Couch potatoes can trace their roots to this date in 1928, when three experimental television sets were installed in private homes in Schenectady, New York. Not that there was much to see, the test broadcast by General Electric and RCA being of a woman smoking, followed by a man playing a ukulele. The first home receivers’ screens were only 1½ inches square; a far cry from today’s theater-sized flat screens. And in another departure from 1928’s lonely three, the percentage of U.S. households with TV sets now has held steady for many years at over 98 percent, and of course, many households have multiple sets. Even with heavy foreign competition, U.S. manufacturers ship close to $1.2 billion worth of TV sets annually. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.
Sunday, January 12th. Near this date in 49 B.C., Julius Caesar, leading the 13th Roman legion, crossed the Rubicon, a minor river in northeastern Italy, marking a boundary south of which a Roman general could not bring his troops. Crossing the Rubicon, which has since come to mean passing a point of no return, precipitated a civil war. Caesar triumphed, effectively ending the Roman republic and launching imperial Rome. Many generations later, the descendants of the Romans crossed a more formidable water barrier: the Atlantic Ocean. In 1832, three Italians were recorded as immigrants to the U.S.; in 1914, immigration from Italy peaked at over 283,000. Today there are nearly 17 and a half million Americans of Italian ancestry, around 5½ percent of the population. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>
Saturday, January 11th. This date in 1973 was a day that lives in infamy, at least among some self-described baseball purists. The American League approved a three-year experiment with replacing pitchers in the batting order with a designated hitter. The rule change stuck and is the most visible distinction between the two major leagues. The first DH to come to the plate was the New York Yankees’ Ron Blomberg on April 6, 1973. The result of this epochal at-bat? He walked. With the Houston Astros having moved to the American League last year, there are be up to 15 designated hitter jobs in the U.S., a tiny, one-in-10 million specialty among the nearly 156 million people 16 and older in the labor force. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.