Traditionally only men could propose marriage, not women. Under the custom of the time, February 29 was ignored as a non-day. Since it was not a real day St. Patrick reasoned that traditions did not apply. So when St. Bridget complained that women had to wait too long to be asked to marry, he said [...]
In 269 AD St. Valentine, a Catholic priest, was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death for performing forbidden marriages. His execution was done in three parts, beating, stoning and finally beheading. His skull is on display in the Basilica of Santa Mariain Cosmedin, Rome. His favorite song should have been "What I Did For Love".
On this date in 1897, Carl Elsener patented a penknife that later became known as the Swiss Army Knife. 97 years later on this date in 1994 a Swiss Army Knife was allegedly use by O. J. Simpson to brutally murder his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. The crime shocked the nation due to the perception of [...]
On this date in 1932 the Bonus Army started to gather in Washington D.C. to demand the cash payment of the bonus promised them for their service in World War I. Passed in 1924, the World War Adjusted Compensation Act awarded each veteran a bonus plus interest to be paid in 1945. With the collapse of the [...]
On this date in 1856 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was savagely beaten on the floor of the Senate by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks. The beating was prompted by Sumner's two-day speech against slavery and specifically called out three of his fellow senators by name as being particularly heinous. One of those senators, South Carolina Senator Andrew P. Butler, [...]
On this date in 1932 Amelia Earhart landed in Derry, Northern Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, five years to the day after Lindberg's flight. She became an inspiration to the world who followed her adventures closely. She helped promote women aviators and became a professor at Purdue University [...]
On this date in 1927 Charles Lindberg took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island on the first successful solo Transatlantic flight. He landed the following day in Paris. Following this flight he became perhaps the world's most famous man. That fame led to tragedy when in 1932 his infant son Charles Jr was kidnapped [...]
On this date in 1962 Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to John F. Kennedy at a birthday salute held at Madison Square Garden in New York. Monroe's breathless rendition was played frequently on the news and continues to be a favorite film clip whenever she or President Kennedy are profiled. It has been reported that [...]
On this date in 1926 Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared from Ocean Park Beach near Los Angeles. What happened next continues to be a matter of controversy. "Sister Aimee" was a radio evangelist with millions of followers. Her Foursquare Church was her platform for her preaching that was in its time even more popular than Billy Sunday. At that [...]
On this date in 1990 homosexuality was removed from the list of psychiatric diseases by the World Health Organization. Fourteen years later on this date the first legal same sex marriages were performed in Massachusetts. The modern LGBT rights movement started with the Stonewall riots in 1969. For years police had conducted raids on bars [...]
On this date in 1861 Herman Webster Mudgett was born. Mudgett is better known by his alias Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of America's first modern serial killers. At the time of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Holmes opened a hotel in the Hyde Park neighborhood and rented rooms to single women attending the [...]
On this date in 1905 the city of Las Vegas was founded. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad auctioned off 110 acres in what is now downtown Las Vegas to start the city. Originally it was a popular stopping point on the railroad and was the staging point for the many mines that [...]
On this date in 1643, four-year-old Louis XIV became king of France when his father, Louis XIII died, who had himself become king on this date in 1610 when his father Henry IV was assassinated. Louis XIV is known as the "Sun King" for the glorious epoch of French history he ushered in. Through many wars [...]
On this date in 1931 Jim Jones was born. A Marxist from an early age, Jones felt frustrated by the repression of communists during the McCarthy era. In order to cloak his beliefs he turned to religion and in 1956 founded what was to become the People's Temple. From the beginning it was an inter-racial [...]
On this date in 1935 Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith met for the first time in Akron, Ohio. Both men struggled with alcoholism and had tried various approaches to control it. Together they founded Alcoholics Anonymous which emphasized the helplessness of the alcoholic rather than the sinfulness of drink. They developed a twelve step program [...]
On this date in 2000 Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as president of Russia. Putin, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet KGB, became acting president in 1999 when Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. He was able to reach an accord with the Russian oligarchs, in which they were able to retain their power in exchange for [...]
On this date in in 1994 Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton alleging sexual harassment. During the course of depositions for this case Clinton denied having had an affair with another staffer, Monica Lewinsky. As a result of his statements and continued denials, charges of perjury and obstruction of justice were brought against [...]
On this date in 1925 John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. The resulting show trial, usually referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial was staged to promote the city of Dayton, Tennessee and provide a stage for the opposing sides of the evolution question. Arguing against evolution [...]
On this date in 1932 Al Capone started his eleven year prison sentence for tax evasion. Capone became famous in the 1920's for his crime organization. Located in Cicero, Illinois he eventually took over the south side of Chicago running speakeasies, brothels, and smuggling operations. He enjoyed a reputation as something of a Robin Hood [...]
On this date in 1469 Niccolò Machiavelli was born. Machiavelli was a historian, philosopher, politician and writer who lived in Florence. He is best remembered for his book The Prince which offers guidance on the realities of political power. The book was written about Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI. To find out more about [...]
On this date in 1536 Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. She gave birth to a daughter, the Future Queen of England Elizabeth I but when no sons followed Henry grew tired of her. Henry had her investigated and she was charged with adultery, incest, [...]
On this date in 1776 the Illuminati was formed in Bavaria by Adam Weishaupt. It was formed to promote the ideals of the Enlightenment and to fight superstition, prejudice, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power. Even worse in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church was their promotion of education for women and gender [...]
On this day in 1933 the great Willie Nelson was born. Besides being one of the greatest musicians of the last half century, Willie is famous for his activism in support of the environment, animal rights and American farmers. He is also well known for his fondness for marijuana and his work to have it [...]
On this day in 1863 William Randolph Hearst was born. Hearst was one of the most powerful media moguls of his day. He used his network of newspapers to push a populist agenda that included whipping the country into a fury over Spanish rule of Cuba which led to the Spanish American War in 1898. He also [...]
On this date in 1789 the Mutiny on the Bounty occured. The ship was on a mission to the South Pacific to pick up breadfruit plants and take them to the West Indies to be grown as food for slaves. Relations between Captain William Bligh and sailing master Fletcher Christian deteriorated over the course of [...]
On this date in 1773 the British Parliament passed one of the most ill-conceived laws of all time, The Tea Act. In an effort to save the almost bankrupt East India Company, Parliament granted it a de facto monopoly on tea in the American colonies. The law actually reduced the cost of tea in the [...]
On this date in 1937 the German Luftwaffe conducted its first terror bombing of a civilian target, the Spanish town of Guernica. The raid was in support of Franco's Fascist forces in their eventually successful campaign to overthrown the legitimate government of France. The bombing is most notably remembered through Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, painted [...]
On this date French highwayman Nicolas Pelletier became the first person to be executed by guillotine. The guillotine was named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician who petitioned for a humane execution method that was to be used on all condemned prisoners, regardless of rank. By 1793 what became known as the Reign of Terror started [...]
On this date in 1984, 48 year old Jerry Lee Lewis married his sixth wife, 21 year old Kerrie McCarver. At 20 years it would prove to be his longest marriage. His first, when he was 14, to 17 year old Dorthy Barton, lasted 20 months. His second lasted 4 years. His third caused a [...]
Today is the Vinalia Urbana, the Roman festival of wine. Every year Romans would gather to celebrate the wine harvest, sample the latest wine from the last harvest and pray for good weather. Venus was the goddess of "profane" wine used for everyday drinking while Jupiter was the god of wine that was good enough [...]
On this date in 1994, Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States died. Nixon's paranoia led to the misuse of the FBI for domestic spying and the creation of the "White House Plumbers Unit" to find and destroy his political "enemies". The subsequent scandal became known as Watergate after the name of the [...]
