The New Orleans Opera, which made eight tours to New York and other cities between 1827 and 1845, was America’s first resident opera company.
Specializing in French opera, the company’s reputation made New Orleans as synonymous with opera in the 19th century as it was with jazz in the 20th.
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.
At first, it seemed that the U.S. had won the Olympic basketball final in 1972 50-49 . But it was ruled that the clock was wrong, and there were three seconds left to play. When the teams resumed the game, the U.S.S.R. scored a basket to win 51-50. It was the first U.S. basketball title…
It was in 44 B.C. that Julius Caesar was assassinated. The date was March 15, the Ides of March.
The light-green beans called lima beans were introduced to the U.S. from Lima, Peru, by U.S. Navy Captain John Harris in 1824.
Alice Walker wrote the biography for children Langston Hughes: American Poet (1974). In it, poet and novelist Walker told the story of her predecessor in the African-American literary tradition. Hughes was at the center of the influential Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Walker is known for such works as the novel The Color Purple (1982).
After escaping from slavery in 1838, the abolitionist and black leader Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-95) took the name “Douglass” from a character in Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810).