HIST0RY~MAR 23

 

  March 23

 

1839  On this day in 1839, the initials "O.K." are first published in The Boston Morning Post.

Meant as an abbreviation for "oll correct," a popular slang misspelling of "all correct" at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.

During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as "kewl" for "cool" or "DZ" for "these," the "in crowd" of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included "KY" for "No use" ("know yuse"), "KG" for "No go" ("Know go"), and "OW" for all right ("oll wright").

*Can you believe that even Victorians said "OK"? 

1919  Mussolini founds the Fascist party

1925  'Monkey Day'

An evolution law, enacted this day in the great State of Tennessee made it a crime for a teacher in any state-supported public school or college to teach any theory that contradicted the Bible’s account of man’s creation. Tennessee’s Governor Austin Peay said, “The very integrity of the Bible in its statement of man’s divinecreation. 

Within two months, a Dayton, Tennessee high school science teacher, John T. Scopes was indicted, and later convicted, in the famous ‘Monkey Trial’ for teaching his students the theory of evolution.

1972 - New York Yankees baseball officials announced plans to keep the Yankees in the nation’s largest city.

1985 - Singer Billy Joel married supermodel Christie Brinkley in private ceremonies held in New York City. (They were divorced Aug 25, 1994.)

1985 - We Are the World, by USA for Africa, a group of 46 pop stars, entered the music charts for the first time at number 21.

1998 - The movie, Titanic, won a record-tying 11 Oscars at the 70th Annual Academy Awards (tying the number of awards won by Ben-Hur in 1959).

 

  BIRTHDAYS

1904  Joan Crawford (Lucille Fay LeSueur)