Category Archives: Presidential History

National Potato Chip Day

National Pi Day– Why today? Because today is 3.14, the value of π, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159.

1629 – A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1757 – British Admiral John Byng was executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty. Byng is best known for the loss of Minorca in 1756 at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. His ships badly needed repair and he was relieved of his command before he could see to his ships or secure the extra forces he required. He was court-martialled and found guilty of failing to “do his utmost” to prevent Minorca falling to the French. The court martial sitting in judgement on Byng acquitted him of personal cowardice and disaffection, and convicted him only for not having done his utmost, since he chose not to pursue the superior French fleet, instead deciding to protect his own. Once the court determined that Byng had “failed to do his utmost”, it had no discretion over punishment under the Articles of War, and therefore condemned Byng to death.

Publication of Federalist Paper #69: The Real Character of the Executive written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788.

From www.gradesaver.com

Hamilton structures his argument around a three-way comparison of the office of the presidency under the proposed constitution, the king of England, and the governor of New York. Hamilton’s chief concern is to counter claims that the president would have powers commensurate to the English monarch against whom Americans fought a war. He does this in a very specific and methodical way, taking a variety of issues and comparing the powers of the president and the king.

In order to make the argument more relevant to the people of New York, who Hamilton is addressing, he introduces a comparison between the president and the governor of New York as well. Surely, the people of New York would not claim that the president under the proposed constitution is an elected monarch if his powers are roughly commensurate to their own governor.

1794 – Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin.

Birthday of Jonathan Luther “John” “Casey” Jones, (March 14, 1864), American railroad engineer

Birthday of Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879), German physicist, noted for his theory of relativity.

March 14, 1883 – Karl Marx died at the age of 64 years. Author of “The Communist Manifesto” recognized as one of the world’s most influential political documents. Now in the public domain, it can be found on many websites including ours: Nextdoor e-store.com

1885 – The Mikado, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, received its first public performance in London.

1914 – Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes.

1967 – The body of U.S. President John F. Kennedy was moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery. In the three years following the Kennedy assassination, over 16 million people visited the original gravesite. The vast number of visitors necessitated the erection of a larger memorial.

March 13 is celebrated as Ear Muff Day. If you live in a cold climate like Chester Greenwood did, and had large, protruding ears, like Chester Greenwood did, you might be thankful for his invention. National Earmuff Day honors the man who found a better way to keep his ears warm all winter long.

After a day of ice skating in the cold, 15-year-old Chester came up with an idea to keep his big ears warm. Partnering with his grandmother who sewed tufts of fur between loops of wire, Chester soon had a working model. Farmington, Maine is now the “Earmuff Capital of the World”

Anniversary of the Discovery of Uranus See 1781.
Jewel Day

Anniversary of the naming of Harvard University in 1639, oldest university in the U. S. Originally called “New College” or “the college at New Towne”, it was renamed Harvard after clergyman John Harvard bequeathed the school £779 pounds sterling and his library of some 400 books.

Birthday of Joseph Priestley (March 13, 1733), English discoverer of oxygen.

Birthday of Abigail Fillmore (March 13, 1798), wife of Millard Fillmore, First Lady 1850-1853. She caught a cold at the inauguration of Fillmore’s successor, Franklin Pierce, in 1853, developed pneumonia, and died a month later at age 55.

March 13, 1781 – William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. Image is from Hubble telescope, 2006
According to Nasa:

• Uranus is known as the “sideways planet” because it rotates on its side. Uranus’ unique sideways rotation makes for weird seasons. The planet’s north pole experiences 21 years of nighttime in winter, 21 years of daytime in summer and 42 years of day and night in the spring and fall.
• Uranus was the first planet found using a telescope.
• Uranus is an Ice Giant planet and nearly four times larger than Earth.
• Uranus has 27 known moons, most of which are named after literary characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
• Like Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune, Uranus is a ringed planet.
• Like Venus, Uranus rotates east to west, the opposite direction as most other planets.
• Uranus is the 7th planet from the sun.

1901 – Death of Benjamin Harrison , the twenty-third President of the United States and grandson of the ninth President, William Henry Harrison. He died of complications from influenza at Indianapolis, Indiana at age 67.

1963 – Police in Phoenix, Arizona arrested Ernesto Miranda and charged him with kidnap and rape. His conviction is ultimately set aside by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona. The court found that statements made by a defendant are only admissible if the defendant was informed of the right to an attorney and of the right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by the police. Now known as “Miranda” rights.

1991 – The United States Department of Justice announced that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

March 8 is:

National Peanut Cluster Day

International (Working) Women’s Day

1618 – Johannes Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion. The three laws are:

1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
2. A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
3. The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

Publication of Federalist Paper #66: Objections to the Power of the Senate To Sit as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788. Hamilton continues his arguments for the process of impeachment in this paper.

1817 – The New York Stock Exchange was founded.

Birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (March 8, 1841), American jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.

1874 Death of Millard Fillmore , thirteenth President of the United States. He became President when Zachary Taylor died in office. Fillmore died in Buffalo, New York at age 74 after suffering a stroke.

March 8, 1918 – The first cases of the deadly Spanish flu virus are reported. The 1918 flu pandemic infected 500 million people across the world and killed 50 to 100 million of them, 3 to 5 percent of the world’s population.

1930 – Death of William Howard Taft , twenty-seventh President of the United States and tenth Chief Justice.

Taft was an avid baseball fan, but contrary to myth he did not create the seventh-inning stretch, which was custom decades earlier. He was, however, the first American president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, at Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1910.

He was the first president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was 72.

March 5 is:

National Cheese Doodle Day

On this day in 1496, King Henry VII of England issued letters to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to explore unknown lands.

1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus‘s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was banned by the Catholic Church. He dared to think that the Sun , not the Earth, was the center of the known universe. One of his quotes: “To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

Boston Massacre, anniversary of the March 5, 1770 death of Crispus Attucks, American Revolutionary leader who led the group whose anti-British defiance precipitated the Boston Massacre. Honored as the first American black man to die for freedom. At the subsequent trial, the soldiers are defended by future U.S. president John Adams. Celebrated as Crispus Attucks Day.

Publication of Federalist Paper #64: The Powers of the Senate written by John Jay in 1788. John Jay wrote several early Papers (#2-5) and came back to write #64. This paper discusses the process of making treaties with foreign countries. Some felt that this power should be given to the House of Representatives. Jay argues that a two year term of office is not sufficient to understand all the issues involved in a treaty. He argues that the power properly belongs to the President with consent of the Congress. From teaparty911.com:

This very important power which relates to war, peace, and commerce has been given by the convention to the president chosen by a select body of electors and the senate appointed by state legislatures. This ensures that men of quality and character and ages thirty years or greater will be making treaties in a manner conducive to the public good and will afford the highest security. Further these men are those that best understand our national interests whether in relation to the several states or foreign nations.

In 1821 James Monroe became the first President to be inaugurated on March 5th; March 4th was on a Sunday.

Birthday of James Merritt Ives (March 5, 1824), American lithographer; partner in the firm of Currier & Ives

1946 – Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.

On March 5, 1953, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died. Josef Stalin became the leader of Soviet Union after Lenin died in 1924, and launched government programs that would make the country more progressive. His attempt to move to the new economy, however, led to the starvation of nearly 10 million people. With many intellectuals and activists not in favor of his leadership, Stalin also launched the “Great Purge”, killing every person who opposed him and his ideals. It is estimated that Stalin was responsible for 23 million deaths, second in murderous dictatorship only to Mao Zedong.

1973 Yankee pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich announced they had swapped wives, known as the most scandalous trade in baseball history.

March 2 is National Banana Cream Pie Day

Birthday of Samuel Houston (1793), first president of the Republic of Texas.

1799 – Congress standardized US weights & measures. Under the United States Constitution, Article 1 Section 8, Congress shall have power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

The U.S. Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves on March 2, 1807, disallowing the importation of new slaves into the country. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson, who called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union Address. He had promoted the idea since the 1770s. It reflected the force of the general trend toward abolishing the international slave trade which Virginia, followed by all the other states, had prohibited or restricted.

1819 – Territory of Arkansas was organized.

Texas Independence Day is the anniversary of Texas’ Declaration of Independence from Mexico in 1836.

1853 – Territory of Washington was organized after separating from Oregon Territory

1861 – US created Dakota & Nevada Territories out of the Nebraska & Utah territory

Baseball batter’s box was officially adopted in 1874

Rutherford B Hayes was inaugurated on this day in 1877.  The U.S. presidential election held on Nov. 7, 1876 was one of the most contentious in U. S. History. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote with 4,288,546 and Republican, Rutherford Hayes got 4,034,311. Tilden won 203 electoral votes to Hayes’s 166. The Republicans disputed the votes in three southern states, claiming voter intimidation (specifically they claimed that Negroes had been prevented from going to the polls) by the Democrats in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. (There was also a controversy regarding the electors from the state of Oregon.) There were 20 electoral votes disputed.  To resolve the dispute, Congress, in January 1877, established an electoral commission made up of five U.S. representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. Three of the justices were Republicans. The commission awarded Hayes all 20 of the disputed electoral votes. Democratic leaders accepted Hayes’s election in exchange for Republican promises to withdraw federal troops from the South, provide federal funding for internal improvements in the South, and name a prominent Southerner to the president’s cabinet. When the federal troops were withdrawn, the Republican governments in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina collapsed, bringing Reconstruction to a formal end. Under the so-called Compromise of 1877, the national government would no longer intervene in southern affairs. This would permit the imposition of racial segregation and the disfranchisement of black voters.The voters were not pleased with the outcome, referring to the president as RutherFRAUD Hayes. He served just one term.

1897 – U.S. President Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have required a literacy test for immigrants entering the country.

President McKinley signed a bill creating Mt Rainier National Park (5th in US) in 1899.

Birthday of Dr. Seuss (March 2, 1904), aka Theodor Seuss Geisel, writer of 46 children’s books.

The film King Kong opened at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 1933.

March 2, 1956 – Morocco declared its independence from France.

1965 – The movie, “Sound Of Music,” opened. It featured music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and included songs: My Favorite Things”, “Edelweiss”, “Climb Every Mountain”, and “Do-Re-Mi”. See BenneynLinda.com for more information.

1983 – Compact Discs and players were released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had previously been available only in Japan.

February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 310 days remaining until the end of the year. By Roman custom, February 24 was doubled in a leap year in the Julian calendar.

National Tortilla Chip Day

Feb 24, 1500 was the birthday of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who once said: “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”

1803 – In Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States established the principle of judicial review. Judicial review is the power of the courts to examine the actions of the legislative, executive, and administrative arms of the government and to determine whether such actions are consistent with the Constitution. Actions judged inconsistent are declared unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void.

Arizona was organized as a United States territory on this day in 1863.

Andrew Johnson became the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives on February 24, 1868. He is later acquitted in the Senate on May 16, 1868. Per Wikipedia:

The impeachment and subsequent trial gained a historical reputation as an act of political expedience, rather than necessity, based on Johnson’s defiance of an unconstitutional piece of legislation and with little regard for the will of the public (which, despite the unpopularity of Johnson, opposed the impeachment). Until the impeachment of Bill Clinton 131 years later (which also ended in an acquittal), it was the only impeachment trial of a President in the history of the United States.

That was before the election and attempted impeachment of Donald Trump, 45th President. He was acquitted both times.

1920 – The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was founded.

1981 Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Britain’s Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer. They married July 29, 1981; had two sons, William in 1982 and Harry in 1984; divorced in 1996. Diana died in a car crash August 31, 1997. Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in April 2005. He became King Charles III upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, on Sept 8, 2022.

1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a US $3 million bounty for the death of The Satanic Verses author, Salman Rushdie.

February 23 is:

Birthday of Samuel Pepys (February 23, 1633), English writer. The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.

Birthday of George Frederic Handel (February 23, 1685), German opera composer, wrote the Messiah, heard every Easter.

Publication of Federalist Paper #60: Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788. It was suggested that the regulations could be used to promote “some favorite class of men in exclusion of others by confining the places of election to particular districts and rendering it impracticable to the citizens at large to partake in the choice”. Since the house is elected by the people, the senate by the state legislatures, and the electors of the president chosen by the people, “there would be little probability of a common interest to cement these different branches in a predilection for any particular class of electors”.

1836 – The Battle of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas.

“This is the last of Earth! I am content!” were the final words spoken by John Quincy Adams , sixth President of the United States. His death on February 23, 1848 was triggered by a cerebral hemorrhage. He collapsed on the floor of the US Capitol Building while he was still serving as the representative of the District of Massachusetts.

1861 – President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington, D.C., after the thwarting of an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland.

1903 – Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the United States “in perpetuity”.

1927 – President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill establishing the Federal Radio Commission (later replaced by the Federal Communications Commission) which was to regulate the use of radio frequencies in the United States.

Iwo Jima Day, anniversary of the raising of the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in 1945

1954 – The first mass innoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh.

February 22 is:

National Cook a Sweet Potato Day
National Margarita Day
National Cherry Pie Day

Birthday of George Washington in 1732; first President of the United States, born in Colonial Virginia.
Now commemorated on Presidents’ Day.

Publication of Federalist Paper #59: Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members written by Alexander Hamilton in 1788. In Chapter 59, the new Constitution provided that the time, place, and manner of electing United States senators and representatives should be regulated by the state legislatures, but that the Congress could alter such regulations, “except as to places of choosing senators.”
“Every government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation.” If the power of regulating elections for the national government were left entirely in the hands of state legislatures, the latter would have the union entirely at their mercy.

Birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892), American poet and playwright; authored:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

1821 Spain sold eastern Florida to United States for $5 million. Under Spanish rule, Florida was divided by the natural separation of the Suwanee River into West Florida and East Florida. See further information about West Florida

February 22, 1862 – Jefferson Davis officially became President of the Confederate States of America.

In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opened the first of many of 5¢ and 10¢ Woolworth stores in February, 1878. The original store failed and closed in May 1878.

1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge became the first President to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.

The inaugural Daytona 500 race was held in Daytona Beach, Fla. on this date in 1959.

2006 “Insurgents” (aka barbaric terrorists), affiliated with Al-Qaida, destroyed the golden dome of one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines, the Askariya Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, setting off a spasm of sectarian violence. In 2007 another al-Askari Mosque bombing destroyed the mosque’s two remaining ten-story minarets.