History

The military nickname “G.I.” stood for Government Issue. The term was introduced during World War II.

Andrew Jackson (served 1829-37), who shot and killed Nashville lawyer Charles Dickinson in 1806, is the only U.S. president known to have killed a man in a duel. The duel resulted from Dickinson’s impugning of the honor of Jackson’s wife, Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson.

The Toll House behind the chocolate-chip cookies known as Toll House cookies was a Massachusetts eatery called the Toll House Restaurant, run by Ruth Wakefield, who popularized the cookies in the early 20th century. She later sold the rights to the name “Toll House Cookies” to the Nestle Company.

Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Massachusetts, was the first person executed for witchcraft in America, on June 15, 1648. This was nearly five decades before the Salem witch trials of 1692– 93.

Robert Jenkins was a British sailor smuggling slaves to the Spanish colonies in defiance of the Spanish trade monopoly. A Spanish captain caught Jenkins and cut off one of his ears. Jenkins was displayed in the House of Commons by people seeking to ignite a war with Spain. The war that followed from 1739 to … Read more

Duke University was founded in 1838 as the Union Institute and Randolph College, and renamed Trinity College in 1851. The Durham, North Carolina, institution became Duke University in 1924 in commemoration of a $40 million donation from tobacco mogul James B. Duke.

Supreme Court received the disparaging epithet “Nine Old Men” when they opposed President Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms during the Great Depression. The Nine Old Men was the title of a 1936 book on the Supreme Court by Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen.

Fifty-one nations, including the U.S., signed the U.N. charter in 1945, to join the United Nations. The charter was framed at a conference in San Francisco.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was originally scheduled to take place in Wallkill, New York, but had to be moved to nearby Bethel when Wallkill residents, nervous about the huge turnout, backed out of the deal. The event, held August 15-17, 1969, brought together about 400,000 people. Performers included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joan … Read more

Sophia Smith (1796-1870) founded the Smith College for women. After receiving an inheritance upon the death of her brother, a wealthy stockbroker, she was advised by a clergyman to use the money to begin an institution of higher education for women. Plans were drawn up in 1868, and in 1871, Smith College was founded.

The Dust Bowl was the name given to the region of the Great Plains wracked by drought in 1934-37 during the Great Depression. It contained portions of several states, including Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico.

The “Hurricane of Independence” was a hurricane that swept from North Carolina to Nova Scotia from September 2-9, 1775, killing over 4,000 people. It received its name because it coincided with the first stages of the American War of Independence.

Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) led about 200 Sioux in the 70-day occupation of the town, site of the 1890 battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. AIM demanded redress of American Indians’ grievances against the federal government.

Great Britain, with $3.1 billion, received the most aid under the Marshall Plan; Iceland, with $32 million, received the least. The aid came in the form of grants, food, goods, and tariff reductions.

The Great Compromise was the agreement reached at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in 1787 to give each state two senators and to apportion seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of population. The agreement satisfied both the smaller, less populous states, which wanted all states to be represented equally, and the larger states, … Read more

The motto Annuit Coeptis above the eye on the dollar bill means, “He [God] Favored Our Undertakings.” The eye represents the all-seeing deity. The pyramid symbolizes strength; it is unfinished to suggest the work ahead.

Warren G. Harding was the first president to speak over the radio, on June 14, 1922.

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.

Statesman Henry Clay (1777-1852) said, “I would rather be right than be president”.

There were several practical reasons why the young Columbia graduate student Margaret Mead decided to do field work on Samoan adolescence. She thought her fluency in French and German would help her in the Polynesian island chain, and there were regular steamship stops there. More important, she wanted to know how much of human behavior … Read more

Born as Malcolm Little (1925-65), Malcolm X served six years in prison for burglary, beginning at age 21. While in prison, he joined the Nation of Islam and took the Muslim name El-Hajj Malik ElShabazz and the public name of Malcolm X. Malcolm became a vocal opponent of white racism and advocate for black rights. … Read more

William Travis, commander of the Alamo, was not from Texas but from South Carolina. A lawyer and lieutenant-colonel, Travis was one of many Southerners who responded to Texas’s call for volunteers to help in their revolution against Mexico, which began in 1835. Southerners sympathized with the rebels because the province of Texas was a slave-owning … Read more

In 1913, Illinois stonemason Charles Pajean brought the toy he created for his children to the American Toy Fair in New York City. Within one year, 1 million Tinkertoy sets had been sold.

Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest man to become president of the U.S. Roosevelt was a 42 year-old vice president when he took office upon the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. At 43, John F. Kennedy was the youngest man to be elected president.

Until the late 19th century, Americans used sales catalogues, newspapers, pamphlets, fliers, or whatever other paper they could find for toilet paper. The materials were kept in the bathroom or outhouse, where they provided reading matter as well as sanitation. Toilet paper in rolls, sold in plain brown wrappers, was first marketed in the U.S. … Read more

Hattie T. Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, was elected to the Senate in 1932, making her the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Wendell Holmes never served as chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was an associate justice from 1902 to 1932, during the terms of four different chief justices.

The renowned American painter Winslow Homer (1836-1910) worked for Harper’s Weekly during the Civil War. One of his first important paintings, Prisoners from the Front in 1866, drew on this experience.

Richard Henry Dana was a college student at Harvard before he shipped out as a sailor in the voyage recounted in Two Years Before the Mast (1840). Dana (1815-82) suffered eye problems that led him to go out to sea in hopes of improving his health. Working as a common seaman, he traveled around South … Read more

President William Henry Harrison died in 1841 after only 31 days in office. James A. Garfield was a close second. In 1881, he died of a gunshot wound after only six months in office.

The first party platform was negotiated by the Democratic Party for the 1840 election.

Harpers Ferry is in what is now West Virginia (then part of Virginia). John Brown led a party of 22 in seizing the U.S. arsenal there in October 1859. Brown, an abolitionist born in Torrington, Connecticut, planned to arm the local slaves and start a full-scale rebellion, but his plan was foiled by state and … Read more

The Catholic anarchist and pacifist newspaper The Catholic Worker founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin has been published since May 1933. The cost, then and now, is one cent per copy.

Needle Park, the infamous hangout in New York for addicts and dealers in the 1960s and 1970s was Verdi Square Park. It is named for the Italian composer, and occupies a triangular area between Seventy-second and Seventy-third Streets at Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

The worst earthquake east of the Mississippi River occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 31, 1886, and registered what would have been 6.6 on the Richter scale. Sixty people were killed.

Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) coined the term “birth control” in 1914. Sanger founded the first birth control clinic in the U.S., in 1916. In 1921, she established the American Birth Control League, predecessor to the Planned Parenthood Federation.

John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959, often expressed his belief that the containment policy of the Truman years did not go far enough. In the 1952 presidential campaign, he called for a “rollback” of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the “unleashing” of Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek. … Read more

The first U.S. census was taken in 1790. It included six questions and recorded a population of 3,929,214 persons, of whom 3,172,006 were white and 757,208 were black. The white population was evenly divided between males and females-1,615,434 males, 1,556,572 females. Virginia was the most populous state, with 747,610 inhabitants.

Benjamin Franklin performed the kite experiment that proved lightning is electricity in 1751.

William H. Bonney (1859-81), the New York-born symbol of the outlaw West also known as Billy the Kid, was shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett. Barely into his twenties, Bonney had become infamous as a cattle rustler in frontier New Mexico.

Bar manager Catherine Genovese was stabbed to death in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964. Her neighbors looked on from their windows but ignored her calls for help. The case became a paradigm for urban lawlessness and apathy.

Five, dating back to 1808, when the first Hamilton Fish was born to Nicholas Fish (1758-1833), Revolutionary War patriot and friend of Alexander Hamilton, for whom Nicholas named his son. Each Hamilton Fish was father to another one, in this order: Hamilton Fish (1808-93) Hamilton Fish (1849-1936) Hamilton Fish, Jr. (1888-1991) Hamilton Fish, Jr. (1926) … Read more

The Chevrolet Corvair, made by General Motors, was exposed by Ralph Nader in Unsafe at Any Speed. Nader’s crusading book, published in 1965, led to passage of the Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966.

Coca-Cola is older than Pepsi-Cola, by ten years. It was introduced to the American public in 1886, Pepsi-Cola in 1896. For decades, Coca-Cola was sold in a six-and-one-half-ounce bottle. Depending on the bottler, Pepsi-Cola came in six, six and-one-half, and seven-ounce sizes. Starting in 1934, however, Pepsi was sold in 12-ounce bottles, but for the … Read more

The poorest county in the United States is Shannon County, South Dakota, site of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is home to the Oglala branch of the Sioux Indians. In 1987, 63.1 percent of all 9,900 residents here lived in poverty, compared to a national poverty rate of 13.5 percent.

For late 19th-century immigrants from Europe, to travel to America in “steerage” meant a passage below decks, near the ship’s steering gear. The price for these uncomfortable but low-fare accommodations was about $15.

Jimmy Carter (served 1977-81) was the first president to have more than one woman in his cabinet. His female cabinet members were: Patricia Roberts Harris – Housing and Urban Development; later moved to Health and Human Services Shirley Mount Hufstedler – Education Juanita Kreps – Commerce

George Bush said, “Fluency in English is something that I’m not often accused of”, in a toast to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto at a White House dinner on June 6, 1989.

In its nine years of existence (1933-42), the employment program for men between 18 and 24 called the Civilian Conservation Corps put over 2 million men to work conserving and developing the country’s natural resources.

The Tet Offensive was a general attack in January 1968 by North Vietnamese forces against South Vietnamese cities. Militarily, North Vietnam lost since they suffered heavy losses and failed to hold any city. But strategically North Vietnam delivered a severe blow to the U.S. by showing that the war was far from over and undermining … Read more

Mary Quant, co-owner (with her husband Alexander Plunket Greene) of the boutique Bazaar in Chelsea, London, is credited with inventing the miniskirt. Quant, “the mother of the miniskirt,” premiered the new fashion item at Bazaar in 1965.

No, the Smithsonian Institution wasn’t named after an American. Founded in 1846, it was named for British chemist James Smithson (1765-1829), who bequeathed his fortune to build the U.S. institution. It is now the world’s largest museum complex, containing 14 museums and the National Zoo.

Yes, but the Biltmore clock is now part of the 78-story atrium of the Bank of America Plaza at 335 Madison Avenue. It once hung over the entrance to the lavish Palm Court salon in the famed Biltmore Hotel, between Madison and Vanderbilt Avenues and Forty-third and Forty-fourth Streets. The bronze clock is the only … Read more

The “N” in SNCC stood for “nonviolent” when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded in April 1960 by sit-in veterans who wanted to step up the pace of nonviolent direct action for equal rights. As the 1960s wore on, SNCC leaders became frustrated with white repression of the civil rights movement and began to … Read more

44.4 percent of American newspaper, radio, and television journalists identify themselves as Democrats, according to a 1992 survey by the nonpartisan Freedom Forum. 16.3 percent are Republicans. 34.4 percent are independents.

St. Augustine, Florida, which was settled by Spain in 1565, is the oldest town founded in America by Europeans.

General Omar Bradley (1893-1981) earned the nickname “soldiers’ general” for his unassuming manner and his concern for the welfare of soldiers.

A boy named William, born in 1623 or 1624 in Jamestown, Virginia, was the first child of African parents born in England’s American colonies. His parents, Antony and Isabel, were among the first Africans shipped in bondage to the English colonies in 1619.

Written by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen, the Depression-era Democratic party theme song “Happy Days Are Here Again” first appeared in the 1930 MGM musical Chasing Rainbows, starring Bessie Love and Charles King. The movie opened after the 1929 stock market crash and was a flop.

The system of mail delivery by horse-and-rider relays lasted only 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861. It connected Saint Joseph, Missouri, with Sacramento, California, a distance of 1,800 miles. The completion of the transcontinental telegraph system brought the Pony Express to an end.

The first American book written about baseball was the Book of Sports by Robin Carver, published in 1834.

Columbus did not realize he had discovered a new continent that would be named America, but Amerigo Vespucci, who explored the New World between 1497 and 1504, did. German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller first applied the name to the new continent on a map published in 1507.

Named for trader Jesse Chisholm, this nineteenth-century cattle route started south of San Antonio, Texas, passed through Oklahoma, and ended at Abilene, Kansas. In 1871, the trail’s busiest year-700,000 cattle were driven along the route by 5,000 cowboys.

The draft office where the Berrigan brothers burned draft files in 1968 was in Catonsville, Maryland. Philip and Daniel Berrigan, both priests, broke into the draft office with seven other Roman Catholic protestors and burned over 600 draft files with napalm. The Berrigans were arrested and convicted, but Daniel jumped bail and went underground for … Read more

At about $865 million each, the radar-evading “Stealth” strategic B-2 bomber built by Northrop for the U.S. Air Force is considered the most expensive weapons system in American history.

In the nineteenth century, the district known as Harlem in northern Manhattan was a fashionable white residential district, a favorite site for summer homes. Apartment buildings rose in the boom of the 1880s. After the panic of 1893, however, many buildings became vacant, and property owners began renting to blacks. By World War I, much … Read more