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.
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.
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.
Warren G. Harding was the first president to speak over the radio, on June 14, 1922.
Peoria, Illinois, got its name from the Peoria tribe of the Illinois Confederacy. The name means “carrying a pack on his back.”
After World War I, the British Empire, or Commonwealth, covered over 14 million square miles and dominated 450 million people. It encompassed a quarter of the world’s population and land surface. Among the countries under its dominion were: Antigua, Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, Iraq, Ireland, and Pakistan.
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.