Stoplight Spotlight | Red Curtain

AND NOW LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

On this day in 1923 African-American inventor Garrett Augustus Morgan — born in 1877, the son of former slaves — is granted the first patent (U.S. patent No. 1,475,024) for an electric automatic three-way traffic signal, an invention inspired by his witnessing the collision of an automobile and a horse-drawn carriage. The Father of the Stoplight, Morgan later sold the patented technology to the General Electric Corporation for $40,000, a huge sum at the time. Shortly before his death in 1963 he was awarded a citation for his traffic signal by the US Government.

Today in 1989 the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Czechoslovakia comprises an estimated half-million assembled peaceful protesters, up from 200,000 the day before.

On this date in 1992 a fire breaks out in Queen Elizabeth's English estate, Windsor Castle, raging for 15 hours and causing serious damage. An investigation determines that the blaze was ignited after a spotlight came into contact with drapery.

Lastly, but not leastly, on this day in 1945 the Nuremberg Trials begin against 24 Nazi war criminals, for many of whom it is, ultimately, "curtains."

These varied events converge unwittingly in a conceptual way with the design on this Show Black T-Shirt, available in the Alcreations CafePress.com shop.

[To purchase items click on the photograph or colored text links.]