An American writer, Sarah Vowell, who is known for her American history creations, once said, “History is packed with good stories, this is the main reason I got into this Racket: I would like to argue that history is interesting.” Although not many of us agree that history can be of interest, many stories on the pages that talk about the post can enchant even those who do not believe in it. The past days demonstrate that we need to look at the past to understand the present. The past days are holding rooms with many fascinating stories. Is it not compelling to question why dictators like Adolf Hitler have done what they have done? The Historical pages contain the answers to so many complicated mysteries. The history has been crucial to unlocking these riddles: how the society has grown, how lands have been studied and waterways commissioned, how industrialization has been grown, how technology improved, and how topology has achieved its current state, why boundaries between countries have been established. October 09 is such an important day that it has witnessed several events that have made a significant impact on world history. Without further delay let us take a look at the few major events of this day. Tune in to Today in History.
1635: Rhode Island founder banished from Massachusetts
The General Court of Massachusetts has barred religious dissident Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The civil authorities’ right to penalize religious opposition and confiscate American indigenous lands, Williams had spoken out.
Following the departure from Massachusetts, Williams set up a settlement at the junction of two rivers near the Narragansett Bay, located on Rhode Island, with the assistance of the Narragansett tribe. He made the settlement open to anyone who wanted freedom of conscience and the church’s removal from civil matters. Williams called the group providence, taking the success of the venture as a sign from heaven.
Anne Hutchinson, like Williams, was expelled from Massachusetts for religious reasons, some of the first Jews to settle in North America, and the Quakers were among the founders of a sanctuary on the Rhode Island Colony’s religious and political shelter. Roger Williams was also established in Providence the first American Baptist Church and edited the first Native American Language Dictionary.
INVENTION/SCIENCE HISTORY
1936: Hoover Dam begins transmitting electricity to Los Angeles
On the 9th of October 1936, Hoover Dam began to send electricity over 266 miles of mountain and desert transmission lines to fuel the lighting, radios, and furnaces of Los Angeles by leveraging the strength of the mighty Colorado River.
Initially called Boulder Dam, works on the dam were started under the administration of President Herbert Hoover and completed under Roosevelt (which renamed it Hoover) in public works. The towering concrete and steel plug, which was completed in 1935, was the highest dam in the world and symbolizes the current federal commitment to large-scale reconstruction projects for watering the arid western region. Indeed, deep in the bowels of Hoover Dam electricity produced was only a secondary gain. The main justification for the dam was that the most important of western resources, water, was stored, protected, and rationally distributed.
Hoover Dam was one of the many major multipurpose water development projects which tamed the wild river of Colorado to exploit the increasing numbers of western farmers, ranchers, and towns’ people, under the guidance of the Federal Reclamation Bureau. Now the 115-mile-long Mead Lake was filled with water that once had freely flowed to the sea. Huge aqueducts channeled millions of gallons of water into California from the Colorado River, where it is now flowing from the water of Los Angeles, irrigating large fields of productive cropland.
Hoover Dam showed that the aridity of an area once known as the Great American Desert does not have to stand in the way of complete settlement and growth. However, given the increasing growth of western towns such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, it remains to be seen whether the Great American Desert still dictate their limitations for western progress.
Reference:
www.history.com
