On This Day December 11

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On this Day July 18

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1936 – The Oscar Mayer company rolls out the first Wienermobile to market its hot dogs. The small, metal wiener-shaped shell on wheels — the brainchild of Oscar’s nephew, Carl Mayer — stretched 13 feet long and cruised the streets of Chicago with Carl behind the wheel. Over the years, modern, more spacious versions of the original Wienermobile began to criss-cross the U.S., and still do today.

1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated at the Democratic National Convention for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt is eventually elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

1947 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first woman in American history to hold permanent military rank.

1969 – Mary Jo Kopechne, the 28-year-old passenger in a car driven by Massachusetts Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy, is killed when the vehicle plunges off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard. The incident becomes a national scandal, referred to as “Chappaquiddick,” and is believed to have influenced Kennedy’s decision not to campaign for president in 1972 and 1976.

1976 – Fourteen-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 during the Summer Olympics in Montreal. 

1984 – James Oliver Huberty opens fire in a crowded McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, killing 21 people and wounding 19 others with several automatic weapons.

1986 – New close-up videotaped footage of the sunken ocean liner Titanic is released to the public. It shows one of the ship’s majestic grand staircases and a coral-covered chandelier swinging slowly in the ocean current.

On this Day May 30

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1431 –  Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy.

1783 – The Pennsylvania Evening Post becomes the first daily newspaper published in the United States.

1911 – The Indianapolis 500 is run for the first time and the winner is Ray Harroun, travelling at an average speed of 74.6 miles per hour in his single-seater Marmon Wasp.

1922 – Supreme Court Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft dedicates the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Memorial was designed to heal national divisions caused by the Civil War. Yet for many, Lincoln’s promise of freedom remained incomplete. Over the next half century, the looming figure of Abraham Lincoln witnessed a number of events and demonstrations that reinforced the memorial’s importance as a symbolic space for civil rights movements.

1927 – The Kentucky River peaks during a massive flood caused by torrential rains. The disaster kills 89 people and leaves thousands homeless.

1971 – The unmanned spacecraft Mariner 9 launches on a mission to gather scientific information from Mars. It circles the Red Planet twice each day for almost a year, photographing the surface and analyzing the atmosphere with infrared and ultraviolet instruments.

1990 – With the Soviet economy on the brink of collapse, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Washington, D.C., for three days of talks with President George H. W. Bush. The summit centers on the issue of Germany and its place in a changing Europe.