James John Davis (born 1873)

In 1873, in the year that James John Davis was born, on March 3rd, the U.S. Congress enacted the Comstock Law. The law made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material through the U.S. mail. This included erotica, contraceptives, sex toys, abortifacients, information about these items, and "personal letters alluding to any sexual content or information".

In 1901, shortly after beginning his second term, President McKinley was assassinated by the self proclaimed anarchist Leon Czolgosz. The last President to have served in the Civil War - he began as a private and ended the war as a brevet major - McKinley was a Republican. First elected in 1896, he was re-elected in 1900. Six months after the swearing in, McKinley was shot - and died of the gangrene that set in as a result.

In 1910, Thomas Edison introduced his kinetophone, which he hoped would make "talkies" a reality. But the sound wasn't synchronized to the pictures and only 45 Kinetophones were made.

In 1925, in July, the Scopes Trial - often called the Scopes Monkey Trial - took place, prosecuting a substitute teacher for teaching evolution in school. Tennessee had enacted a law that said it was "unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school". William Jennings Bryan headed the prosecution and Clarence Darrow headed the defense. The teacher was found guilty and fined $100. An appeal to the Supreme Court of Tennessee upheld the law but overturned the guilty verdict.

In 1964, in June, three young civil rights workers - Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner from New York City, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi - were kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi. Working with "Freedom Summer", they were registering African-Americans to vote in the Southern states. Their bodies were found two months later. Although it was discovered that the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office and the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department were involved, only 7 men were convicted and served less than six years.