1814 - The Demologos, the first steam-powered warship, launched in New York City. Things went downhill from here!
1858 - On this day in 1858, the first store opens in a small frontier town in Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver in a shameless ploy to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. The brainchild of a town promoter and real estate salesman from Kansas named William H. Larimer Jr., Denver and its first store were created to serve the miners working the placer gold deposits discove red a year before at the confluence of Cheery Creek and the South Platte River. By 1859, tens of thousands of gold seekers had flooded into the area, but by then the placer deposits were already playing out and most miners quickly departed for home or headed west into the mountains in search of richer lodes. As a result, by 1860, Larimer’s new town had almost failed before it had even really started. Although it was still centrally located for servicing the mining camps along the Rocky Mountain Front Range, Denver had neither the rail or water transportation routes needed to bring in goods cheaply. Even the tran scontinental Union Pacific railroad, which opened in 1869, didn’t stop at Denver initially. In 1870, Denver began to overcome its geographical isolation with the arrival of the Kansas Pacific Railroad from the East and the completion of the 105-mile Denver Pacific Railway joining Denver to the Union Pacific line at Cheyenne. Other lines began to connect Denver to the booming mining regions in the Rockies, and by the mid-1870s, the city was thriving as a railroad hub and center of the western mining industry. By 1890, Denver had a popu lation of more than 106,000, making it the 26th largest urban area in the nation and earning it the nickname, the “Queen City of the Plains.” However, the Silver Panic of 1893 brought the boom to an abrupt end, though it was partially revived a year later by the gold discoveries on Cripple Creek. Although the growing significance of farming and ranching helped moderate its ups and downs by decreasing the city’s dependency on mining, this cyclical pattern of economic boom and bust would continue to dominate Denver, and many other western cities, throughout much of the 20th century.
1901 - Leon Czolgosz is electrocuted for the assassination of US President William McKinley. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo, NY.
1927 - Russian archaeologist Peter Kozloff apparently uncovers the tomb of Genghis Khan in the Gobi Desert, a claim still in dispute.
1929 - The stock market crashed as over 16 million shares were dumped amid tumbling prices. The Great Depression followed in America, lasting until the outbreak of World War II. The 1920s investment boom goes bust when a record number of shares are traded on Wall Street in October 1929 — 16.4 million on the 29th alone—evaporating $30 billion from the stock market's value. As overleveraged investors crash, consumer spending declines and a tariff reduces foreign markets for U.S. goods. Unemployment rises and the country sinks into the Great Depression. By 1933, some 9,000 banks fail, taking uninsured depositors with them. Today the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, begun in 1933, insures deposits up to $250,000. The Dow lost an additional 30 points, or 12 percent in this one day for a total loss of 24% of its total value. By mid-November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September will have been wiped out.
1945 - The first ball-point pen goes is sold by Gimbell's department store in New York for a price of $12.
1952 - French forces launch Operation Lorraine against Viet Minh supply bases in Indochina.
1964 - Thieves steal a jewel collection--including the world's largest sapphire, the 565-carat "Star of India," and the 100-carat DeLong ruby--from the Museum of Natural History in New York. The thieves were caught and most of the jewels recovered.
1969 - First computer-to-computer link; the link is accomplished through ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet.
1972 - Palestinian guerrillas kill an airport employee and hijack a plane, carrying 27 passengers, to Cuba. They force West Germany to release 3 terrorists who were involved in the Munich Massacre.
1983 - More than 500,000 people protest in The Hague, The Netherlands, against cruise missiles.
1998 - The deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record up to that time, Hurricane Mitch, makes landfall in Honduras (in 2005 Hurricane Wilma surpassed it); nearly 11,000 people died and approximately the same number were missing.
Birthday - Nazi propaganda minister Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was born in Rheydt, near Dusseldorf, Germany. Considered a master propagandist, he controlled all Nazi newspapers, radio and film production. He was a virulent anti-Semite who advocated the extermination of the Jews. Devoted to Hitler until the end, he died at Hitler's Berlin bunker in 1945 after poisoning his six children.
Birthday - 1815-1876 - SAMUEL MANAIAKALANI KAMAKAU born in Mokuleia, Oahu, Hawaii and died in Honolulu, Hawaii. He lived his life as a great Hawaiian historian and public service for the people of Hawaii.
No comments:
Post a Comment