Check out This Day in History for Dec. 22, in MainStream’s daily look at significant progressive, intersectional historical events.
1882: The first electric Christmas tree lights are introduced, a creation of Thomas Edison assistant Edward Hibberd Johnson. The invention greatly reduced holiday fire hazards from lit candles lighting trees prior to Johnson’s invention.
1913: Hearkening the phrase from the American Revolution, “no taxation without representation,” suffragette leader and ordained Methodist minister Anna Howard Shaw refuses to pay taxes on the grounds that she has no voting rights as a woman. Supporters would intervene to buy back Shaw’s property auctioned off by the government.
1993: The first major Hollywood film about AIDS begins its theatrical release, with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington starring in “Philadelphia,” about a gay attorney whose firm attempted to fire him when they learned he had contracted HIV and developed AIDS.
2001: Richard Reid will become known as “the shoe bomber” for trying to light explosives he’d brought onto American Airlines Flight 63 in his sneakers. Reid claimed he was working alone.
Also, Shani Davis becomes the first African-American ever to qualify for the United States Olympic speed skating team. He’ll go on to become the first-ever Black athlete to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics, in 2006.
2022:President Joe Biden issues a general pardon for anyone with a federal marijuana possession charge. The overall pardon is Part One of his three-part plan to adjust how cannabis is regulated; governors were to pardon state-leve offenses, next, followed by cannabis’ rescheduling from a Schedule I highly addictive drug to a Schedule III drug with medical potential. Donald Trump issued an executive order for part three last week; part two happened in only a few states.
Cover photo: logo for the film “Philadelphia;” Rev. Annan Howard Shaw; speed-skater Shani Davis; and the first-ever electric Christmas tree lights, Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
