| On February 19, 1519, with a force of 600 men, and less than 20 horses, Cortez set sail for Mexico. He sailed up the coast of the Yucatán. In March 1519, Cortez landed in Mexico, and suppressed the town of Tabasco. |  |
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| Halley's Comet, named after Edmond Halley, is a comet that can be seen every 75-76 years and is the most famous of all periodic comets. Although in every century many long-period comets appear brighter and more spectacular, Halley is the only short-period comet that is visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet certain to return within a human lifetime. |
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| On February 19, 1519, with a force of 600 men, and less than 20 horses, Cortez set sail for Mexico. He sailed up the coast of the Yucatán. In March 1519, Cortez landed in Mexico, and suppressed the town of Tabasco. | |
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| Established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard, of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Upon his death in 1638, the young minister left his library and half his estate to the new College. In 1639, in recognition of John Harvard's bequest, the Great and General Court ordered "that the colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge." |
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| In 1622, England gave the land of Maine and New Hampshire to Fernando Gorges and John Mason. The land was divided between the two men in 1629, and Maine was given to Gorges. Massachusetts bought Maine in 1677, from the heirs of Gorges after his death. |
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| Halley concluded that all three comets previously documented were in fact the same object returning every 76 years (a period that has since been amended to every 7576 years). After a rough estimate of the perturbations the comet would sustain from the attraction of the planets, he predicted its return for 1757. Halley's prediction of the comet's return proved to be correct, although it was not seen until December 25,1758 by Johann Georg Palitzsch, a German farmer and amateur astronomer, and did not pass through its perihelion until March 1759. |
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| In 1781, English astronomer William Herschel detected Uranus in the night sky, but he thought it was a comet. It was the first planet to be discovered with the aid of a telescope. By 1787, he had also observed the Uranian satellites Titania and Oberon (11 Jan 1787), which were later given these names by his son, John Herschel. |  |
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| The drawing was the work of Frank Henry Bellew. Through the years, the caricature changed with Uncle Sam becoming symbolic of the U.S. being just like a favorite uncle. A prime example of this symbolism were U.S. Army posters that portrayed Uncle Sam pointing and saying, “I want you!” |  |
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| In 1877, the first U.S. patent for earmuffs was issued to teen-aged Chester Greenwood of Farmington, Maine. While trying out a new pair of ice-skates one winter, he experienced stinging ears, and solved his problem with beaver fur pads on a wire frame. By his mid-twenties, he had a factory and 11 workers producing in his hometown of Farmington producing 50,000 earmuffs yearly. |  |
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| In 1882, the zoopraxiscope, an optical apparatus invented by Eadweard J. Muybridge to exhibit photographs of moving animals, was shown at the Royal Institution in the presence of the Prince of Wales. Muybridge's great work on the subject was published in 1887-9, and his Animals in Motion in 1899. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. It functioned as essentially the firstmovie projector, with a sequence of stop-motion silhouette images hand-painted around the edge of a circular glass disk, which was loaded onto the projector's side in a vertical position. In 1893, he lectured at "Zoopraxigraphical Hall" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. |
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| When the storm first hit New York City, the temperature was mild as a light rain began to fall on March 11th, gradually increasing in ferocity. By March 12th these torrential rains changedto heavy snow and buried the unprepared city in drifts of up to thirty feet deep! The temperature plunged and winds reached over eighty miles per hour. This continued for the next 36 hours. Sources vary on the total devastation caused by this massive storm, but over 400 people lost their lives, some 200 in New York City. This snow storm became legendary, earning the nickname "The Great White Hurricane," after it paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine. Ships at sea sunk or were grounded, telegraph and telephone wires were down cutting off communication between major cities. All transportation was immobilized. An estimated $25 million was caused in property damage from fires alone. |
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| The Kansas State Board of Review was established by the Legislature in 1913, replacing the Moving Picture Censorship Committee. The board was given no financial support at that time, making the inspection of films in Kansas impossible initially. However, in 1915, the law allowing for the inspection of films was amended, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction, W.D. Ross, served as the Board's first chairman. |
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| In an infamous exhibition at Daytona Beach, Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson is set to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane flying at an altitude of 525 feet. Aviatrix Ruth Law supposedly forgets to bring a baseball aloft and instead drops a grapefruit which splatters all over Robbie. Outfielder Casey Stengel is the assumed culprit of the switch. |  |
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| The new models had a concealed speaker and eliminated the need for headphones. The Thorophone was a gooseneck loudspeaker with a voice-coil driver. |  |
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| Tennessee’s Butler Act specified: "That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." |
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| On February 18, 1930, Tombaugh was examining a pair of plates taken in mid-January when he noticed a shift of position by a faint star. He knew he had found Planet X. The observatory staff watched the star for a few weeks to confirm the movement, and on March 13, 1930, the discovery of the ninth planet was officially announced. Front page headlines around the world heralded the discovery. The name for the new planet was suggested by a young schoolgirl from England. She thought that because the planet was so far away from the sun and in its own dark world, it should be named for the Greek god of the underworld, Pluto. |
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| Between 1929 and 1931, 4,000 banks closed for good; by 1933 the number rose to more than 9,000, with $2.5 billion in lost deposits. Banks never have as much in their vaults as people have deposited, and if all depositors claim their money at once, the bank is ruined. To stop the run on banks, many states simply closed their banks the day before Roosevelt’s inauguration. Roosevelt himself declared a four-day “bank holiday” almost immediately upon taking office and made a national radio address on Sunday, March 12, 1933, to explain the banking problem. |
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| The major leagues approve an official ball, which will be made from reclaimed cork and balata in the interior, materials not needed in the war effort. Officials insist the ball will have the resiliency of the 1939 ball, but the players will express dismay that they cannot drive the new ball and point out the dearth of runs and homers in 1942 even with the old ball. |
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| "Who's On First?" is descended from turn-of-the-century burlesque sketches like "The Baker Scene" (the shop is located on Watt Street) and "Who Dyed" (the owner is named Who). By the early 1930s, a "Baseball Routine" had become a standard bit for burlesque comics across the country. After Abbott and Costello teamed up, they adopted the routine and kept adding to it until it became the team's signature skit. It is featured in their 1945 film “The Naughty Nineties.” In 1956, "Who's On First?" was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. |
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| Newly acquired Bobby Thomson of the Braves breaks his ankle sliding into 2B under Woodie Held in an exhibition game with the Yankees at Al Lang Field. The injury, a trimalleor fracture, will keep Thomson out of action until July 14th, but it will open the way for Henry Aaron to start in the left field. Ironically, Aaron will suffer a fracture in September. Starting the following day, Aaron got three hits, including a home run. |
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| In 1949 Stafford moved to Columbia and recorded the two biggest hits of her career, 1952's "You Belong to Me" and 1954's "Make Love to Me." Stafford gained her own television program during the mid-'50s, and also recorded the first LP by Jonathan and Darlene Edwards (a pseudonym), American Popular Songs. |  |
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| The 1950s were dismal for the team, with only 33 victories for the decade. Poor performances, coupled with the near-mythic status of crosstown rivals the Bears, resulted in a decline in attendance and revenue. The Bidwills engineered a deal with the NFL which sent the Cardinals to St. Louis beginning with the season, a move which doubled to block St. Louis as a market against the emerging American Football League. |
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| The Alliance for Progress initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961 aimed to establish economic cooperation between North and South America. The aid was intended to counter the perceived emerging communist threat from Cuba to U.S. interests and dominance in the region. |  |
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| The title was taken from one of Ringo's sayings. "Hard Day's Night" was another Ringo expression made into a song. The Beatles wrote this for the movie Help, which was at one point titled "Eight arms to hold you." In the first few takes of this song, the John Lennon and Paul McCartney harmonized an opening rather than having the song begin with the guitar. |  |
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| Paul McCartney said this is a tribute to women everywhere. It was inspired by a picture of an African woman suckling her kid, over the caption "Mountain Madonna." The piano arrangement was lifted from a '50s jazz classic - "Bad Penny Blues" by Humphrey Lyttleton. |  |
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| Apollo 9 was the first space test of the complete Apollo spacecraft, including the third critical piece of Apollo hardware - the lunar module. For ten days, the astronauts put all three Apollo vehicles through their paces in Earth orbit, undocking and then redocking the lunar lander with the command module, just as they would in lunar orbit. Apollo 9 gave proof that the Apollo machines were up to the task of orbital rendezvous and docking. The splashdown point was 23 deg 15 min N, 67 deg 56 min W, 180 miles (290 km) east of Bahamas and within sight of the recovery ship USS Guadalcanal. |
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| The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corp. in the 1970s and 1980s. The PDP-11 was a successor to DEC's PDP-8 computer in the PDP series of computers. It had several uniquely innovative features, and was easier to program than its predecessors. |  |
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| MGM president Mike Curb signed the Osmonds and sent them to work with Muscle Shoals studio owner and famed R&B producer Rick Hall. Hall's staff songwriter George Jackson had penned a surefire hit titled "One Bad Apple," which appeared on the group's debut album Osmonds. Released as a single at the very beginning of 1971, "One Bad Apple" shot up the charts and landed in the top spot for five weeks, finally establishing the Osmonds as recording stars after nearly a decade in the public eye. |
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| "The Merv Griffin Show""The Merv Griffin Show", starring perennial game show and late-night TV host, singer and pianist, Merv Griffin, debuted in syndication for Metromedia Television. Joining Merv were sidekick, Arthur Treacher and Mort Lindsey and his orchestra. |  |
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| The Four Seasons had a series of hits from 1962-1968. In 1975, they returned to the charts with "Who Loves You," which hit #3 in the US. This was the follow-up to that song. The lead singer on the first verse was not Frankie Valli (he comes in on the second verse): drummer Gerri Polci shared the lead in "December 1963" and provided all of the lead vocal in the group's third hit from the She Loves You LP, "Silver Star," which hit #38 in the US. |
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| The purpose of the European Monetary System (EMS), which was established in 1979, is to stabilize exchange rates between the currencies of member states in the European Union. When the EMS was established in 1979, all then member states of the EU except the UK joined the ERM. Spain joined the ERM in 1989 and Portugal in 1992; Greece is not yet a member. The UK joined in 1990 but was forced to withdraw from the ERM, along with I taly, in autumn 1992. |
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| "Centerfold" is about a guy who had a crush on a sweet, innocent girl in his homeroom in high school. Years later, he's looking through a girly magazine and sees his homeroom crush as the centerfold. |  |
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| National Football League owners met in Phoenix, AZ and tabled a proposal that would have allowed transmitters and receivers in football helmets. The idea was to allow quarterbacks to talk with players in noisy stadiums. |
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| ESA's first deep space mission, Giotto was designed to help solve the mysteries surrounding Comet Halley by passing as close as possible to the comet's nucleus, which it achieved on 13 March 1986. No-one expected the spacecraft to survive its battering from comet dust during this encounter, but although Giotto was damaged during the flyby, most of its instruments remained operational. The mission was extended to allow an unprecedented encounter with a second comet, Grigg-Skjellerup. |
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| The primary payloadof STS-29 was the third and final component of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation in geosynchronous orbit. The three on-orbit satellites were stationed over the equator at about 22,300 miles above Earth. |  |
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| Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and Alaska Governor Walter Hickel announced that Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping Company agreed to settle all federal and state civil claims resulting from the Exxon Valdez oil spill on March 24, 1989, by the payment of $900 million in damages. The settlement also has a reopener clause stating that Exxon may incur an additional $100 million for natural resource damages not currently foreseen. |
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| Canadian rapper Snow scored one of 1993's biggest hits with his single "The Informer." His patois-laced song soared up the pop and R&B charts, even though only hardcore reggae listeners could understand it without a lyric translation sheet. The album 12 Inches of Snow also did well, with the second single, "Girl I've Been Hurt," becoming a hit. |  |
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| Described as one of the largest and most intense storms in a century, the March 12-14,1993 blizzard paralyzed the eastern seaboard with record cold, snow, and wind. Southern cities not accustomed to severe winter weather like Birmingham, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee were buried by paralyzing snows and frozen by unseasonable cold. |  |
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| "Believe" was the biggest-selling single in US in 1999 and in UK in 1998. When "Believe" hit #1 in the US, it was the longest anyone had gone between #1 hits in the US. Her last chart topper was "Dark Lady," which hit #1 in 1974. At 25 years, this broke the record for biggest gap, which was previously held by The Beach Boys, who went 22 years between "Good Vibrations" and "Kokomo." It was the biggest UK hit by a solo female artist, selling 1,672,108 copies. |
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0607 12th recorded perihelion passage
of Halley's Comet
More ...
1519 Cortez lands in México
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1639 Harvard U named for clergyman John Harvard
More ...
1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
More ...
1759 27th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's
Comet
More ...
1781 The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William
Herschel
More ...
1852 The New York "Lantern" newspaper
published an Uncle Sam cartoon
More ...
1877 Chester Greenwood of Farmington, ME patented
the earmuff
More ...
1878 Oxford defeats Cambridge in their first golf
match
1882 Muybridge invents a zoopraxiscope
More ...
1888 Great Blizzard of 1888 rages
More ...
1913 Kansas legislature approves censorship of
motion pictures
More ...
1915 Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson tries to
catch a baseball dropped from an airplane
More ...
1923 New radio receivers eliminated the need
for headphones
More ...
1925 A law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting
the teaching of evolution
More ...
1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto
at Lowell Observatory
More ...
1933 Banks began to reopen after a "holiday"
declared by President Franklin Roosevelt
More ...
1942 Bing Crosby and Mary Martin record "Wait Till the Sun Shines,
Nellie" for Decca Records
1943 Baseball approves official ball (with cork
& balata)
More ...
1944 Abbott and Costello's "Who's On
First" was copyrighted
More ...
1947 "Brigadoon" opens at Ziegfeld Theater
NYC for 581 performances
1954 Braves' Bobby Thomson breaks his ankle, he
is replaced by Hank Aaron
More ...
1954 "Make Love to Me!" by Jo Stafford
topped the charts
More ...
1960 NFL's Chicago Cardinals move to St Louis
More ...
1960 White Sox unveil new road uniforms with players'
names above number
1961 JFK sets up the Alliance for Progress
More ...
1965 Beatles' "Eight Days a Week" single
goes #1 & stays #1 for 2 weeks
More ...
1968 Beatles release "Lady Madonna"
in the UK
More ...
1969 The Apollo 9 ends mission that tested
the lunar module
More ...
1970 Digital Equipment Corp introduces PDP-11
minicomputer
More ...
1971 "One Bad Apple" by the Osmonds
topped the charts
More ...
1972 "The Merv Griffin Show" debuted
in syndication
More ...
1976 "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)"
by the Four Seasons topped the charts
More ...
1979 European Monetary System is established,
ECU created
More ...
1982 "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band
topped the charts
More ...
1985 NFL owners table helmet radios
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1986 Giotto encounters Comet Halley
More ...
1989 27th shuttle, Discovery 8, launched, first
woman to do the countdown
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1991 Exxon pays $1-billion dollars in fines &
cleanup of Valdez oil spill
More ...
1992 FCC rules companies can own 30 AM & 30
FM stations (formerly 12)
1993 "Informer" by Snow topped the charts
More ...
1993 Blizzard of '93 hits north-east US
More ...
1999 "Believe" by Cher topped the charts
More ...