On this day in history, November 3rd… 1534 : King Henry VIII of England was granted Royal Supremacy, as the English parliament accepted the first Act of Supremacy. This legislation declared the King as the supreme head of the Church of England. It also initiated by King Henry VIII himself and cut England off from the Roman Catholic Church. It is believed that the main […]
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On this day in history, November 2nd… 1898 : Marks the official birth date of organized cheerleading. On this date, student Johnny Campbell of the University of Minnesota directed a crowd at a football game into cheering “Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!” From then, the University of Minnesota organized a “yell leader” squad of six male […]
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On this day in history, November 1st… 1512 : Michelangelo’s epic ceiling painting in the Sistine Chapel was opened to the public for viewing for the first time. Michelangelo Buonarroti, born in 1475, first came to the spotlight as a talented sculpture during the early Renaissance movement in Florence. His famous statues of Pieta (1498) and David (1504) earned him a call from […]
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On this day in history, October 15th… 1783: The Montgolfier brothers make the world’s first hot air balloon ascent with a human inside the basket attached to the balloon. The first human aboard was Étienne Montgolfier (when testing before the public demonstration), then the second human, Pilâtre de Rozier, ascended 80 ft. at the public demonstration. About a month later, on […]
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This Day In History: August 16, 1948 On this day in history, 1948, the Sultan of Swat died due to naso-pharyngeal cancer (often mistakenly said to have been throat cancer). While his historic years as a baseball player are well chronicled, less talked about are the Babe’s final years. George Herman “Babe” Ruth was one of the most popular and […]
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This Day In History: August 11, 1964 On this day in history, 1964, what would later be called one of the 100 greatest films of all time by Time Magazine, the Beatles “mockumentary”, A Hard Day’s Night, debuted in the United States. (Warning: There be spoilers in the A Hard Day’s Night facts ahead! So if you haven’t seen it, […]
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This Day In History: July 25, 1978 On this day in history, 1978, the first “test tube” baby, Louise Brown, was born weighing 5 lb. 12 oz. (2.6 kg) to Leslie and John Brown who had up to this point been unable to have a child due to Leslie’s lack of proper fallopian tubes. The couple eventually learned of and […]
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This Day In History: July 8, 2011 On this day in history, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center to deliver equipment and supplies to the International Space Station. Atlantis touched down at 5:57 AM EDT on July 21, 2011, closing 30 years and 135 missions performed by the Space Shuttles. Throughout their run, a total […]
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This Day In History: June 24, 1374 Amidst our people here is come, the madness of the dance. In every town there now are some, who fall upon a trance. It drives them ever night and day, they scarcely stop for breath. Till some have dropped along the way, and some are met by death. [A 17th century poem about […]
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This Day In History: June 23, 1917 On this day in history, 1917, Babe Ruth was on the mound for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park against the Washington Senators. He threw four straight balls, at least as far as the umpire, Clarence “Brick” Owens, was concerned, walking Ray Morgan. Ruth thought the second and the fourth pitch were […]
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This Day In History: May 30, 1806 On this day in history, 1806, Andrew Jackson dueled with famed marksman Charles Dickinson, killing him, after Dickinson insulted Jackson in a variety of ways including calling Jackson’s wife of bigamist. This latter point was a sore spot for Jackson as his wife really had married him while she was still married to […]
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This Day In History: May 18, 1927 On this day in history, 1927, 55 year old school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, with his farm in the process of being foreclosed, murdered his wife, burned down his house, then blew up part of the Bath Consolidated School building, which at the time contained around 236 students. He then committing suicide by […]
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This Day In History: May 9, 1961 Yesterday Josh Hamilton tied an MLB record with 15 other players, hitting four home runs in one game. Something even more rare happened on this day in history, Baltimore Orioles first basemen, ‘Diamond’ Jim Gentile, managed to hit a grand slam in two consecutive innings (the 1st and the 2nd inning, both home […]
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This Day In History: April 19, 1927 On this day in history, 1927, Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in prison and given a $500 fine, charged with “obscenity and corrupting the morals of youth” for writing, under the pen name Jane Mast, directing, and performing in the play Sex. The play was the first written by the 34 […]
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This Day In History: April 12, 1994 On this day in history, 1994, the world’s first mass commercial internet spam campaign was launched when husband and wife immigration lawyer team, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, who had previously been subject to disciplinary action for unscrupulous practices (see Bonus Facts Below) and had been thrown out of the American Immigration Lawyers […]
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This Day In History: April 3, 1973 On this day in history, 1973, a Motorola employee, Martin Cooper, publicly demonstrated the world’s first handheld mobile phone by placing a call to Joel Engel, the head of research at AT&T’s Bell Labs using the phone. Engel and his team were Cooper’s chief rival and had also been attempting to make the […]
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This Day In History: March 29, 1886 On this day in history, 1886, Dr. John Pemberton mixed the first batch of what would soon become Coca-Cola. Pemberton was a pharmacist and also a former Confederate soldier who was wounded in the Battle of Columbus. This subsequently led to him becoming addicted to morphine, as happened to many people at the […]
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This Day In History: March 21, 1989 On this day in history, 1989, Sports Illustrated published an article alleging that Cincinnati Reds Coach and former star baseball player Pete Rose bet on Major League Baseball games. Pete Rose started managing in 1984, while he was still a player, and continued on managing until 1989, with the latter three years of […]
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