It was on this day in 1898 that the US Post Office authorized private companies to print and sell postcards. (Prior to this, companies could only make “souvenir cards.”) At first, postcards were not allowed to have a “divided back”…the name/address had to go on one side of the card, and the short message on the other. This restriction was in effect until 1907, when postal regulation were modified to allow people to put a message on the same side of the card as the address. This opened up what has since been called “The Golden Age of American Postcards.“
This first event that Wiki mentions occurring on this day is “1499 – Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12” and the most recent is “2010 – The Royal Thai Armed Forces concludes its crackdown on protests by forcing the surrender of United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship leaders.“
A few other things that also happened on this day are:
1536 – Anne Boleyn loses her head.
1921 – US institutes the first limits on immigration.
1962 – Marilyn Monroe sings “Happy Birthday” to JFK.
1967 – USSR, England, and US sign a treaty that bans nuclear weapons in outer space.
1992 – Amy Fisher shoots Mary Jo Buttafuoco.
Happy Birthday to Phil Rudd, Dusty Hill, Grace Jones, Pete Townshend, and Peter Mayhew.