On January 9, 2001, Apple launches iTunes, a media player that revolutionized the way people consumed digital media. Bill Kincaid and Jeff Robbin, two former Apple employees, developed an MP3 player called SoundJam MP in the late 1990s. In 2000, Apple re-hired them and their partner, Dave Heller, to work on a similar player that wouldContinue reading “History Lesson Tuesdays: Apple launches iTunes, revolutionizing how people consume music”
Category Archives: History.com
History Lesson Tuesday: December 5, 1933. The End of Prohibition in America.
The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. At 5:32 p.m. EST, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the requisite three-fourths majority of states’ approval. Pennsylvania and Ohio had ratified it earlier in the day. The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began inContinue reading “History Lesson Tuesday: December 5, 1933. The End of Prohibition in America.”
History Lesson Tuesdays: 1994 Jeffrey Dahmer Murdered in Prison
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, serving 15 consecutive life sentences for the brutal murders of 15 men, is beaten to death by a fellow inmate while performing cleaning duty in a bathroom at the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium in Portage, Wisconsin. During a 13-year period, Dahmer, who lived primarily in the Midwest, murdered at least 17 men. Most of these men wereContinue reading “History Lesson Tuesdays: 1994 Jeffrey Dahmer Murdered in Prison”
History Lesson Tuesdays: 1877 Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph.
Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. Edison stumbled on one of his great inventions—the phonograph—while working on a way to record telephone communication at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. His work led him to experiment with a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which, to hisContinue reading “History Lesson Tuesdays: 1877 Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph.”
History Lesson Tuesdays: Herman Melville Publishes “Moby Dick” in 1851.
Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: “Call me Ishmael.” Initially, though, the book about Captain Ahab and his quest to catch a giant white whale was a flop. Its author, Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. As a young man, heContinue reading “History Lesson Tuesdays: Herman Melville Publishes “Moby Dick” in 1851.”
Jimmy Carter Wins Nobel Peace Prize
On October 11, 2002, former President Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, served one term as U.S. president between 1977 and 1981. One of hisContinue reading “Jimmy Carter Wins Nobel Peace Prize”
Work Begins on Mount Rushmore
October 4, 1927 On October 4, 1927, sculpting begins on the face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota. It would take another 12 years for the granite images of four of America’s most revered presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt—to be completed. The monument was the brainchild of a South Dakota historian namedContinue reading “Work Begins on Mount Rushmore”
History Lesson Tuesdays: Massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
During the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, in the early morning of September 5, a group of Palestinian terrorists storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage. The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September, in return for the release of the hostages, they demandedContinue reading “History Lesson Tuesdays: Massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972.”
True Crime Sundays: Son of Sam Serial Killer is Arrested
Photo Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
This Day in History 1990 Americans with Disabilities Ave (ADA) signed into Law & 1908 FBI Founded
On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the most sweeping affirmation of rights for the disabled in American history at the time, into law. As disability rights attorney Arlene Mayerson would later write, the story of the ADA began “when people with disabilities began to challenge societal barriers thatContinue reading “This Day in History 1990 Americans with Disabilities Ave (ADA) signed into Law & 1908 FBI Founded”