Margaret Brent, who demanded the right to vote in Maryland’s colonial assembly in 1647, was the first known suffragette in American history.

Eighty-five essays were published in New York City newspapers from October 27, 1787, to August 16, 1788. Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (or The Federalist) supported the proposed Constitution and upheld the need for a strong central government.

The women’s rights group, the National Organization for Women, was founded in 1966 by Betty Friedan. Friedan was author of the 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique.

Yogi Berra was born Lawrence Peter Berra in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1925. He joined the New York Yankees in 1946.

The counter-cultural gathering for 20,000 hippies and flower children was held in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, in January 1967. Timothy Leary and poet Allen Ginsberg were among the speakers.

When Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton restructured the government’s miscellaneous debts into more or less their current form in 1791, the national debt was $75 million, or about $18 per person, given the population at that time. In 191, it was nearly 50,000 times larger. The national debt in 1991 was $3.7 trillion, or … Read more

Formally known as the “United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” the Shakers sect got its name from the involuntary trembling of its members during moments of religious ecstasy. Founded in England by Mother Ann Lee, the Shakers came to America in 1774. Lee’s followers practiced celibacy, communal ownership, and sacred dancing. By the … Read more

It was during the Lincoln administration in the middle of the Civil War that the first federal tax on income was levied by Congress, in the Internal Revenue Act of 1862. The rates ranged from 3 to 5 percent. Congress eliminated the tax in 1872.

The most recent amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18. The amendment was ratified on July 1, 1971, in response to the demand of young Americans that those old enough to be drafted be old enough to vote.

According to the 1990 census, Americans of Chinese origin (1.6 million) outnumber those of Japanese origin (848,000) by almost two to one.

Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the “Gerry” behind gerrymandering. In 1812, when Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, legislators from his party redrew district lines to favor their representatives. Their rivals, the Federalists, blamed Gerry for the redistricting (though he was actually opposed to it). A Federalist cartoonist portrayed … Read more

No number of Supreme Court justices is specified in the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court began with six justices, rose to a peak of ten during the Lincoln years, and settled at nine in 1869.

Timothy Leary was fired from Harvard. He and fellow professor Richard Alpert were fired for LSD experiments with students.

After World War I, the British Empire, or Commonwealth, covered over 14 million square miles and dominated 450 million people. It encompassed a quarter of the world’s population and land surface. Among the countries under its dominion were: Antigua, Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, Iraq, Ireland, and Pakistan.

The eastern branch of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific, employed mainly Irish workers; the western branch, the Central Pacific, employed mainly Chinese workers. The two work crews met at Promontory, Utah, in May 1869, completing the transcontinental link.

President Calvin Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, called out the state militia to break the strike by Boston police officers in 1919. The praise Coolidge received helped get him elected as Warren G. Harding’s vice-president in 1920. Coolidge served as president from 1923 to 1929.

The traditional baseball-only park at Camden Yards opened in Baltimore in April 1992. Influenced by big-league parks of the early 1900s like Ebbets Field, Fenway Park, and Wrigley Field, Oriole Park has an assymetrical playing field and natural grass turf. Its location, Camden Yards, was an important railroad center and in the mid-19th century a … Read more

James Buchanan (1857-1861) was the only U.S. president that was a lifelong bachelor. He had been engaged in 1819 to Ann Caroline Coleman, but she died of an overdose of laudanum before the two were married.

Ronald Reagan served as host and commercial spokesman on the CBS dramatic anthology “General Electric Theater” from 1954 to 1962. The show aired Sundays from 9:00-9:30 P.M. Reagan occasionally starred in the dramas showcased in the series, including “Money and the Minister,” where he acted opposite his wife, Nancy Davis.

The first American college football game took place on November 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers beat Princeton, six goals to four. The rules used were actually those for soccer. It was not until the 1870s that rugby rules began to prevail in the sport, making the game more like modern football.

West Virginia was part of Virginia when that state seceded from the Union in 1861. The delegates of 40 western counties formed their own government and seceded from Virginia to join the Union side. These counties entered the Union as the state of West Virginia in 1863.

Seventy-five percent of the population of New Yorkers in 1930 consisted of foreigners and their children. Italians and Eastern European Jews were the largest groups.

Arkansas newspaper columnist and long-time Clinton opponent Paul Greenberg was the first to apply the name “Slick Willie” to then-governor of Arkansas and future president Bill Clinton.

George Eastman, a New York bank clerk, developed the first hand-held roll-film camera in 1888. The cost was $25.

During his first term (1861-65), Abraham Lincoln’s vice-president was Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. During his second term (1865), it was Andrew Johnson of North Carolina, who succeeded Lincoln upon his assassination.

A 1908 race riot in Springfield, Massachusetts, reported by liberal New York journalist W.E. Walling inspired him to help found a national organization to speak out on behalf of equality for African-Americans. After a meeting with other concerned citizens in his apartment, including social worker Mary W. Ovington, the National Association for the Advancement of … Read more

Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America (1835, 1840) said of Americans, “If I were asked . . . to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women”.

The Courant, published in Hartford, Connecticut, since 1764, is the oldest U.S. newspaper still being published.

The people of Guam are U.S. citizens but do not vote in national elections. The U.S. acquired Guam from Spain in 1898. Since 1950, the island (the largest of the Marianas Islands, located east of the Philippines) has been self-governing.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Born in 1737, he was 95 years old when he died in 1832.

No, it was designed by Francis Hopkinson, a naval flag designer, who was never reimbursed for his services by the U.S. government. And there is no record of Betsy Ross’s commission to sew the flag.

The comic book superhero Superman died fighting the villain Doomsday in Superman No. 75, the January 1993 issue that went on sale on November 11, 1992.

Theodore Roosevelt, who invited Booker T. Washington, was the first president to invite an African-American man to the White House.

The gold and silver ore deposit called the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859 in what is now Virginia City, Nevada.

The first labor union in America was the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers), formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1794.

There were between 1,490 and 1,635 deaths in the April 19, 1912, disaster when the Titanic sank, 100 of whom were women.