This Day In History: December 9, 1872 On this day in history, 1872, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became the first person of African American descent to serve as the governor of a U.S. state. Pinchback was born the son of a freed slave (African-Cherokee-Welsh-German descent) and her former white owner (Scottish-Irish-Welsh-German descent), who married her. His father was reasonably well […]
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This Day In History: December 8, 2010 On this day just two years ago, SpaceX became the first privately held entity to successfully launch a spacecraft into orbit and then subsequently recover it (they were also the first private company to launch something in orbit with a liquid-fueled vehicle around a year earlier when their Falcon 1 rocket put a […]
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On this day in history, December 7: 1869: Former Confederate guerrilla fighter Jesse James turns to a life of crime, robbing the Davies County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. Over the next 14 years, James and his gang committed a variety of robberies and murders. Despite often being portrayed in his day as a “Robin Hood” type, robbing from the […]
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On this day in history, December 6: 1768: The Encyclopædia Britannica makes its debut in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the first volume being sold for 6-8 pence (varying price based on quality of paper), with each subsequent volume being released in weekly installments. All total about 3,000 copies of the first set of the encyclopedia, comprising 2,391 pages, were sold for a […]
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This Day In History: December 5, 1933 On this day in history, 1933, Prohibition officially ended when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, originally proposed by Congress on February 20, 1933. Once ratified, this constitutional amendment repealed the 18 Amendment. The 18th Amendment, passed in 1919, banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in […]
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On this day in history, December 4 1872: The crew of the British craft Dei Gratia spotted the Mary Celeste (originally named The Amazon before being purchased and rechristened) still under sail, but yawning slightly. Upon closer inspection, they observed that no members of the crew were on deck. After several hours of watching from a distance, they finally decided […]
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On this day in history, December 3rd: 1910: The French “Thomas Edison“, George Claude, demonstrates the modern neon light at the Paris Motor Show. Claude designed and developed the neon light as a way to find a financially profitable use for the neon his air liquefaction company ended up with as a byproduct of the liquefying process. Among the significant […]
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This Day In History: Dec 2, 1942 On this day in history, at 3:25 pm CST, 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, famed physicist and Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, the “father of the atomic bomb”, and his team successfully started the word’s first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on a racquetball court under the west stands of Stagg […]
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This Day In History: December 1, 1955 On this day in history, 1955, Rosa Parks’ simple act of refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott which in turn stimulates the Civil Rights Movement. It also vaulted Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight as a […]
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On this day in history, November 30th… 1934 : 4472 Flying Scotsman, a steam locomotive built in 1923 as a long-distance express train for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), became the first to officially exceed 100mph. In 1928, the train which featured a new version of the large eight-wheel tender which held 9 tons of coal, was first inaugurated and set to travel the 392 […]
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On this day in history, November 29th… 1961 : Enos the chimpanzee was launched into space, becoming the second chimp to travel to space and the first to orbit the Earth. Enos, along with many other chimps such as “Ham”, the first chimp to be launched into space, were trained as part of Project Mercury, which was the first manned […]
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On this day in history, November 28th… 1582 : William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, 8 years his senior. It was thought that since he was just 18 at the time and she was 26 and 3 months pregnant with his child that there was some pressure for them to get married. However, there is no evidence to support that. Six months after […]
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On this day in history, November 27th… 1095: A Crusade was launched by Pope Urban II, the first of seven major military campaigns fought over two centuries. The Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of the Byzantine Empire appealed to the Pope and requested the help of western volunteers to repel the invading Seljuq Turks from Anatolia. In response to his plea and taking it as an […]
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On this day in history, November 26th… 1842: The University of Notre Dame was founded by Father Edward Sorin. He also became the University’s first President. The University’s name “Notre Dame” is French for “Our Lady,” being a catholic school, the term “Our Lady” is a reference to the Virgin Mary. When the University was first founded, it was an […]
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On this day in history, November 25th… 1926 : An outbreak of 27 twisters rip up the Midwest in one of the worst tornado storms in U.S history. The strongest of these tornadoes was an estimated F4 that tore up Herber Springs, Arkansas. The storm caused over 76 deaths, 51 of which were in Arkansas alone and over 400 injuries in […]
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On this day in history, November 24th… 1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life‘, more popularly known as simply “On the Origin of Species”. Darwin had already been working on his theory of “natural selection” since 1938, as the idea […]
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On this day in history, November 23rd… 1963 : The first episode of “Doctor Who” aired on BBC. The show went on the become the world’s longest running science fiction drama. Based on the adventures of a Time Lord—a time traveling, humanoid alien known as the Doctor, the show quickly become a significant part of British popular culture. After 26 seasons, in 1996, the show was put on […]
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On this day in history, November 22nd… 1963 : President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot while traveling with his wife and others in a Presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The President was traveling in Dallas in an open-top convertible along with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, the Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife, on a route that was planned to give […]
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