Detroit is French for “the strait.” It refers to the strait formed by the Detroit River between Lake Erie and lake St. Clair. Originally founded as a French fort and trading post in 1701, Detroit was incorporated as a city in 1815.

Arnold Palmer was the first U.S. professional male golfer to win over $1 million during his career, in 1963. No U.S. professional female golfer earned this much money until Kathy Wentworth in 1981.

“What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar” was uttered by Thomas R. Marshall, vice-president under Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), in response to a senator’s long speech about the country’s needs.

There are more than 97 million items are in the collections of the Library of Congress, including books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and records.

The challenger Luis Firpo, known as the “Wild Bull of the Pampas,” was Argentine. Dempsey defeated him in a brutal fight that ended less than a minute into the second round at New York’s Polo Grounds on September 4, 1923. The event is immortalized in the 1924 painting by George Bellows, The Dempsey-Firpo Fight, which … Read more

1876 Centennial Exposition—Philadelphia 1901—Pan-American Exposition—Buffalo, New York 1905—Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition—Portland, Oregon 1926—Sesquicentennial Exposition—Philadelphia 1933-34–Century of Progress International Exposition—Chicago 1935 California Pacific International Exposition—San Di- ego 1939-40—New York World’s Fair—New York City 1939-40—Golden Gate International Exposition—Treasure Island, San Francisco 1962—Century 21 Exposition—Seattle 1964-65—New York World’s Fair—New York City 1974—Expo ’74—Spokane, Washington 1982—World’s Fair—Knoxville, Tennessee … Read more

Dixville Notch, New Hampshire is the first election district to vote and report its returns in presidential elections.

The first president to hold a doctorate was Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), the 28th president. He received a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1886. His thesis was entitled “Congressional Government, a Study in American Politics.”

A vial containing the air representing Thomas Alva Edison’s last exhalation is a prime draw at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Originally known as the Edison Institute for Technology in honor of Ford’s inventor friend, the museum also includes a slab of concrete with Edison’s footprints in addition to more general Americana like … Read more

The first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Connecticut, on June 21, 1954.

Benjamin Harrison, Republican, in 1888, was the last president to be elected without winning the largest share of the popular vote. Fewer ballots were cast for him at the polling booth than for Democrat Grover Cleveland. But Harrison carried the day by winning 233 votes in the Electoral College to Cleveland’s 168.

Idaho-born sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941), with the help of his son, carved the faces on Mount Rushmore from 1927 to 1941. The faces are those of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington.

The State of Tennessee, represented by prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, won its 1925 case against John Thomas Scopes in the Scopes trial. John Thomas Scopes was a high-school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. Despite the efforts of defense attorney Clarence Darrow, Scopes was convicted and fined $100. However, an appeals … Read more

Thirteen students were shot by Ohio National Guard troops under the command of General Robert H. Canterbury during the antiwar demonstration at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Nine were wounded and four were killed: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder. Of those four, only Krause and Miller had been demonstrating. … Read more

The “The Star-Spangled Banner” has four stanzas, all ending with “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” Congress made it the national anthem in 1931.

The town brought to life in the 19th-century cowboy song “The Streets of Laredo” is located in Texas.

Oliver North served no prison time. The Marine colonel at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal was convicted in 1989 of falsifying and destroying records, accepting an illegal gratuity, and obstructing Congress, but was not given prison time. Instead, he was given a three-year suspended sentence and ordered to perform 1,200 hours of community service. … Read more

More than 36 percent of the nation’s net worth (assets minus debts) was held by the top one percent of households in 1989, up from below 20 percent in 1979, according to a 1992 study. The study shows that the wealthiest few increased their share of the nation’s total wealth as much during the Reagan … Read more

The tallest hills in San Francisco are Twin Peaks, Mount Davidson, and Mount Sutro, all more than 900 feet tall. The best known hills, Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill, are smaller, between 300 and 400 feet.

John Sparkman in 1952 and Estes Kefauver in 1956, were Adlai Stevenson’s running mates in the 1952 and 1956 elections. Stevenson lost both times to Dwight Eisenhower and his running mate Richard Nixon.

The American-born dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), long an advocate of radical politics, went to Moscow in 1921 at the invitation of Anatoly Lunacharsky, Soviet commissar of enlightenment. In Moscow, she founded a school and married poet Sergei Essenin.

Naval officer Stephen Decatur, hero of campaigns against Barbary Coast privateers and the War of 1812 said, “Our country, right or wrong”. Decatur made his famous remark in a toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1815: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right. But our … Read more

President John Tyler was known as “His Accidency”, because he moved up from the vice-presidency through the accident of President William Henry Harrison’s death from pneumonia in 1841.

The Spanish-American War was called “that splendid little war” by then U.S. Secretary of State John Hays.