MARCH 10 — 1933 Long Beach Earthquake; INVENTION/PATENTS: 1902 U.S. Appellate Court rules Edison did not invent movie camera, 1903 Harry Gammeter develops early copy machine, 1891 Almon Strowger patents telephone circuit switching, 1849 Lincoln becomes only president to file for a U.S. patent, 1791 John Stone patents pile driver; 2001 Okie Noodling video released to prepare for annual Oklahmoa festival
MARCH 10
1933 6.3 earthquake hits Long Beach,CA.
Not a particularly heavy one on the Richter Scale, but enough to kill about 115 folks and cause around $40M of property damage due to unreformed masonry along the Newport-Inglewood fault line all the way down to Laguna Beach. Good thing school wasn’t in session that particular day; because that unreinforced masonry was the cause they incurred the most amounts of damages as they were thrown off their foundations. The amount of casualties was due to folks fleeing their locations, only to get struck by falling wreckage.
The aftermath would lead to the Field Act a month later, which tightened structural safety and support regulations on building codes. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald made a reference to the Long Beach Earthquake in his 1941 book, The Last Tycoon.
1864 — Jack Slade gets hanged.
According to the Denver Posyt in 1979 Jack had two personalities, one sober and one drunk. When he was sober he was friendly and a smart businessman. When he was drunk he was basically a rowdy hellraiser. He was the superintendent of stage stops at the Overland Trail and he was brazen. Legend has it, outlaw Jules Reni shot Slade multiple times with buckshot pellets, seemingly leaving Slade for deda. But Slade muttered he’s be wearing Rini’s ears on his wristwatch one day. He kept his word. Reni was captured later by Slade’s men and by the time Slade got to him, Reni was tied against a pole, sweating harder than Shaq at the free throw line at a Laker game. Slade tortured Reni, killed him and tore off his ears, wearing one on his wrist.
He ran the Pony Express and Buffalo Bill worked for him in the earlyh 1860s. But when he got drunk he caused trouble, firing his gun wildly in the air and was suspected of secretly helping out bandits for pay during train robberies. He was fired from the Overland and went to Montana to Virginia City. His drunkenness followed him and sooon he had the entire town freaked out. A group of local vigilantes banded together and captured Slade, and strung him up before he had a chance to say goodbye to his wife, March 10, 1864. His crime was disturbing the peace.
1902 – The United States court of appeals rules that Thomas Edison did not invent the movie camera.
He gave us the phonograph, kinetograph, and more. However it also gave him credit for inventing the sprocket system that moved perforated film through the camera. 1903 – In Cleveland, Harry Gammeter patents multigraph duplicating machine. It was a very early copy machine. 1891 – Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka Kansas, patented the strowger switch, which was a device that led to the automation of telephone circuit switching. Get this, he came up with the idea when he started losing clients to a competing funeral home. Turned out he discovered the funeral operator’s wife was a telephone dispatcher who was intercepting Strowger phone calls and redirecting them to her husband’s funeral home. Talk about putting the fun in funeral right? 1849 – Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions. He is the only US president to have applied for a patent. 1791 John Stone from Concord, Mass patented the pile driver. Brought new meaning to the term Hit the road.
1962 – Cleopatra comes to back to life. America was obsessed with the affair the Liz Taylor was having on Eddie Fisher with Richard Burton. She stole Burton from Debbie Reynolds, he became her fourth husband, and while filming Cleopatra in Rome, Liz and Burton started an affair that had more steam than a Paris Red Light sauna. Burton would replace Fisher as Liz’s husband as he became not only her fifth husband but also her sixth.
2000, Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde was arrested for leading an animal rights protest against the clothing firm Gap, who were accused of using leather from cows slaughtered ‘illegally and cruelly’. The protest took place in a store in Manhattan.
2001 Okie Noodling is released.
Now everyone outside of Oklahoma can see how real men catch fish. Now, anyone can flock to Paul’s Valley and noodle his or her hearts out. Noodling is the sport of catching catfish with your bare hands. According to their website: This event is the only sponsored noodling tournament in the world and has resulted in the sport’s popular success through shows like Hillbilly Handfishin’ on Animal Planet and Mudcats on the History Channel.
Also if you’re a fan of King of the Hill, noodling was featured in the episode The Redneck on Rainy St. Now, there are four categories: scuba, women’s, natural, and 17 & under. There are also a few basic rules: the fish must be caught within 36 hours of the deadline, must be alive when brought into the weigh in, can be caught within any lake in the entire state of Oklahoma, and no stringers, rods or reels.
But people get sneaky sometimes, so how does the committee prevent folks from turning in the same fish at different competitions? These days, the tournament has a new method of preventing cheating: a polygraph.
Yeeeeeehaw!!