On this day:
1747 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.
The London Lock Hospital, which opened on 31 January 1747, was the first venereal disease clinic and the most famous and first of the Lock Hospitals which were developed for the treatment of syphilis following the end of the use of lazar hospitals, as leprosy declined. The hospital later developed maternity and gynaecology services before being incorporated into the National Health Service in 1948, and finally closed in 1952.
1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape.
Richard Gurley Drew (June 22, 1899 – December 14, 1980) was an American inventor who worked for Johnson and Johnson, Permacel Co., and 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he invented masking tape and cellophane tape.
When Drew joined 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1920, it was a modest manufacturer of sandpaper. While testing their new Wetordry sandpaper at auto shops, Drew was intrigued to learn that the two-tone auto paintjobs so popular in the Roaring Twenties were difficult to manage at the border between the two colors. In response, after two years of work in 3M’s labs, Drew invented the first masking tape (1922), a two-inch-wide tan paper strip backed with a light, pressure-sensitive adhesive.
The first tape had adhesive along its edges but not in the middle. In its first trial run, it fell off the car and the frustrated auto painter growled at Drew, “take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!” (By “Scotch,” he meant “parsimonious”.) The nickname stuck, both to Drew’s improved masking tape, and to his 1930 invention, Scotch Brand cellulose tape.
In 1925 he came up with the world’s first transparent cellophane adhesive tape (called sellotape in the UK and Scotch tape in the United States). In the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, people began using tape to repair items rather than replace them. This was the beginning of 3M’s diversification into all manner of marketplaces and helped them to flourish in spite of the Great Depression.
Drew died in 1980 in Santa Barbara, California.
1949 – These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago.
These Are My Children is an American television soap opera which ran on NBC from January 31, 1949, to February 25, 1949. The show was broadcast live from Chicago, Illinois, airing fifteen minutes a day, five days a week, at 5:00 p.m. EST. It is widely credited as the first soap opera broadcast on television. It may be more accurately described as the first daytime drama or the first soap opera strip, as it was preceded by DuMont series Faraway Hill in 1946 and Highway to the Stars in 1947, both of which are described as soap operas but aired later in the evenings and broadcast only once a week.
Created by Irna Phillips and directed by Norman Felton, the show was based in large part on Phillips’ early radio soaps Today’s Children and Painted Dreams. Children centered on an Irish widow, Mrs. Henehan and her struggles to run a boarding house as well as help her three children and new daughter-in-law Jean. Critics were not impressed; Television World ended their review with: “There is no place on television for this type of program, a blank screen is preferable.”
Phillips later created many popular daytime dramas, and Felton produced primetime soaps Dr. Kildare and Executive Suite.
1971 – The Winter Soldier Investigation, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to publicize war crimes and atrocities by Americans and allies in Vietnam, begins in Detroit.
The “Winter Soldier Investigation” was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) from January 31, 1971 – February 2, 1971. It was intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War. The VVAW challenged the morality and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering of 109 veterans and 16 civilians took place in Detroit, Michigan. Discharged servicemen from each branch of military service, as well as civilian contractors, medical personnel and academics, all gave testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years of 1963–1970.
With the exception of Pacifica Radio, the event was not covered extensively outside Detroit. However, several journalists and a film crew recorded the event, and a documentary film called Winter Soldier was released in 1972. A complete transcript was later entered into the Congressional Record by Senator Mark Hatfield, and discussed in the Fulbright Hearings in April and May 1971, convened by Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The purpose of the Winter Soldier Investigation was to show that American policies in Vietnam had led to war crimes. In the words of one participant veteran, Donald Dzagulones,
“We gathered not to sensationalize our service but to decry the travesty that was Lt. William Calley’s trial for the My Lai Massacre. The U.S. had established the principle of culpability with the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. Following those principles, we held that if Calley were responsible, so were his superiors up the chain of command — even to the president. The causes of My Lai and the brutality of the Vietnam War were rooted in the policies of our government as executed by our military commanders.”
The name “Winter Soldier Investigation” was proposed by Mark Lane, and was derived from Thomas Paine’s first American Crisis paper, written in December 1776. When future Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, then a decorated Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve (Inactive), later spoke before a Senate Committee, he explained,
“We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.
Born on this day:
1854 – David Emmanuel, Romanian mathematician and academic (d. 1941)
David Emmanuel (31 January 1854 – 4 February 1941) was a Romanian Jewish mathematician and member of the Romanian Academy, considered to be the founder of the modern mathematics school in Romania.
He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Paris (Sorbonne) in 1879 with a thesis on Study of abelian integrals of the third species, becoming the second Romanian to have a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Sorbonne (the first one was Spiru Haret). David Emmanuel was the president of the first Romanian Congress of Mathematics held in 1929.
In 1882, David Emmanuel became a professor of superior algebra and functions theory at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Bucharest. Here, in 1888, he held the first courses on group theory and on Galois theory. Among his students were Gheorghe Țițeica, Traian Lalescu and Simion Stoilow. Emmanuel had an important role in the introduction of modern mathematics and of the rigorous approach to mathematics in Romania.
1902 – Nat Bailey, Canadian businessman, founded White Spot (d. 1978)
Nathaniel Ryal Bailey (January 31, 1902 – March 27, 1978), better known as Nat Bailey, was an American-born Canadian restaurateur best known for building the first drive-in restaurant in Canada, in 1928, and developing the first car-hop tray. His chain of White Spot restaurants continues to thrive today.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bailey moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1913. He started his business career selling peanuts during games at the Vancouver Forum. He expanded his business by adding hot drinks and hamburgers. When the Forum’s roof collapsed in 1934, he built a type of log cabin White Spot at 70th and Granville in Vancouver’s Marpole district.
The logs were painted white and the ends painted green. This was the first drive-in in Canada. The car-hops wore green uniforms with Naugahyde captain’s caps, and a white stripe down the pant leg. Nat’s specially designed tray fit between the car’s window sills. He became famous for his hamburgers, which used Nat’s “secret sauce”, which was rumoured to be Thousand Island dressing mixed with mayonnaise, but he never revealed the recipe.
It has been reported that, as the condiments used came in large containers, he poured the excess dill pickle juice into the depleted mayonnaise jars, then put this mixture into the depleted ketchup containers, then added the relish from the depleted relish containers, to which was added the juice and residue from the slicing of tomatoes, adding the resultant mixture to a commercial Thousand Island dressing.
When a customer desired extra sauce on their burger, the waiter/car-hop would squiggle three O’s on the order slip to notify the kitchen. This has evolved into the current copyrighted “Triple-O Sauce” and Triple-O’s Restaurants owned by White Spot Restaurants.
Later, Nat became famous for his “Chicken Pickens” and “Chicken In The Straw.” This was long before the Colonel and KFC were on the scene. Nat built several of the drive-ins throughout Vancouver and Victoria. He sold the chain to General Foods when he retired as a famous restaurateur and community sports supporter.
Bailey was a Freemason, and supporter of the Marpole Rotary Club, as well as the Chamber of Commerce.
Bailey was also a supporter of little league baseball in the city of Vancouver and was a part owner of the Vancouver Mounties professional team. His love of the game was commemorated with the renaming of Capilano Stadium to Nat Bailey Stadium after his death in 1978. The reasons for his death are unknown. Nat Bailey Stadium is currently the home of the Vancouver Canadians, a short season Single-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays.