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This Week In History: February 8-14

This Week in History…

February 8, 1922: President Warren Harding has the White House’s first radio installed.

On June 14 of the same year, Harding became the first president to have his voice transmitted to the American public by radio. His speech, however, was not radio-specific; rather it was a pre-planned address that also happened to be broadcast over the radio. His successor, Calvin Coolidge, was the first to give an official presidential radio address in 1923.

February 9, 1950: In a speech in Wheeling, WV, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claims he has a list of over 200 “known communists” in the Department of State.

McCarthy’s declarations vaulted him to national prominence and prompted nationwide hysteria about communist subversives within the government. Yet, McCarthy’s aggressive pursuits proved to be his own undoing. His televised investigations allowed the public to see his true nature as a bully, and he was subsequently stripped of his chairmanship on the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate.

February 12, 1809: President Abraham Lincoln is born in Hardin County, Kentucky.

Abraham Lincoln is widely known as the president who preserved the Union. Did you know that he was also a man of hidden talents? Lincoln was such a skilled wrestler that he is enshrined as an “Outstanding American” in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. He is also the only president to hold a patent. He invented a device to free steamboats that ran aground.