1521 Pope Leo X ex-communicated Martin Luther. In 1962 on the same day Pope John XXIII (pictured below) ex-communicated Fidel Castro.
1872 Elijah McCoy, whose parents were slaves and took the underground railroad to Canada, got U.S. patent no. 129,843 for a lubricating device that allowed steam locomotives to run without stopping for lubrication. Legend holds that his invention worked so well that machine operators wary of cheap substitutes often requested “the real McCoy.” (There are competing legends that attribute the phrase to others.)
1929 Don Bradman scored 112 v England at Melbourne Cricket Ground – his first Test century with twenty-eight more to follow in a spectacular career.
1938 President Franklin Roosevelt became patron of the March of Dimes to fund research into polio and to assist those afflicted. Dr. Jonas Salk was its research director. When we went to the movies in the 1950s we always put all of the dimes in our pockets into the collection cups for the March of Dimes passed around by ushers like church collection plates. I suppose today the anti-vaxxers would steal them because God told them to do so.
1996 The first clamshell flip mobile phone, the Motorola StarTAC, went on sale. It was the first cell phone to have a screen. Eventually sixty million were sold. No doubt the design was influence by Star Trek communicators.
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