Category Archives: Featured Facts

This Day in History: Samuel Byck Hijacks an Airliner with the Intent of Flying it into the White House to Kill President Nixon

On This Day In History: February 22, 1974 On this day in history, 1974, Samuel Joseph Byck attempted to assassinate President Richard Nixon.  Byck’s plan was to take control of an airliner and then force the pilots to fly the plane into the White House, thereby presumably killing the President who was there at the time.  Not all went as […]

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February 15: The World’s First General Purpose Digital Electronic Computer is Dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania

This Day In History: February 15, 1946 On this day in history, 1946, the first ever general purpose digital electronic computer was dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania.  The machine was called the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer).  It cost over $500,000 (around $6 million today), weighed around 57,000 pounds and took up 1800 square feet.  Further, it featured […]

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February 9th: William G. Morgan Invents a Game Called Mintonette that is Better Known Today as Volleyball

This Day In History: February 9, 1895 On this day in history, 1895, the first volleyball game, originally called “Mintonette” (referencing its similarity to badminton), was played in Holyoke Massachusetts at a YMCA.  The inventor of the game was the YMCA athletic director there, William G. Morgan. Morgan had become intrigued by the recently invented game of basketball, which had […]

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February 8th: Mickey Mantle is Threatened with a Lifetime Ban from Baseball, and Subsequently Banned, for Working at a Casino

This Day In History: February 8, 1983 On this day in history, 1983, Mickey Mantle was threatened by the commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, that if he didn’t stop working for the Claridge Casino in Atlantic City, he’d be put on baseball’s permanently ineligible list, which meant he’d be banned from any Major or Minor League Baseball related activities including […]

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February 4th: Mark Zuckerberg Launches Facebook

This Day In History: February 4, 2004 On this day in history, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a site called TheFacebook, that eventually became just “Facebook” after the company acquired the domain rights to facebook.com for $200,000 in 2005.  The site was originally inspired by a project done by one of Mark Zuckerberg’s high school friends, Adam D’Angelo.  D’Angelo had developed […]

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February 1: Alexander Selkirk is Rescued After Being Stranded on a Deserted Island for Four Years, This is Thought to Have Inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

This Day In History: February 1, 1709 On this day in history, 1709, Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was finally rescued from a deserted island he inhabited for over four years.  The island he found himself on was Más a Tierra, the largest island of the Juan Fernández group of islands, around 400 miles west of South America.  Today the island […]

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January 30: President Andrew Jackson Beats Richard Lawrence with a Cane After Lawrence Attempted to Assassinate Jackson

This Day In History: January 30, 1835 On this day in history, 1835, Richard Lawrence became the first known person to attempt to assassinate a U.S. President, attempting to fire two guns at Andrew Jackson at close range.  His assassination attempt failed only because the guns he pointed at Jackson jammed when he pulled the trigger.  Interestingly, when the guns […]

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Black Friday: History, Myths, and Facts

Embed This Infographic: Source: Today I Found Out How the Black Friday Tradition Got Started While it wasn’t called “Black Friday” until the 1960s, and then not popularly called such until the last two decades, retailers have been trying to push people to shop the Friday after Thanksgiving since the late 19th /early 20th century.  Around this time, it was […]

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