February 20 U.S. president George Washington signs legislation to create the U.S. Postal Service to guarantee inexpensive delivery of all newspapers, stipulating the right to privacy, and granting Congress the ability to expand postal service to new areas of the Nation. – 1792 From Cape Canaveral, Fla., John Hershel Glenn,
February 13 Italian philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, Galileo Galilei, arrives in Rome to face charges of heresy for advocating Copernican theory, which holds that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Galileo officially faced the Roman Inquisition in April of that same year and agreed to plead guilty in exchange for
February 6 Ironworkers from six cities meet in Pittsburgh, Pa. to form the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers of America. Their pay in Pittsburgh at the time: $2.75 for a nine-hour day. – 1896. After a long illness, King George VI of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
January 30 During a funeral service in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol to honor the late U.S. representative Warren R. Davis of South Carolina, a man discharged two pistols in the direction of U.S. president Andrew Jackson. Both weapons misfired, and the shooter was promptly subdued and arrested.
January 23 Elizabeth Blackwell graduates with the highest grades in her class when she is granted a medical degree from Geneva College in New York state, to become the first female officially recognized as a physician in U.S. history. – 1849. Declaring he did not care whether or not it
January 16 The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” is ratified on this day in 1919 and becomes the law of the land. – 1919. Faced with an army mutiny and violent demonstrations against his rule, Mohammad
It is my intention again this year to focus on success stories of individuals who, by dent of their work ethic, commitment, and drive, transformed their earthly sojourn into meaningful and productive lives. I had never heard of Madam C.J. Walker prior to seeing a bookmark from the National Trust
January 9 Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone, a touchscreen mobile phone with an iPod, camera, and Web-browsing capabilities, among other features, at the Macworld convention in San Francisco. It went on sale in the United States six months later amidst huge hype. Thousands of customers lined up
Steve Chirico, mayor of Naperville, takes the oath of office for a second term at the Special City Council ceremony at the Naperville Municipal Center.
Aurora’s Richard C. Irvin, mayor, prepares to cut the ribbon Saturday, June 1 on Stolp Avenue in front of the Paramount School of the Arts.
Friends and family gather around Jo Fredell Higgins, seated, middle, of Aurora Monday at Gaslite Manor in Aurora just prior to the presentation by the Kiwanis Club of Aurora at the annual award dinner.
January 2 Georgia votes to ratify the U.S. Constitution to become the fourth state in the modern United States, and was one of the original 13 colonies. – 1788. Albert Fall, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, resigns in response to public outrage over the Teapot Dome scandal.
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
