Today in history—March 14

1794: Eli Whitney receives a patent for the cotton gin, which will make raising the crop in the American South profitable.

1813: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Philo Bradley, who before going on the bench will be a prominent patent and commercial lawyer, is born in New York.

1883: Karl Heinrich Marx, the bourgeois champion of the proletariat, dies at London.

1900: Congress passes the Gold Standard Act, which puts the U.S. on the gold standard.  Duh.

1923: The first-ever live broadcast of an ice hockey game occurs in Regina, Saskatchewan.

1932: Inventor and industrialist George Eastman blows his brains out with a pistol, leaving his estate to the University of Rochester. He called his company “Kodak” because he liked the letter “K.”

1989: The U.S. bans importation of “assault rifles” by anyone except the government. Since no one can really define “assault rifle,” the ban has little effect.