What kind of car won the first Indianapolis 500?
A six-cylinder Marmon Wasp, driven by Ray Harroun at an average speed of 74.59 miles per hour, won the first 500-mile race at the Indianapolis Speedway in 1911.
Ten hours before the surprise attack on December 7, 1941, Americans intercepted a 14-part Japanese message. They deciphered it at 4:37 A.M., Washington time, just hours before the attack, but the message remained in the code room; not until three hours later was it delivered to President Roosevelt. By 11:00 A.M., the U.S. chief of…
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…
The original “action figure,” G.I. Joe, was introduced in 1964 by Hassenfeld Bros. (later Hasbro) of Newport, Rhode Island. G.I. Joe was 12 inches tall. By 1982, G.I. Joe had shrunk down to three inches.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with 1,560 games, is the NBA lifetime leader in most games played. Born Ferdinand Lewis (Lew) Alcindor in 1947, Abdul-Jabbar began playing for the Milwaukee Bucks in 1969 and the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975.
The U.S. national debt grew about sixfold during World War II. In 1940, the national debt was $43 billion. At the end of World War II, it was $258.7 billion.
In the 1860s, Karl Marx wrote about politics in Europe for the U.S. periodical the New York Tribune.