This Day in History: 05/12/1957 - Foyt's First Pro Victory - HISTORY

This Day in History - May 12, 1957, legendary driver AJ Foyt won the midget stock car championship. This win set off his career, leading him to win 4 Indy-500 championships. To find out more about the great formula-1 driver, check out this clip.

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Elvis Presley is known by everyone as the King of Rock and Roll. Did you know however, that he was drafted on December 20, 1957? December 20th marks many historical days in our history. In 1989, the United States invaded Panama, while just six years later, in 1995, the peace was brought to Bosnia by NATO agreements. December 20th also marks the beginning phases of the Civil War because it was on this date, in 1860, that South Carolina became the first official state to succeed from the Union. Watch the This Day in History video: December 20th, to learn more about these events.

This Day in History - May 16, 1929, was the day of the first Academy Awards. 270 people attended the awards with an admission of $5. Fifteen awards were presented with only one given to a female. All the recipients of the awards already knew they had won before attending. To find out more about this first big night of stars, check out this clip.

In This Day in History video clip - May 5, 1961: The first American in space - Cape Canaveral, Florida, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The first Frisbee in produced by Wham-O, Joseph Stalin's trial for communist party purges begins, President Richard Nixon announces the end of the Vietnam War in This Day in History video. The date was January 23. The first Frisbee was actually invented by students at Connecticut College.

In this "This Day in History" video, learn about the history of December 5th. It was the day of the California Gold Rush in 1848, the start of Prohibition in 1933, and the day Newt Gingrich became speaker of the house, the first Republican to do so in some 40 years.

See what happened in history on December 28 in this video of This Day in History. On December 28, 1912, the first public street car was established in San Francisco, while most transit systems were privately owned at the time. In 1945, Congress officially excepted the pledge of allegiance that was written for a children's magazine 50 years earlier. In addition, on December 28, 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr was born as the first child to be conceived using in-vitro fertilization. Lastly, on the day in 1895 the first movie was screened with the help of a camera doubling as a film projector. This set up was created by Louis and Auguste Lumiere. The show was a box office hit, but the reviewers thought that this new business had no future.

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