On this day 10 years ago, I started writing this column, ‘Good News on This Day in History.’ I wanted to provide a daily accounting of positive anniversaries for people on their birthdays—maybe because on mine I always hear about the anniversaries of so many disasters, like the bombing of the Morrow Building in Oklahoma City, for example. The best thing about the column, for me, is continually learning something new… Click daily to get a tasty dose of history!
MORE Good News on This Date:
- Canada extended to black citizens the right to vote –128 years before the U.S. did the same in 1965 (1837)
- Cleveland, Ohio set a record high temperature for March: 83ºF (1910)
- Animator Joseph Barbera, the award-winning co-creator of Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons–and founder of one of the most successful animation studios of the 20th century–was born. (1911)
The National Gallery of Art was established through a gift from financier, public servant, and art collector Andrew W. Mellon the year of his death– a museum with the distinction of displaying the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the western hemisphere (1937)
- In an event later dramatized in The Great Escape, 76 Allied prisoners of World War II began breaking out of the Nazi German camp Stalag Luft III in Poland through secretly dug tunnels (1944)
- John D Rockefeller Jr. donated the NYC East River site to the United Nations (1947)
- Mick Jagger & Keith Richards first performed together as Little Boy Blue & the Blue Boys (1962)
- Halle Berry became the first African-American actor to win the Academy award for best actress, after her role in “Monster’s Ball” (2002)
- Bhutan officially became a democracy, with its first ever general election (2008)
- Pope Francis declared that women will be included in annual Easter week ritual that formerly involved only men (2016)
Also, on this day in 1930, the late-actor Steve McQueen was born in Indiana. Interesting note, on his 14th birthday, across the ocean, 76 Allied prisoners of World War II began breaking out of a Nazi German camp in Poland through secretly-dug tunnels, an event he would later help bring to life in the epic 1963 film, The Great Escape.
Today’s Notable Birthdays: Payton Manning, 40; Tommy Hilfiger, 65.