On June 26, 1896, the 400-seat Vitascope Hall was opened at the corner of Canal Street and Exchange Place in New Orleans by William T. Rock.
For 10 cents, viewers could peer into the projection room; for another 10 cents, they could see the Edison Vitascope projector.
A popular film of the time was May Irwin Kiss, one of the first movies to portray any form of onscreen sex.
The first female to hold a post in the U.S. Cabinet was Frances Perkins. She served as Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945.
The first news event to be televised was the nomination of Alfred E. Smith for the presidency in Albany, New York, on August 22, 1928. The program was transmitted by Schenectady’s WGY. The first regular news reports were 15-minute daily programs transmitted over New York’s WCBS and WNBT, beginning on July 1, 1941. The First…
Carl B. Stokes (b. 1927) was the first black mayor. He was the great-grandson of a slave and was mayor of Cleveland from 1967 to 1971.
The first skyscraper was the 10-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago It was designed by William Le Baron Jenney and completed in 1885. The first tall building to be supported by an internal frame of iron and steel rather than by thick masonry walls, it was demolished in 1931.
A first step to joining the French Foreign Legion would be to write to them. The address is: Legion Etrangere, Quartier Vienot, 13400 Aubagne, France.
Silent-picture actress Norma Talmadge (1897-1957) started the tradition when she accidentally stumbled onto a freshly laid cement sidewalk in front of the theater in 1927.