According to the 1783 Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain acknowledged American independence, the new nation’s boundaries were the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the state of Florida and the latitude line of 31° North.
The line “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” is a fabrication of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, found in his poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858). Alden, Mullins, and Standish were all passengers on the Mayflower but were not known to be involved in a love triangle.
The English explorer Sir Francis Drake gave the name Nova Albion (Latin for “New England”) to California in 1579. The place near San Francisco where he anchored is still called Drake’s Bay.
The division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that maintains the world’s largest fingerprint files was founded in 1924. The FBI itself was founded in 1908.
Hattie T. Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, was elected to the Senate in 1932, making her the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
About 4.7 million Americans served in the armed forces in World War I. Over three times as many, 16.1 million, served in World War II.
A 1908 race riot in Springfield, Massachusetts, reported by liberal New York journalist W.E. Walling inspired him to help found a national organization to speak out on behalf of equality for African-Americans. After a meeting with other concerned citizens in his apartment, including social worker Mary W. Ovington, the National Association for the Advancement of…