On This Day January 27

Click each item below to learn more!

On This Day November 14

Click each item below to learn more!

History Highlights
History Highlights

1851 – Harper & Brothers publishes Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale,” a treasured piece of American literature about the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, whose commander, Captain Ahab, goes on an obsessive quest for a white whale.

1941 – The Alfred Hitchcock romantic thriller “Suspicion” opens in U.S. theaters, starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. The film is nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, but loses to “How Green Was My Valley.” However, Fontaine wins a Best Actress Oscar — the only Oscar performance ever in a Hitchcock movie.

1969 – Apollo 12 clears the launch pad at Cape Kennedy in Florida on its way to America’s second manned moon landing.

1970 – A chartered jet carrying most of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team crashes while preparing to land in Huntington, West Virginia, killing 37 players, the coach, doctors, the university athletic director, flight crew and 25 team boosters. The tragedy remains the worst sports-related air disaster in U.S. history. It inspired the 2006 movie, “We Are Marshall,” starring Matthew McConaughey.

1972 – Wall Street hits record territory when the Dow Jones Industrial Average tops the 1,000 mark for the first time.

1982 – Lech Walesa, leader of communist Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after 11 months of internment near the Soviet border.

2006 – State officials close the last two of Texas’ beloved Pig Stands, the only remaining pieces of the nation’s first drive-in restaurant empire. The owners had filed for bankruptcy and owed the state more than $200,000 in back-taxes.

On this Day July 16

Click each item below to learn more!

History Highlights
History Highlights

1790 – President George Washington signs into law the Residence Act, which grants him the authority to select a new site for a capital of the United States on the east bank of the Potomac River.

1935 – The first parking meter in the U.S. — Park-O-Meter No. 1 — is installed at the intersection of First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The device was the creation of Carl Magee (pictured), founder of the Oklahoma News newspaper, who was determined to alleviate parking congestion. Magee saw the meter, and the threat of being ticketed, as a way to prevent drivers from leaving their cars parked endlessly on the street.

1945 – The nuclear age begins as the so-called “Trinity Test” is conducted. Part of the Manhattan Project, the world’s first successful test of an atomic bomb takes place during the early morning hours in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico. 

1951 – J. D. Salinger’s novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” is published and becomes one of the best known works in American literature. To date, more than 65 million copies have been sold.

1969 – Apollo 11 roars from its launch pad at Cape Kennedy, Florida on the first manned mission to the moon. Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin set out to fulfill a national objective declared by President John F. Kennedy in May of 1961: perform a crewed lunar landing and return safely to Earth.

1999 – A single-engine plane piloted by publisher and presidential son John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, killing Kennedy, 38, his wife Carolyn, 33, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, 34. Five days later, underwater divers discover all three bodies still strapped into their seats.

Musical Milestones
Musical Milestones