Category: Open Lines

This is National Nurses Week. Yesterday’s National Nurses Day began a week honoring the outstanding efforts of nurses in helping to keep Americans healthy. The observance ends next Monday, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, who established the world’s first nursing school in England in the 19th century. In the U.S., there were some 12,000 registered nurses by 1900. Today, that figure is over 2.6 million, with median annual earnings of about $62,000. As their numbers have grown, so have nurses’ …

What is perhaps the nation’s foremost professional organization, the American Medical Association, was founded on this date in 1847 in Philadelphia. Two hundred fifty delegates from 28 states attended the founding meeting, which adopted the first code of medical ethics, and established the first nationwide standards for preliminary medical education and the degree of MD. At the time, there were some 50,000 medical doctors in the U.S. Today, there are nearly 700,000. Physicians and surgeons have median annual earnings of …

In Spanish, today’s date is Cinco de Mayo, and celebrations will be held in many cities across the U.S., as well as Mexico. These events mark the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when outnumbered Mexican troops defeated the invading French forces of Napoleon III. Over the years, the celebration has evolved from one of military victory to a colorful and vibrant event, celebrating Mexican culture. Appropriately, this is also National Salsa Month. There are over 34 million …

One of major league baseball’s most dramatic and poignant moments occurred on this date in 1938. That was when the New York Yankees’ famously durable first baseman Lou Gehrig removed himself from the lineup, breaking his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played; a record which would stand until 1995, and hasn’t otherwise been approached. Gehrig never played again, and was shortly diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a wasting, usually fatal disease, which in fact took his life in another two …

Construction began on this date in 1884 in Chicago for a radical new building design — destined to be America’s first skyscraper. It was the Home Insurance Company headquarters, designed by engineer William Jenney. For many centuries, thick outer walls supported multi-story buildings, limiting the height that could be safely or usefully attained. Jenney’s building used a metal frame for support, like a skeleton. The exterior walls were attached to the frame, and so these so-called curtain walls weren’t load …

This is the anniversary of the one of the greatest real estate deals in history — one that doubled the size of the U.S. and put the nation in position to become a world power. The year was 1803, and the deal was the Louisiana Purchase. The young U.S. under President Thomas Jefferson bought nearly 830,000 square miles from France at the cost of four cents an acre. The land stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and …

Health insurance and its affordability has been a topic of political contention mostly in the past two decades, but the social need was recognized much earlier. On this date in 1942, Rhode Island became the first state to set up a health or temporary disability insurance program for its working citizens unemployed because of sickness. The covered workers — not the employers — funded the program with a 1 percent tax on wages of less than $3,000 a year. Today, …

Today marks the completion of the first full century of an invention many — if not most — of us use every day without a second thought. In April 1913, Hoboken, New Jersey resident Gideon Sundbach patented the zipper. He called his invention the “hookless fastener.” Improved and patented again in 1917 as the “separable fastener,” for many years the invention was used mainly on rubber boots. Such was the use by the B.F. Goodrich Company, which gave the fastener …

Many automobile license plates proclaim glories of the issuing states; others spell out something dear to the drivers but indecipherable to anyone else. Those plates and the basic ones handed out by motor vehicle departments are requirements to drive on public roads. New York was the first state to require license plates on motor vehicles on this date in 1901. At the time, there were just under 15,000 sputtering automobiles in the entire country, traveling over muddy, rudimentary roads without …

Early America certainly was a simpler society than that which we have today, but some of today’s familiar institutions were part of the national experience over 200 years ago. On this date in 1795, the city of Baltimore set up a permanent, elected board of health, successor to the nation’s first such appointed agency. The first board was created by Maryland’s governor to cope with yellow fever epidemics beginning in 1792. At one point, the city of Baltimore quarantined or …

America’s first — and oldest — school is celebrating its 369th birthday today. The Boston Latin School started in 1635 with a handful of students meeting in the headmaster’s home. Admission was by reading aloud a few verses from the Bible. Stressing a classical education and the development of independent thought, the school has long been considered one of the top public secondary schools in the nation. Its list of graduates includes John Hancock, George Santayana, and Leonard Bernstein. Ben …

One of world’s most important medicines — insulin — became available for general use this month in 1923, saving the lives of millions of people suffering from diabetes. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas and is critical in the processing of carbohydrates in the human body. It was first isolated the year before by a Canadian team led by Dr. Frederick Banting at the University of Toronto. The effect was like a miracle. One year, the disease was …

Immigration and assimilation are matters of much current debate, but in 1980, those issues came floating in on the tide. It was on this date that what’s known as the Mariel boatlift began. When Cuban ruler Fidel Castro announced that any citizens wishing to leave the police state could, the voluntary exiles made their way to the port town of Mariel, just west of Havana. During the exodus, some 125,000 Cubans crossed the Florida straits in about 5,000 small boats, …

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 …

April is a significant month for the American printed word. In 1800, the Library of Congress was founded, and earlier this week, in 1828, Noah Webster published the first dictionary of American English. This is also the fifth day of National Library Week, celebrating libraries, those who staff them and the billions of materials they circulate. While computers and electronic media are of increasing importance in the services libraries offer, books remain at the core of their collections, with the …

Children have worked throughout history, especially on family farms and in trades. But their employment in industrialized settings raised many popular objections. On this date in 1836, Massachusetts became the first state to prohibit children under 15 from working in factories. Massachusetts acted again six years later, limiting children’s work to 10 hours per day. But it wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that long, dangerous child labor was ended nationally. The restrictions on child labor scarcely …

To borrow from some recent advertising slogans, although many Americans couldn’t imagine leaving home without them, and they’re everywhere they want to be, there was a time when credit cards were rare; issued only by individual merchants. But that proprietary limitation ended on this date in 1952, when the Franklin National Bank in New York launched a credit card for use by the customers of varied merchants. In this, the bank was following the lead of the Diners Club Card, …

The distribution of political representation under the Constitution was authorized on this date in 1792. Based on the results of the 1790 Census, the House of Representatives was to be apportioned according to population, coming as near to equal populations in the districts as could be determined. That first census counted a resident population of over 3.9 million people in the soon to be 15 states. There were then 105 seats in the House of Representatives, and the Apportionment Act …

This week in 1955, a small hamburger restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois-the first of what would become one of the world’s best-recognized brand names — McDonald’s. The franchise shop belonged Ray Kroc, whose main interest at the time was selling the machines that mixed milkshakes. The name came from two McDonald brothers who operated a hamburger shop in California. The first day’s revenue at the Illinois franchise was $366 and 12 cents. That shop is now a museum housing …

The need to pay a $15 debt sparked one of the most useful of inventions, patented on this date in 1849. Walter Hunt, a mechanic in New York, owed the debt. While he thought about how to raise the money, he fiddled with a small piece of wire. Finally, he bent the wire with a twist in the middle, creating a spring, and formed a clasp at the other end, to guard the point of the wire. He had invented …