Friday / Weekend Open Lines

This date in 1961 saw the launch of the ill-fated invasion of Cuba by some 1,400 U.S. trained exiles. The attempt to overthrow the Fidel Castro dictatorship was crushed at the Bay of Pigs. A reverse amphibious operation began this month in 1980, when what’s known as the Mariel boatlift began. Castro had announced that any citizens wishing to leave the island could do so. Voluntary exiles embarked in the port town of Mariel, just west of Havana. Some 125,000 Cubans crossed the Florida straits in about 5,000 small boats, mostly coming ashore in Key West. The boatlift lasted until late September, when Castro closed the port to any more emigrants. Of the 54 million Hispanics in the U.S., more than 2 million — over 3½ percent — are of Cuban heritage. Profile America is completing its 18^th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Saturday, April 18th. For urban dwellers, the difficulty — or at least the expense — of doing their laundry began to ease on this date in 1934 when the first public, self-operated laundry in the U.S. opened its doors in Fort Worth, Texas. The first name was “Washateria,” eventually replaced with the now familiar “Laundromat.” Early facilities were not necessarily coin-operated, and there was always an attendant on duty. The automatic washing machine came along in 1937, and by the late 1940s, the first unattended, 24-hour Laundromats were opened. Now, there are just under 11,000 dry cleaners and coin-operated laundromats across the country.  Employing 39,000 people, they do $3.5 billion of grime-fighting business annually. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at <www.census.gov>.

Sunday, April 19th. The first all-news radio format in the U.S. debuted on this date in 1965, as WINS-AM in New York City switched from rock and roll to rip and read. Almost 20 years earlier, the station had notched another first by broadcasting every New York Yankees game live, both home and away. The station shut off the music — its last record was the Shangri-La’s “Out in the Streets” — and became “all news, all the time.” The format has been successfully replicated in cities around the country. Today in the U.S., there are over 15,000 radio stations, employing over 90,000 people, with annual industry revenues of around $13 billion. You can find more statistics on communities across the country by downloading the Census Bureau’s “dwellr” mobile application at <www.census.gov/mobile>.