Which became a state first, Alaska or Hawaii?
Alaska became the 49th U.S. state in 1958, Hawaii the 50th in 1959.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Josephine Baker (1906-75) first danced bare-breasted in La revue negre in Paris in 1925. She later joined the Folies Bergere. She became a French citizen in 1937.
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…
A Cherokee named Sequoyah finished the system of writing in Cherokee in Arkansas in 1821. Sequoyah neither spoke nor wrote English, but he had an idea of the power of writing: “I thought that would be like catching a wild animal and taming it.” His alphabet had a character for each of 86 Cherokee syllables….
Roosevelt had polio in August 1921, when he was 39. By that time, he had been assistant secretary of the navy, a vice presidential nominee (in 1920), and a member of the New York State Senate.
Sir Francis Drake (1545-1596) was the first man to sail around the earth in 1580. His predecessor, Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521), started such a trip but died before the last of his ships finished the voyage.
The first tabloid newspaper was the Illustrated Daily News (now the Daily News). Founded in New York City in 1919, it was the nation’s largest-selling paper by 1925. Current weekday circulation is 781,800; Sunday circulation is 983,000.