A TRIP BACK IN TIME!
March 1,
1781 - Maryland
ratified the Articles of
Confederation which were the first form of government of the
former American Colonies after the Declaration of Independence. It was
supplanted by the Constitution. (See March 4th)
March 1,
1844 - Lillian
M. N. Stevens who was a temperance reformer was born. She
headed the Maine Women's Christian Temperance Union for many years.
March 1,
1872 - President
Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the act creating the
first national park,
Yellowstone, in Wyoming.
March 1,
1961 - The Peace
Corps was established in President
John F. Kennedy's administration.
March 4,
1781 - Rebecca
Gratz was born. She started a Hebrew Sunday School in Philadelphia
and also the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in
Reduced Circumstances. In 1815 she founded the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum. She
was a friend of Sarah
Hoffman, a founder of the New York Orphan Asylum in New York City, today's Graham Windham. See
March 15th.
March 4,
1789 - The first session of the United
States Congress was held in Manhattan which was then the capital of the
new Nation. At that point, NYC consisted only of Manhattan.
March 4,
1797 - The Articles
of Confederation were replaced by the United
States Constitution.
March 4,
1861 - President
Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration. Inauguration Day used to
be March 4th.
March 5,
1853 - Steinway
& Sons, piano makers, formed a partnership and opened its
first factory on Varick Street
in Lower Manhattan.
March 9,
1976 - The first female
cadets entered the United
States Military Academy at West Point.
March
10, 1876 - Alexander
Graham Bell tested the first telephone in his Boston home, calling his assistant who was in
the next room.
March
11-12, 1888 - "The
Great Blizzard of 1888" blanketed New York City (then only Manhattan). Many telegraph wires came
down. This led to putting wires underground in Manhattan. It affected the Northeast.
The only way for people in NYC to contact Boston
or Washington
was via the Atlantic Cable and London!
The cable had been laid down in 1857, a monumental feat.
Google or Bing or Yahoo "The Great Blizzard of 1888" to
see some wonderful photos! Really worth a look. No trucks to remove snow, no
trains running, no long-term weather forecasts, no TV or radio for the news,
just the papers if they got published and the newsboys shouting out the news of
the day! SO WORTH A LOOK AT
THE PHOTOS!
And, ladies, imagine navigating the streets in long
dresses and corsets! And men had their top hats, of course.
March
11, 1959 - Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, opened
on Broadway. It was the first play produced on Broadway written by an
African-American woman. The director, Lloyd
Richards, was the first African-American director to have a
play on Broadway. Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee starred in it.
March
12, 1777 - The Continental
Congress voted to buy blankets for the soldiers during the American Revolution.
March
12, 1871 - Jane
Delano was born. She was a pioneer in women's nursing and
worked extensively with the Red Cross. She was also Director of the Army
Nurse Corps. After World War I ended, she went to France to work there. She
became ill and died. She is buried in Arlington National
Cemetery.
March
12, 1993 - Janet
Reno became the first female Attorney General of the United States.
March
14, 1629 - England
granted a Royal Charter to the Colony
of Massachusetts Bay. The Puritans arrived the next year and
settled in Boston
and surrounding towns. They were led by the first governor, John
Winthrop. The Colony was separate from Plymouth Colony. They later
joined to become Massachusetts,
first as a colony and then a state.
Note: Reading Winthrop's diary is fascinating. I spent, so
to speak, years with them. for my thesis. A good novel is Anya Seton's That Winthrop Woman, about
his daughter-in-law Elizabeth who had to leave because she was a follower
of Anne Hutchinson in their "religious wars." She settled on Long Island and Hutchinson
in more tolerant Rhode Island.
His son had died.
March
14, 1879 - Albert
Einstein was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
March
14, 1927 - Subway Service on the
IRT Flushing Line
was extended to Times Square in Manhattan.
March
15, 1806 - The Orphan
Asylum Society was founded by Mrs. Isabella Graham, her daughter, Mrs. Joanna Bethune, and Mrs.
Alexander Hamilton
(the widow of the first Secretary of the Treasury who was killed in a duel in
1804.) In 1977, it merged with Windham
which was originally The Society for the Relief of Half-Orphans which had been
founded in 1835. Today it is Graham
Windham , a child care agency, which assists thousands of
children and families.
March
15, 1913 - President Woodrow
Wilson held the first presidential press conference.
March
20, 1778 - King
Louis XVI of France
officially received American dignitaries as allies during the American Revolution.
March
21, 1965 - More than 3,000 people, led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
began the Civil Rights
march from Selma
to Montgomery, Alabama.
March
22, 1972 - The Equal
Rights Amendment to the Constitution was passed by the Senate
and sent to the states for ratification. It has never been ratified.
March
23, 1903 - Orville
and Wilbur Wright filed a patent for their airplane design.
March
24, 1996 - Shannon
Lucid, an American astronaut, boarded the Mir Space Station,
becoming the first female astronaut to live on a space station.
March
26, 1930 - Sandra
Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the United States
Supreme Court, was born. Now there are three women Justices on the Court
March
26, 1953 - Dr.
Jonas Salk successfully tested a vaccine against polio.
March
30,1776 - Phillis
Wheatley, the first African-American published poet,
wrote a poem entitled:
"To His Excellency General Washington: Proceed, great chief,
with virtue on thy side." At this time the Continental Congress
was meeting in what came to be called Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was four months after that
the Declaration of Independence was voted on and passed.
March
30, 1867 - The United States bought
Alaska
from Russia.
It was called Seward's
Folly after Secretary of State William Seward.
HAPPY SPRING & Daylight Savings Time
If you would like to receive my articles, press releases, and
blogs Click here to sign up:
http://www.linktoexpert.com/Subscribe/Subscribe_for_Updates.aspx?id=3458
Historically yours,
Until next month,
Phyllis Barr