Category: Quick hits

A number of various causes are recognized in March. Two of these seem to go hand-in-hand — National Nutrition Month and National Frozen Food Month. The goal of the first is make consumers aware of just how easy it is to eat healthy meals. And one of the ways this is possible is because of frozen food. Developed by Clarence Birdseye, the first commercially available frozen food was fish in 1925. Frozen food became increasingly popular as refrigerated freight trains …

One of the most noted crime-fighting tools started because of a conversation at a card game between J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and a newspaper reporter. The reporter wanted to profile some of the most wanted criminals the FBI was searching for. The resulting article caused a sensation, leading to the publication of the first “Ten Most Wanted” list by the FBI this week in 1950. In the years since, 497 men and women have appeared on the list. …

The first state college for women was created this month in 1884 in Mississippi. Known as the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College, classes opened in the fall of the next year on the campus of a former college in Columbus. Now called the Mississippi University for Women, it has been ranked as one of the top schools in the annual list of “America’s Best Colleges.” Now coed, the school has many of the buildings on its imposing campus on the …

One of the most famous department stores in America opened in Philadelphia on this date in 1877. Wanamaker’s, now absorbed into the Macy’s family of department stores, opened in a converted train station and is now a national historic landmark. The store was among the first in the country to make the experience of shopping as much a draw as the merchandise itself, pioneered the use of the price tag, and was the first to install a restaurant on the …

One of the most devastating public health crises in history hit the U.S. on this date 95 years ago — and experts are still studying it, hoping to head off a similar global pandemic. The first cases were reported among soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas. By October, the worst month, 195,000 Americans perished. By 1920, nearly one-in-four Americans had suffered from this strain of the flu, killing about 575,000. Worldwide, estimates put the death toll between 30 to 50 million. …

The inventor of the first practical automatic dishwasher was born on this date in 1839 and was perhaps an unlikely candidate for the distinction. Josephine Cochrane was a socialite and devised the dishwasher out of some annoyance at how her domestic staff damaged her china. Awarded a patent in 1886, Cochrane sold her machines in the 1890s mainly to restaurants and hotels. Her company eventually became KitchenAid, now part of the Whirlpool Corporation. In 2011, the Census Bureau’s American Housing …

As if to prove there is nothing new under the sun, Massachusetts acted on this date in far-off 1801 to register voters. At that time, the franchise was limited to men — usually those of some property and local repute. Town assessors drew up publicly-posted lists of voters. If any voter was omitted, documents proving eligibility were accepted. The practice caught on very slowly. Only after the Civil War did voter registration become widespread. Today, North Dakota is the only …

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 …