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.
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.
West Virginia was part of Virginia when that state seceded from the Union in 1861. The delegates of 40 western counties formed their own government and seceded from Virginia to join the Union side. These counties entered the Union as the state of West Virginia in 1863.
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.”
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) sued John Ruskin for libel after Ruskin vilified the painter’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1877), accusing Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Whistler had lived in Europe since 1855 and had become a fixture of London art circles….
The 1793 invention, the cotton gin, by Eli Whitney mechanically removed seeds from a cotton bloom without harming its fiber. Previously, seeds had to be removed laboriously by hand. The invention led to an economic boom for the South by increasing the amount of cotton the southern states could provide to textile manufacturers. It also…
The Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional to require recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance not in the 1960s but in 1943, in the midst of World War II. In that year, the Supreme Court struck down a West Virginia law requiring recitation of the pledge.