December 26 The first day of the first Kwanzaa is celebrated in Los Angeles under the direction of Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University in Long Beach. The seven-day holiday, which has strong African roots, was designed by Dr. Karenga as a celebration of African
December 19 An explosion in the Darr Mine in Westmoreland County, Pa., kills 239 coal-miners. Seventy-one of the dead share a common grave in Olive Branch Cemetery. December 1907 was the worst month in U.S. coal-mining history, with more than 3,000 deaths. – 1907. After nearly 14 hours of debate,
Ben Franklin was a Founding Father and in his 84-year old life, America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist. He was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of the United States which were the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of
December 12 More than two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Mona Lisa is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room in Florence. Peruggia previously had worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group
Imagine three Celtic artist monks, secluded in the scriptorium of Iona, or in eastern Scotland, or in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath, Ireland. They welcome in the year 800 A.D. in days filled with extraordinary artistry and commitment. The Book is written on prepared calfskin (vellum) and contains
December 5 A fire at the Brooklyn Theater in New York City kills nearly 300 individuals and injures hundreds more. Some victims perished from a combination of burns and smoke inhalation; others were trampled to death in the general panic that ensued. – 1876. Unionists John T. McNamara and James
November 28 After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America, that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships to become the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic. – 1520. Frank Duryea wins the first motor-car race in
November 21 The American inventor Thomas A. Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. – 1877. A Senate committee issues a report charging that U.S. government officials were behind assassination plots against two foreign leaders and were heavily involved in at least
November 14 In Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, the religious leader Sheikh-ul-Islam declares an Islamic holy war on behalf of the Ottoman government and urges his Muslim followers to take up arms against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, and Montenegro in World War I. – 1914. The Depression-era Public Works
Part two of the Stolp Avenue profile: The first part is available at thevoice.us/history-recalled-of-buildings-on-stolp-avenue-in-aurora This essay looks at Island Avenue in Aurora before it was amalgamated with Stolp Avenue in 1964. It must be noted that not only was this street the center of Aurora geographically, it was Aurora’s heart
November 7 U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains the only president to have served more than two terms. – 1944. November 8 U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt announces plans for the Civil Works Administration to create four million additional jobs
October 31 The priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation. In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic
October 24A 63-year-old schoolteacher, Annie Edson Taylor, becomes the first known person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel. – 1901. The first U.S. federal minimum wage, 25¢ an hour, takes effect, thanks to enactment of the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA). The law required an
More chickens have come home to roost. In a previous essay, I stated that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which ended World War I, had unintentional consequences and that those consequences were the massive conflicts currently embroiling all of Southwest Asia. Among other things, the Treaty called for the
October 17Gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000 to signal the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s. – 1931. Paris police kill more than 200 Algerians who were marching in the city in support
October 10 A former U.S. postal worker kills his former supervisor with a three-foot samurai sword, shoots the supervisor’s fiance, and shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, N.J.. His violent outburst was one of several high-profile attacks by postal workers that resulted in the
October 3 Expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln announces that the Nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday November 26. – 1863. With the admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Britain terminates its mandate over the Arab nation which makes
September 26For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic Party senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, meet in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S.
September 19Between 400,000 to 500,000 unionists converge on Washington, D.C. for a Solidarity Day march and rally to protest Republican policies. – 1981. A powerful earthquake strikes Mexico City and leaves 10,000 residents dead, 30,000 injured, and thousands more homeless. – 1985. September 20Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, sets sail from
September 12Six months after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev succeeds him with his election as first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev, in 1961, authorized construction of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. – 1960. Hurricane Gilbert slams into Jamaica. Approximately 80%
