Official "This Day In History" thread

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 11

In 1888, the Blizzard of '88, also known as the "Great White Hurricane," began inundating the northeastern United States, resulting in some 400 deaths.

In 1918, what are believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kan.; 46 would die. (The worldwide outbreak of influenza claimed an estimated 20 to 40 million lives.)

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.

In 1954, the U.S. Army charged that Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., and his subcommittee's chief counsel, Roy Cohn, had exerted pressure to obtain favored treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former consultant to the subcommittee. (The confrontation culminated in the famous Senate Army-McCarthy hearings.)

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 12

In 1923, inventor Lee De Forest publicly demonstrated his sound-on-movie-film system, called "Phonofilm," in New York.

In 1925, Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing.

In 1938, the Anschluss merging Austria with Nazi Germany took place as German forces crossed the border between the two countries.

In 1971, Hafez Assad was confirmed as president of Syria in a referendum.

In 1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.)

In 2009, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history.

[Uncwilly]

Thank you wikipediabot.

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 13

In 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21.)

In 1954, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attacked French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.

In 1964, bar manager Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death near her Queens, N.Y., home; the case gained notoriety over the supposed reluctance of Genovese's neighbors to respond to her cries for help.

In 2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis; he was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

[Uncwilly]

Thank you wikipediabot.

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 14

Happy pi day!

From "On this day..."

In 1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.

A few comments, gleaned from sources anyone with a web browser can find:

The invention of the cotton gin greatly facilitated the separation of seeds from cotton fiber in picked cotton of the type grown in the US, speeding up the process by a factor of 50.

Since the cotton gin greatly promoted the production of cotton, which at the time was picked in the US by slave labor, it played a role in the continuation of slavery, which the founding fathers, not having anticipated this invention, envisioned as fading away.

Ironically, Whitney did not profit much from this invention. Industrial espionage soon disclosed the design, and others began making the cotton gin, unencumbered by licenses or royalties. Damages from patent infringement were not easy to collect.

Whitney, however, did well by securing a government contract in 1798 to make 10,000 muskets within 2 years, in anticipation of going to war with France.

He used the idea, already extant, of interchangeable parts. When he had failed to produce any muskets by the beginning of 1801, he was summoned to Washington to explain himself.

He put on a demonstration in which he assembled a number of muskets from parts selected, apparently randomly, from stockpiles of individual parts. The randomness was, be it noted, only apparent -- Whitney cheated by marking the parts, since they weren't actually interchangeable. Apparently his manufacturing still wasn't precise enough to make them so.

However, his demonstration got him renewed federal money. He finally delivered the last of his promised guns eight years late, but they were of good quality. He got another contract to make 15,000 more muskets.

The use of interchangeable parts in manufacturing has probably had a greater effect than the cotton gin.

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 16

In 1926, rocket science pioneer Robert H. Goddard successfully tested the first liquid-fueled rocket at his Aunt Effie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts.

This may be viewed as the beginning of modern rocketry.

The New York Times (in)famously published an editorial ridiculing Goddard's proposal to use rockets to propel vehicles through space. It seems that Mother Nature was not impressed by the editorial.

Goddard's rockets, though they came first, are not direct predecessors of those that came after. Goddard was very secretive about his work. He didn't publish his achievement with a liquid-fueled rocket until years later. I has been argued that, as a result, Goddard's work, though pioneering, had little actual impact on the development of rocketry.

Depends on what you mean by "impact." In this article for instance, we find

Though experts and peers determined that Goddard’s patents were not a direct influence on Wernher von Braun and the development of the V-2 rocket, von Braun later testified, "Goddard’s experiments in liquid fuel saved us years of work, and enabled us to perfect the V-2 years before it would have been possible."

I also recall having read about Robert Goddard in grade school. The story began by describing what happened when Americans were interrogating captured Nazi rocket workers about who had thought all this stuff up. One of them said something like, "Don't you know about your own man Goddard? He was launching rockets in the 1920's!"

[Dr Sardonicus]

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

On this day...

In 1776, the Siege of Boston ended as British forces evacuated the city.

Since 1901, March 17 is officially celebrated in Boston as Evacuation Day.

The siege began in earnest after the "Battle of Bunker Hill" (actually fought mainly on on Breed's hill, where the colonials had built fortifications). On June 17, 1775, the British took the hill after three frontal assaults, and the colonials defending the position ran out of ammunition. The British suffered major casualties. They took Breed's Hill, Bunker Hill, and the whole Charleston Peninsula, but didn't gain much with regard to the siege.

This battle also had the significance that it prompted King George III formally to declare the colonies to be in rebellion.

The colonials fortified Dorchester Heights before the British could occupy them. They brought in cannons taken from the British at Fort Ticonderoga, deployed them around Boston, and began bombarding the British on March 2. When the colonials readied cannon in Dorchester Heights on March 4, British General William Howe realized his position was indefensible.

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 18

On this day...

In 1925, the Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, resulting in some 700 deaths.

This tornado was over a mile wide at times, and moved along the ground at 60 MPH or more. It jumped two major rivers -- the Mississippi and the Wabash. It was on the ground for over three hours. Its track was well over 200 miles long. The Fujita scale had not been devised yet, but this tornado is generally regarded to have been an F5. It is, by far, the deadliest tornado in US history. Most of the damage and fatalities occurred in Illinois.

More may be found here.

[Dr Sardonicus]

March 19

On this day...

In 1918, Congress passed the first law establishing daylight saving time in the United States, with clocks to be moved forward one hour from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. (This law was repealed in August 1919.)

For more on the history of DST (AKA "summer time," AKA "an abomination," AKA "an invention of the devil") see Daylight saving time.

Port Arthur, Ontario was the first city in the world to enact DST on July 1, 1908. This was followed by Orillia, Ontario, introduced by William Sword Frost while mayor from 1911 to 1912. The first states to adopt DST (German: Sommerzeit) nationally were those of the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary commencing April 30, 1916 as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year, and the United States adopted daylight saving in 1918. Most jurisdictions abandoned daylight saving time in the years after the war ended in 1918, with exceptions including Canada, the UK, France, Ireland, and the United States. However, many places [vague] adopted it for periods of time during the following decades, and it became common during World War II. It became widely adopted in America and Europe starting in the 1970s as a result of the 1970s energy crisis. Since then, the world has seen many enactments, adjustments, and repeals. For specific details, see Daylight saving time by country.

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

For more on the history of DST (AKA "summer time," AKA "an abomination," AKA "an invention of the devil") see Daylight saving time.

Saskatchewan, however, observes Central Time even though it is located in the Mountain Time Zone, meaning it effectively observes DST year round.