Shirley Booth (born 1898)

In 1898, in the year that Shirley Booth was born, on March 24th, Robert Allison of Pennsylvania became the first person to buy an American-built car. He bought a Winton, which he had seen in an advertisement in Scientific American. The Winton, built in Ohio, was made by hand and came with a leather roof, padded seats, gas lamps, and tires made by B.F. Goodrich.

In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck formulated an energy theory, postulating the existence of "quanta," which lays the groundwork for the quantum theory of modern physics. In December, he introduced a paper on the Planck postulate which stated that E=hv - the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency times a constant. Planck won a Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work in theoretical Physics.

In 1923, on August 2, President Warren G. Harding died in office, apparently of a heart attack. He was staying at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco after completing a nationwide tour. Suffering from cramps, indigestion, a fever and shortness of breath, his doctor thought he had food poisoning. After several days of being ill, he suddenly shuddered, slumped over, and died. There were rumors of foul play (some thought that his wife had poisoned him because of his affairs) but no evidence has ever been found.

In 1971, in March, Intel shipped the first microprocessor to Busicom, a Japanese manufacturer of calculators. The microprocessor has since allowed computers to become smaller and faster, leading to smaller and more versatile handheld devices, home computers, and supercomputers.

In 1989, on March 24th, the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker, struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and oil began spilling out of the hold. The oil would eventually contaminate more than a thousand miles of coastline. It is estimated that over 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Sound - killing 100,000 to 250,000 seabirds, over 2,800 sea otters, about 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas - as well as an unknown number of salmon and herring.