On This Day - February 12th

On this day in the year 1793 of the common era (CE) the first Fugitive Slave Law passes, requiring the return of escaped slaves in the United States; seventy-two years later Henry Highland Garnet becomes the first African American minister to preach to the United States House of Representatives, delivering a sermon concerning the end of slavery in America and the world. Forty-four years after that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed.

On this day in the year 1795 CE the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill opens; it is the first State University in the United States.

On this day in 1870 CE, Utah becomes the second territory in the United States to pass a law allowing women the vote, following Wyoming the year before, a history of liberalism and universal suffrage its current residents have since forgotten.

In 1877 CE the first news dispatch by telephone takes place between Boston and Salem, Massachusetts; fifty-four years later Vatican Radio begins broadcasting with the callsign HVJ.

In 1878 CE, Harvard player Frederick Thayer patents the baseball catcher's mask (pat # 200,358); one year later the first artificial ice rink in North America opens at Madison Square Garden, New York, New York.

In 1908 CE the New York to Paris auto race (via Alaska & Siberia) begins; George Schuster wins after 88 days behind the wheel.

In 1912 CE the last Qing emperor of China, Puyi (age 6), abdicates after losing the support of the Chinese people and thus the "mandate of heaven;" on this same day China adopts the Gregorian calendar.

In 1914 CE the first feature-length film shot in Hollywood is released in the United States, The Squaw Man directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel; seventy-nine years later, the comedy film Groundhog Day opens starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, directed by Harold Ramis. One year after that, The Scream by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1893 pastel version) is stolen in Oslo, Norway.

In 1935 CE the first secret demonstration of radio signals detecting aircraft is conducted by Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins at Daventry, England; six years later the first injection of penicillin into a patient is conducted by British physician Charles Fletcher at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England.

In 1955 CE president Eisenhower sends the first United States military advisors to South Vietnam.

In 1965 CE the United States performs nuclear test in the Aleutian Islands in the Pacific Ocean; eleven years later at the Nevada Test Site, and again six years after that.

In 1989 CE, a British-loyalist paramilitary group kills Pat Finucane, a Belfast lawyer who represented republican hunger striker Bobby Sands. He is murdered while having dinner with his family.

In 1998 CE, tech giant Intel unveils its first graphics chip, the i740; sixteen years later Peter Diamandis projects that fifty percent of jobs in the United States are under threat of being mechanized within ten years…he was wrong.

In 1999 CE. United States President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial.

In 2001 CE the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lands in the saddle region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid; twenty-three years later the oldest known stone-age megastructure is discovered submerged in the Bay of Mecklenburg off the German coast, a hunting lodge thought to be eleven thousand years old.

In 2016 CE pope Francis “The Good” meets Patriarch Kirill in Havana, it is the first meeting between the heads of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches in nearly one thousand years.