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Birth of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway is born in Oak Park, Illinois, a place he will later describe as a town of "wide lawns and narrow minds." He is the second of six children of Clarence Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a music teacher. -
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Boxer Rebellion
On June 18, 1900, the Empress Dowager ordered all foreigners to be killed. Several foreign ministers and their families were killed before the international force could protect them. On August 14, 1900, the international force took Peking and subdued the rebellion.
The Boxer Rebellion weakened the Ch'ing dynasty's power and hastened the Republican Revolution of 1911 that overthrew the boy emperor and made China a republic. -
World War 1
The spark that started World War I was the assassination of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The assassination occurred on June 28, 1914 while Ferdinand was visiting the city of Sarajevo in the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. -
WW1 Ambulance Driver
Hemingway leaves the newspaper and attempts to join the U.S. Army so that he can fight in World War I. The Army rejects him because of poor eyesight, so he volunteers as a driver with the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. -
Hemingway Wounded in Battle
While passing out supplies to soldiers in Italy, Hemingway is seriously injured by a trench mortar and machine gun. The blast leaves shell fragments in his legs. The Italian government awards him a Silver Medal of Military Valor for dragging a wounded Italian soldier to safety after the attack, but his career as an ambulance driver is over. While recuperating in a Milan hospital, Hemingway falls in love with an American nurse six years his senior named A -
Insulin Discovered
Medical researcher Frederick Banting and research assistant Charles Best studied the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas of dogs at the University of Toronto. Banting believed that he could find a cure for the "sugar disease" (diabetes) in the pancreas. In 1921, they isolated insulin and successfully tested in on diabetic dogs, lowering the dogs' blood sugar level. -
Hemingway's 1st Marriage
Hemingway marries Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. She turns out to be the first of four wives. -
Tomb of King Hut Descovered
After working for five years in the Valley of the Kings and finding almost nothing, Howard Carter was progressing on his final season when he made the discovery. On November 4, 1922, while clearing away some ancient huts, one of Howard Carter's workmen found a hidden step near the base of the tomb of Rameses VI. Though he hoped it led to an ancient, royal tomb, it could just as easily have been a royal cache or, much worse, empty - pilfered in antiquity. But that was not to be. Carter had discov -
Hitler Jailed After Failed Coup
Ten years before Hitler came to power in Germany, he tried to take it by force. On the night of November 8, 1923, Adolf Hitler and some of his confederates stormed into a beer hall and attempted to force the triumvirate, the three men that governed Bavaria, to join him in a national revolution. The men of the tiumvirate disagreed. Hitler was arrested three days later and after a short trial, he was sentenced to five years in prison. -
Pluto Discovered
It was American astronomer Percival Lowell who first thought there might be another planet somewhere near Neptune and Uranus. Lowell had noticed that the gravitational pull of something large was affecting the orbits of those two planets.
However, despite looking for what he called "Planet X" from 1905 until his death in 1916, Lowell never found it. Thirteen years later, the Lowell Observatory (founded in 1984 by Percival Lowell) decided to recommence Lowell's search for Planet X. They had a -
Empire State Building Complete
When the Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931, it was the tallest building in the world - standing at 1,250 feet tall. This building not only became an icon of New York City, it became a symbol of twentieth century man's attempts to achieve the impossible. -
Birth of Gregory Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway's third and last child, Gregory Hemingway, is born. Hemingway calls the boy "Gig"; in adulthood, as a cross-dresser, Gregory chooses to call himself Gloria. This enrages his ultra-macho father. -
Prohibition Ends in the U.S.
Prohibition was the period in United States history in which the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors was outlawed. It began officially on January 16, 1920 (exactly a year after the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) and ended with the ratification of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933. Many people called prohibition the "noble experiment" and debates continue over whether or not making alcohol illegal made society any safer. -
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was the intense air battle between the Germans and the British over Great Britain's airspace from July 1940 to May 1941, with the heaviest fighting from July to October 1940. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. After just two hours of bombing, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, 21 ships* had either been sunk or damaged, and more than 188 U.S. aircraft destroyed. -
D-Day
During World War II, the Allied powers planned to create a two-front war by continuing the Soviet Union's attack of Nazi-occupied lands from the east and by beginning a new invasion from the west. In June 1944, the United States and the United Kingdom (with help from many other western countries) began the long-awaited attack from the west, the Normandy Invasion (Operation Overlord). June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, was the very first day of this massive amphibious invasion, which brought th -
Across the River and Into the Trees
Hemingway's novel Across the River and Into the Trees is published. It is the most poorly reviewed novel of his career. -
Color TV Invented
On June 25, 1951, CBS broadcast the very first commercial color TV program. Unfortunately, nearly no one could watch it on their black-and-white televisions. -
Death of Hemingway's Mother
Hemingway's mother Grace dies. -
The Old Man and the Sea
The novella The Old Man and the Sea is published in Life magazine. The story of Santiago the fisherman brings Hemingway commercial and critical success. -
Great Smog
From December 5 to December 9, 1952, a thick fog settled on London. This fog mixed with trapped black smoke to create a deadly layer of smog. Although there was no great panic at the time, the smog proved deadly. In the five days it hovered over London, the smog killed 4,000 people. In the following weeks, another 8,000 people died from exposure to the Great Smog of 1952. -
Nobel Prize
Ernest Hemingway is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the fifth American author to receive the award. Hemingway is still recovering from serious injuries sustained in two separate plane crashes and a bushfire accident earlier in the year and is unable to travel to Stockholm to receive the award. The American ambassador John C. Cabot accepts the prize on his behalf and reads his speech aloud. -
Disneyland Opens
On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened for a few thousand specially invited visitors; the following day, Disneyland officially opened to the public. Disneyland, located in Anaheim, California on what used to be a 160-acre orange orchard, cost $17 million to build. The original park included Main Street, Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. -
Suicide
Suffering from depression, alcoholism, and numerous physical ailments, Ernest Hemingway commits suicide with a shotgun at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. He receives a Catholic burial, as the church judges him not to have been in his right mind at the time of his suicide. He is buried in Ketchum. -
First Heart Transplant
On December 3, 1967, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard conducted the first heart transplant on 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky. The surgery was a success. However, the medications that were given to Washkansky to prevent his immune system from attacking the new heart also supressed his body's ability to fight off other illnesses. Eighteen days after the operation, Washkansky died of double pneumonia.
