This Day…

1875 – First Kentucky Derby: The inaugural “Run for the Roses” was held at Churchill Downs, won by Aristides with jockey Oliver Lewis.

1921 – Florence Allen is the first female judge to sentence a man to death in Ohio

1924  – Pulitzer Prize for poetry awarded to Robert Frost for “New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes”

1878 – Thomas Edison‘s phonograph is shown for the first time at the Grand Opera House in NYC

1900 – Casey Jones dies heroically in a train wreck at Vaughn, Mississippi, while driving Cannonball Express, immortalized in the song “Ballad of Casey Jones”

1927 – Birth of Coretta Scott King, renowned civil rights activist, author, and leader who continued the legacy of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

1931 – US gangster film “The Public Enemy” starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow premieres.

1902 – Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive compound radium chloride

1865 – Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination

1865 – Abraham Lincoln dies nine hours after he is shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington