Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry first brought an armed squadron to Tokyo Bay in 1853, when he delivered a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the emperor of Japan. In 1854, on a second expedition, Perry succeeded in persuading the Japanese to open their previously isolated society to U.S. trade.
Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 employed the slogan, “In your heart you know he’s right”. Some Democratic opponents responded, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.” Public fear that Goldwater was an extremist helped Lyndon Johnson defeat him that year.
Benjamin Franklin said, “He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas” in Poor Richard’s Almanack (published 1732-57).
Virginia Dare, born in 1587 to English settlers of the “lost colony” of Roanoke Island. The entire colony disappeared; Dare’s death date is unknown.
A bestseller in its time, the 1931 “informal history” Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen was the first popular recreation of the Jazz Age and the 1920s. The book is still in print.
At least 1,547 people were killed when the boiler of the side-wheeler Sultana exploded on April 27, 1865, on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee, making it the worst marine disaster in U.S. history. Many of those killed in the blaze were Union soldiers who had recently been freed from Confederate prison camps. The most…