Mar 9, 1959: Barbie makes her debut
On this day in 1959, the first Barbie doll goes on display at the American Toy Fair in New York City.
Eleven inches tall, with a waterfall of blond hair, Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features. The woman behind Barbie was Ruth Handler, who co-founded Mattel, Inc. with her husband in 1945. After seeing her young daughter ignore her baby dolls to play make-believe with paper dolls of adult women, Handler realized there was an important niche in the market for a toy that allowed little girls to imagine the future.
Barbie's appearance was modeled on a doll named Lilli, based on a German comic strip character. Originally marketed as a racy gag gift to adult men in tobacco shops, the Lilli doll later became extremely popular with children. Mattel bought the rights to Lilli and made its own version, which Handler named after her daughter, Barbara. With its sponsorship of the "Mickey Mouse Club" TV program in 1955, Mattel became the first toy company to broadcast commercials to children. They used this medium to promote their new toy, and by 1961, the enormous consumer demand for the doll led Mattel to release a boyfriend for Barbie. Handler named him Ken, after her son. Barbie's best friend, Midge, came out in 1963; her little sister, Skipper, debuted the following year.
Over the years, Barbie generated huge sales--and a lot of controversy. On the positive side, many women saw Barbie as providing an alternative to traditional 1950s gender roles. She has had a series of different jobs, from airline stewardess, doctor, pilot and astronaut to Olympic athlete and even U.S. presidential candidate. Others thought Barbie's never-ending supply of designer outfits, cars and "Dream Houses" encouraged kids to be materialistic. It was Barbie's appearance that caused the most controversy, however. Her tiny waist and enormous breasts--it was estimated that if she were a real woman, her measurements would be 36-18-38--led many to claim that Barbie provided little girls with an unrealistic and harmful example and fostered negative body image.
Despite the criticism, sales of Barbie-related merchandise continued to soar, topping 1 billion dollars annually by 1993. Since 1959, more than 800 million dolls in the Barbie family have been sold around the world and Barbie is now a bona fide global icon.
Mar 9, 1954: Republican senators criticize Joseph McCarthy
Senate Republicans level criticism at fellow Republican Joseph McCarthy and take action to limit his power. The criticism and actions were indications that McCarthy's glory days as the most famous investigator of communist activity in the United States were coming to an end.
A Republican senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy had risen to fame in early 1950 when he stated in a speech that there were over 200 known communists operating in the U.S. Department of State. Various other charges and accusations issued forth from McCarthy in the months and years that followed. Although he was notably unsuccessful in discovering communists at work in the United States, his wild charges and sensational Senate investigations grabbed headlines and his name became one of the most famous in America.
Republicans at first embraced McCarthy and his devastating attacks on the Democratic administration of President Harry S. Truman. However, when McCarthy kept up with his charges about communists in the government after the election of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, the party turned against him. Eisenhower himself was particularly disturbed by McCarthy's accusations about communists in the U.S. Army. On March 9, 1954, Republican Senator Ralph Flanders (Vermont) verbally blasted McCarthy, charging that he was a "one-man party" intent on "doing his best to shatter that party whose label he wears." Flanders sarcastically declared, "The junior Senator from Wisconsin interests us all, no doubt about that, but also he puzzles some of us. To what party does he belong? Is he a hidden satellite of the Democratic Party, to which he is furnishing so much material for quiet mirth?" In addition to Flanders' speech, Senate Republicans acted to limit McCarthy's ability to conduct hearings and to derail his investigation of the U.S. Army.
McCarthy's days as a political force were indeed numbered. During his televised hearings into the U.S. Army later in 1954, the American people got their first look at how McCarthy bullied witnesses and ignored procedure to suit his purposes. By late 1954, the Senate censured him, but he remained in office until his death in 1957. His legacy was immense: during his years in the spotlight, he destroyed careers, created a good deal of hysteria, and helped spread fear of political debate and dissent in the United States.
Mar 9, 1981: Japanese power plant leaks radioactive waste
A nuclear accident at a Japan Atomic Power Company plant in Tsuruga, Japan, exposes 59 workers to radiation on this day in 1981. As seems all too common with nuclear-power accidents, the officials in charge failed to timely inform the public and nearby residents, endangering them needlessly.
Tsuruga lies near Wakasa Bay on the west coast of Japan. Approximately 60,000 people lived in the area surrounding the atomic power plant. On March 9, a worker forgot to shut a critical valve, causing a radioactive sludge tank to overflow. Fifty-six workers were sent in to mop up the radioactive sludge before the leak could escape the disposal building, but the plan was not successful and 16 tons of waste spilled into Wakasa Bay.
Despite the obvious risk to people eating contaminated fish caught in the bay, Japan's Atomic Power Commission made no public mention of the accident or spill. The public was told nothing of the accident until more than a month later, when a newspaper caught wind of and reported the story. By then, seaweed in the area was found to have radioactive levels 10 times greater than normal. Cobalt-60 levels were 5,000 times higher than previous highs recorded in the area.
Finally, on April 21, the Atomic Power Commission publicly admitted the nuclear accident but denied that anyone had been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Two days later, the company running the plant declared that they had not announced the accident right away because of Japanese emotionalism toward anything nuclear. The public also learned for the first time that, in an earlier incident at the same plant in January 1981, 45 workers had been exposed to radiation.
All the fish caught in Wakasa Bay following the accident were recalled and reports indicate that fish in the area displayed far more mutations than normal for several years after the incident. In May 1981, the president and chairman of the Japan Atomic Power Company resigned.
Mar 9, 1932: China's last emperor is Japanese puppet
Henry Pu Yi, who reigned as the last emperor of China from 1908 to 1912, becomes regent of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, comprising the Rehe province of China and Manchuria.
Enthroned as the emperor Hsian-T'ung at the age of three, he was forced to abdicate four years later in Sun Yat-sen's republican revolution. He took the name of Henry and continued to live in Beijing's Forbidden City until 1924, when he was forced into exile. He settled in Japanese-occupied Tianjin, where he lived until his installment as the puppet leader of Manchukuo in 1932. In 1934, he became K'ang Te, emperor of Manchukuo. Despite guerrilla resistance against his puppet regime, he held the emperor's title until 1945, when he was captured by Soviet troops in the final days of World War II.
In 1946, Pu Yi testified before the Tokyo war crimes tribunal that he had been the unwilling tool of the Japanese and not, as they claimed, an instrument of Manchurian self-determination. Manchuria and the Rehe province were returned to China, and in 1950 Pu Yi was handed over to the Chinese communists, who imprisoned him at Shenyang until 1959, when Chinese leader Mao Zedong granted him amnesty. After his release, he worked in a mechanical repair shop in Peking. He died on October 17, 1967.
Mar 9, 1916: Pancho Villa raids U.S.
In the early morning of March 9, 1916, several hundred Mexican guerrillas under the command of Francisco "Pancho" Villa cross the U.S.-Mexican border and attack the small border town of Columbus, New Mexico. Seventeen Americans were killed in the raid, and the center of town was burned. It was unclear whether Villa personally participated in the attack, but President Woodrow Wilson ordered the U.S. Army into Mexico to capture the rebel leader dead or alive.
Before he invaded the United States, Pancho Villa was already known to Americans for his exploits during the Mexican Revolution. He led the famous Division del Norte, with its brilliant cavalry, Los Dorados, and won control of northern Mexico after a series of audacious attacks. In 1914, following the resignation of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, Pancho Villa and his former revolutionary ally Venustiano Carranza battled each other in a struggle for succession. By the end of 1915, Villa had been driven north into the mountains, and the U.S. government recognized General Carranza as the president of Mexico.
In January 1916, to protest President Woodrow Wilson's support for Carranza, Villa executed 16 U.S. citizens at Santa Isabel in northern Mexico. Then, in early March, he ordered the raid on Columbus. Cavalry from the nearby Camp Furlong U.S. Army outpost pursued the Mexicans, killing several dozen rebels on U.S. soil and in Mexico before turning back. On March 15, under orders from President Wilson, U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing launched a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa and disperse his rebels. The expedition eventually involved some 10,000 U.S. troops and personnel. It was the first U.S. military operation to employ mechanized vehicles, including automobiles and airplanes.
For 11 months, Pershing failed to capture the elusive revolutionary, who was aided by his intimate knowledge of the terrain of northern Mexico and his popular support from the people there. Meanwhile, resentment over the U.S. intrusion into Mexican territory led to a diplomatic crisis with the government in Mexico City. On June 21, the crisis escalated into violence when Mexican government troops attacked a detachment of the 10th Cavalry at Carrizal, Mexico, leaving 12 Americans dead, 10 wounded, and 24 captured. The Mexicans suffered more than 30 dead. If not for the critical situation in Europe, war might have been declared. In January 1917, having failed in their mission to capture Villa, and under continued pressure from the Mexican government, the Americans were ordered home.
Villa continued his guerrilla activities in northern Mexico until Adolfo de la Huerta took power over the government and drafted a reformist constitution. Villa entered into an amicable agreement with Huerta and agreed to retire from politics. In 1920, the government pardoned Villa, but three years later he was assassinated at his ranch in Parral.
Mar 9, 1841: Supreme Court rules on Amistad mutiny
At the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the African slaves who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus are free under American law.
In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the U.S. was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s.
On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmembers were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the "black schooner" was first spotted by American vessels.
On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans' extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa.
The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S. abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. court. Before a federal district court in Connecticut, Cinque, who was taught English by his new American friends, testified on his own behalf. On January 13, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson's findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again.
On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans' defense team. In Congress, Adams had been an eloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation's highest court he presented a coherent argument for the release of Cinque and the 34 other survivors of the Amistad.
On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa. Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in Sierra Leone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the African interior. One of the survivors, who was a child when taken aboard the Amistad as a slave, eventually returned to the United States. Originally named Margru, she studied at Ohio's integrated and coeducational Oberlin College in the late 1840s, before returning to Sierra Leone as evangelical missionary Sara Margru Kinson.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
1454 - Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy. Matthias Ringmann, a German mapmaker, named the American continent in his honor.
1617 - The Treaty of Stolbovo ended the occupation of Northern Russia by Swedish troops. 1734 - The Russians took Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland. 1745 - The first carillon was shipped from England to Boston, MA. 1788 - Connecticut became the 5th state to join the United States. 1793 - Jean Pierre Blanchard made the first balloon flight in North America. The event was witnessed by U.S. President George Washington. 1796 - Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais were married. They were divorced in 1809. 1799 - The U.S. Congress contracted with Simeon North, of Berlin, CT, for 500 horse pistols at the price of $6.50 each. 1812 - Swedish Pomerania was seized by Napoleon. 1820 - The U.S. Congress passed the Land Act that paved the way for westward expansion of North America. 1822 - Charles M. Graham received the first patent for artificial teeth. 1832 - Abraham Lincoln announced that he would run for a political office for the first time. He was unsuccessful in his run for a seat in the Illinois state legislature. 1839 - The French Academy of Science announced the Daguerreotype photo process. 1858 - Albert Potts was awarded a patent for the letter box. 1859 - The National Association of Baseball Players adopted the rule that limited the size of bats to no more than 2-1/2 inches in diameter. 1860 - The first Japanese ambassador to the U.S. was appointed. 1862 - During the U.S. Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia fought to a draw in a five-hour battle at Hampton Roads, Virginia. 1863 - General Ulysses Grant was appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces. 1897 - A patent was issued to William Spinks and William Hoskins for cue chalk. 1900 - In Germany, women petition Reichstag for the right to take university entrance exams. 1905 - In Egypt, U.S. archeologist Davies discovered the royal tombs of Tua and Yua. 1905 - In Manchuria, Japanese troops surrounded 200,000 Russian troops that were retreating from Mudken. 1905 - In Congo, Belgian Vice Gov. Costermans committed suicide following an investigation of colonial policy. 1906 - In the Philippines, fifteen Americans and 600 Moros were killed in the last two days of fighting. 1909 - The French National Assembly passed an income tax bill. 1910 - Union men urged for a national sympathy strike for miners in Pennsylvania. 1911 - The funding for five new battleships was added to the British military defense budget. 1916 - Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico. 17 people were killed by the 1,500 horsemen. 1929 - Eric Krenz became the first athlete to toss the discus over 160 feet. 1932 - Eamon De Valera was elected president of the Irish Free State and pledged to abolish all loyalty to the British Crown. 1933 - The U.S. Congress began its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation. 1936 - The German press warned that all Jews who vote in the upcoming elections would be arrested. 1945 - "Those Websters" debuted on CBS radio. 1945 - During World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers launched incendiary bomb attacks against Japan. 1946 - The A.F.L. accused Juan Peron of using the army to establish a dictatorship over Argentine labor. 1949 - The first all-electric dining car was placed in service on the Illinois Central Railroad. 1954 - WNBT-TV (now WNBC-TV), in New York, broadcast the first local color television commercials. The ad was Castro Decorators of New York City. (New York) 1956 - British authorities arrested and deported Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus. He was accused of supporting terrorists. 1957 - Egyptian leader Nasser barred U.N. plans to share the tolls for the use of the Suez Canal. 1959 - Mattel introduced Barbie at the annual Toy Fair in New York. 1964 - Production began on the first Ford Mustang. 1965 - The first U.S. combat troops arrived in South Vietnam. 1967 - Svetlana Alliluyeva, Josef Stalin's daughter defected to the United States. 1969 - "The Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour" was canceled by CBS-TV. 1975 - Work began on the Alaskan oil pipeline. 1975 - Iraq launched an offensive against the rebel Kurds. 1977 - About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invaded three buildings in Washington, DC. They killed one person and took more than 130 hostages. The siege ended two days later. 1983 - The official Soviet news agency TASS says that U.S. President Reagan is full of "bellicose lunatic anti-communism." 1985 - "Gone With The Wind" went on sale in video stores across the U.S. for the first time. 1986 - U.S. Navy divers found the crew compartment of the space shuttle Challenger along with the remains of the astronauts. 1987 - Chrysler Corporation offered to buy American Motors Corporation. 1989 - The U.S. Senate rejected John Tower as a choice for a cabinet member. It was the first rejection in 30 years. 1989 - In Maylasia, 30 Asian nations conferred on the issue of "boat people". 1989 - In the U.S., a strike forced Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy. 1989 - In the U.S., President George H.W. Bush urged for a mandatory death penalty in drug-related killings. 1990 - Dr. Antonia Novello was sworn in as the first female and Hispanic surgeon general. 1993 - Rodney King testified at the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of violating his civil rights. (California) 1995 - The Canadian Navy arrested a Spanish trawler for illegally fishing off of Newfoundland. 2000 - In Norway, the coalition government of Kjell Magne Bondevik resigned as a result of an environmental dispute.
1796 Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais, widow of a former French officer executed during the revolution. 1841 The Supreme Court ruled that the Amistad slaves were free. 1862 The first battle between two ironclad ships, the Monitor (Union) and Merrimack (Confederate) occurred, revolutionizing naval warfare. 1933 The special session of Congress known as the "100 days" opened, launching FDR's New Deal. 1964 U.S. Supreme Court issued N.Y. Times v. Sullivan ruling. 1990 Dr. Antonia Novello was sworn in as both the first Hispanic and woman to be U.S. surgeon general.
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/mar09.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
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