Oops, I'm still bad...Facts of the Day

Academy Awards

The first Academy Awards were held in 1929 with about 270 people attending at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The silent film Wings won Best picture and there were only 12 categories for awards the first time; there are now 25 categories (not including scientific and technical, special achievement, and honorary awards). The Academy Awards was first televised in 1953. The design for the award statuette - a knight standing on a reel of film and holding a sword - is credited to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) art director Cedric Gibbons. The statuette stands 13.5 inches tall and weighs 8.5 pounds. The true origin of the nickname Oscar has not been determined.

Brown v Board of Education

In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that segregation of public schools "solely on the basis of race" denied "equal educational opportunity" even if "physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may have been equal." The case, Brown v. Board of Education, was argued by Thurgood Marshall, then director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who went on to become the first black appointed to the Supreme Court. Marshall presented evidence showing that separating black and white students discriminated against blacks, placing them at a severe disadvantage. He argued that segregated schools were not and could never be equal. Such schools, he said, violated the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment.

Gertrude Elion

Gertrude Belle Elion, American pharmacologist who was the co-recipient of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, was the first woman to be inducted as a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame (1991). Elion won the Nobel for developing drugs for the treatment of leukemia, autoimmune disorders, urinary-tract infections, gout, malaria, and viral herpes. Even in retirement, Elion helped oversee the development of azidothymidine (AZT), the first drug used in the treatment of AIDS.

Gone With the Wind

After an ankle injury in 1926, Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) left the Atlanta Journal newspaper and for the next 10 years worked slowly on a romantic novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction as seen from a southern point of view. For six years after it was finished, the novel was set aside by Mitchell. But in 1935, Mitchell was persuaded to submit her manuscript for publication and it came out the next year. Within six months 1 million copies had been sold; 50,000 copies were sold in one day. It has sold more copies than any other novel in U.S. publishing history, and was eventually translated into 25 languages. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and made into a movie in 1939. Mitchell, who had trouble adjusting to her celebrity and never attempted another book, died after an automobile accident in 1949.

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, departing Newfoundland, Canada and landing near Londonderry, Ireland - 2026 miles total in a record time of 14 hours 56 minutes. Earhart refused to wear typical flying gear; she wore a suit or dress instead and a close-fitting hat instead of a helmet and no goggles until landing. She died on July 2, 1937, en route from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island; the U.S. spent $4 million looking for Earhart, making it the most costly and intensive air and sea search in history to that date.