Category: Quick hits

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, 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 …

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 …

Wednesday Open Lines

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 …

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, 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, …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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, 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 …

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 …

The origins of the humble hamburger are unclear, but a precursor traces back as far as the fifth century in Imperial Rome. There are several claimants for the distinction of serving the first recognizable, made in the USA hamburger. One of them was Oscar Weber Bilby of Oklahoma. He is supposed to have served the first burgers at his Fourth of July cookout in 1891. Some forms of ground or chopped beef had previously been served on or between slices …

Today is the signature American holiday, celebrating the date in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Ours was the first successful colonial independence movement against a European power. Recognition of our nationhood came with the Peace Treaty of 1783. From sea to shining sea, there will be parades, concerts, barbecues, and, of course, fireworks. Among the celebrations is the Boston Pops fireworks spectacular, featuring Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” In the U.S. of 1812, the population of …

Friday, July 1st.  “America runs on Bulova time.” That declaration was the entire audio portion of the first advertisement appearing on a commercial television station. The rather subdued ad was broadcast on New York station WBNT on this date in 1941, the first TV ad with the sanction of the Federal Communications Commission. The 10-second spot appeared in a Brooklyn Dodgers game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Consisting of nothing more than the image of a ticking clock, the ad cost …

On this date 45 years ago, the sun set on our old concept of coming of age. The 26th amendment to the Constitution became law effective July 1, lowering the age requirement for voting in national elections from 21 to 18 years old.  In 1972, the amendment added some 11 million voters to the electorate. Today, there are over 14.5 million young Americans age 18 to 20. In the last presidential election, more than 37 percent of them went to …

On June 28, 1969, the first National Hollerin’ Contest was held in Spivey’s Corner in Sampson County. The contest is the product of the farm culture of the Sandhills region. Before the advent of the telephone, yelling loudly, or hollering, was the primary way farmers and neighbors communicated in rural North Carolina. As new technologies made communication easier, the practice began to disappear. The idea for the contest grew out of a conversation on a local radio program. The contest’s two …

America’s first commercial oil refinery was put in operation this month in 1860. It was built in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on the banks of Oil Creek. That town was the site of the country’s first productive oil well in 1859, and these developments made the area some 100 miles north of Pittsburgh the cradle of America’s oil industry. The first refinery was focused on extracting kerosene from the crude oil. Any gasoline by-product was dumped into the creek. With today’s regulations …