Prohibition of the manufacture and sale of liquor was known as the “Noble Experiment”. It was put into effect by the 18th Amendment in 1920 and lasted until repeal by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

In 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. for $5 million. In addition, Spain gave up its claim to the Oregon Territory while the U.S. recognized that Texas belonged to Spain. Within three decades, in 1845, the U.S. had annexed Texas too.

Europeans discovered Alaska in the 18th century. Vitus Bering, a Dane working for the Russians, and Alexei Chirikov discovered Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in 1741.

Peggy Noonan created the phrase “a thousand points of light”, in a speech she wrote for presidential nominee George Bush at the 1988 Republican Convention.

The feminist writer Margaret Fuller was 30 when Ralph Waldo Emerson asked her to edit his Transcendentalist periodical in 1840. During her life she also worked as the foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune and wrote the influential collection of essays, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), which served as an inspiration for the … Read more

A black man from Haiti named Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable (1745-1818) founded the city of Chicago. In 1772, Du Sable founded a settlement called Eschikagou on the north bank of the Chicago River. However, he was not officially recognized as the city’s founder until 1968.

The company IBM, now known as International Business Machines was originally founded as the Computing Tabulating Recording Company in 1911.

The name for the tribe Crow in their own Siouan language is Absaroke, meaning “crow, sparrowhawk, or bird people.” The French called these people of the Rocky Mountains gens des corbeaux, from which the English “Crow” is translated.

The phrase “rub out” first appeared not among gangsters in the Roaring ’20s but among the rugged fur traders and trappers of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in the early 19th century. It came into more widespread use in World War I.

The first American restaurant to feature a menu in French and English was the influential continental restaurant Delmonico’s, which appeared in New York City in 1837. Although now in a different New York City location, it still operates today.

In 1920, the Yankees paid the Boston Red Sox $125,000 for the Babe.

Ronald Reagan made the joke about bombing the Soviet Union a few minutes before his weekly radio broadcast on August 11, 1984. He said, “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to announce I just signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

The subject of the Civil War marching song of the same name, goober peas were peanuts, one of the few foods soldiers in the South could find to eat.

It happened in 1913 by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

The women’s rights leader Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) did not live to see the 19th Amendment adopted in 1920 guaranteeing women the right to vote. But Anthony had voted illegally in a Rochester, New York, election in 1872, and refused to pay the fine that followed.

In the struggle between France and England for control of North America (1754-63), most, but not all, Indians fought on the French side. They included the Abnaki of Maine, the Delaware and Shawnee of Pennsylvania, and the Potawatomi and Ottawa of Michigan and Wisconsin. The English relied on the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

William C. Durant found the General Motors Corporation in 1908, in Flint, Michigan.

Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Western allies and Russia at 2:41 A.M., French time, on Monday, May 7, 1945. In the United States, this was 8:41 P.M., Eastern Wartime, on Sunday, May 6, 1945. Japan unconditionally surrendered through a note delivered to the U.S. State Department at 6:10 P.M. on Tuesday, August 14, 1945.

Only one president has served as speaker of the House of Representatives James K. Polk (president 1845-49). He was speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839.

The name of the first slave ship built in the English colonies was the Desire, launched from Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1637. Until then, only European ships transported slaves to the colonies.

Abigail Van Buren (born Pauline Esther “Popo” Friedman) and Ann Landers (born Esther Pauline “Eppie” Friedman) are identical twins born on July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1955, Eppie took over as Ruth Crowley’s replacement on the Chicago Sun-Times “Dear Ann Landers” advice column. In 1956, the other sister began writing under the … Read more

Sir Francis Drake (1545-1596) was the first man to sail around the earth in 1580. His predecessor, Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521), started such a trip but died before the last of his ships finished the voyage.

According to Forbes magazine’s 1992 list of richest Americans, they are: William Henry Gates 3rd ($6.3 billion) John Werner Kluge ($5.5 billion) Helen Walton, S. Robson Walton, Jim C. Walton, John T. Walton, Alice L. Walton (tied at $5.1 billion each) Gates is the founder of Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal computer software company. … Read more

With lyrics altered to reflect the country, “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” is called “Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean.” Written by Englishmen David T. Shaw and Thomas a Becket, the “Columbia” version (referring to an alternate name for the United States) was first published in 1843 under the name “Columbia, the Land of … Read more

One U.S. president did serve in the Confederate government. John Tyler (president 1841-45) represented Virginia in the Confederate House of Representatives beginning in 1861.

The first state to secede from the Union was South Carolina, which seceded on December 20, 1860, in response to the November election of Abraham Lincoln as president.