On This Day

Every date has a story. American history, wars, disasters, inventions and legends, posted on the day it happened.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

https://t.co/tHocifiSyp

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@WSJ The world's first gas station was a pharmacy. In 1888, Bertha Benz drove her husband's car 66 miles without telling him, and when fuel ran low she bought ligroin solvent at the Stadt-Apotheke in Wiesloch. She cleared a clogged fuel line with her hat pin along the way.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@TheEconomist One day before Telstar 1 launched in July 1962, the US set off a 1.4-megaton nuclear bomb 250 miles above the Pacific. Its radiation helped kill the satellite.

Telstar still beamed the first live TV between the US and Europe, then died after 7 months. It's still in orbit today.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@Rainmaker1973 At 60, that tortoise is a teenager. Jonathan, on St Helena, hatched around 1832 and is about 193 today, the oldest known living land animal.

He arrived in 1882 as a gift to a future governor and has now outlived 31 governors' terms on the island.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@TheEconomist In 2000, Blockbuster turned down a chance to buy Netflix for $50 million.

Ten years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy with $900 million in debt. Today one franchise store is left on Earth, in Bend, Oregon, now a tourist stop full of Blockbuster memorabilia.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@Rainmaker1973 The Czechs have been doing this since 1410. Prague's Orloj was first recorded on 9 October 1410, built by clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and astronomer Jan Šindel.

Legend says the city blinded its maker so he could never build another, and he jammed it in revenge.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@TheEconomist Math has leaned on computers since 1976. That June, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken at the University of Illinois proved the four color theorem with one, after a century of false proofs. Part of it filled 400+ pages of microfiche, checked by hand with help from Haken's daughter.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@MarioNawfal When crowds stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the fortress held just 7 prisoners: four forgers, two mentally ill men and a count jailed at his family's request. It was torn down within five months. Lafayette sent its key to George Washington. It's still at Mount Vernon.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@Rainmaker1973 Istanbul has a statue of a street cat. Tombili went viral for one photo of him lounging against a step in Kadıköy.

After he died in 2016, 17,000 people signed a petition and a sculptor recreated his pose. A month later it was reported stolen. Two days after that, it came back.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@Rainmaker1973 The man behind the Ames Window was a Harvard-trained lawyer who quit law to paint, then got so hooked on how the eye works that vision became his life's work.

Adelbert Ames Jr. also built the Ames room, where one person looks like a giant. His grandfather: Gen. Benjamin Butler.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@business Carrefour means "crossroads." Its first store opened in 1960 near one in Annecy, France.

On 15 June 1963, near Paris, it opened Europe's first hypermarket: a supermarket and department store under one roof, an idea the founders took from US retail seminars.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@WSJ The first World Series in 1903 was best-of-nine, and Boston beat Honus Wagner's Pirates 5 games to 3 by winning the last four.

It was just a deal between two clubs, not the leagues, so in 1904 there was no Series at all. Boston's "Royal Rooters" sang "Tessie" to rattle Wagner.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@business 97 years ago tomorrow was Black Thursday: a record 12.9 million shares traded on Oct 24, 1929. Bankers sent NYSE VP Richard Whitney to the floor to bid $205 a share for 25,000 U.S. Steel, well above market. The calm held five days, until Black Tuesday.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@ScienceNews The biggest crater on Phobos is named for a woman most people never heard of. Asaph Hall found the moon in 1877 and credited his wife, mathematician Angeline Stickney, as critical to the discovery. In 1973 a committee chaired by Carl Sagan named the 9 km crater Stickney.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@business In 1846, Parliament passed 263 Acts for new railway companies, with routes totalling 9,500 miles. About a third were never built.

Britain's Railway Mania: shares bought on a 10% deposit, rates raised late 1845, families' savings wiped out. Yet 6,220 miles of track did get built.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@MarketWatch Netscape was 16 months old and not yet profitable when it went public on Aug 9, 1995. Shares priced at $28, double the original $14 plan, hit $75 on day one and closed at $58.25, a $2.9B company. It gave Wall Street the phrase "Netscape moment."

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@business Franz Kafka's first real job was at Assicurazioni Generali. He started Nov 1, 1907, hated the 8am-to-6pm shifts that left no time to write, and quit on July 15, 1908. Two weeks later he joined a workers' accident insurance office, assessing claims for lost fingers and limbs.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@newscientist The dinosaur-killing crater was found by oil hunters. In 1978 Pemex geophysicists Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo spotted a 180 km "bullseye" under the Yucatán. Separately, Luis and Walter Alvarez found iridium up to 160x normal in clay at Gubbio, Italy. That's them.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@business The amber light was a Detroit cop's idea. In 1920 police signal chief William Potts built the first four-way, three-color traffic light, and by 1921 15 Detroit towers ran it. The very first signal, London 1868, was gas-lit and exploded on Jan 2, 1869.

[On This Day @HailHistory]

@Reuters Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Sept 15, 2008, with over $600 billion in assets, still the biggest in U.S. history. The Dow fell just over 500 points.

Next day, Barclays' Bob Diamond told Lehman staff they'd been bought, then played "God Save the Queen" on the intercom.