The two Allied armies from America and Germany met on April 25, 1945, on the Elbe River at the town of Torgau.
The Americans had been advancing from the west and the Russians from the east.
In its nine years of existence (1933-42), the employment program for men between 18 and 24 called the Civilian Conservation Corps put over 2 million men to work conserving and developing the country’s natural resources.
Calvin L. Graham (1930-92), born in Canton, Texas, was the boy who lied about his age so he could enlist in the U.S. Navy at age 12 during World War II. Wounded by shrapnel during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, he helped pull other crew members to safety. When the Navy discovered his age…
Vermont widow Ida May Fuller received the first Social Security check in 1940. The check totalled $22.54.
Composer Aaron Copland knew very little about the historical subject of his ballet Billy the Kid (1938). Copland admitted that his knowledge of the career of Western outlaw William H. Bonney (1859-81) was “rather vague” and that he “would never have touched it” if he had had to present it realistically. Instead, he treated Billy…
The granite-laden mountain called Mount Rushmore is said to be named for 19th-century New York attorney Charles E. Rushmore. Legend holds that while Rushmore was visiting the Black Hills on business related to his mining clients, he asked the name of a nearby mountain. One member of his group joked, “Why, that is Mount Rushmore,”…
There are seven states that are part of the Tennessee Valley: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries encompasses 41,000 square miles, with the largest part in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created in 1933 to control floods, improve navigation, and bring…