MOMENTS IN TIME

Apr 26, 20120

The History Channel

• On May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet up in Promontory, Utah, making transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days.

• On May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, with 1,198 people drowned. It was later revealed that the Lusitania was carrying about 173 tons of war munitions for Britain, which the Germans cited as justification for the attack.

• On May 12, 1925, a Philadelphia radio station broadcasts the first all-star radio program featuring film actors and actresses. Sound films had not yet debuted, and the broadcast marked the first time that most listeners had heard the voices of film stars like Lillian Gish and Marion Davies.

• On May 8, 1933, the first police radio system, connecting headquarters to patrol cars and patrol cars to one another, is installed in Eastchester Township, N.Y. The system consisted of one transmitter of 20 watts for the headquarters and two transmitters of 4.5 volts each for the two patrol cars.

• On May 13, 1956, Gene Autry’s musical variety show, “Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch,” airs its final broadcast, after 16 years. The show featured 10- to 15-minute skits about cowboys and rustlers, along with musical numbers by Autry, “America’s singing cowboy.”

• On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control bill. Development of “the pill” was commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick.

• On May 11, 1981, reggae legend Bob Marley dies of cancer in Miami Beach, Fla. Marley, born in Jamaica in 1945, formed his band, the Wailers, in 1963. In the early 1970s, the band’s records began to catch on outside Jamaica, assisted by Eric Clapton’s cover of “I Shot the Sheriff.”