The surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii began at 7:55 A.M. local time on December 7, 1941, and lasted nearly two hours.
Over 2,300 Americans were killed; an additional 1,100 were wounded.
More than ten ships were sunk or severely damaged; more than 140 aircraft were destroyed.
Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan’s first wife (married 1940, divorced 1948), is Maureen Reagan’s mother. Nancy Davis Reagan (married 1952) is her stepmother.
The movie actor Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) was a veteran of World War I. While serving in the Navy, Bogart was wounded in the shelling of the ship Leviathan. The injury resulted in the scarred and partially paralyzed upper lip that gave him his trademark lisp and tight-set mouth.
Bar manager Catherine Genovese was stabbed to death in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964. Her neighbors looked on from their windows but ignored her calls for help. The case became a paradigm for urban lawlessness and apathy.
The quote “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it” refers to the bombardment of the city of Ben Tre, South Vietnam, during the Tet Offensive in 1968. The army major who said it was unidentified.
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 U.S. frontier officially closed in 1890. That was the year in which the Bureau of the Census announced there was no difference between frontier and settlement, meaning that the frontier was now closed.