Daily Archives: 05/03/2023
on this day …
1568 – French forces in Florida slaughtered hundreds of Spanish.
1802 – Washington, DC, was incorporated as a city.
1855 – Macon B. Allen became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
1859 – France declared war on Austria.
1888 – Thomas Edison organized the Edison Phonograph Works.
1916 – Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.
1921 – West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.
1926 – The revival of Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” opened in New York.
1926 – U.S. Marines landed in Nicaragua and stayed until 1933.
1926 – In Britain, trade unions began a general strike.
1927 – Francis E.J. Wilde of Meadowmere Park, NY, patented the electric sign flasher.
1933 – The U.S. Mint was under the direction of a woman for the first time when Nellie Ross took the position.
1937 – Margaret Mitchell won a Pulitzer Prize for “Gone With The Wind.”
1944 – Wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended in the U.S.
1944 – Dr. Robert Woodward and Dr. William Doering produced the first synthetic quinine at Harvard University.
1945 – Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.
1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1952 – The first airplane landed at the geographic North Pole.
1966 – The game “Twister” was featured on the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.
1968 – After three days of battle, the U.S. Marines retook Dai Do complex in Vietnam. They found that the North Vietnamese had evacuated the area.
1971 – Anti-war protesters began four days of demonstrations in Washington, DC.
1971 – National Public Radio broadcast for the first time.
1971 – James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King’s assassin, was caught in a jailbreak attempt.
1986 – In NASA’s first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its main engine shortly after liftoff. Safety officers destroyed it by remote control.
1988 – The White House acknowledged that first lady Nancy Reagan had used astrological advice to help schedule her husband’s activities.
1992 – Five days of rioting and looting ended in Los Angeles, CA. The riots, that killed 53 people, began after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
1997 – The “Republic of Texas” surrendered to authorities ending an armed standoff where two people were held hostage. The group asserts the independence of Texas from the U.S.
1998 – “The Sevres Road,” by 18-century landscape painter Camille Corot, stolen from the Louvre in France.
1999 – Mark Manes, at age 22, was arrested for supplying a gun to Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold, who later killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado.
1999 – Hasbro released the first collection of toys for the Star Wars movie “Episode I: The Phantom Menace.”
Today in Star Wars History
1999 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 11,000 for the first time.
2000 – The trial of two Libyans accused of killing 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 (over Lockerbie) opened.
2006 – In Alexandria, VA, Al-Quaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was given a sentence of life in prison for his role in the terrorist attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
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Helping for the long term in Flint, Michigan –
Posted: 03 May 2016 03:00 AM PDT
things to remember and… be better prepared for
Access to clean drinking water is a concern all over the world, but in the United States it’s often a foregone conclusion. That is not the case recently for the residents of Flint, Michigan, many of whom we now know have been exposed to lead in their tap water. It’s a crisis, one to which the American people readily responded by donating water and resources to help alleviate the immediate pain. But the problem won’t go away quickly, and understanding its extent is both challenging and an absolute necessity.
Today, Google.org is providing $250,000 to partners in the Flint community to help, with a special focus on a technical solution for understanding and resolving the crisis for the long term.
First, we’re making a $150,000 grant to the University of Michigan-Flint to enable the University of Michigan-Flint to develop a comprehensive data platform that will assist government and community leaders in making more informed decisions about the crisis and providing critical information to citizens. The funds will support student researchers at the University of Michigan, Flint and Ann Arbor campuses, to do this work under the leadership of Professors Mark Allison (Flint) and Jake Abernathy (Ann Arbor) to answer key questions about the crisis and response, such as the probability of lead levels before they are tested. The team plans to develop a platform and app that visualizes the data and also provides the ability for citizens to seek out and request key services, such as reporting concerns about water and requesting testing kits. Google volunteers will provide guidance and mentoring on the technology and product design.
We’re also making a $100,000 donation to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint for the Flint Child Health & Development Fund. The Flint Child Health & Development Fund was founded to ensure the long-term health of Flint families, especially newborns to children 6 years old—the group most vulnerable to developmental issues from lead. The Fund is a supplemental resource to state and federal funding and gives grants for childcare-related initiatives such as early childhood education, student support services, continuous access to a pediatric medical home, access to infant and child behavioral health services, and research.
With Google offices in Ann Arbor and Birmingham, Flint and its residents are also our neighbors. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, a group of 20 Google volunteers went to Flint and volunteered at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, where they helped with distributing bottled water and food in the greater Flint area. Around $35,000 has been donated through employees and Google’s gift match program to the United Way of Genesee County and theFlint Water Fund to aid in the crisis, and our employee groups, like the Black Googler Network, continue to explore more ways to help.
As a native Michigander, I’m proud that we can help our neighbors in Flint. We hope we can support a resolution to this crisis and assist the residents of Flint in getting the resources they need and deserve, both for the short and long term.
Posted by Mike Miller, Head of Google Michigan
Be a Seed for Change 
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