Tag: History

June 2 Twenty-six journeymen printers in Philadelphia stage the trade’s first strike in America over wages: A cut in their $6. weekly pay. – 1786. In an event that is generally regarded as marking the end of the U.S. Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces...

May 19 Explosion in Coal Creek, Tenn. kills 184 miners. – 1902. Thirty-one dockworkers are killed, 350 workers and others are injured, when four barges carrying 467 tons of ammunition blow up at South Amboy, N.J.. They were transporting mines that had been deemed unsafe by the Army and were...

May 5 Lumber strike begins in Pacific Northwest, will involve 40,000 workers by the time victory is achieved after 13 weeks: Union recognition, a 50¢ per hour minimum wage and an eight-hour day. – 1937. In Lakeview, Ore., Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to...

April 21 According to tradition, April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated some time in the Fourth Century B.C., and the exact date of Rome’s...

April 7 Rwandan armed forces kill 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers in a successful effort to discourage international intervention in the genocide that had begun only hours earlier. In approximately three months, the Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda brutally murdered an estimated 500,000 to one million innocent civilian Tutsis and moderate...

March 24 Groundbreaking on the first section of the New York City subway system, from City Hall to the Bronx: According to The New York Times, the following was a worker’s review of the digging style of the well-dressed Subway Commissioners: “I wouldn’t give th’ Commish’ners foive cents a day...

March 10 The first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days earlier. – 1876. A devastating mine disaster kills...

March 3 Anne Sullivan begins teaching six-year-old Helen Keller, who lost her sight and hearing after a severe illness at the age of 19 months. Under Sullivan’s tutelage, including her pioneering “touch teaching” techniques, the previously uncontrollable Keller flourished, and eventually was graduated from college to become an international lecturer...

February 17 Approximately 900 persons drown when a passenger ferry, the Neptune, overturns near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The ferry was dangerously overloaded, and carried no lifeboats or emergency gear. – 1993. February 18 A man ignites a gasoline-filled container inside a subway train in Daegu, South Korea. The blaze engulfes the...

February 10 After three hours, world chess champion Gary Kasparov loses the first game of a six-game match against Deep Blue, an IBM computer capable of evaluating 200 million moves per second. Man was ultimately victorious over machine, however, when Kasparov defeated Deep Blue in the match with three wins...