All Things in Moderation

1969 – Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York introduces the automated teller machine to its customers, the first ATM to appear in the US. ATM’s will go on to alter the face of personal banking across the world, and have become an indispensable feature to every day life.

1959 – Responding to the increasing appeal of smaller imported cars, Ford introduces the Falcon, its first compact, fuel efficient car dubbed “the small car with the big car feel”. Priced at only $1,900, the car is a huge hit, with dealers ordering 97,000 of the cars on the first day alone, and more than 2 million of them are sold in its first two years. My dad had a Falcon when I was a kid.

1945 – Aboard the USS Missourri, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu of the Imperial Army formally sign unconditional surrender documents, officially ending World War II. The surrender ceremony in color.

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1985 – The R.M.S. Titanic is discovered on the ocean floor 12,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic by an expedition headed by Robert S. Ballard. Ballard is actually on a secret mission chartered by the US Navy to locate and photograph two sunken nuclear submarines, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. Using the search for the Titanic as a cover story, Ballard is allowed to search for the remains of the ship after having located the two submarines. Scanning the ocean floor with an unmanned submersible sub named Argo, Ballard discovers one of Titanic‘s massive boilers, which leads to the wider debris field and eventually the ship itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5J9GpuNb3A

1939 – One week after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union, World War II begins when Germany invades Poland. The move prompts both Britain and France to declare war on Germany two days later, and the Soviets will join in the invasion of Poland by mid-September, effectively splitting the nation between Germany and the Soviets. Despite Germany’s defeat 6 years later, it will be 50 years before Poland will regain its independence from the Soviet Union.

1864 – In one of the most decisive battles of the Civil War, Union forces under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman capture Atlanta, an important supply hub for the South. The battle for the city had begun in May, and it will remain occupied by Union forces until November 15 when Sherman leaves the city in ruins and begins his infamous March to the Sea.

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