Months before its release, Orson Welles’ landmark film Citizen
Kane began generating such controversy that Radio City Music
Hall eventually refused to show it. Instead, Citizen Kane, now
revered as one of the greatest movies in history, made its
debut at the smaller RKO Palace Theater on May 1, 1941.

No Tags

SANDY KOZEL

Jack Roosevelt Robinson
(January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972)

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, become the first
African American player in Major League Baseball when he
stepped onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the
Brooklyn Dodgers.

No Tags

The bloodiest four years in American history began when
Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard
open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s
Charleston Bay (above). During the next 34 hours, 50
Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000
rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major
Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S.
President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling
for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
(1818-1893)

Robert Anderson
(June 14, 1805 – October 26, 1871)

No Tags

Mercury Seven or Original Seven, they are (front row, left to right)
Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr., Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, John H.
Glenn Jr., M. Scott Carpenter, (back row) Alan B. Shepard Jr.,
Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and L. Gordon Cooper, Jr.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
introduced America’s first astronauts to the press: The men
(above), all military test pilots, were carefully selected from
a group of 32 candidates to  take part in Project Mercury,
America’s first manned space program. NASA planned to
begin manned orbital flights in 1961. 

No Tags

Eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
gave his first national radio address, or “fireside chat” (above), broadcast directly from the White House during the Great
Depression.  He began that address simply: “I want to talk for a
few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.”
He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s
banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investor’s worried about possible bank failures. The banks would
be reopening the next day.

Roosevelt thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper
during what he called the “banking holiday.”

No Tags