Today In White History

1920 The Spitsbergen Treaty was signed by several nations. Its purpose was to recognize the full and absolute sovereignty of Norway over the arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen (now called Svalbard).

1908 The Palau de la Música Catalana (Palace of Catalan Music), a concert hall in Barcelona, Spain, was inaugurated. The hall seats about 2,200 people and is the only auditorium in Europe that is illuminated during daylight hours entirely by natural light. In 1997, the Palau de la Música Catalana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today, more than half a million people a year attend musical performances in the Palau that range from symphonic and chamber music to jazz and Cançó (Catalan music).

1895 In Holyoke, Massachusetts, YMCA physical education director William G. Morgan invented the game of volleyball, which he originally called “Mintonette”.

1846 German engine designer and industrialist Wilhelm Maybach was born in Heilbronn. He developed light, high-speed internal combustion engines suitable for land, water and air use and became the technical director of the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, also known as Daimler Motor Company or DMG. He later founded Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH together with his son Karl in 1909, which originally manufactured Zeppelin engines and later produced large luxury vehicles, branded as Maybach.

1789 German inventor Franz Xaver Gabelsberger was born in Munich. While employed as typist by the Bavarian government, he invented a new shorthand writing system which was first fully described in the textbook Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie (1834) and became rapidly used.