In 1848, the Marble Dry Goods Palace opened on Broadway in New York City.
Its proprietor and developer was Alexander Turney Stewart, formerly a schoolmaster in Ireland.
By the time of his death in 1876, the blocklong store yielded annual earnings of $70 million.
Meals had long been offered in taverns, cook-shops, and coffeehouses. The first place known as a restaurant was the Champ d’Oiseau, which opened in Paris in 1765. At the entrance was the Latin motto Venite ad me, omn e qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos, or “Come to me, anybody whose stomach groans, and…
In 1972, Jean Westwood became the first woman to head the Democratic party. In 1974, Mary Louise Smith became the first woman to head the Republican party.
The first spacecraft to land on the moon was Luna 2, launched by the USSR on September 12, 1959. It crash-landed between the craters Archimedes and Autolycus in the Mare Imbrium on September 14. A successful landing was made by Luna 9 on February 3, 1966.
The first urban shopping center was Roland Park Shopping Center, built in 1896 in Baltimore, Maryland. The first suburban shopping center was built in 1928 in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Called Suburban Square, it offered two department stores, doctors’ offices, a movie theater, and 17 other shops.
Of the 2,200 persons quoted in the current edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations only 164 are women. This is an astronomical increase over the number quoted in the 1855 first edition of four.
On November 2, 1920, the radio station KDKA in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, broadcast for the first time. Its initial newscast reported that Warren Harding had been elected president of the United States.