July 14 Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror, in which King Louis XVI was overthrown
July 7 Mary Harris “Mother” Jones begins “The March of the Mill Children”, when, accompanied part of the way by children. She walked from Philadelphia to president Theodore Roosevelt’s home on Long Island, N.Y. to protest the plight of child laborers. One of her demands: Reduce the children’s work week
I recently went looking for a nugget and found a gold mine. Let me explain. I visited the website of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum a few weeks ago to track down information on a former Illinois lawmaker from its oral history collection. I emerged several hours later
June 30 Just three days after the United Nations Security Council voted to provide military assistance to South Korea, president Harry S Truman orders U.S. armed forces to assist in defending that nation from invading North Korean armies. Truman’s dramatic step marked the official entry of the United States into
June 23 U.S. president Richard Nixon signs into law the Higher Education Act, which includes the groundbreaking Title IX legislation. Title IX barred discrimination in higher education programs, including funds for sports, and other extracurricular activities. As a result, women’s participation in team sports, particularly in collegiate athletics, surged with
June 16 The first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, N.Y.. Its speed is approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. – 1884. When daylight breaks, survivors of a tsunami in Japan find that more than 20,000 of their friends and family
June 9 With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes). In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed
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 26 The first copies of the classic vampire novel, Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, appear in London bookshops on this day. – 1897. One hundred thousand steel workers and miners in mines owned by steel companies strike in seven states. The Memorial Day Massacre, in which 10 strikers
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 12 The dead body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, N.J., mansion. Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic Ocean, and
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 28 Coal mine collapses at Eccles, W.Va., and kills 181 workers. – 1914. One-hundred nineteen die in Benwood, W.Va. coal mine disaster. – 1924. Boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army and is immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali, a Muslim, cited religious
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 14 U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is shot at a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army, to effectively end the American Civil War. – 1865. In what came to be known as Black Sunday,
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 31 President Martin Van Buren issues a broadly-applicable executive order granting the 10-hour day to all government employees engaged in manual labor. – 1840. The Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by Pierre Tirard, French prime
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 17 In New York City, the first parade honoring the Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is held by Irish soldiers serving in the British army. – 1762. The leadership of the American Federation of Labor selects the carpenters union to lead the eight-hour
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
