MOMENTS IN TIME

The History Channel

• On March 6, 1899, the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registers Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co. In its primitive form, the active ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine.

• On March 10, 1902, in the case of Edison v. American Mutoscope Company, the U.S. Court of Appeals rules that despite his claims, Thomas Edison did not invent the movie camera. The court did, however, admit that Edison invented the sprocket system that moved perforated film through the movie camera.

• On March 9, 1913, English author Virginia Woolf delivers the manuscript of her first novel, “The Voyage Out,” to her publisher. In 1941, fearful for her own mental state and afraid of the coming world war, she filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself.

• On March 7, 1923, the New Republic publishes Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The poem begins with the famous line “Whose woods these are, I think I know.” Although Frost never graduated from a university, he had collected 44 honorary degrees before he died in 1963.

• On March 5, 1963, the Hula-Hoop, a hip-swiveling toy that became a huge fad across America when it was first marketed by Wham-O in 1958, is patented by the company’s co-founder, Arthur “Spud” Melin. An estimated 25 million Hula-Hoops were sold in its first four months of production alone.

• On March 11, 1970, author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, dies. The crime-solving attorney Perry Mason appeared in numerous novels and became the star of a top-rated TV show starting in 1957. The show starred Raymond Burr as the titular hero and ran for nine years.

• On March 8, 1986, “Mask,” starring Eric Stoltz and Cher, opens in theaters. Cher, who had launched a serious acting career with her appearance in Robert Altman’s film “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” in 1982, received the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in “Mask.”

(c) 2012 King Features Synd., Inc.