History

The Truce of God was an attempt by the Roman Catholic Church in 1041 to limit war. In this decree, the Church proposed that no country do battle between Lent and Advent, as well as from the Thursday to the next Monday of important festivals. Although the Lateran Council approved the truce in 1179 and…

According to a study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, the top ten religious denominations in the United States are (with number of members in millions): Roman Catholic 53.4 Southern Baptist Convention 18.9 United Methodist 11.1 Black Baptist 8.7 Jewish 6.0 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5.2 Presbyterian 3.6 Church of Jesus…

Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps during John F. Kennedy’s term (1961-63), was Kennedy’s brother-in-law.

It was not Christopher Columbus or Leif Erikson who was the first known European to spot America. It was a Norseman named Biarni Heriulfson who first spotted North America around 985 A.D. Blown off course while sailing from Iceland to Greenland, he probably saw what is now Newfoundland, Canada.

On October 29, 1929, the date of the worst crash in Wall Street history, over 16 million shares of stock were traded on the New York Stock Exchange. That day, $8-9 billion in paper value was lost.

Pittsburgh was named for William Pitt, even though Pitt never set foot in Pennsylvania. Pitt’s actions as a British war minister during the French and Indian War led to the city’s founding. He committed money and troops to the war; he mapped out a strategy that included the capture of Fort Duquesne, located where the…

The earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906 is estimated to have measured 8.3 on the Richter scale. Four square miles of downtown San Francisco were destroyed and over 500 people died in the earthquake and subsequent fire on April 18-19, 1906.

Dollar was the English spelling of the German Taler (a silver coin first issued in 1519). American colonists used the word dollar to describe the Spanish peso circulating from South America, and when it came time to devise a system of currency (in 1792), the United States government adopted the dollar as its basic monetary…

Geronimo (1829-1909), leader of the Chiricahua Apaches, born in what is now Arizona, repeatedly defied the U.S. Army’s attempts to restrict his movements to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. He finally surrendered to General Nelson Miles in Skeleton County, Arizona, on September 4,1886. He spent the rest of his life in captivity.

The man, John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) who set up the Standard Oil Trust also founded the University of Chicago. What university did John D. Rockefeller, Jr., found? The son (1874-1960) of John D. Rockefeller founded Rockefeller University in New York.

The first U.S. military advisors were sent to South Vietnam under Dwight D. Eisenhower (served 1953-61).

Calvin Coolidge’s announcement was: “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.”

The first federal prison in America opened in Auburn, New York in 1821. To regulate prisoner activity, Auburn employed what came to be known as the Auburn system. In the hopes of instilling discipline and effecting rehabilitation, the Auburn system required inmates to work silently in groups. When not working, inmates were confined in silence…

The Babylonian Exile took place in the sixth century B.C., after the Babylonians conquered the kingdom of Judah. Not all Jews were deported to Babylonia; in fact, there were several deportations, each one occurring after an uprising. The date of the first deportation was probably 597 or 586 B.C. The exile ended in 538 B.C.,…

The Armory Show of 1913, officially known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, is credited with introducing modern art to the U.S.. Held in New York City at the 69th Regiment Armory, the gigantic exhibition of about 1,600 works presented much that Americans found new, controversial, and ultimately influential. Contemporary artists represented in the…

In the mid-1890s, Mr. and Mrs. Pearl B. Wait of LeRoy, New York, adapted a gelatin dessert that had been patented by inventor Peter Cooper and named it Jell-O. In 1899, the Waits sold the business to Francis Woodward, founder of the Genessee Pure Food Company. By 1906, Woodward had sold $1 million worth of…

The term “mechanic” in 18th and early 19th-century America referred to a craftsman, such as a potter, blacksmith, or housewright.

Founded in 1780 by Zadoc Benedict, the first beaver-hat factory in America was located in Danbury, Connecticut. As late as the early 20th century, two thirds of the mills in this town were engaged in hat making.

The phrase “meatless Mondays” originated in World War I. Herbert Hoover, director of the Food Administration, urged Americans to observe “meatless Mondays” and “wheat-less Wednesdays” to conserve food for the war.

The two largest U.S. labor unions, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, became the AFL-CIO on December 5, 1955. The merger created a combined membership estimated at 15 million.

Big Ben in London is not a clock. It is a 13.5-ton bell in the clock tower of England’s Houses of Parliament. Cast in 1858, the bell’s installation was directed by the rotund Sir Benjamin Hall, commissioner of works. The bell was originally to be called Saint Stephen’s, but the British newspapers renamed it Big…

The name A&P is an abbreviation for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. One of the nation’s top grocery chains, it was founded in New York in 1859 by George Huntington Harford and George P. Gilman as the Great American Tea Company. It was renamed in 1869 to take advantage of national interest in…

Imprisoned for nearly two years after a questionable 1914 murder conviction in Utah, Hill was executed on November 14, 1915. The night before the execution, he cabled friend and IWW cofounder “Big Bill” Haywood, “Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize.”

The rebels of “Pontiac’s Rebellion” were an alliance of American Indian tribes of the Great lakes region, including the Chippewa, Potawatomi, Huron, Shawnee, Delaware, and Seneca. In 1763, they made war against the British, who had just taken over the territory from the French. The rebellion was mostly defeated by 1764. However, Pontiac, an Ottawa…

Union deaths from battle or disease totalled 364, 511 in the Civil War. Authoritative figures for the Confederacy are not available, but most estimates range around 260,000. The total of 620,000 deaths makes this conflict the bloodiest in the nation’s history, not excluding World War II, in which 405,399 Americans died.

Yes. Within the span of a few days in April 1861, Lee was offered command of both the Union and Confederate forces. Although he opposed slavery and secession and believed the South could not win, his loyalty to his home state of Virginia led him to accept the Confederate command.

The unofficial group of advisors to President Andrew Jackson, active mainly during his first term (1829-1833), included: Amos Kennedy, newspaper editor from Kentucky Andrew J. Donelson, Jackson’s personal secretary William B. Lewis, an old military comrade Martin Van Buren, secretary of state John H. Eaton, secretary of war Duff Green, newspaper editor; replaced in midterm…

President Lyndon Johnson’s first lady was born Claudia Alta Taylor.

The granite-laden mountain called Mount Rushmore is said to be named for 19th-century New York attorney Charles E. Rushmore. Legend holds that while Rushmore was visiting the Black Hills on business related to his mining clients, he asked the name of a nearby mountain. One member of his group joked, “Why, that is Mount Rushmore,”…

Over the course of publication (1732-57), Benjamin Franklin’s Almanack sold on average 10,000 copies per year.

The U.S. fielded about 540,000 troops, by far the most of any nation in the coalition it led against Iraq in the Gulf War. Iraqi ground forces in the Kuwaiti theater of operations were estimated at 545,000.

The federal government founded the National Rail Passenger Corporation Amtrak in 1970 to prevent the imminent extinction of passenger railroads in the U.S. Unable to compete with airlines, the commercial railroads had been eliminating most of their passenger service and concentrating on freight. Railroad passenger-miles traveled in a single year had declined from a height…

The term “manifest destiny” appeared in an article by John L. O’Sullivan in the July-August 1845 United States Magazine and Democratic Review. In the article, O’Sullivan said it was “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

“M” and “N” are tied with eight states each for the most common initial letter for U.S. states: Maine Nebraska Maryland Nevada Massachusetts New Hampshire Michigan New Jersey Minnesota New Mexico Mississippi New York Missouri North Carolina Montana North Dakota

Alexander Graham Bell first displayed his electric telephone in 1876 at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Levittown was named for the construction company that designed and built the post-World War II suburban developments, Levitt and Sons, William Levitt, owner. The first Levittown development was built between 1947-51 in Hempstead, New York.

The pioneer of modern dance Martha Graham (1894-1991) choreographed for women from 1927 to 1938. She began her own dance troupe in 1929. Her works include Deep Song and Night Journey.

W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), wrote “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”. Du Bois took issue with Washington’s idea that blacks had to prove their worth to whites. Du Bois encouraged blacks to take pride in their African origins and to struggle for political, educational, and economic…

The doomed whaling ship Pequod commanded by Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) was named for the Pequot tribe of Connecticut, massacred by English colonists in 1637. Melville said the “celebrated tribe” was “now extinct as the ancient Medes.”

The Equal Rights Amendment elude ratification by three states. Between 1972 and 1982, 35 state legislatures approved the amendment. Thirty-eight were needed for the amendment to be incorporated into the Constitution.

The Bataan Peninsula is in the Philippines. Following the Allied surrender of Bataan to the Japanese in April 1942, it was the site of the infamous “death march” in which thousands of American and Filipino prisoners died.

The last American troops left Vietnam under President Gerald Ford (served 1974-77). The troops left on April 29, 1975. The Saigon government surrendered shortly thereafter.

The first public showing of a motion picture in the U.S. took place on April 23, 1896, at New York’s Koster & Bial Music Hall on 34th Street and Broadway. The 12 short-subject films, projected on Thomas Edison’s Vitascope, accompanied a vaudeville show. Previously, Edison’s films could only be viewed peep-show style on his Kinetoscope…

The duel in which Vice-President Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton was held on July 11,1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Burr had challenged Hamilton to the duel in response to Hamilton’s attacks on his character during the election campaign for governor of New York. Wounded by Burr’s pistol, Hamilton died the next day.

The principal speaker at the ceremonies dedicating the military burial ground at the Gettysburg cemetery on November 19, 1863, was Edward Everett, former governor of Massachusetts and famous orator. His speech lasted about two hours; Lincoln’s lasted two minutes. Everett wrote Lincoln: “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as…

The first educational aptitude test in America was developed in 1910 by German-American psychologist Hugo Munsterberg. This was done after he had been asked by William James to direct the psychological laboratory at Harvard University.

For 107 years, beginning in 1864, the mile-square Union Stock Yards stood at Halsted Street and Exchange Avenue. The Swift, Armour, and Wilson companies had plants there. The yards closed on July 31, 1971, and were demolished. Only the Union Stock Yards’ gate was preserved; it was named a Chicago landmark on February 24, 1972.

Eleven men stole $2.5 million in cash, checks, and securities from the headquarters of the Brink’s armored car company in the Brink’s robbery of 1950. The crime took place in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1950. After several years undercover, one of the robbers confessed to the police, and eight of the 11 men were…

Common to many American Indian tribes, a sweat lodge is an enclosed steam bath in which steam is produced by pouring cold water over hot stones. Religious ceremonies performed in the sweat lodge are related to spiritual purification and communication with the divine.

What Peter Minuit gave the Manhattoe tribe was a package of trinkets and cloth valued at 60 guilders, roughly equivalent to $24.

Warren G. Harding was the first president to ride in an automobile to his inauguration, on March 4, 1921.

The Constitution, a 44-gun frigate that defeated two British warships in the War of 1812, was nicknamed “Old Ironsides”. It was memorialized as “Old Ironsides” in the 1830 poem of that name by Oliver Wendell Holmes, written to protest the proposed scrapping of the ship. The ship was saved and, in rebuilt form, is still…

In the brief conflict called the Gulf War from January to March 1991, the U.S. suffered 148 combat deaths and 213 wounded. The number of Iraqi combat deaths, according to a Saudi Arabian estimate, was 80,000 to 100,000, though the exact figure is not known.

Born in upstate New York, Matthew Brady (c. 1823-96) worked in New York City as a clerk in the A. T. Stewart department store and as a manufacturer of jewelry cases. He opened his first daguerreotype portrait studio at the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street in 1844. He later became famous for the pictures…

Redware were earthenware containers used in 18th and early 19th-century America for everyday household needs, such as stew-pots, mixing bowls, and chamber pots.

Willie O’Ree, who played one season for the Boston Bruins, 1960-61 was the first black professional hockey player.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 250,000 AIDS cases have been reported in the U.S. and its territories as of September 30, 1992. Of those people, 160,372 have died.

Martin Luther King Day was first observed as a federal legal public holiday on January 20, 1986.

The holiday Decoration Day, which was first widely celebrated on May 30, 1868, was originally meant to remind citizens to decorate with wreaths the graves of soldiers killed in the Civil War. The holiday has since been renamed Memorial Day and is observed on the last Monday in May to honor the dead of all…

On September 14, 1847, during the Mexican War, U.S. troops under the command of General Winfield Scott occupied Mexico City. Mexico made peace with the U.S. in 1848.

The grandfather and namesake of 1950s Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson served as vice-president from 1893 to 1897 under Grover Cleveland.

National Airlines began the first domestic jet airliner passenger service in the U.S. on December 10, 1958, between New York and Miami.

The head of the Unification Church married 2,075 couples in a mass wedding at Madison Square Garden in New York City on July 1, 1982.

Prohibition of the manufacture and sale of liquor was known as the “Noble Experiment”. It was put into effect by the 18th Amendment in 1920 and lasted until repeal by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

In 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. for $5 million. In addition, Spain gave up its claim to the Oregon Territory while the U.S. recognized that Texas belonged to Spain. Within three decades, in 1845, the U.S. had annexed Texas too.

Europeans discovered Alaska in the 18th century. Vitus Bering, a Dane working for the Russians, and Alexei Chirikov discovered Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in 1741.

Peggy Noonan created the phrase “a thousand points of light”, in a speech she wrote for presidential nominee George Bush at the 1988 Republican Convention.

The feminist writer Margaret Fuller was 30 when Ralph Waldo Emerson asked her to edit his Transcendentalist periodical in 1840. During her life she also worked as the foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune and wrote the influential collection of essays, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), which served as an inspiration for the…

A black man from Haiti named Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable (1745-1818) founded the city of Chicago. In 1772, Du Sable founded a settlement called Eschikagou on the north bank of the Chicago River. However, he was not officially recognized as the city’s founder until 1968.

The company IBM, now known as International Business Machines was originally founded as the Computing Tabulating Recording Company in 1911.

The name for the tribe Crow in their own Siouan language is Absaroke, meaning “crow, sparrowhawk, or bird people.” The French called these people of the Rocky Mountains gens des corbeaux, from which the English “Crow” is translated.

The phrase “rub out” first appeared not among gangsters in the Roaring ’20s but among the rugged fur traders and trappers of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in the early 19th century. It came into more widespread use in World War I.

The first American restaurant to feature a menu in French and English was the influential continental restaurant Delmonico’s, which appeared in New York City in 1837. Although now in a different New York City location, it still operates today.

In 1920, the Yankees paid the Boston Red Sox $125,000 for the Babe.

Ronald Reagan made the joke about bombing the Soviet Union a few minutes before his weekly radio broadcast on August 11, 1984. He said, “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to announce I just signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

The subject of the Civil War marching song of the same name, goober peas were peanuts, one of the few foods soldiers in the South could find to eat.

It happened in 1913 by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

The women’s rights leader Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) did not live to see the 19th Amendment adopted in 1920 guaranteeing women the right to vote. But Anthony had voted illegally in a Rochester, New York, election in 1872, and refused to pay the fine that followed.

In the struggle between France and England for control of North America (1754-63), most, but not all, Indians fought on the French side. They included the Abnaki of Maine, the Delaware and Shawnee of Pennsylvania, and the Potawatomi and Ottawa of Michigan and Wisconsin. The English relied on the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

William C. Durant found the General Motors Corporation in 1908, in Flint, Michigan.

Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Western allies and Russia at 2:41 A.M., French time, on Monday, May 7, 1945. In the United States, this was 8:41 P.M., Eastern Wartime, on Sunday, May 6, 1945. Japan unconditionally surrendered through a note delivered to the U.S. State Department at 6:10 P.M. on Tuesday, August 14, 1945.

Only one president has served as speaker of the House of Representatives James K. Polk (president 1845-49). He was speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839.

The name of the first slave ship built in the English colonies was the Desire, launched from Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1637. Until then, only European ships transported slaves to the colonies.

Abigail Van Buren (born Pauline Esther “Popo” Friedman) and Ann Landers (born Esther Pauline “Eppie” Friedman) are identical twins born on July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1955, Eppie took over as Ruth Crowley’s replacement on the Chicago Sun-Times “Dear Ann Landers” advice column. In 1956, the other sister began writing under the…

Sir Francis Drake (1545-1596) was the first man to sail around the earth in 1580. His predecessor, Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521), started such a trip but died before the last of his ships finished the voyage.

According to Forbes magazine’s 1992 list of richest Americans, they are: William Henry Gates 3rd ($6.3 billion) John Werner Kluge ($5.5 billion) Helen Walton, S. Robson Walton, Jim C. Walton, John T. Walton, Alice L. Walton (tied at $5.1 billion each) Gates is the founder of Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal computer software company….

With lyrics altered to reflect the country, “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” is called “Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean.” Written by Englishmen David T. Shaw and Thomas a Becket, the “Columbia” version (referring to an alternate name for the United States) was first published in 1843 under the name “Columbia, the Land of…

One U.S. president did serve in the Confederate government. John Tyler (president 1841-45) represented Virginia in the Confederate House of Representatives beginning in 1861.

The first state to secede from the Union was South Carolina, which seceded on December 20, 1860, in response to the November election of Abraham Lincoln as president.