951 – Paris is founded
1693 – The City of New York authorizes the first police uniforms in American colonies
1836 – HMS Beagle carrying Charles Darwin, the respected naturalist and geologist, reaches Saint Helena for six days as his last stop before returning to Great Britain
1845 – Fire in Lower Manhattan destroys 345 homes, 30 fatalities
The last of the three ‘great’ fires, this one in 1845, began very early, around two o’clock on a Saturday morning on the third floor of the J.L. Van Doren, Oil Merchant and Candle Manufacturer located at 34 New Street.
Imagine, in 1845, this area was among the oldest parts of New York and therefore filled with old wooden structures. The fire quickly spread toward Broad Street and crept up toward Wall Street and when it reached 38-40 Broad Street, a multi-story warehouse where saltpeter, (the chemical compound potassium nitrate used in the manufacture of gunpowder) was stored. It caught fire, exploded and caused further mayhem and destruction.
The fire wasn’t brought under control until around 1PM later that day.
N. Currier – Currier & Ives, c1845
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1853 – First US World’s fair opens at New York’s Crystal Palace
1947 – Demolition begins for the United Nations headquarters in Turtle Bay along the East River
1949 – USSR explodes its first atom bomb
1988 – Stevie Wonder announces he will run for mayor of Detroit in 1992.
1990 – At 12:34:56 on 7/8/90, the time and date read: 1234567890
Birthdays
1839 – John D Rockefeller, capitalist and founder of Standard Oil
1910 – William Hanna, animator (Hanna-Barbera ) – Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo), (d. 2001)
Deaths
810 – Pepin, son of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and of Italy and the first emperor since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, dies
1986 – Raymond Loewy, US industrial designer, dies at 92
Raymond Loewy was a French-born American industrial designer whose designs changed the face of the industrial world and popular culture at the time. He was recognized for this by Time magazine and featured on its cover on October 31, 1949.
Over the course of seven decades, he engineered various designs including the Shell, Exxon, TWA and the former BP logos, the Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, Coca-Cola vending machines, the Lucky Strike package, Coldspot refrigerators, the Studebaker Avanti and Champion, and the Air Force One livery and the interiors of NASA space capsules.
While his name may not be widely known, his work in consumer-product design impacted American society through the engravement of products now registered in popular culture.