History

Generations of fans and enemies of rock and roll have thought that it does, but in all probability it does not. The original song as written and recorded by Richard Berry in 1956 has tame lyrics about longing to see a certain girl while sailing across the Caribbean Sea. However, in the hit version by…

Bangladesh was founded in 1971. Formerly East Bengal and then East Pakistan, it rebelled against Pakistan, with help from India in 197. Bangladesh was not recognized by Pakistan until 1974.

The last smoking sign in Times Square, which had advertised Winston cigarettes for five years, stopped blowing rings September 13, 1977. Like its predecessors for much of the twentieth century, it blew about 1,000 rings a day; a steam-producing box, located behind the head of the man in the sign, created the rings. The Winston…

No GM chairman ever said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”. The line actually was, “What’s good for the country, is good for General Motors, and vice-versa,” and it was said by Charles Wilson, a former GM head who was at the time the secretary of defense under President Eisenhower.

Legend claims that when sentenced to death in 1776 by the British for spying, Nathan Hale proclaimed, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” But British officer Captain Frederick Mackenzie reports in his diaries that Hale said, “It is the duty of every good officer to obey any…

In a contest with four candidates in 1860 (Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, John C. Bell, and John C. Breckinridge), Abraham Lincoln received 40 percent of the popular vote and carried 18 states.

It took seven years for Sacco and Vanzetti to move from arrest to execution, from their arrest in May 1920 to their electrocution on August 23, 1927. The Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts. The evidence was shaky and the conviction seemed motivated by…

Five U.S. presidents attended Harvard University: John Adams John Quincy Adams Theodore Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt John F. Kennedy

The first installment plan in American business was introduced by Isaac Singer’s partner Edward Clark in 1856. Customers could buy a sewing machine for five dollars down, paying the rest in monthly installments of three to five dollars, including interest. Singer was criticized for charging high interest, but the company’s sales took off. In 1857,…

The “Peggy Stewart Tea Party” took place in a colony in Maryland. The burning of the tea ship Peggy Stewart was inspired by the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. Like its more famous counterpart, this act of destruction was committed to protest British duties on tea and the monopoly of the British East…

In 1992, the average annual salary of a major league baseball player was $1,014,947. Currently, the highest paid player is Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants at $7.3 million.

The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to rent Constitution Hall to contralto Anderson for a concert in 1938 because she was black. Appalled by this action, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a DAR member, resigned from the organization and rallied support in Anderson’s behalf. Later that year, Roosevelt was able to arrange a performance for…

The first commercially available oral contraceptive “pill” was introduced in August 1960, by Chicago-based pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle. It contained synthetic progesterone and estrogen and was named Enovid 10.

The families lived on opposite sides of a stream called Tug Fork in the Appalachian Mountains. The McCoys resided in Pike County, Kentucky, and the Hatfields in Logan County, West Virginia. How the feud got started is not known, but it got under way in earnest with the killing of a Hatfield in 1882. The…

The Seminole War of 1835-42, sparked by the Seminole tribe’s refusal to be exiled to Oklahoma, was fought in the Florida Everglades. The tribe’s greatest hero, Osceola, held off U.S. troops with guerrilla-style actions until his capture in 1837. He died in prison, but the fighting dragged on for several more years.

Most states outlawed or restricted abortion during the period 1830-1880. Before then, abortion in the first months of pregnancy (until “quickening”, or the first perception of fetal movement) was legal throughout most of the country in keeping with colonial common law. The drive to prohibit abortion came from a variety of sources, including the desire…

Benjamin Franklin said, “He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas” in Poor Richard’s Almanack (published 1732-57).

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton or “Mother Seton” (1774-1821) was the first native-born American to become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Born into a wealthy Episcopalian family in New York City, Seton converted to Roman Catholicism after her husband died. She founded the American Sisters of Charity, an order dedicated to helping the poor…

One hundred seventy-nine episodes of the TV series “I Love Lucy” were broadcast, from 1951 to 1957, on CBS.

The Elizabethan Age ran for the 45 years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, from 1558 to 1603.

When the Civil War broke out, a West Point graduate, Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85) had fallen into alcoholism and hard times after his service in the Mexican War. He was working as a clerk in his father’s leather shop in Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War began. Obtaining a commission as a colonel of volunteers,…

The secretive, anti-Catholic, and antiforeign movement, which flourished in the 1850s, received its name, the “Know Nothings”, because members, when questioned by outsiders, answered, “I know nothing.” They pursued their aims through electoral politics, violence, and intimidation. Also known as the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner and the American Party, the movement had adherents in…

On the July 2, 1938, flight during which Amelia Earhart disappeared, the aviatrix was traveling from New Guinea to Howland Island, in the Pacific. In June 1928, Earhart had become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, one year after Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight. Earhart’s remains were never found.

The song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” was written in 1863 during the Civil War by Union army bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore.

Poet Henry Timrod (1828-67) of Charleston, South Carolina, author of “The Cotton Boll” and “Ethnogenesis” was given the title “Laureate of the Confederacy”.

Beginning in August 1990, baseball’s hits leader Pete Rose served a five-month term at the federal prison at Marion, Illinois, for income tax evasion. In August 1989, baseball commissioner Ban Giamatti had banned Rose from baseball for alleged gambling on major league games.

No shells were fired by warships at the Battle of Midway. The decisive Allied victory on June 4, 1942, was significant in naval history because the two opposing fleets never fired at or even came in view of each other. The Japanese and American fleets attacked each other with submarines and planes launched from aircraft…

Part of the maple-sugar manufacturing process, “sugaring-off” refers to boiling down the sap of the maple tree until the sap hardens into candy or crystallizes into sugar. Maple-sugaring was a popular social activity in America during the 19th century, accompanied by feasting and dancing.

Broadway’s all-time longest-running show was A Chorus Line. It ran 6,137 performances from 1975 to 1990. Its nearest competitor is Oh! Calcutta! with 5,959 performances between 1976 and 1989.

Alice Walker wrote the biography for children Langston Hughes: American Poet (1974). In it, poet and novelist Walker told the story of her predecessor in the African-American literary tradition. Hughes was at the center of the influential Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Walker is known for such works as the novel The Color Purple (1982).

The 1921 site houses the Cyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta, a depiction of the Civil War battle for control of the Georgia railroad on July 22, 1864. The 1885-86 artwork blends an enormous circular painting with a three-dimensional model of the action. The painting is 358 feet in circumference and 42 feet tall. It…

Stephen A. Douglas (1813-61), the short but politically powerful congressman from Illinois, was known as “The Little Giant”. A Democrat, he represented Illinois in the House of Representatives (1843-47) and the Senate (184761). He lost the 1860 presidential election to Abraham Lincoln.

In the 1500s, the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were the Cayuga, Mohawks, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. Around 1720, these five nations, based in New York, were joined by another tribe, the Tuscarora.

Only one U.S. president served nonconsecutive terms. Grover Cleveland was president from 1885 to 1889. After being defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison in the 1888 election, the Democrat Cleveland defeated Harrison in 1892 and won a nonconsecutive second term (1893-97).

Three dozen Navy Seals arrived on the beach at Mogadishu early on December 9, 1992, to begin the famine relief operation. They were outnumbered two to one by more than 75 reporters and camera crew members waiting to cover the story.

The “Trail of Tears” refers to the “removal,” or forced exile, of 17,000 Cherokee from Georgia in 1838-39, under the terms of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. About 4,000 people, one in four Cherokees, died of hunger and disease on their way to Oklahoma.

President Richard Nixon was charged with three counts of impeachment. On July 30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee charged the U.S. president with three counts related to the Watergate case: obstructing justice; abuse of power; and defying the House Judiciary Committee subpoenas.

The name Betty Crocker was created by the Washburn Crosby Company (a forerunner of General Mills) in 1921 to be used in response to letters and recipe requests from homemakers. In 1924, Betty’s voice was first heard on the Betty Crocker “Cooking School of the Air,” the first food service program on daytime radio. Not…

A chinook was a dance to summon the warm wind to melt the snow. It also refers to the wind itself and to the Chinook people of the Columbia River valley. “Chinook jargon” is a pidgin language based on Indian languages, French, and English, formerly spoken in the Pacific Northwest.

The light-green beans called lima beans were introduced to the U.S. from Lima, Peru, by U.S. Navy Captain John Harris in 1824.

Vermont widow Ida May Fuller received the first Social Security check in 1940. The check totalled $22.54.

There are two members from each state for a total of 100 in the U.S. Senate.

William Howard Taft, at a top weight of 352 pounds was the heaviest U.S. president.

The 52 American hostages were held for 444 days, from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president.

The American nuclear family is not very typical, according to an analysis of 1990 census data by the Center for the Study of Social Policy. The most common type of household in the United States is a married couple without children: There are 27.5 million of these. In second place (at 26.9 million) are non-family…

Humorist Dorothy Parker made the quip “How can they tell?” after U.S. President Calvin Coolidge’s death in 1933.

The city Dubuque in Iowa is named for French-Canadian Julien Dubuque, who first settled the region in 1785. The town received the name at its founding in 1833.

The most destructive hurricane in U.S. history, Andrew’s winds reached speeds of 175 miles per hour as they gusted into Dade County, Florida, on August 24, 1992. South-central Louisiana was hit by 120 mile-per-hour winds two days later. The hurricane killed 38 people and caused billions of dollars in losses.

A company of French and Caughnawaga Indians killed about 50 of the 300 residents of the English colonial village of Deerfield, Massachusetts. It was a predawn raid on February 29, 1704, during Queen Anne’s War. Almost 100 settlers were taken to Canada as prisoners.

A veteran of Vietnam and Grenada and head of the U.S. Central Command, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf had been revising contingency plans for war in the Mideast when Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Having just completed a command-post exercise with Iraq as the mock enemy, Schwarzkopf was prepared to take charge of the…

The practice of ceasing to work but occupying the workplace first occurred on a mass scale in the rubber factories of Akron, Ohio, in 1936. Sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan, and Cleveland, Ohio, followed. In 1939, the Supreme Court ruled sit-down strikes illegal.

It has appeared on most American coins since about 1864. During the Civil War, rising popular religious sentiment prompted Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase to put the country’s faith where its money was. Other slogans suggested were God Our Trust and God and Our Country. The motto is not required by law.

Emma Lazarus (1849-87), a New York Jewish poet, wrote the poem “The New Colossus” with its words, “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It was written in honor of the planned Statue of Liberty in 1883, but the poem was not part of the statue when it was…

The forerunner to the modern movie theater, the nickelodeon, first opened in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, in 1905. The nickelodeon showed motion pictures with musical accompaniment.

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…

On one side of the Bank War (1833-36) was President Andrew Jackson, who wanted to abolish the Second Bank of the United States. On the other side was the Second Bank’s president, Nicholas Biddle. Jackson vetoed the Second Bank’s early renewal in 1832 and withdrew all federal funds in 1833 In retaliation, Biddle contracted credit…

The first American Express Travelers’ Cheque was issued in 1891. Then as now, Travelers’ Cheques were designed to allow travelers to carry funds safely. American Express levied a surcharge on buyers of the cheques and paid banks a commission for each sale.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) was the first woman in the U.S. to receive an M.D. degree. She received her degree in 1849 from Geneva Medical College in New York.

There have been sixteen chief justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Beginning with John Jay and running through William H. Rehnquist, who joined the court as an associate in 1972 and became chief justice in 1986.

An attempt to revive the Roman Empire of the West, the Holy Roman Empire was founded by Charlemagne in A.D. 800. Surviving for more than a thousand years, this entity was not formally abolished until 1806, when it dissolved under pressure from Napoleon.

There have been two “Banks of the United States”, both chartered by Congress and both allowed to expire after 20 years. The First Bank of the United States lasted from 1791 to 1811, the second from 1816 to 1836. Each served as the federal government’s fiscal agents and repositories of federal funds. The banks were…

After hitting an undersea reef, the oil tanker the Exxon Valdez spilled over 10 million gallons into the Alaskan waters on March 24, 1989, in the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The line “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” is a fabrication of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, found in his poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858). Alden, Mullins, and Standish were all passengers on the Mayflower but were not known to be involved in a love triangle.

The first Academy Awards ceremony was held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929. All awards were presented by Douglas Fairbanks, then president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There were no surprises because the winners’ names had already been made public in February. Since April…

The Dow Jones fell 508 points, or 22.6 percent, on Monday, October 19, 1987.

The name “Alaska” comes from an Aleutian word meaning “mainland,” distinguishing it from the islands on which the Aleutian people lived.

Previous handguns before the Colt revolver could fire only once before they had to be reloaded. Samuel Colt’s invention, patented in 1835, had a six-chambered cylinder that rotated with each shot, automatically readying another bullet for firing. The Colt revolver became standard equipment on America’s western frontier.

Gerald R. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in 1913. His parents divorced when he was an infant; his mother then married Gerald R. Ford, Sr., who adopted the future president and gave him his name.

The original Diet Coke, made with saccharin, debuted in July 1982. An updated version of Diet Coke, made with NutraSweet, first appeared in August 1983.

Krakatoa the volcano, located in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, erupted on August 27, 1883. Four hours later, the sound of the eruption could be heard nearly 3,000 miles away; 10 days later, volcanic dust fell at points more than 3,000 miles away.

According to scholars, the Trojan War took place during the thirteenth century B.C. The Iliad, Homer’s epic account of the war, is thought to have been written in the ninth century B.C.

Yes. Originated by the Constitution, the Court has been regulated in size by Congress. The number of justices varied, from six to ten, until 1869, when Congress voted to set the membership at nine.

The four “Middle Colonies”, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, were all initially colonized by countries other than England. New York and New Jersey were settled by the Dutch, Delaware and Pennsylvania by the Swedes. New Sweden, founded in 1638 with its base at what is now Wilmington, Delaware, was conquered by the Dutch in…

The undersized Miles Standish was given the nickname “Captain Shrimp” by fellow colonist Thomas Morton. Standish (c. 1584-1656) was the military leader of the Plymouth Colony, founded in Massachusetts in 1620. Morton (c. 1590c. 1647), leader of the rival colony of Merrymount, ridiculed the austere habits and strict religious beliefs of his Pilgrim neighbors.

The oldest confirmed site of human habitation in the continental United States is an archeological site at Clovis, New Mexico. It is a site that dates back 11,500 years, to a time when mammoths were still alive. The site was discovered in 1952.

Limited Test Ban Treaty—August 1963 Antiballistic Missile Treaty—May 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)—June 1979 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I—July 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) II January 1993

President Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts lowered the top tax rate from 70 percent to 30 percent during the Reagan years.

Molly Pitcher was Mary McCauley Hays, (1754-1832), heroine of the American Revolution. She earned her nickname during the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, when she fetched water for her husband and his gun crew. After her husband suffered a wound, she took over for him, helping the gun crew do its job. After the war,…

The royal governor of New York Henry Sloughter with the murderous name was responsible for hanging Jacob Leisler in 1691. Leisler was a New York City wine merchant who led a rebellion against royal rule in 1689. As acting governor, Leisler set up an assembly and reformed tax laws until the new governor, Sloughter, stopped…

The largest earthquake in American history was the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964. The quake, on March 28, 1964, had its epicenter near Anchorage and measured a 9.2 on the Richter scale. This is the second highest magnitude ever recorded, behind a 9.5 earthquake in Chile.

Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy, was a Jordanian-born American. He shot Kennedy, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, on June 5, 1968.

Over 60,000 British settlers emigrated to New England, Bermuda, and the Caribbean islands, for economic, religious, or political reasons during the Great Migration of the 1630s.

Like many top officers in the Civil War, both commanders of the opposing forces at Fort Sumter had fought on the same side in the Mexican War (1846-48). P.G.T. Beauregard was the Confederate general who gave the order to fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, at 4:30 A.M., in the first battle of…

In 1959, Glen Raven Mills of North Carolina brought out PantiLegs, the first pantyhose. Allen Grant, president of Glen Raven, got the idea when his wife Ethel complained about the discomfort of nylon stockings and garter belts.

Though born into slavery, Sojourner Truth was born not in the South but in Ulster County, New York, before slavery was abolished in that state in 1827. After being sold to a master who set her free, she worked as a domestic. She later became a preacher of Christianity, abolitionism, and women’s rights.

Walter was the first name of the federal official named Nixon whom the U.S. Senate impeached. Walter L. Nixon, Jr., a judge of the U.S. District Court for Mississippi, was removed from office on November 3, 1989, after appearing before the Senate in its role as court of impeachment. President Richard Nixon resigned from office…

Twenty-five states were in the Union by the end of the Civil War; 11 were in the Confederacy. The states were: Union Confederacy California Alabama Connecticut Arkansas Delaware Florida Illinois Georgia Indiana Louisiana Iowa Mississippi Kansas North Carolina Kentucky South Carolina Maine Tennessee Maryland Texas Massachusetts Virginia Michigan Minnesota Missouri Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey…

Both Mike Tyson, 1986 and 1987 Heavyweight World Champion, and Riddick Bowe, 1992 Heavyweight World Champion, are from Brownsville.

The New Orleans Opera, which made eight tours to New York and other cities between 1827 and 1845, was America’s first resident opera company. Specializing in French opera, the company’s reputation made New Orleans as synonymous with opera in the 19th century as it was with jazz in the 20th.