FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Crispus Attucks (c.1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American stevedore of African and Native American descent, widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolution. Historians disagree on whether he was a free man or an escaped slave, but most agree that he was of Natick and African descent. Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre published in 1770 did not refer to him as “black” nor as a “Negro”; it appears that Bostonians viewed him as being of mixed ethnicity. According to a contemporaneous account in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he was a “Mulattoe man, named Crispus Attucks, who was born in Framingham, but lately belonged to New-Providence, and was here in order to go for North Carolina.”

Attucks became an icon of the anti-slavery movement in the mid-19th century. Supporters of the abolition movement lauded him for playing a heroic role in the history of the United States.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

1810s

• BORN 1817: GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS (ARTIST)

1820s

• 1820: CATO STREET CONSPIRACY FOILED

1830s

• 1836: THE SIEGE OF THE ALAMO BEGAN IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

1840s

• 1846: LIBERTY BELL DEVELOPED ITS FINAL IRREPARABLE CRACK AFTER TOLLING FOR WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
• DIED 1848: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (6TH U.S. PRESIDENT)

1860s

• BORN 1868: W.E.B. DUBOIS (FOUNDER OF THE NIAGARA MOVEMENT, WHICH EVENTUALLY MERGED WITH THE NAACP)

1890s

• 1896: TOOTSIE ROLL INTRODUCED BY LEO HIRSHFIELD

1920s

• 1927: FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION ESTABLISHED

1930s

• BORN 1932: MAJEL BARRETT-RODDENBERRY (ACTRESS AND PRODUCER)
• 1936: U.S. ROCKET MAIL FLIGHT ACROSS GREENWOOD LAKE, NEW YORK, TO NEW JERSEY

1940s

• 1943: SONG “AS TIME GOES BY,” FROM MOVIE CASABLANCA, COPYRIGHTED
• 1945: THE MOST MEMORABLE WW II PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY JOE ROSENTHAL OF MEMBERS OF THE 5TH DIVISION OF THE U.S. MARINES PLANTING AN AMERICAN FLAG ATOP MT. SURIBACHI, IWO JIMA, JAPAN

1950s

• BORN 1951: PATRICIA RICHARDSON (ACTRESS)

1990s

• BORN 1994: DAKOTA FANNING (ACTRESS)
• DIED 1995: MELVIN FRANKLIN (MOTOWN SINGER)
• 1997: THE EXISTENCE OF DOLLY THE SHEEP, THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL CLONED MAMMAL, WAS ANNOUNCED

2000s

• DIED 2002: GORDON MATTHEWS (INVENTOR OF VOICEMAIL)
• DIED 2004: CHARLIE FOX (1971 “MANAGER OF THE YEAR” WITH THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS AND SPENT A HALF-CENTURY IN BASEBALL AS AN EXECUTIVE, MANAGER, COACH, AND SCOUT)
• DIED 2004: DON CORNELL (BIG BAND SINGER)
• 2008: CHLOE HEGLAND KEPT SOCCER BALL ALOFT WITH 163 TOUCHES IN 30 SECONDS

2010s

• BORN 2012: ESTELLE SILVIA EWA MARY (DAUGHTER OF SWEDEN’S CROWN PRINCESS VICTORIA; FIRST ROYAL BIRTH IN 30 YEARS)

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