Holiday Party - On This Day in History Fun Facts

I’ve always loved fun facts, the random little things that you wouldn’t really need to know unless you were going to go on Jeopardy or try to stump or impress someone with random trivia facts. When thinking about what I want to do in the upcoming year, I wanted to add another weekly meme that would be interesting to read about and research, without requiring a huge time commitment. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in seeing as a weekly meme here, or if you have any other ideas for weekly memes, let me know. But for now, here are my top 10 facts about events that happened on this day.

1732 - "The Pennsylvania Gazette," owned by Benjamin Franklin, ran an ad for the first issue of "Poor Richard’s Almanack."

1832 - John C. Calhoun became the first vice president of the United States to resign, stepping down over differences with President Jackson.

1846 - Iowa became the 29th state to be admitted to the Union (and tomorrow marks the anniversary of Texas becoming the 28th state).

1869 - William E. Semple patented an acceptable chewing gum.

1895 - In Paris, the first commercial public screening of cinematographic films took place.

1902 - The first professional indoor football game was played at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Syracuse defeated the Philadelphia Nationals 6-0.

1912 - The first municipally-owned street cars were used on the streets of San Francisco, CA. 

1945 - The U.S. Congress officially recognized the "Pledge of Allegiance."

1964 - Initial filming of the movie "Dr. Zhivago" began on location near Madrid, Spain. The movies total running time is 197 minutes.

1981 - Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American test-tube baby, was born in Norfolk, VA.