TIME TRAVELING, MAY 15 1800 With the adjournment of Congress in Philadelphia on this day, President John Adams orders his Cabinet to assure that Congress and all federal offices (about 125 federal employees) are moved from Philadelphia to the nation’s new capital, Washington, D.C., by June 15. 1862 Congress creates the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1911 The U.S. Supreme Court orders the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. 1940 Nylon stockings go on sale in the U.S. for the first time. 1941 Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees begins his historic Major League Baseball hitting streak of 56 games. 1942 Wartime gasoline rationing allowing only three gallons per week for nonessential vehicles begins in the U.S. 1957 Britain drops its first hydrogen bomb. It falls on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. 1958 The Soviet Union launches “Sputnik III,” the first automatic scientific space laboratory. 1963 U.S. astronaut Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard “Faith 7,” the final flight of Project Mercury, the NASA program that put the first American into space in 1961 and the first into orbit in 1962. Cooper completes 34 hours in space and 22 orbits of the earth, becoming the first astronaut to spend more than a day in space. 1970 President Richard Nixon appoints Americas first two female generals, as the Chief of the Army Nurse Corps and the Director of the Womens Army Corps are promoted to brigadier general. 1970 Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, are killed when police open fire during student protests. 1972 Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace is shot by 21-year-old Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Md., while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace is paralyzed from the waist down by the shot, and his third presidential campaign is brought to an irrevocable end. 1988 The Soviet Union begins withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan after an eight-year campaign there. 1990 Vincent Van Goghs Portrait of Doctor Gachet is sold for $82.5 million, setting a new world record. 1999 The Russian parliament is unable to attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin.
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 05:05:01 +0000
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