Although the numbers have fallen sharply in the last few decades, still some people in the U.S. succumb to diseases that could have been prevented by immunization. Others experience pain, suffering and disability. That’s why this is National Immunization Awareness Month — highlighting the importance of vaccinations to a long and healthy life. The process of vaccination was known even in ancient cultures. Its most spectacular success came in the eradication of smallpox, a scourge of humanity for thousands of …
Category: Open Lines
Tuesday Open Line
A patent awarded on this date in 1903 literally affected the shape of things to come. Specifically, the shape of glass things to come. Michael Owens of Toledo, Ohio, patented a machine that could automatically manufacture glass bottles, producing four per second. The invention standardized and expanded the glass industry. It also enabled tremendous growth in the soft drink and beer industries, making available a less expensive way of packaging their products. Owens’ later machines were developed to quickly turn …
Monday Open Line
Supermarkets carry dozens of brands in their cereal aisles, from the sugary and candy-like to high-fiber organic products. One of them has been available for over 120 years, an early entrant in the cereal business. On this date in 1893, Denver restaurant owner Henry Perky received a patent for a “Machine for the Preparation of Cereals for Food.” That food was shredded wheat. By 1901, he had set up an ultra-modern plant at Niagara Falls called “the Palace of Light” …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, July 29th. The nation’s love affair with automobiles is generations old. Our devotion can be traced down through the decades by looking at advertising, as cars progressed from romantic if noisy new playthings to a near necessity in our vast country. The first known national ad promoting a car appeared at the end of July 1898 in the Scientific American magazine. It was for the now forgotten Winton Motor Carriage with the headline “dispense with a horse.” Americans did …
Thursday Open Line
The home front during World War II had to cope with some irritating impositions, notably gas rationing and a lack of new cars and tires. But what for many was a real crisis was coffee rationing. Decreed in 1942 because of hoarding and supply concerns, it proved very unpopular. President Roosevelt ended the rationing on this date in 1943 because imports had rebounded. Coffee may have been an early import by the Jamestown colony in the 17th century. Coffee consumption …
Wednesday Open Line
The past few decades have seen ever more frequent public opinion polls, whether from the traditional Gallup and Harris firms, to those commissioned by newspapers or political campaigns. The first such poll in U.S. history appeared this month in 1824 in the Harrisburg Pennsylvanian, finding that Andrew Jackson was favored over John Quincy Adams in the four-man presidential race. But most favored “none of the above,” as that contest recorded the lowest participation rate in our history–under 27 percent. Although …
Tuesday Open Line
On this date 26 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act became law. First introduced in Congress in 1988, the goal of the legislation was to guarantee equal opportunity for people with disabilities in public and commercial facilities, employment, transportation, and services at all levels of government. Nearly 57 million Americans — or about 19 percent of the population — have at least one disability. Some 12 million over the age of 15 need assistance with one or more activities …
Monday Open Line
On July 24, 1894, Kenneth Royall, the last United States Secretary of War and the first Secretary of the Army, was born in Goldsboro. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1917, Royall joined the Army. He served in France from August 1918 until he was wounded in February 1919. At that time, Royall returned to Goldsboro and began practicing law. In June 1942, he retired from his legal practice, by then headquartered in both Goldsboro and Raleigh, in order …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, July 22nd. It’s time to pass the mixed carrots, or maybe the pear zucchini corn. Fremont, Michigan is celebrating the 25th annual National Baby Food Festival, which began Wednesday and ends tomorrow. The town of 4,000 is home to the Gerber Baby Food Company, and is welcoming thousands of visitors to enjoy entertainment as well as baby food eating contests by adults and a baby crawl race. Today in the U.S., there are around 4 million babies being cradled …
Thursday Open Line
A substantial and recurring feature of national media reporting — on TV, in newspapers and on the web — is devoted to nutrition and health. There, doctors and public health officials express concerns about obesity, diabetes, and the quality of the diet of many Americans. However, junk food shows little sign of waning in popularity. So with unrepentant advocacy, today is National Junk Food Day. It celebrates the naughty temptations on offer, notably at the nearly quarter-million fast food outlets …
Tuesday Open Line
The first 18-hole golf course in the U.S. opened this week in 1893 in Downer’s Grove, Illinois. Laid out by Charles MacDonald of the Chicago Golf Club, the course was an expansion of an existing 9-hole facility. The Chicago Golf Club soon moved to a new course in nearby Wheaton, and the Downer’s Grove course has since reverted to 9 holes. The sport arrived on these shores from Scotland, and there is evidence of golfing in the late 18th Century …
Monday Open Line
On this date 61 years ago in West Milton, New York, a species of turning swords into plowshares was created. That was when the Atomic Energy Commission sold electric power from a General Electric nuclear reactor. The buyer was the Niagara-Mohawk Power Corporation, purchasing the power for civilian distribution. Some 10,000 kilowatts were supplied from the reactor, which was a prototype for the one used in the nuclear submarine USS Seawolf. Last year, nearly 800 million kilowatt-hours were generated at …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, July 15th. Motorists in Oklahoma City were confronted with America’s first parking meter this month in 1935. It was located on the corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue, and while local drivers could avoid that single space, they couldn’t escape for long. That meter was just the first of many to sprout up in Oklahoma City and across the nation, as millions of ticketed motorists will attest. While municipalities sought to rotate street parking spots among more drivers, …
Thursday Open Line
Income taxes first came to America 154 years ago this month, when President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill levying a 3 percent tax on incomes between $600 and $10,000, and 5 percent for greater incomes. The tax was rescinded in 1872. The income tax all of us know today dates to 1913, when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. About 147 million individual income tax returns are submitted annually, reporting tax revenues totaling over $1.6 trillion. There are …
Wednesday Open Line
One of the most important inventions of our time was announced in early July 1948 in a press release by Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. It was the transfer resistance device — far better known as the transistor. The small, simple, and tough transistor replaced fragile and heat-generating vacuum tubes, which had been the heart of electronics for decades. The discovery led to the development of the integrated circuit and the microprocessor that are the basis of modern electronics. Today, …
Tuesday Open Line
A stirring but controversial period of American history ended, semiofficially, on this date in 1893. That’s when University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered a landmark academic paper in Chicago. Based on 1890 Census data, Turner declared that the closing of the American frontier ended the formative national experience. Turner said that migration from the East, the building of railroads and hundreds of new towns had combined to forge a single transcontinental nation. Even 123 years on, the West …
Monday Open Line
The distant reaches of planet Earth came into electronic proximity for the average American on this date in 1962. The occasion was the successful relay of a transatlantic TV signal by Telstar, the first privately owned satellite launched the day before. While a major communications advance and a sensation of the day, Telstar did not last long. It failed in December, was restored briefly, and then went dead in February 1963. Today, dozens of communications satellites allow television signals, telephone …
Friday / Weekend Open Lines
Friday, July 8th. This week in 1898, the U.S. began absorbing an island paradise en route to making it a treasured part of the nation. President William McKinley signed a resolution annexing the Hawaiian islands, then an independent republic. A short time later, Congress made Hawaii an incorporated territory of the U.S., which it remained until achieving statehood in 1959. For most Americans on the mainland, Hawaii is the ultimate vacation, with its lovely scenery and an average annual temperature …
Thursday Open Line
When something is proclaimed the best thing since sliced bread, that praise doesn’t encompass as much time as one might think. Sliced bread, wrapped for sale in wax paper, first appeared on store shelves on this date in 1928 in Chillicothe, Missouri. The Chillicothe Baking Company’s innovation of uniform, pre-sliced bread loaves remained local for a short while. By the 1930s, the obvious convenience of satisfactory sliced bread spread the practice nationally. In large part, this was due to the …