In one of the first sit-down strikes in the United States, autoworkers occupied
the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. The autoworkers were striking to win recognition of the United Auto Workers
(UAW) as the only bargaining agent for GM’s workers; they also wanted to
make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and to establish
a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that
would help protect assembly-line workers from injury. In all, the strike lasted
44 days.

General Motors’ workers celebrate the end of the historic Flint Sit-
Down Strike in 1937. As a result, 100,000 workers gained the right
to union representation.

TIM MAGUIRE

Jodie Foster in "Courtship of Eddie’s Father”, 1969.

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is 57 today.

Actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster has received
two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards,
two Golden Globe Awards, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award
along with a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for
her work as a director.

Foster began her professional career as a child model when
she was three years old, and she made her acting debut in
1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late
1960s and early 1970s (below).

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976).

    
Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in
The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

October 14, 1991

For the first time, Henry Ford’s entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile
factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis–
the automobile’s frame–is assembled using the revolutionary industrial
technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts
on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one
“Model T” from 12-1/2 hours to six. Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes.

The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford’s use of the
moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of
the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car
affordable to ordinary consumers.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947)

TIM MAGUIRE

On this day in 1962, Johnny Carson began hosting the “Tonight”
show on NBC television. He was introduced by Groucho Marx
(left) who warmed up the audience with a 15-minute monologue.

Johnny Carson with second banana Ed McMahon (left).

Talk show host Johnny Carson wipes his eye after
watching a series of clips from earlier shows during
the last taping of the "Tonight Show" in 1992.

Nils Ivar Bohlin (July 17, 1920 – September 21, 2002)

Nils Bohlin, the Swedish engineer and inventor responsible
for the three-point lap and shoulder seatbelt–considered
one of the most important innovations in automobile safety,
was born in Härnösand, Sweden.

Before 1959, only the two-point lap belts were available in
automobiles; for the most part, the only people who regularly
buckled up were race car drivers.