#online collections
April 6, 1917 - The United States officially enters World War I
“Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I.
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.
On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.
In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. Four days later, his request was granted.
On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.“
This Month in History:
April 3, 1860 - The Pony Express begins
April 9, 1959 - NASA introduces America’s first astronauts
April 12, 1963 - Martin Luther King, Jr. writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
April 20, 1902 - Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium
April 24, 1800 - Library of Congress established
April 30, 1803 - United States and France conclude the Louisiana Purchase
ThisSelective Service Poster from World War I can be found in the online collection of the McLeod County Historical Society & Museum.
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November 3, 1948 - Newspaper mistakenly declares “Dewey Defeats Truman”
“On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumps the gun and mistakenly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of his presidential race with incumbent Harry S. Truman in a front-page headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Many of America’s major newspapers had predicted a Dewey victory early on in the campaign. A New York Times article editorialized that “if Truman is nominated, he will be forced to wage the loneliest campaign in recent history.” Perhaps not surprisingly then, Truman chose not to use the press as a vehicle for getting his message across. Instead, in July 1948, he embarked on an ambitious 22,000-mile “whistle stop” railroad and automobile campaign tour.
At every destination, Truman asked crowds to help him keep his job as president. His eventual success in the election of 1948 has been largely attributed to this direct interaction with the public and his appeal to the common voters as the political “underdog.” At the end of one of his campaign speeches, voices in the crowd could be heard yelling “Give ’em Hell, Harry!” It didn’t take long for the phrase to catch on and become Truman’s unofficial campaign slogan.
In a now famous photograph snapped in the early morning hours after the election, a beaming and bemused Truman is shown holding aloft the Chicago Tribune issue that had wrongly predicted his political downfall. Truman defeated Dewey by 114 electoral votes.”
This week in History:
October 31, 1926 - Harry Houdini dies
November 1, 1800 - John Adams moves into White House
November 2, 1947 - Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose” flies
November 3, 1903 - Panama declares independence from Columbia
November 4, 1922 - Entrance to King Tut’s tomb discovered
November 5, 1940 - FDR re-elected for third term
November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln elected president
These two newspapers (the original “Dewey Defeats Truman” and the retraction printing the next day) can be found in the online collectionofKentucky Historical Society.
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March 3, 1887 - Helen Keller meets Anne Sullivan, her teacher and “miracle worker”
“On March 3, 1887, 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, eventually graduating from college and becoming an international lecturer and activist. Sullivan, later dubbed “the miracle worker,” remained Keller’s interpreter and constant companion until the older woman’s death in 1936.
Sullivan, born in Massachusetts in 1866, had firsthand experience with being handicapped: As a child, an infection impaired her vision. She then attended the Perkins Institution for the Blind where she learned the manual alphabet in order to communicate with a classmate who was deaf and blind. Eventually, Sullivan had several operations that improved her weakened eyesight.
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, to Arthur Keller, a former Confederate army officer and newspaper publisher, and his wife Kate, of Tuscumbia, Alabama. As a baby, a brief illness, possibly scarlet fever or a form of bacterial meningitis, left Helen unable to see, hear or speak. She was considered a bright but spoiled and strong-willed child. Her parents eventually sought the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and an authority on the deaf. He suggested the Kellers contact the Perkins Institution, which in turn recommended Anne Sullivan as a teacher.
Sullivan, age 20, arrived at Ivy Green, the Keller family estate, in 1887 and began working to socialize her wild, stubborn student and teach her by spelling out words in Keller’s hand. Initially, the finger spelling meant nothing to Keller. However, a breakthrough occurred one day when Sullivan held one of Keller’s hands under water from a pump and spelled out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. Keller went on to learn how to read, write and speak. With Sullivan’s assistance, Keller attended Radcliffe College and graduated with honors in 1904.
Helen Keller became a public speaker and author; her first book, “The Story of My Life” was published in 1902. She was also a fundraiser for the American Foundation for the Blind and an advocate for racial and sexual equality, as well as socialism. From 1920 to 1924, Sullivan and Keller even formed a vaudeville act to educate the public and earn money. Helen Keller died on June 1, 1968, at her home in Easton, Connecticut, at age 87, leaving her mark on the world by helping to alter perceptions about the disabled.”
This week in History:
February 28, 1861 - Congress creates Colorado Territory
March 1, 1961 - President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps
March 2, 1836 - Texas declares independence
March 3, 1875 - First indoor game of ice hockey
March 4, 1918 - First cases reported in deadly Spanish Flu pandemic
March 5, 1963 - Hula Hoop patented
March 6, 1820 President Monroe signs the Missouri Compromise
Thisphotograph of Anne Sullivan Macy and Hellen Keller can be found in the online collection of the O. Winston Link Museum/History Museum of Western Virginia.
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November 4, 1922 - Entrance to King Tut’s tomb discovered
“British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, though the little-known King Tutankhamen, who had died when he was 18, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for “King Tut’s Tomb,” finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously intact.
Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.”
This week in History:
November 1, 1512 - Sistine Chapel opens to public
November 2, 1947 Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose” flies
November 3, 1964 - D.C. residents cast first presidential votes
November 1842 - Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd
November 5, 1912 Woodrow Wilson wins landslide victory
November 6, 1860 Abraham Lincoln elected president
November 7, 1916 Jeannette Rankin becomes first U.S. congresswoman
ThisAnubis, found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, can be found in the online collection of the Metzger Collection.
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October 7, 1913 Moving assembly line debuts at Ford factory
“For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis–the automobile’s frame–is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one “Model T” from 12-½ hours to six. Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes. The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford’s use of the moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car affordable to ordinary consumers.
In introducing the Model T in October 1908, Henry Ford proclaimed, “I will build a motor car for the great multitude.” Before then, the decade-old automobile industry generally marketed its vehicles to only the richest Americans, because of the high cost of producing the machines. Ford’s Model T was the first automobile designed to serve the needs of middle-class citizens: It was durable, economical, and easy to operate and maintain. Still, with a debut price of $850, the Model T was out of the reach of most Americans. The Ford Motor Company understood that to lower unit cost it had to increase productivity. The method by which this was accomplished transformed industry forever.
Prototypes of the assembly line can be traced back to ancient times, but the immediate precursor of Ford’s industrial technique was 19th-century meat-packing plants in Chicago and Cincinnati, where cows and hogs were slaughtered, dressed, and packed using overhead trolleys that took the meat from worker to worker. Inspired by the meat packers, the Ford Motor Company innovated new assembly line techniques and in early 1913 installed its first moving assembly line at Highland Park for the manufacture of flywheel magnetos. Instead of each worker assembling his own magneto, the assembly was divided into 29 operations performed by 29 men spaced along a moving belt. Average assembly time dropped from 20 minutes to 13 minutes and soon was down to five minutes.
With the success of the magneto experiment, Ford engineers put the Model T motor and then the transmission on moving assembly lines. On October 7, 1913, the chassis also went on the moving assembly line, so that all the major components of the Model T were being assembled using this technique. Ford rapidly improved its assembly lines, and by 1916 the price of the Model T had fallen to $360 and sales were more than triple their 1912 level. Eventually, the company produced one Model T every 24 seconds, and the price fell below $300. More than 15 million Model T’s were built before it was discontinued in 1927, accounting for nearly half of all automobiles sold in the world to that date. The affordable Model T changed the landscape of America, hastening the move from rural to city life, and the moving assembly line spurred a new industrial revolution in factories around the world.”
This week in History:
October 4, 1957 - Sputnik launched
October 5, 1947 - Truman delivers first presidential speech on TV
October 6, 1926 - Babe Ruth sets World Series record
October 7, 1780 - Battle of King’s Mountain
October 8, 1871 - Great Chicago Fire begins
October 9, 1936 - Hoover Dam begins transmitting electricity to Los Angeles
October 10, 1845 - US Naval Academy opens
Thispostcard showing an Assembly Line of the Ford Motor Company in the 1920s can be found in the online collection of the Detroit Historical Society.
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September 2, 1945 - Japan surrenders, bringing an end to WWII
“Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II.
By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic” and set for November 1945.
The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties. On July 16, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world’s first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the “unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces.” Failure to comply would mean “the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.” On July 28, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that his government was “paying no attention” to the Allied ultimatum. U.S. President Harry Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on August 6, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80,000 people and fatally wounding thousands more.
After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan’s supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan’s desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.
Just before midnight on August 9, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration “with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler.” The council obeyed Hirohito’s acceptance of peace, and on August 10 the message was relayed to the United States.
Early on August 12, the United States answered that “the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.” After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender.
In the early hours of August 15, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji Hatanaka. The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime Minister Suzuki’s residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, “we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.” The United States immediately accepted Japan’s surrender.
President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. For the site of Japan’s formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman’s native state. MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until September 2 in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive.
On Sunday, September 2, more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 9 a.m. Tokyo time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature.
Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed, declaring, “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.” Ten more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over.“
This week in History:
August 30, 1983 - Guion S. Bluford becomes first African American in space
August 31, 1897 - Thomas Edison invents Kinetograph
September 1, 1807 - Aaron Burr acquitted of Treason
September 2, 1969 - First ATM opens for business
September 3, 1783 - Treaty of Paris signed
September 4, 1951- President Truman makes first transcontinental television broadcast
September 5, 1836 - Sam Houston elected as president of Texas
This photograph of US General Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito of Japan can be found in the online collection of the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives at the Handley Regional Library.
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July 1, 1867 - Canadian Independence Day
“The autonomous Dominion of Canada, a confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, is officially recognized by Great Britain with the passage of the British North America Act. July 1 becomes known as Canada Day.
During the 19th century, colonial dependence gave way to increasing autonomy for a growing Canada. In 1841, Upper and Lower Canada—now known as Ontario and Quebec—were made a single province by the Act of Union. In the 1860s, a movement for a greater Canadian federation grew out of the need for a common defense, the desire for a national railroad system, and the necessity of finding a solution to the problem of French and British conflict. When the Maritime provinces, which sought union among themselves, called a conference in 1864, delegates from the other provinces of Canada attended. Later in the year, another conference was held in Quebec, and in 1866 Canadian representatives traveled to London to meet with the British government.
On July 1, 1867, with passage of the British North America Act, the Dominion of Canada was officially established as a self-governing entity within the British Empire. Two years later, Canada acquired the vast possessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and within a decade the provinces of Manitoba and Prince Edward Island had joined the Canadian federation. In 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, making mass settlement across the vast territory of Canada possible.”
This week in History:
June 28, 1969 - The Stonewall Riots begin
June 29, 1613 - The Globe Theatre burns down
June 30, 1859 - Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on tightrope
July 1, 1863 - The Battle of Gettysburg begins
July 2, 1964 - President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act
July 3, 1775 - Washington formally takes command of Continental Army
July 4, 1776 - Continental Congress adopts Declaration of Independence
This print depicting the Canadian Coat of Arms can be found in the online collection of the Wellington County Museum & Archives.
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June 3, 1800 - President John Adams moves into tavern in Washington D.C.
“John Adams, the second president of the United States, becomes the first president to reside in Washington, D.C., when he takes up residence at Union Tavern in Georgetown.
The city of Washington was created to serve as the nation’s capital because of its geographical position in the center of the existing new republic. The states of Maryland and Virginia ceded land around the Potomac River to form the District of Columbia, and work began on Washington in 1791. French architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed the city’s radical layout, full of dozens of circles, crisscross avenues, and plentiful parks. In 1792, work began on the neoclassical White House building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue under the guidance of Irish-American architect James Hoban, whose White House design was influenced by Leinster House in Dublin and by a building sketch in James Gibbs’ Book of Architecture. In the next year, Benjamin Latrobe began construction on the other principal government building, the U.S. Capitol.
On June 3, 1800, President Adams moved to a temporary residence in the new capital as construction was completed on the executive mansion. On November 1, the president was welcomed into the White House. The next day, Adams wrote to his wife about their new home: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but wise men ever rule under this roof!” Soon after, Abigail Adams arrived at the White House, and on November 17 the U.S. Congress convened for the first time at the U.S. Capitol.
During the War of 1812, both buildings were set on fire in 1814 by British soldiers in retaliation for the burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. troops. Although a torrential downpour saved the still uncompleted Capitol building, the White House was burned to the ground. The mansion was subsequently rebuilt and enlarged under the direction of James Hoban, who added east and west terraces to the main building along with a semicircular south portico and a colonnaded north portico. Work was completed on the White House in the 1820s and it has remained largely unchanged since.”
This week in History:
May 31, 1859 - Big Ben rings out over London for the first time
June 1, 1779 - Benedict Arnold court-martialed
June 2, 1935 - Babe Ruth retires
June 3, 1965 - Major Edward H. White II becomes first American to walk in space
June 4, 1919 - Congress passes 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote
June 5, 1933 - FDR takes United States off gold standard
June 6, 1944 - D-Day
This medal showing the profile of President John Adams can be found in the online collection of the American Philosophical Society.
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May 6, 1935 – FDR creates Works Progress Administration (WPA)
“On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many Great Depression relief programs created under the auspices of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which Roosevelt had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and other federal assistance programs put unemployed Americans to work in return for temporary financial assistance. Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.While FDR believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, he also expressed disdain for doling out welfare to otherwise able workers. So, in return for monetary aid, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They restored theaters–such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C.–and built the ski lodge at Oregon’s Mt. Hood. The WPA also put actors, writers and other creative arts professionals back to work by sponsoring federally funded plays, art projects, such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.Opponents of the New Deal in Congress gradually pared back WPA appropriations in the years leading up to World War II. By 1940, the economy was roaring back to life with a surge in defense-industry production and, in 1943, Congress suspended many of the programs under the ERA Act, including the WPA.“|
-History.com
This week in History:
May 3, 1952 First aircraft lands at North Pole
May 4, 1965 Willie Mays breaks National League home run record
May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard becomes first American in space
May 6, 1940 John Steinbeck wins Pulitzer for The Grapes of Wrath
May 7, 1994 Munch’s The Scream recovered after theft
May 8, 1945 V-E Day is celebrated in America and Britain
May 9, 1914 Woodrow Wilson proclaims first Mother’s Day holiday
Thisprint by Paul Kucharyson can be found in the online collection of The Columbus Museum.
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Feb 5, 1919 - United Artists created
“By 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith were all heavyweights in the rapidly growing motion-picture industry. Chaplin was a British actor and former vaudeville performer whose “Little Tramp” persona had made him one of the biggest stars of silent film. Pickford, silent film’s favorite ingenue, and Fairbanks, her leading man on-screen and off, were equally familiar to American audiences, and Griffith’s controversial feature Birth of a Nation (1915) had become Hollywood’s first blockbuster, establishing the director as a pioneer in filmmaking techniques. All four, however, were seeking to gain more financial and artistic control over producing and distributing their films. On February 5, 1919, they joined forces to create their own film studio, which they called the United Artists Corporation.
United Artists quickly gained prestige in Hollywood, thanks to the success of the films of its stars, notably Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), as well as the work of actors such as Buster Keaton, Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. Chaplin directed UA films as well as acted in them, and Pickford concentrated on producing after she retired from acting in the 1930s. With the rise of sound during that decade, UA was helped by the talents (and bankrolls) of veteran producers like Joseph Schenck, Samuel Goldwyn, Howard Hughes and Alexander Korda. The corporation began to struggle financially in the 1940s, however, and in 1951 the production studio was sold and UA became only a financing and distributing facility.
By the mid-1950s, all of the original partners had sold their shares of the company, but UA had begun to thrive again, releasing such films as The African Queen (1951), High Noon (1952), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment and The Magnificent Seven (both 1960) and West Side Story (1961). In addition, the company was responsible for the James Bond and Pink Panther film franchises. UA went public in 1957 and became a subsidiary of the TransAmerica Corporation a decade later.
UA films garnered a slew of Best Picture Academy Awards over the course of the 1970s, for Midnight Cowboy (1969), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Rocky (1976) and Annie Hall (1977). Soon after that, however, five top executives left the company in a disagreement and formed the Warner Brothers-backed Orion Pictures. UA sustained an even more devastating blow in 1980, when it released the big-budget flop Heaven’s Gate, directed by Michael Cimino. Two years in the making and way over budget, the film earned less than $4 million at the U.S. box office. After that debacle, UA struggled throughout the 1980s. In 1981, MGM bought the company, merging with it in 1983 to become MGM/UA Entertainment. In a highlight of those relatively dark years, UA did release another Best Picture winner, Rain Man, in 1988.
In 1992, the French bank Credit Lyonnais acquired the corporation and changed its name back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., abandoning the United Artists name altogether. The James Bond and Pink Panther franchises were revived, with varying degrees of success. MGM changed hands and was reorganized repeatedly over the next decade and a half, during which UA was repositioned as a boutique producer of smaller, so-called “art house” films such as Bowling for Columbine (2002), Hotel Rwanda (2005) and Capote (2006). In November of 2006, MGM gave the actor/producer Tom Cruise (star of Rain Man) and his production partner, Paula Wagner, control over the United Artists production slate, announcing the decision as a “reintroduction” of the UA brand in the spirit of its founders. Cruise and Wagner, whose former deal with Paramount Pictures ended amid reported acrimony earlier in 2006, released their first co-production with UA, Lions for Lambs, in 2007.”
This week in History:
Feb 2, 1887: First Groundhog Day
Feb 3, 1944: U.S. Troops capture the Marshall Islands
Feb 4, 1913: Rosa Parks is borm
Feb 5, 1917: Immigration Act passed over Wilson’s veto
Feb 6, 1952: Elizabeth II becomes queen
Feb 7, 1964: The Beatles arrive in New York
Feb 8, 1862: Battle of Roanoke Island
This negative of the United Artists Theater in Chicago can be found in the online collection of the Theatre Historical Society of America.
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This Week in History:
January 6, 1838 - Samuel Morse demonstrates telegraph
“On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse’s telegraph system is demonstrated for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize long-distance communication, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 1930s.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He attended Yale University, where he was interested in art, as well as electricity, still in its infancy at the time. After college, Morse became a painter. In 1832, while sailing home from Europe, he heard about the newly discovered electromagnet and came up with an idea for an electric telegraph. He had no idea that other inventors were already at work on the concept.
Morse spent the next several years developing a prototype and took on two partners, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, to help him. In 1838, he demonstrated his invention using Morse code, in which dots and dashes represented letters and numbers. In 1843, Morse finally convinced a skeptical Congress to fund the construction of the first telegraph line in the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. In May 1844, Morse sent the first official telegram over the line, with the message: “What hath God wrought!”
Over the next few years, private companies, using Morse’s patent, set up telegraph lines around the Northeast. In 1851, the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded; it would later change its name to Western Union. In 1861, Western Union finished the first transcontinental line across the United States. Five years later, the first successful permanent line across the Atlantic Ocean was constructed and by the end of the century telegraph systems were in place in Africa, Asia and Australia.
Because telegraph companies typically charged by the word, telegrams became known for their succinct prose–whether they contained happy or sad news. The word “stop,” which was free, was used in place of a period, for which there was a charge. In 1933, Western Union introduced singing telegrams. During World War II, Americans came to dread the sight of Western Union couriers because the military used telegrams to inform families about soldiers’ deaths.
Over the course of the 20th century, telegraph messages were largely replaced by cheap long-distance phone service, faxes and email. Western Union delivered its final telegram in January 2006.
Samuel Morse died wealthy and famous in New York City on April 2, 1872, at age 80.”
This week in History:
January 5, 1933 - Construction on Golden Gate Bridge begins
January 6, 1912 - New Mexico joins Union
January 7, 1927 - Harlem Globetrotters play their first game
January 8, 1946 - Elvis Presley receives first guitar
January 9, 1768 - First modern circus is staged
January 10, 1901 - Gusher signals start of U.S. oil industry
January 11, 1908 - Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument
This carte-de-visite of Samuel Morse and his telegraph can be found in the online collection of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.
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November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln Elected President
“Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.
Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and former Whig representative to Congress, first gained national stature during his campaign against Stephen Douglas of Illinois for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858. The senatorial campaign featured a remarkable series of public encounters on the slavery issue, known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Lincoln argued against the spread of slavery, while Douglas maintained that each territory should have the right to decide whether it would become free or slave. Lincoln lost the Senate race, but his campaign brought national attention to the young Republican Party. In 1860, Lincoln won the party’s presidential nomination.
In the November 1860 election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Breckinridge and Bell. The announcement of Lincoln’s victory signaled the secession of the Southern states, which since the beginning of the year had been publicly threatening secession if the Republicans gained the White House.
By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded, and the Confederate States of America had been formally established, with Jefferson Davis as its elected president. One month later, the American Civil War began when Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina. In 1863, as the tide turned against the Confederacy, Lincoln emancipated the slaves and in 1864 won reelection. In April 1865, he was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after the American Civil War effectively ended with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.
For preserving the Union and bringing an end to slavery, and for his unique character and powerful oratory, Lincoln is hailed as one of the greatest American presidents.”
This week in history:
Nov 3, 1948 - Newspaper mistakenly declares Dewey president
Nov 4, 1922 - Entrance to King Tut’s tomb discovered
Nov 5, 1605 - King James learns of gunpowder plot
Nov 6, 1861 - Jefferson Davis elected Confederate president
Nov 7, 1916 - Jeannette Rankin becomes first US Congresswoman
Nov 8, 1895 - German scientist discovers X-rays
Nov 9, 1989 - East Germany opens the Berlin Wall
Thispolitical commemorative ribbon depicting President Lincoln can be found in the online collection of Historic Richmondtown.
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September 4, 1886 - Geronimo surrenders
“On this day in 1886, Apache chief Geronimo surrenders to U.S. government troops. For 30 years, the mighty Native American warrior had battled to protect his tribe’s homeland; however, by 1886 the Apaches were exhausted and hopelessly outnumbered. General Nelson Miles accepted Geronimo’s surrender, making him the last Indian warrior to formally give in to U.S. forces and signaling the end of the Indian Wars in the Southwest.
Geronimo was born in 1829 and grew up in what is present-day Arizona and Mexico. His tribe, the Chiricahua Apaches, clashed with non-Indian settlers trying to take their land. In 1858, Geronimo’s family was murdered by Mexicans. Seeking revenge, he later led raids against Mexican and American settlers. In 1874, the U.S. government moved Geronimo and his people from their land to a reservation in east-central Arizona. Conditions on the reservation were restrictive and harsh and Geronimo and some of his followers escaped. Over the next decade, they battled federal troops and launched raids on white settlements. During this time, Geronimo and his supporters were forced back onto the reservation several times. In May 1885, Geronimo and approximately 150 followers fled one last time. They were pursued into Mexico by 5,000 U.S. troops. In March 1886, General George Crook (1829–90) forced Geronimo to surrender; however, Geronimo quickly escaped and continued his raids. General Nelson Miles (1839–1925) then took over the pursuit of Geronimo, eventually forcing him to surrender that September near Fort Bowie along the Arizona-New Mexico border. Geronimo and a band of Apaches were sent to Florida and then Alabama, eventually ending up at the Comanche and Kiowa reservation near Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory. There, Geronimo became a successful farmer and converted to Christianity. He participated in President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in 1905. The Apache chief dictated his autobiography, published in 1906 as Geronimo’s Story of His Life. He died at Fort Sill on February 17, 1909.”
This week in History:
September 1, 1985 - Wreck of the Titanic found
September 2, 1789 - Congress founds U.S. Treasury
September 3, 1939 - Britain and France declare war on Germany
September 4, 1951 - President Truman makes first transcontinental broadcast
September 5, 1836 - Sam Houston elected President of Texas
September 6, 1522 - Magellan’s expedition circumnavigates globe
September 7, 1776 - World’s first submarine attack
Thisphotograph of Geronimo, can be found in the online collection of the Museum of the Great Plains.
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December 5, 1933: Prohibition ends
“The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. At 5:32 p.m. EST, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the requisite three-fourths majority of states’ approval. Pennsylvania and Ohio had ratified it earlier in the day.
The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began in the early 19th century, when Americans concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming temperance societies. By the late 19th century, these groups had become a powerful political force, campaigning on the state level and calling for national liquor abstinence. Several states outlawed the manufacture or sale of alcohol within their own borders. In December 1917, the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. On January 29, 1919, the 18th Amendment achieved the necessary three-fourths majority of state ratification. Prohibition essentially began in June of that year, but the amendment did not officially take effect until January 29, 1920.
In the meantime, Congress passed the Volstead Act on October 28, 1919, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of Prohibition, including the creation of a special Prohibition unit of the Treasury Department. In its first six months, the unit destroyed thousands of illicit stills run by bootleggers. However, federal agents and police did little more than slow the flow of booze, and organized crime flourished in America. Large-scale bootleggers like Al Capone of Chicago built criminal empires out of illegal distribution efforts, and federal and state governments lost billions in tax revenue. In most urban areas, the individual consumption of alcohol was largely tolerated and drinkers gathered at “speakeasies,” the Prohibition-era term for saloons.
Prohibition, failing fully to enforce sobriety and costing billions, rapidly lost popular support in the early 1930s. In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified, ending national Prohibition. After the repeal of the 18th Amendment, some states continued Prohibition by maintaining statewide temperance laws. Mississippi, the last dry state in the Union, ended Prohibition in 1966.”
This week in History:
December 2, 1823: Monroe Doctrine declared
December 3, 1818: Illinois becomes 21st state
December 4, 1783: Washington bids farewell to his officers
December 5, 1776: Phi Beta Kappa founded
December 6, 1865: 13th Amendment ratified
December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor bombed
December 8, 1980: John Lennon shot
Thisphotographof students celebrating the legalization of 3.2 percent beer in April 1933, foreshadowing the end of Prohibition, can be found in the online collection of the Hoboken Historical Museum.
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November 7, 1916 - Jeannette Rankin becomes first U.S. congresswoman
On this day in 1916, Montana suffragist Jeannette Rankin is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the first woman in the history of the nation to win a seat in the federal Congress.
Born and raised on a ranch near Missoula, Montana, Rankin was the daughter of progressive parents who encouraged her to think beyond the narrow sphere of opportunities generally permitted to women of the early 20th century. After graduating from the University of Montana and the New York School of Philanthropy, Rankin worked briefly as a social worker before becoming active in the national effort to win women the vote. In 1914, her efforts brought her back to Montana, where she believed pioneer conditions had created greater respect for women’s work and abilities, making it somewhat easier to convince men to grant them the right to vote. Indeed, other western states like Wyoming and Colorado had already approved women’s suffrage years before, and Rankin’s leadership helped Montana join them in 1914.
With the vote for women secured, Rankin put Montana’s new political dynamics to the test. She ran for one of Montana’s two seats in Congress as a Progressive Republican in 1916. With strong support from women and men alike, Rankin became the first woman in history elected to that body. When she traveled to Washington, D.C., the next year, the eyes of the nation watched to see if a woman could handle the responsibilities of high office. Rankin soon proved she could, but she also demonstrated that she would not betray her own strongly held convictions for political expediency. A dedicated pacifist, Rankin’s first vote as a U.S. congresswoman was against U.S. entry into World War I. Many supported her courageous stand, though others claimed her vote showed that women were incapable of shouldering the difficult burdens of national leadership—despite the fact that 55 men had also voted against the war.
Rankin’s vote against WWI contributed to her defeat in her 1918 reelection bid. For the next 20 years, she continued to work for the cause of peace. Ironically, she again won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1940, just as the nation was about to enter World War II. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Rankin became the only person in the history of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both world wars. This time, though, the principled pacifist from Montana cast the sole dissenting vote.
This Week in History:
November 4, 1842 - Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd
November 5, 1912 - Woodrow Wilson wins landslide victory
November 6, 1861 - Jefferson Davis elected Confederate president
November 7, 1885 - Canada’s transcontinental railway completed
November 8, 1895 - German scientist discovers X-rays
November 9, 1989 - East Germany opens the Berlin Wall
November 10, 1903 - Mary Anderson patents windshield wiper
Thispolitical cartoon by Nina Allender depicting Jeannette Rankin can be found in the online collection of the National Woman’s Party.
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October 03, 1862 - The Battle of Corinth
“On this day in 1862, Confederates under General Earl Van Dorn attempt to recapture Corinth, a vital rail center in Mississippi. However, the following day, the Second Battle of Corinth ended in defeat for the Rebels.
Northern Mississippi was the scene of much maneuvering during the summer of 1862. The Confederates were forced to evacuate Corinth in May in the face of heavy Union pressure, but they maintained two armies in the area. On September 19, one of these armies, commanded by Van Dorn, was defeated by Union General William Rosecrans at the Battle of Iuka, 20 miles east of Corinth. Shortly after, Van Dorn combined his force with that of General Sterling Price to form a 22,000-man army that turned toward Corinth to launch another attack against Rosecrans, who had consolidated his forces there.
Van Dorn hurled his army at the outer defenses of Corinth on the morning of October 3. Over the course of the spring and summer, both Union and Confederate occupiers of Corinth had constructed concentric rings of trenches around the city. The Confederates were initially successful at capturing the outer defenses, driving the 23,000 defenders back nearly two miles. The battle lasted all day, and only nightfall brought relief to the battered Yankees.
The next day, the Confederates made a series of desperate assaults on the inner trenches. They suffered heavy losses and began to withdraw from Corinth by early afternoon. The Confederate defeat was devastating. The Union losses included 315 dead, 1,812 wounded, and 232 taken as prisoners, while the Confederate losses included 1,423 dead, 5,692 wounded, and 2,268 prisoners. The Confederate defeat at Corinth allowed the Union to focus attention on capturing Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last major Rebel stronghold on the Mississippi River.”
This week in History:
September 30, 1918 - President Woodrow Wilson speaks in favor of female suffrage
October 1, 1962 - Johnny Carson makes debut as Tonight Show host
October 2, 1836 - Darwin returns to England
October 3, 1863 - Lincoln proclaims official Thanksgiving holiday
October 4, 1777 - Battle of Germantown
October 5, 1947 - First presidential speech on TV
October 6, 1683 - First Mennonites arrive in America
Thiskepi, found on the battleground of the Battle of Corinth, can be found in online collection of the American Civil War Museum.
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