August 25
1212: Children’s crusade under Nicolas (10) reaches Genoa.
1875: Captain Matthew Webb makes the 1st
observed and unassisted swim across the English Channel in 21 hours and 45 minutes.
1932: Amelia Earhart completes trans-
continental flight.
1943: German occupiers impose 72-hour
work week.
1958: Momofuku Ando markets the first package of precooked instant noodles (Chikin Ramen).
1968: Arthur Ashe becomes 1st African American to win the US singles championship.
August 26
1682: English astronomer Edmond Halley first observes the comet named after him.
1873: First free kindergarten in the U.S. started by Susan Blow in Carondelet, a suburb of St.
Louis, Missouri.
1895: Electric generator at Niagara Falls produces first power.
1951: Film “An American in Paris” with music by George Gershwin, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron premieres in London (Academy Awards Best Picture, 1952).
August 27
1883: Krakatoa volcano, west of Java
in Indonesia, erupts with a force of
1,300 megatons and kills approximate-
ly 40,000 people.
1910: Using twenty 137,000 candlepower arc lights, 2 amateur baseball teams play a night game at White Sox Park.
1918: Spanish flu arrives in Boston, beginning of the second wave and deadliest wave in the U.S.
1948: 102°F highest temperature ever recorded in Cleveland in August.
August 28
1830: 1st American built locomotive, “Tom Thumb” races a horse-drawn car from Stockton and Stokes stagecoach company from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills. Let history record that due to mechanical problems the horse won!
1884: First known photograph of a tornado is made near Howard, South Dakota.
1898: Caleb Bradham renames his carbonated soft drink “Pepsi-Cola.”
August 29
1833: Britain’s 1st Factory Act becomes law
“to regulate the Labour of Children and young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom.”
1883: Seismic sea waves created by Krakatoa eruption create a rise in English Channel – 32
hrs after explosion.
1896: Chop suey invented in NYC by chef of
visiting Chinese Ambassador.
1932: United Cigar Stores shuts 800 shops.
August 30
1791: Thomas Jefferson responds to Benjamin Banneker’s letter on the issue of slavery.
1885: 13,000 meteors seen in 1 hour near
Andromeda.
1922: Babe Ruth is thrown out of a game for
5th time in 1922.
1941: Winston Churchill approves a nuclear
programme (Tube Alloys), first national leader
to do so.
1956: Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opens in
Louisiana, longest continuous bridge in the world.
August 31
1422: Henry VI becomes King of England at
the age of 9 months.
1897: Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope [kinetographic camera], a device which produces moving pictures.
1911: The “Sullivan Act” requiring New Yorkers to possess licences for firearms small enough to be concealed comes into effect
1946: Foghorn Leghorn, Warner Bros. cartoon character created by Robert McKimson and Warren Foster, (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series), first debuts in “Walky Talky Hawky.”
On This Day…
August 25
Park
Service
Founders Day
August 26
National Dog Day
August 27
Just Because Day
August 28
Power Rangers Day
August 29
Lemon Juice Day
August 30
Grief Awareness Day
August 31
Diatomaceous Earth Day
Courtesy of
nationaldaycalendar.com
Montana Historical Society—Artifacts on Display at Helena Museum
“We have some quirky artifacts
in our collection, including this
carving by Father Anthony Ravalli (1812-1884).
The beloved priest ministered to both Indians and non-Indians alike, from the time of his
arrival in the
Bitterroot Valley
in 1845 until his death in 1884.
An accomplished sculptor, Father Ravalli created this wooden carving around 1870 as a memento mori — a convention in art dating to the Middle Ages — to
remind viewers that death was inevitable but adherence to Christian principals in this life ensured Paradise in the next.
Father Ravalli, whom one biographer termed a “pioneer-architect-sculptor-craftsman-physician-priest,” was born in Italy and schooled there in theology, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, philosophy, mechanics, architecture, and art before Father Pierre-Jean De Smet enlisted him to work among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains.
Object ID X1904.01.02
facebook.com/Montana Historical Society
Since time immemorial, Montana’s First Peoples have fashioned natural materials such as bone, porcupine quills, shells, and stone into decorative ornaments to adorn clothing and other possessions. European explorers and fur traders
introduced glass beads and beading traditions to North America in the 1600s, often via existing intertribal trade networks.
By the 1820s, trading posts throughout the West stocked European-manufactured beads, a prized trade item among the region’s indigenous
peoples. Glass beads were aesthetically pleasing and easily incorporated into
indigenous designs. Unlike quills, beads required no preparation to apply and could be re-used.
Sample cards were used
to show customers the variety
of beads a trader had in stock. This card came from Browning’s Sherburne Mercantile, which operated on the Blackfeet Reservation from 1896 to 1942. With limited access to
natural materials during the late-1800s and the wide
availability of glass beads, Native artists became known for producing the spectacular beadwork still associated with Plains Indians today.
Bead sample card
date:ca. 1910
Gift of J.L. Sherburne
Object ID:X1952.06.32
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