The Corps of Discovery sets off, the Associated Press takes shape, the Wright Bros. get the patent for their flying machine, and Verdi's "Requiem" premieres in Milan. Happy birthdays to Su Xun and Arthur Conan Doyle - with a reading from Doyle's "A Case of Identity."

"Bleeding Kansas" comes to Lawrence, Clara Barton establishes the American Red Cross, and the birthday club includes Alexander Pope, Fats Waller, and Harold Robbins - with a reading from Pope's "An Essay on Man."

Shakespeare's sonnets are published, and the birthday club includes Honore de Balzac and John Stuart Mill. This episode includes a reading of Shakespeare's "Sonnet #17."

Centigrade flips Celsius, King George II issues the land grant that became Ohio, and Parks Canada and Sierra Gorda are established. The birthday club includes Jim Lehrer and Jodi Picoult. And a reading from Charles Chesnutt's "The House Behind the Cedars."

The first statute in the American colonies that banned slavery, and the birthday club includes Omar Khayyam, Frank Capra, and Tina Fey - with a reading from Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat."

The Buttonwood Agreement, Brown v. Board of Education, the World Health Organization finds homosexuality is not an illness, but a natural variation of human sexuality, and happy birthday to Dorothy Richardson - with a reading from her novel "Pointed Roofs."

The Sedition Act of 1918, the first Academy Awards ceremony, and the U.S. Surgeon General warns the addictive properties of nicotine are equal to heroin and cocaine. The birthday club includes Margret Rey and Studs Terkel - with a reading from Terkel's "Touch and Go: A Memoir."

Robespierre proposes the self-denying ordinance, Standard Oil is declared a monopoly and broken up. The birthday club includes L. Frank Baum, Katherine Anne Porter, and Utah Phillips - with a reading from Porter's "The Never-Ending Wrong."

The birthday club includes George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Christine Brennan, Raphael Saadiq, and Mark Zuckerberg - all with a reading from "There Is Confusion," by Jessie Redmon Fauset.

The UK's Queen Victoria proclaims that nation's neutrality in the U.S. Civil War and the Philadelphia police bomb MOVE - with a reading from UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill's speech known as "Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat."