On this day in 1937, physician Bernard Fantus coined the word “blood bank” by establishing the first one at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Four years earlier, Fantus had received […]

On this day in 1879, Albert Einstein was born. One of the most brilliant scientists of all time, Einstein formulated the theory of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for […]

On this day in 1781, William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. Born in Germany, the Herschel family moved to England when William was 17 years old. A musician like his […]

On this day in 1930, Mohandas Gandhi took the first steps of a 240-mile march to the seaside town of Dandi in western India.  The daunting walk was not a […]

On this day in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur, under presidential orders, fled the Philippines as the Japanese Navy moved in. Escaping at dusk by PT boat, MacArthur and his family […]

On this day in 1785, President George Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson as Minister to France, who stepped in for an aged Benjamin Franklin. When someone mentioned that he was Franklin’s […]

On this day in 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court exonerated 35 Africans who had seized control of the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship headed to Cuba. The incident occurred two […]

On this day in 1917, riots and demonstrations erupted in the city of Petrograd, now called St. Petersburg. The February Revolution, so named because Russia observed the Julian calendar at […]

On this day in 1876, Patent Number 174,465 was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell for a device that would electrically transmit sound. Bell’s application to the U.S. Patent Office, made […]

On this day in 1475, Michelangelo was born in Caprese, Italy, near Florence. His father, a member of the declining Buonarroti family, ridiculed his son’s artistic pursuits, believing they were […]