History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.
~Cicero~
1888 – The “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” killed 235 people, many of them children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United States. The storm came with no warning, and some accounts say that the temperature fell nearly 100 degrees in just 24 hours.
There had been unseasonably warm weather the previous day from Montana east to the Dakotas and south to Texas. Suddenly, within a matter of hours, Arctic air from Canada rapidly pushed south. Temperatures plunged to 40 below zero in much of North Dakota. Along with the cool air, the storm brought high winds and heavy snows. The combination created blinding conditions.
Most victims of the blizzard were children making their way home from school in rural areas and adults working on large farms. Both had difficulty reaching their destinations in the awful conditions. In some places, though, caution prevailed. Schoolteacher Seymour Dopp in Pawnee City, Nebraska, kept his 17 students at school when the storm began at 2 p.m. They stayed overnight, burning stockpiled wood to keep warm. The next day, parents made their way over five-foot snow drifts to rescue their children. In Great Plains, South Dakota, two men rescued the children in a schoolhouse by tying a rope from the school to the nearest shelter to lead them to safety. Minnie Freeman, a teacher in Nebraska, successfully led her children to shelter after the storm tore the roof off of her one-room schoolhouse. In other cases, though, people were less lucky. Teacher Loie Royce tried to lead three children to the safety of her home, less than 90 yards from their school in Plainfield, Nebraska. They became lost, and the children died of hypothermia. Royce lost her feet to frostbite.
1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote by a 204-174 margin,.
1926 – A two-man comedy series, Sam ‘n’ Henry, debuted on Chicago’s WGN radio station. Six weeks later, the show was a phenomenon, attracting a large following in the Chicago area but the duo (Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden – yes, they were white) were even more ambitious. They wanted to expand the audience for Sam ‘n’ Henry by recording the programs in advance and sending the discs to other radio stations – an innovation the two men dubbed a “chainless chain”. What would eventually become standard practice in radio syndication did not sit well with the powers-that-be at WGN, however. Management maintained that they owned Sam ‘n’ Henry,
So, before their WGN contract expired, Freeman and Charlie talked with WGN’s rival WMAQ about a possible move. Owned by the Chicago Daily News, the team found WMAQ much more receptive to the concept. The fact that WMAQ would be getting Gosden and Correll by basically stealing them from WGN probably didn’t hurt matters. Given WGN’s legal position, the two men couldn’t take the “Sam n Henry” name with them…so they settled on a more alliterative title instead: Amos ‘n’ Andy.
Two years later, the Amos ‘n’ Andy show was one of the most popular radio programs in American history. Over the next 22 years, the show would become the highest-rated comedy in radio history, attracting more than 40 million listeners.
But by 1951, when Amos ‘n’ Andy came to television, changing attitudes about race and concerns about racism had virtually wiped out the practice of blackface. Even though it was the first TV series to feature an all-black cast – and the only one of its kind for the next 20 years – that did not stop African-American advocacy groups and eventually the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from criticizing both the radio and TV versions of Amos ‘n’ Andy for promoting racial stereotypes. These protests led to the TV show’s cancellation in 1953.
1932 – Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, became the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. With the support of Huey Long, a powerful senator from Louisiana, Caraway was elected to the seat and served for six years.
1943 – Soviet troops created a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga.
By 1942, 650,000 Leningrad citizens had died from starvation, disease, exposure, and injuries suffered from the siege and the continual German bombardment with artillery. It would take a Soviet counteroffensive in 1944 to finally end the siege after 872 days.
1949 – The Chicago-based children’s show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie made its national television debut on NBC.
1949 – Arthur Godfrey and His Friends premiered on CBS. The program stayed on the network for seven years.
1954 – In a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations dinner in his honor, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced that the United States would protect its allies through the “deterrent of massive retaliatory power.” The policy announcement was further evidence of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to rely heavily on the nation’s nuclear arsenal as the primary means of defense against communist aggression.
1966 – In his State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson committed the United States to staying in Vietnam. Citing communist China’s intention to dominate all of Asia, Johnson pledged renewed commitment to helping the South Vietnamese defeat North Vietnam in a war that had become increasingly controversial among Americans.
By 1965, the U.S. military presence in Vietnam had increased to approximately 200,000 troops. In December of that year, the draft quota doubled. Growing numbers of Americans protested the escalation of the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. In his speech, Johnson attempted to restore confidence in America’s word and in America’s protection, while the nation was asked to sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the love of freedom.
Johnson’s speech was a wasted attempt to sway increasingly polarized public opinion in favor of the Vietnam War. By year’s end, Johnson increased American troop numbers in Vietnam to 400,000.
1966 – Batman premiered on ABC. The show was aired twice weekly for its first two seasons and weekly for the third, with a total of 120 episodes produced during its run.
1967 – Dragnet returned to NBC after being off the network schedule for eight years. Jack Webb tried to persuade Ben Alexander to rejoin him as Frank Smith, but Alexander was committed to an ABC police series, Felony Squad, and the producers would not release him. Webb reluctantly came up with a new character to take the role of Joe Friday’s partner, hiring Harry Morgan to play Officer Bill Gannon.
1967 – Dr. James Bedford became the first person to be cryopreserved after legal death, with the intent of future resuscitation. He remains “frozen in time” at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, AZ.
1971 – The Reverend Philip F. Berrigan, already serving a six-year prison term on charges of destroying draft records, and six others were indicted by a grand jury on charges of conspiring to kidnap presidential adviser Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington. The “Harrisburg Seven,” as they came to be known, denied the charges and denounced them as a government effort to destroy the peace movement.
1971 – All In The Family premiered on CBS. During its eight-year run, the show broke ground in its depiction of issues previously considered unsuitable for U.S. network television comedy, such as racism, homosexuality, women’s liberation, rape, beast cancer, and the Vietnam War. Through depicting these controversial issues, the series became arguably one of television’s most influential comedic programs, as it injected the sitcom format with more realistic and topical conflicts.
1976 – Dame Agatha Christie, the most popular novelist in the world, died leaving a rumored multi-million dollar fortune and a final book waiting to be published.
1981 – Dynasty premiered on ABC. Over the next eight years, the Carringtons, a rich Denver oil clan, and another wealthy family, the Colbys, would form the center of a campy, yet glamorous universe of greed.
1991 – A deeply divided Congress gave President George H.W. Bush the authority to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The Senate vote was 52-47; the House followed suit 250-183.
1998 – Linda Tripp provided Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s office with taped conversations between herself and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
2004 – The world’s largest (at that time) ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, made its maiden voyage.
2010 – A magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. The quake, which was the strongest to strike the region in more than 200 years, left over 300,000 people dead and some 895,000 Haitians homeless.
A large-scale, international relief operation was launched soon after the quake hit. The United States took charge, sending thousands of military troops to Haiti to deliver supplies, assist with search-and-rescue efforts and help maintain order. Relief efforts initially were hampered by earthquake damage to roads, communication systems and the Port-au-Prince airport and main port.
Governments and individuals around the world made donations and pledges of aid to Haiti totaling billions of dollars. However, on the first-year anniversary of the disaster, reconstruction efforts were still in their infancy. Thousands of people left homeless by the quake were living in tents, and only a small portion of the heavy debris resulting from the disaster had been cleared.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2016 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.