This Day…

1945 – V-J Day, formal surrender of Japan signed aboard the USS Missouri, marks the end of World War II

1929 – Aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh makes her first solo flight

1920 – Ethelda Bleibtrey leads an American medal sweep of the Antwerp Olympic women’s 300m freestyle with a world record swim of 4:34.0

1873 – First free kindergarten in the U.S. started by Susan Blow in Carondelet, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri

1889 – 1st ship-to-shore wireless message (“Sherman is sighted”) received in the US from Lightship No. 70 to a coastal receiving station at Cliff House in San Francisco

1848 – New York Herald is the first major eastern newspaper to report the discovery of gold in California

1896 – Gold first discovered in Klondike, found at Bonanza Creek in the Yukon, Canada by George Carmack

1870 – Transcontinental Railway actually completed in Colorado

1877 – To his amazement, Thomas Edison records himself reciting “Mary had a little lamb” on his just completed cylinder phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders