The baseball league was formed in 1876. Its charter members were Chicago, St. Louis, Hartford, Boston, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The American League was founded in 1900 and received major league status in 1901. Its charter members included Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Baltimore.
The most destructive air attack of World War II was not the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but the firebombing of Tokyo by 279 Superfortress bombers on March 9-10, 1945. Over 1,650 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city, raising a massive firestorm and killing from 80,000 to 120,000 people. The bombing represented a … Read more
The revealing 1929 study by Robert and Helen Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture, examined family life in Muncie, Indiana. It was followed by Middletown in Transition in 1937.
Famed for its Italian flavors, the Ragti line of products was founded in Rochester, New York, in 1937 by two Italian immigrants, Giovanni and Assunta Contisano. Ragii became the first nationally distributed brand of pasta sauce in the U.S. in 1989, after it was acquired by Chesebrough-Pond’s.
The speech known as the Gettysburg Address, given by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, runs 271 words, if you count “resting place” as two words.
The official signing ceremony for the Declaration of Independence was on August 2, 1776, not July 4. On July 4, Congress approved the final draft of the declaration, and John Hancock and the secretary of the Congress signed it. But most members of Congress signed it at the official ceremony on August 2. A few … Read more
World Trade Center. 1,350 feet high, 110 stories Empire State Building. 1,250 feet high, 102 stories (with the 164-foot television tower included, it is 1,414 feet high) Chrysler Building. 1,046 feet high, 77 stories AT&T Building. 950 feet high, 67 stories 40 Wall Tower. 927 feet high, 71 stories
It took place on May 4, 1886, at Chicago’s Haymarket Square during a peaceful rally to protest the killing three days earlier of six workers striking for the eight-hour day. Two hundred policemen were sent in to break up the rally. Before they could, a dynamite bomb of unknown origin exploded, killing 8 policemen and … Read more
After experimenting with thousands of materials, Thomas Edison discovered in 1879 that a scorched cotton thread, the equivalent of a carbon wire, was the filament he needed. It was one that would glow for a long period without melting in an electric light bulb. Edison’s discovery ushered in the age of electric lighting.
It wasn’t only John D. Rockefeller who founded the Standard Oil Company. What would become the country’s largest oil company was founded in 1867 by four people, Rockefeller, Henry M. Flagler, S. V. Harkness, and Rockefeller’s brother William.
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) sued John Ruskin for libel after Ruskin vilified the painter’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1877), accusing Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Whistler had lived in Europe since 1855 and had become a fixture of London art circles. … Read more
Newspaper columnist Bob Greene is credited with first writing the term “yuppie” in a column in March 1983. The derisive term for “young urban professionals” became widespread by 1984.
The first major conflict against Indians in New England was the Pequot War against the Pequot Indians of Connecticut in 1637. In the bloodiest encounter of the war, English colonists burned a Pequot village near Long Island Sound, killing hundreds of Indian men, women, and children.
Partial use of English was introduced to the U.S. liturgy on November 29, 1964. Latin was not completely phased out of the liturgy until Easter 1970.
William Johnson (1715-74) was an Irishman who settled in the Mohawk Valley of New York in 1738, at the age of 23. He became a wealthy landowner and trader and treated his Mohawk neighbors with fairness and respect. The Mohawks adopted him as a blood brother, and he took a Mohawk wife, Molly Brant. Johnson’s … Read more
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay negotiated for the United States in a treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. The Treaty of Paris, ending the war and recognizing American independence, was signed on February 3, 1783.
The term “POSSLQ”, which refers to “Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters,” was coined in the 1970s by the U.S. Census Bureau in response to the tripling of the number of unmarried persons sharing households between 1970 and 1980.
The Spanish Inquisition lasted about 350 years. It was begun in 1478 by Queen Isabella of Castile to search out converted Jews secretly practicing their original faith. In 1483, it was broadened as a means of persecuting any and all heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was not completely abolished until 1834.
Yale University students appear to have begun the Frisbee in the 1920s, when they threw around metal pie tins from the Frisbie Bakery of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Middlebury College in Vermont has also taken credit for inventing the game. As a commercial venture, however, Frisbee began with a saucer-shaped toy invented by Walter Frederick Morrison in … Read more
The man who had been expelled from Harvard, William Randolph Hearst, bought or started 42 newspapers. Only a handful remained by the time of his death in 1951.
Approximately 5,000 people appeared at the dedication of the Civil War battlefield cemetery on November 19, 1863.
According to the 1860 census, only 4 percent of the white population of the South owned plantations large enough to be farmed by 20 or more slaves. About 1 percent owned plantations needing 50 or more slaves. Seventy-five percent of white families owned no slaves.
The series of trials in Massachusetts in 1692-93, known as the Salem witch trials, resulted in 27 convictions. Of those, 20 were executed: 19 were hanged, one was crushed to death. In 1693, Massachusetts governor William Phips created a new court, with stricter guidelines for evidence. Through it, remaining prisoners were either acquitted or set … Read more
The Viennese founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud visited the U.S. only once, to receive an honorary doctor of law degree from Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1909. Freud got sick eating American food and was unimpressed by U.S. culture. He later said, “Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake.”
Henry Lee, a fellow officer in the Revolutionary War and the father of Civil War general Robert E. Lee called George Washington “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”.
Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, six days after Nagasaki was bombed on August 9 and nine days after Hiroshima was bombed on August 6.
Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died of a battle wound, but it was not inflicted by a Union soldier. One of his own men accidentally shot him in the arm during the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, May 1-3, 1863. Although the battle was a Confederate victory, Jackson’s arm had to be amputated. The general contracted … Read more
Harry Truman didn’t attend college. He was the only president in the 20th century without a college education.
In 1939, a night at the Essex House on Central Park South cost $6. Today, a night in the same hotel starts at $185.
In 1948, some Democratic leaders looked for a more popular candidate than the controversial Harry Truman. Before eventually nominating Truman, they approached Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and former Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower.
Precursor of the modern machine gun, the rapid-firing weapon the Gatling gun saw limited action during the Civil War, specifically in the Petersburg Campaign in 1864. The hand-crank-operated gun, capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute, was patented by Richard J. Gatling in 1862.
The first meeting of the U.S. Supreme Court was on February 2,1790, in New York City. John Jay presided as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1789 to 1795.
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a French explorer and administrator, founded Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit in 1701. The Cadillac automobile is named for him.
Roman citizens wore the woolen garment called the toga when they were in public. There were three types of togas: the toga pieta, embroidered with golden stars and worn by emperors and victorious generals; the toga virilis, the unadorned white toga worn by males fifteen and older; and the toga praetexta, bordered in purple and … Read more
“Resurrection City” was a shantytown built at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., by participants in the Poor People’s March on March 2, 1968. The marchers built Resurrection City to protest the poverty of black Americans and to call for federal aid. The shantytown was torn down after two months.
A white amateur photographer named George Holliday happened to be on hand to videotape the scene of Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles police on March 3, 1991, while testing his new camcorder. The images of black motorist King being kicked and clubbed by white officers shocked the country. A year later, news of the … Read more
William O. Douglas (1898-1980), who served 36 years (1939-75), was the Supreme Court Justice who served the longest term. Four justices served 34 years: John Marshall (1801-35); Stephen J. Field (1863-97); Hugo L. Black (1937-71); and William J. Brennan, Jr. (1956-90).
The title of the 1962 book by Michael Harrington refers to the huge number of Americans at the time who were living below the poverty level. According to Harrington, the poor totaled 20-25 percent of the U.S. population, or about 40-50 million people.
The first American steam railroad to carry both passengers and freight was the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. It began operation in 1830, powered by the Tom Thumb locomotive built by American manufacturer Peter Cooper (1791-1883).
A New York disc jockey named Jerry Carroll (also known as Dr. Jerry) did the radio and TV ads for the chain of electronics stores “Crazy Eddie” in the Northeast, which began with a store on Kings Highway in Brooklyn in 1972. Although he screamed and yelled at the camera, Carroll himself was not “Crazy … Read more
In his February 9, 1950, speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy brandished a list which he said contained the names of 205 communists, though the number fluctuated over time. For the next few years, McCarthy investigated State Department officials and others, relying on shaky charges and insinuation. He was finally brought down when … Read more
In 1992, the biggest corporation in America was General Motors, with sales of $133 billion and assets of $191 billion. In second place was Exxon, with sales of $104 billion and assets of $85 billion.
The Red River begins in New Mexico, serves as the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma, and flows into Louisiana. “The Red River Valley” is the site of the departing lover in the traditional Southern folk song of that name.
The assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray, was arrested by Scotland Yard detectives at a London airport on June 8, 1968. Ray had shot King on April 4, 1968.
The headquarters for the Democratic party organization Tammany Hall was once a social club named for a seventeenth-century Delaware Indian chief. After the Revolution, Aaron Burr transformed it into a political machine, using it to strengthen the 1800 presidential campaign of Thomas Jefferson. Its power grew throughout the nineteenth century and Tammany Hall became the … Read more
Formulated in 1823 by President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the Monroe Doctrine warned that the U.S. would not tolerate new colonization of the Americas by European powers, while promising that the U.S. would not interfere with existing colonies or with European governments.
The 1964 resolution that gave President Johnson the right to use extensive military force in southeast Asia was approved by all of the House of Representatives and all but two members of the Senate. The two dissenting senators were Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska.
The line refers not to the pasta but to the Macaroni Club, a mid-eighteenth-century English social club of dandyish young men who wanted to bring the influences of the Continent to bear on their home country. Thus the line was originally intended to discredit American revolutionaries.
The female work force grew from 11 million to approximately 20 million during World War II. Most of these women helped with the war effort in relevant industries.
Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 employed the slogan, “In your heart you know he’s right”. Some Democratic opponents responded, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.” Public fear that Goldwater was an extremist helped Lyndon Johnson defeat him that year.
The opening words of the Declaration of Independence are as follows: When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature … Read more
The first attempted assassination of a president took place in January 1835, when a house painter named Richard Lawrence aimed two pistols at Andrew Jackson. Both guns misfired. The first assassination of a president was John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
On November 29, 1991, in the midst of a recession, Bush went shopping at the Frederick Towne Mall in Frederick, Maryland to set an example of consumer confidence. Among his purchases were a pair of socks at J.C. Penney’s.
The U.S. government instituted a system of standardized route numbers in 1925 to simplify route directions. Perhaps the nation’s most well-known road, Route 66, opened in 1932 to link Chicago and Los Angeles. In December 1940, the first freeway opened, the Arroyo Seco Parkway in Los Angeles. Not until 1956 did the government pass the … Read more
Theodore Roosevelt offered a “square deal”. Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered a “new deal”. Harry Truman offered a ‘fair deal”.
As of 1992, the honor goes to Richard (Dick) Button, who held the title for seven years from 1946 to 1952. Four skaters have held the title for four years: Hayes Jenkins-1953-56 David Jenkins-1957-60 Scott Hamilton-1981-84 Brian Boitano-1985-88 What female figure skater has most often won the U.S. Skating Championship? As of 1992, the honor … Read more
The Hollywood screen goddess Marilyn Monroe (1926-62) was married three times: to aircraft plant worker James Dougherty, baseball hero Joe DiMaggio, and playwright Arthur Miller. The marriage to Miller lasted the longest, nearly five years, from 1956 to 1961. Her marriage as a teenager to Dougherty lasted four years, from 1942 to 1946. The shortest … Read more
Whiskey distilled from surplus corn was at the heart of this 1794 rebellion by western Pennsylvania farmers. The farmers refused to pay a federal excise tax on whiskey, which was easier to store and transport than corn and was even used as currency. President George Washington stopped the rebellion with a force of 13,000 militiamen. … Read more
As of 1990, there were about 9,000 cable television companies in the U.S.
Andy Warhol’s real name was Andy Warhola (1928-87). Born in Pennsylvania, the painter, graphic artist, and filmmaker was best known for incorporating images from mass culture (such as Marilyn Monroe and Coca-Cola bottles) in the style known as Pop Art. The stenciled pictures of Campbell’s soup cans brought Warhol his first brush with fame in … Read more
Yes, Bob Dylan did indeed meet Woody Guthrie, albeit when Guthrie was in his last years. Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, young folksinger Bob Dylan hitchhiked to New York in 1960 to visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was hospitalized with Huntington’s chorea. The composer and collector of hundreds of folk … Read more
Standard sizes for ready-made clothing were not developed in America until the Civil War, when the Union Army collected body measurements of more than a million conscripts. The statistical data was needed to meet the demand for large numbers of uniforms. From this beginning, fitting systems with numbered sizes were developed during the latter half … Read more
The British general James Wolfe was killed on the battlefield during the engagement on September 13, 1759. But the French general Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, was only wounded. He died in bed early the next morning. On September 18, Quebec, the capital of New France, surrendered to the British, marking a crucial turning point … Read more
The earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay area on October 17, 1989, minutes before the third game of the World Series was about to be played between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. The earthquake, which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, killed 67 people and destroyed over 100,000 buildings.
Wall Street got its name from the wall built around Lower Manhattan in colonial times to protect cattle from Indian raids.
Carol Moseley Braun (Democrat, Illinois), whose term began in 1993, was the first black woman senator. The first black senator was Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who served during Reconstruction, 1870-71.
In the Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed on August 27, 1928, the US., France, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland all agreed to give up war as an instrument of foreign policy. However, the treaty lacked enforcement power, and within 14 years all the parties that signed it were fighting in World War II. The … Read more
The Great Depression in the 19th century was the worldwide period of deflation that lasted from 1873 to 1897 and caused erratic fluctuations in economic activity in the U.S. Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was not marked by low productivity.
The American Communist party was never so popular as during World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies. Founded soon after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the party reached a peak membership of about 100,000 during World War II. Afterward, Cold War repression made it unsafe to stay in the … Read more
Du Pont chemist Wallace Hume Carrothers invented the artificial polymer nylon in the 1930s while searching for alternatives to silk. Nylon stockings first came on the market with heavy publicity on what was billed as “Nylon Day,” May 15, 1940. Women hungry for a cheap and durable alternative to silk stockings bought millions of pairs … Read more
The first “Negro History Week” was organized in the second week of February, 1926, by Carter G. Woodson. It was meant to include the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and the traditional birthday of Frederick Douglass. It was expanded in the 1960s to “Black History Month.”
As depicted in some spy movies, the president would not press a button; he would make a phone call. To begin a nuclear attack, the president telephones the commander in chief at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska; several officers at SAC would verify the president’s orders. Once verified, instructions would go to bomber … Read more
The Governor’s Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, built by the Spanish in 1609, is the oldest surviving building of non-Indian design in the United States.
There were two Children’s Crusades, both in A.D. 1212. In the first, a French peasant boy named Stephen of Vendome led thousands of children toward Palestine to free the Holy Land; they were either shipwrecked or sold into slavery. In the same year, a boy preacher named Nicholas led thousands of German children as far … Read more
The first eight-hour day in America was instituted for federal employees in public work projects in 1868. Before the law was passed, an average workday could run 10 to 12 hours. In 1867, the Illinois state legislature had passed a law proclaiming the eight-hour day to be “the legal workday in the state.” But the … Read more
Louisiana named after King Louis XIV of France, who reigned from 1643 to 1715. The entire Mississippi River Valley was named Louisiana and claimed for France by Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, in 1682.
No one knows for sure who first said “Taxation without representation is tyranny”. Lawyer James Otis is often credited with having coined the phrase in 1761, but the evidence for that is shaky. The exact words did not appear in print until 1820, when John Adams recalled them in some notes.
The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness (begun at Pimlico, Baltimore, in 1873), and the Belmont (begun in 1867 at Jerome Park, New York; now held in Belmont Park, New York) make up the Triple Crown. Sir Barton in 1919 first won the Triple Crown.
The Union had a population of about 20,700,000 during the Civil War. The 11 states of the Confederacy had a population of 9,100,000 including nearly 4,000,000 slaves.
Rev. Samuel F. Smith wrote the lyrics for this song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” (also called “America”) to the music of the British national anthem, “God Save the King” in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1832.
The “Mexican cession” was the territory Mexico called the “Far North,” including what are today California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. In return Mexico received $15 million, was set free of $3 million in American claims, and got rid of American forces occupying its capital. The … Read more
Two U.S. presidents are buried in Arlington National Cemetery: William Howard Taft and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
From 1929 to 1931, the tallest building in the world before the Empire State Building was opened was the Chrysler Building in New York City. In the 1920s, its architect, William Van Alen, was commissioned to design the world’s tallest building. Simultaneously his former partner, H. Craig Severance, was commissioned by another company to do … Read more
It was 24th president William Howard Taft (1857-1930) who was in office when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1909 and ratified in 1913. The federal income tax gave the federal government power to collect tax “among the several states and without regard to census”.
The government lowered the draft age of U.S. military recruits from 20 to 18 on November 12, 1942, to expand American forces during World War II.
John Adams (served 1797-1801) was known as “His Rotundity”.
During the Revolutionary War years, 90 percent of Americans were farmers. By World War II, the number had shrunk to 15 percent. Today fewer than 3 percent of the population are farmers.
First Bull Run, Virginia Confederacy July 21, 1861 Shiloh, Tennessee Union April 6-7, 1862 Second Bull Run, Virginia Confederacy August 29-30, 1862 Antietam, Maryland Union September 17, 1862 Federicksburg, Virginia Confederacy December 13, 1862 Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi Union May 22—July 4, 1863 Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Union July 1-3, 1863 The Wilderness, Virginia Union May 5-6, … Read more
Lincoln’s “eye for an eye” order was an order issued in 1863 during the Civil War that the Union would shoot a Confederate prisoner for every black Union prisoner shot. It would also condemn a Confederate prisoner to hard labor for life for every black prisoner sold into slavery. The order was meant to deter … Read more
An American “Continental Navy” was established by the Second Continental Congress on October 13, 1775. It was disbanded after the War of Independence, in 1784. The first U.S. Navy was not established until April 30, 1798.