Wednesday April 16, 2014

KALW

Published April 16, 2014 at 7:09 AM PDT

On This Day In …
1789 --- Newly elected President George Washington leaves his Mount Vernon, Virginia, home and heads for New York, where he is sworn in as the first American president.
1854 -- San Salvador was destroyed by an earthquake.

1900 --- The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.

1905 --- An endowment of a college teachers’ pension fund was established by Andrew Carnegie. He donated $10,000,000 of personal money to set up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
1917 --- Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the

Russian Revolution. One month before, Czar Nicholas II had been forced from power when Russian army troops joined a workers' revolt in Petrograd, the Russian capital.

1940 --- Cleveland Indians’ Bob Feller pitches his first no-hitter. He went on to throw two more no-hitters in his career; only two other pitchers in baseball history have recorded more no-hitters. Feller

threw his first no-hitter, against the White Sox on opening day at Comiskey Park. The Indians won the game, 1-0. Feller’s no-hitter remains the only one to occur on any opening day in baseball history. He pitched a second no-hitter against the Yankees on April 30, 1946, and his third no-hitter came on July 1, 1951, in a game against the Tigers.

1943 --- In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumes LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid

diethylamide, Dr. Hoffman was disturbed by unusual sensations and hallucinations. In his notes, he related the experience:After intentionally taking the drug again to confirm that it had caused this strange physical and mental state, Dr. Hoffman published a report announcing his discovery, and so LSD made its entry into the world as a hallucinogenic drug.

1947 --- The Zoomar lens is demonstrated by NBC-TV in New York City. The Zoomar lens is a device that can feature close-up and long distance camera shots from a stationary camera. Eventually, the lens would be scaled down for use by regular photographers, not just for television. There are many different kinds of close-up/long distance lenses today, including the zoom lens named after the original Zoomar.

1947 --- At 9:12 a.m. in Texas City's port on Galveston Bay, a fire aboard the French freighter Grandcamp ignites ammonium nitrate and other explosive materials in the ship's hold, causing a massive blast that destroys much of the city and takes nearly 600 lives.The port of Texas City, a small industrial city with a population of about

18,000, was teaming with chemical plants and oil refineries that provided steady, good-paying jobs for much of the town. In the industrial sector, minor accidents and chemical fires were rather commonplace, and many stood around the port casually watching the reddish orange blaze that broke out on the Grandcamp early on a Wednesday morning. Twenty-seven members of the Texas City Volunteer Fire Department were called out to douse the flames, but the ship was so hot that the water from their fire hoses was instantly vaporized.

1947 --- Financier and presidential confidant Bernard M. Baruch said in a speech at the South Carolina statehouse, "Let us not be deceived. We are today in the midst of a cold war."

1956 --- On the 'I Love Lucy' show, Lucy stomped grapes in Rome, and wrestled with another female grape stomper. An inspiration for future 'food wrestling' entrepreneurs. Actually, this is one of the funniest sitcom episodes ever made.
1964 --- "The Rolling Stones (England's Newest Hitmakers)," the band's debut album, was released
1972 --- Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon.

1973 --- Former Beatle, Paul McCartney, leading the group, Wings, starred in his first TV special titled, James Paul McCartney.

1975 --- The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after a five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror.

1990 --- Over 72,000 people gathered at London's Wembley Stadium for an anti-apartheid concert honoring Nelson Mandela. Mandela had recently been released from prison.
1996 --- A segment about mad cow disease was aired on the Oprah Winfrey show. Later, a group of Texas cattle ranchers sued Winfrey for her comments. (The cattle ranchers lost the suit).

2007 --- In one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history, 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University by Seung Hui Cho, a student at the school who later dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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