SEPTEMBER 14 –1879 Happy birthday women’s rights leader Margaret Sanger; 1972 Waltons debut on TV; 1978 Mork & Mindy also debuts on TV; 2013 Happy Anniversary Lebron James/Savannah Binson
SEPTEMBER 14
1879 — Happy birthday Margaret Sanger, woman’s rights leader.
Born Margaret Higgins in Corning, New York in a strict Roman Catholic household, Margaret had 11 brothers and sisters. Her mother, Anna, had several miscarriages, and died relatively young at the age of either 40 or 50, depending on who you ask, and Margaret believed that the miscarriages certainly didn’t exactly help her mother’s health. Her father was an Irish stonemason who didn’t work much, so at age 17 Margaret went out on her own and attended Claverack College and studied nursing at White Plains hospital in New York.
There, she met and married William Singer but the marriage was short lived. She began writing a newspaper column titled What Every Girl Should Know for the New York Call, and began publishing a magazine called The Woman Rebel. The main reason Margaret began a crusade on birth control, as a nurse, she had seen more than her fair share of women bleeding internally and having other serious injuries from do-it-yourself or back alley abortions.
But the whole discussion of contraceptives The Woman Rebel got Margaret in a little trouble, being considered obscene and immoral and therefore a violation of the Comstock Act of 1873, not to mention the fact that the only contraceptive allowed in Roman Catholicism is the rhythm method. How do I know this?
It’s complicated, anyway!
Margaret was facing some serious charges that could’ve gotten her up to five years in prison for her birth control blasphemy, so she bolted to England and found the diaphragm. Loving this invention, she smuggled some back to the United States, where her obscene and immoral charges were dropped. However in 1916 she opened up the first birth control clinic, and was shut down a few days later. In 1917 she would spend 30 days in the slammer at the Brooklyn Pen.
Since she had a little time on her hands, she used it to her advantage and defiantly published The Birth Control Review. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, which led to Birth Control Federation of America, which in 1942 became Planned Parenthood, which didn’t start get federal funding until the Nixon administration decades later. Margaret Sanger led the whole cause, and managed to change the Comstock Law to allow scientific information for medical purposes.
Her hospital staff was all female and included African Americans. She formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, and ran the International Planned Parenthood Federation. An oral pill, or The Pill as we call it, Nevoid was now available. By the way, that doesn’t work if you’re a smoker. Or something.
In 1965, birth control hit another legal milestone as the case Griswald vs Connecticut allowed married couples to use contraception. A year later, she passed away. Happy birthday Margaret!
2004 – The Haifa Street helicopter incident. On September 12, 2004, insurgents in Baghdad detonated a couple car bombs and attacked American forces, and four American soldiers from a Bradley armored fighting vehicle were injured. A crowd gathered around the burning vehicle once the soldiers were evacuated and appeared to be celebrating, when an American helicopter began firing at the crowd, for the purposes of “to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people”. 13 people were killed and 60 others were wounded. There are varying accounts as to how many of them were actually peaceful civilians, and how many were insurgents. In either case, it was yet another embarrassing blow to American support in the war of Iraq.1886 – George K. Anderson of Memphis, TN patents the typewriter ribbon. If you don’t know what a typewriter is, ask an adult.
2014 – Strati, first 3D printed electric car is completed at Chicago’s International Manufacturing Technology Show.
Several months prior to this, Local Motors organized a contest to see who could come up with the best 3D printed car. After 200 submissions came pouring in from all over the world a handful was selected as finalists, and Italian car designer Michele Anoe won a phat prize of $85K, and of course, bragging rights to the first 3d printed car. It took 44 hours to print, 1 day to mill, and 2 days to assemble. The car goes up to 40 miles per hour and can go about 100-120 miles depending on how the battery packs are used. Back in 2010 another semi 3-D car was printed called the Urbee, but only the body was printed and not the internal structure. In the case of the Strati, everything with the exception of the battery, motors, wiring and suspension were outsource but installed by Local Motors.
1848 – The Marble Palace opens up in New York City. It was the first department store and it was founded by Alexander Stewart. Located at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, his beauty was five stories tall and focused on woman’s apparel from overseas. Stewart was a genius of a businessman. He understood that not everyone can make it to his store, so he offered to mail the clothes to them all around the country, and made millions doing so. He also didn’t want to pay another mill for producing the fabric for these European style clothes, so he established his own mill to make the fabric. All these ideas made Stewart the one of the richest men in the world and paved the way for future stores like Target, Macy’s, and amazon for their business models. After Stewart passed away, his body was stolen and held for ransom. The body snatchers got the ransom, and legend has it that these days his remains are located at a mousseline and are rigged with security devices that will cause the bells of the Cathedral to ring if ever disturbed.
1972 – The Walton’s makes its debut on CBS. It was a show about a father of seven struggling to make it through the Great Depression and WWII. Ralph Waite, who played John Walton Sr, already passed away. Here’s what happened to the rest of the cast: most of them got out of acting and id various other things.1978 – Mork & Mindy debuts. Back then Robin Williams was virtually unknown, but when producer Garry Marshall asked Williams to take a seat to interview him for the audition, Williams sat on his head. Marshall hired him on the spot, and there were no auditions. The show was about an alien who was sent here in an e.g. to observe earth. But enough about my ex. The show only lasted four seasons but had ties to other shows like Happy Days, Laverne and Shirly, Out of the Blue, and others.
2013 – Happy anniversary LeBron James and Savannah Binson who got married at the Capella Chapel in San Diego.
SEPTEMBER 14