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 federal income tax in the U.S. has been permanent since 1913, with the passage of the 16th Amendment. As established in that year, the bottom rate was 1 percent on taxable net income over $3,000 for an individual, $4,000 for a married couple. The top rate, for those making more than $500,000, was 7…
Formally conceived to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago also served to establish Chicago as a cosmopolitan international urban center. To plan the Exposition, several of the nation’s top urban planners were recruited, including Daniel Burnham and Frederick law Olmsted. Founder of Poetry magazine Harriet…
The names of these two English political parties Whig and Tory were each invented by the respective party’s rival as a pejorative term. The Country Party, representing the merchants and middle class, called their opponents tories, a word for Irish plunderers. The Court Party, representing the aristocrats, squires, and Anglican clergy, called their opponents Whigs,…
The Miss Subways program, run by the New York Subway Advertising Company, started in May 1941 and ended in December 1976. Every month a Miss Subways, a woman over 17, not an actress or a model, was chosen. She was featured on signs and was given a $50 sterling silver charm with dangling subway tokens….
Virginia Dare, born in 1587 to English settlers of the “lost colony” of Roanoke Island. The entire colony disappeared; Dare’s death date is unknown.