The two largest U.S. labor unions, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, became the AFL-CIO on December 5, 1955.
The merger created a combined membership estimated at 15 million.
There were two Children’s Crusades, both in A.D. 1212. In the first, a French peasant boy named Stephen of Vendome led thousands of children toward Palestine to free the Holy Land; they were either shipwrecked or sold into slavery. In the same year, a boy preacher named Nicholas led thousands of German children as far…
The future mayor of New York City Fiorello La Guardia worked at the immigration center on Ellis Island as an interpreter while attending law school. The Manhattan-born son of an Austrian Jewish mother and Italian father, La Guardia (1882-1947) helped usher immigrants through the center, which served as a port of entry from 1892 to…
The federal government founded the National Rail Passenger Corporation Amtrak in 1970 to prevent the imminent extinction of passenger railroads in the U.S. Unable to compete with airlines, the commercial railroads had been eliminating most of their passenger service and concentrating on freight. Railroad passenger-miles traveled in a single year had declined from a height…
Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay, named for its former owner Sam Ellis, operated as an immigration center from 1892 to 1943. It was a detention place for deportees until 1954. In 1965 it became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Following restoration of its Registry Room, the point of entry for…
Swedish soprano Jenny Lind was called the “Swedish Nightingale”. She was brought to the U.S. by showman P. T. Barnum for a concert tour that lasted from 1850 to 1852. Her highly successful appearances helped to fix opera as a popular art in American culture.
By crossing the Atlantic on May 20-21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh won the $25,000 award offered by a New York hotel owner.