On December 1, 1866, the Michigan Soldiers Home was opened in Grand Rapids for veterans of the Mexican War, Civil War and Spanish-American War who were disabled by disease or wounds and were incapable of earning a living. Space was provided for mothers, wives and widows of veterans. Now known as the Michigan Home for Veterans.
Source : Official Blog of the Michigan House Democrats, December 1, 2014.
On December 1, 1913, Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. His innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to two hours and 30 minutes.Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908, was simple, sturdy and relatively inexpensive–but not inexpensive enough for Ford, who was determined to build “motor car[s] for the great multitude.” (“When I’m through,” he said, “about everybody will have one.”) In order to lower the price of his cars, Ford figured, he would just have to find a way to build them more efficiently.
Ford had been trying to increase his factories’ productivity for years. The workers who built his Model N cars (the Model T’s predecessor) arranged the parts in a row on the floor, put the under-construction auto on skids and dragged it down the line as they worked. Later, the streamlining process grew more sophisticated. Ford broke the Model T’s assembly into 84 discrete steps, for example, and trained each of his workers to do just one. He also hired motion-study expert Frederick Taylor to make those jobs even more efficient. Meanwhile, he built machines that could stamp out parts automatically (and much more quickly than even the fastest human worker could).
The most significant piece of Ford’s efficiency crusade was the assembly line. Inspired by the continuous-flow production methods used by flour mills, breweries, canneries and industrial bakeries, along with the disassembly of animal carcasses in Chicago’s meat-packing plants, Ford installed moving lines for bits and pieces of the manufacturing process: For instance, workers built motors and transmissions on rope-and-pulley–powered conveyor belts. In December 1913, he unveiled the pièce de résistance: the moving-chassis assembly line.
In February 1914, he added a mechanized belt that chugged along at a speed of six feet per minute. As the pace accelerated, Ford produced more and more cars, and on June 4, 1924, the 10-millionth Model T rolled off the Highland Park assembly line. Though the Model T did not last much longer–by the middle of the 1920s, customers wanted a car that was inexpensive and had all the bells and whistles that the Model T scorned–it had ushered in the era of the automobile for everyone.
Source : This Day in History from History.com
The Assembly Line and the $5 Day – Background Reading courtesy of the Michigan Historical Museum and still available thanks to the Internet Archive..
December 1, 1953, former Michigan Governor Kim Sigler and three passengers were killed when Sigler’s personal plane crashed into a radio tower near Battle Creek.
Kim Sigler, who rocketed to the Michigan governor’s chair seven years ago after a sensational grand jury expose, plummeted to his death late yesterday in a fiery plane crash. Three companions died with him.
Sigler’s own four-place plane, threading its way through a dense fog, snagged onto a guy wire supporting a 540-foot television tower. The impact sheared off one wing and sent the fuselage hurtling into a woods three quarters of a mile away, where it chrashed and burned.
The 59-year-old Republican ex-governor presumably was at the controls.
The other victims were Sigler’s secretary, Mrs. Ruth Prentice, 41; her sister, Mrs. Virginia Schuyler, 28; and Mrs. Schuyler’s husband Harold, 37, of Lansing.
The crash scene was near Augusta, in northeast Kalamazoo County.
Sigler and his party were returning from a combination business-pleasure trip to Louisiana.
It was believed that because of the fog Sigler might have been coming in for a landing at Kellogg Field, only three miles from the tower.
In the mid-1940’s Sigler, as special prosecutor for a one-man state graft grand jury, was responsible for indictments against more than 100 legislatures and lobbyists. Many of them went to prison. Bribe taking to influence votes was exposed.
After a bitter feud over continuance of the grand jury, Sigler took a fling at politics in 1945.
By a thumping majority of 340,000 votes, he defeated Democratic Incumbent Murray D. Van Wagoner.
But after one two-year term, Sigler, was unseated by present Democratic Gov. C. Mennen Williams by 164,000 votes in a surprising political nosedive. He returned to his law practice in western Michigan.
Sources :
Jefferson City (Missouri) Post-Tribune December 1, 1953.
One evening in early December, 1955, I was sitting in the front seat of the colored section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The white people were sitting in the white section. More white people got on, and they filled up all the seats in the white section. When that happened, we black people were supposed to give up our seats to the whites. But I didn’t move. The white driver said, “Let me have those front seats.” I didn’t get up. I was tired of giving in to white people.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks: My Story
The bus on which Rosa was riding that day is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn.
We can view the exact location of Rosa’s seat, thanks to a court record. This image depicts an exhibit from Civil Case 1147, Browder, et al v. Gayle, et. al which was filed, during 1955, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery) Division. Locate Rosa’s seat next to a window, on the right side of the bus, five rows back from the front door.
After Rosa Parks defied the law in Montgomery, Alabama – refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man – she was arrested, fingerprinted and convicted after a very short trial. Her actions effectively launched the modern-day civil rights movement.
In 1957 Rosa Parks would move to Detroit, Michigan
Source : Awesome Stories
Lansing’s TV station, WFSL, first called “Independent Station TV 47”, began on December 1, 1982 and later became Fox 47, WSYM.
Source: John Robinson, “Lansing History : Fox 47 Debuts, December 1” WFMK Blog, April 2, 2019.
The Hitsville U.S.A. building in Detroit, Michigan
On December 1, 1987, Michigan Governor James Blanchard and Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young, along with Motown stars Smokey Robinson and the Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks, attended a ceremony at 2648 West Grand Boulevard for the dedication of the Motown Historical Museum and the unveiling of a Michigan Historical Marker at the Hitsville USA house.
Source : Detroit Historical Society
David Zinn is an Ann Arbor artist known for his temporary street art composed entirely of chalk, charcoal and found objects that is entirely improvised on location. Most of these drawings (most notably “Sluggo”) have appeared on sidewalks in Ann Arbor and elsewhere in Michigan, but some have surfaced as far away as subway platforms in Manhattan and construction debris in the Sonoran Desert. Zinn’s chalk work began in 2001 as an excuse to linger outdoors and pursue his inner-child, but has since achieved global notoriety.
David Zinn’s Sluggo reveals what lives below the sidewalk!
Check out David Zinn’s Art Store.
The elk is booting the common loon off Michigan’s wildlife license plate.
Starting December 1, the giant mammal will be featured on the new plates, which cost $35 and help support wildlife management in the state.
The swap coincides with next year’s 100th anniversary of the elk’s reintroduction to Michigan.
For the full article, see Elk is in, loon is out for Michigan’s wildlife license plate“, , October 18, 2017.
Elizabeth Chandler organized the state’s first antislavery society. Some sources suggest that the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1832, but at any rate, it went on to help create safe stops for for escaping slaves following the underground railroad.
Source : Historical Society of Michigan.
For more information about Elizabeth Chandler, see Elizabeth Chandler biography from Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame.
On December 2, 1888, Detroit milkmen met to try to raise the price of their product to seven cents per quart.
Sources :
Detroit Historical Society
Bill Loomis, “Got milk? A century ago, it came from a peddler – and bring your own pitcher”, Detroit News, 2015.