President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon on September 8, 1974, 30 days after coming to office on August 9. The unconditional pardon exonerated Nixon of any crimes he might have committed as president.

The inexpensive, crystallized cocaine called crack was first noted in urban areas on the west coast of America in 1983.

Reported quarterly, the GNP (Gross National Product) of the U.S. represents the total market value of American goods and services bought for final use during a one-year period. Considered the most comprehensive measure of U.S. economic activity, it includes consumer purchases, private investment, and government spending.

The $100 bill is the largest denomination of U.S. currency now being issued. Issuance of larger denominations stopped in 1969, though some of the bigger bills are still in circulation, all the way up to the $100,000 bill featuring Woodrow Wilson’s picture.

“American Independent” candidate George Wallace, with his running mate Curtis LeMay, got 13.6 percent of the popular vote and 8.6 percent of the electoral vote. Richard Nixon won against both Wallace and Hubert Humphrey. How many electoral votes did independent candidate John Anderson get in 1980? None, but John Anderson did win 6.6 percent of … Read more

The town of Las Vegas was a sparsely populated mining and ranching community before it became a center for gambling. Gambling did take place in the town throughout most of its history, but Las Vegas did not become known as a mecca for gambling until after the Flamingo Hotel was opened in 1946 by gangster … Read more

The U.S. frontier officially closed in 1890. That was the year in which the Bureau of the Census announced there was no difference between frontier and settlement, meaning that the frontier was now closed.

Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan’s first wife (married 1940, divorced 1948), is Maureen Reagan’s mother. Nancy Davis Reagan (married 1952) is her stepmother.

The movie actor Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) was a veteran of World War I. While serving in the Navy, Bogart was wounded in the shelling of the ship Leviathan. The injury resulted in the scarred and partially paralyzed upper lip that gave him his trademark lisp and tight-set mouth.

The WIN in the WIN buttons stood for Whip Inflation Now.

The 1882 law, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was enacted to preserve jobs for native-born Americans, suspended Chinese immigration to the U.S. for ten years. Renewed from time to time in the 20th century, it was completely suspended in 1965.

At the three-day festivities celebrating survival through the winter, many foods were served, but turkey was not one of them. The menu included: venison, duck, goose, seafood, eels, white bread, corn bread, leeks, watercress and various other greens, wild plums, dried berries, and wine.

The Shawnee political and military leader Tecumseh (1768-1813) fought against the U.S. as a British brigadier-general in the War of 1812. Born in what is now western Ohio, he had resisted U.S. encroachment on Native American lands but was defeated at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. When the War of 1812 broke out, Tecumseh … Read more

The inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery reads: “Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier Known But to God.” Arlington has been a military cemetery since 1864.

Vice-President Dan Quayle’s version of the United Negro College Fund slogan was “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” Quayle was speaking at an NAACP luncheon in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 15, 1989.

Of 76 million Americans, 87 percent were white, 11.4 percent were black, and nearly 2 percent were “other.” According to the 1990 census, of 248.7 million Americans, 80.3 percent are white, 12.1 percent are black, and nearly 8 percent are “other.” Asians and Pacific Islanders now represent 2.9 percent of the population, compared to less … Read more

Tavern-on-the-Green in Central Park was built in 1870, not as a restaurant but to house sheep and their shepherd and his family. In 1934, the sheep were moved to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and the building was converted to a restaurant. Glass pavilions were added to the original brick structure from 1975 to 1976.

Wisconsin’s Victor Berger, elected in 1911, was the first Socialist elected to the U.S. Senate.

In the late 1800s, New York’s Ladies’ Mile was Manhattan’s high-class shopping district. This equivalent of Fifth Avenue or Fifty-seventh Street ran from Eighth Street to Twenty-third Street, bound on the east by Broadway and on the west by Sixth Avenue. These areas are now parts of the more residential neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and … Read more

Scottish-born American privateer John Paul Jones said, “I have not yet begun to fight” in 1779, during the Revolutionary War.

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve”, when the Republicans tried to draft him for president upon his retirement from the army in 1880.

The Berlin Airlift lasted for ten months in 1948 and 1949. 1,000 planes of the Western powers flew food, fuel, and other necessities to the two million civilians in West Berlin, then under a Soviet blockade.

Born in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68) traveled north to receive his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University in 1955. He returned to the South to become pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he met Rosa Parks and was chosen to lead the bus boycott. An advocate of … Read more

The East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., built in 1978, is the work of architect I. M. Pei.

The Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, was America’s first national monument.