This Day…

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

1948 – Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera” TV debut on ABC

1860 – Queen of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) arrives in NYC

1926 – Harry Houdini stays in a coffin underwater for 1½ hours before escaping

1865 – Lewis Carroll publishes “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

1912 – US government censors movies and photos of prizefights