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 […]
Read more
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, […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
This Day In History: March 20, 1985 On this day in history, 1985, paraplegic Rick Hansen sets out to circumnavigate the land masses of the world in a wheelchair. Hansen was inspired by Terry Fox, the Canadian athlete who lost his leg due to bone cancer and subsequently set out on the “Marathon of Hope” in 1980, running across Canada to […]
Read more
This Day In History: March 16, 1926 On this day in history, 1926, Robert Goddard performed the first flight test of a liquid-fuel rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts. This gasoline and liquid oxygen fueled rocket burned for about 20 seconds before lifting off from the ground and subsequently rising to a height of 41 feet, reaching a top speed of 60 mph. […]
Read more
This Day In History: March 13, 1962 On this day in history, 1962, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer, submitted a proposal to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, developed by the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense, outlining plans to commit various acts of terrorism on U.S. soil and then to frame the […]
Read more
This Day In History: February 29, 1504 On this day in history, 1504, Christopher Columbus convinced a group of Native Jamaicans that his god was angry with them for ceasing to provide his group with supplies and that god would show his anger with a sign from the heavens. The sign was a lunar eclipse that Columbus knew was imminent. […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more