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19281776 Club

Chillicothe bakery sells the first machine-sliced loaves; Rohwedder's invention reaches the public on his 48th birthday

The Kleen Maid Sliced Bread hits shelves today, cut by Otto Rohwedder's automatic slicer, as the company calls it "the greatest forward step in baking since bread was wrapped."

Before 1928, every American loaf came whole, and every household sliced its own. On July 7 of that year, the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri, sold the first loaves cut by Otto Rohwedder's automatic bread-slicing machine, on Rohwedder's 48th birthday. The company advertised its Kleen Maid Sliced Bread as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped." Within five years, roughly 80 percent of bread sold in the United States came pre-sliced…

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More from July 7
1846

Sloat raises the flag over Monterey; Mexico's California falls without a shot

Sailors and marines from three warships walk ashore unopposed, ending both Mexican rule and the weeks-old California Republic declared at Sonoma.
1898

McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution; Hawaii is annexed, and its $4 million debt with it

The House voted 209 to 91 and the Senate 42 to 21, with a Pacific war making the islands' coaling station and anchorage look essential to Washington.
1958

Eisenhower signs Alaska into the union; the territory has waited forty years for this moment

The House voted 210-166, the Senate 64-20; Alaska is cleared to become the 49th state, though formal admission is not yet complete.
19411776 Club
The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, sailed from Charleston via Argentia, begins disembarkation on an island the U.S. has no treaty obligation to defend.
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Read the full July 7 edition →Everything that happened on July 7 →
More from The World Wars
1942

Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns

Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
1942

Congress makes the Pledge of Allegiance official, fifty years after a magazine wrote it

The wording, unchanged from Bellamy's 1892 Columbus Day campaign, is now federal law, with the United States seven months into war.
1944

Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act; veterans to get mortgages, tuition, and a year's pay

Congress voted unanimously, sixteen days after D-Day, with the WWI bonus debacle and the 1932 Bonus Army march still fresh in every lawmaker's memory.
1945

Flag rises on Okinawa; Ushijima and his chief of staff are dead by their own hand

Eighty-two days of cave fighting, monsoon rain, and kamikaze attacks end with organized Japanese resistance broken and ninety miles of runway in Allied hands.
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