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Live television crosses the country for the first time, carrying a peace conference into American homes

Delegates from 48 nations gather in San Francisco as engineers send the signal east in real time.

San Francisco filled with delegates from 51 nations on September 4, 1951, ahead of the conference that would settle Japan's postwar status. That same day, engineers achieved something new: a live television signal sent from the West Coast and received, in real time, on the East Coast. Americans who had only known television as a local or regional medium watched a diplomatic gathering unfold thousands of miles away as it happened. The peace treaty itself was still four days off, but the country had just watched its first transcontinental broadcast…

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More from September 4
1862

Lee marches north; Confederate columns wade the Potomac into Maryland

The Army of Northern Virginia carries the war onto Union soil for the first time.
1941

A German submarine fires on an American destroyer; the Greer answers with depth charges

The United States is still officially neutral, but off Iceland its warships are now trading fire with Germany's navy.
1998

Two Stanford dropouts-in-waiting file the papers; Google is now a company

A hundred-thousand-dollar check written to a firm that didn't legally exist yet just cleared.
18121776 Club
A whiskey-stocked blockhouse goes up in flames as 600 warriors close in on the Wabash.
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More from Cold War America
1950

American fighters meet North Korean Yaks above Suwon; three shot down, none lost

F-82s and F-80Cs scrambled to cover civilian evacuation flights out of Seoul, two days after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel.
1950

Gaetjens heads it in; the US beats England, 1–0, in Belo Horizonte

Borghi shuts out the sport's reigning aristocracy; the American squad includes a hearse driver, a schoolteacher, and men who trained together exactly once.
1956

Eisenhower signs the highway act; 41,000 miles of interstate and $25 billion set in motion

The president who crossed the country on rutted Army roads in 1919 authorizes the largest public works project the nation has yet attempted.
1946

Blandy detonates the bomb over Bikini; the target fleet survives, and the Navy claims vindication

Test Able misses its aim point by 2,130 feet, scattering results that disappoint the Navy's critics but settle nothing about the weapon's power at sea.
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