May 2 General Motors Corporation (GM), which will become the world’s largest automotive firm, acquires Chevrolet Motor Company. – 1918. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, is killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his compound hideout in Pakistan. – 2011. May 3 Four...
April 25 The New York Times declares the struggle for an eight-hour work-day to be “un-American” and calls public demonstrations for the shorter hours “labor disturbances brought about by foreigners.” Other publications declare that an eight-hour work-day day would bring about “loafing and gambling, rioting, debauchery, and drunkenness.” – 1886....
April 18 Missouri is hit by a string of deadly tornadoes and 151 residents die, including 99 in the town of Marshfield. – 1880. At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, Calif. and kills hundreds of residents when it topples...
April 11 Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba. – 1814. Approximately 25,000 marchers in Watsonville, Calif. show support for United Farm Workers organizing campaign among...
Saturday, April 6, the Aurora and Fox Valley community are invited to Aurora Central Catholic High School, 1255 N. Edgelawn Dr. (corner Edgelawn & Indian Trail), Aurora, 8 a.m.-noon, for the “75th Kiwanis Pancake Day.” The Kiwanis Club of Aurora in its 108 th year presents this annual breakfast event...
April 4 Only 31 days after assuming office, William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, dies of pneumonia at the White House. – 1841. Just after 6 p.m. April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room...
March 28 Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn.. Violence during the march persuades him to return the following week to Memphis, where he was assassinated. – 1968. At 4 a.m. the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry...
March 21 U.S. president Jimmy Carter informs a group of U.S. athletes that, in response to the December 1979 Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, the United States will boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. It marked the only time that the United States boycotted the Olympic Games. – 1980. March 22...
March 14 The Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of a wire service news story in 1949 about the toughest guys the FBI wanted to capture. The story drew so...
March 7 Twenty-nine-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention, the telephone. – 1876. More than 3,000 unemployed auto workers, led by the Communist Party of America, brave the cold in Dearborn, Mich. to demand jobs and relief from Henry Ford. The marchers got too close...
February 29 Hattie McDaniel wins Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy, in Gone with the Wind at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards. McDaniel was the first African American to be honored with an Oscar. – 1940. March 1 In Salem Village in the...
February 22 Spanish minister Do Luis de Onis and U.S. secretary of state John Quincy Adams sign the Florida Purchase Treaty, in which Spain agrees to cede the remainder of its old province of Florida to the United States. – 1819. In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic...
February 15 Toy store owner and inventor Morris Michtom places two stuffed bears in his shop window and advertises them as Teddy bears. Michtom earlier had petitioned U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt for permission to use his nickname, Teddy. The president agreed and, before long, other toy manufacturers began turning out...
February 8 Following the Russian rejection of a Japanese plan to divide Manchuria and Korea into spheres of influence, Japan launches a surprise naval attack against Port Arthur, a Russian naval base in China. The Russian fleet was decimated. – 1904. A severe blizzard in New England finally subsides, and...
February 1 The Collar Laundry Union forms in Troy, N.Y.; raises earnings for female laundry workers from $2. to $14. a week. – 1864. The first portion of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, is published. Today, the OED is...
January 25 Sojourner Truth addresses first Black Women’s Rights convention. – 1851. At the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered. It is the largest diamond ever found, to weigh in at 1.33 pounds and the estimated price in today’s market would be approximately $400 million....
January 18 For the first time since joining the World Court in 1946, the United States walks out of a case. The case that caused the dramatic walkout concerned U.S. paramilitary activities against the Nicaraguan government. – 1985. January 19 Following the death of Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri,...
January 11 U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument. – 1908. The IWW-organized “Bread & Roses” textile strike of 32,000 women and children begins in Lawrence, Mass.. It lasts 10 weeks and ends in victory. – 1912. January 12 There were unseasonably-warm-weather...
January 4 Six years after Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon Church, issued his Manifesto reforming political, religious, and economic life in Utah, the territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th state. – 1896. For the first time since Charlemagne’s reign in the 9th Century, Europe is united...
December 28 The world’s first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief...
