Category: Open Lines

Friday, November 20th. One of the most renowned of America’s historically black colleges was founded on this date in 1866 as the Howard Theological Seminary. Named after Civil War general and post-war Freedmen’s Bureau Director Oliver O. Howard, the seminary changed its name to Howard University just two months after its founding. While not the first college to admit black students, nor the first to be established for blacks, Howard was the first to offer full undergraduate, graduate and professional …

The first automatic toll collection station went into service on this date in 1954. It was installed at the Union Toll Plaza on New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway. Motorists dropped coins into a wire mesh hopper, triggering a green light that told them to go ahead. The idea soon caught on at toll roads around the country, reducing the number of booth attendants and propelling cars and trucks on their way. There are some 3,300 miles of toll roads in …

We still use the word “dial” to refer to the act of calling someone on the phone — even though a great many of us have never used a rotary phone or seen one, except in old movies and TV shows. Push-button, or touch-tone, phones made their debut on this date in 1963. At the time, the service was an extra cost option and was available only in two cities in Pennsylvania. It didn’t take long, however, for the speed …

The United States Congress met for the first time in the District of Columbia on this date in 1800. Up until then, it did its squabbling, vituperating and, most importantly, legislating in Philadelphia. Ever since President George Washington laid the cornerstone for the Capitol in 1793, the District had been planned as the permanent home for the U.S. government. By 1800, enough of the Capitol had been completed for the members of the Sixth Congress to move in. One senator …

This month in 1883, the ancestor of today’s familiar U.S. time zones first appeared at the initiative of the American Railway Association. A schoolteacher named Charles Dowd is credited with first proposing the notion of time zones as early as 1863 in order to rationalize railroad timetables, there being 80 time standards then in use by localities. There was wide but incomplete acceptance of the railway association’s zones, and the adjusted zones were not made law until 1918. In 1884, …

Friday, November 13th. This month 111 years ago, Connecticut inventor Harvey Hubbell moved household electricity from shock it to socket. In November 1904, he received a patent for the world’s first detachable electric plug: the two-, now sometimes three-prong plug familiar to us today. Remarkable as it sounds, at the time electric terminals would extend out from a wall, and any electrical device had to be hardwired to them–a time consuming process with a chance of electrocution. Hubbell was no …

November is National Family Caregivers Month, honoring the great number of relatives, friends and neighbors involved in caring for those Americans needing assistance in the home. The nonprofessional caregivers render an important and devoted service, not just to the recipients, but society. In an aging nation, volunteer caregiving lessens the strain on the country’s medical system and provides an estimated $375 billion worth of service annually. Up to 30 percent of American adults are involved in some level of caregiving …

Today is Veterans Day. It originated on this date in 1919 to commemorate the first anniversary of the end of combat in World War I. Known as Armistice Day, the occasion kept its name and focus until 1954, when it was changed to Veterans Day, and its scope widened to honor veterans from all eras. Across the country, there are almost 20 million military veterans. Very nearly half — 9.3 million — are age 65 and older. The veteran population …

Public education in the U.S. traces its birth to very early in the Colonial era. On this date in 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Colony authorities ordered that every township with 50 or more householders assign at least one person to teach children to read and write. The teachers would be paid by the children’s parents or the general village population. Towns of 100 or more householders were required to establish schools with headmasters and instruction to prepare children for still …

At 5:16 pm Eastern time on this date 50 years ago, about 30 minutes after sundown, a fast-moving ripple of deeper darkness spread over much of the northeastern United States and a part of Canada. A misset relay in an Ontario power station began a cascade of power grid overloads and disconnects across 80,000 square miles of the U.S. and Canada. Some 30 million people, including New York City’s roughly 7.8 million, were affected for up to 14 hours. Each …

Friday, November 6th. This is National American Indian Heritage Month, conceived almost a century ago but made official by a congressional resolution signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. The American Community Survey finds 5.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives in the U.S., about 2 percent of the total population. By the year 2060, that percentage is projected to grow to 2.7 percent, or some 11 million people. California is home to the greatest number of these groups …

Much as been heard in recent years about national education policy, with an emphasis on encouraging more science, technology, engineering and math — or STEM — students. As far as engineering goes, the trail was broken on this date in 1824 with the founding of the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York. Now known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, it was the nation’s first engineering school. Its first 10 students graduated with engineering degrees in 1826. In the years since, engineering …

November is designated every year as National Diabetes Month. The goal is to make the public more aware of the serious nature of the disease, and how to detect and control it. When our bodies are unable to maintain a normal blood sugar level, many complications may follow, including kidney failure. The disease is also the leading cause of new cases of blindness. Diabetes in the U.S. is on the rise, and some public health experts even refer to it …

Today is Cliché Day — any way you slice it, a minor and obscure occasion. While the ostensible purpose is to encourage our verbal banalities, it might also be stretched to stereotypes. Such as the cliché that men in particular are enchanted by sandwiches. If true, then today has double meaning, as it’s National Sandwich Day. This date was chosen in honor of the birthday in 1718 of John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, and the purported inventor of …

Even with all of our electronic diversions, many of us listen to radio at some point every day. The wide variety of formats means we can choose our favorite type of music, and radio keeps us up to the minute on news and weather. The presidential election held on this date 95 years ago was the occasion of the first commercial radio broadcast. Station KDKA in Pittsburgh carried the results, in which Warren G. Harding defeated the ticket of James …

Friday, October 30th. A technological breakthrough that has led to remarkable changes in American and global society occurred 46 years ago today … or yesterday, depending on your point of reference. While Americans in the Eastern and Central time zones entered October 30, 1969, it was around 10:30 p.m. Pacific time on October 29 that the first connection was made on what would become the Internet. The first two computers linked were at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute — …

“Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.” That anonymous quotation overlooks the condition of plenty of Americans, who still venerate cats. For such folks, and also the former deities, today is National Cat Day. For the less observant, there’s always the Internet, which cats seem to dominate. There are about 74 million such honored animals in the U.S., slightly outnumbering dogs, their supposed rivals. Tributes to domestic cats are made through some of …

One of the nation’s enduring symbols, the Statue of Liberty, was dedicated on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor on this date in 1886. A gift from France, the statue’s full name is “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and is the work of sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. France also was the country of origin of a bit under 12,000 of the 334,000 immigrants arriving that year. The statue was the first glimpse of America for more than 20 million immigrants who …

The scene this week in 1945 at Gimbel’s department store in New York City was shopping chaos. Big ads in the city papers had heralded the first sale in the U.S. of a new writing instrument. One that was guaranteed to write for two years without refilling — the ballpoint pen. By the end of the day, the store had sold its entire stock of 10,000 at $12.50 each. The idea of the ballpoint pen was first patented in 1888 …

Doing laundry was a wearying, time-consuming chore for many centuries. The industrial revolution and American inventiveness attacked the ancient chore on this date in 1858, when Hamilton Smith patented a rotary washing machine. It was hand-driven, with a crank turning a perforated shell within a wooden tub. This was scarcely a labor saving invention. People continued to use the tub and washboard, even after the first electric washer came along in 1908. A few years later, the agitator-type machine appeared …