Tidbits of History

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.