#OnThisDay in 1886, pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine.
In April 1865, Dr. Pemberton sustained a saber wound to the chest during the Battle of Columbus. He soon became addicted to the morphine used to ease his pain. In 1866, seeking a cure for his addiction, he began to experiment with painkillers...
... that would serve as morphine-free alternatives to morphine.

After a few attempts, he began experimenting with coca and coca wines, eventually creating a recipe that contained extracts of kola nut and damiana, which he called Pemberton's French Wine Coca.
With public concern about drug addiction, depression, and alcoholism among war veterans, and "neurasthenia" among "highly-strung" Southern women, Pemberton's "medicine" was advertised as...
... particularly beneficial for "ladies, and all those whose sedentary employment causes nervous prostration".
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More from @marinamaral2

4 May
Mary Kenner was an inventor most noted for her development of the sanitary belt, also known as a menstrual pad. Racial discrimination caused her patent to be prevented for thirty years.

Kenner never made any money from the sanitary belt, because her patent expired and...
... became public domain, allowing it to be manufactured freely.

In an interview, she said, "one day I was contacted by a company that expressed an interest in marketing my idea. I was so jubilant ... I saw houses, cars, and everything about to come to my way."
"Sorry to say, when they found out I was black, their interest dropped. The representative went back to New York and informed me the company was no longer interested."

Between 1956 and 1987 Kenner received five total patents for her household and personal item creations.
Read 4 tweets
3 May
Henry O. Flipper died #OnThisDay in 1940.

He was an American soldier, engineer, formerly enslaved, who in 1877, became the first African American to graduate from the US Military Academy at West Point, earning a commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Army.
After his commissioning, he was assigned to one of the all-black regiments in the U.S. Army, which were historically led by white officers. Flipper served with distinction during the Apache Wars and the Victorio Campaign, but was haunted by rumors alleging improprieties.
Eventually, he was court-martialed and dismissed from the U.S. Army.

In 1994, his descendants applied to the U.S. military for a review of Flipper's court-martial and dismissal. A review found the conviction and punishment were "unduly harsh and unjust"...
Read 5 tweets
3 May
#OnThisDay in 1945, World War II: German ship "Cap Arcona" laden with prisoners from Nazi concentration camps is sunk by the Royal Air Force in the East Sea. 5,800 killed. This was one of the largest single-incident maritime losses of life in the Second World War. Image
For weeks after the attack, bodies of victims washed ashore, where they were collected and buried in mass graves at Neustadt in Holstein, Scharbeutz and Timmendorfer Strand.

Parts of skeletons washed ashore over the next 30 years, with the last find in 1971.
RAF Pilot Allan Wyse of No. 193 Squadron recalled, "We used our cannon fire at the chaps in the water... we shot them up with 20 mm cannons in the water. Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war."
Read 4 tweets
2 May
I think you should know that Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury collaborated in a recording session featuring them singing There Must Be More to Life Than This, State of Shock and Victory, but the project was never completed because Michael Jackson brought a llama to the studio. ImageImage
Freddie’s manager Jim ‘Miami’ Beach said: “They got on well except for the fact that I suddenly got a call from Freddie, saying, ‘Miami, dear, can you get on over here… You’ve got to get me out of here. I’m recording with a llama… I’ve had enough and I want to get out.”
Image
Read 5 tweets
2 May
Colorized by me: Queen Victoria's coffin in the Albert Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle, 1901.
Photographer unknown. 🇬🇧 Image
Image
Victoria died of a cerebral haemorrhage.

In one of her last diary entries on 4 January 1901, she wrote: "From not having been well, I see so badly, which is very tiresome."
Read 4 tweets
30 Apr
Thread: Portraits of African Americans, formerly enslaved, taken in 1936-8.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs. via @librarycongress
Green Cumby, Henderson, Texas: "Durin' slavery I had purty rough times. My grandfather, Tater Cumby , was cullud overseer for forty slaves and he called us at four in de mornin' and we worked from sun to sun."
Minerva Bendy, born in Alabama and later moved to Texas: I was just about five years old when us make de trip to Texas. Us come right near Woodville and make the plantation. It a big place and dey raise corn and cotton and cane.
Read 7 tweets

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