| Barnum's circus was the first show at the original Madison Square Garden at Madison Avenue and 26th Street. It merged with James Bailey's circus in 1881 and in 1919 the big show became Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. |  |
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| The 1818 Service Pension Law made sure that all persons who had served in the War for Independence and were in need for assistance would receive a pension for life. Before 1818 only disabled veterans were given such pensions. |
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| In 1834, the first U.S. railroad tunnel was completed between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Driven through slate, the Staple Bend Tunnel was 901 feet long, 25 feet wide and 21 feet high and lined throughout with masonry 18 inches thick. It was for the Allegheny Portage Railroad, the first railroad to go west of the Alleghany Mountains. |
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| American Express was founded in 1850 by Henry Wells, William Fargo, and John Butterfield as an express business, finding its niche by taking advantage of the rapid westward of American Express was helped by high costs, slow service (in some areas and lack of any services at all in many others) that characterized the U.S. Postal Service at the time. The company grew from a US-only freight and parcel delivery company into the premier global banking, finance, insurance, travel, credit card and business services company that it is today. |
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| Barnum's circus was the first show at the original Madison Square Garden at Madison Avenue and 26th Street. It merged with James Bailey's circus in 1881 and in 1919 the big show became Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. | |
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| As the United States approached a new century, the potential of state naval militias as a reserve force was being realized. The states of Massachusetts and New York had gained permission to drill aboard active ships of the fleet. Their work so impressed the Secretary of the Navy, that in August 1894, Congress authorized the loan of old naval vessels to state naval militias for training purposes. |
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| The first submarine telephone cable was laid by HMTS Monarch between England and France enabling telephone conversations to be made between London and Paris. |
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| It all started on March 18, 1892, at a dinner of the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Association. Lord Kilcoursie, a player on the Ottawa Rebels hockey club from Government House, delivered the a message on behalf of Lord Stanley, the Earl of Preston and Governor General of Canada who felt that there should be a challenge cup awarded to the champion hockey tem of Canada. The Stanley Cup was originally known as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup. Shortly thereafter, Lord Stanley purchased a silver cup measuring 7 1˛2 inches high by 11 1˛2 inches across for the sum of 10 guineas (approximately $50); appointed two Ottawa gentlemen, Sheriff John Sweetland and Philip D. Ross, as trustees of that cup. |
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| William Henry Pickering discovered Saturn's ninth moon Phoebe in 1899 from plates taken in 1898. He also led solar eclipse expeditions and studied craters on the Moon, and hypothesized that changes in the appearance of the crater Eratosthenes were due to "lunar insects." Pickering constructed and established several observatories or astronomical observation stations, including Percival Lowell's Flagstaff Observatory. |
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| Enrico Caruso was one of the most famous tenors in the history of opera. Caruso was also the most popular singer in any genre in the first twenty years of the twentieth century and one of the pioneers of recorded music. His 1902 recording of Vesti la giubba from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci was the world's first gramophone record to sell a million copies. |  |
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| In only his second season as general manager, Giulio Gatti-Gasazza offered the company premiere of the one-act opera, “The Pipe of Desire,” by Boston composer Frederick Shepherd Converse and librettist George Edward Barton. It was the first opera ever given in English at the Met and the first by an American composer. |  |
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| An American artist by the name of Rose Cecil O'Neill originally designed what would later become the "Kewpie" doll. Unnamed at first, depictions of O'Neill's creation were first seen in the Ladies' Home Journal in the years from 1905 and 1909. In 1909, the impish-looking doll finally got named "Kewpie." It got its name from the mythical matchmaker named Cupid. In 1910, drawings of the Kewpie doll appeared in the Women's Home Companion. Finally, in 1913, Rose Cecil O'Neill brought her designed dolls to life. The original Kewpie dolls were made from china or bisque materials. |
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| Having re-conceptualized the idea of shaving, Schick had a problem. Electric motors in the 1920s had not yet been miniaturized to the point where they could fit in a hand-held device. Schick's first design had the motor (about the size of a grapefruit) in one case. It then connected to the shaving head with a flexible drive shaft. But there really was no other way to do it given the motors available at the time. However, motors were shrinking and all Schick had to do was wait. In 1931 he released his first handheld electric shaver, complete with a small internal motor. |
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| Two black players, Jackie Robinson and Nate Moreland, request a tryout with the Chicago White Sox during spring training at Pasadena. Manager Jimmie Dykes allows them to work out but dismisses the two without an offer. |
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| On March 18, 1944 a small riot broke out in a Chicago department store, as thousands of customers fought over a shipment of 1,500 alarm clocks offered for sale. Clocks had not been available in stores since 1942. |
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| Richard became the NHL's first 50-goal shooter in 1944-45. This feat was accomplished in 50 games, a performance that wouldn't be equaled until Mike Bossy did it in 1980-81. |  |
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| A child prodigy, Brewer first appeared on radio at the age of two and sang on the Major Bowes' Amateur Hour between 1938 and 1943. She was a veteran radio and club performer by the time she joined London Records in 1949. The attractive and strong-voiced teenager topped the US chart in 1950 with her debut hit "Music! Music! Music!", on which she was backed by the Dixieland All Stars. |  |
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| Plastic lenses were first invented in 1952 by the English physician Harold Ridley. The plastic lens may completely restore vision, or the patient's vision may require fine-tuning with additional eyeglasses or contact lenses. |
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| The Boston Braves become the Milwaukee Braves, the first franchise shift in baseball since 1903 when Baltimore moved to New York. The Braves have been in Boston for 77 years. Milwaukee assumes Pittsburgh's place in the Western Division for scheduling purposes and night games. The Milwaukee Brewers (minor league team) move to Toledo. |
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| In 1948, Howard Hughes gained control of RKO, a struggling major Hollywood studio. A steady stream of lawsuits from RKO's minority shareholders, charging him with financial misconduct and corporate mismanagement became an increasing nuisance, especially as Hughes looked to focus on his aircraft-manufacturing and TWA holdings during the Korean War years. Anxious to be rid of the distraction, Hughes offered to buy out all other stockholders. By the end of 1954, at a cost of nearly $24 million, he had gained near total control of RKO, becoming the closest thing to a sole owner of a studio that Hollywood had seen in more than three decades. Six months later, Hughes sold the studio to General Tire and Rubber Company for $25 million. |
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| From 19421956 Kelly performed with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, where he was a major attraction, though he took the 1956 season off to perform as the mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. In a move to change their image (‘Dem bums’), the Dodgers announced that clown Emmett Kelly will not perform in 1958 now that the’re in Los Angeles. |  |
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| The 1958-59 season saw Sharman regain the free-throw shooting title with a career-best .932 mark. He led the Celtics in scoring for a fourth straight year, at 20.4 ppg, and was selected to the All-NBA First Team. The Celtics became champions again in 1959, beginning a record string of eight consecutive titles. Sharman averaged 20.1 points in the postseason, hitting 57-of-59 free-throw attempts. |  |
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| Statehood bills were introduced again in 1947 and in 1950. It was only in 1959, during the first session of the 86th Congress that Hawaii statehood was finally acted upon with dramatic swiftness. After some debate, the Senate bill passed on March 11 by a vote of 76 to 15. The House bill reached the floor on the same day and the House substituted the Senate version for it and passed it on March 12 by a vote of 323 to 89. On March 18, 1959 the Hawaii Statehood Bill was signed by President Eisenhower. |
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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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| The Pillsbury Doughboy was created by an ad agency called Leo Burnett. Pacific Data Images, a pioneer in the world of computer graphics for film and video, created the animated version of the figure for the commercials. The name of the artist who actually first drew Poppin' Fresh (the Pillsbury Doughboy) was Martin Nodell. Nodell was working for the ad agency at the time, and he is the one who actually conceived of Poppin' Fresh and drew him. Mart Nodell is well known in the comic book world as the creator of the original Green Lantern. The original voice of the Doughboy was performed by the actor Paul Frees (the voice of Rocky and Bullwinkle's Boris Badenov). In October of 1965, Pillsbury debuted the loveable 14-ounce, 8 3/4-inch character in a Crescent Roll commercial. |
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| In 1965, Voskhod 2 was launched into space carrying Aleksey Leonov and Pavel Belyayev aboard. On the second orbit Leonov left the spacecraft through the air lock while still tethered to the vessel. He was the first man to climb out of a spacecraft in space. While outside, he took motion pictures and practiced moving outside of the spacecraft for 10 minutes. Voskhod 2 made 17 orbits at about 110 miles (177 km) above earth. |
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| The "Paper Caper," the nation's first paper dress, was introduced by Scott Paper in 1966 as a promotional gimmick for its consumer products. A truly "1960s" cultural relic, Scott advertisers described the paper dress as "created to make you the conversation piece at parties. Smashingly different at dances or perfectly packaged at picnics. Wear it anytime...anywhere. Won't last forever...who cares? Wear it for kicks -- then give it the air." The disposable paper dress, available by mail order for $1.25, originally came in two designs, a black and white Op Art motif and a red bandanna pattern. |
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| Paul McCartney was sitting at a bus shelter waiting for John Lennon to meet him on Penny Lane, a
street near their houses. While sitting there Paul jotted down the things he saw, including a barber's shop with
pictures of its clients and a nurse selling poppies for Remembrance Day (November 11th or the day World War 2
officially ended). He later turned these into the song we now know. The ‘B’ side of hit record was the also-popular "Strawberry Fields Forever." Strawberry Field was a Salvation Army home in Liverpool where John Lennon used to go. He had fond memories of the place that inspired this. John's aunt Mimi did not like John going to Strawberry Fields, as it was basically an orphanage and she thought they would lead John astray. |
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| "At 12:01 a.m. on March 17, 1970, branch 36 of the New York Post Office made history. By a count of 1,555 to 1,055 the postal workers of branch 36, which served Manhattan and the Bronx, voted to go on strike" (massaflcio.org). Word spread quickly and by the 18th, there were more workers picketing not only in New York, but also in the surrounding states. In response, President Nixon appeared on television ordering the postal employees to go back to work or face federal felony charges. In two weeks, the postal workers returned and they negotiated an agreement which stipulated a six percent raise for government workers along with an additional eight percent if the two sides could agree on a way to reorganize the postal system (usps.org). |
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| Brook remained signed to the Mercury Records label until 1964 before moving to RCA Records, then Reprise Records. Releases on these labels failed to recapture the artist's previous success, but by the end of the decade, Benton rose to the challenge releasing "Rainy Night In Georgia." It was an international hit and the most memorable product since his 1963’s "Hotel Happiness". |  |
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| The album had more of a Country sound than Young's earlier work. James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt were able to drop by the studio and add their vocals because they were in town to appear on Cash's variety show as well. Young wrote this in 1971 after he suffered a back injury that made it impossible for him to play the electric guitar. He recorded some mellow tracks with an acoustic guitar when he was in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash's variety show, and used local session musicians for the other instruments. |
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| In 1977, The Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood was producing a movie about the New York Disco scene. The working title of the film was "Saturday Night," so he asked the group to write a song of that name. The Bee Gees thought it was a dumb title, but they had already written a song called "Night Fever." They convinced Stigwood to use that and change the film's title to Saturday Night Fever. The movie became a classic, telling a coming-of-age story in the Disco era. The soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever sold over 30 million copies worldwide and it won the 1978 Grammy for Album Of The Year. |
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| Commissioner Ueberroth reinstates Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, who had been banned from association with organized baseball by Bowie Kuhn due to their employment by Atlantic City casinos. |
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| At the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC, anti-counterfeiting experts are redesigning all US Currency from the $1 bill to the $100. Changes discussed were watermarks, Security Threads, with printing that can't be seen when bills are laid flat, special color tints, holograms, and razor ting prisms that create changing color patterns. The Treasury Department planned to begin circulating new bills with at least some of these features in mid-1987. |
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| In 1987, the discovery of "high-temperature" superconductivity was announced to thousands of scientists at a packed meeting of the American Physical Society in New York City. The phenomenon, discovered 1911, was at first known to occur at only 4 degrees above absolute zero, when all electrical resistance in a metal sample disappeared. In 1986, researchers discovered a ceramic material that was a superconductor at a temperature of more than 30 degrees above absolute zero. When published in September of that year, that news stirred the wider scientific community into action. By the time of the APS meeting, further discoveries had been made. The scene of excitement at the meeting was dubbed the "Woodstock of Physics." |
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| Chiles, fading in the oil bust, sold out to a group led by George W. Bush, son of the president, in March 1989. Bush began negotiations for a new stadium as neighboring Dallas opened a campaign to usurp the team just as Arlington had from the nation's capital in 1972. |
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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 players and owners reach a new collective-bargaining agreement that will end the 32-day lockout of spring training camps. Highlights of the deal include increasing the clubs' contributions to the players' pension fund, raising the minimum ML salary to $100,000, and a compromise on salary arbitration that leaves 17 percent of players with between two and three years of ML experience eligible. |
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| On the night of March 18, 1990, thieves dressed as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and stole 13 works of art. Works included a painting by Vermeer ("The Concert") and three Rembrandts (two paintings, including his only seascape The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and a small self-portrait print) as well as works by Manet, Degas, Govaert Flinck, and a French and a Chinese artifact. |
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| It took a long time, but Wilt Chamberlain was "very happy" that his No. 13 jersey was hoisted to the rafters at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. The Sixers will honored the 54-year-old basketball great on March 18 in a ceremony before their game against the Orlando Magic. |  |
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| Jordan signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox and was assigned to the Birmingham Barons as an outfielder. In his first summer with the Barons, he batted .202 with 114 strikeouts in 127 games. Later in the year he batted .252 with the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Arizona Fall League. By November of 1994, the Bulls had retired his number and erected a life-size statue of him in front of the United Center. On March 18, 1995, Jordan announced "I'm back!" He ended his short-lived career with baseball and rejoined the Bulls near the end of the 1994-1995 regular season, eventually losing to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. |
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1818 Congress approves first pensions
for government service
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1834 First railroad tunnel in US completed, in
Pennsylvania (275 meter long)
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1850 Henry Wells & William Fargo forms American
Express in Buffalo
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1881 PT Barnum &James A Bailey's Greatest
Show on Earth opens (Madison Square Garden)
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1890 First US state naval militia organized (Massachusetts)
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1891 Britain is linked to the continent by Telephone
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1892 Lord Stanley proposes silver challenge cup
for hockey (Stanley Cup)
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1899 Phoebe, a moon of Saturn is discovered by
Pickering
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1902 Enrico Caruso becomes first well-known performer
to make a record
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1909 First ham transmission, as Einar Dessau of
Denmark talks to a government radio post about 6 miles away
1910 First opera by an US composer (Converse)
performed at the Met, New York NY
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1910 Rose O'Neill's Kewpie doll was patented
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1911 North Dakota enacts a hail insurance law
1931 First electric shavers go on sale in US (Schick)
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1942 Two Black players, Jackie Robinson &
Nate Moreland,tryout with the White Sox
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1944 Guards & floorwalkers trampled over alarm
clock shipment
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1945 Maurice "Rocket" Richard becomes
the first NHLer to score 50 goals
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1948 Philips begin experimental TV broadcasting
1950 "Music! Music! Music!" by Teresa
Brewer topped the charts
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1952 First plastic lens for cataract patients
fitted (Philadelphia)
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1953 National League approves Boston Braves move
to Milwaukee (first shift since 1903)
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1954 RKO Pictures becomes the first
motion picture studio to be owned by an individual
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1958 Dodgers announces mascot/clown Emmett Kelly
will not perform in 1958
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1959 Boston Celtics' Bill Sharman begins record
of 56 straight free-throws
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1959 President Dwight D Eisenhower signs Hawaii
statehood bill
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1961 "Pony Time" by Chubby Checker topped
the charts
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1965 Poppin' Fresh Pillsbury DoughBoy "born"
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1965 Russia launches 2nd & final Voshkod-first
spacewalk-Aleksei Leonov
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1966 Scott Paper begins selling paper dresses
for $1
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1967 The Beatles went gold with "Penny Lane"
More ...
1968 Congress repeals requirement for a gold reserve
to back U.S. currency
1970 Mail service paralyzed by first major postal
strike
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1970 Brook Benton received a gold record for the
hit single, "Rainy Night in Georgia"
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1972 Cornell NCAA hockey team shut out for first
time in 225 games (Boston University)
1972 "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young topped
the charts
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1978 "Night Fever" by the Bee Gees topped
the charts
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1985 Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth reinstates
Willie Mays & Mickey Mantle
More ...
1986 Treasury Department announces plans to alter
paper money
More ...
1987 Superconductivity Discovered
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1989 California Quake amusement ride opens at
Universal Studios
1989 Investor group led by George W Bush purchases controlling interest of Texas Rangers
More ...
1989 "Lost in Your Eyes" by Debbie Gibson
topped the charts
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1990 32-day lockout by baseball owners ends
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1990 Largest Art robbery in the history (Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston)
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1991 Philadelphia '76ers retire Wilt Chamberlain's
#13 jersey
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1991 Reggie Miller (Indiana) ends NBA free throw
streak of 52 games
1995 Michael Jordan announces he is ending his
17 month NBA retirement
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