TAKE A TOUR OF THE MUSEUM!

Next week we will be celebrating six months of the National Museum of African American History and Culture being open and over 1,000,000 visitors have already come through our doors! If you’ve already visited the Museum, then you understand the groundbreaking significance of this remarkable institution that you helped to build. If you have not had a chance to visit, join as a Charter Member now to receive a downloadable map of the Museum experience. Each day, thousands of visitors embark on an exhilarating exploration of the rich and complex tapestry of the African American experience… In case you haven’t yet visited the Museum, there is a special map available if you join as a Charter Member today. It depicts visitors’ progression through Museum’s galleries and highlights some of thousands of objects featured in our exhibitions — from an old slave cabin and Harriett Tubman’s shawl, to Chuck Berry’s Cadillac and a robe worn by Muhammad Ali. Join as a Charter Member now to show your continued commitment! All the best, Lonnie G. Bunch III Founding Director Photographs by Benjamin G. Sullivan for the NMAAHC

1536 – The Argentine city of Buenos Aires was founded by Pedro de Mendoza of Spain.

1653 – New Amsterdam, now known as New York City, was incorporated.

1802 – The first leopard to be exhibited in the United States was shown by Othello Pollard in Boston, MA.

1848 – The Mexican War was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty turned over portions of land to the U.S., including Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The U.S. gave Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed responsibility of all claims against Mexico by American citizens. Texas had already entered the U.S. on December 29, 1845.

1848 – The first shipload of Chinese emigrants arrived in San Francisco, CA.

1863 – Samuel Langhorne Clemens used a pseudonym for the first time. He is better remembered by the pseudonym which is Mark Twain.

1870 – The “Cardiff Giant” was revealed to be nothing more than carved gypsum. The discovery in Cardiff, NY, was alleged to be the petrified remains of a human.

1876 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (known as the National League) was formed in New York. The teams included were the Chicago White Stockings, Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Red Stockings, Hartford Dark Blues, Mutual of New York, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings and the Louisville Grays.

1878 – Greece declared war on Turkey.

1880 – The S.S. Strathleven arrived in London with the first successful shipment of frozen mutton from Australia.

1887 – The beginning of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, PA.

1892 – William Painter patented the bottle cap.

1893 – The Edison Studio in West Orange, NJ, made history when they filmed the first motion picture close-up. The studio was owned and operated by Thomas Edison.

1897 – The Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg was destroyed by fire. The new statehouse was dedicated nine years later on the same site.

1913 – Grand Central Terminal officially opened at 12:01 a.m. Even though construction was not entirely complete more than 150,000 people visited the new terminal on its opening day.

1935 – Leonard Keeler conducted the first test of the polygraph machine, in Portage, WI.

1943 – During World War II, the remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrendered to the Soviets. Stalingrad has since been renamed Volgograd.

1945 – U.S. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill left for a summit in Yalta with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1946 – The first Buck Rogers automatic pistol was made.

1946 – The Mutual Broadcasting System aired “Twenty Questions” for the first time on radio. The show moved to television 3 years later.

1949 – Golfer Ben Hogan was seriously injured in an auto accident in Van Horn, TX.

1950 – “What’s My Line” debuted on CBS television.

1962 – The 8th and 9th planets aligned for the first time in 400 years.

1967 – The American Basketball Association was formed by representatives of the NBA.

1971 – Idi Amin assumed power in Uganda after a coup that ousted President Milton Obote.

1980 – The situation known as “Abscam” began when reports surfaced that the FBI had conducted a sting operation that targeted members of the U.S. Congress. A phony Arab businessmen were used in the operation.

1989 – The final Russian armored column left Kabul, Afghanistan, after nine years of military occupation.

1990 – South African President F.W. de Klerk lifted a ban on the African National Congress and promised to free Nelson Mandela.

1998 – U.S. President Clinton introduced the first balanced budget in 30 years.

1999 – 19 people were killed at Luanda international airport when a cargo plane crashed just after takeoff.

1999 – Hugo Chávez Frías took office. He had been elected president of Venezuela in December 1998.

2004 – It was reported that a white powder had been found in an office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) later confirmed that the powder was the poison ricin.

1962 8 of 9 planets align for 1st time in 400 years

The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune is about the size of Uranus and is known for supersonic strong winds. Neptune is far out and cold. The planet is more than 30 times as far from the sun as…

astrobiology.nasa.gov

The Misfits, a flawed but moving meditation on the vanishing spirit of western independence, opens in theaters on February 1, 1961.

The Misfits had all the right ingredients to become a truly great western. The director, John Huston, was one of the most talented in Hollywood. The screenwriter, Arthur Miller, was a celebrated playwright. The three stars—Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift—were among America’s brightest. Yet when the film opened in early 1961, the reviews were mixed, and the public largely ignored the film.

Audiences disliked the film in part because it failed to offer a clear-cut hero with whom they could identify. The Misfits tells the story of a four rootless losers trying to survive in the modern-day West. Monroe plays a frightened divorcee who falls in with an embittered rodeo rider (Clift) and an aging cowboy (Gable). These three improbable friends join a cynical cowboy to help him round up wild horses in the Nevada desert to sell for dog food.

In some of the films most memorable and stunning scenes, the four misfits are shown careening across the Nevada desert in an old pickup truck. Clift and Clark are swinging their lassoes, as if they had returned to the long-passed era of the Open Range. Yet, the jarring juxtaposition of the classic cowboy in a beat-up truck rather than on a noble steed suggests the film’s real theme: the days of the Old West were over, and misfits could no longer find freedom and sanctuary there. For Miller, the four characters belonged to a vanished age, and they stood as symbols of the many others left behind by progress. Like another similarly dark film that came out the following year, Lonely are the Brave, the heroes of The Misfits are doomed to loneliness and spiritual death. They are unable to fit into the modern mechanized world.

Source: history.com

1788 – Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat.

1790 – The U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York City.

1793 – France declared war on Britain and Holland.

1793 – Ralph Hodgson patented oiled silk.

1842 – In New York City, the “City Despatch Post” began operations. It was a private company that was the first to introduce adhesive postage stamps in the western hemisphere. The company was bought by the U.S. governemnt a few months laster and renamed “United States City Despatch Post.”

1861 – Texas voted to secede from the Union.

1862 – “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe was first published in the “Atlantic Monthly.”

1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution submitting the proposed 13th Amendment to the states.

1867 – In the U.S., bricklayers start working 8-hour days.

1884 – The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

1893 – Thomas A. Edison completed work on the world’s first motion picture studio in West Orange, NJ.

1896 – Puccini’s opera “La Boheme” premiered in Turin.

1898 – The Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, CT, issued the first automobile insurance policy. Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo, NY, paid $11.25 for the policy, which gave him $5,000 in liability coverage.

1900 – Eastman Kodak Co. introduced the $1 Brownie box camera.

1913 – Grand Central Terminal (also known as Grand Central Station) opened in New York City, NY. It was the largest train station in the world.

1919 – The first Miss America was crowned in New York City.

1920 – The first armored car was introduced.

1920 – Canada’s Royal North West Mounted Police changed their name to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The organization was commissioned in 1873.

1921 – Carmen Fasanella registered as a taxicab owner and driver in Princeton, New Jersey. Fasanella retired November 2, 1989 after 68 years and 243 days of service.

1929 – Weightlifter Charles Rigoulet of France achieved the first 400 pound ‘clean and jerk’ as he lifted 402-1/2 pounds.

1930 – The Times published its first crossword puzzle.

1946 – Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie was chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations.

1951 – The first telecast of an atomic explosion took place.

1951 – The first X-ray moving picture process was demonstrated.

1953 – CBS-TV debuted “Private Secretary.”

1954 – CBS-TV showed “The Secret Storm” for the first time.

1957 – P.H. Young became the first black pilot on a scheduled passenger airline.

1958 – The United Arab Republic was formed by a union of Egypt and Syria. It was broken 1961.

1960 – Four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. They had been refused service.

1968 – During the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. The scene was captured in a news photograph.

1976 – “Sonny and Cher” resumed on TV despite a real life divorce.

1979 – Patty Hearst was released from prison after serving 22 months of a seven-year sentence for bank robbery. Her sentence had been commuted by U.S. President Carter.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was welcomed in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile.

1987 – Terry Williams won the largest slot machine payoff, at the time, when won $4.9 million after getting four lucky 7s on a machine in Reno, NV.

1991 – A USAir jetliner crashed atop a commuter plane at Los Angeles International Airport. 35 people were killed.

1994 – Jeff Gillooly pled guilty in Portland, OR, for his role in the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. Gillooly, Tonya Harding’s ex-husband, struck a plea bargain under which he confessed to racketeering charges in exchange for testimony implicating Harding.

1996 – Visa and Mastercard announced security measures that would make it safe to shop on the Internet.

1998 – Stuart Whitman received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 – Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gave a deposition that was videotaped for senators weighing impeachment charges against U.S. President Clinton.

2001 – Three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Mergrahi guilty of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people. The court said that Megrahi was a member of the Libyan intelligence service. Al-Amin Khalifa, who had been co-accused, was acquitted and freed.

2003 – NASA’s space shuttle Columbia exploded while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts on board were killed.