Jell-O ad by Maxfield Parrish
As National Jell-O Week (the second full week of February) draws to an end, “16 Fascinating Facts About Jell-O.”
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As we marvel at a dish that’s equally-appropriately approached with a spoon or a fork, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that the first-ever 9-1-1 call was placed by Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite, from Haleyville City Hall, to U.S. Rep. Tom Bevill, at the city’s police station.
Emergency numbers date back to 1937, when the British began to use 999. But experience showed that three repeated digits led to many mistaken/false alarms. The Southern California Telephone Co. experimented in 1946 in Los Angeles with 116 for emergencies.
But 911– using just the first and last digits available– yielded the best results, and went into widespread use in the 1980s when 911 was adopted as the standard emergency number across most of the country under the North American Numbering Plan.
