In Akron, Ohio, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, two recovering alcoholics, founded Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), a 12-step rehabilitation program that would eventually help countless
people cope with alcoholism.

Based on psychological techniques that have long been used
in suppressing certain personality traits, members of the strictly anonymous organization control their disease through guided
group discussion and confession.

Dr. Robert Smith (1879 – 1950) and Bill Wilson (1895 – 1971)

On May 28, 1937, the government of Germany—then under the
control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party—
formed new state-owned automobile company, then known
as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens
mbH. Later that year, it was renamed simply Volkswagenwerk,
or “The People’s Car Company.”

Originally operated by the German Labor Front, a Nazi
organization, Volkswagen was headquartered in Wolfsburg,
Germany. In addition to his ambitious campaign to build a
network of autobahns and limited access highways across
Germany, Hitler’s pet project was the development and mass
production of an affordable yet still speedy vehicle that could
sell for less than 1,000 Reich marks (about $140 at the time).         
        

VW logo during the 1930s, initials surrounded by a stylized cogwheel and a spinning propeller that looked like a
swastika.

The American Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton (1821–1912) 
on this day in history, May 21, 1881.

Nurse Clarissa Harlowe "Clara" Barton was born on Christmas
Day, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, the American Red
Cross website notes.

She spent her early career as a teacher before moving to
Washington, D.C. to work in the U.S. Patent Office.

According to the American Red Cross, at the time of the
American Civil War Barton shifted her career once again,
becoming a battlefield nurse.    
 

Clara Barton was inducted into the National Women’s Hall
of Fame in 1973.

Members of the American Red Cross Corps in a photo taken around 1910.

Photo of a dispensary taken around 1914.

.

On April 10, 1866, the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)was
founded in New York City by philanthropist and
diplomat 54 year old Henry Bergh. 

Henry Bergh (August 29, 1813 – March 12, 1888)

Portrait of Henry Bergh on duty.

It all started in this little white schoolhouse in Wisconsin.

In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party met to
establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the
western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834
to oppose the “tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had
shown itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over
slavery.

With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
of 1854 that dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise
and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the territories
by popular sovereignty, the Whigs disintegrated.

By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the
upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party
and one such meeting, in Wisconsin was on this day in 1854 and
is generally remembered as the birth of the Republican Party.