June 30 · This Day in America
Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act and President Theodore Roosevelt signs it the same day, along with the Meat Inspection Act. For the first time the federal government claims the power to say that what is in the bottle must be on the label, that food crossing state lines cannot be poisoned or filthy, and that patent medicines cannot quietly be laced with cocaine and morphine. The push had been building for years, but the thing that broke it open was a novel: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, whose descriptions of Chicago packing houses turned the nation's stomach within months of publication. Sinclair aimed at the workers' plight and hit the country's lunch instead. The law is imperfect and will be strengthened many times, and it grows into the Food and Drug Administration. But June 30, 1906 is the day America decided that buying dinner should not be an act of blind faith.
Source: www.fda.gov
Also on this day · 1859
Some twenty-five thousand people arrive by train and steamer to watch the Frenchman Charles Blondin step onto a rope eleven hundred feet long, strung a hundred and sixty feet above the gorge below Niagara Falls. No net, no wire to hold. He crosses. The crowd loses its mind. Over the season he does it again blindfolded, on stilts, carrying a man on his back, and once stopping midway to cook an omelet over the roaring water.
Source: www.smithsonianmag.com