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Ch. 27
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Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House
On this day in 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised presidential address from the White House to a limited audience. There were only about 44,000 TV sets in U.S. homes, concentrated in a few cities, compared with some 40 million radios. Five days earlier saw the first telecast of a World Series game, pitting the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers. -
President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is an expression of loyalty to the federal flag and the republic of the United States of America. Originally composed by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy in 1892 and formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942. The Pledge has been modified four times since its composition, with the most recent change adding the words under God in 1954. -
Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
Dr. Francis made the announcement to a crowd of scientists and reporters at the University of Michigan's Rackham Auditorium. Concluding his two-year national field trials of the poliomyelitis vaccine developed by his former student. Jonas Salk. Francis was chair of the School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology where Salk did postgraduate training. -
First Nuclear power plant
The reactor went online December 2, 1957, and was in operation until October, 1982. It was an experimental, light water moderated, thermal breeder reactor and is notable for its ability to transmute inexpensiveThorium 232 to Uranium 233 the latter being the fissile material that fueled the reaction within the reactor core. -
NASA is established
It may well be argued that NASA has become the world's premier agent for exploration, carrying on in "the new ocean" of outer space a long tradition of expanding the physical and mental boundaries of humanity. Fifty years ago, however the agency that pushed the frontiers of aeronautics, took us to the moon.The driving force, of course, was the launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, followed by its even weightier successors.
