This date marks the anniversary in 1635 of the idea of America’s first public school — the Boston Latin School — long before there was a United States. Established in April that year, among its later students were Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams. And this month in 1897, Phoebe Hearst and Alice Birney founded what is today known as the Parent Teacher Association, or PTA. Originally called the National Congress of Mothers, the organization now encourages both mothers and fathers to take part in school activities to improve the quality of their children’s education. Today, there are nearly 50 million youngsters enrolled in elementary through high school, with an additional 8.8 million attending nursery school or kindergarten. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.
Saturday, February 14th. While today may not be an official holiday, Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular in the year’s calendar. Its origins are a mix of legends involving two Christian martyrs, a Roman fertility rite, and the old notion that this is the time of year when the birds choose their mates. What is sure is that Esther Howland of Massachusetts began selling the first mass-produced valentines in the 1840s. The observance also falls in the middle of National Weddings Month. There are 2.1 million weddings annually in the U.S. — that’s about 5,800 per day. Almost 53 percent of the population over age 15 is currently married. Some 19 men out of 1,000 get married each year; for women, the rate is over 17½ per thousand. Wyoming leads the nation in marriage rate for both sexes. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.
Sunday, February 15th. For many Americans nowadays, it’s hard to conceive of life without computers. But such a life is within the living memory of America’s seniors. The first electronic computer was publicly demonstrated on Valentine’s Day 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania, and America came to love its descendants. Inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly developed the computer to help calculate the proper ballistic trajectory for artillery shells. It filled a large room with 18,000 vacuum tubes and the resulting heat. Eckert and Mauchly went on to develop the first commercial computer — UNIVAC I — used to process the 1950 Census. Today, the U.S is one of the most computerized nations in the world. Nearly 84 percent of America’s 116 million households have a computer, and some 74 percent access the Internet. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.