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It’s easy to take the zipper for granted today, but before it was invented, getting (and staying) dressed involved securing clothing with ropes, ties, buttons or other fasteners.

After years of attempts, Bell achieved his goal of transmitting sound over a wire, and on March 7, 1876, obtained his first U.S. Patent for a device he labeled as “Improvement on Telegraphy”—now better known as the telephone.

The first World’s Fair to take place in the United States was held in Philadelphia in 1876, and also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the country’s founding.

Then, in 1893, inventor Whitcomb L. Judson received a patent for his “clasp locker” shoe fastener, and immediately partnered with businessman Colonel Lewis Walker to launch the Universal Fastener Company and manufacture his invention

Along with the zipper, the Garis-Cochran Dishwashing Machine was also first introduced to the public at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, in a display drawing crowds curious about the contraption capable of thoroughly washing and drying 240 dishes in two minutes. The crowd-pleasing exhibit was more than a decade in the making. In 1883, Ohio entrepreneur Josephine Garis Cochran grew frustrated with the amount of time it took to clean up after dinner parties, reportedly saying, “If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I’ll do it myself.” And she did.

One of the biggest challenges that arose during the early days of electricity was getting it from the power source to an individual device. By the 1880s, entire houses were being wired for electricity, but electrical appliances had to be connected to the home’s main power source directly, posing serious safety risks to members of the household.

April 30, 1939, New York City: This is the scene viewed on the television receivers in the metropolitan area, as the National Broadcasting Company inaugurated the first regular television service to the American public telecasting the ceremonies marking the opening of the New York World's Fair. Bettmann via Getty Images

May 1, 1939 saw another television milestone: the launch of a regular television broadcast schedule on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which was owned by RCA.

Fairgoers could take what was advertised as “America’s first television tour” (presented by NBC), where they would learn about the history of the medium, as well as the science and engineering that made its broadcast possible.

In the age of smartphones, it’s easy to identify the touchscreen demonstration at the World’s Fair as a significant technological turning point, but according to Jack Neely, executive director of the Knoxville History Project and crowd controller at the World’s Fair, that wasn’t apparent at the time. “It was...one of those things you had to look fast to notice,” Neely told the University of Tennessee Daily Beacon in a 2017 interview.

The decision extended a 2012 ruling, which invalidated future life-without- parole sentence for juvenile murderers, to all such offenders who were given life sentences in the past.

Monday's opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberals, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

A total of 2,341 people are now serving mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenses. Roughly 1,000 of them would be affected by a decision in this case, according to a study by The Phillips Black Project, a non-profit law group that represents prisoners facing severe sentences. The remainder, the study concluded, were imprisoned in states that have already applied the ruling retroactively.

Monday's decision said the states do not have to hold new sentencing hearings if they allow juvenile homicide offenders the opportunity to be released on parole. Such a step "ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity -- and who have since matured -- will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence" in violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"Prior to the funeral service, there will be an opportunity for members of the public to pay their respects at the Library."

"It is a very sad day," former Ronald Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein told NBC News. "Every time she was in the room, he was better, and every time he was in the room she was better. She brought a sense of class and dignity and elegance that everybody admired."

"We remain grateful for Nancy Reagan's life, thankful for her guidance, and prayerful that she and her beloved husband are together again," President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama said in a statement.

Barbara Bush, another influential former first lady, said in a statement: "Nancy Reagan was totally devoted to President Reagan, and we take comfort that they will be reunited once more. George and I send our prayers and condolences to her family."

Reagan was also a Girl Scout and named honorary president of the Girl Scouts as first lady. The Girl Scouts of America said in a statement that Reagan would be remembered for her "courage, confidence and character."

In lieu of flowers, Mrs. Reagan asked that contributions be made to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Foundation at www.reaganlibrary.com, Drake said.

While Ronald Reagan was governor of California from 1967 to 1975, Nancy Reagan worked with numerous charitable groups, and spent hours visiting veterans, the elderly, and the emotionally and physically handicapped.

"The movies were custard compared to politics," Mrs. Reagan once said.

When her husband became president of the United States, First Lady Reagan continued her interest in these groups continued, and arguably became best known for her "Just Say No" program fighting against drug abuse among youth.

When Ronald was shot in 1981 by a would-be assassin, Nancy rushed to his side immediately, and later endured his nearly decade-long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

In recent years she broke with fellow Republicans in backing stem cell research as a way to possibly find a cure for Alzheimer's.

There are contentious disputes over mutual claims for economic reparations, Cuba's insistence on an end to the 53-year-old trade embargo and American calls for Cuba to improve on human rights and democracy. Rodríguez Parilla told reporters that the two leaders discussed their differences on those areas.

The two leaders have spoken on several occasions since taking steps toward normalizing relations and economic ties between the two countries after decades of Cold War hostilities. The two presidents spoke most recently during a rare phone call ahead of Pope Francis' visit to Cuba and the U.S.

They also spoke earlier this month after the Obama administration announced that U.S companies are now allowed to establish a physical presence in Cuba — a change which will make it easier for people in the U.S. to invest, travel and open up business in Cuba. The two leaders also spoke before their meeting at the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April.

In August, the American flag was raised over the U.S. Embassy in Cuba for the first time in more than half a century. In July, Cuban officials inaugurated their embassy in Washington.

defense argued that Lockhart, who was dishonorably discharged, was suffering from untreated PTSD and wasn't in his right mind when he abducted, robbed and fatally shot college student Lauren Burk in 2008. advertisement

"At a time in which the death penalty is being imposed less and less, it is disturbing that so many veterans who were mentally and emotionally scarred while serving their country are now facing execution," said Robert Dunham, the center's executive director.

About 300 veterans are on death row nationwide, about 10 percent of all those condemned to die, the group estimates.

It's unclear how many have been diagnosed with PTSD or have symptoms, but Dunham says that in too many cases, a veteran's mental scars are not examined closely enough by defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges, juries and governors who can commute death sentences.

The judge scheduled conferences Thursday to "discuss a new trial date," indicating that he expects prosecutors to try Porter again. Williams gave Porter the option to appear Thursday, but he declined.

During arguments, prosecutors focused on what they said was Porter's failure to take care of Gray while he was in custody by not getting him medical care or buckling his seatbelt.

Porter, who took the stand in his defense, said that Gray was "unable to give me a reason for a medical emergency" and that it was not his duty to fasten the seatbelts of people who have been arrested in the van.

"In the coming days, if some choose to demonstrate peacefully to express their opinion, that is their constitutional right," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. "In the case of any disturbance in the city, we are prepared to respond. We will protect our neighborhoods, our businesses and the people of our city."

And in the meantime, Baltimore worked to rebuild and remember.

"With the eyes of the world on Baltimore City, we must ensure that any protests that take place are peaceful, and we must ensure that the process of healing our community continues. We must continue to channel our emotions into strong, positive change, so that, as a city, we truly see our young men of color before it is too late," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said in a statement. "This is the road to more equal justice in our community."

"I think it went botched, I don't feel as if the prosecution was at tight as it needed to be by virtue of the fact that the jury still had a whole lot of unanswered questions," he said. "To be clear that they were deadlocked on all four charges and got no clarity or consensus on any of them. So I hope that in this retrial they'll be more clear about how it is they present the case."

ers should remain calm. He described the mistrial as "a bump on the road to justice."

As an L.G.B.T.Q. American, I’ve spent the past four years fearing that every new day will bring some new indignation — like Ben Carson calling women like me “big hairy men,” or the time the administration considered erasing transgender individuals as a legal entity altogether. Or simply the policy enacted as Mr. Trump was on his way out the door, wiping out nondiscrimination protections for queer Americans.

I actually stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance and sang along with the national anthem. Nonetheless, the scars of the Trump years are likely to endure. A new era, alas, doesn’t mean that the last one didn’t happen.

As Mary Tyler Moore imitating Abe Lincoln might have said: “Oh, Mr. Grant. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in and to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

"He did the same thing in China. And he tried to do it in Kazakhstan and in Russia," Mr Giuliani reportedly added.

The result was a perfect storm: A U.S. government not well prepared for a pandemic, run by a president who was slow to act after his intelligence community and public health advisers were warning about the dangers.

U.S. government over 20 years of successive administrations and Congresses failed to heed the warnings by taking basic steps that would have made it easier to quickly respond to a fast spreading and lethal pathogen. They didn't set up and fund a large volunteer medical reserve corps, for example, or build surplus hospital capacity, or create a system to quickly produce and deploy virus tests.

elected officials from both parties have never fully geared up for the biological threat, former officials and public health experts told NBC News. Each new White House deprioritized the issue, only to elevate it later after some defining event led to a presidential revelation. They then belatedly scrambled to respond with ambitious plans and initiatives, which faded after a few years.

"Here's the problem: In 10 years, if there's no pandemic, then everybody starts getting a bit relaxed," said Michael Leavitt, a former Utah governor who served as secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration.

When President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Bernard wrote a transition memo. He soon learned the Bush team had eliminated his job as White House biodefense czar.

But after 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks, the newly created Department of Homeland Security hired Bernard back, with added staff, to run a bio-preparedness unit.

After Bush read a book about the 1918 influenza pandemic in 2005, he forced his administration to double down on pandemic preparation, replenishing the stockpile and creating an early warning system.

officials deserved "at least a B-plus," and Mount Sinai virologist Peter Palese called the overall response "excellent." Republicans in Congress praised the CDC for developing a vaccine in six months.

When Ebola erupted in Africa in 2014, Obama brought in an outsider, Ron Klain, to run the federal response. The effort was widely praised, as was Obama's response to the 2016 Zika virus outbreak. But afterward, the Obama administration failed to fully replenish the federal stockpiles, according to research by ProPublica and USA Today.

Under Obama and a mostly Republican-controlled Congress, public health spending declined. Per capita public health spending, adjusted for inflation, rose from $39 in 1960 to $281 in 2008, and fell by 9.3 percent from 2008 to 2016, according to a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. It has fallen further under the Trump administration, records show.

During the transition from Obama to Trump, Obama officials conducted a tabletop exercise based on a pandemic with incoming Trump aides. But in his second year as president, Trump fired his top official in charge of pandemic response, Tom Bossert, and did not replace him. Trump then allowed his national security adviser to disband the NSC's global health unit. As a result, when alerts about coronavirus began to emanate from the intelligence and public health communities, there was no senior official in the White House to coordinate a response.

"Every administration has at some point in time gotten religion and realized there is a program and dusted it off and used it," Clarke told NBC News."Except this one."

"The disease-causing microbes of the planet," wrote Garrett, "far from having been defeated, [are] posing ever greater threats to humanity."

The exercise predicted many of the problems besetting the coronavirus response – confused lines of authority, shortages of medical gear, controversies over social distancing.

They failed to set up a system that would insure the rapid deployment of tests for a novel virus. And they failed to replenish a federal stockpile that hospital officials say is both insufficiently stocked and rife with defective gear.

Those failures — and the late start on gear purchases by the Trump administration — have severely hampered the U.S. response to coronavirus, said Scott Gottlieb, who ran the FDA from 2017 to 2019.

"In no way, shape or form can anyone say that we weren't warned, that the information wasn't available and shared with them," he said. "We've known about the risk of pandemics, and war gamed them literally going back some 30 years."

In 2019, Facebook came up with a solution to offload the most difficult content moderation decisions. The company created the "Oversight Board," a quasi-judicial body that Facebook claims is independent. The Board, stocked with impressive thinkers from around the world, would issue "rulings" about whether certain Facebook content moderation decisions were correct.

the decision, which is nearly 12,000 words long, illustrates that whether Trump is ultimately allowed to return to Facebook is of limited significance. The more important questions are about the nature of the algorithm that gives people with views like Trump such a powerful voice on Facebook. 

The Oversight Board was Facebook's idea. It spent years constructing the organization, selected its chairs, and funded its endowment. But now that the Oversight Board is finally up and running and taking on high-profile cases, Facebook is choosing to ignore questions that the Oversight Board believes are essential to doing its job.

This is a key passage (emphasis added): 

duces no original reporting. But, on Facebook in April, The Daily Wire received more than double the distribution of the Washington Post and the New York Times combined:

A critical issue, as the Oversight Board suggests, is not simply Trump's posts but how those kinds of posts are amplified by Facebook's algorithms. Equally important is how Facebook's algorithms amplify false, paranoid, violent, right-wing content from people other than Trump — including those that follow Trump on Facebook.

The jurisdiction of the Oversight Board excludes both the algorithm and Facebook's business practices.

Facebook stated to the Board that it considered Mr. Trump’s “repeated use of Facebook and other platforms to undermine confidence in the integrity of the election (necessitating repeated application by Facebook of authoritative labels correcting the misinformation) represented an extraordinary abuse of the platform.” The Board sought clarification from Facebook about the extent to which the platform’s design decisions, including algorithms, policies, procedures and technical features, amplified Mr. Trump’s posts after the election and whether Facebook had conducted any internal analysis of whether such design decisions may have contributed to the events of January 6. Facebook declined to answer these questions. This makes it difficult for the Board to assess whether less severe measures, taken earlier, may have been sufficient to protect the rights of others.

Donald Trump's Facebook page is a symptom, not the cause, of the problem. Its algorithm favors low-quality, far-right content. Trump is just one of many beneficiaries.

NewsWhip is a social media analytics service which tracks which websites get the most engagement on Facebook. It just released its analysis for April and it shows low-quality right-wing aggregation sites dominate major news organizations.

The Oversight Board has no power to compel Facebook to answer. It's an important reminder that, for all the pomp and circumstance, the Oversight Board is not a court. The scope of its authority is limited by Facebook executives' willingness to play along. 

This actually understates how much better The Daily Wire's content performs on Facebook than the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Daily Wire published just 1,385 pieces of content in April compared to over 6,000 by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Each piece of content The Daily Wire published in April received 54,084 engagements on Facebook, compared to 2,943 for the New York Times and 1,973 for the Washington Post. 

It's important to note here that Facebook's algorithm is not reflecting reality — it's creating a reality that doesn't exist anywhere else. In the rest of the world, Western Journal is not more popular than the New York Times, NBC News, the BBC, and the Washington Post. That's only true on Facebook.

Facebook has made a conscious decision to surface low-quality content and recognizes its dangers.

Shortly after the November election, Facebook temporarily tweaked its algorithm to emphasize "'news ecosystem quality' scores, or N.E.Q., a secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism." The purpose was to attempt to cut down on election misinformation being spread on the platform by Trump and his allies. The result was "a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible." 

BuzzFeed reported that some Facebook staff members wanted to make the change permanent. But that suggestion was opposed by Joel Kaplan, a top Facebook executive and Republican operative who frequently intervenes on behalf of right-wing publishers. The algorithm change was quickly rolled back.

Other proposed changes to the Facebook algorithm over the years have been rejected or altered because of their potential negative impact on right-wing sites like The Daily Wire. 

The Beersheba attack came amid heightened tensions over a wave of stabbings, shootings and clashes in Israel and the West Bank which has killed at least 42 Palestinians and eight Israelis.

The exploratory well was the first in the Chukchi in 24 years.

Over the summer, protesters in kayaks unsuccessfully tried to block Arctic-bound Shell vessels in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

Shell has spent about $7 billion on Arctic offshore development on the hope that there would be deposits worth pursuing.

He said that the U.S. is concerned about "deconfliction" of airspace, but would not comment on whether the coalition has invited Russia to join the air campaign against ISIS in Syria. Davis did say that the U.S. would "welcome Russia's participation in the global anti-ISIL efforts."

Abbott is joined by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner who also announced their states would "suspend" the resettlement of Syrian refugees. The governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin made similar vows following the attacks, which killed at least 129 people.

North Carolina and Idaho governors said they oppose the admittance of Syrian refugees but have not said they wouldn't accept them. Massachusetts' governor said he wants to know more before accepting them and Nevada's governor has not said either way but said he is requesting a review from the federal government.

Clark has long contended that wariness of the Los Angeles Police Department and anger over the brutal Rodney King beating figured in the acquittal of Simpson after a five-month trial in 1995 that transfixed the world.

Clark said prosecutors amassed a "mountain of evidence" pointing to Simpson's guilt in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.

"They didn't care whether he was guilty or innocent," she told Dateline's Josh Mankiewicz. "They were going to use this case for payback."

, 'I'm not black, I'm O.J.,'"

s not exactly your civil rights firebrand."

"But at the end of the day, the evidence didn't wind up mattering because there was a fundamental large issue standing in the way of seeing the evidence," she said. "You had this enormous mistrust of everything LAPD, everything officer related."

"I think he's someone who is a danger to society," she said. "He was getting into one scrape after another after he was acquitted."

The one exception was Pakistan, where a majority — 62 percent — had no opinion about ISIS. Still, 28 percent said they had an unfavorable view of ISIS, and just nine percent said they had a favorable view.

In addition to Paris, the terror group has taken responsibility for a string of other recent attacks, including ones in Beirut and Baghdad.

In Lebanon, which was attacked by ISIS days before the survey was conducted, 99 percent of people had a very unfavorable view of the group. Israelis (97 percent) and Jordanians (94 percent) were also opposed to ISIS.

Most disconcertingly for the GOP establishment, the latest poll finds a hefty portion of its electorate, even beyond current Trump supporters, coming around to the idea of Trump as their standard-bearer. Two-thirds of GOP voters said they'd be either enthusiastic or satisfied if he captured the party's nod, while 65% said the brash billionaire had the right temperament to serve as president.

Trump's favorability rating stands at 61% — the best among the field and a nine-point jump from his 52% favorable rating in the October Monmouth poll. Only 29% of Republicans view Trump unfavorably, compared to 33% two months ago

The finding comes amid signs that Trump's call last week for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States is resonating with GOP voters. A Bloomberg Politics poll found that two in three Republicans back the ban, although an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed the Republican electorate more divided. 

What's clear, though, is that after briefly surrendering his national polling lead to Carson, Trump is back on top. Of the 12 national polls conducted since November, Trump has led in all of t hem.

Most of the 102 people died when the building where the fireworks were stored collapsed, Chandy told reporters at the temple complex.

Local TV channels broadcast images of huge clouds of white smoke billowing from the temple, as fireworks were still going off in the night sky. Successive explosions from the building storing the fireworks sent huge chunks of concrete flying as far as a half mile, according to resident Jayashree Harikrishnan.

The temple holds a competitive fireworks display every year, with different groups putting on successive light shows for thousands of devotees gathered for the last day of a seven-day festival honoring the goddess Bhadrakali, a southern Indian incarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali.

This year, district authorities denied permission for the fireworks display, Chief Minister Chandy said. advertisement The state's High Court had earlier mandated that fireworks must be stored more than 100 yards from temples — orders that were flouted at the Paravoor temple, said Loknath Behera, a top police official.

Given the election results, however, it seems that job growth may have been more of a positive for Democrats than the narrative suggested

If there had been no rescue plan and inflation were 6 percent instead of 8 percent, but gas and grocery prices had spiked anyway, would Democrats have been in a much stronger political position? Probably not. And if there were fewer jobs created by fiscal stimulus, Democrats might actually have done worse.

My point is that while the midterms showed that voters care about issues going beyond economics, they also suggested that harsh negative verdicts on Bidenomics were premature. Biden’s economy hasn’t been that bad, and it didn’t sink his party.