All Quotes

In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which, as any American high school student can tell you, was an act that apparently had something to do with stamps.
‐‐ Dave Barry

In 1775, no fewer than nine colonies had established churches, ranging from Congregational establishments in New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts to Episcopal churches in the southern states from Maryland on down.
‐‐ M. Stanton Evans

In 1787, many Americans were convinced that the 'perpetual union' they had created in winning independence was collapsing. Six years earlier, in the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen state governments had surrendered extensive powers to a congress of delegates from each state legislature.
‐‐ Edmund Morgan

In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions.
‐‐ Robert Toombs

In 1791, the right to bear arms to defend against an over-reaching government wasn't theoretical. Today, it's hard to imagine physical weapons serving the same purpose. But it's easy to see how hacktivists might - especially if you broaden the opponents to include hate groups and rapacious multinationals.
‐‐ Marcus Sakey

In 1792, my Sister told me, I was growing out of my senses.
‐‐ Joanna Southcott

In 1795, I sent him another letter, telling him, that danger still stood before us, and that the truth of what I had written in 1792 was to be proved by 12 men.
‐‐ Joanna Southcott

In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine.
‐‐ Robert Dallek

In 1817, Czar Alexander I personally founded the Society of Israelite Christians but had less luck defeating Judaism than he'd had defeating Napoleon; gentile serfs and merchants in areas bordering the Pale even showed disturbing new signs of 'Judaizing.'
‐‐ Tom Reiss

In 1820, the average lifespan was just 26 years. Twenty-six years!
‐‐ Peter Diamandis

In 1828 we raised the duties, on an average, to nearly fifty per cent, when the debt was on the eve of being discharged, and thereby flooded the country with a revenue, when discharged, which could not be absorbed by the most lavish expenditures.
‐‐ John C. Calhoun

In 1833, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of merely revenue duties.
‐‐ Henry Charles Carey

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.
‐‐ Claire Tomalin

In 1844, there was a balance of perhaps of a couple of thousand dollars on the cr side.
‐‐ Ezra Cornell

In 1853, American warships bullied Japan out of centuries of virtual isolation and into the modern world. The threat of force compelled Japan, like India and China before it, to accept trade agreements that were economically ruinous and eroded national sovereignty.
‐‐ Pankaj Mishra

In 1854 I took out a patent for puddling iron by means of steam.
‐‐ James Nasmyth

In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate.
‐‐ Simon Newcomb

In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.
‐‐ Simon Newcomb

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement.
‐‐ Peter Agre

In 1880 at the Military Hospital at Constantine, I discovered, on the edges of the pigmented spherical bodies in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria, filiform elements resembling flagellae which were moving very rapidly, displacing the neighbouring red cells.
‐‐ Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran

In 1887, Oregon became the first state to make Labor Day an official holiday, with Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York quickly following suit.
‐‐ Brendan I. Koerner

In 1889, I predict, the legislative stage of the Irish question will have arrived; and the union with England, which shall then have cursed Ireland for nine tenths of a century, will be repealed.
‐‐ John Boyle O'Reilly

In 1890, nearly everyone died on the job, and if they lived long enough not to die on the job, the average age of retirement was 85.
‐‐ Robert Fogel

In 1893 I founded a chemical company which I ran until 1899.
‐‐ Leo Baekeland

In 1893, Miss M. Roalfe Cox brought together, in a volume of the Folk-Lore Society, no less than 345 variants of 'Cinderella' and kindred stories showing how widespread this particular formula was throughout Europe and how substantially identical the various incidents as reproduced in each particular country.
‐‐ Joseph Jacobs

In 1900, 180-plus out of every 1,000 African-American babies died.
‐‐ Peter Diamandis

In 1900, as the immigrants come down the gangplank into Jersey City, they expect the streets to be paved with gold, and they were only paved with gold in Frank Baum's 'The Wizard of Oz,' of course.
‐‐ David Levering Lewis

In 1900, the average life expectancy of a US citizen was 48, so most menopausal women were dead, which is not a great place to be.
‐‐ Sandra Tsing Loh

In 1900, the typical American was a boy, not yet a teenager, named John. He lived with his parents and his sisters, Mary and Helen, on a farm in New York or Pennsylvania.
‐‐ Bill Dedman

In 1903, I finished my doctor's thesis and obtained the degree. At the end of the same year, the Nobel prize was awarded jointly to Becquerel, my husband and me for the discovery of radioactivity and new radioactive elements.
‐‐ Marie Curie

In 1905, I was privileged to be given a place in the private laboratory of my revered teacher, Professor W. H. Perkin, Jr. at the University of Manchester.
‐‐ Robert Robinson

In 1906, I developed pleurisy and was unable to get into condition. So I asked for my release and obtained it. So ended my Major League career.
‐‐ Kid Nichols

In 1906, just as we were definitely giving up the old shed laboratory where we had been so happy, there came the dreadful catastrophe which took my husband away from me and left me alone to bring up our children and, at the same time, to continue our work of research.
‐‐ Marie Curie

In 1907, Britain and Russia signed a treaty dividing Iran between them; no Iranian was at the negotiations or even knew they were taking place.
‐‐ Stephen Kinzer

In 1908, there was a persuasive demonstration of the power of high-speed, low-mass asteroids in rural Siberia. The Tunguska impactor iced millions of pine trees and about a zillion mosquitoes - and was no larger than an office building.
‐‐ Seth Shostak

In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business.
‐‐ Michael Dirda

In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated.
‐‐ Joe Wurzelbacher

In 1912, when I was working in The Hague, I first saw a drawing by Louis Sullivan of one of his buildings. It interested me.
‐‐ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

In 1913 many believed that there would never again be a war in Europe. The great powers of the continent were so closely intertwined economically that the view was widespread that they could no longer afford to have military confrontations.
‐‐ Jean-Claude Juncker

In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.
‐‐ Kage Baker

In 1916 I was discharged from military service, or rather, given a sort of leave of absence on the understanding that I might be recalled within a few months. And so I was a free man, at least for a while.
‐‐ George Grosz

In 1916, Universal Studios released the first filmed adaptation of Jules Verne's novel '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.' Georges Melies made a film by that name in 1907, but, unlike his earlier adaptations of Verne, Melies' version bears no resemblance to the book.
‐‐ Kage Baker

In 1917 - as we have seen, - Italy suffered a great reverse, losing 200,000 soldiers and immense supplies.
‐‐ Kelly Miller

In 1918, when I was 6 or 7 years old, radio was just coming into use in the Great War.
‐‐ Chuck Jones

In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan had put forward a proposal to guarantee racial equality at the League of Nations, but Woodrow Wilson overturned it in the face of majority support.
‐‐ Pankaj Mishra

In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.
‐‐ Samuel P. Huntington

In 1921, Harry Houdini started his own film company called - wait for it - the Houdini Picture Corporation.
‐‐ Kage Baker

In 1922, I got a small stipend from the Swedish-American Foundation and went to Cambridge, England, for a few months and thereafter to Harvard University. In the summer, Cambridge was rather empty, but I am grateful for many pleasant talks about economics with Austin Robinson who, in the summer of 1922, seemed to be about as lonely as I was.
‐‐ Bertil Ohlin

In 1925, when Britain went back to the gold standard, that was supported by the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Bank of England, the civil service, the CBI, the TUC, the Times, the Economist; that consensus was very strong.
‐‐ Ed Balls