This Day in History September 4

This is the birthday of one of the most written-about, talked-about, joked-about cities in the world, Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles was born on this day in 1781.


The Mexican Provincial Governor, Felipe de Neve, founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, originally named Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, who had noticed the beautiful area as they traveled north from San Diego in 1769. El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles translates into the Village of our Lady, the Queen of the Angels ... L.A. for short.

Mexico ceded California to the United States in 1848, and Los Angeles, the capital of Alta California, a Mexican Province, came with it. Once a quiet, little village, the discovery of oil in the 1890s started an expansion that has grown to be the home of more than 8 1/2 million people (approx. 3 1/2 million in the actual city limits). Hollywood, movie stars, Disneyland, freeways, Beverly Hills, earthquakes, fires, floods and drive-by shootings have all managed to keep the City of Angels on the map, so to speak.

As have the more than a million visitors a year ... they come to visit and they often come back to stay ... in L.A.

Events September 4

1682 - Edmund Halley got his only look at the comet that now bears his name. He worked out a theory of cometary orbits and concluded that the comet of 1682, otherwise known as Halley’s Comet, was periodic and correctly predicted that it would return in 76 years.

1833 - Barney Flaherty answered an ad in The New York Sun and became the first newsboy. Actually, Barney became what we now call a paperboy. He was 10 years old at the time. Show us a 10-year-old who reads a newspaper today. Those were the days! Of course, there was no radio, no TV, no MTV, no computers, no Internet. What was a kid to do?

1862 - General Robert E. Lee invaded the North for the first time, with 50,000 Confederates. He headed for Harpers Ferry, located 50 miles northwest of Washington. The Union Army, 90,000 strong, under the command of McClellan, was in hot pursuet.

1882 - Thomas Edison displayed the first practical electrical lighting system. The Pearl Street electric power station, Edison’'s steam powered plant, began operating and successfully turned on the lights in a one square mile area of New York City.

1885 - As you pile that delicious platter of stuff on your tray, grab an extra dessert just for the fun of it and enough packets of sugar to last a year ... keep in mind that on this day, the Exchange Buffet opened in New York City. It was the first self-service restaurant in the U.S.

1886 - Geronimo surrendered to U.S. general Nelson A. Miles. Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache who had led raids on white settlers for ten years after the U.S. government attempted to move the Apache to a reservation.

1888 - The name Kodak was registered by George Eastman of Rochester, NY. He patented his roll-film camera: U.S. Patent #388,850