The 1973 women’s health sourcebook Our Bodies, Ourselves stems from a 1969 course created in Boston by a group of women (now known as the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective). As their course about women and their bodies evolved, so did the title. Originally titled Women and their Bodies, it became the more inclusive Women … Read more

William Randolph Hearst is alleged to have said, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” to artist Frederic Remington, who was covering conditions in Cuba at a time when newspaper publisher Hearst was interested in fomenting war with Spain, then in charge of Cuba. The Spanish-American War of 1898 resulted in part from … Read more

The first World Series between the American and National Leagues was played in 1903. The Boston Red Sox (AL) beat the Pittsburgh Pirates (NL) five games to three in a best-of-nine series.

The slogan “Africa for the Africans at home and abroad” was made famous by Jamaica-born black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), who came to New York in 1916. Garvey built a mass movement calling for an end to oppression of blacks in Africa and the United States. Convicted of mail fraud (a charge he denied), … Read more

The first president born west of the Mississippi was Herbert Hoover. President Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa.

The major political parties held their national conventions in Los Angeles only once. The Democratic Party nominated John F. Kennedy in Los Angeles in July 1960.

The 4,000-mile trade route called the Silk Road joined the ancient kingdoms of China and Rome. It started in Siam, followed the Great Wall of China to the northwest, bypassed the Takla Makan Desert, crossed the Pamir Mountains, passed through Afghanistan, and ended at the Levant. Goods were then transported across the Mediterranean Sea to … Read more

There are seven states that are part of the Tennessee Valley: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries encompasses 41,000 square miles, with the largest part in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created in 1933 to control floods, improve navigation, and bring … Read more

In Russian, Bolshevik means “those of the majority.” It was used by a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party led by V. I. Lenin after they had gained a temporary majority on the party’s central committee in 1903. The Bolsheviks believed in a disciplined, centralized party of professional revolutionaries. They called their opponents in … Read more

There are four stanzas in the song “America the Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates (1850-1929), originally published in 1895 and revised in 1904 and 1911. The stanzas begin respectively with these lines: 1. 0 beautiful for spacious skies 2. 0 beautiful for pilgrim feet 3. 0 beautiful for heroes proved 4. 0 beautiful for patriot … Read more

The self-governing colony of New Zealand gave women the right to vote on September 19, 1893. Ninety thousand women voted in their first election on November 28, 1893. Switzerland was the last Western country to grant women the vote in 1971.

The 42nd president Bill Clinton (1993— ) was born William Jefferson Blythe 4th on August 19, 1946. His father, a traveling salesman, died in a car accident three months before he was born. He received his new name when his mother married Roger Clinton, a car dealer, in 1950.

Two Philadelphia-based political periodicals, both published in February 1741, share the honor of being the first magazine created in America. One was the American Magazine, or A Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies, published by Andrew Bradford. The other was the General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, For all the British Plantations, … Read more

The U.S. national debt grew about sixfold during World War II. In 1940, the national debt was $43 billion. At the end of World War II, it was $258.7 billion.

The bank robber Jesse James was shot in the back of the head by his reward-seeking cousin, Robert Ford, on April 3, 1882. James was 34 at the time of his death.

“ARVN” stood for “The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam” in the Vietnam War, the army that South Vietnam fielded against North Vietnam.

D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1916 was the first movie shown in the White House. Woodrow Wilson was president at the time.

The subject of the 1840s folk song “On Top of Old Smoky” is one of the peaks in the Blue Ridge Mountains, located near Asheville, North Carolina.

Twenty people on President Richard Nixon’s enemies list were named in the 1971 memo released to the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. There were 200 additional enemies on a separate list. The memo proposed the use of “federal machinery,” including IRS audits and litigation, to “screw our political enemies.” The top 20 enemies included Ed … Read more

The name “America” first appeared in print in 1507 in Cosmographiae Introductio by German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller. Waldseemiiller named it in honor of explorer Amerigo Vespucci, whom he believed was the true discoverer of America. Vespucci’s claims to have been the first to reach the American mainland (in 1497) and the first to realize that … Read more

Ralph Waldo Emerson said the line, in the essay “Self-Reliance” (1841). The complete quote is, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Stephen Collins Foster, who wrote the song “Swanee River” about the South (also called “Old Folks at Home”) in 1852, was born near Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, in 1826. Daniel D. Emmett, the author of the 1859 song “Dixie” that became a Confederate anthem, was born in Ohio.

No, Abraham Lincoln didn’t write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. Judging from the many drafts of the speech that have been discovered, the speech was fashioned through the traditional method of writing and revising. It was presented on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, four … Read more