This day in History.

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This day in History.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:45 pm

Welcome to the THIS DAY IN HISTORY newsletter from History.com

March 7: General Interest
1876 : Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

On this day in 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention--the telephone.

The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard.

While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B. Morse's invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a "harmonic telegraph," a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance.

With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate--called the diaphragm--to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message--the famous "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you"--from Bell to his assistant.

Bell's patent filing beat a similar claim by Elisha Gray by only two hours. Not wanting to be shut out of the communications market, Western Union Telegraph Company employed Gray and fellow inventor Thomas A. Edison to develop their own telephone technology. Bell sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Bell's patent rights. In the years to come, the Bell Company withstood repeated legal challenges to emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry.

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General Interest
1876 : Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... y&id=52435
1936 : Hitler reoccupies the Rhineland
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=4815
1973 : Bangladesh's first democratic leader
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=4816
1999 : Stanley Kubrick dies
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=6829

American Revolution
1777 : Five letters pass between Abigail and John Adams
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=303

Automotive
1903 : C.S. Rolls sets record
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=7295
1916 : BMW is born
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=7294
1932 : Communists protest at Ford
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=7293

Civil War
1862 : Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern), Arkansas
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=2129

Cold War
1950 : Soviet Union denies Klaus Fuchs served as its spy
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=2599

Crime
2002 : Defense rests in Andrea Yates trial
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=930

Disaster
1988 : Cyclone Bola hits New Zealand
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=365

Entertainment
1946 : Joan Crawford wins Oscar
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3042
1955 : First Broadway play televised in color
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3043
1960 : Jack Paar returns to the Tonight Show
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3041

Literary
1923 : "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" is published
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3900

Old West
1885 : Kansas quarantines Texas cattle
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=4451

Presidential
1977 : Carter meets with Yitzhak Rabin
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=271

Sports
1987 : Mike Tyson unifies titles
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... y&id=56961

Vietnam War
1966 : U.S. jets launch heaviest air raids of the war
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=1714
1967 : Republic of Korea forces operation launch
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=1713
1972 : Jets engage in aerial combat
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... tegory&id= 1715

World War I
1918 : Finland signs treaty with Germany
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... tegory&id= 334

World War II
1941 : British forces arrive in Greece
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=6734
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Re: This day in History.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:10 pm

March 8: General Interest
1917 : February Revolution begins

In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia's use of the Julian calendar) begins when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd. One week later, centuries of czarist rule in Russia ended with the abdication of Nicholas II, and Russia took a dramatic step closer toward communist revolution.

By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of the czarist regime. Government corruption was rampant, the Russian economy remained backward, and Nicholas repeatedly dissolved the Duma, the Russian parliament established after the Revolution of 1905, when it opposed his will. However, the immediate cause of the February Revolution--the first phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917--was Russia's disastrous involvement in World War I. Militarily, imperial Russia was no match for industrialized Germany, and Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any nation in any previous war. Meanwhile, the economy was hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort, and moderates joined Russian radical elements in calling for the overthrow of the czar.

On March 8, 1917, demonstrators clamoring for bread took to the streets in the Russian capital of Petrograd (now known as St. Petersburg). Supported by 90,000 men and women on strike, the protesters clashed with police but refused to leave the streets. On March 10, the strike spread among all of Petrograd's workers, and irate mobs of workers destroyed police stations. Several factories elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet, or "council," of workers' committees, following the model devised during the Revolution of 1905.

On March 11, the troops of the Petrograd army garrison were called out to quell the uprising. In some encounters, regiments opened fire, killing demonstrators, but the protesters kept to the streets, and the troops began to waver. That day, Nicholas again dissolved the Duma. On March 12, the revolution triumphed when regiment after regiment of the Petrograd garrison defected to the cause of the demonstrators. The soldiers, some 150,000 men, subsequently formed committees that elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet.

The imperial government was forced to resign, and the Duma formed a provisional government that peacefully vied with the Petrograd Soviet for control of the revolution. On March 14, the Petrograd Soviet issued "Order No. 1," which instructed Russian soldiers and sailors to obey only those orders that did not conflict with the directives of the Soviet. The next day, March 15, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother Michael, whose refusal of the crown brought an end to the czarist autocracy.

The new provincial government, tolerated by the Petrograd Soviet, hoped to salvage the Russian war effort while ending the food shortage and many other domestic crises. It would prove a daunting task. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik revolutionary party, left his exile in Switzerland and crossed German enemy lines to return home and take control of the Russian Revolution.

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General Interest
1917 : February Revolution begins
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=6830
1801 : Anglo-Ottoman force takes Abukir Bay
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=4817
1957 : Egypt opens the Suez Canal
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=4818

American Revolution
1782 : Pennsylvania militiamen senselessly murder Patriot allies
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=304

Automotive
1936 : First stock-car race run at Daytona
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=7296
1969 : Firebird Trans Am debuts
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=7297

Civil War
1862 : C.S.S. Virginia terrorizes Union navy
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=2130

Cold War
1982 : United States accuses Soviets of using poison gas
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=2600

Crime
1951 : The Lonely Hearts Killers are executed
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=931

Disaster
1669 : Mount Etna erupts
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=366

Entertainment
1933 : 42nd Street premieres
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3045
1986 : Mask opens
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3046
1991 : Theater violence over New Jack City
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3047
1993 : Bandleader Billy Eckstine dies
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3044

Literary
1935 : Thomas Wolfe's second novel, Of Time and the River, is published
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=3901

Old West
1893 : Emmet Dalton goes to prison
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=4452

Presidential
1983 : Reagan refers to U.S.S.R. as “evil empire”.again
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=272

Sports
1971 : Ali battles Frazier for heavyweight championship
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... y&id=56962

Vietnam War
1965 : U.S. Marines land at Da Nang
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=1716
1975 : Thieu orders force withdrawal
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=1717

World War I
1917 : February Revolution begins in Russia
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ory&id=335

World War II
1942 : Dutch surrender on Java
http://www.history.com/tdih.do?action=t ... ry&id=6735


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