1864 – Battle of Dalton, Georgia, begins
On this day in 1864, Union General George Thomas attacks Joseph Johnston’s Confederates near Dalton, Georgia, as the Yankees probe Johnston’s defenses in search of a weakness. Thomas found the position too strong and ceased the offensive the next day, but the Yankees learned a lesson they would apply during the Atlanta campaign that summer.
1868 – President Andrew Johnson impeached
The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history.
1938 – Variety announces big news about The Wizard of Oz
On this day in 1938, the entertainment trade newspaper Variety reported that the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) had bought the rights to adapt L. Frank Baum’s beloved children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for the screen, and that the studio had cast 16-year-old Judy Garland in the film’s central role, Dorothy Gale. The Wizard of Oz became history’s most enduring and best-loved films, ranking sixth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest films of all time.
2004 – “Grey Tuesday” brings mashups to the mainstream
The phenomenon known as the “mashup” can be traced back through at least several decades of radio DJs and record producers manipulating, or “remixing,” one or more existing recordings to create a new musical work. With the rise of digitally distributed music and of inexpensive, sophisticated production technologies in the late 1990s, however, the phenomenon was radically democratized, and a trend was born—a trend that reached its highest level of public awareness with the event known as “Grey Tuesday,” which took place on this day in 2004.
