraph infrastructure was disabled, isolating New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. for days. Two hundred ships were grounded, and at least one hundred seamen died. Fire stations were immobilized, and property loss from fire alone was estimated at $25 million. One hundred people were killed in New York City alone and it is estimated 400 people died from the storm in all. |
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| In 1889, Almon B. Strowger of Kansas City patented the first automatic telephone exchange. Tradition gives that his inspiration came because a local telephone operator was his his principal competitor's wife, and she would divert Strowger's clients to her husband. The original prototype was devised using a collar box and a number of used matches. The first Strowger telephone exchange opened on November 3, 1892 in LaPorte, Ind. This early system did not use a dial to enter the desired number. Instead, using three keys, one for each digit of a three-digit number, a subscriber pressed each key the appropriate number of times for each digit. |
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| In 1894, the first bottles of Coca-Cola were sold. Coca-Cola was invented by Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist who created the formula in a three legged brass kettle in his backyard on May 8, 1886. He mixed a combination of lime, cinnamon, coca leaves, and the seeds of a Brazilian shrub to make the famous beverage. Carbonated water was introduced later to make the beverage as now familiar. Coca-Cola was originally used as a nerve and brain tonic and a medical elixir. |
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| The first troop meeting of Girl Scouts in the United States was held in Savannah on March 12, 1912.Juliette Low's girls were able to contribute to the war effort in their community. These young women were able to actively participate as valued citizens who were concerned about their future. |  |
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| In 1923, the Phonofilm, the first motion picture with a sound-on-film track was demonstrated at a press conference. It was developed by Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio tube. Dancers and musicians were shown on the film with music, but without voice dialogue. The De Forest process read a series of light and dark areas on the film itself, using a photocell to convert to audio. |  |
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| Making good on his word in March 1930, he launched a new satyagraha against the tax on salt, highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from March 12 to April 6, 1930, marching 400 kilometres (248 miles) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make his own salt. Thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful, resulting in the imprisonment of over 60,000 people. |
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| Only eight days after his inauguration, President Roosevelt took to the air waves to let us know how the country is doing. Millions gathered around their radios to listen in. The subject was banking. The President explained to the Country in simple terms why so many banks had failed and why he had decided to close them down on March 6 (the so-called "bank holiday.") He then described the measures that Congress was taking to make sure that a banking crisis would not happen again. |
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| Artie Shaw’s 1938-39 band was a sensation, and knocked Benny Goodman off the 'King of Swing' throne for a brief time. The pieces from this era are: "Begin the Beguine," "Comes Love" (with a great vocal by Shaw's most popular female vocalist, Helen Forrest), "Deep Purple" (another vocal from Helen Forrest), "Any Old Time" (the only recording the band made with Billie Holiday during her brief tenure as their singer), "Indian Love Call," "Oh! Lady Be Good," and a live version of "St. Louis Blues." |
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| Addressing a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey and established a doctrine, that would guide U.S. diplomacy for the next forty years. President Truman declared, "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The sanction of aid to Greece and Turkey by a Republican Congress indicated the beginning of a long and enduring bipartisan cold war foreign policy. |
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| Following the success of its 1938 RCA hit "At a Perfume Counter," the Barron band became a New York ballroom mainstay and spent much of the 1940s headlining the Edison Hotel, headquarters of its coast-to-coast radio broadcasts. Soon after, Barron was drafted to serve with the U.S. Army Airborne Division during World War II, naming singer Tommy Ryan to assume bandleader duties until his return. Following Barron's return from duty, in 1949 he scored his biggest hit with the chart-topping "Cruisin' Down the River." However, the big-band era was by now drawing to a close, although he kept the orchestra afloat until 1956. |
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| Hank Ketcham created Dennis the Menace during the month Peanuts debuted, October, 1950. Remarkably, the daily panel was in print only five months later — Post-Hall Syndicate had it in a whopping sixteen newspapers starting March 12, 1951. Readership expanded rapidly, and a Sunday strip was added in 1952. Soon, it was being enjoyed by millions. The National Cartoonists' Society bestowed its prestigious Reuben Award on Ketcham in 1952, when the strip was a year old and its artist only 22. In 1978, the same group gave him the Silver T-Square, for outstanding contributions to their profession. |
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| Having made some decisions that riled several owners, he was fired after one term, receiving only nine of the twelve votes necessary to continue. When he left, his reputation for being good-humored, iron-willed, and honest remained intact. He had put the players' pension fund on a sound footing, averted threats to the reserve clause, and helped open the ML door for black players. |  |
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| Brubeck's quartet was immensely popular on college campuses in the 1950s; the album Jazz at Oberlin, recorded in concert at that college in 1953, contains some of Brubeck's (and especially Desmond's) finest improvisations. In 1954, as a sign of his growing popularity, Brubeck's picture appeared on the cover of Time. During the 1950s and 1960s, he began experimenting with time signatures unusual in jazz, such as 5/4, 9/8, and 11/4. By 1959, he recorded the first jazz instrumental piece to sell a million copies, entitled “Desmond's Take Five.” |
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| Signed to the Coral label, they had their first minor hit in 1954 with "Pine Tree, Pine Over Me," in collaboration with Johnny Desmond and Eileen Barton. During the rest of that year they had further successes with their version of the Spaniels' R&B hit "Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight", followed by "Muskrat Ramble", "Lonesome Polecat" and "Christmas Alphabet". In 1955 the sisters had their first million-seller with another cover version, "Sincerely', originally recorded by the Moonglows. The McGuires" version stayed at number 1 in the USA for 10 weeks, and accelerated their breakthrough into the big time in clubs, theatres and on television. |
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| This was part of the score for the 1959 movie "A Summer Place," which stared Troy Donahue and was set on an island in Maine. It was written by Austrian film composer Max Steiner, who also wrote the score for Casablanca. In the US, this was the top selling single of 1960. It won the 1960 Grammy for Record Of The Year. |  |
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| He was the first NHL player to score more than 50 goals in a season, surpassing Maurice Richard's hallowed mark of 50 goals during the 1965-66 NHL season. His 51st goal earned him a seven-minute standing ovation. He would go on to score 54 goals that season, the highest single season total of the Original Six era, and led the league in goal scoring seven times in all in the Sixties. |  |
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| Sadler wrote this song to idolize the troops in Vietnam when public opinion was low. He was injured by a punji stick (a type of booby trap) and while laid up in the hospital released the rights to this song so it could be heard. Sadler was a member of the Green Berets, the US Army's elite Special Forces unit. He was serving as a medic and he nearly had to have his leg amputated after he was injured. While he was recuperating, he wrote songs for other wounded soldiers. A TV news crew filmed him singing this at the hospital, and when the footage aired in the US, it became a huge hit very quickly. |
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| Howe is regarded as one of the greatest ice hockey players of all time and perhaps the greatest left winger to ever play the game. In his 23 years in the NHL and WHA, he played for the Chicago Blackhawks, Winnipeg Jets and Hartford Whalers. |  |
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| The film cost around six million dollars to produce, and was a substantial hit, ultimately grossing more than 70 million dollars worldwide. Its soundtrack album was also an international success. It featured the ballad "Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star is Born)", which became one of the biggest hits of Streisand's career, spending three weeks at number one in the United States, and peaking at number three in the United Kingdom. |
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| Witschey's involvement with the Science Museum of Virginia began many years ago, during his days as a volunteer. Back then, he got permission to build the world's largest sundial, a feat which earned him and the Museum a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. |
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| Docking with Salyut 6 delayed after the onboard Argon computer determined it would occur outside of radio range with the TsUP. In mid-May, Kovalyonok and Savinykh replaced the Soyuz-T 4 probe with a Salyut drogue. This may have been an experiment to see if a Soyuz-T docked to a space station could act as a rescue vehicle in the event that an approaching Soyuz-T equipped with a probe experienced docking difficulties and could not return to Earth. |
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| "Billie Jean" was the second of 7 US top 10 hits from the Thriller album. "The Girl Is Mine" was released before this. Quincy Jones produced this. He wanted to change the title to "Not My Lover" because he thought it would be confused with tennis star Billie Jean King. |  |
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| On March 12, 1985, Bird scored 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks to reclaim the record for highest scoring output in a game by a Celtic. This feat occurred just nine days after teammate, Kevin McHale, broke Bird's previous record by scoring 56 points against the Detroit Pistons. |  |
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| There is only one woman who enters a race called the Iditarod, that takes her 1,161 miles across the Alaskan wilderness, enduring 100 m.p.h. winds, arctic blizzards, snow blindness, wild animals, thin ice, sleep deprivation, avalanches, and whatever else nature feels like throwing at a person up in the land of the midnight sun -- and wins three times in a row. Her name? Susan Butcher. |  |
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| "Never Gonna Give You Up" was written by the British production team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. It was inspired by a woman Pete Waterman had been seeing for 3 years. Rick Astley was staying with Waterman at the time, and after a 3-hour phone call with the woman, Astley said, "You're never gonna give her up." Aitken and Waterman then changed the story a bit and made him the one who was vulnerable. |
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| Comprised of vocalists Jenny Berggren and Linn Berggren, and keyboardists Jonas "Joker" Berggren and Ulf "Buddah" Ekberg, the Swedish quartet Ace of Base became a phenomenally popular international act with their 1993 debut album, The Sign. Ace of Base's simple, melodic Euro-disco was equally popular on radio and in the clubs, earning the quartet three U.S. Top Ten singles -- "All That She Wants," "Don't Turn Around," and "The Sign," which spent six weeks at number one. |
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1755 First steam engine in America
installed, to pump water from a mine
More ...
1849 First gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en
route to California
1850 First US $20 gold piece issued
More ...
1888 The Great Blizzard of '88 struck the northeastern
US
More ...
1889 Almon B. Strowger patents an automatic telephone
system
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1894 First bottles of Coca-Cola sold
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1901 Ground is broken for Boston's first American
League ballpark (Huntington Ave Grounds)
1903 New York Highlanders (Yankees) approved as
members of American League
1912 Girl Guides (Girl Scouts) founded in Savannah,
by Juliette Gordon Low
More ...
1912 Helen Hayes Theater opens at 238 W 44th St
NYC
1923 Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated his putting
sound on motion picture film
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1930 Mohandas K. Gandhi began a 200-mile march to
protest a British tax on salt
More ...
1933 FDR conducts his first "fireside chat"
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1935 England establishes 30 MPH speed limit for
town & village roads
1939 Artie Shaw and his band recorded
"Deep Purple," in New York
More ...
1947 President Truman introduces Truman-doctrine
to fight communism
More ...
1949 "Cruising Down the River" by Blue
Barron topped the charts.
More ...
1951 "Dennis The Menace," made its
syndicated debut in 16 newspapers
More ...
1951 Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler loses
fight (9-7) to stay in office
More ...
1955 The Dave Brubeck Quartet appeared
at Carnegie Hall in New York City
More ...
1955 "Sincerely" by the McGuire Sisters
topped the charts
More ...
1956 Dow Jones closes above 500 for first time
(500.24)
1960 Theme from "A Summer Place" by
Percy Faith topped the charts
More ...
1966 Bobby Hull's 51st goal of season, sets
record
More ...
1966 "The Ballad of the Green Berets"
by SSgt Barry Sadler topped the charts
More ...
1972 NHL great Gordie Howe retires
More ...
1977 "Love Theme From A Star Is Born (Evergreen)"
by Barbra Streisand topped the charts
More ...
1981 Walter R T Witschey installs world's largest
sundial, Richmond VA
More ...
1981 Soyuz T-4 carries 2 cosmonauts to Salyut
6 space station
More ...
1983 "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson
topped the charts
More ...
1985 Larry Bird scores Boston Celtic record 60
points
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1986 Susan Butcher wins 1,158 mile Iditarod Trail
Sled Dog Race
More ...
1987 "Les Miserables" opens at Broadway/Imperial
NYC for 4000+ performances
1988 "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick
Astley topped the charts
More ...
1993 Entertainment Tonight's 3,000th show
1994 "The Sign" by Ace of Base topped
the charts
More ...