Browsing: February

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on February 26th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On February 26, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, aka Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, escaped from his forced exile on the island of Elba and made his way back to France, seeking to regain his throne. On February 26, 1903, Michael Joseph Owens was granted a patent for a glass blowing machine, one of five inventions he patented for the mass production of glass objects…

A Brief History On February 26, 1903, Michael Joseph Owens was granted a patent for a glass blowing machine, one of five inventions he patented for the mass production of glass objects such as light bulbs and bottles. Digging Deeper Owens made the production of glass bottles 80% cheaper and glass bulbs 90% cheaper than hand made objects.  His inventions revolutionized the glass industry and helped spur the rapid development of the 20th Century industrial modernization. Owens worked for glass pioneer, Edward Libbey, in Ohio, making light bulbs for Edison General Electric.  In 1919, Owens joined Libbey in creating the Owens…

A Brief History On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, was sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress.  Over 150 years later, on February 25, 2023, a collaboration of several history YouTubers attempts to help promote and uplift the history black people in the United States and diaspora as well as their ancestors both in and out of Africa.  Rather than the usual narrative that is taught in the American school system which largely focuses on the topic of oppression and subsequent freedom against this oppression, the aim…

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on February 25th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On February 25, 1336, the 4,000 defenders of the medieval Lithuanian fortress of Pilénai thought they had no other choice but to make the horrible decision to kill themselves and their families after torching and destroying everything they had of value to deny their Teutonic besiegers the spoils of victory and the opportunity to kill or enslave them. On February 25, 1836, Samuel Colt of Hartford Connecticut…

A Brief History On February 25, 1870, history was made when Hiram Rhodes Revels, an African American man from Mississippi, was sworn in as a US Senator, the first African American member of the US Congress. Digging Deeper Despite being born in North Carolina in 1827, Revels was not born a slave, and later lived in Indiana and Ohio.  The son of a Baptist minister, Revels was educated in Quaker seminaries and at Knox College, in Illinois, later being ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Revels served in the US Army during the American Civil War as a chaplain,…