History Today

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 2nd. Actor Matt Damon turned 50 this year, some 23 years after his Oscar-nominated performance in Good Will Hunting, which premiered on this day in 1997. The film was a box-office smash and received nine Academy Award nominations, and two wins.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 1st. Sixty-five years ago today, a 42-year-old African-American seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus to a white man. Her decision helped spark the civil rights movement in the United States. The local Black community soon organized a bus boycott, led by a young Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 30th. It’s a story that would have been right at home in the year 2020--on this day in 1954, the first modern instance of a meteorite hitting a human occurred in Alabama. The meteorite crashed through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounced off a radio and struck a woman on her hip. The victim, Elizabeth Hodges, was sleeping on her couch at the time of impact.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 29th. For decades, there has been speculation about what really happened on this day in 1981, when 43-year-old actress Natalie Wood drowned off the coast of California’s Catalina Island. Wood had been boating with her husband, actor Robert Wagner, at the time of her death.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 28th. To country music fans, it’s sacred ground--the Grand Ole Opry began broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee, on this day in 1925. Originally called Barn Dance, the Saturday-night show featured folk music, fiddling and the relatively new genre of country-western music.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 27th. It’s that time of year when it’s easy for anyone to put on a few extra pounds--even, apparently, the president. On this day in 1911, then-White House housekeeper Elizabeth Jaffrey wrote in her diary about a conversation she’d had with President William Howard Taft and his wife about the president’s ever-expanding waistline.

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Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 26th. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” That iconic line is from one of the most beloved films in Hollywood history, Casablanca, which premiered in New York City on this day in 1942.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 25th. London’s famed The Mousetrap is one of the many live events forced to close by the pandemic. But it’s still the longest-running play in history, and it all started on this day in 1952, when the murder-mystery written by novelist and playwright Agatha Christie opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 24th. It was one of the most groundbreaking scientific works in history: On this day in 1859, “On the Origin of Species” by British naturalist Charles Darwin, was published. In it, Darwin argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called “natural selection.

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Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on November 23rd. It’s no secret that Americans like beer. In fact, we drink more than 6 billion gallons of beer each year. But during Prohibition, beer was outlawed.

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