This Week In #History ... March 21 - 27

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @UlaVovk

Mar 21
1697 Czar Peter the Great begins tour through West-Europe
1788 Gustavus Vassa petitions Queen Charlotte, to free enslaved Africans
1871 Journalist Henry M. Stanley begins his famous expedition to Africa
1924 Mass Investors Trust becomes 1st mutual fund set up in US
1935 Persia officially renamed Iran
1943 Assassination attempt on Hitler fails
1952 Alan Freed presents Moondog Coronation Ball at old Cleveland Arena, 25,000 attend 1st rock and roll concert ever
1962 A bear becomes the 1st creature to be ejected at supersonic speeds
1969 John and Yoko stage their 1st bed-in for peace (Amsterdam Hilton)
1975 Ethiopia ends monarchy after 3000 years
1984 Part of Central Park is named Strawberry Fields honoring John Lennon
2010 A suicide bomb attack in Geresh, Helmand Province, Afganistan kills ten people and injures 7

Mar 22
1457 Gutenberg's Bible became the 1st printed book
1630 1st colonial legislation prohibiting gambling enacted (Boston)
1733 Joseph Priestly invents carbonated water (seltzer)
1790 Thomas Jefferson becomes the 1st U.S. Secretary of State
1872 Illinois becomes 1st state to require sexual equality in employment
1888 English Football League established
1914 World's 1st airline, St. Petersburg - Tampa Airboat Line, begins
1922 British court sentences Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years in prison
1946 1st U.S. rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere (50 miles up)
1960 1st patent for lasers, granted to Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes
1972 Congress approves Equal Rights Amendment (never ratified)
1985 NASA launches Intelsat VA
2010 The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 is passed by the U.S. House of Representatives

Mar 23
1490 1st dated edition of Maimonides "Mishna Torah" published
1794 1st U.S. patent (Joseph G Pierson for a riveting machine)
1839 1st recorded use of "OK" [oll korrect] (Boston's Morning Post)
1840 Draper takes 1st successful photo of the Moon (daguerrotype)
1861 London's 1st tramcars, designed by Mr. Train of New York, begins operating
1910 1st race at Los Angeles Motordrome (1st U.S. auto speedway)
1912 Dixie Cup invented
1925 Tennessee becomes 1st state to outlaw teaching theory of evolution
1933 Enabling Act: German Reichstag grants Adolph Hitler dictatorial powers
1944 Nicholas Alkemade falls 5,500 m without a parachute and lives
1960 Explorer (8) fails to reach Earth orbit
1976 International Bill of Rights goes into effect (35 nations ratifying)
1989 2 Utah scientists claim they have produced fusion at room temperature
2001 Russian Mir space station is crashed into the Pacific during a controlled re-entry

Mar 24
1603 Scottish king James VI becomes King James I of England
1828 Philadelphia and Columbia Railway (1st state owned) authorized
1882 Dr. Robert Koch discovers germ that causes tuberculosis
1898 1st automobile sold
1920 1st U.S. coast guard air station established (Morehead City, NC)
1930 Planet Pluto named
1941 Glenn Miller begins work on his 1st movie for 20th Century Fox
1955 1st seagoing oil drill rig placed in service
1964 Kennedy half-dollar issued
1982 U.S. submarine Jacksonville collides with a Turkish freighter near Virginia
1992 1st Belgium in the space, Dirk Frimout on Atlantis Space Shuttle STS-45 (Atlantis 11) launches into space
2008 Bhutan holds it's first public election

Mar 25
31 1st Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus
421 Friday at 12 PM - city of Venice founded
1655 Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan (Saturn's largest satellite)
1807 1st railway passenger service began in England
1857 Frederick Laggenheim takes 1st photo of a solar eclipse
1896 Modern Olympics began in Athens, Greece
1902 Irving W. Colburn patents sheet glass drawing machine
1954 RCA manufactures 1st color TV set, a 12-inch screen for $1,000
1960 1st guided missile launched from nuclear powered sub (Halibut)
1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. led 25,000 to state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama
1970 Concorde makes its 1st supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH)
1986 Kurt Browning (Canada) becomes 1st skater to land a quadruple jump
2008 160 square mile part of the Antarctic ice shelf disintegrates

Mar 26
1636 University of Utrecht opening ceremony
1780 1st British Sunday newspaper appears (British Gazette and Sunday Monitor)
1845 Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, precusor of bandaid
1859 1st sighting of Vulcan, a planet thought to orbit inside Mercury
1885 Eastman Film Co. manufactures 1st commercial motion picture film
1910 U.S. forbid immigration to criminals, anarchists, paupers and the sick
1927 Gaumont-British Film Corporation forms
1934 Driving tests introduced in Britain
1943 Elsie S. Ott becomes 1st woman awarded U.S. Air Force Medal
1969 Soviet weather satellite Meteor 1 launched
1986 Geffen records signs Guns and Roses
2010 Iran calls upon Muslims around the world to act in protest in response to Israel's plans to build in East Jerusalem

Mar 27
1790 The shoelace invented
1794 U.S. Navy forms
1841 1st U.S. steam fire engine tested, New York City
1855 Abraham Gesner patents kerosene
1866 Andrew Rankin patents the urinal
1914 1st successful blood transfusion (in Brussels)
1940 Himmler orders building of Auschwitz concentration camp, at Katowice
1945 Iwo Jima occupied, after 22,000 Japanese and 6,000 U.S. killed
1958 Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet premier and 1st Secretary of Communist Party
1969 Launch of Mariner 7, flies 2,190 miles above southern Mars
1983 Larry Holmes beats Lucien Rodriguez in 12 for heavyweight boxing title
1991 Scotty Bowman and Neil Armstrong elected to NHL Hall of Fame
2010 Thousands of 'red shirt' protesters demand fresh elections, causing Thai troops to retreat

Weird Al Says: #WTF?!

A “gaydar” software program developed at MIT can reportedly identify gay men on Facebook, private profile or not.

This has been a moment of ... WTF?!

Weird Al Says ... #WTF?!

Tic Tacs contain carnauba wax - the same ingredient found in many car polishes.

This has been a moment of ... WTF?!

This Week In #History ... March 7-13th

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Ula Vovk

Mar 7
1778 Captain James Cook 1st sights Oregon coast, at Yaquina Bay
1854 Charles Miller patents 1st U.S. sewing machine to stitch buttonholes
1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents telephone
1908 Cincinnati Mayor Mark Breith stood before city council and announces that, "women are not physically fit to operate automobiles" ('scuse me?)
1911 Willis Farnsworth, Petaluma, California, patents coin-operated locker
1912 Roald Amundsen announces discovery of the South Pole
1926 1st transatlantic telephone call, London - New York
1933 Game of "Monopoly" invented
1954 Russia wins title in their 1st international ice hockey competition
1962 Launch of OSO 1, 1st astronomy satellite (solar flare data)
1981 1st homicide at Disneyland, 18 year old is stabbed to death
1996 1st surface photos of Pluto by Hubble Space Telescope
2010 Iraqi voters take part in parliamentary elections and a referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement


Mar 8
1855 1st train crosses 1st U.S. railway suspension bridge, Niagara Falls
1887 Everett Horton, Connecticut, patents fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes
1910 Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris is 1st licensed female pilot
1911 1st International Woman's Day
1927 Pan American Airlines incorporates
1941 1st baseball player drafted into WW II (Hugh Mulcahy, Phillies)
1946 1st helicopter licensed for commercial use (New York City)
1961 U.S. nuclear submarine Patrick Henry arrives at Scottish naval base of Holy Loch from South Carolina in a record underseas journey of 66 days 22 hours
1965 1st U.S. combat forces arrive in Vietnam (3,500 Marines)
1972 1st flight of the Goodyear blimp
1986 Martina Navratilova is 1st tennis player to earn $10 million
2010 35 suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia are captured by the French Navy, the European Union's most successful mission


Mar 9
1497 Nicolaus Copernicus 1st recorded astronomical observation
1562 Kissing in public banned in Naples (punishable by death)
1798 Dr. George Balfour becomes 1st naval surgeon in the U.S. navy
1858 Albert Potts of Philadelphia patents the street mailbox
1882 False teeth patented
1907 1st involuntary sterilization law enacted, Indiana
1918 Russian Bolshevik Party becomes the Communist Party
1945 Japanese proclaim "independence" of Indo-China
1953 Josef Stalin buried in Moscow
1959 Barbie, the popular girls' doll, debuted, over 800 million sold
1964 1st Ford Mustang produced
1986 Soviet probe Vega 2 flies by Halley's Comet at 8,030 km
2010 Alphalara itadori, a Japanese insect that combats invasive Japanese knotweed, is the first biocontrol agent approved by the European Union


Mar 10
1791 John Stone, Concord, Massachusetts, patents a pile driver
1862 U.S. issues 1st paper money ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 and $1000)
1876 1st telephone call made (Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Watson)
1910 China ends slavery
1925 Walter Mittelholzer is 1st to flies over Demawend mountain, Iran
1933 Nevada becomes 1st U.S. state to regulate narcotics
1945 Japan declares Vietnam Independence
1951 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declines post of baseball commissioner
1975 Dog spectacles patented in England
1987 Vatican formal opposition to test-tube fertilization and embryo transfer
2006 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enters Mars orbit


Mar 11
1302 Romeo and Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare
1669 Volcano Etna in Italy erupts killing 15,000
1702 1st English daily newspaper "Daily Courant," publishes
1850 Woman's Medical College of Penn. (1st female medical school)
1917 British troops occupy Baghdad
1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Lend-Lease Bill to lend money to Britain
1953 1st woman army doctor commissioned (FM Adams)
1960 Pioneer 5 launched into solar orbit between Earth and Venus
1974 Rhino Store gives people 5 cents to take home Danny Bonaduce's Album
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader
1997 Ashes of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry are launched into space
2006 Slobodan Milosevic found dead in cell in the Hague


Mar 12
1365 University of Vienna founded
1642 Abel Tasman is 1st European in New Zealand
1755 1st steam engine in America installed, to pump water from a mine
1849 1st gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en route to California
1868 Congress abolishes manufacturer's tax
1896 1st movie in Netherlands (Kalverstr 220)
1904 1st main line electric train in U.K. (Liverpool to Southport)
1934 Josip Broz (Tito) freed from jail
1945 New York is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
1958 British Empire Day is renamed "Commonwealth Day"
1970 U.S. lowers voting age from 21 to 18
1981 Soyuz T-4 carries 2 cosmonauts to Salyut 6 space station
1994 Church of England ordains 1st 33 women priests


Mar 13
1519 Cortez lands in Mexico
1639 Cambridge College renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard
1887 Chester Greenwood of Maine patents earmuffs
1894 J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate
1921 Mongolia (formerly Outer Mongolia) declares independence from China
1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory
1943 Failed assassin attempt on Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight
1961 John F. Kennedy sets up the Alliance for Progress
1969 Apollo 9 returns to Earth
1979 European Monetary System is established, ECU created
1987 John Gotti is acquitted of racketeering
2010 Six people are killed by a remotely operated bomb while travelling in southern Afghanistan in Tirin Kot, the capital of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province

Weird Al Says ... #WTF?!

Rats may not have gallbladders or tonsils, but they are all born with bellybuttons.

This has been a moment of ... WTF?!