Today in 1775 was one of those signature moments in American history that everybody knows. Patrick Henry gave his “give me liberty or give me death!” speech rallying the colonies to strive for independence. Less people know that he gave that speech in a church -St Joh’s Episcopal Church in Richmond Virginia. And even less remember that he was not a fan of the more centralized government under the Constitution after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, famously saying “I smell a rat”. This was also the date that another Russian Tsar, Paul I, was assassinated by nobles angered by his reform moves in 1801.
On one coast the University of California was established in Oakland in 1868 and on the other coast Elisha Otis’s first elevator was installed in New York City in 1857. In 1919 Benito Mussolini took Italy down the fascist path and in 1959 Pakistan became the first Islamic republic in the world. In 1956 NASA launched Gemini 3, with the US’s first two-man crew of Gus Grissom and John Young, setting the stage for multiple crew flights including moon landings. And in 2010 the Affordable Care Act became law, paving the way for many more people to get health insurance in the US.
Into the world on this date came:17th US VP Schuyler Colfax (1823), German-American physicist and engineer Werner von Braun (1912) who contributed greatly to the development of the US space program, Roger Bannister (1929) the first to break the 4-minute mile mark, and Stanley Armour Dunham (1918) an American sergeant who also was the maternal grandfather of President Barack Obama.
This date marked the passing of actors Peter Lorre (1964), Elizabeth Taylor (2011), George Segal(2021), and Czech-born American diplomat Madelaine Albright, the first female Secretary of State (2022).
Look to the skies and observe the weather for this is World Meteorological Day. And in Bolivia, they remember their loss of a coastal connection in a past war by celebrating the Day of the Sea.
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