1825 – The U.S. House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president. No candidate had received a majority of electoral votes.

1861 – The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America elected Jefferson Davis as its president.

1870 – The United States Weather Bureau was authorized by Congress. The bureau is officially known as the National Weather Service (NWS).

1884 – Thomas Edison and Patrick Kenny executed a patent application for a chemical recording stock quotation telegraph (U.S. Pat. 314,115).

1885 – The first Japanese arrived in Hawaii.

1895 – Volley Ball was invented by W.G. Morgan.

1895 – The first college basketball game was played as Minnesota State School of Agriculture defeated the Porkers of Hamline College, 9-3.

1900 – Dwight F. Davis put up a new tennis trophy to go to the winner in matches against England. The trophy was a silver cup that weighed 36 pounds.

1909 – The first forestry school was incorporated in Kent, Ohio.

1932 – America entered the 2-man bobsled competition for the first time at the Olympic Winter Games held at Lake Placid, NY.

1942 – The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff held its first formal meeting to coordinate military strategy during World War II.

1942 – Daylight-saving “War Time” went into effect in the U.S.

1943 – During World War II, the battle of Guadalcanal ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.

1950 – U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists. This was the beginning of “McCarthyism.”

1958 – CBS radio debuted “Frontier Gentleman.”

1960 – A verbal agreement was reached between representatives of the American and National Football Leagues. Both agreed not to tamper with player contracts.

1960 – The first star was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star was for Joanne Woodward.

1969 – The Boeing 747 flew its inaugural flight.

1971 – The San Fernando Valley experienced the Sylmar earthquake that registered 6.4 on the Richter Scale.

1971 – The Apollo 14 spacecraft returned to Earth after mankind’s third landing on the moon.

1975 – The Russian Soyuz 17 returned to Earth.

1984 – NBC Entertainment president, Brandon Tartikoff, gave an interviewer the “10 Commandments for TV Programmers.”

1989 – Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. completed the $25 billion purchase of RJR Nabisco, Inc.

1997 – “The Simpsons” became the longest-running prime-time animated series. “The Flintstones” held the record previously.

2001 – “Hannibal,” the sequel to “Silence of the Lambs,” opened in theaters.

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Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens (September 12, 1913 to March 31, 1980), also known as “The Buckeye Bullet,” was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals and broke two world records at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Owens’ athletic career began in high school, when he won three track and field events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships. Two years later, while competing for Ohio State University, he equaled one world record and broke three others before qualifying and competing in the 1936 Olympics. The 2016 movie Race depicts Owens’ budding track and field stardom in college through his wins at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, where he defied Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.Made in consultation with Stephen Owens’ three daughters, the movie stars Stephan James as Owens and Jason Sudeikis as Larry Snyder, Owens’ coach at Ohio State University. Jesse Owens’ Wife and Kids Jesse Owens was married for nearly 48 years to Ruth Owens. The longtime chairwoman of the Jesse Owens Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting the development of young people, Ruth died in 2001 of heart failure. The couple had three daughters together: Gloria, Beverly, and Marlene. When and Where Was Jesse Owens Born? Jesse Owens was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama. Family and Early Life The son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves, Jesse Owens was a frail child who was often sick from battles with chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia. Still, he was expected to work, and at the young age of seven he was picking up to 100 pounds of cotton a day to help his family put food on the table. At the age of nine, Owens moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where the young “J.C.” discovered a world far different than the slower, Southern life he’d known. School proved to be one of the bigger changes. Gone was the one-room schoolhouse he’d attended in Alabama, replaced by a bigger setting with stricter teachers. Here, Owens earned the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life: One of his instructors, unable to decipher his thick southern accent, believed the young athlete said his name was “Jesse,” when he in fact had said “J.C.” Rising Track and Field Star At East Technical High School, Owens quickly made a name for himself as a nationally recognized sprinter, setting records in the 100 and 200-yard dashes as well as the long jump. After graduating, Owens enrolled at Ohio State University, where he continued to flourish as an athlete. At the 1935 Big Ten Championships, the “Buckeye Bullet,” as he was also known, overcame a severe tailbone injury and tied a world record in the 100-yard dash—and set a long jump record of 26-8 ¼ that would stand for 25 years. Owens also set new world marks in the 220-yard dash and in the 220-yard low hurdles. His dominance at the Big Ten games was par for the course for Owens that year, which saw him win four events at the NCAA Championships, two events at the AAU Championships and three others at the Olympic trials. In all, Owens competed in 42 events that year, winning them all. 1936 Olympics For Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were expected to be a German showcase and a statement for Aryan supremacy. Hitler lambasted America for including black athletes on its Olympic roster. But it was the African-American participants who helped cement America’s success at the Olympic Games. In all, the United States won 11 gold medals, six of them by black athletes. Owens was easily the most dominant athlete to compete. He captured four gold medals (the 100 meter, the long jump, the 200 meter and the 400-meter relay) and broke two Olympic records along the way. Owens’ world record for the broad jump would last 25 years until being broken by Olympian Irvin Roberson in 1960. After Owens won the 100-meter event, a furious Hitler stormed out of the stadium, though some reports indicate that Hitler later congratulated the athlete on his success. Jesse Owens and Racism While Owens helped the U.S. triumph at the games, his return home was not met with the kind of fanfare one might expect. President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to meet with Owens and congratulate him, as was typical for champions. The athlete wouldn’t be properly recognized until 1976, when President Gerald Fordawarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The mild-mannered Owens seemed not the least bit surprised by his home country’s hypocrisy. “When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus,” he said. “I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either.” Later Years Following the 1936 Olympic Games, Owens retired from amateur athletics and started to earn money for his physical talents. He raced against cars and horses, and, for a time, played with the Harlem Globetrotters. Owens eventually found his calling in public relations and marketing, setting up a business for himself in Chicago, Illinois, and traveling frequently around the country to speak at conventions and other business gatherings. Death Jesse Owens died of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona, on March 31, 1980. He smoked up to a pack of cigarettes a day for a good deal of his life. Related Videos Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!

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

The Greenboro Sit-Ins of 1960 provoked all manner of emotions when they occurred and they remain an important part of civil rights history. Accepting and taking to the limit Martin Luther King’s idea of non-violence and peaceful protests, the sit-ins provoked the type of reaction the Civil Rights movement wanted – public condemnation of the treatment of those involved but also continuing to highlight the issue of desegregation in the South. The sit-ins started in 1960 at Greensboro, North Carolina.

In this city, on February 1st, 1960, four African American college students from North Carolina A+T College (an all-black college) went to get served in an all-white restaurant at Woolworth’s. The shop was open to all customers regardless of colour, but the restaurant was for whites only. They asked for food, were refused service and asked to leave. The students had done research on what they were doing and had read a handout on tactics of resistance by CORE. This direct action by Ezell Blair Jnr, David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil sparked off the so-called sit-ins. However, they were not heroes to all African American people. One Black lady, a dishwasher, behind the counter was heard to shout at them that they were “stupid, ignorant…….rabble-rousers, troublemakers.” The food counter did not serve them but the café shut 30 minutes early. When the four students returned to their campus, they were greeted as heroes by fellow students.

Other students followed their example over the following days in February. On February 2nd, 24 students took part in a sit-in at Woolworth’s food counter.

The above photo shows, left to right, Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson and (partially hidden) Mark Martin at the Woolworth’s counter on February 2nd. The white lady on the left arrived at the counter for lunch but refused to sit down with African Americans; she left.

On February 4th, black students were joined by white female students from the North Carolina’s Women’s College. Segregated food counters throughout Greensboro were affected.

Such was the chaos created that the restaurant in Woolworth’s was forced to close. In its initial stages, theNAACP was reluctant to get involved and one thought mooted by the students was not to allow the involvement of adults. More and more students across the South copied the Greensboro example of direct action. By February 7th, there were 54 sit-ins throughout the South in 15 cities in 9 states.

One reason put forward for this approach by the students was that they had seen little return from other movements and they wanted the pace of the drive for equality speeded up. A future civil right leader, Robert Moses, claimed that he was sparked into action by the “sullen, angry and determined look” of the protesters that differed so much from the “defensive, cringing” expression common to most photos of protesters in the South.

One of the reasons that Greensboro was so important to the Civil Rights movement is that the press took a great interest in it and the protest was fully reported around the country. It obviously took Martin Luther Kingby surprise as it was only when a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference informed King of what was going on that he assured the protesters of his full support.

How successful were the sit-ins?

The photos of students (both white and African American) having food poured over them at lunch counters by those opposed to what they wanted, had an effect on the public in northern, eastern and western states. Many were horrified that at a time when the dictatorship of the Soviet Union was made clear to all, that such behaviour could take place in America – the land of the free. However, as Eisenhower had wished for, changes in the South had to come from the heart and not be enforced by a court in Washington; the protests only hardened attitudes amongst white segregationists in the South.

The sit-ins did have some impact. Stores in Atlanta, the city most associated with King, desegregated. The Woolworth’s at Greensboro eventually agreed to desegregate its food counter in July 1960 having lost $200,000 dollars of business or 20% of its anticipated sales.

But their value was more in terms of the coverage by the press and television which these protests received. To further their actions, students established the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) with Marion Barry as its first leader. To some this was a negative move however as now there were four major civil rights movements in the South – NAACP, SCLC, CORE and SNCC. To which one were people more loyal to? There was even rancour in the ranks of the Civil Rights movement when King clashed with Roy Wilkins, leader of the NAACP, over the direction the movement was taking.

SNCC also involved itself with issues in the South. The position of the African Americans in the north had taken a backseat despite Ella Baker’s plea that SNCC should involve itself with housing, health care, voting and employment throughout America. Baker was the executive director of the SCLC. The NAACP never endorsed the sit-ins probably because of the different generations involved. The older NAACP leadership was clearly out of touch with the younger members of SNCC. Local NAACP groups did help the students with legal advice and bail money but this was done at an individual level not with the blessing of the NAACP hierarchy. One theory put forward for this is that those in the NAACP had jobs, mortgages etc and they feared losing all that they had if they were deemed outright supporters of direct action. As students, the youths had much less to lose.

Thurgood Marshall also derided the tactic, especially the tactic of jail-ins when the students deliberately cluttered up jails by refusing bail.

Regardless of this lack of support at the highest level in the NAACP, over 70,000 people took part in the sit-ins. They even spread to northern states such as Alabama and Ohio and the western state of Nevada. Sit-ins protested about segregated swimming pools, lunch counters, libraries, transport facilities, museums, art galleries, parks and beaches. By simply highlighting such practices, the students can claim to have played a significant part in the history of the civil rights movement.

Oscar Stanton DePriest, born in Florence on March 9, 1871, was an American lawmaker and civil rights advocate who was the first Black Congressman of the 20th century. He moved to Chicago, where he became a successful businessman as a real estate broker, was a member of the board of commissioners of Cook County, Illinois, and served on the Chicago City Council from 1915-1917.

In 1928, De Priest became the first African American elected to Congress in the 20th century, representing the 1st Congressional District of Illinois as a Republican. During his three consecutive terms (1928-1935) as the only Black representative in Congress, De Priest introduced several anti-discrimination bills.

De Priest’s 1933 amendment barring discrimination in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Roosevelt. A third proposal, a bill to permit a transfer of jurisdiction if a defendant believed he or she could not get a fair trial because of race or religion, would be passed by another Congress in another era. Civil rights activists criticized De Priest for opposing federal aid to the needy, but they applauded him for speaking in the South despite death threats. They also praised him for telling an Alabama senator he was not big enough to prevent him from dining in the Senate restaurant and for defending the right of Howard University students to eat in the House restaurant. He was again elected to the Chicago city council in 1943 and served until 1947. De Priest died in Chicago, Illinois on May 12 1951.

1693 – A charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.

1802 – Simon Willard patented the banjo clock.

1861 – The Confederate States of America was formed.

1861 – A Cheyenne delegation and some Arapaho leaders accepted a new settlement (Treaty of Fort Wise) with the U.S. Federal government. The deal ceded most of their land but secured a 600-square mile reservation and annuity payments.

1896 – The Western Conference was formed by representatives of Midwestern universities. The group changed its name to the Big 10 Conference.

1900 – In South Africa, British troops under Gen. Buller were beaten at Ladysmith. The British fled over the Tugela River.

1904 – The Russo-Japanese War began with Japan attacking Russian forces in Manchuria.

1910 – William D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America.

1918 – During World War I, “The Stars and Stripes” was published under orders from General John J. Pershing for the United States Army forces in France. It was published from February 8, 1918 to June 13, 1919.

1922 – The White House began using radio after U.S. President Harding had it installed.

1927 – The original version of “Getting Gertie’s Garter” opened at the Hippodrome Theatre in New York City.

1936 – The first National Football League draft was held. Jay Berwanger was the first to be selected. He went to the Philadelphia Eagles.

1952 – Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the British throne. Her father, George VI, had died on February 6.

1963 – The Kennedy administration prohibited travel to Cuba and made financial and commercial transactions with Cuba illegal for U.S. citizens.

1963 – Lamar Hunt, owner of the American Football League franchise in Dallas, TX, moved the operation to Kansas City. The new team was named the Chiefs.

1969 – The last issue of the “Saturday Evening Post” was published. It was revived in 1971 as a quarterly publication and later a 6 times a year.

1971 – The Nasdaq stock-market index debuted.

1973 – U.S. Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal.

1974 – The three-man crew of the Skylab space station returned to Earth after 84 days.

1978 – The U.S. Senate deliberations were broadcast on radio for the first time. The subject was the Panama Canal treaties.

1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced a plan to re-introduce draft registration.

1985 – “The Dukes of Hazzard” ended its 6-1/2 year run on CBS television.

1993 – General Motors sued NBC, alleging that “Dateline NBC” had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that some GM pickups were prone to fires after certain types of crashes. The suit was settled the following day by NBC.

2002 – The exhibit “Places of Their Own” opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The works displayed were by Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo and Emily Carr.

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