To assess voters’ preferences in the 1824 presidential election, citizens were asked whom they preferred. This was the first public opinion poll. The results, published in the Harrisburg Pennsylvanian on July 24, 1824, gave Andrew Jackson a commanding lead over John Quincy Adams and all others. However, Adams won the election.
The first stolen car was a Peugeot owned by Baron de Zuylen of France It was stolen in June 1896 by a mechanic from the manufacturer’s plant in Paris, where it had been taken for repairs.
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.
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.
The first personal ad might well have been a matrimonial advertisement that appeared in a British publication called the Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade on July 19, 1695. The ad read: A Gentleman about 30 Years of Age, that says he has a Very Good Estate, would willingly Match Himself to some…
Hiram Revels (1822-1901) of Mississippi became the first black senator on February 25, 1870. He completed the term begun by Jefferson Davis, who had resigned to become the president of the Confederacy. Aside from Blanche K. Bruce, who represented Mississippi from 1875 to 1881, there were no other black senators until 1966, when Edward Brooke,…