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A History Time Line... Of Little And Well Know Facts

1946

Mar - Winston Churchill proclaimed an "iron curtain" had come down across Europe. By early 1946, the Soviet Union had control or influence over the Eastern European countries it had liberated from Germany. The Soviets saw this as necessary for their security, while the West saw it as aggressive.
While touring the United States, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow." Many historians cite this speech as the formal end of the alliance between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union and the beginning of the cold war.

• Jul 01 - The United States tested nuclear devices at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. During Operation Crossroads, the United States exploded two atomic devices--one above the water on July 1 and the other below the water on July 25
• Dec 31 - Official End of WWII

1947

The nation's first suburbia was started on Long Island, NY with the building of 17,400 free standing homes called Levittown.

• Jan 25 - Al Capone died in Miami Beach, FL.
• Sep 18 - US Air Force established
• Nov 02 - Built by Howard Hughes, the Spruce Goose flew. The plane never flew again.

1948

Jun - The Soviet Union began the Berlin Blockade, cutting West Berlin off from the West. After the war, the Allies divided Germany into four zones, controlled by the United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union, respectively. They also partitioned Germany's capital, Berlin, even though it was located in the Soviet occupation zone. The United States, France, and Britain, convinced that cooperation with the Soviets was no longer possible, planned to set up an independent West Germany, made up of their zones. The Soviets, perhaps hoping to block this, cut off traffic to and from the U.S., French, and British zones of Berlin. The United States began a vast airlift to keep West Berlin supplied with food and fuel. The airlift continued until May 1949, when the Soviets lifted the blockade. By then, West Germany had already been established.

• Jan 04 - Britain granted independence to Burma
• Sep 14 - A groundbreaking ceremony took place in Manhatten at the site of the United Nations world headquarters.

1949

• Jan 19 - The salary of the President of the United States was increased from $75,000 to $100,000 with an additional $50,000 expense allowance added for each year in office. Today, the President makes $200,000 a year.
• May - Nationalist Chinese forces led by Chiang Kai-shek retreated from mainland China to Formosa. Mao Tse-tung and the communist People's Liberation Army had fought against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government since the 1920's. When Japan invaded China in the 1930's, the two parties made a pact to defend China from its invader. Civil war erupted again after the end of World War II. After Mao's victory, the United States refused to recognize the People's Republic of China.
• Aug 29 - The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic device.

1950

• Jun 25 - The Korean War began

1951

1952

• Jan 19 - The National Football League bought the franchise of the New York Yankees (correcto-mungo!). To make nice with the New York Giants for having another team in their territory, the NFL permitted the Giants to choose five players from the Yankee roster. One of the five was Tom Landry, who played for the Giants for six years. During that time, the NFL sent the Yankee club winging its way to Dallas and eventual obscurity; until 1960, when the Dallas expansion team, now the Dallas Cowboys, hired Tom Landry as head coach. The original Yankee club was sold to the NFL for a mere $300,000.

1953

• April 3 - Q) What year was the first national TV Guide released and who was on the cover? A) The year was April 3, 1953, with a photo of Lucy’s baby Desni Arnez Jr. On the cover.
• July 27 - is the anniversary of the end of the Korean War, frequently referred to as the "Forgotten War". The 1950-53 conflict cost America 33,651 killed in action and 103,284 wounded. More than 1.5 million American men and women fought in Korea.

1954

Q) What year was the first color TV introduced and how much was it? A) In 1954 RCA introduced its first all-electric color TV set. Model CTC- 100 with a 12-1/2” screen and it sold for $1000.00.

Q) What year was the fist TV dinner introduced and what food was it? A) In 1954 C.A Swanson & Sons Introduced the TV dinner, it was roast turkey with stuffing and gravy, sweet potatoes and peas and it sold for 98 cents. In 1962 they stopped calling them TV dinners

• The first atomic sub, the USS Nautilus, was lanched at Groton, CT.

1955

Britain, France, U.S. and the Soviets agree to pull out all military occupation forces form Austria.

• Jan 19 - President Eisenhower allowed a filmed news conference to be used on television (and in movie newsreels) for the first time. The 33-minute conference was cut to 28-1/2 minutes to fit TV formats.
• Apr 05 - Richard J. Daley was elected mayor of Chicago, IL -- starting one of the most colorful political careers not only of the Windy City, but anywhere.

1956

• Oct 28 - Hungarian upraising against Soviet occupation.
• Nov 04 - The Soviets crush the Hungarian upraising

1957

• Oct 04 - The Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite, the 184 lb Sputnik 1.

1958

First implantable pacemaker

• Oct 28 - Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 from New York to Paris in 8 hours, 41 minutes.
• Dec 01 - Our Lady of the Angels School Fire Shortly before classes were to be dismissed on December 1, 1958, fire broke out at the foot of a stairway in the Our Lady of the Angels school. Ninety pupils and three nuns at this Roman Catholic grade school lost their lives when smoke, heat, and fire cut off their normal means of escape through open stairways and corridors. Seventy-seven were seriously injured. As a result of the tragedy, ordinances to strengthen Chicago's fire code and new amendments to the State fire code were passed. Also, the National Fire Protection Association estimated that hundreds of schools across the nation were safer because, according to a NFPA survey, about 68% of all U.S. communities inaugurated and completed fire safety projects after the Our Lady of the Angels holocaust.

1959

• Sep 14 - The Soviet space probe Luna II become the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.
• Dec 19 - Walter Williams, said to be the last surviving veteran of the Civil War, died in Houston, Texas this day. Mr. Williams was 117 years old.

1960

1961

• Apr 12 - Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, is the first person to orbit the Earth. His flight in Vostok 1 lasts less than 2 hours.
• May 05 - Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, with a 15 minute, suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7.
• May - President John F. Kennedy vows to send men to the moon and back by the end of the decade.

1962

• Feb 20 - John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth. He ciircles the plant 3 times in 5 hours.
• Oct 28 - Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushechev, ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

First insulted tube compartment for protection of pacemaker battery.

• Jan 27 - A flash fire in the Apollo 1 command module during a test on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy, kills astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
• Jun 08 - The USS Liberty, (during the Six-Day War), Israelis attacked the Liberty, a US Navy communications vessel. It was in international waters 15 miles north of the Sinai Peninsula. 34 American seamen were killed, 171 were wounded, and extensive damage was done to the ship. Israelis immediately apologized and claimed the attack was an accidental one, although the US said that Israel had "ample opportunity to identify the Liberty orrectly." Later, Israel paid $3,323,500 in compensation.
• Oct 27 - Expo '67 closed in Montreal

1968

• Jan 23 - The USS Pueblo, North Koreans seized the Pueblo in the Sea of Japan off the Korean coast. 82 crew members survived the boarding. They were held for exactly 11 months and charged with spying. Neither Moscow nor Peking intervened; as a result, North Korean President Kim Il Sung became a demigod in the eyes of his people. The crew was set free after the U.S. signed an apology for having conducted espionage on North Korea, and promised never to do it again; however, in a procedure unprecedented in international law, the United States branded the document false before signing it.
• Dec 21 - Launch of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon.

1969

• Jul 20 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walk on the moon. Neil said as he stepped on the moon, "Tha't one small step for man, one gaint leap for mankind." ...and planted the United States flag. This is the furthest the flag has ever gone-so far.
• Aug 15 to 17 - The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair opens in upstate New York. It was actually held in Bethel, NY, in Sullivan County, not Woodstock (Ulster County). It was called the largest and most peaceful gathering of young people ever assembled. Woodstock was held on Max Yasger's farm and attracted hundreds of thousands of people who communed in heavy rain, lots of mud, and bright sunshine, with lots of music by the biggest acts in rock music.

1970

• Apr 13 - Apollo 13 moon mission is aborted when an oxygen tank in the service module ruptures. The crew returns to Earth 4 days later.

1971

• Jan 01 - Today was the last day we ever sang, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" or heard the "Marlboro Theme" on radio or TV. Tobacco ads representing $20 million dollars in advertising were banned from broadcast.
• May 01 - A new word was introduced into the American traveling lexicon this day -- "Amtrak". The word soon became synonymous with passenger train travel. Amtrak operates under the National Railroad Passenger Corporation.
• Jul 30 - The Chicago Union Stock Yard went out of business at midnight Friday.

1972

1973

World Trade Center, building complex in lower Manhattan, N.Y.C., originally consisting of seven buildings and a shopping concourse. Most prominent were the 110-story, rectangular twin towers, one rising to 1,362 ft (415 m) and the other to 1,368 ft (417 m). Designed by Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth, the towers and concourse portion of the center was completed in 1973 at a cost of $750 million. A massive terrorist bomb explosion damaged portions of the complex in 1993. Ten persons were convicted in the bombing in 1995, and the bombing's mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, was tried and convicted in 1998. On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists crashed one hijacked U.S. commercial airliner into each tower, as part of the most destructive attack on U.S. soil in history. Later that morning, the twin towers collapsed. The impact of the collapse left a large area of lower Manhattan covered in rubble and debris for blocks around the former Center and caused fires and the collapse of neighboring buildings, including World Trade Center 7, another building in the complex.

First commercialized rechargeable long-life pacemaker introduced.

The first oil crisis starts

• Jan 27 - Signing of the Vietnam peace accord

1974

1975

• May 13 - The SS Mayaguez was a merchant freighter bound to Thailand from Singapore. On May 12, 1975, (local time) Cambodian Khmer Rouge guerrillas in two gunboats captured the ship and its 39-member crew. The crew was charged with spying. Following 2 days of military attacks and counterattacks, the Mayaguez was retaken in a lightning raid using a small amphibious force of U.S. Marines. 15 Marines were killed and so were dozens of Cambodians.
• Oct 28 - Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian president to pay an offical visit to the U.S.

1976

1977

1978

First single chip pacemaker introduced, significantly reducing the size of pulse generators and improving their reliability.

• Oct 27 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a Middle East accord.

1979

The second oil crisis starts

• Jul 11 - After losing altitude for nearly 2 years, the U.S. space station, Skylab, falls out of the sky and crashes, scattering debris from the southwester Indian Ocean to western Australia.

1980

• Feb 28 - The first M-1 tanks were delivered to the U.S.Army.

1981

First microprocessor based pulse generator for pacemakers.

• Apr 12 - Inaugural lanch of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia, the first reuseable manned spacecraft.

1982

• Sep 14 - Princess Grace of Monaco died at age 52 of injuries from a car crash the day before.

1983

• Jun 18 - Challenger astronaut, Sally Ride, becomes the first American woman in space.

1984

1985

First programer displaying annotated markers, which tells physician when pacemaker is working

1986

• Jan 28 - Challenger exploodes 73 secondsafter lift -off. Killing all seven shuttle crew members including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

1987

• Jan 01 - The Dishonor List of Banished Words and Phrases was issued this day. The Doublespeak Award went to Lake Superior State College for the phrase, "The patient did not fulfill his wellness potential." Or, in other words... he died.
• Feb 08 - Russia's space station Mir, becomes the first continuously inhabited space station.
• Apr 05 - Calling it the first launching of a television network in almost 40 years, the FOX Broadcasting Company, under the direction of media and publishing baron, Rupert Murdoch, started with two Sunday night offerings, "Married ... With Children" and "The Tracey Ullman Show" were the beginnings of the FOX lineup.

1988

The lights come on at Wrigley.

First dual chamber rate modulated pacemaker implanted.

• Sep 14 - Hurricane Gilbert slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

1989

1990

• Apr 25 - Astronauts on the shuttle Discovery place the Hubble space telescope into Earth's orbit. Astronauts realize almost immediately that the mirror has the wrong shape.

1991

• Jan 17 - Operation Desert Storm began
• Apr 11 - Persian Gulf War offical cease fire

1992

1993

• Dec 04 thru 10 - Astronauts capture the Hubble space telescope and repair its optics.

1994

1995

• Mar 22 - Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov returns to Earth after spending a record 437 days and 18 hours in space aboard Russia's space station Mir.
• Jun 29 - As part of America's 100th manned space mission, shuttle Atlantis docks with Russia's space station Mir.

1996

First pacemakers introduced certified to not be affected by cellular phone interference.

1997

The tallest buildings are the twin Petronas Towers (opened 1997) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which rise 1,483 ft (452 m), contain 88 stories each, and feature twin spires.

• A court in Ireland granted the first divorce in the Roman Catholic country's history
• Jul 01 - Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule.
• Jul 04 - In a culmination of the Pathfinder mission, the Sojourner rover lands on Mars. The spacecraft falls silent 83 days later.

1998

First U.S. clinical trial implants of left ventricular pacing systems to treat congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation.

October 11 Clayton Bates The birth of Clayton Bates is marked on this date in 1907. He was an African-American tap dancer. Born in rural Fountain Inn, South Carolina. He retired from the stage in 1989 and passed away at Fountain Inn on December 6, 1998. Clayton Bates was buried in Palentown Cemetery, Ulster County, New York.

• Oct 29 - The shuttle Discovery, lauches in to space with 77 year old John Glenn.

1999

2000

2001

During the morning rush hour of Tuesday, September 11, two hijacked 757 airliners slam into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, creating an explosion and fire that leads to the collapse of both towers. Moments later, a third airliner crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., and another crash-landed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in what was revealed to be a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States. Thousands of lives-including emergency workers, airline passengers and crew, and employees of the Pentagon and World Trade towers-were lost. Osama bin Laden, leader of the Afghanistan-based international terrorist network al Qaeda, is believed to have been responsible for the attacks.

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is executed by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m. on June 11. Convicted of murder, conspiracy, and explosives charges in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, McVeigh maintained that while "sorry" for the suffering he caused, the 168 lost lives were "collateral damage" in his war against the federal government. Anti-death penalty protests were mounted around the world after the FBI admitted to withholding evidence in McVeigh's trial. In a final written statement, McVeigh quoted from the poem "Invictus," famous for the lines "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul," . His remains were cremated and disposed of secretly.

2002

1587 Mary Queen of Scots beheaded After 19 years of imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England for her complicity in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I.

2003

• 01 Feb - The Space Shuttle Columbia blew up during landing

Next in height is the Sears Tower (1974), Chicago, 110 stories and 1,454 ft (443 m) tall. Major New York City skyscrapers are the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 110 stories, 1,362 ft (415 m) and 1,368 ft (417 m); the Empire State Building, 102 stories, 1,250 ft (381 m); and the Chrysler Building, 77 stories, 1,046 ft (319 m). When the 224-story Centre of India Tower (Katangi, India) is completed in 2008, it will be the largest skyscraper at 2,222 ft (676 m); Chicago's 7 South Dearborn building (scheduled for 2003) will be 108 stories and 1,550 (471 m) high.

2004

• 21 June - Test pilot Mike Melvill landed at Mojave Airport, about 80 miles north of Los Angeles, California, after taking the rocket plane SpaceShipOne to an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) -- the internationally recognized boundary of space.

2005

2006

2007

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