George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, premiered in 1924 by the
Paul Whiteman Orchestra was billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music”.
The piece fused symphonic and jazz styles, reflecting Gershwin’s background as a popular songwriter.
Bill Clinton was born in the small town of Hope, Arkansas, but was raised in the city of Hot Springs from the age of four.
People of Mexican descent founded the city of Los Angeles in 1781. Mexicans remained the major population group in Los Angeles (named for Our Lady of the Angels) until the Gold Rush of 1849 brought Anglo-Americans to California in droves. By then, as a result of the Mexican War in 1846-48, California had passed from…
Poet Henry Timrod (1828-67) of Charleston, South Carolina, author of “The Cotton Boll” and “Ethnogenesis” was given the title “Laureate of the Confederacy”.
The Watts riots of 1965 lasted six days, beginning on August 12, 1965. The riot in the largely black Watts district of Los Angeles involved up to 10,000 people. Thirty-four people, most of them black, were killed. Nearly 4,000 people were arrested. Whole blocks were burned, with nearly 1,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Damage was…
The hero of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Sergeant Alvin York, launched on September 26, 1918, killed 25 Germans and captured 132, along with 35 machine guns in World War I. The Tennessee sharpshooter, who had petitioned unsuccessfully for exemption as a conscientious objector, was lionized for his exploits and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and…
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…