Once Upon A Time – Sept. 14 – 1956 – IBM Introduces RAMAC 305, 1st Commercial Computer With Hard Drive, Weighs Over A Ton

1752 Britain and the British Empire (including the American colonies) adopt the Gregorian calendar (no Sept 3 – Sept 13)

1936 1st prefrontal lobotomy in America performed by Walter Freeman and James W. Watts at George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C.

1939 World’s 1st practical helicopter, the VS-300 designed by Igor Sikorsky takes (tethered) flight in Stratford, Connecticut

1949 India’s Constituent Assembly adopts Hindi as an official language. Celebrated today as Hindi Day.

1956 IBM introduces the RAMAC 305, 1st commercial computer with a hard drive that uses magnetic disk storage, weighs over a ton

1960 Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia and Venezuela form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

2020 Astronomers report possible sign of life on Venus, after detecting phosphine in planets’s atmosphere by telescope [1]

2021 1 in 500 Americans have died of COVID-19 as the nation’s known death toll reaches 663,913 (Johns Hopkins) [1]

HISTORICAL EVENTS TODAY

TODAY IN FILM & TV

1985 “The Golden Girls”, starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty, debuts on NBC

TODAY IN MUSIC

1741 George Frideric Handel finishes his “Messiah” oratorio after working on it non-stop for 23 days

TODAY IN SPORT

1987 Cal Ripken Jr.’s record streak of 8,243 consecutive innings (908 games) is finally broken

MORE FACTS….

1814 Francis Scott Key pens the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry”, later known as “The Star-Spangled Banner” while witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship in Baltimore harbor

2015 14 yr old Texan Ahmed Mohamed arrested at school when home-made clock assumed to be a bomb – Mark Zuckerberg and US President Barack Obama send supportive tweets

FAMOUS WEDDINGS

1830 Princess WFLC Marianne marries Albrecht of Prussia

1835 American leading transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (33) marries 2nd wife Lydia (Lidian) Jackson in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

1838 Newly escaped slave Frederick Douglass marries free woman Anne Murray in New York