History

Thirty-nine episodes of the TV series “The Honeymooners” were broadcast, from 1955 to 1956, also on CBS.

It was Brooklyn-born Shirley Chisholm (1924), who was the first black woman elected to Congress from that borough in 1969. In 1972, she ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president.

The English-speaking American Indian Squanto famous for befriending the Pilgrims at Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21 was a Pawtuxet.

Japan occupied the Aleutian islands Attu, Agattu, and Kiska from 1942 to 1943. The islands lie west of the Alaskan Peninsula.

The firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert, that specialized in using junk bonds to fund 1980s corporate takeovers marked the beginning of a new decade by filing for bankruptcy on February 13, 1990. The company had defaulted on more than $100 million in loans.

Dick Beals, himself only four-and-a-half feet tall, did the voice of the singing animated Alka-Seltzer puppet in over 200 TV commercials from 1954 to 1964. Speedy, who had an Alka-Seltzer tablet for a hat and another for his torso, was designed by Robert Watkins for Wade Advertising of Chicago.

An authoritative variorum edition of Emily Dickinson’s complete poems was not published until Thomas H. Johnson did so in 1955, nearly 70 years after Dickinson’s death. Dickinson (1830-86) died with over 1709 poems unpublished; shortly thereafter (in 1890-91), her friends Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel L. Todd began a tradition of publishing her poetry in…

The American writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) reached her fourth year at Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1901, but failed several courses and dropped out. After she moved to Paris, her salon served as a gathering place for artists and writers in the 1920s. The author of such novels as The Moviegoer (1961), Walker Percy received…

John F. Kennedy was approaching his 45th birthday when Marilyn Monroe sang the song to him at a Democratic fund-raiser in Madison Square Garden on March 19, 1962.

The 60-foot-wide wood, steel, and concrete structure known as the boardwalk in Atlantic City is about 4.5 miles long. It continues on another two miles into Ventnor City, south of Atlantic City. The first boardwalk in Atlantic City was built in 1870.

Ohio and California are tied with six each for producing the most Miss America winners. Twenty-three states have produced no Miss America winners at all, even though the Miss America pageant has been crowning beauty queens for over 70 years (since 1921). As of 1993, Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maryland, and Wyoming are among the states…

The 13 original American colonies were: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia.

The first women’s college in the U.S. was the Troy Female Seminary, in Troy, New York, founded by Emma Willard (1787-1870) in 1821. The first coeducational college was Oberlin College, which first accepted female students in 1833.

The Virginia dynasty were four of the first five presidents, all from Virginia: George Washington (served 1789-97) Thomas Jefferson (served 1801-09) James Madison (served 1809-17) James Monroe (served 1817-25) John Adams of Massachusetts (served 1797-1801) was the only one of the first five presidents not from Virginia. His son John Quincy Adams broke the hold…

John Adams (1735-1826), the second president, was the first president defeated for reelection in 1801. Thomas Jefferson defeated him and served two terms, from 1801 to 1809.

President Franklin Roosevelt ordered U.S. banks closed March 6-9, 1933 during The Hundred Days .

Passengers used New York’s original Pennsylvania Station for 53 years, from its opening in 1910 to its demolition in 1963. Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the two-square-block structure was made of granite with a Doric colonnade. It was torn down to make way for the Madison Square Garden sports and office complex.

Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling twice. In their first encounter in 1936, before Louis became heavyweight champion, the German boxer emerged the winner. In 1938, now the world champion, Louis beat Schmeling in a one-round knockout that struck a symbolic blow to Nazi Germany’s claims of national and racial superiority. Louis’s initial loss to Schmeling…

The source of the term “hoosier” for Indiana residents is often said to be Samuel Hoosier, a contractor for the Ohio Falls Canal in Louisville, Ohio, in 1825. Hoosier’s employees, recruited from Indiana, were known as the “Hoosier men” or simply “Hoosiers.” By 1833, the term was being used in local periodicals, for example, in…

Attila is the name for the man described by sixth-century historian Jordanes as “short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head”. It means “Little Father.” Attila was born circa 406 and died in 453.

The two candidates for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, held seven debates. Democrat Douglas was reelected. But Lincoln’s strong performance in the campaign led to his nomination as the Republican candidate for president in 1860.

“Make-Believe Ballroom” was a long-lived program of American popular music and ballroom music on New York radio station WNEW-AM. Begun in 1934 by announcer Martin Block, it ran until WNEW-AM went off the air on December 11, 1992. It was known for popularizing big band, swing, and jazz, and for its distinctive announcers, such as…

The New York Stock and Exchange Board was formally organized in 1817, and the name New York Stock Exchange was adopted in 1863. Since 1953, membership in the exchange has been limited to 1,366. Since 1868, new members have purchased seats (with exchange approval) from existing members.

Sally Hemings was the name of the slave reputed to have been Thomas Jefferson’s mistress. The charge that he had fathered children by her while he was an envoy in Paris came up during the presidential election of 1804, which he won just the same.

The first written constitution in the U.S. was the Fundamental Orders, written for the Connecticut Colony at its founding in 1639. This document is considered the first written constitution not only in the U.S. but the world.

In 1619, a Dutch ship brought the first 20 slaves to the English colony of Virginia. How many slaves were freed after the American Civil War? About 4 million. In total, how many Africans were brought to the United States as slaves? Approximately 15 million.

The Declaration of Independence cited 27 separate grievances against the king of Great Britain, George III. These grievances included refusing his assent to “wholesome” laws, making judges dependent on “his will alone,” and bringing in foreign mercenaries to wage war on the colonies in a way “totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.”

Yes, the U.S. has attacked Canada. The U.S. attempted to conquer Canada, then a British colony, in 1813, during the War of 1812. American forces got as far as burning the city of York (now Toronto) before being turned back. In retribution, the British burned much of Washington, D.C., the following year.

Eight countries are currently known or suspected to have nuclear weapons. They are: China, France, India, Israel, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Native American senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, whose term began in 1993, represents Colorado. He is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe of Montana.

African-American Sergeant William H. Carney won Congressional Medal of Honor for his courage in the charge of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers on Fort Wagner in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, in July 1863. The charge was unsuccessful, but the regiment’s bravery is commemorated by a monument at the Boston House of Commons. The black…

On October 25, 1854, during the Crimean War, James Thomas Brudenell, Seventh Earl of Cardigan, led the British cavalry against the Russians in the Battle of Balaklava. The charge was disastrous, but it did inspire the admiration of the British public, particularly that of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who wrote the 1855 poem “The Charge of…

The 71-year-old head of the Gambino crime family Paul Castellano was shot dead on December 16, 1985, on 46th Street near Third Avenue in New York City. His successor, John Gotti, reputedly masterminded the killing.

In 1942, about 100,000 Japanese-Americans were moved to ten internment camps in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The camps were closed in late 1945.

The duties assigned to the vice-president by the Constitution are: To be president of the Senate; to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed; and to replace the president of the U.S. in the event that the latter’s term ends prematurely.

The comedienne made headlines for her performance at the July 25, 1990, game of the San Diego Padres-Cincinnati Reds. Arnold grabbed her crotch in response to boos at her handling of the anthem.

Harvey Milk (1930-78) was the first openly homosexual candidate to be elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. An advocate of gay rights and urban issues, Milk was elected in 1977, representing the Castro district. He was assassinated, with Mayor George Moscone, by a former supervisor on November 27, 1978.

Jim Crow was a black stage character invented by minstrel star Thomas Rice in the decades before the Civil War. The name came to be applied to the segregationist laws that kept blacks separate from whites beginning in the 1870s. The Supreme Court declared Jim Crow laws unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in…

The white supremacy movement called the Ku Klux Klan has had at least three major incarnations: the first during Reconstruction (1860s-1870s), the second before and after World War I (1915-1920s; final disbandment in 1944), and the third since World War II (1946—present).

From 1906 to 1960 the Xerox Corporation was known as the Haloid Company, headquartered in New York. In 1961 it became the Xerox Corporation.

The winning home run was hit in the bottom of the ninth at the New York Polo Grounds by the Giants’ third baseman Bobby Thomson, in the 1951 National League playoffs between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. With two men on base, Thomson’s home run changed the score from Dodgers 4, Giants…

The National Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated in 1939 at Cooperstown, New York, to honor the centennial of the alleged invention of baseball by Army officer Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown in 1839. However, it was later proven that Doubleday was not even at Cooperstown in 1839 (he was a cadet at West Point) and…

The independent political party the Mugwumps was comprised of Republicans who wanted to band together to demonstrate support for the Democratic candidate for the 1884 election, Grover Cleveland. They remained active in presidential politics through 1892. The word mugwump was a slang term for “kingpin.”

This classified history of American involvement in Vietnam called the Pentagon Papers first began to run in the New York Times on June 13, 1971. Despite legal challenges from the White House, the Supreme Court permitted the Times and the Washington Post to continue publishing the documents. Leaked by former Pentagon employee Daniel Ells-berg, the…

In 1914, Glenn Curtis fought the Wright brothers for patent rights on the airplane. The U.S. court decided in favor of the Wright brothers.

The Battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890, was the last major battle between U.S. troops and Native Americans. Twenty-nine U.S. soldiers and nearly 200 Sioux men, women, and children were killed.

The wall that ran through Berlin was 26.5 miles long. The Berlin Wall was put up on the night of August 12-13, 1961. Its function as a barrier between East and West Germany ended on November 9, 1989, when the East German government declared an end to restrictions on emigration and travel to the West.

The love song “Dear Mr. Gable, You Made Me Love You” from one MGM star to another appeared in Broadway Melody of 1938.

A Yavapai from Arizona, Carlos Montezuma (1865-1923) was a physician who became a prominent advocate for Native Americans. In his newsletter Wassaja and elsewhere, he spoke out for Indian rights. He helped to found the Society of American Indians in 1911.

Five people have held the post of secretary-general. With their countries of origin and terms of office, they are: Trygve Lie, Norway (1946-1952) Dag HarnmarskjOld, Sweden (1953-1961) U Thant, Burma (1961-1971) Kurt Waldheim, Austria (1972-1981) Javier Perez de Cuellar, Peru (1982–present)

New York socialite Samuel Ward McAllister created the term in 1892, when he planned a party to be held in Mrs. William Astor’s ballroom. Since the ballroom held only 400 people, McAllister limited the invitations to those he decided were the inner elite of New York society.

Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Veblen used the term to excoriate Americans who spent lavishly in trying to impress others with their wealth.

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 first all-Federal housing project in America was an eleven-block, low-rent housing project called Tech-wood, in Atlanta, Georgia. Built in 1936 by the Public Works Administration, it cost $2,875,000. The project offered 22 brick and concrete apartments for families with annual incomes under $1,800.

The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in 1910 in Washington, D.C., by painter and illustrator Daniel Carter Beard. Known as “Uncle Dan,” Beard based the organization on the British group founded in 1908 by Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts organization in Savannah, Georgia, in 1912.

Pope, a Pueblo medicine man, planned the Indian revolt against the Spanish in New Mexico in 1680. The Pueblos and Apaches took over Santa Fe, drove out or killed Spanish settlers, and forced the Spanish to abandon New Mexico. The Spanish recaptured Santa Fe in 1693; the revolt was not entirely crushed until 1698.

Many tribes besides the Sioux speak Siouan languages. These include the Biloxi of Mississippi, the Winnebagos of Wisconsin, the Osages of Missouri, and the Omahas of Iowa and Nebraska.

Not until the 23rd Amendment was ratified in 1961, were the residents of Washington, D.C., allowed to vote in presidential elections.

The College Board first administered the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in June 1926. More than 8,000 applicants took the test, most of them applicants to elite colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The test, intended to help predict subsequent academic performance, was modeled on intelligence tests administered by the U.S. Army in World War…

The illustrations of fashionable, modern women of the 1890s were named for the artist who drew them for popular magazines, Charles Dana Gibson. Gibson’s drawings helped to establish a new standard of American beauty at the turn of the 19th century.

Cassius Clay announced that he had changed his name to Muhammad Ali in February 1964, after defeating Sonny Liston and becoming heavyweight champion. Some time earlier, Ali had secretly joined the Nation of Islam, led by Elijah Muhammad.

In 1990, the U.S. zoos with highest attendance were: 1. Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, Illinois 2. San Diego Zoo, California 3. National Zoo, Washington, D.C. 4. Busch Gardens, Tampa, Florida 5. St. Louis Zoo, Missouri

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, was written by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974). Delivered on May 17, 1954, it was one of the first of several major decisions of the Warren Court, which lasted from 1953 to 1969.

Yes. The city in south central North Dakota, now the state capital, was founded in 1872 as Camp Hancock. A military post, it protected the crews working on the Northern Pacific Railway. In 1873, it was renamed in honor of then-chancellor Otto von Bismarck in hopes of attracting German railroad investors.

The city of Seattle is named for a local Indian chief, whose name was variously spelled Seattle, See-yat, and Sealth.

The famous shootout on October 26, 1881, happened in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, at a photographer’s studio just to the east of the O.K. Corral, Camillus Fly’s studio. The Earp brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and friend Doc Holliday shot Billy Clanton and neighbors Tom and Frank McLaury. Although there was bad blood between the Earps, the…

Freedom’s Journal, which began publication in New York City on March 16, 1827, was the first black newspaper. Co-founders Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm explained in their first issue, “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”

The United States took over the island of Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War. Since 1917, Puerto Ricans have been considered U.S. citizens. Since 1952, the island has been a self-governing commonwealth, voluntarily associated with the U.S.

The insider stock trader Michael Milken who became the symbol of 1980s greed graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, symbol of 1960s activism, in 1968.

“Embalmed beef” was a nickname for the tinned meat fed to troops at training camps during the Spanish-American War. The meat gained its nickname because it caused diseases such as typhoid fever, dysentery, and food poisoning, which eventually claimed thousands of soldiers’ lives.

The intellectuals who served as advisers to FDR included attorney Basil O’Connor, Felix Frankfurter of Harvard law School, and Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle of Columbia University. The nickname, the brains, for the elite group who helped shape the New Deal was first suggested in 1932 by Roosevelt’s legal counsel Samuel Rosenman.

The first astronauts who went to the moon were: Edwin E. (“Buzz”) Aldrin, Jr., Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins. Collins circled the moon in the capsule while Aldrin and Armstrong landed.

The dog that gave the title to the 1952 speech by vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon was a cocker spaniel. In the speech, Nixon defended his financial integrity and refused to return the pet given to his children by a supporter.

The 1961 book PT-109 about John F. Kennedy’s exploits in World War II was written not by Kennedy but by Robert F. Donovan.

George Bush said, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” not to Argentina, but to employees of the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in Dover, New Hampshire, on January 15, 1992. He was asking people not to feel sorry for him during his tough campaign against Pat Buchanan in the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Upton Sinclair said, “I aimed for the heart and by accident I hit the stomach instead”. He was discussing the national response to his 1906 novel The Jungle about the Chicago meatpacking industry. The book was meant to galvanize workers to socialism but instead led to the passage of the first nationwide food and drug…

It was not John F. Kennedy’s but Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration that first launched plans for the overthrow of Fidel Castro, the Communist leader of Cuba, by an armed invasion of Cuban exiles. This plan was known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy, who came to office in January 1961, allowed the plan to…

The “Thunderer of Waters” is the Indian name for Niagara Falls, New York.

Tobacco was the first major export industry in America. By 1617, 50,000 pounds of the Virginia-grown crop were exported to England.

The first in this series of musical shows The Ziegfeld Follies staged by producer Florenz Ziegfeld was “The Follies of 1907.” Combining European style and American topical humor, the show was such a hit that Ziegfeld followed it with 21 annual editions of The Ziegfeld Follies. Famous alumni include Will Rogers, Ruth Etting, Eddie Cantor,…

Times Square was named for the 1903 building that was headquarters for the New York Times. The building, located at the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Forty-second Street, and Broadway, transmitted news by the band of electric lights that ran across the top of the building. New York Newsday now occupies the spot and still flashes…

U.S. military expenditures during Reagan’s first term totalled $1.5 trillion dollars. Between 1981 and 1986, the U.S. national debt doubled, expanding from $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

The draft in the U.S. ended on January 27, 1973, after years of anti-draft protests. The end of the draft coincided with a ceasefire that stopped direct involvement of U.S. ground forces in hostilities in Vietnam.

There have been Two Liberty Bells. The first was cast in England in 1752 for the Pennsylvania State House, which later became Independence Hall. The second was cast in Philadelphia and inscribed, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). The bell cracked on July 8, 1835, as it tolled…

The latitude of the boundary between North and South Korea that the U.S. was defending in the Korean War (1950-53) was the 38th parallel.

Calvin L. Graham (1930-92), born in Canton, Texas, was the boy who lied about his age so he could enlist in the U.S. Navy at age 12 during World War II. Wounded by shrapnel during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, he helped pull other crew members to safety. When the Navy discovered his age…

The flooding of the Kansas River at Kansas City, Missouri, and Topeka and Lawrence, Kansas, in July 1951 was the first flood in the United States to cost $1 billion in damages. Forty-one people were killed.

Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology developed the Richter scale in 1935 as a mathematical device to compare the sizes of earthquakes. Each whole number increase in the scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph, or an increase of about 31 times the energy…

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 Yiddish word “chutzpa” meaning “gall, impudence” came over from Eastern Europe with the millions of Jews who immigrated to the U.S. beginning in the 1880s. By the 1970s, the Americanized term had taken on the positive connotation of “self-confidence, courage” and had made its way into British slang as well.