• 1054 – The Chinese, the Arabs and possibly Amerindians (the who?) observe a supernova near the star Tauri. It was bright enough to be seen during the day for several months.
  

• 1634 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France. It would later become Quebec.
  

  Coat of arms of Trois-Rivières

• 1636 – Roger Williams establishes the city of Providence, Rhode Island

• 1776 – The second continental congress adopts the United States Declaration of Independence
  

  Yeah, America!

• 1778 – Kaskaskia is captured by George Clark and his men during the Illinois campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The population of Kaskaskia as determined by the 2000 census was 9.
• 1802 – The United States Military Academy opens at West Point, New York
• 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced.
  
• 1817 – Construction begins on the Erie Canal at Rome, New York. It would take 15 years to complete the 360+ mile canal.
• 1827 – New York State abolishes slavery.
• 1837 – The world’s first long-distance railway, Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Liverpool is opened. Today it is part of the West Coast Main Line, a railway system between London and Scotland.
• 1840 – The first transatlantic crossing with a scheduled end (as opposed to simply “whenever you get there”) takes place aboard the Cunard Line’s RMS Britannia, a 700 ton wooden paddle steamer.
• 1845 – Henry David Thoreau embarks on his two year experiment in simple and solitary living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts.

Walden Pond

• Walt Whitman’s seminal work, Leaves of Grass, is published in Brooklyn.
  

  Walt Whitman in 1887. Check out that beard.

• 1862 – 10-year-old Alice Liddell is told a story by Lewis Carroll. The story would eventually become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland when it would be published in November, 1865.
  

  Cover of the 1898 printing of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

• 1863 – After 47 days of fighting, the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi during the American Civil War ends. The town would not recognize Independence Day for almost eighty years following the battle.
• 1881 – The Tuskegee Institute opens in Tuskegee, Alabama
  

  The Tuskegee Institute in 1916

• 1886 – France offers the Statue of Liberty to the United States.
  

  As a lighthouse, the flames inside the statue's torch were the cause of death for hundreds of birds each night.

• 1892 - Western Samoa changes the location of the International Date Line such that the country recognizes 367 days per year.
• 1894 – Sanford B. Dole, relative of the pineapple magnate, proclaims the Republic of Hawaii.
• 1934 – The nuclear chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb is patented by Hungarian physicist, Leo Szilard, who would go on to later work on the Manhattan Project.
• 1939 – After being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig announces his retirement from baseball at Yankee Stadium. After a presentation by Babe Ruth, Gehrig addressed the crowd: –

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

–

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

–

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that’s the finest I know.

–

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

• 1946 – The Philippines attains full independence from the United States after 381 years of colonial rule.
• 1947 – The Indian Independence Bill is passed by the British House of Commons, leading to British India being split into today’s India and Pakistan.
• 1959 – The 49-star-flag is debuted in Philadelphia after Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
  

  Congressmen celebrate Alaska's new statehood

• 1960 – Ten months after its admission as the 50th U.S. state on August 21st, 1959, the 50-star flag is debuted once again in Philadelphia.
• 1966 – The Freedom of Information Act is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• 1969 – The Zodiac Killer attacks his first two victims in Blue Rock Springs, California. One survives.
• 1976 – In 53 minutes, Israeli commandos rescue 102 hostages from a hijacked Air France flight from Israel to Paris who were being held in Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
• 1976 – On the other side of the globe, America celebrates its bicentennial.
  • Among other things, New Jersey offers a Bicentennial Lottery where the winner would receive $1,776 a week for 20 years ($1,847,040, all before taxes)
  • NASA paints an American flag and the official bicentennial logo on the side of its massive vehicle assembly building. Each star on the flag is six feet across, the blue background behind the stars is the size of a regulation basketball court, and each stripe is as wide as a road lane
    

    NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building in 1976. The bicentennial logo (the star on the right) wasn't replaced with the NASA logo until 1998.

• 1987 – World War II Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie is convicted of crimes against humanity.
• 1997 - NASA’s Pathfinder lands on Mars
  

  The surface of Mars upon Pathfinder's landing in 1997

• 2004 – The cornerstone is laid on the former World Trade Center site in New York City for One World Trade Center (no longer “Freedom Tower” — it’s official!)
  
• 2006 – North Korea fires six test missiles — four short-range, one medium-range, and one long-range, which is rumored to have failed mid-air above the Sea of Japan.
• 2009 – After 8 years of closure, the crown of the Statue of LIberty re-opens for guests.
  

“Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day…”

To most of us, this is a victory in and of itself. Free Krispy Kreme, THAT’S awesome. Except, not quite so much to the American Life League, a pro-life organization whose slogan is “From creation to natural death” (catchy, isn’t it?). The next day, the group released a press statement entitled “KRISPY KREME CELEBRATES OBAMA WITH PRO-ABORTION DOUGHNUTS”. No joke. Talk about oversensitivity.

CTIA, the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, as of June, 2008 reports that there are

262,720,165 mobile phone users in the US

Of all these users, there are

240,000,000 phones that can send text messages.

We’re going to take our first leap of faith here and assume that each phone belongs to a different individual. This probably is not the case all the time, but multiple-phone ownership isn’t terribly common yet.

So we’ve got 240 million people who CAN send text messages and as of June, 2008, over 75 billion (that’s right, with a ‘b’) text messages are sent in the US every month

Leap of faith #2: Number of text messages sent per day:

(75,000,000,000 messages/month) / (30 days/month) = 2,500,000,000 messages sent per day = 28,935 messages per second.

Leap of faith #3: Number of people sending messages per day:

(2500000000 messages/day) / (240,000,000 potential users) = 10.416 messages per user per month. Let’s round down for the sake of trying to make up for our estimations.

Maximum amount of data in one text message = 160 bytes

Amount of data sent between 12:00:00 and 12:01:00 = 60 seconds

160 bytes/message * 28,395 messages/second * 60 seconds = 1703700 bytes = 259.96 = 260 megabytes

Now let’s assume that not everyone sent a text message exactly between midnight and 12:01, and I’m sure some people sent the messages just a minute or so before midnight as well.

160 bytes/message * 28,395 messages/second * 60 seconds * 8 minutes = 2 079.71 mb = 2.07 gigabytes of data sent in 8 minutes in the whole US

The last part is important here. Our wireless infrastructure isn’t that amazing yet. We still have to connect by Wifi to get large iPhone apps. Imagine what happens if instead of the whole country sending 2 gigs of data, we have just one quarter of the country sending just as much or more data? You know what happens, because you probably experienced the phenomenon of waiting 20+ minutes to send “Happy 2009!” to your friends.

We didn’t even take into account sending multiple messages, as I and I’m sure many of you did, so the amount of traffic can probably be multiplied by at least 3-5 times to get a semi-kind-of-more-reasnoable estimate.

You probably knew most of this. Sorry for wasting your time.

1808 - The United States bans the importing of slaves

–

1845 – The Cobble Hill Tunnel (Atlantic Ave. Tunnel) in New York City is built.

The tunnel is now abandoned, but still exists and is about 2, 750 feet long. The tunnel was originally just sort of a sunken train track used to rush passengers to ferries in Manhattan from Long Island. The trench was eventually covered up with bricks, turning it into a tunnel.  While it has been attributed to be the first subway tunnel, this claim is dubious since there weren’t any stations built along it. After the tunnel was closed for operations, it was discovered that it had been used for many purposes:

• 1916: The FBI (formed in 1908) breaks into the tunnel suspecting that German terrorists were making bombs inside. Nothing of the sort was found.
• 1920s: Mushroom growing and distilling of bootleg whiskey
• 1930s: New York City police break into the tunnel looking for “the body of a hoodlum.” The hoodlum was later discovered buried in cement, in a barrel, in Buffalo.
• 1940s: The FBI enters the tunnel again looking for spies

Schematics of the tunnel

Image of the tunnel circa 1980s

The tunnel today. Click for more pictures on Flickr.

–

1863 - Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation

–

1880 – Ferdinand de Lesseps, despite not being an engineer, begins the French construction of the Panama Canal. It would cost an estimated $120,000,000. Adjusting for inflation, that’s a whopping $2,548,080,527.28 in today’s dollar. The French would later cease construction on the canal altogether and the US would finish the job.

The French attempt at the Panama Canal circa 1885

–

1901 – The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed.

–

1908 – For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York City’s Times Square to signify the start of the New Year at midnight.

1 Times Square: 1908 and a hundred years later in 2008

–

1934 – Alcatraz becomes a United States federal prison.

–

1962 – United States Navy SEALs established.

–

1983 – The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.

–

1984 – AT&T is famously broken up by the US Supreme Court into 22 different companies, only to reassemble itself some years later when it is acquired by parts… of its former self.

Funny enough, I was interning for Cracked.com in the summer of 2006, some time before this bit aired. I had put together an almost identical written piece, but we couldn’t print it because high-quality, print-ready versions of the old “Baby Bell” logos don’t exist. You can get away with it on TV since screen resolution is so low.

People Born

• 1449: Lorenzo de’ Medici (you know, like those guys who funded the Rennaisance)
• 1752: Betsy Ross
• 1735: Paul Revere
• 1863: Organizer of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin
• 1879: Hungarian-born film producer, William Fox. He’s the “Fox” in 20th Century-Fox.
• 1895: J. Edgar Hoover
• 1919: J.D. Salinger
• 1958: Joseph Saddler (you might know him as Grandmaster Flash)