1876

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Today in History 03/07/17

Engraving of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, 1877 (© Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images)(1876) Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone
Following the development of his prototype ‘harmonic telegraph’ device, Scotland-born Alexander Graham Bell receives a US patent on a revolutionary new form of instantaneous communication, the telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. Bell’s father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell’s life’s work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
Lived: Mar 03, 1847 – Aug 02, 1922 (age 75)
Spouse: Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (m. 1877 – 1922)
Founded: AT&T · National Geographic Society · Bell Labs · Bell System · Oriental Telephone Company · Aerial Experiment Association
Inventions: Telephone · Graphophone · Twisted pair
Children: Elsie Bell (Daughter) · Robert Bell (Son) · Edward Bell (Son) · Marian Hubbard Bell (Daughter)
Education: University of Edinburgh (1864 – 1865) · Royal High School, Edinburgh (1858 – 1862) · University College London (1868 – 1870) · Weston House Academy (1863 – 1864)
Highlights
  • 1877: On July 11, 1877, a few days after the Bell Telephone Company was established, Bell married Mabel Hubbard (1857–1923) at the Hubbard estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  • 1880: Canada’s first telephone company building, the “Henderson Home” of the late 1870s, a predecessor of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada (officially chartered in 1880).

  • 1880: In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize with a purse of 50,000 francs (approximately US$260,000 in today’s dollars) for the invention of the telephone from the Académie française, representing the French government.

  • 1893: In 1893, Keller performed the sod-breaking ceremony for the construction of the new Bell’s new Volta Bureau, dedicated to “the increase and diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf”.

  • 1914: Bell was later awarded the AIEE’s Edison Medal in 1914 “For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone”.

  • 1922: Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate in Cape Brenton, Nova Scotia, at age 75.

wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell
Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, on March 8, 1945, one day after it was captured intact by American troops during World War II (© AP)(1945) US forces capture Ludendorff Bridge on German Rhine
Nine years to the day after Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles and reoccupied the Rhineland, the US Army’s 9th Armored Division secures one of the last still-standing bridges over the Rhine River. Allied forces will now be able to cross into the German interior and bring the war to a swifter conclusion.
The Battle of Remagen during the Allied invasion of Germany resulted in the unexpected capture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine and possibly shortened World War II in Europe. After capturing the Siegfried Line, the 9th Armored Division of the U.S. First Army had advanced unexpectedly quickly towards the Rhine. They were very surprised to see one of the last bridges across the Rhine still standing. The Germans had wired the bridge with about 2,800 kilograms of demolition charges. When they tried to blow it up, only a portion of the explosives detonated. U.S. forces captured the bridge and rapidly expanded their first bridgehead across the Rhine, two weeks before Operation Plunder. The GIs’ actions prevented the Germans from regrouping east of the Rhine and consolidating their positions.
Start date: Mar 07, 1945
End date: Mar 25, 1945

wiki/Battle_of_Remagen
General Matthew B. Ridgway talks with major James H. Lee during the former’s inspection of front line positions in Korea on March 1, 1951 (© AP)(1951) Ridgway launches Korean War’s Operation Ripper
Spearheaded by US General Matthew Ridgway, a UN force launches a huge offensive against enemy combatants around Seoul. A week later the South Korean capital will be liberated from Communist control.
Operation Ripper, also known as the Fourth Battle of Seoul, was a United Nations military operation conceived by the commander US Eighth Army, General Matthew Ridgway, during the Korean War. The operation was intended to destroy as much as possible of the Chinese communist People’s Volunteer Army and North Korean military around Seoul and the towns of Hongch’on, 50 miles east of Seoul, and Ch’unch’on, 15 miles further south. The operation also aimed to bring UN troops to the 38th parallel. It followed upon the heels of Operation Killer, an eight-day UN offensive that concluded February 28, to push Communist forces north of the Han River. The operation was launched on March 6, 1951 with the US I Corps and IX Corps on the west near Seoul and Hoengsong and US X Corps and ROK III Corps in the east, to reach “Line Idaho”, an arc with its apex just south of the 38th Parallel in South Korea.
Start date: Mar 07, 1951
End date: Apr 04, 1951

wiki/Operation_Ripper
Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King lead a black voting rights march from Selma, AL, to the state capital in Montgomery, March 1965 (© William Lovelace/Express/Getty Images)(1965) Selma civil rights march becomes ‘Bloody Sunday’
Marching for civil rights for African Americans, hundreds of unarmed and peaceful protesters cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and are set upon by state troopers wielding billy clubs and tear gas. Public disgust at the incident will help galvanize support for passage of the Voting Rights Act.
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression, and were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.
Start date: Mar 07, 1965
End date: Mar 21, 1965

wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
3.3.f17

A Historical Day

(1876) Native tribes battle Custer’s 7th Cavalry in Montana
1876 A coalition of Native American tribes, resisting a forced move onto reservations, array themselves against George Armstrong Custer’s US 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. A vastly overconfident Custer advance is met and wiped out in a matter of an hour..
(1906) Paranoid millionaire kills a prominent New York architect
Very rich, and very unstable, Harry Thaw’s volcanic jealousy is triggered by both architect Stanford White’s social snubs and White’s prior love affair with Thaw’s wife, showgirl Evelyn Nesbit. Obsessed, Thaw shoots White at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The “trial of the century” will follow. . 1906
(1947) Anne Frank’s ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ is released
1947 Two years after her death at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank’s account of her time hiding from the Nazis with her Jewish family in Amsterdam is published. The diary, which Frank began on her 13th birthday, is heartbreaking and hopeful in equal measure. .
(1950) North invades south and the Korean War begins
After Japan surrendered at the end of World War II and relinquished control of Korea, the nation has been divided between communist and capitalist powers. With support from the Soviet Union, North Korea now invades US-supported South Korea in a bid to reunify the country, and a bloody 3-year war ensues.. 1950