This Day In History

• 1788 - The first British penal settlement was founded at Botany Bay. Kahn later used the Botany Bay to escape Earth after the losing Earth's Eugenics War in the 1990s. Thus leading to inevitable confrontation with Captain James T. Kirk.



• 1807 - London's Pall Mall became the first street lit by gaslight. Soon to be followed by Pall Malls being lit with gas lighters.
• 1871 - France surrendered in the Franco-Prussian War. They've done nothing but surrender ever since.
• 1878, the first commercial telephone exchange in the U.S. was installed at New Haven, Connecticut, and served 21 subscribers connected by a single strand of iron wire. For the first six weeks, the exchange was not operated at night. Instead of "hello," the first experimental shout was "Ahoy, ahoy." The first operator was George W. Coy. A Bell franchise had been awarded for New Haven and Middlesex Counties to Coy on 3 Nov 1877, paid for by incorporating as a company with two financial partners. Coy improvised his first crude switchboard, using carriage bolts, handles from teapot lids and bustle wire. The concept of interconnecting phone wires had been tried before by three other men, but none of these men attempted commercial telephone operations. The system was quickly overwhelmed by the subscribers' teenaged daughters.
• 1909 - The United States ended direct control over Cuba. Boy was that a mistake.
• 1921 - Einstein startled Berlin by suggesting the possibility of measuring the universe.
• 1922 - The National Football League (NFL) franchise in Decatur, IL, transferred to Chicago. The team took the name Chicago Bears. People today vaguely remember when Chicago had a football team.
• 1935 - Iceland became the first country to introduce legalized abortion.
• 1958 - Construction began on first private thorium-uranium nuclear reactor. It was the first reactor designed to supplement fissionable uranium-235 with fertile thorium-232. This was the Indian Point nuclear generating station, built at Buchanan, New York, at a cost of $100 million. It was a pressurized water reactor able to produce 275,000 kilowatts of power. The design and construction was executed by the Babcock and Wilcox Co. for the Consolidated Edison Co. The Indian Point 1 operating licence was dated 26 Mar 1962 and its shutdown date was 31 Oct 1974.
• 1960 The first photograph bounced off of the moon. It was received at Washington, D.C., having been transmitted from Hawaii by the U.S. Navy.
• 1965 - General Motors reported the biggest profit of any U.S. company in history. The seventies changed that.
• 1983 - Dover, New Jersey's WDHA becomes the first commercial radio station to air music from a compact disc.
• 1986 U.S. Space Shuttle, Challenger, explodes only 74 seconds into its flight. All seven members of the crew perish, including school teacher, Christa McAuliffe. The U.S. space program's worst disaster, Challenger's ill-fated flight occurs exactly 19 years and a day after the Apollo 1 tragedy that killed three astronauts.



• 1994 In Los Angeles, Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg declared a mistrial in the case of Lyle Menendez in the murder of his parents. Lyle, and his brother Erik, were both retried later and were found guilty. They were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Much to good a fate for them.
• 2002 Toys R Us Inc. announced that it would be closing 27 Toys R Us stores and 37 Kids R Us stores in otder to cut costs and boost operating profits. Noooooo !