Today in History

First Shopping Cart

June 4, 1937

Sylvan Goldman, the owner of a Humpty Dumpty Grocery store in Oklahoma City, begins using his new invention - the shopping cart. It was essentially a folding chair with wheels and two baskets attached.
The carts were initially a flop, as shoppers were reluctant to use them. Men found them effeminate and women thought them too much like a baby carriage. So, Goldman hired both male and female models to shop with them.
Eventually, folding carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire by collecting a royalty on every folding design shopping cart in the United States.
Goldman also invented "nested" shopping carts, where the carts are pushed inside of each other for storage.

 

State's rights were a topic during his defense... he had Federal charges because he had 32,500 plants on his property. It was the Feds who busted him, the local Sherriff wouldn't do it.

 

Beginning of the AIDS Epidemic

June 5, 1981

A report is issued concerning an unexplained outbreak, among homosexual men, of a type of pneumonia which usually affects only cancer patients.
The first known AIDS death occurred in 1969, although the cause of the 15-year-old boy's death wasn't determined until 1987.

 

Apple II Computer


June 5, 1977

The Apple II goes on sale. At a cost of $1298, it was one of the first microcomputers sold fully assembled.

 

Robert F. Kennedy Shot

June 5, 1968

24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Bishara Sirhan shoots Robert F. Kennedy three times. Kennedy died the following day. Five other people were wounded. Kennedy had just won the California primary. After addressing his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, he was leaving the hotel kitchen when Sirhan approached and began firing. He had been advised by his bodyguard to avoid the kitchen.

 

Gold Standard Dropped

June 5, 1933

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill making it illegal to require payments in gold or any other particular currency.

 

William Boyd

Born June 5, 1895 d. 1972

American actor. He played Hopalong Cassidy in the movies and television. His Hopalong Cassidy character was the first licensed character to appear on a metal lunchbox (1950).
Boyd's charisma and good looks helped make him a matinee idol in the 1920s, earning a salary of over $100,000 a year. In 1935, he was offered the supporting role of Red Connors in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy, but asked for and got the title role. The films were box office hits in the 1930s, but by the late 1940s "B" westerns were being phased out. Boyd mortgaged everything he owned to buy the rights to his films and licensed them to NBC television where they were edited to broadcast length and became an instant hit. In 1949, Hopalong Cassidy became the first network television Western series and the films earned Boyd millions, mostly from merchandising and endorsement deals. In 1950, more than 100 companies manufactured $70 million of Hopalong Cassidy products.
Boyd enlisted in the army during World War I, but was exempt from military service because of a "weak heart".
Film: The Road to Yesterday (1925).

 

I was in Junior High School... it was a big topic at the time. Thanks for the reminder.

 

Weird that one is, quite a story!

 

Elvis Presley Gyrates on National TV

June 6, 1956

Elvis Presley appears on The Milton Berle Show singing his sexually charged version of Hound Dog. Although not Elvis's first television appearance and not even his first time on Milton Berle's show, this was the first time he was shown on television in full length gyrating his pelvis without his guitar blocking his moves. Journalist Jack O'Brian wrote that Elvis "makes up for vocal shortcomings with the weirdest and plainly suggestive animation short of an aborigine's mating dance." TV writer Ben Gross wrote "Popular music has been sinking in this country for some years… Now it has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. …he gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos."
A few days after the performance, Berle called Elvis's manager Col. Tom Parker to tell him that based on the hundreds of thousands of letters critical of Elvis's performance, he had a star on his hands.

 

D-Day

June 6, 1944

Allied troops invade Europe at Normandy, during World War II. Over 4,000 allied troops were killed on the first day of the invasion, with the Germans losing about 1,000. Also, known as the Normandy landings, this was the largest seaborne invasion in history, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.