On This Day: a thread about stuff that happened on this day in history

[4U2NV]

The limited edition 1969.5 Hurst SC/Rambler made its debut at the Chicago Auto Show on March 8, 1969.

[4U2NV]

[R.Murphy]

March 14

Albert Einstein's birthday, 1879.

Also PI DAY! Go have some pie to celebrate. Pie improves everything.

[R.Murphy]

March 18

1965
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksey Arkhipovich Leonov, after passing through an air lock on the spacecraft Voskhod 2, became the first man to walk in space.


1766
The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act of 1765 after violent protests from American colonists, including a group known as the Sons of Liberty.

[R.Murphy]

March 21

On this day in 1960, F1 Champ Ayrton Senna was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.



Also on this day, in 1965:

Martin Luther King, Jr. begins the march from Selma to Montgomery

In the name of African-American voting rights, 3,200 civil rights demonstrators in Alabama, led by Martin Luther King Jr., begin a historic march from Selma to Montgomery, the state’s capital. Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents were on hand to provide safe passage for the march, which twice had been turned back by Alabama state police at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.

In 1965, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided to make the small town of Selma the focus of their drive to win voting rights for African Americans in the South. Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, was a vocal opponent of the African-American civil rights movement, and local authorities in Selma had consistently thwarted efforts by the Dallas County Voters League and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register local blacks.

Although Governor Wallace promised to prevent it from going forward, on March 7 some 500 demonstrators, led by SCLC leader Hosea Williams and SNCC leader John Lewis, began the 54-mile march to the state capital. After crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by Alabama state troopers and posse men who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back.

Several of the protesters were severely beaten, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national television and outraged many Americans.

King, who was in Atlanta at the time, promised to return to Selma immediately and lead another attempt. On March 9, King led another marching attempt, but turned the marchers around when state troopers again blocked the road.

On March 21, U.S. Army troops and federalized Alabama National Guardsmen escorted the marchers across Edmund Pettus Bridge and down Highway 80. When the highway narrowed to two lanes, only 300 marchers were permitted, but thousands more rejoined the Alabama Freedom March as it came into Montgomery on March 25.

On the steps of the Alabama State Capitol, King addressed live television cameras and a crowd of 25,000, just a few hundred feet from the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he got his start as a minister in 1954.

[R.Murphy]

Happy Birthday to the first woman to win an Indy Car series race.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/star-driver-danica-patrick-born

[R.Murphy]

April 27, 2001

The inaugural S2KDays event began.

[R.Murphy]

Happy May Day!


1931 Herbert Hoover dedicates Empire State Building

On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building and presses a button that turns on the building’s electrical lights. Hoover was not actually in New York for the dedication. The button he pushed was a symbolic one in ...read more

[Stuka]

The first of May, a day most people view as a rebirth of life, spring in all it's glory, has a sadder darker connotation for me and has for the past 25 years.
Ayrton Senna Born March 21, 1960, Died May 1, 1994.

[R.Murphy]

The first of May, a day most people view as a rebirth of life, spring in all it's glory, has a sadder darker connotation for me and has for the past 25 years.
Ayrton Senna Born March 21, 1960, Died May 1, 1994.

Wow. Time flies. Hard to believe it's been 25 years.

Some things just stick with you. I still remember where I was when I picked up the paper and saw the headline that Dale Earnhardt Sr had died at the Daytona 500. I hadn't watched the race because I was off on a vacation at a Bed & Breakfast with no TV. I recall thinking, "No. That can't be right. Dale was the guy who always got the car back out there no matter what and finished the race for those much needed points. He was rock solid. That can't be." https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator...ears-old-today

[Stuka]

Wow. Time flies. Hard to believe it's been 25 years.

Some things just stick with you. I still remember where I was when I picked up the paper and saw the headline that Dale Earnhardt Sr had died at the Daytona 500. I hadn't watched the race because I was off on a vacation at a Bed & Breakfast with no TV. I recall thinking, "No. That can't be right. Dale was the guy who always got the car back out there no matter what and finished the race for those much needed points. He was rock solid. That can't be." https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator...ears-old-today

Yeah, I remember that one vividly also, I was watching both races when it happened. Two of my favorite drivers...a dangerous sport.

[R.Murphy]

Daimler-Benz announces purchase of Chrysler Corp.


On this day (May 7) in 1998, the German automobile company Daimler-Benz–maker of the world-famous luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz–announces a $36 billion merger with the United States-based Chrysler Corporation.

The purchase of Chrysler, America’s third-largest car company, by the Stuttgart-based Daimler-Benz marked the biggest acquisition by a foreign buyer of any U.S. company in history. Though marketed to investors as an equal pairing, it soon emerged that Daimler would be the dominant partner, with its stockholders owning the majority of the new company’s shares. For Chrysler, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the end of independence was a surprising twist in a striking comeback story. After a near-collapse and a government bailout in 1979 that saved it from bankruptcy, the company surged back in the 1980s under the leadership of the former Ford executive Lee Iacocca, in a revival spurred in part by the tremendous success of its trendsetting minivan.

The new company, DaimlerChrysler AG, began trading on the Frankfurt and New York stock exchanges the following November. A few months later, according to a 2001 article in The New York Times, its stock price rose to an impressive high of $108.62 per share. The euphoria proved to be short-lived, however. While Daimler had been attracted by the profitability of Chrysler’s minivans and Jeeps, over the next few years profits were up and down, and by the fall of 2003 the Chrysler Group had cut some 26,000 jobs and was still losing money.

In 2006, according to the Times, Chrysler posted a loss of $1.5 billion and fell behind Toyota to fourth place in the American car market. This loss came despite the company’s splashy launch of 10 new Chrysler models that year, with plans to unveil eight more. The following May, however, after reportedly negotiating with General Motors about a potential sale, DaimlerChrysler announced it was selling 80.1 percent of Chrysler to the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $7.4 billion. DaimlerChrysler, soon renamed Daimler AG, kept a 19.9 percent stake in the new company, known as Chrysler LLC.

By late 2008, increasingly dismal sales led Chrysler to seek federal funds to the tune of $4 billion to stay afloat. Under pressure from the Obama administration, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2009 and entered into a partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat. In 2014, the two companies became Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/daimler-benz-announces-purchase-of-chrysler-corp

[4U2NV]

Big Ben chime for the fist time on May 31, 1859.

[Stuka]

To go along with the British theme...Today in 1967 the Beatles released "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
To paraphrase - "Twas 52 years ago today, The Beatles taught the world to play"

[Fokker]

June 3, 1989

The Chinese government begins its crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Hundreds are killed and thousands are arrested.

[s2kbobby]

[R.Murphy]

https://www.history.com/topics/women...th-amendment-1

Edit: (June 4, 1919) ... 19th Amendment passed by Congress.

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest. In 1848 the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement. Stanton and Mott, along with Susan B. Anthony and other activists, raised public awareness and lobbied the government to grant voting rights to women. After a lengthy battle, these groups finally emerged victorious with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Women’s Suffrage
During America’s early history, women were denied some of the basic rights enjoyed by male citizens.

For example, married women couldn’t own property and had no legal claim to any money they might earn, and no female had the right to vote. Women were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, not politics.

The campaign for women’s suffrage was a small but growing movement in the decades before the Civil War. Starting in the 1820s, various reform groups proliferated across the U.S.—temperance leagues, the abolitionist movement, religious groups—and in a number of these, women played a prominent role.

Meanwhile, many American women were resisting the notion that the ideal woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Combined, these factors contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States.

Seneca Falls Convention
It was not until 1848 that the movement for women’s rights began to organize at the national level.

In July of that year, reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York (where Stanton lived). More than 300 people—mostly women, but also some men—attended, including former African-American slave and activist Frederick Douglass.

In addition to their belief that women should be afforded better opportunities for education and employment, most of the delegates at the Seneca Falls Convention agreed that American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

...

https://www.history.com/topics/women...th-amendment-1

[Stuka]

Happy birthday to the Flying Scot Sir Jackie Stewart, born 80 years ago... a true champion and a survivor of the deadliest years of F1 racing.
He and his wife Helen counted 57 racing deaths during his racing career including some of his closest friends. He said "and in those days they never stopped the race, you just kept racing!"

[R.Murphy]

June 26, 1948 Berlin Airlift begins

In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city. For nearly a year, supplies from American planes sustained the over 2 million people in West Berlin. ...

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/berlin-airlift-begins

[R.Murphy]

You are now free to move about the country.
(apologies to Southwest Airlines for borrowing their slogan)


June 26, 1956

Congress approves Federal Highway Act


On this day in 1956, the U.S. Congress approves the Federal Highway Act, which allocates more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways; it will be the largest public construction project in U.S. history to that date. Among the pressing questions involved in passing highway legislation were where exactly the highways should be built, and...


https://www.history.com/this-day-in-...al-highway-act