Timothy Donovan (died 1918)

In 1812, on February 27th, the English poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the British House of Lords. He spoke in defense of the Luddite violence against industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire. Luddites were primarily textile workers and weavers who thought that machinery was being used as a way to keep workers from achieving fair practices and wages.

In 1822, on July 3rd, Charles Babbage published a proposal for a forerunner of the modern computer. Called a "difference engine", it calculated logarithms and trigonometric functions. Babbage wanted to eliminate the errors that occurred through the use of human "calculators" by creating a machine to do the same work. While a prototype was begun, it was never completed.

In 1865, on December 24th, 8 months after the end of the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was formed in Pulaski, Tennessee by Jonathan Shank and Barry Ownby. They wanted to fight Reconstruction after the Civil War and to intimidate what were called "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" - northern and southern whites who supported reconstruction. They also wanted to repress the newly freed slaves.

In 1899, on February 14th, the first voting machines were approved by Congress for use in federal elections. Several states were already using voting machines in their elections and the Federal government was finally convinced of their safety and accuracy.

In 1918, in the year of Timothy Donovan's passing, following European countries, Daylight Saving Time went into effect in the United States in March. It was an effort to conserve fuel needed to produce electric power. This was a war effort and proved unpopular so in most areas of the United States, Daylight Saving Time ended after World War I. It returned during World War II.