This Week In History, May 7 – 13

Published May 12, 2017

Listen To The Earliest Known Recording Of JFK, Uncovered By Harvard After 80 Years

Young Kennedy At Desk

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumJohn F. Kennedy sits at his desk at Harvard, circa 1939.

In 1937, John F. Kennedy was simply a 20-year-old in a public speaking course at Harvard.

In class, as the future president spoke about Franklin Roosevelt’s controversial appointment of Hugo Black (a rumored Ku Klux Klan member) to the Supreme Court, his professor decided to record him.

Now, 80 years later, the recently uncovered tape has been released to the public as a part of a Harvard exhibit on the 35th president’s ties to the university.

Though the nearly two-minute audio is clouded by crackles and static, you’ll still recognize the heavy Boston accent as well as the “uh” and “ehrm”-filled speech pattern that the president would retain throughout his career.

Hear for yourself here.

“Baby Louie,” The Mysterious Dinosaur Without A Species, Finally Finds Its Family

Baby Louie Fossil

Darla Zelenitsky/University of Calgary

The fetal fossil of the dinosaur christened “Baby Louie” was discovered in China — surrounded by its brothers’ and sisters’ humongous eggs — in the early 1990s.

Since then, scientists have searched high and low for the 90-million-year-old embryo’s parents. But the species that had laid the 18-inch long, six-inch wide eggs remained a mystery.

Now, after 25 years of searching, Louie and his siblings — encased in the largest-known dinosaur eggs ever recorded — have finally been given a name: Beibeilong sinensis, or “baby dragon from China.”

Find out more here.

author
All That's Interesting
author
A New York-based publisher established in 2010, All That's Interesting brings together subject-level experts in history, true crime, and science to share stories that illuminate our world.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.