Discover what happened on March 2 in history, along with notable celebrity birthdays and fun Days of the Year to celebrate.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
1799 – Detroit became an official port of entry for the United States.
1807 – Congress passed an act to “prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States… from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.”
1836 – The Michigan town of Bronson changed its name to Kalamazoo.
1866 – Excelsior Needle Company began making sewing machine needles.
1877 – Just two days before the inauguration, Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 Presidential election by the U.S. Congress. Samuel J. Tilden, however, had won the popular vote on November 7, 1876.
1897 – President Grover Cleveland vetoed legislation that would have required a literacy test for immigrants entering the country.
1899 – Mount Rainier National Park, in Washington, was established by Congress.
1899 – President William McKinley signed a measure that created the rank of Admiral for the U.S. Navy. The first admiral was George Dewey.
1908 – In Paris, Gabriel Lippmann introduced three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.
1917 – Citizens of Puerto Rico were granted U.S. citizenship with the enactment of the Jones Act.
1923 – Time magazine debuted.
1925 – State and federal highway officials developed a nationwide route-numbering system and adopted the familiar U.S. shield-shaped, numbered marker.
1929 – The U.S. Court of Customs & Patent Appeals was created by Congress.
1933 – The motion picture “King Kong” had its world premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York, NY.
1937 – The Steel Workers Organizing Committee signed a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel, leading to unionization of the U.S. steel industry.
1939 – The Massachusetts legislature voted to ratify the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. These first ten amendments had gone into effect 147 years before.
1949 – The first automatic street light was installed in New Milford, CT.
1949 – Captain James Gallagher landed his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, TX after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight. The trip took 94 hours and 1 minute.
1962 – Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks 169-147. Chamberlain broke several NBA records in the game.
1965 – The movie “The Sound of Music”, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, premiered in theaters.
1969 – In Toulouse, France, the supersonic transport Concorde made its first test flight.
1972 – Pioneer 10 was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on a mission to explore Jupiter and the outer planets.
1974 – The speed limited in Michigan was lowered to 55 miles per hour to comply with federal legislation aimed at reducing energy consumption.
1974 – U.S. postage stamps jumped from 8 to 10 cents for first-class mail.
1976 – Disney World, in Orlando, FL, had its 50 millionth visitor.
1976 – March 2-4, one of the worst ever ice storms in Michigan. Some places had 3” of ice.
1983 – Compact Discs and players were released for the first time in the U.S. and other markets. (They had previously just been available only in Japan.) Sixteen albums were released on CD for the first time. The first commercially released CD was Billy Joel’s “52nd Street”.
1984 – The first McDonald’s franchise was closed. A new location was opened across the street from the old location in Des Plaines, IL.
1985 – The U.S. government approved a screening test for AIDS that detected antibodies to the virus that allowed possibly contaminated blood to be kept out of the blood supply.
1987 – The U.S. government reported that the median price for a new home had gone over $100,000 for the first time.
1995 – Yahoo! was incorporated.
1998 – Images from the American spacecraft Galileo indicated that the Jupiter moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice and a source of interior heat.
2002 – A strong low pressure center moved across the Ohio Valley. It brought a lot of snow to lower Michigan. Grand Rapids had 13.9″ of snow and Muskegon had 10.5″. Both of those totals set records for the snowiest March day on record.
2004 – NASA announced that the Mars rover Opportunity had discovered evidence that water had existed on Mars in the past.
2005 – Kobe Bryant settled a civil suit filed by the woman who accused him of raping her in 2003.
2005 – The iTunes Music Store reached 300 million songs sold.
2011 – Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iPad 2.
2012 – A tornado outbreak occurred over a large section of the Southern United States and into the Ohio Valley region, resulting in 40 tornado-related fatalities
2016 – United States astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to earth after 340 days, setting an International Space Station record.
2017 – The elements Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson were officially added to the periodic table.
BIRTHDAYS:
John Cullum – 96 years old (1930) – Actor and singer
Gene Stallings – 91 years old (1935) – Football player and coach
David Satcher – 85 years old (1941) – Admiral and physician, 16th Surgeon General of the United States
John Irving – 84 years old (1942) – Novelist and screenwriter
Robert Williams – 83 years old (1943) – Painter and cartoonist
Larry Carlton – 78 years old (1948) – Guitarist and songwriter
Mark Evanier – 74 years old (1952) – Author and screenwriter
Laraine Newman – 74 years old (1952) – Actress and comedian
Russ Feingold – 73 years old (1953) – Lawyer and politician
Dale Bozzio – 71 years old (1955) – Pop-rock singer-songwriter
Jay Osmond – 71 years old (1955) – Singer, drummer, actor, and TV/film producer
Ken Salazar – 71 years old (1955) – Lawyer and politician, 50th United States Secretary of the Interior
John Cowsill – 70 years old (1956) – Musician, songwriter, and producer
Mark Dean – 69 years old (1957) – Inventor and computer engineer
Kevin Curren – 68 years old (1958) – South African-American tennis player
Larry Stewart – 67 years old (1959) – Singer-songwriter and guitarist
Jon Bon Jovi – 64 years old (1962) – Singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
Alvin Youngblood Hart – 63 years old (1963) – Singer and guitarist
Laird Hamilton – 62 years old (1964) – Surfer and actor
Ron Gant – 61 years old (1965) – Baseball player and journalist
Ann Leckie – 60 years old (1966) – Author
Method Man – 55 years old (1971) – Rapper, record producer and actor
Dominique Canty – 49 years old (1977) – Basketball player and coach
Heather McComb – 49 years old (1977) – Actress
Bryce Dallas Howard – 45 years old (1981) – Actress
Ben Roethlisberger – 44 years old (1982) – Football player
Corey Webster – 44 years old (1982) – Football player
Deuce – 43 years old (1983) – Singer-songwriter and producer
Glen Perkins – 43 years old (1983) – Baseball player
Ryan Shannon – 43 years old (1983) – Ice hockey player
Reggie Bush – 41 years old (1985) – Football player
Robert Iler – 41 years old (1985) – Actor
Jason Smith – 40 years old (1986) – Basketball player
Laura Kaeppeler – 38 years old (1988) – Beauty queen, Miss America 2012
Dexter Pittman – 38 years old (1988) – Basketball player
Shane Vereen – 37 years old (1989) – Football player
Malcolm Butler – 36 years old (1990) – Football player
Luke Combs – 36 years old (1990) – Singer-songwriter
Nick Franklin – 35 years old (1991) – Baseball player
Charlie Coyle – 34 years old (1992) – Ice hockey player
Becky G – 29 years old (1997) – Singer and actress
Arike Ogunbowale – 29 years old (1997) – Basketball player
Tua Tagovailoa – 28 years old (1998) – Football player
Isiah Pacheco – 27 years old (1999) – Football player
TODAY IS:
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For additional information check out websites like: www.on-this-day.com, www.born-today.com, www.famousbirthdays.com, www.daysoftheyear.com, and www.nationaldaycalendar.com.
