Mark George (died 1956)

In 1826, on March 10th, João VI, King of Portugal and the former Emperor of Brazil, died after a short illness. Six days earlier, the King had become ill after eating at the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon. An investigative autopsy in the late 1990's discovered that he had been killed by arsenic poisoning - having enough arsenic in his body to kill two people.

In 1857, on October 13th, New York banks closed due to the Panic of 1857. The banks didn't reopen until December 12th.

In 1883, on February 28th, in Boston MA, the first vaudeville theater was opened by Benjamin Franklin Keith.

In 1929, American Samoa officially became a U.S. territory. Although a part of the United States since 1900, the Ratification Act of 1929 vested "all civil, judicial, and military powers in the President of the United States of America".

In 1956, in the year of Mark George's passing, on May 20th, the U.S. tested the first hydrogen bomb dropped from a plane over Bikini Atoll. Previously, hydrogen bombs had only been tested on the ground. The Atomic Age moved forward.