Thanks for hanging out with us today as we celebrate one of our favorite holidays- Radio Day! We celebrated today by sharing some history of the radio and sharing some stories about how radio has had an impact on our lives!

Radio waves were originally discovered by one Heinrich Hertz, following on the heels of his discovery of electromagnetic radiation. While experiments were performed in using this energy to transmit information, it wasn’t until 1890 that the word radio was first applied, when the radio-conducteur was invented by French Physicist Édouard Branly. Previous to this all forms of communication using this discovery was known as wireless communication, but eventually radio spread across the world and became the go-to term. Radio quickly spread to find applications in every conceivable venue, from transmitting information, to broadcasting music, and even serving as a way of transmitting stories. Long before there was TV, there was Radio Theater, (incidentally, this also brought along the creation of Foley artists, but that’s another story entirely).

Radio Day is a great opportunity to remember all those years we spent traveling with Walkman, and enjoying the best and newest music broadcast from your local radio station. Set aside your CD’s and MP3 players, and remember when you discovered new music by what they played on the radio. Dig out that old boom box and drag it down to your local beach or park to reconnect to your local radio community, and remember what the world was like before whatever music we wanted was at our fingertips.

Our Who-Knew Question for today was…
Q: What were the call letters for the first radio station?
A: KDKA
The first commercial radio station was KDKA in Pittsburgh, which went on the air in the evening of Nov. 2, 1920, with a broadcast of the returns of the Harding-Cox presidential election. The success of the KDKA broadcast and of the musical programs that were initiated thereafter motivated others to install similar stations; a total of eight were operating in the United States by the end of 1921.
Congratulations to Matthew who guessed correctly!

We also talked about Tortellini Day in our Who-Knew Food Corner!
Here’s all sorts of recipies for Tortellini to make in this cold weather!

Thanks for listening and making it possible for us to do what we do!
– Lilly and Hannah