February 9, 1934 – Iowa Historian – Professor Benjamin F. Shambaugh (above left) – is scheduled to be the featured speaker on Professor A. Craig Baird’s first edition of his WSUI radio show – Forensic Forum.

In 1925, Speech Professor A. Craig Baird came to Iowa City and continued a tradition he had started at Bates College in Maine – taking his debate teams overseas to compete with Oxford University students in England. Over the next 45 years, Baird built the modern debate program at Iowa, wrote and/or edited over 36 books on public speaking, and became known world-wide as “The Father of International Debate.”

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Meet Lulu Johnson – Johnson County’s New Namesake. A graduate of SUI – BA in 1929 and a Masters in History (1930) – Johnson went on to distinguish herself as the second African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in History, and the first to receive a Doctorate of any kind in Iowa! In June 2021, Johnson County, Iowa did something that rarely happens – they officially changed their eponyn, removing a racist slave-holding southerner in favor of this amazing African-American Iowa farm girl who spent her life teaching us things we all need to know.

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February 8, 1980 – St. Mary’s Catholic Church & Rectory – located at 220 E. Jefferson Street – is designated on the National Register of Historic Places.

The first Mass in Iowa City was celebrated by a frontier missionary, the Rev. Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli on December 20, 1840. It was attended by 28 people in a building that doubled as a private home and a hotel owned by Ferdinand Haberstroh. St. Mary’s parish was established by Mazzuchelli in 1841, named St. Mary of the Assumption, and a small building was largely completed by 1842. The current 1869 church was built around the existing one, which then was demolished from the inside and carried out piece by piece. The beautiful 140-foot steeple on the new facility was added in 1874.

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