325 - 1st Christian ecumenical council opens at Nicaea, Asia Minor 1310 - Shoes were made for both right & left feet 1506 - Christopher Columbus, explorer dies in poverty in Spain at 55 1639 - Dorchester Mass, forms 1st school funded by local taxes 1830 - 1st railroad timetable published in newspaper 1830 - D Hyde patents fountain pen 1861 - Kentucky proclaims its neutrality in Civil War 1861 - North Carolina becomes 11th & last state to secede from Union 1873 - Levi Strauss & Jacob Davis patent 1st blue jeans 1875 - International Bureau of Weights & Measures forms by treaty 1891 - The first public display of Thomas Edisons prototype kinetoscope. 1892 - George Sampson patents clothes dryer 1895 - 1st commercial movie performance (153 Broadway, NYC) 1902 - US military occupation of Cuba (since Jan 1, 1899) ends 1916 - Saturday Evening Post cover features Norman Rockwell painting 1918 - 1st electrically propelled warship (New Mexico) 1927 - Pilot Charles Lindbergh takes off from NY to cross Atlantic for Paris 1932 - Amelia Earhart 1st woman to fly solo across Atlantic 1940 - Igor Sikorsky unveils his helicopter invention 1942 - US Navy 1st permitted black recruits to serve 1956 - United States drops hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll 1959 - Japanese-Americans regain their citizenship 1971 - Pentagon reports blacks constitute 11% of US soldiers in SE Asia 1979 - 1st western pop star to tour USSR-Elton John 1980 - 710 families in Love Canal area (Niagara Falls NY) are evacuated 1985 - FBI arrests John A Walker Jr, convicted of spying for USSR 1985 - US began broadcasts to Cuba on Radio Marti 1990 - Hubble Space Telescope sends 1st photographs from space 1991 - Soviet parliament approves law allowing citizens to travel abroad 1992 - India launches its 1st satellite independently 1995 - Pennsylvania Ave in front of the White House closed to traffic
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 14:25:55 +0000