This Day…

On this day in 1829, Dr. Sarah R. Adamson Dolley was born in Schuylkill Meeting, Pennsylvania. Aspiring to become a doctor, she sought an apprenticeship with her physician uncle, Hiram Corson, but he initially would not accept her, believing the practice of medicine to be an unsuitable profession for women. After seeing that she was determined and relentless, he finally agreed.

1967 – President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 prohibiting sex discrimination in employment by the federal government and by federal contractors

1824: Adeline Train Whitney born (writer)

1866: Anne Sullivan Macy born (educator – Helen Keller‘s “Teacher”)

1868: Lida Shaw King born (educator, classicist)

1945: Jessye Norman born (opera singer)

1963: Four girls killed in the bombing of 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama (story)

1846 – Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning.

1953 – Jacqueline Lee Bouvier marries U.S. Representative John Fitzgerald Kennedy at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island.

1992 – Dr. Mae Carol Jemison becomes the first African-American woman in space on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour

1921 – 16-year-old Margaret Gorman wins the Atlantic City Pageant’s Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dubbed her the first Miss America.

In 1916, the Democratic and Republican parties endorsed female enfranchisement, and on June 4, 1919, the 19th Amendment was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the required three-fourths majority of state ratification, and on August 26 the 19th Amendment officially took effect.

1891 – The Boston National League club shocks the baseball world by announcing the signing of King Kelly away from the rival Boston American Association club, thereby wrecking peace talks between the leagues. Kelly signs through the 1892 season for a total of $25,000, a figure that will not be topped by any player until the Federal League war of 1914 and 1915.

1910 – Rickwood Field, the first concrete-and-steel ballpark in the minor leagues, opens in Birmingham with the hometown Barons scoring two runs in the bottom of the ninth in their exciting 3-2 walk-off victory over Montgomery. The Alabamian landmark, which will become the oldest surviving professional baseball park in the country, is well attended by the citizens of the booming iron-and-steel town, often drawing standing-room-only crowds in excess of 10,000 fans in the first decade of it existence.

1912 – Shoeless Joe Jackson completes the stolen base cycle when he swipes home in the seventh inning of the Indians’ 8-3 victory over New York at Cleveland’s League Park. The 25 year-old outfielder had made his way around the bases by stealing second and third base before his thievery of the plate to complete the deed.

1890 – At Auburn Prison, New York murderer William Kemmler becomes first person to be executed by electric chair.