Everyday Life
Origins of everyday objects, food, home tools, games, and communication
History: January 1 (#1)
January 1, 1985 The first British mobile phone call is made by Michael Harrison to his father Sir Ernest Harrison, chairman of Vodafone.
Read commentary →History: January 1 (#2)
January 1, 1902 The first American college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.
Read commentary →History: January 1 (#5)
January 1, 1726 J. S. Bach leads the first performance of Herr Gott, dich loben wir, BWV 16, his church cantata for New Year's Day to a libretto by Georg Christian Lehms.
Read commentary →History: January 3 (#1)
January 3, 1957 The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
Read commentary →History: January 4 (#3)
January 4, 1912 The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Empire by royal charter.
Read commentary →History: January 8 (#1)
January 8, 1735 The premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante takes place at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Read commentary →History: January 8 (#3)
January 8, 2004 The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
Read commentary →History: January 11 (#1)
January 11, 1977 The first episode of Finnish children's TV show Pikku Kakkonen ("Little Number Two") is aired on Yle TV2.
Read commentary →History: January 11 (#3)
January 11, 1759 The first American life insurance company, the Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of the Presbyterian Ministers (now part of Unum Group), is incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Read commentary →History: January 12 (#2)
January 12, 1969 The New York Jets of the American Football League defeat the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League to win Super Bowl III in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.
Read commentary →History: January 12 (#3)
January 12, 2004 The world's largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage.
Read commentary →History: January 17 (#2)
January 17, 1904 Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard receives its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre.
Read commentary →History: January 17 (#3)
January 17, 1920 Alcohol Prohibition begins in the United States as the Volstead Act goes into effect.
Read commentary →History: January 20 (#1)
January 20, 1788 The third and main part of First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay, beginning the British colonization of Australia. Arthur Phillip decides that Port Jackson is a more suitable location for a colony.
Read commentary →History: January 23 (#1)
January 23, 1957 American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, which later renames it the "Frisbee".
Read commentary →History: January 25 (#1)
January 25, 1964 Blue Ribbon Sports, which would later become Nike, is founded by University of Oregon track and field athletes.
Read commentary →History: January 28 (#2)
January 28, 1960 The National Football League announces expansion teams for Dallas to start in the 1960 NFL season and Minneapolis-St. Paul for the 1961 NFL season.
Read commentary →History: January 28 (#3)
January 28, 1938 The World Land Speed Record on a public road is broken by Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen at a speed of 432.7 kilometres per hour (268.9 mph).
Read commentary →History: January 31 (#1)
January 31, 1949 These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera, is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago, United States.
Read commentary →History: February 3 (#1)
February 3, 1995 Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Read commentary →History: February 4 (#2)
February 4, 1859 The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt.
Read commentary →History: February 9 (#2)
February 9, 1978 The Budd Company unveils its first SPV-2000 self-propelled railcar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Read commentary →History: February 9 (#5)
February 9, 1900 The Davis Cup competition is established.
Read commentary →History: February 10 (#1)
February 10, 1933 In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf. Schaaf dies four days later.
Read commentary →History: February 10 (#2)
February 10, 1996 IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time.
Read commentary →History: February 14 (#2)
February 14, 2005 YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.
Read commentary →History: February 17 (#1)
February 17, 1996 In Philadelphia, world champion Garry Kasparov beats the Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match.
Read commentary →History: February 18 (#1)
February 18, 3102 BCE Kali Yuga, the fourth and final yuga of Hinduism, starts with the death of Krishna.
Read commentary →History: February 20 (#1)
February 20, 1952 Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
Read commentary →History: February 20 (#2)
February 20, 1956 The United States Merchant Marine Academy becomes a permanent Service Academy.
Read commentary →History: February 23 (#1)
February 23, 1909 The AEA Silver Dart makes the first powered flight in Canada and the British Empire.
Read commentary →History: March 1 (#1)
March 1, 1956 The International Air Transport Association finalizes a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet for the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Read commentary →History: March 2 (#1)
March 2, 1989 Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.
Read commentary →History: March 4 (#2)
March 4, 1957 The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90.
Read commentary →History: March 5 (#1)
March 5, 1981 The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 11⁄2 million units around the world.
Read commentary →History: March 9 (#2)
March 9, 1959 The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.
Read commentary →History: March 12 (#1)
March 12, 2009 Financier Bernie Madoff pleads guilty to one of the largest frauds in Wall Street's history.
Read commentary →History: March 17 (#1)
March 17, 1862 The first railway line of Finland between cities of Helsinki and Hämeenlinna, called Päärata, is officially opened.
Read commentary →History: March 22 (#3)
March 22, 1631 The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.
Read commentary →History: March 25 (#1)
March 25, 1957 The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members.
Read commentary →History: March 25 (#4)
March 25, 1911 Andrey Yushchinsky is murdered in Kiev, leading to the Beilis affair.
Read commentary →History: March 25 (#5)
March 25, 1655 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
Read commentary →History: March 29 (#2)
March 29, 1984 The Baltimore Colts load their possessions onto fifteen Mayflower moving trucks in the early morning hours and transfer their operations to Indianapolis.
Read commentary →History: March 31 (#1)
March 31, 1906 The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
Read commentary →History: March 31 (#4)
March 31, 1901 Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák premieres at the National Opera House in Prague.
Read commentary →History: April 2 (#2)
April 2, 1107 Seljuq sultan Muhammad I Tapar begins the siege of Shahdiz, a fortress of the Nizari Ismailis.
Read commentary →History: April 3 (#1)
April 3, 1895 The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
Read commentary →History: April 3 (#2)
April 3, 686 Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumes the crown of Calakmul.
Read commentary →History: April 4 (#1)
April 4, 1996 Comet Hyakutake is imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.
Read commentary →History: April 9 (#2)
April 9, 1860 On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the first known recording of an audible human voice.
Read commentary →History: April 13 (#1)
April 13, 2025 Rory McIlroy wins the Masters Tournament, becoming just the sixth person to complete the Grand Slam in golf.
Read commentary →History: April 14 (#2)
April 14, 1894 The first ever commercial motion picture house opens in New York City, United States. It uses ten Kinetoscopes, devices for peep-show viewing of films.
Read commentary →History: April 21 (#1)
April 21, 1934 The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1994, it is revealed to be a hoax).
Read commentary →History: April 21 (#2)
April 21, 1952 Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated.
Read commentary →History: April 22 (#2)
April 22, 1977 Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.
Read commentary →History: April 25 (#1)
April 25, 1829 Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the British Empire.
Read commentary →History: April 25 (#2)
April 25, 1954 The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Read commentary →History: April 25 (#3)
April 25, 2005 The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum is returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937.
Read commentary →History: April 28 (#1)
April 28, 1910 Frenchman Louis Paulhan wins the 1910 London to Manchester air race, the first long-distance aeroplane race in the United Kingdom.
Read commentary →History: April 30 (#2)
April 30, 2008 Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei and Anastasia, two of the children of the last Tsar of Russia, whose entire family was executed at Yekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks.
Read commentary →History: May 2 (#2)
May 2, 1867 Albert Günther publishes the first study to recognise that the New Zealand tuatara is not a lizard.
Read commentary →History: May 2 (#5)
May 2, 1920 The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis.
Read commentary →History: May 3 (#1)
May 3, 1957 Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
Read commentary →History: May 5 (#2)
May 5, 1920 Authorities arrest Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for alleged robbery and murder.
Read commentary →History: May 13 (#1)
May 13, 1373 Julian of Norwich has visions of Jesus while suffering from a life-threatening illness, visions which are later described and interpreted in her book Revelations of Divine Love.
Read commentary →History: May 14 (#2)
May 14, 1879 The first group of 463 Indian indentured laborers arrives in Fiji aboard the Leonidas.
Read commentary →History: May 15 (#3)
May 15, 1618 Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).
Read commentary →History: May 19 (#2)
May 19, 1743 Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
Read commentary →History: May 20 (#1)
May 20, 1891 History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.
Read commentary →History: May 22 (#2)
May 22, 1840 The penal transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished.
Read commentary →History: May 23 (#2)
May 23, 1609 Official ratification of the Second Virginia Charter takes place.
Read commentary →History: May 25 (#1)
May 25, 1895 Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison.
Read commentary →History: May 26 (#1)
May 26, 1986 The European Community adopts the European flag.
Read commentary →History: May 29 (#3)
May 29, 1852 Jenny Lind leaves New York after her two-year American tour.
Read commentary →History: June 7 (#1)
June 7, 1892 Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train; he lost the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson.
Read commentary →History: June 8 (#1)
June 8, 1856 A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.
Read commentary →History: June 10 (#1)
June 10, 1944 In baseball, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game.
Read commentary →History: June 11 (#1)
June 11, 1968 Lloyd J. Old identified the first cell surface antigens that could differentiate among different cell types.
Read commentary →History: June 19 (#2)
June 19, 1988 Pope John Paul II canonizes 117 Vietnamese Martyrs.
Read commentary →History: June 21 (#1)
June 21, 1970 Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy in what was the largest U.S. corporate bankruptcy to date.
Read commentary →History: June 24 (#4)
June 24, 1918 First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto.
Read commentary →History: June 26 (#1)
June 26, 1977 Elvis Presley holds what will prove to be his final concert at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Read commentary →History: June 26 (#4)
June 26, 1948 Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is published in The New Yorker magazine.
Read commentary →History: June 30 (#1)
June 30, 1859 French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
Read commentary →History: July 1 (#1)
July 1, 1881 The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.
Read commentary →History: July 3 (#2)
July 3, 1886 The New-York Tribune becomes the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand.
Read commentary →History: July 4 (#1)
July 4, 1939 Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, informs a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth", then announces his retirement from major league baseball.
Read commentary →History: July 4 (#3)
July 4, 1855 The first edition of Walt Whitman's book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published in Brooklyn.
Read commentary →History: July 10 (#2)
July 10, 1877 The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain.
Read commentary →History: July 12 (#2)
July 12, 1562 Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatán, burns the sacred idols and books of the Maya.
Read commentary →History: July 16 (#1)
July 16, 1941 Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as an MLB record.
Read commentary →History: July 18 (#2)
July 18, 1334 The bishop of Florence blesses the first foundation stone for the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral, designed by the artist Giotto di Bondone.
Read commentary →History: July 21 (#2)
July 21, 2012 Erden Eruç completes the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world.
Read commentary →History: July 25 (#5)
July 25, 1137 Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Prince Louis, later King Louis VII of France, at the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux.
Read commentary →History: July 30 (#3)
July 30, 1502 Christopher Columbus lands at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.
Read commentary →History: August 2 (#1)
August 2, 1873 The Clay Street Hill Railroad begins operating the first cable car in San Francisco's famous cable car system.
Read commentary →History: August 2 (#2)
August 2, 1870 Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London, England, United Kingdom.
Read commentary →History: August 2 (#3)
August 2, 1982 The Helsinki Metro, the first rapid transit system of Finland, is opened to the general public.
Read commentary →History: August 3 (#2)
August 3, 1977 Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the world's first mass-produced personal computers.
Read commentary →History: August 5 (#3)
August 5, 1858 Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts. It will operate for less than a month.
Read commentary →History: August 6 (#1)
August 6, 1956 After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network makes its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena in New York in the Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena series.
Read commentary →History: August 7 (#1)
August 7, 1858 The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
Read commentary →History: August 8 (#2)
August 8, 1963 Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes.
Read commentary →History: August 11 (#2)
August 11, 1929 Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.
Read commentary →History: August 11 (#4)
August 11, 3114 BCE The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya, begins.
Read commentary →History: August 14 (#1)
August 14, 1948 An Idaho Department of Fish and Game program to relocate beavers known as Beaver drop occurred. This program relocated beavers from Northwestern Idaho to Central Idaho by airplane and then parachuting the beavers into the Chamberlain Basin .
Read commentary →History: August 15 (#4)
August 15, 1843 Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Read commentary →History: August 23 (#1)
August 23, 1927 Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti are executed after a lengthy, controversial trial.
Read commentary →History: August 23 (#3)
August 23, 2007 The skeletal remains of Russia's last royal family members Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Grand Duchess Anastasia are discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Read commentary →History: August 27 (#1)
August 27, 1991 The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Read commentary →History: August 28 (#2)
August 28, 1830 The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's new Tom Thumb steam locomotive races a horse-drawn car, presaging steam's role in U.S. railroads.
Read commentary →History: September 4 (#1)
September 4, 1972 The Price Is Right premieres on CBS. It currently is the longest running game show on American television.
Read commentary →History: September 4 (#5)
September 4, 2002 The Oakland Athletics win their 20th consecutive game, an American League record, until the Cleveland Indians surpassed it in 2017.
Read commentary →History: September 6 (#1)
September 6, 1620 The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England on the Mayflower to settle in North America. (Old Style date; September 16 per New Style date.)
Read commentary →History: September 7 (#1)
September 7, 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flies his 14-bis aircraft at Bagatelle, France successfully for the first time.
Read commentary →History: September 11 (#1)
September 11, 1968 John Eliot Gardiner conducts Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine with the Monteverdi Choir at the Proms.
Read commentary →History: September 12 (#1)
September 12, 1984 Dwight Gooden sets the baseball record for strikeouts in a season by a rookie with 276, previously set by Herb Score with 246 in 1954. Gooden's 276 strikeouts that season, pitched in 218 innings, set the current record.
Read commentary →History: September 12 (#2)
September 12, 1983 A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros.
Read commentary →History: September 12 (#5)
September 12, 1993 NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-51.
Read commentary →History: September 14 (#1)
September 14, 1998 Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom complete their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom.
Read commentary →History: September 16 (#1)
September 16, 1990 The railroad between the People's Republic of China and Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.
Read commentary →History: September 16 (#3)
September 16, 1822 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a "note" read to the Academy of Sciences, reports a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster's hypothesis that photoelasticity (as it is now known) is stress-induced birefringence.
Read commentary →History: September 18 (#5)
September 18, 96 Emperor Domitian is assassinated as a result of a plot by his wife Domitia and two Praetorian prefects. Nerva is then proclaimed as his successor.
Read commentary →History: September 19 (#2)
September 19, 96 Nerva, suspected of complicity of the death of Domitian, is declared emperor by Senate. The Senate then annuls laws passed by Domitian and orders his statues to be destroyed.
Read commentary →History: September 22 (#2)
September 22, 1792 Primidi Vendémiaire of year one of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
Read commentary →History: September 24 (#1)
September 24, 1932 Mahatma Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar agree to the Poona Pact, which reserved seats in the Indian provincial legislatures for the "Depressed Classes" (Untouchables).
Read commentary →History: September 27 (#2)
September 27, 1930 Bobby Jones wins the (pre-Masters) Grand Slam of golf.
Read commentary →History: September 30 (#1)
September 30, 1936 American journalists Herbert R. Ekins, reporter for the New York World-Telegram, Dorothy Kilgallen of the New York Journal and Leo Kieran of The New York Times start the race to travel around the world on commercial airline flights. The race takes 18 ½ days.
Read commentary →History: October 1 (#1)
October 1, 1903 Baseball: The Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series.
Read commentary →History: October 1 (#4)
October 1, 2003 The popular and controversial English-language imageboard 4chan is launched.
Read commentary →History: October 7 (#3)
October 7, 3761 BCE The epoch reference date (start) of the modern Hebrew calendar.
Read commentary →History: October 14 (#1)
October 14, 1956 Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, leader of India's Untouchable caste, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 of his followers (see Neo-Buddhism).
Read commentary →History: October 19 (#2)
October 19, 1936 New York World-Telegram reporter Herbert Ekins won a race against two other New York newspaper journalists to travel around the world on commercial airline flights. He accomplished the feat in 18 ½ days. His opponents were New York Evening Journal reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, who finished in second place, and New York Times reporter Leo Kieran.
Read commentary →History: October 29 (#2)
October 29, 1675 Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
Read commentary →History: November 1 (#5)
November 1, 365 Roman Emperor Valentinian I learns the Alemanni have crossed the Rhine and invaded Gaul.
Read commentary →History: November 2 (#1)
November 2, 1936 The BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service begins. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
Read commentary →History: November 7 (#1)
November 7, 1940 In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion.
Read commentary →History: November 7 (#3)
November 7, 1987 The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system in Singapore opens for passenger service.
Read commentary →History: November 10 (#1)
November 10, 1997 WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).
Read commentary →History: November 11 (#1)
November 11, 1675 Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
Read commentary →History: November 15 (#1)
November 15, 1971 Intel releases the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
Read commentary →History: November 18 (#2)
November 18, 1883 In the "day of two noons", American and Canadian railroad companies institute four standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
Read commentary →History: November 21 (#2)
November 21, 1676 The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.
Read commentary →History: November 21 (#4)
November 21, 2019 Tesla launches the SUV Cybertruck. A gaffe occurs during the launch event when its "unbreakable" windows shatter during demonstration.
Read commentary →History: November 22 (#3)
November 22, 2003 Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident: Shortly after takeoff, a DHL Express cargo plane is struck on the left wing by a surface-to-air missile and forced to land.
Read commentary →History: November 24 (#1)
November 24, 1974 Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
Read commentary →History: November 24 (#2)
November 24, 1906 A 13–6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the "Ohio League" Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football.
Read commentary →History: November 24 (#3)
November 24, 1642 Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
Read commentary →History: November 28 (#1)
November 28, 1814 The Times of London becomes the first newspaper to be produced on a steam-powered printing press, built by the German team of Koenig & Bauer.
Read commentary →History: November 29 (#1)
November 29, 1972 Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.
Read commentary →History: December 9 (#2)
December 9, 1822 French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a memoir read to the Academy of Sciences, coins the terms linear polarization, circular polarization, and elliptical polarization, and reports a direct refraction experiment verifying his theory that optical rotation is a form of birefringence.
Read commentary →History: December 10 (#1)
December 10, 1684 Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.
Read commentary →History: December 11 (#1)
December 11, 1815 The U.S. Senate creates a select committee on finance and a uniform national currency, predecessor of the United States Senate Committee on Finance.
Read commentary →History: December 12 (#1)
December 12, 1963 Kenya declares independence from Great Britain.
Read commentary →History: December 14 (#3)
December 14, 2017 The Walt Disney Company announces that it would acquire 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio, for $52.4 billion.
Read commentary →History: December 17 (#1)
December 17, 1790 The Aztec calendar stone is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City.
Read commentary →History: December 20 (#1)
December 20, 1984 The Summit Tunnel fire, one of the largest transportation tunnel fires in history, burns after a freight train carrying over one million liters of gasoline derails near the town of Todmorden, England, in the Pennines.
Read commentary →History: December 21 (#1)
December 21, 2012 2012 phenomenon: Festivities are held in parts of Mesoamerica to commemorate the conclusion of b'ak'tun 13, a roughly 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar whose passing many New Age spiritualists had earlier held to portend a variety of cataclysmic or transformative events.
Read commentary →History: December 25 (#5)
December 25, 2003 The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express spacecraft on December 19, stops transmitting shortly before its scheduled landing.
Read commentary →History: December 26 (#1)
December 26, 1966 The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
Read commentary →History: December 28 (#3)
December 28, 1912 The first municipally owned streetcars take to the streets in San Francisco.
Read commentary →Get Everyday Life Daily
Receive one history of the day entry each morning with commentary. Free, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Start Free Daily Email