May 14, 1884

Trustbusters aim for White House

During the late nineteenth century, some of America's corporate leaders, including Andrew Carnegie, went on a rampage, gobbling up the competition-and the vast majority of profits-in their respective fields. While the rise of monopolistic corporations, or "trusts," made fiscal sense for business leaders like Carnegie, it raised the hackles of Americans who had placed their faith in a more even, and carefully monitored, playing field. Not only did trusts arouse considerable protest, but they also gave birth to a reform-minded political movement. And, on this day in 1884, forces from that movement, in the guise of the freshly formed Anti-Monopoly Party, held their first convention to nominate a candidate for the White House. The Anti-Monopoly Party tabbed as their presidential nominee General Benjamin Butler, a staunch unionist who had switched allegiances from the Northern Democrats to the Radical Republicans before joining the Anti-Monopolists. Though Butler failed to capture the Oval Office and the Anti-Monopoly Party ultimately foundered, the call for legislation aimed at reigning in the trusts did not go unheeded: in 1890, the Federal Government enacted the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the landmark bill designed to tame the trusts.

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May 15, 1882

President Arthur investigates tariffs

In the years following the Civil War, the U.S. government used tariffs to shield the nation's manufacturers from the ravages of foreign competition. While the tariffs had their intended effect, there were those in government, and even in business, who questioned the government's unswerving allegiance to high duties. And so, on this day in 1882, President Chester A. Arthur formed a high-level commission to tackle the tariff issue. Though the commission was putatively charged with weighing the relative merits of tariffs, both in terms of the impact on global trade and smaller domestic enterprises, the deck was stacked in favor of protectionist and industrial interests. Indeed, the commission's nine members included John L. Hayes, the secretary of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, a likely proponent of protectionist measures. Unsurprisingly, the commission weighed in with a favorable report on tariffs as a means to preserve the integrity and interests of American-made goods.

May 15, 1937

Madeleine Albright is born

On this day in 1937, Madeleine Albright, America's first female secretary of state, is born Maria Jana Korbelova in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic).

The daughter of Czech diplomat Josef Korbel, Albright fled to England with her family after the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. Though Albright long believed they had fled for political reasons, she learned as an adult that her family was Jewish and that three of her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps. The family returned home after World War II ended but immigrated to the United States in 1948 after a Soviet-sponsored Communist coup seized power in Prague. Josef Korbel became dean of the school of international relations at the University of Denver (where he would later train another female secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice).

After graduating from Wellesley College in 1959, Albright married Joseph Medill Patterson Albright of the prominent Medill newspaper-publishing family. With an MA and PhD from Columbia University under her belt, Albright headed to Washington, D.C., where she worked for Maine's Senator Edmund S. Muskie and served on the National Security Council in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. She and Joseph Albright divorced in 1982. During the Republican presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Albright worked for several nonprofit organizations and taught at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

With a Democrat--Bill Clinton--in the White House again in 1992, Albright found herself at the center of Washington's most powerful circle. In 1993, Clinton appointed her ambassador to the United Nations. In that post, Albright earned a reputation as a straight-talking defender of American interests and an advocate for an increased role for the U.S. in U.N. operations. In late 1996, Clinton nominated Albright to succeed Warren Christopher as U.S. secretary of state. After her nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, she was sworn in on January 23, 1997.

As secretary of state, Albright pursued an active foreign policy, including the use of military force to pressure autocratic regimes in Yugoslavia and Iraq, among other troubled regions. Her trip to North Korea in October 2000 to meet with leader Kim Jong Il made her the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit that country. She drew some criticism for her tough position on U.S. sanctions against Iraq, which led to many civilian deaths in that country and fueled the rage of Muslim extremists such as Osama bin Laden.

Albright's term ended with the election of President George W. Bush in 2000. Though there was talk of her entering Czech politics, she returned to her teaching post at Georgetown and became chair of a nonprofit organization, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

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May 16, 1770

Louis marries Marie Antoinette

At Versailles, Louis, the French dauphin, marries Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. France hoped their marriage would strengthen its alliance with Austria, its longtime enemy. In 1774, with the death of King Louis XV, Louis and Marie were crowned king and queen of France.

From the start, Louis was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems he had inherited from his grandfather, King Louis XV. In addition, his queen fell under criticism for her extravagance, her devotion to the interests of Austria, and her opposition to reform of the monarchy. Marie exerted a growing influence over her husband, and under their reign the monarchy became dangerously alienated from the French people. In a legendary episode, Marie allegedly responded to the news that the impoverished French peasantry had no food to eat by declaring "Let them eat cake."

At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Marie and Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it, and by 1791 opposition to the royal pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to attempt an escape to Austria. During their trip, Marie and Louis were apprehended by revolutionary forces at Varennes, France, and carried back to Paris. There, Louis was forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead.

In August 1792, the royal couple was arrested by the sansculottes and imprisoned, and in September the monarchy was abolished by the National Convention. In November, evidence of Louis' counterrevolutionary intrigues with Austria and other foreign nations was discovered, and he was put on trial for treason by the National Convention. The following January, Louis was convicted and condemned to death by a narrow majority. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed. Nine months later, Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason by a tribunal, and on October 16 she followed her husband to the guillotine.

May 16, 1886

Congress nixes disme

On this day in 1866, Congress dealt a crushing blow to fans of the half-disme by voting to discontinue use of the small silver coin. However, the disme's defeat resulted in the birth of one of the enduring coins of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The House voted to replace the half-disme with a five-cent piece, which was affectionately dubbed the "nickel." The initial version of the nickel, which featured a shield on the front and a "5" on the back, was plain-faced, but successive runs of the coin were more ornate. In 1913, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing issued the now-coveted "buffalo" nickel, with a buffalo and a bust of a Native American on its respective sides. The current, and even more ornate, incarnation of the coin pays homage to Thomas Jefferson--featuring the third U.S. president's likeness on one side and a rendering of his home, Monticello, on the other.

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May 19, 1749

Ohio Company chartered

King George II of England grants the Ohio Company a charter of several hundred thousand acres of land around the forks of the Ohio River, thereby promoting westward settlement by American colonists from Virginia. France had claimed the entire Ohio River Valley in the previous century, but English fur traders and settlers contested these claims. The royal chartering of the Ohio Company, an organization founded primarily by Virginian planters in 1747, directly challenged the French claim to Ohio and was a direct cause of the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754.

With the defeat of the French in 1763, the Ohio River and the Great Lakes areas were placed within the boundaries of Canada, and the Ohio Company was merged with another land company to better exploit the region. Settlers in Ohio resented these acts and joined the patriots in their struggle against the British in the American Revolution. In 1783, Ohio was ceded to the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. In 1788, Marietta became the first permanent American settlement in what was known as the Old Northwest. During the next decade, Native Americans were suppressed and British traders were pushed out, and in 1799 Ohio became a U.S. territory. In 1803, it entered the Union as the 17th state.

May 19, 1828

Congress passes "Tariff of Abominations"

Wool manufacturers won a handsome victory on May 19, 1828, when President John Quincy Adams gave the nod to the tariff of 1828. Not surprisingly, the tariff aroused howls of protest, most notably from Andrew Jackson's allies in the House, who had hoped to kill the bill as a means of humiliating Adams. Though Jackson's forces failed to block the passage of the tariff, they refused to give up, and in 1832, helped enact legislation that rolled back rates to their more modest 1824 levels. But, the tariff of 1832 failed to diffuse the situation--a number of states, including South Carolina, refused compromise measures and instead pushed for the complete nullification of the 1828 legislation. With a nasty battle looming on the horizon, Henry Clay stepped in with a proposal for a "compromise tariff" of 1833. While Clay's bill appeased the competing interests of manufacturers and farmers, it couldn't remove the stigma of the 1828 tariff which, in the intervening years, came to be known as the "tariff of abominations."

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May 20, 1873

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans

On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans.

Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early 1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days of the Gold Rush.

In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family's firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco.

Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points--at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly--to make them stronger. As Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings"--the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them--was granted to both men on May 20, 1873.

Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for "waist overalls," as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean--known until 1890 as "XX"--was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi's denim waist overalls were the top-selling men's work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young and old, around the world.

May 20, 1996

Big Business battles big damage awards

On this day in 1996, the Supreme Court saved BMW a tidy chunk of change by overturning a state court ruling that had called for the auto giant to pay $2 million to an Alabama doctor. In the original case, Dr. Ira Gore of Birmingham, Alabama, had sued the car company after learning that, prior to purchasing his BMW, the car had been repainted. Charging that the car was, in fact, damaged, Gore sued. Though the car seemed to be in fine shape, an Alabama court handed Gore over $4 million in actual and punitive damages. Though Gore's hefty award was later trimmed to $2 million by the Alabama Supreme Court, BMW wasn't mollified by the reduction and pushed their case to the Supreme Court. The Court's subsequent ruling, founded on the justice's belief that the initial damage payment was "grossly excessive," not only pleased BMW, but business leaders across the country who had long crusaded against lower court's habit of handing out hefty damage awards in cases against corporate America.

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May 22, 1824

House passes Tariff of 1824

During the early spring of 1824, lawyer-turned-legislator Henry Clay vigorously stumped for the passage of a protectionist tariff. Playing on national pride, Clay positioned the tariff as a potent tool for bolstering America's fiscal and social well-being. With its blend of protectionist measures and domestic trade initiatives, the tariff was designed to break the nation's putatively heavy reliance on foreign goods. But, Clay's campaign, which included a marathon two-day speech before the House of Representatives, was met with some fierce resistance, most notably from Daniel Webster, who hit the House floor in early April to deliver his own two-day take on the tariff. Webster passionately argued against the legislation, dismissing it as an affront to free trade. However, when the dust, settled, Clay was the victor: on this day in 1824, the House passed the Tariff of 1824.

 

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May 27, 1794

Rail baron is born

This day in 1794 marks the birth of rail baron and arch-capitalist, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Born to a poor family in Staten Island, Vanderbilt left school at age eleven and headed to New York's waterfront to begin what proved to be a long and fruitful career. In 1810, Vanderbilt began his first entrepreneurial venture with the launch of a small ferry business. Though Vanderbilt's ferry enterprise soon began to thrive, he sold his schooners in 1818, opting instead to learn the shipping business under the tutelage of captain Thomas Gibbons. Though still young, Vanderbilt was a savvy and fiercely competitive entrepreneur, and by 1829 he had purchased his first steamer. Thanks in large part to his aggressive fares and lavishly decorated steamers, Vanderbilt eventually came to rule the shipping industry. By 1862, the nation's burgeoning rail network beckoned and, utilizing his handsome capital resources, Vanderbilt built an empire that included the New York and Harlem Railroad, as well as the New York Central Railroad. Towards the end of his life, Vanderbilt tempered his competitive zeal with altruism--he donated $1 million to Central University (later renamed Vanderbilt University) and masterminded the construction of New York's Grand Central Terminal. Cornelius Vanderbilt passed away in New York City during in early 1877.

May 27, 1937

Golden Gate Bridge opens

San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opens to the public after five years of construction. On opening day--"Pedestrian Day"--some 200,000 bridge walkers marveled at the 4,200-foot-long suspension bridge, which spans the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and connects San Francisco and Marin County. On May 28, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic.

The concept of bridging the nearly mile-wide Golden Gate Strait was proposed as early as 1872, but it was not until the early 1920s that public opinion in San Francisco began to favor such an undertaking. In 1921, Cincinnati-born bridge engineer Joseph Strauss submitted a preliminary proposal: a combination suspension-cantilever that could be built for $27 million. Although unsightly compared with the final result, his design was affordable, and Strauss became the recognized leader of the effort to bridge the Golden Gate Strait.

During the next few years, Strauss' design evolved rapidly, thanks to the contributions of consulting engineer Leon S. Moisseiff, architect Irving F. Morrow, and others. Moisseiff's concept of a simple suspension bridge was accepted by Strauss, and Morrow, along with his wife, Gertrude, developed the Golden Gate Bridge's elegant Art Deco design. Morrow would later help choose the bridge's trademark color: "international orange," a brilliant vermilion color that resists rust and fading and suits the natural beauty of San Francisco and its picturesque sunsets. In 1929, Strauss was selected as chief engineer.

To finance the bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District was formed in 1928, consisting of San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Del Norte, and parts of Mendocino and Napa counties. These counties agreed to collectively take out a large bond, which would then be paid back through bridge tolls. In November 1930, residents of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District voted 3-1 to put their homes, farms, and businesses up as collateral to support a $35 million bond to build Strauss' Golden Gate Bridge.

Construction began on January 5, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Strauss and his workers overcame many difficulties: strong tides, frequent storms and fogs, and the problem of blasting rock 65 feet below the water to plant earthquake-proof foundations. Eleven men died during construction. On May 27, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to great acclaim, a symbol of progress in the Bay Area during a time of economic crisis. At 4,200 feet, it was the longest bridge in the world until the completion of New York City's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge remains one of the world's most recognizable architectural structures.

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May 29, 1975

Ford foils jobs bill

The United States limped through the mid-1970s, suffering through the political and moral implications of the Watergate scandal. On top of these woes, America's economy was in terrible shape. The prices of oil, wood, and grain all skyrocketed, unleashing a heady wave of inflation. The nation's fragile finances also resulted in rampant unemployment and, by the end of May 1975, the jobless rate had climbed to a whopping 9.2 percent. Looking to stop the bleeding, Congress green-lighted a $5.3 billion jobs-creation bill in the spring of 1975. Though the legislation promised to create 1 million badly needed jobs, Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford was wary of the program's hefty price tag and, on this day in 1975, vetoed the job creation bill. In place of the jobs program, Ford moved to pass a bill that extended the ceiling on unemployment benefits to sixty-five weeks.

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May 30, 1899

Pearl Hart holds up an Arizona stagecoach

On this day, the amateur bandit Pearl Hart and her boyfriend hold up an Arizona stagecoach.

Little is known about Pearl Hart's early life. She was born in Petersborough, Ontario, in 1871, and moved to Toronto as a child. She eloped when she was 16, but her husband abused her and the marriage did not last. Eventually, Hart took up with a dance-hall musician and minor gambler named Dan Bandman, and in 1892 the couple moved to Phoenix, Arizona. When Bandman left to fight in the Spanish-American War, Hart relocated to the Arizona mining town of Globe, where she began an affair with a German drifter named Joe Boot.

Short on money, the couple determined to hold up a stage, though neither of them appears to have had any prior experience as robbers. On this day in 1899, Hart (dressed as a man) and Boot stopped a stage on the run between Globe and Florence. After taking $421 in cash from the three passengers, Hart took pity on them and handed back $1 to each so they could buy something to eat when they arrived in Florence.

Unskilled in the art of the getaway, Hart and Boot left an obvious trail and the sheriff of Pinal County arrested the couple four days later. Boot was jailed in Florence, but since the town had no detention facilities for women, Hart was jailed in Tucson. Within several days, Hart had apparently charmed several men into helping her and she escaped. Her freedom, however, was short-lived. A lawman recognized her in Deming, New Mexico, and returned her to Tucson.

Tried and convicted in a Florence court, Boot was sentenced to 30 years and Hart to five. Neither served out their terms. After several years of good behavior, Boot was made a trusty and walked off while doing fieldwork, never to be heard from again. After about a year in prison, Hart became pregnant. Eager to save the Arizona Territory the embarrassment of having to explain how Hart arrived at this condition while imprisoned, Governor Alexander O. Brodie pardoned her on December 19, 1902.

Hart's life after her release is shrouded in myth. According to the romantic version, Hart leveraged her single experience as a stage robber into a career in show business, billing herself as "The Arizona Bandit." Some said she traveled for several years on the vaudeville circuit, others that she toured briefly with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Historians have been unable to verify either of these claims. The more mundane but likely version has it that Hart quickly married an Arizona rancher named Calvin Bywater and settled down to a quiet life of domestic bliss. If Mrs. Cal Bywater was indeed Pearl Hart, she lived into her 80s and other people described her as "soft-spoken, kind, and a good citizen in all respects."

May 30, 1908

Aldrich has banner day

May 30, 1908 was a banner day for financier and conservative legislator, Senator Nelson Aldrich. First, he watched as Congress passed one of his pet projects, the Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Act. One of Aldrich's typically business-friendly bills, the Currency Act was designed as a boon to struggling banks. As such, the legislation granted banks the authority to issue currency that was pegged to commercial notes and government bonds. The day held yet another victory for Aldrich, as President Theodore Roosevelt tabbed the Rhode Island Republican to chair the National Monetary Commission. In doing so, Roosevelt had effectively granted the arch-conservative the right to monitor and mold the nation's finances.

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June 2, 1912

Universal founded

On this day in 1912, Carl Laemmle merges his movie studio, the Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP), with several others, creating Hollywood's first major studio, Universal.

Laemmle launched IMP in 1909, despite the efforts of The Motion Picture Patents Company to monopolize the industry and force out newcomers. In 1915, the studio bought a 230-acre lot and founded Universal City in San Fernando Valley, where the studio made hit films starring Rudolph Valentino, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and many others. Despite the success of its films, especially horror movies like Frankenstein and Dracula, the studio struggled financially in the mid-1930s until a string of musicals starring Deanna Durbin restored its fortunes. During the next few decades, Universal distinguished itself with the colorful Arabian Nights movies and the popular Abbott and Costello comedies. In 1946, Universal merged with International Films and was later purchased by Decca Records. Talent agency MCA acquired Decca and Universal International in 1962, but an antitrust suit forced MCA to spin off its talent component the same year.

During the next two decades, Universal released a string of box office hits, including The Sting, American Graffiti, and Jaws in the 1970s, and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park in the 1980s. Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. purchased MCA in 1991 but sold the company to The Seagram Co. in 1995. The company was renamed Universal Studios in 1996. Since 2004, GE, parent company of NBC, has owned 80 percent of the company; the remaining 20 percent is owned by Vivendi, which acquired Seagram's entertainment holdings in 2000.

June 2, 1985

R.J. Reynolds buys Nabisco

On June 2, 1985, tobacco titan R.J. Reynolds Industries began what would prove to be a short but intense courtship of the National Brands, Inc. (more popularly known as Nabisco). When viewed on paper, R.J. Reynolds and Nabisco seemed like strange bedfellows; though the origins of both companies dated back to the late nineteenth century, they seemingly shared few other similarities. Reynolds had made its money from cigarettes, a putatively adult-oriented product, while Nabisco mined the more family-minded vein of cookies and crackers. But, corporate matchmaking is more a game of money and market share than overt compatibility; R.J. Reynolds had been expanding into the food industry since the 1960s and partnering with Nabisco, then the largest producer of packaged snack items, promised to be a most profitable union. After a sustained spate of wooing and negotiation, Reynolds and Nabisco agreed to join forces to form a $4.9 billion company. However, the newly formed RJR Nabisco, Inc. company proved to be ripe for the plucking in the merger-mad atmosphere of the late 1980s: In 1989, the tobacco and food giant was snapped up for a record $23 billion by Wall Street buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company. Then, in 1999, RJR Nabisco sold its international tobacco business for nearly $8 billion to Japan Tobacco, Inc. RJR Nabisco also announced it plans to separate its remaining food and domestic tobacco interests.

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June 4, 1910

Enter Robert Anderson

This day in 1910 marks the birth of Robert Anderson, the lawyer turned legislator who helped shaped the conservative economic policies of President Dwight Eisenhower's second administration. Born in small-town Texas, Anderson spent a portion of his life hopping from modestly prestigious public posts to relatively lucrative spots in the private sector. After securing a law degree from the University of Texas in 1932, Anderson did an extended stint in the state government, serving first as the assistant attorney general and then the state tax commissioner. By the dawn of the 1940s, Anderson switched career paths and headed into the private sector, working as the general manager of a Texas-based oil and ranching concern. During the 1950s, he continued to move between business and government, though this time his dalliances with the public sector landed him a seat in President Eisenhower's administration. After working as Eisenhower's secretary of the Navy (1953) and then the secretary of defense (1954), Anderson made a temporary retreat into the private world. However, in 1957 Eisenhower, casting about for someone to run the Treasury, again beckoned Anderson to Washington. The Texas businessman heeded the President's call and headed up the Treasury until Eisenhower left office in 1961.

June 4, 1919

Congress passes the 19th Amendment

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

The women's suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to assert the right of women to vote. Female enfranchisement was still largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict and subsequent Civil War precluded further discussion. During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender.

In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was formed to push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone, was organized in the same year to work through the state legislatures. In 1890, these two societies were united as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. That year, Wyoming became the first state to grant women the right to vote.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women in American society was changing drastically; women were working more, receiving a better education, bearing fewer children, and several states had authorized female suffrage. In 1913, the National Woman's party organized the voting power of these enfranchised women to elect congressional representatives who supported woman suffrage, and by 1916 both the Democratic and Republican parties openly endorsed female enfranchisement. In 1919, the 19th Amendment, which stated that "the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex," passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it the law of the land. Eight days later, the 19th Amendment took effect.

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June 5, 1883

John Maynard Keynes is born

This day in 1883 marks the birth of John Maynard Keynes, the groundbreaking economist who argued for the benefits of full employment and active government involvement in economic matters. Born in Cambridge, England, Keynes's early career centered on fiscally minded government work, both at home and in India. Following the close of World War I, Keynes began writing about various economic issues, publishing all-too prescient attacks on the decision to saddle Germany with heavy reparations. During this same period Keynes also began his increasingly critical investigation into then dominant fiscal policies, including "laissez-faire" economics. By the early 1930s much of the Western world was struggling through dire economic slumps, which only reinforced KeynesÝs belief that governments, rather than "natural" fiscal forces, should be relied upon to steer national finances. Keynes articulated these beliefs in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935-1936), a landmark work that informed Roosevelt's interventionist approach to ending the Depression. In 1944, the U.S. government called on Keynes to partake in the Bretton Woods Conference and help draft the blueprint for the post- World War II global fiscal order. Whatever his past success in shaping economic policy, Keynes's voice was largely drowned out by American leaders. Just two years after the conference, Keynes passed away in Sussex, England.

June 5, 1933

FDR takes United States off gold standard

On June 5, 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable. Soon after taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt declared a nationwide bank moratorium in order to prevent a run on the banks by consumers lacking confidence in the economy. He also forbade banks to pay out gold or to export it. According to Keynesian economic theory, one of the best ways to fight off an economic downturn is to inflate the money supply. And increasing the amount of gold held by the Federal Reserve would in turn increase its power to inflate the money supply. Facing similar pressures, Britain had dropped the gold standard in 1931, and Roosevelt had taken note. On April 5, 1933, Roosevelt ordered all gold coins and gold certificates in denominations of more than $100 turned in for other money. It required all persons to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce. By May 10, the government had taken in $300 million of gold coin and $470 million of gold certificates. Two months later, a joint resolution of Congress abrogated the gold clauses in many public and private obligations that required the debtor to repay the creditor in gold dollars of the same weight and fineness as those borrowed. In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply. The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard. In 1974, President Gerald Ford signed legislation that permitted Americans again to own gold bullion.

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June 6, 1932

First gas tax enacted

The first gasoline tax levied by Congress was enacted as a part of the Revenue Act of 1932. The Act mandated a series of excise taxes on a wide variety of consumer goods. Congress placed a tax of 1¢ per gallon on gasoline and other motor fuel sold.

June 6, 1934

FDR signs Securities Exchange Act

The New Deal swept through Wall Street on this day in 1934, as President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Securities Exchange Act. With the swoop of his pen, Roosevelt sanctioned a set of regulations designed to rein in the stock swapping shenanigans and duplicitous sales tactics that had riddled the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and helped spark the Great Crash of 1929. Along with imposing registration requirements for all exchanges and curbing stock purchases by cash-strapped traders, the legislation created the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC was charged with nothing less than reviving the public's tattered faith in the stock market, and was thus given the lead to monitor both brokerage houses and investment banks. Few pieces of New Deal legislation played well on Wall Street; the Securities Exchange Act--along with the adjoining Exchange Act passed in 1933--was particularly loathed by traders and investment leaders. Whatever the fiscal and moral impact of the Great Crash, Wall Street had operated almost entirely unfettered since the late eighteenth century and was hardly ready to submit to government control. However, the relative restraint of the Securities Exchange Act, which, despite its regulatory bent, left traders a fair amount of latitude, and ensuing appointment of Joeseph P. Kennedy, a business-friendly industrialist, to head the SEC eased Wall Street's fears.

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June 9, 1534

Cartier discovers St. Lawrence River

French navigator Jacques Cartier becomes the first European explorer to discover the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec, Canada.

In 1534, Cartier was commissioned by King Francis I of France to explore the northern American lands in search of riches and the rumored Northwest Passage to Asia. That year, Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence by the Strait of Belle Isle, explored its barren north coast for a distance, and then traveled down the west shore of Newfoundland to Cape Anguille. From there, he discovered Magdalen and Prince Edward islands, explored Chaleur Bay, and claimed Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula for France. He then discovered the inlet of the St. Lawrence River, sailed north to Anticosti Island, and then returned to Europe.

Previously thought to be a barren and inhospitable region, Cartier's discoveries of the warm and fertile lands around the Gulf of St. Lawrence inspired Francis I to dispatch him on a second expedition in 1535. On this voyage, he ascended the St. Lawrence to the native village of Hochelaga, site of the modern-day city of Montreal. On his return voyage to France, he explored Cabot Strait along the southern coast of Newfoundland. Cartier led a final expedition to the region in 1541, as part of an unsuccessful colonization effort. His extensive geographical discoveries formed the basis of France's claims to the rich St. Lawrence Valley in the 17th century.

June 9, 1943

"Pay As You Go" tax established

World War II prompted sweeping fiscal changes in the United States, as President Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow legislators geared the nation for the rigors of wartime production. Along with reallocating vast chunks of America's work force to the task of manufacturing military items, Roosevelt helped establish tight controls on wages, prices, and consumption. While most of these initiatives were brought to a halt shortly after the declaration of peace in 1945, at least one wartime fiscal policy--the Current Tax Payment Act -- has had some enduring impact. Indeed, the tax legislation, which hit the law books on this day in 1943, paved the path for withholding on income taxes. In particular, the bill, popularly known as the "Pay As You Go Tax," allowed Americans to taxpayers to withhold federal income taxes before getting paid their wages or salaries.

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June 12, 1915

Rockefeller clan grows

On this day in 1915, the Rockefellers, one of America's first families of industry and wealth, grew a touch larger with the birth of David Rockefeller. The youngest of five children sired by the imperious oil baron John D. Rockefeller, David ably continued the family tradition of acquiring vast sums of money. Before the dawn of 1941, David had racked up degrees from Harvard, the London of School Economics and the University of Chicago. Following a stint in World War II, Rockefeller started working at the Chase National Bank, which was chaired by his uncle, Winthrop W. Aldrich. David enjoyed a fast rise through the ranks at Chase and was named the bank's vice president in 1952. A few years after his promotion, Rockefeller helped engineer the merger between Chase and the Bank of Manhattan Company. But, befit his name and background, Rockefeller didn't stall as the second in command of the newly formed banking conglomerate: By 1969, he was tabbed to serve as both the chairman of the board and CEO of the Chase Manhattan Bank. A well-traveled expert in international finance, Rockefeller's reign at Chase lasted until the dawn of the 1980s.

June 12, 1962

George Lucas in near-fatal car wreck

On this day in 1962, teenager George Lucas survives a nearly fatal wreck after racing his car at top speed just two days before his high school graduation. An aspiring racecar driver before the accident, Lucas shifted his ambitions to filmmaking afterward.

Lucas was born in 1944 in Modesto, California, where he attended junior college for two years before starting film school at the University of Southern California. As a student project at USC, he made a science fiction film called THX-1138: 4EB, which won the National Student Film Festival in 1965.

Lucas' strong performance in film school won him the opportunity to observe production of Finian's Rainbow, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He became the director's prot'g' and with his support made an expanded version of THX-1138, released in 1973, and American Graffiti (1973). Although Lucas made the latter for only $700,000, including his own $20,000 salary, it became an enormous success and later earned more than $55 million in rentals alone.

In 1969, Lucas married film editor Marci Griffin, who later won an Oscar for her editing work on Star Wars. The couple adopted a daughter but divorced in 1983. Lucas later adopted two more children.

Lucas spent three years developing his next project, Star Wars, which he wrote and directed. Although a simple good vs. evil story, the movie boasted groundbreaking special effects and became one of the most successful movies of all time. In a move unusual for the time, Lucas had held out for ancillary rights--like merchandizing and soundtrack rights--to his film, which proved extremely lucrative. In the 20 years following the release of Star Wars, Lucas sold more than $3 billion in licensed merchandise based on the movies.

After Star Wars, Lucas stopped directing and turned his attention to producing, although he consulted on the stories for Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). In the 1980s, he produced the Indian Jones series, directed by Steven Spielberg, and explored less successful projects, including two projects with Jim Henson: Labyrinth (1986) and Willow (1988).

With the fortune he earned from his successful ventures, Lucas built a 2,500-acre ranch in Northern California, dubbed Skywalker Ranch, where a mock Victorian building houses many of his employees. His businesses include production company Lucasfilm, software company LucasArts Entertainment, and special effects shop Industrial Light and Magic, which created the groundbreaking effects for movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. In 1994, Lucas began working on the story for a second Star Wars trilogy. The first of these, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, was released in 1999.

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June 13, 1933

Homeowners get help

America's beleaguered homeowners got a dose of relief on this day in 1933, as Congress gave the nod to the Home Owners Refinancing Act. The legislation, passed during the furious first 100 days of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealing administration, was designed to help Depression-stricken citizens refinance their homes. Towards that end, Act established the HomeOwners Loan Corporation (HOLC), a typical Roosevelt-era administration which wielded federal funds in the fight against the Depression. Chaired for a spell by New Deal stalwart Jesse Holman Jones helped finance mortgages and even helped pay for repairs on some people's homes. Though HOLC lasted but three years, it doled out loans for roughly one million mortgages.

June 13, 1966

The Miranda rights are established

On this day in 1966, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. Now considered standard police procedure, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you," has been heard so many times in television and film dramas that it has become almost cliche.

The roots of the Miranda decision go back to March 2, 1963, when an 18-year-old Phoenix woman told police that she had been abducted, driven to the desert and raped. Detectives questioning her story gave her a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. However, tracking the license plate number of a car that resembled that of her attacker's brought police to Ernesto Miranda, who had a prior record as a peeping tom. Although the victim did not identify Miranda in a line-up, he was brought into police custody and interrogated. What happened next is disputed, but officers left the interrogation with a confession that Miranda later recanted, unaware that he didn't have to say anything at all.

The confession was extremely brief and differed in certain respects from the victim's account of the crime. However, Miranda's appointed defense attorney (who was paid a grand total of $100) didn't call any witnesses at the ensuing trial, and Miranda was convicted. While Miranda was in Arizona state prison, the American Civil Liberties Union took up his appeal, claiming that the confession was false and coerced.

The Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but Miranda was retried and convicted in October 1966 anyway, despite the relative lack of evidence against him. Remaining in prison until 1972, Ernesto Miranda was later stabbed to death in the men's room of a bar after a poker game in January 1976.

As a result of the case against Miranda, each and every person must now be informed of his or her rights when arrested.

June 13, 1978

Ford fires Iaccoca

Ford Motor Company Chairman, Henry Ford II, fired Lee Iaccoca from the position of president, ending a bitter personal struggle between the two men.

Since his grand emergence into the spotlight with the release of the Ford Mustang in 1964, Lee Iacocca had risen precipitously through the ranks at Ford, ascending to the position of company president in 1970. As president of Ford, Iacocca--previously known exclusively as a sales and marketing expert--set into motion a rigorous cost-cutting policy that would increase Ford's stagnating annual profit margin. Within four years, he recalls, his policies had earned him "the respect of the one group that had always been suspicious of me: the bean counters."

Over the course of the 1970s, Iacocca instituted quarterly reviews of Ford staffers by their superiors. Known as an authoritarian, Iacocca would not take excuses from his employees, and he held each employee personally responsible for their output. His policies proved successful, but as Iacocca became more and more obsessed with making Ford profitable, he neglected to maintain the approval of the family business's volatile boss. Personal relations between the two men turned from distant to ugly. The rift is often explained by Ford's notion of Iacocca as a lower-class hired gun, a gifted immigrant salesman good for business and little else. One Ford public relations spokesperson explained, "Mr. Ford always regarded Mr. Iacocca as a rather vulgar Italian." And all the while, Iacocca believed that his future in the automotive industry rested wholly on his balance sheets.

Iacocca admits to becoming blinded by his hefty salary, and to ignoring Ford's poor treatment of him. He claims, though, that "in 1975, Henry Ford started his month-by-month campaign to destroy me." Ford launched company investigations into travel expenses of leading executives. He targeted many of Iacocca's proteges. Iacocca was repeatedly asked, at the risk of losing his job, to fire close friends of his. Iacocca wouldn't resign because he had spent his whole professional career at Ford and, as he puts it, "I wanted that $1 million [salary] so much that I wouldn't face reality."

Ford installed a series of new positions to decrease Iacocca's power as company president; finally, in 1978, he called Iacocca into his office to inform him his services were no longer needed. Iacocca stated that Ford gave him no reason for the firing. "It's personal. Sometimes you just don't like somebody," Ford had said. So Lee Iacocca, arguably the automotive industry's most successful executive, was left without a job. He would later agree to run Chrysler.

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June 16, 1884

First roller coaster in America opens

On this day in 1884, the first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. The new entertainment was an instant success and by the turn of the century there were hundreds of roller coasters around the country.

Coney Island, a name believed to have come from the Dutch Konijn Eilandt, or Rabbit Island, is a tract of land along the Atlantic Ocean discovered by explorer Henry Hudson in 1609. The first hotel opened at Coney Island in 1829 and by the post-Civil War years, the area was an established resort with theaters, restaurants and a race track. Between 1897 and 1904, three amusement parks sprang up at Coney Island--Dreamland, Luna Park and Steeplechase. By the 1920s, Coney Island was reachable by subway and summer crowds of a million people a day flocked there for rides, games, sideshows, the beach and the two-and-a-half-mile boardwalk, completed in 1923.

The hot dog is said to have been invented at Coney Island in 1867 by Charles Feltman. In 1916, a nickel hot dog stand called Nathan's was opened by a former Feltman employee and went on to become a Coney Island institution and international franchise. Today, Nathan's is famous not only for its hot dogs but its hot dog-eating contest, held each Fourth of July in Coney Island. In 2006, Takeru Kobayashi set a new record when he ate 53.75 hot dogs with buns in 12 minutes.

Roller coasters and amusement parks experienced a decline during the Great Depression and World War II, when Americans had less cash to spend on entertainment. Finally, in 1955, the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, signaled the advent of the modern theme park and a rebirth of the roller coaster. Disneyland's success sparked a wave of new parks and coasters. By the 1970s, parks were competing to create the most thrilling rides. In 2005, Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, introduced the Kingda Ka roller coaster, the world's tallest (at 456 feet) and fastest (at 128 mph).

By the mid-1960s, the major amusement parks at Coney Island had shut down and the area acquired a seedy image. Nevertheless, Coney Island remains a tourist attraction and home to the Cyclone, a wooden coaster that made its debut there in 1927. Capable of speeds of 60 mph and with an 85-foot drop, the Cyclone is one of the country's oldest coasters in operation today. Though a real-estate developer recently announced the building of a new $1.5 billion year-round resort at Coney Island that will include a 4,000-foot-long roller coaster, an indoor water park and a multi-level carousel, the Cyclone's owners have said they plan to keep the historic coaster open for business.

June 16, 1998

Compaq suit thrown out

Compaq breathed a sigh of relief on this day in 1998 as a Brooklyn jury tossed out a lawsuit filed against the computing giant and its recently acquired subsidiary, Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). The suit had been filed by a group of nine people who claimed that DEC's keyboards had caused them "repetitive stress injuries." In return for their pain, the nine plaintiffs had sought a tidy $10 million in damages. While the verdict may have been a sharp disappointment for the plaintiffs, it was just another day in court for DEC and the embattled keyboard industry. Indeed, the increasing prominence of computers in the workplace had putatively caused everything from niggling pains to more severe injuries, thus inspiring a rash of suits against the keyboard industry. But, the Brooklyn jury didn't quite see the connection between the keyboards and the worker's ailments, which inspired sighs of relief and giddy comments from DEC's new owners. "We are delighted that the jury decided there is no link between the use of a computer keyboard and these upper extremity conditions," Thomas Siekman, Compaq's senior vice president and general counsel crowed. But, while the jury may have exonerated Compaq and DCI, their ruling likely did little to quell the roiling debate over injuries caused by the extensive use of computer keyboards.

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June 17, 1930

Hoover signs Smoot-Hawley Tariff

By the spring of 1930, it was all too clear that America would not be able to shake off the fiscal impact of the Great Crash of 1929. And so, President Herbert Hoover stepped into the breach and signed the controversial Smoot-Hawley Tariff on this day in 1930. Smoot-Hawley raised duties on imports to astronomical heights in hopes of preserving the domestic market for American-made goods. Along with forwarding the protectionist cause, the legislation also embodied Hoover's belief that a revived American economy would aid global fiscal health. Needless to say, Smoot-Hawley was a fast hit with protectionist forces, still licking their wounds from the crash. However, economists and international business leaders blasted Smoot-Hawley as an overly aggressive bill that would hurt and perhaps ultimately alienate foreign markets; a month before Hoover signed the bill, over one thousand economists signed a petition that protested the tariff. Fears that foreign governments would view Smoot-Hawley as a bellicose bill proved to be all too well-founded: a raft of foreign nations retaliated by enacting their own hefty tariffs, as well as quotas on imports and other measures that not only made international trade all that more difficult, but that also exacerbated America's fiscal woes.

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June 18, 1998

Disney snaps up portal

By the late 1990s portals--typically snappy industry jargon for web-based guides and search engines--had become one of the hottest flavors in the field of web development. On this day in 1998, the "traditional" media giant, Walt Disney Co., entered the fray by snapping up a minority stake in the Infoseek Corp., which produced the popular portal, Infoseek.com. In return for 43% interest in Infoseek, Disney handed over control of Starwave Corp., a new media company which produces ESPN.com, and $70 million in cash. While other portal companies like Yahoo had yet to yield a penny in profit, Disney honcho Michael Eisner was bullish on the Internet's fiscal prospects. In his eyes, the acquisition of Infoseek left Disney "well-positioned to take advantage" of the medium as it blossomed into "commercial maturity." Shortly after inking the deal, Eisner led Disney and Infoseek web teams back to the lab to give their portal a thorough overhaul. The revised site, complete with new graphics, snazzy functionality and catchy name "Go.com" was launched with a full dose of hype and marketing hoopla in 1999.It would fail to live up to expectations.

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June 19, 1856

First Republican national convention ends

In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, the first national convention of the Republican Party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. John Charles Fremont of California, the famous explorer of the West, was nominated for the presidency, and William Dewis Dayton of New Jersey was chosen as the candidate for the vice presidency.

In 1854, Congress moved to vote on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, an act that would dissolve the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allow slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular sovereignty. When it seemed the bill would win congressional passage, the Whig Party, which could not adequately cope with the issue of slavery, disintegrated. By February 1854, anti-slavery factions of the former Whig Party had begun meeting in the upper Midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, at Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, 1954, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.

The Republicans, who called for the abolition of slavery in all U.S. territories, rapidly gained supporters in the North, and in 1856 their first presidential candidate, John Fremont, won 11 of the 16 Northern states. By 1860, the majority of Southern states were publicly threatening secession if a Republican won the presidency. On November 6, 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president over a divided Democratic Party, and six weeks later South Carolina formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other Southern states had followed South Carolina's lead. On April 12, 1861, the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay.

The Civil War firmly identified the Republican Party as the official party of the victorious North. After the war, the Republican-dominated Congress forced a radical Reconstruction policy on the South, which saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, abolishing slavery and granting voting rights to African American men in the South. By 1876, the Republican Party had lost control of the South, but it continued to dominate the presidency, with a few intermissions, until the ascendance of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933

June 19, 1934

Silver Purchase Act is passed

President Franklin Roosevelt's first term in office was packed with busy days and June 19, 1934, was certainly no exception. Indeed, on this day Congress passed a veritable smorgasbord of legislation, including the Silver Purchase Act. Along with nationalizing silver stocks, the bill charged the President with increasing the Treasury's silver supply. Though silver was hardly about to supplant the gold standard, the legislation called for silver to equal one-third of the Treasury's gold holdings. And, while to some to the Silver Act was perhaps little more than another blip during Roosevelt's furious first term, the passage of the bill marked a rare victory for the long-suffering silver movement, which had pushed for the adoption of metal since the late nineteenth century.

June 19, 1953

Rosenbergs executed

On this day in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths, by the electric chair. The Rosenbergs were the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed for espionage during peacetime and their case remains controversial to this day.

Julius Rosenberg was an engineer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps who was born in New York on May 12, 1918. His wife, born Ethel Greenglass, also in New York, on September 28, 1915, worked as a secretary. The couple met as members of the Young Communist League, married in 1939 and had two sons. Julius Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage on June 17, 1950, and accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Ethel was arrested two months later. The Rosenbergs were implicated by David Greenglass, Ethel's younger brother and a former army sergeant and machinist at Los Alamos, the secret atomic bomb lab in New Mexico. Greenglass, who himself had confessed to providing nuclear secrets to the Soviets through an intermediary, testified against his sister and brother-in-law in court. He later served 10 years in prison.

The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial that began on March 6, 1951, and attracted much media attention, the couple was convicted. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death and the pair was taken to Sing Sing to await execution.

During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Some people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anti-communist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. Many Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly. They agreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. He stated, "I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done."

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June 20, 1931

Hoover vs. the Depression

Unlike his successors Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover is often remembered for what he didn't do during his tenure in the White House. In particular, Hoover has taken his share of knocks for supposedly failing to marshal the nation's legislative forces against the Great Depression. While it's true that Hoover viewed the business community as the primary engine of America's economic revival, he did help devise a number of initiatives that aimed to speed the end of the Depression. Case in point: on this day in 1931, Hoover urged leaders of various nations to suspend payment of international debts and reparations for the next year. The moratorium was intended as a precautionary measure: with the recent demise of a major Austrian bank, Hoover feared that the international economy was on the brink of a nasty slump that would only worsen the United State's woes. The international community readily acceded to Hoover's wishes and by July the freeze was in effect. But, though Hoover's moratorium initially helped restore confidence in the world's various markets and economies, its healing powers were short-lived: that fall, Great Britain abandoned the global economy, shattering most nation's fragile faith in the international economy.

June 20, 1977

Oil flows in Alaska

With a flip of a switch in Prudhoe Bay, crude oil from the nation's largest oil field begins flowing south down the trans-Alaska pipeline to the ice-free port of Valdez, Alaska. The steel pipeline, 48 inches in diameter, winds through 800 miles of Alaskan wilderness, crossing three Arctic mountain ranges and hundreds of rivers and streams. Environmentalists fought to prevent its construction, saying it would destroy a pristine ecosystem, but they were ultimately overruled by Congress, who saw it as a way of lessening America's dependence on foreign oil. The trans-Alaska pipeline was the world's largest privately funded construction project to that date, costing $8 billion and taking three years to build.

In 1968, a massive oil field was discovered on the north coast of Alaska near Prudhoe Bay. Located north of the Arctic Circle, the ice-packed waters of the Beaufort Sea are inaccessible to oil tankers. In 1972, the Department of the Interior authorized drilling there, and after the Arab oil embargo of 1973 plans moved quickly to begin construction of a pipeline. The Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. was formed by a consortium of major oil companies, and in 1974 construction began.

U.S. conservation groups argued that the pipeline would destroy caribou habitats in the Arctic, melt the fragile permafrost--permanently frozen subsoil--along its route, and pollute the salmon-rich waters of the Prince William Sound at Valdez. Under pressure, Alyeska agreed to extensive environmental precautions, including building 50 percent of the pipeline above the ground to protect the permafrost from the naturally heated crude oil and to permit passage of caribou underneath.

On June 20, 1977, oil began flowing down the pipeline. It got off to a rocky start, however, as power supply problems, a cracked section of pipe, faulty welds, and an unsuccessful dynamite attack on the pipeline outside of Fairbanks delayed the arrival of oil at Valdez for several weeks. In August, the first oil tanker left Valdez en route to the lower 48 states. The trans-Alaska pipeline proved a great boon to the Alaskan economy. Today, about 800,000 barrels move through the pipeline each day. Altogether, the pipeline has carried more than 14 billion barrels of oil in its lifetime.

For its first decade of existence, the pipeline was quietly applauded as an environmental success. Caribou populations in the vicinity of the pipeline actually grew (due in part to the departure of grizzly bears and wolves scared off by the pipeline work), and the permafrost remained intact. The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground. On March 24, 1989, however, the worst fears of environmentalists were realized when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in the Prince William Sound after filling up at the port of Valdez. Ten million gallons of oil were dumped into the water, devastating hundreds of miles of coastline. In the 1990s, the Alaskan oil enterprise drew further controversy when the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. attempted to cover up electrical and mechanical problems in the aging pipeline.

In 2001, President George W. Bush proposed opening a portion of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, east of Prudhoe Bay, to oil drilling. The proposal was greeted with overwhelming opposition from environmental groups and was initially defeated. In 2006, however, the Senate voted 51-49 in favor of a budget resolution that included billions for Arctic drilling. Environmental advocacy groups continue to fight the legislation.

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June 24, 1998

AT&T goes local, again

Merger mania, indeed: on this day in 1998, AT&T made a move to return to the local phone service game by snapping up cable heavyweight Tele-Communications, Inc. for a reported $48 billion. The deal, inked a mere ten days after the two companies opened negotiations, handed AT&T cable connections in roughly 33 million homes across the United States. This was a stunning reversal of fortune for the phone industry king, which, a decade back, had been forced to relinquish its choke hold over local phone lines and divest itself of its regional service providers (the "Baby Bells"). Along with reemerging as a local phone force, the acquisition of Tele-Communications also boosted AT&T's status in the booming Internet industry. Moreover, the company was primed to take a leading role in the long-awaited convergence of the various telecommunications channels. For cash-strapped Tele-Communications, the merger promised to help ease the debts company chief John Malone piled up in his quest to make his company the king of convergence.

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June 26, 1998

AMP introduces mandatory furloughs

During the early stretch of the 1990s, corporate America grew fond of downsizing, the practice of slashing work rolls in order to boost the bottom line. But, with the bull run of the late 1990s, downsizing was putatively discontinued and replaced by gentler methods of goosing profits. Thus, on this day in 1998, struggling electrical giant AMP, Inc. opted not to dump a chunk of its workforce, but instead forced 22,000 employees to take "mandatory furloughs." Along with this respite which took the form of either a week sans pay or a "week-long holiday" AMP also announced that 2,200 of its workers were volunteering for early retirement. Despite its status as the international leader in the field of electrical connections, AMP's sales had been hit hard by the recent Asian economic crisis. Company chief William Hudson also placed blame on "higher than normal pricing pressures in the marketplace and a strong dollar, which led to losses in foreign currency translations." The move marked the second time in as many months that AMP had mandated furloughs in hopes of soothing its various ailments. Despite their efforts to avoid layoffs, AMP later laid off nearly 4,000 employees in 1998, and while most jobs were replaced within a few months, an additional fifteen percent of AMP's workforce (including the jobs that were replaced from the first round of layoffs) was eliminated last April when AMP was bought out by Tyco International, Ltd. That same April, AMP's chairman and CEO Robert Ripp resigned, becoming yet another casualty of Tyco's buyout.

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June 27, 1905

Wobblies unite

The dawn of the twentieth century witnessed a sustained burst of progressive activities as various disenfranchised elements of American society pushed to assert their rights. This was especially true in the world of organized labor, as workers marshaled their forces in the battle against Big Business. Along with heading to the picket line, workers formed new and increasingly more strident unions, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which was formally consecrated in Chicago on this day in 1905. Organized by industrial labor's more militant members, including Eugene Debs, William D. Haywood (also known as 'Big Bill' Haywood) and the long-stymied Socialist segment of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the IWW tilted at the formidable windmills of industrial capitalism and its caste-like wage system. As Haywood told the union's first convention, the IWW's "purpose" was the "emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism." Towards that end, the IWW's leaders sought to build a massive union that, rather than give in to labor's nativist tendencies, built its numbers by pooling members from all races and ethnicites. Once the IWW became large enough, its leaders planned to call an apocalyptic strike that would effectively fell the capitalist system. Though the IWW did score some key victories, including leading a successful strike by textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1912), it also drew heavy fire from business leaders, government officials and conservative sectors of the union movement alike.

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June 30, 1957

Feds pull plug on RFC

On June 30, 1957, the Federal Government pulled the plug on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). With that, the United States effectively buried one of the remaining vestiges of the Great Depression. Indeed, the RFC was formed at the behest in 1931, as the nation was sinking deeper into the depths of poverty and despair. The brainchild of President Hoover, who felt that a revived private sector could best lead America back to prosperity, the RFC was charged with propping up the nation's struggling banks and businesses. Towards that end, the RFC was given license to hand out $300 million in credit to ailing financial institutions. However, the agency truly blossomed when Franklin Roosevelt ascended to the Presidency. Under Roosevelt's lead, the RFC helped drive the New Deal recovery program and became a key player during World War II, making disbursements to America's burgeoning defense industry, as well as cash-strapped foreign governments. But, by 1951 rumors that the agency was awash in impropriety swirled about Washington, leading Congress to marshal a probe that revealed that the RFC was riddled with corruption. These findings coupled with President Eisenhower's push to curtail the government's role in the economy effectively signaled the end for the agency. In 1953 Eisenhower signed the RFC Liquidation Act into law, effectively stripping the organization of its duties as a lender. Four years later, the RFC was permanently closed.

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