What was America’s first national monument?
The Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, was America’s first national monument.
The earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906 is estimated to have measured 8.3 on the Richter scale. Four square miles of downtown San Francisco were destroyed and over 500 people died in the earthquake and subsequent fire on April 18-19, 1906.
No, Andrew Jackson holds that honor of being the first president born in a log cabin. He was born on March 15, 1767, in a log cabin in Waxhaw, South Carolina. Andrew Jackson was also the first president born in South Carolina and the first born west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The fire that killed 491 people at the Boston night club The Coconut Grove on November 28, 1942, may have been started by a 16-year-old boy named Stanley Tomaszewski who lit a match near a palm tree while trying to replace a light bulb. However, the fire commissioner could not prove that the boy had…
Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the “Gerry” behind gerrymandering. In 1812, when Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, legislators from his party redrew district lines to favor their representatives. Their rivals, the Federalists, blamed Gerry for the redistricting (though he was actually opposed to it). A Federalist cartoonist portrayed…
More than 13,000 Union prisoners died at Andersonville, the largest Confederate military prison. Most died of neglect. The prison’s commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, was the only Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.
President Lyndon Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by Thomas C. Clark, who resigned when his son, Ramsey Clark, was appointed as U.S. Attorney General. Marshall (190892), a noted civil rights lawyer, became the first African-American Supreme Court justice.