Ellsworth Bartlett McCown

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel".

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.[4] These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world.

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator who is credited with inventing and patenting the first practical telephone. He also founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.

Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. Bell considered his invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.

28th President of the United States. Born December 28, 1856. Died February 3, 1924 at the age of 68.

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilization of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It was also one of the deadliest conflicts in history; an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

On Jan. 1, 1914, the world's first scheduled passenger airline service took off from St. Petersburg, FL and landed at its destination in Tampa, FL, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) away, with a fly time of 23 minutes. The first flight's pilot was Tony Jannus, an experienced test pilot and barnstormer. The first paying passenger was Abram C. Pheil, former mayor of St. Petersburg.

At that time, a trip between the two cities, sitting on opposite sides of Tampa Bay, took two hours by steamship or up to 12 hours by rail. Traveling by automobile around the bay took about 20 hours. But a flight would take about 20 minutes.

The original long-distance telephone network was started in 1885 in New York City. By 1892 this line reached Chicago. After introducing loading coils in 1899, the long-distance line continued west, and by 1911 it reached Denver, Colorado. On June 17, 1914, after affixing 4,750 miles (7,640 km) of telephone line, workers raised the final pole at Wendover, Utah. Then, Theodore Vail, the president of AT&T, succeeded in transmitting his voice across the continental U.S. in July 1914.

Six months later, Alexander Graham Bell in New York City, repeated his famous statement "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you," into the telephone, which was heard by his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson in San Francisco, for a long-distance call of 3,400 miles (5,500 km). Watson replied, "It will take me five days to get there now!" The Alexander Graham Bell call officially initiated AT&T's transcontinental service.

The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer of the Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest.

John Logie Baird (13 Aug 1888 – 14 Jun 1946) was a Scottish engineer, innovator, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrating the first working television system on 26 January 1926, and inventor of both the first publicly demonstrated color television system, and the first purely electronic color television picture tube.

In 1928 the Baird Television Development Company achieved the first transatlantic television transmission. Baird's early technological successes and his role in the practical introduction of broadcast television for home entertainment have earned him a prominent place in television's history.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. An African-American church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolence and civil disobedience. Inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi, he led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination.

31st President of the United States. Born August 10, 1874. Died October 20, 1964 at the age of 90.

The Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II.

Radio broadcasting was the cheapest form of entertainment, and it provided the public with far better entertainment than most people were accustomed to. As a result, its popularity grew rapidly in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and by 1934, 60 percent of the nation’s households had radios. One and a half million cars were also equipped with them. The 1930s were the Golden Age of radio. It was so popular that theaters dared not open until after the extremely popular “Amos ‘n Andy” show was over.

On this day, Amelia Earhart (born 24 Jul 1897) becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, taking 15 hours 18 minutes. In August she then became the first woman to fly non-stop across the US, from Los Angeles to Newark.

Amelia was attempting to fly around the world in 1937 when she disappeared on July 2, 1937 and was presumed dead.

32nd President of the United States. Born Jan. 30, 1882. Died Apr. 12, 1945 at the age of 63.

During the 1939 World's Fair David Sarnoff, president of RCA, unveiled the first commercial publicly accessible television broadcast. In Flushing NY, he proclaimed "Now we add sight to sound" and during the opening ceremonies of the fair on April 30th, FDR became the first president to ever be televised. TV sets went on sale to the public the very next day, and RCA/NBC began regular broadcasts on a daily basis. By the end of the 30s, there were a few hundred televisions in America.

By 1948, 2 million television sets were in American homes (of which 720,000 were in New York City alone.) On September 4th, 1951 the first coast-to-coast telecast was aired as President Truman spoke to 13 million television sets.

World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies (lead by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, United States and China) and the Axis (lead by Germany, Japan, and Italy). Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war.

World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning more than 60 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941.

The surprise attack came as a profound shock to the American people and led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theatres. There were precedents for unannounced military action by Japan, but the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was later judged in the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.

On March 14, 1942, the first patient was treated for streptococcal sepsis with US-made penicillin produced. Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient, Anne Miller. By June 1942, just enough US penicillin was available to treat ten patients. As a direct result of the WWII and the War Production Board, by June 1945, over 646 billion units per year were being produced.

33rd President of the United States. Born May 8, 1884. Died Dec. 26, 1972 at the age of 88.

The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellions in South Korea. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United States and allied countries. The fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), often referred to mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.

34th President of the United States. Born October 14, 1890. Died March 28, 1969 at the age of 79.

The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

The RCA CT-100 was an early all-electronic consumer color television introduced in April 1954. The color picture tube measured 15 inches diagonally. The viewable picture was just 11½ inches wide. The CT-100 wasn't the world's first color TV, but it was the first to be mass produced, with 4400 having been made.

Before a polio vaccine became available, several polio epidemics had occurred between 1948 and 1955. In 1955 Dr. Jonas E. Salk and colleagues research and develop a polio vaccine.

The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975.

On Jan. 25, 1959, the first scheduled transcontinental passenger jet flight took place, a non-stop American Airlines trip from California to New York.

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that was comprised of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time

35th President of the United States. Born May 19, 1917. Assassinated November 22, 1963 at the age of 46.

36th President of the United States. Born August 27, 1908. Died January 22, 1973 at the age of 65.

37th President of the United States. Born Jan. 9, 1913. Died Apr. 22, 1994 at the age of 81.

The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, D.C., Watergate Office Building.

40th President of the United States. Born February 6, 1911. Died June 5, 2004 at the age of 93.

The silence of Nancy Reagan and President Ronald Reagan on HIV/AIDS lasted for several years, with the president waiting until 1985 to directly address the issue while answering a reporter's question. It would be two more years until he made his first major address on the health issue in 1987.

The first news story on the disease appeared on May 18, 1981, in the gay newspaper "New York Native". AIDS was first clinically reported on June 5, 1981, with five cases in the United States. By 1989, AIDS was estimated to be the second leading cause of death in men ages 25-44; surpassing heart disease, cancer, suicide, and homicide. In 1988, AIDS ranked eighth among causes of death among women 25-44 years of age. By 1990, 100,777 people in the United States alone were dead from AIDS.

Some authors consider HIV/AIDS a global pandemic. As of 2016 approximately 36.7 million people worldwide have HIV, the number of new infections that year being about 1.8 million. This is down from 3.1 million new infections in 2001. It resulted in about 1 million deaths in 2016, down from a peak of 1.9 million in 2005.