On This Day March 11

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On This Day December 12

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1901 – Guglielmo Marconi successfully sends the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean.

1917 – In Omaha, Nebraska, Irish priest, Father Edward J. Flanagan, opens the doors to Boys Town, a home for troubled and neglected children that continues to provide this service today.

1967 – “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a groundbreaking movie about an interracial romantic relationship, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier, opens in theaters. It is the ninth movie to pair Hepburn with Tracy, who died less than three weeks after filming ended.

1972 – The world turns upside down for cruise ship passengers when the epic disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure” opens, featuring a veritable Hollywood ‘Who’s Who’ of a cast, including Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, Roddy Mcdowall, Carol Lynley and Jack Albertson.

1980 – American oil tycoon Armand Hammer pays $5.1 million at auction for a notebook containing writings by artist-inventor Leonardo da Vinci. The manuscript, written around 1508, is among over two dozen books da Vinci produced during his lifetime.

1989 – The so-called “Queen of Mean,” hotel operator and real estate developer Leona Helmsley, who once quipped that “only the little people pay taxes,” receives a four-year prison sentence, 750 hours of community service and a $7.1 million fine for tax fraud.

2000 – General Motors (GM) announces that it will begin to phase out its Oldsmobile line of cars, the oldest automotive brand in the United States. The last Olds rolls off an assembly line about four years later.

On This Day October 26

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History Highlights
History Highlights

1881 – The Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. The gunfight only lasts 30 seconds, but when the dust clears, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers are dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday are wounded.

1958 – The Jet Age begins as the first Boeing 707 commercial airliner, operated by Pan Am, takes off from New York’s Idlewild Airport (now JFK) and crosses the Atlantic to Paris-Le Bourget Airport on an 8.5-hour flight.

1970 – The “Doonesbury” comic strip, created by Garry Trudeau, premieres in 28 newspapers across the U.S.

1982 – “St. Elsewhere,” a drama set at the fictional St. Eligius Hospital in Boston, captivates viewers when it premieres on NBC. Then-unknown actors Denzel Washington and Howie Mandel co-star.

1984 – Surgeons place a baboon heart into the chest of Baby Fae (Stephanie Fae Beauclair), an infant with a heart defect that normally kills newborns within their first 10 days of life. The transplant keeps Baby Fae alive for 21 days.

1984 – Director James Cameron’s career-launching sci-fi action film, “The Terminator,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, opens in theaters. The movie is produced on a $6.4 million budget and grosses more than $78 million worldwide. It supercharges Schwarzenegger’s acting career, and “I’ll be back” becomes a popular catch-phrase.

2001 – President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law drawn up in response to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.