August 31st
Today in America's Present Past
1142 | Establishment of the Iroquois League.
1778 | War of Independence: The British kill 17 Stockbridge Indians in the Bronx, New York.
1818 | Revolutionary War hero and politician Arthur St. Clair died.
1837 | Ralph Waldo Emerson gives his famous "The American Scholar" speech to Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1842 | Blacksmith Micah Rugg patents a nuts & bolts machine.
1842 | Congress: Authorizes funding for a U.S. Naval Observatory.
1864 | Civil War: Battle of Jonesboro, Georgia.
1874 | Psychologist Edward Thorndike was born.
1897 | Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope camera.
1899 | Air and Space Museum founder Paul E Garber was born.
1910 | POTUS: Post-presidency, Theodore Roosevelt makes a famous speech in Kansas advocating a 'New Nationalism': property shall be 'the servant and not the master of the commonwealth.’
1911 | New York enacts the "Sullivan Act" requiring a license to possess firearms small enough to be concealed.
1920 | Radio: The first news program broadcast on the radio was made from 8MK (now WWJ) in Detroit, Michigan.
1935 | POTUS: Democrat President Roosevelt signs an act prohibiting the sale of arms to belligerents.
1949 | Actor Richard Gere was born.
1955 | General Motors unveils the first sun-powered automobile, the “Sunmobile,” at an auto show in Chicago, Illinois.
1965 | Congress: Established the Department of Housing & Urban Development.
1969 | Boxer Rocky Marciano died.
1970 | Musician Debbie Gibson was born.
1973 | Director John Ford died.
2015 | POTUS: Democrat President Obama renames Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, Mount Denali.