The symbols of the theme of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, “The World of Tomorrow,” were massive:
The Trylon, a tapering three-sided shaft, was 750 feet high; the Perisphere was a globe 200 feet in diameter.
The two objects were built at a cost of $1.7 million.
Naval officer Stephen Decatur, hero of campaigns against Barbary Coast privateers and the War of 1812 said, “Our country, right or wrong”. Decatur made his famous remark in a toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1815: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right. But our…
The battle cry “fifty-four forty or fight” mean was the slogan of U.S. expansionists who wanted to fix the boundary of the Oregon country (the Pacific Northwest) at latitude 54° 40′ N., in the middle of what is now British Columbia in Canada. The belligerent slogan was associated with the presidential campaign of James K….
The first nuclear reactor in the U.S. in a squash court at the University of Chicago. There, using a uranium-235-based reactor, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi achieved the first sustained nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942. It was a crucial step in the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
Jefferson Davis wearing women’s clothing when he was captured was the unsubstantiated rumor that spread among Union soldiers after the president of the Confederacy was captured near Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10, 1865. Supposedly Davis had donned his wife’s cloak and shawl to disguise himself from the enemy.
John Hancock’s (1737-93) most distinctive contribution to the rebel cause was money which earned him a place as president of the Continental Congress. Hancock was a merchant who had inherited a fortune from a smuggler uncle. He used his wealth to help finance the revolution. He is best remembered now for his flamboyant signature on…
The future U.S. president Bill Clinton was elected governor in 1978 at the age of 32, making him the youngest person to hold that office in Arkansas history. Two years later, he was voted out; he regained the governorship in 1982. Clinton became president in 1993.