On January 11, 1927, MGM’s Louis B. Mayer forever changed the way we celebrate movies by announcing the formation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. The original creation of the Academy had less to do with celebrating achievement on the big…
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On January 10, 1946, in the austere aftermath of World War II, a small team of American scientists quietly achieved something that, in retrospect, marked the opening salvo of the Space Age. At Camp Evans, a former radar laboratory in New Jersey, the United…
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Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon on January 10, 49 BC, marked a defining moment in Roman history, heralding a seismic shift in the Republic’s power dynamics. The Rubicon, a river that demarcated the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper, was more than…
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On a winter day in Paris on January 9, 1839, the modern world blinked into focus. Before a gathering of scholars and savants, the French Academy of Sciences announced that it would soon reveal a new method for fixing images from light itself—a process…
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On January 9, 1861, the United States moved one step closer to going to civil war. On that day, A crew on The Star of the West, a ship hired by the U.S. government to supply American troops, found itself caught in between working for…
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On a cold winter morning in southern France, an unremarkable agricultural routine gave way to one of the most scrutinized UFO cases in modern history. At approximately 5:30 a.m. on January 8, 1981, a local farmer working his land near Trans-en-Provence reported an…
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The Battle of New Orleans, fought on January 8, 1815, stands as one of the most remarkable and celebrated military victories in American history. Under the leadership of Major General Andrew Jackson, American forces delivered a decisive defeat to a larger, better-equipped British army.…
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On January 8, 1982, the largest corporation in the world received a mandate to break up, changing the way people connect and sparking an eventual technological revolution. The breakup of the Bell System was a significant event in the history of American telecommunications. The…
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On January 7, 49 BC, the Roman Republic crossed a point of no return—not with the tramp of legions or the clash of steel, but with a decree of the Senate and the flight of two frightened magistrates. What followed would soon culminate in…
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One of the most famous early motion pictures produced by Thomas Edison’s company was a short film titled “Fred Ott’s Sneeze,” also known as “The Sneeze” or “Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze.” This film, which lasts only a few seconds, captures an employee…
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