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May 5, 1945: Japanese Balloon Bomb Kills 6 in Oregon
1945:: A Japanese balloon bomb kills six people in rural eastern Oregon. They are the only World War II U.S. combat casualties in the 48 states. Months before an atomic bomb decimated Hiroshima, the...
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June 3, 1889: Power Flows Long-Distance
1889: The first long-distance transmission of electricity takes place, linking a powerhouse at Willamette Falls to a string of lights in Portland, Oregon, 14 miles to the west. The power lines...
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Feb. 25, 1919: Oregon Taxes Gas by the Gallon
1919: Oregon passes the nation’s first per-gallon tax on gasoline. It’s only a penny, and it’s only one state, but you know where things go from here. New York City started collecting registration fees...
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April 18, 1906: Mother Nature 1, San Francisco 0
1906: San Francisco is destroyed by an earthquake so powerful that it is felt from Coos Bay, Oregon, to Los Angeles, and as far east as central Nevada. What became known as the San Francisco earthquake...
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May 3, 2000: Geocaching Gets Geeks Going in Great Outdoors
2000: A “geocache” is hidden in the woods outside of Beaver Creek, Oregon, and the first “Great American GPS Stash Hunt” is on. The stash, squirreled away by Dave Ulmer, an Oregon computer consultant...
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July 7, 1936: Get a Grip — Phillips Screws Up the Toolbox
Henry F. Phillips receives patents for a new kind of screw and the new screwdriver needed to make it work. It changes the worlds of mass production and machine repair, not to mention your home toolbox....
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Aug. 1, 1949: FCC Gets in on Cable TV
A secretary at the Federal Communications Commission sends a letter to cable pioneer Ed Parsons in Astoria, Oregon, asking him to explain his community-antenna television system. It's the first-known...
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Nov. 2, 1947: Spruce Goose … Or an Expensive Turkey?
Conceived as a wartime necessity, in the end Howard Hughes' gargantuan cargo plane looks more like an enormous vanity project. The post Nov. 2, 1947: Spruce Goose … Or an Expensive Turkey? appeared...
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