Category: Open Lines

The Philadelphia Flower Show — the largest such indoor event in the world — winds up this weekend. Two-hundred sixty-five thousand visitors are expected to have attended by the time the show closes on Sunday. The Philadelphia show started in 1829 and now covers 33 acres. The show now under way features the horticultural heritage of Great Britain, famous for roses and gardening. In the U.S., close to 70 percent of households take part in some form of gardening. To …

A severe economic panic, striking in 1893, led the city of Seattle to create the nation’s first municipal unemployment assistance office on this date in 1894. State and federal unemployment assistance wasn’t established until the 1930s. Recently, the national unemployment rate, as determined by the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, has settled to around 7.9 percent. In 2010, Washington state’s average was at the then national average of 9.6 percent. The most current unemployment rate is one of the statistics …

The first woman to serve in Congress took her seat on this date in 1917. Jeannette Rankin of Montana shortly became one of the few representatives to vote against entry into World War I, a stand that contributed to her defeat when she ran for the Senate in 1918. She reentered Congress in 1940, and putting her principles ahead of office-holding, cast the lone vote against declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor in 1941. Her political career, which began …

This is Women’s History Month — a time to recognize the often overlooked vision, courage, and accomplishments of the nation’s women. One example is Mary Harris Jones, who brought the evils of child labor to national attention in the 1800s. Another is Grace Hopper, a long-serving naval officer who was a pioneer in computer programming. In recent years, women have excelled in educational attainment. In 1960, men received two-thirds of all college degrees. Today, nearly 23 million women hold bachelor’s …

One of the most frightening industrial accidents in the U.S. occurred on this date in 1979 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant on the Susquehanna River, south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A cascade of alarms and emergency responses started when someone mistakenly cross connected air and water lines in the plant’s number two reactor. The plant reportedly came close to a hydrogen gas explosion and a meltdown of its uranium core, which would have caused extensive radiation contamination. The …

On this date in 1872, America’s third female law student was graduated. But this third was a first. Charlotte Ray was a freeborn African-American. With her degree from historically black Howard University, she shortly began her law practice in Washington, D.C., and was the first woman accredited to argue a case before the Supreme Court. When Charlotte Ray graduated, university degrees were a rarity in all of America. Today, among African-Americans over 25, some 3 million have bachelor’s degrees, and …

Car insurance is both required and a major item in the budget of most households. The idea of insuring cars against accidents began this month in 1898 when the Traveler’s Insurance Company issued a policy to Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo. His policy cost $12.25 and gave him $5,000 in coverage. Martin was chiefly concerned about accidents between his automobile — one of less than 4,000 in the entire country at the time — and horses, which numbered about 18 …

Paper money has circulated in North America since 1690, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued some to paper over — so to speak — the shortage of coins. But these were just promissory notes from governing bodies. That changed on this date in 1862 when Congress passed the Legal Tender Act, fixing paper money as a means of paying the government’s considerable Civil War bills with something other than gold or silver. One result was that greenbacks became a means …

The history of radio and the presidency seems to center entirely on Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “fireside chats’ beginning in 1933 in the depths of the Depression. But the first president to address the nation from the White House over the infant broadcast medium was, ironically, “Silent Cal.” President Calvin Coolidge spoke to a coast to coast audience on the occasion of George Washington’s birthday in 1924, and his words were carried over just 42 stations. That year, there were 530 …

“Only Nixon could go to China” is a metaphor for a person of an established reputation to defy all expectations by acting in a contrary fashion. That phrase was born on this date in 1972. President Richard Nixon, an established cold warrior, surprised everyone by his visit with the Chinese leadership. This led to expanded contacts between the U.S. and that nation. Full diplomatic relations, broken off in 1949, were restored on January 1, 1979. Today, China is a major …

In the early days of the telephone, knowing who had one and what the number was quickly became a problem. The first telephone directory in the U.S. was published this week in 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut. It wasn’t a big list — there were only 50 subscribers. A little later, a directory also came out in San Francisco, with about 170 names. Now, there are over 21,000 retail establishments in the U.S. selling landline and cellular phones, with annual …

On this date in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order requiring Japanese-Americans living along the Pacific Coast to be relocated inland. This order affected some 77,000 citizens and 43,000 resident aliens. The internment lasted throughout the war, and the camps closed by early 1946. The dislocation caused by the internment order singling out an ancestry group came to be widely regretted and led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, formally apologizing for the action and offering financial …

Black History Month highlights not only past achievements, but continued progress in the African-American community. There are just under 2 million black-owned businesses, representing a gain of more than 60 percent in just 5 recent years. These businesses employed more than 920,000 people — a growth of more than one-fifth in the same period. Retail trade, health care and social assistance sectors account for 27 percent of black-owned business revenue, which totals more than $137 billion. Among cities, New York …

Black History Month stories often celebrate Thurgood Marshall, a successful attorney who became the first black appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. The trail to that tribunal was broken over a century earlier. In 1865 African-American attorney John Rock was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. Rock was an MD who practiced medicine and dentistry, as well as law. He died at the age of 41, just a year after being admitted to the bar of the …

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. Today’s occasion falls in the heart of February, which is …

This date marks the anniversary in 1635 of America’s first public school — the Boston Latin School — long before there was a United States. 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 over …

One of the nation’s major civil rights organizations is 104 years old today — the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Founded to combat lynching and segregation, the NAACP continues to work towards greater opportunities for minorities. One of its most telling moments came with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, which desegregated the nation’s schools. The lawyer who argued that case, Thurgood Marshall, became the first African-American Supreme Court justice. When the …

Among his many achievements, Benjamin Franklin played a leading role in the founding of America’s first hospital. Together with Dr. Thomas Bond, he obtained a charter for a hospital to serve the poor, sick and insane in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Hospital opened on this date in 1752 in a converted house. The hospital later developed at a location where a modern medical complex still serves the city. During its long history, the hospital’s doctors have made advances in many fields, …

Every time you step up to a photocopier, you can thank a man named Chester Carlson, born on this date in 1906. In 1938, he developed a method of making dry copies of documents on plain paper, known as xerography — which we take for granted in using photocopiers today. Before his invention, copies were made either by using carbon paper when typing or a mimeograph machine for large numbers of copies. Both were messy. The first commercial copiers became …

It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Nearly 200 years ago, it was even better to light a gas lamp. On this date in 1817, America’s first gas streetlamp was lit in Baltimore, Maryland. The coal gas was supplied by the nation’s first incorporated gas company. Just like today, startups have their struggles, but by 1850, about 50 urban areas had gasworks for mostly municipal and business illumination, along with some private residences. While gas lamps …