1847 Using the masculine pseudonym Ellis Bell, Emily Brontë submitted the manuscript of “Wuthering Heights” to a publisher who had enough sense to publish it.
1965 In the State of Union address to Congress President Lyndon Johnson outlined the Great Society with a long list of measures that galvanised the nation – for a time – into a War on Poverty. Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of LBJ is discussed in other posts on this blog.
1999 For the first time since Charlemagne’s reign in the ninth century, Europe had a common currency when the “euro” became a financial unit in corporate and investment markets. This was the first step to the currency and coin Euro on 1 January 2000. The name had been decided in 1995.
2004 NASA’s rover ‘Spirit’ landed on Mars and it stopped transmitting in 2011, but its sibling, ‘Opportunity,’ just won’t shut up. Below is the first picture that Spirit sent home. N.B. both were designed to last six months. Both overachieved on the KPIs. No low-bid contractors were involved, evidently.
2007 Nancy Pelosi became the speaker of the House, the first woman to hold this post, which made her second in the line of succession for the office of President after the Vice-President. As of today, she’s back!
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