The Yiddish word “chutzpa” meaning “gall, impudence” came over from Eastern Europe with the millions of Jews who immigrated to the U.S. beginning in the 1880s.
By the 1970s, the Americanized term had taken on the positive connotation of “self-confidence, courage” and had made its way into British slang as well.
The Marshall Plan was named for U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall and was formally known as the European Recovery Program. The Marshall Plan expended $12.5 billion in U.S. loans and grants to help rebuild Europe after World War II. Payments were made in the fiscal years 1949 through 1952.
The State of Tennessee, represented by prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, won its 1925 case against John Thomas Scopes in the Scopes trial. John Thomas Scopes was a high-school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. Despite the efforts of defense attorney Clarence Darrow, Scopes was convicted and fined $100. However, an appeals…
Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the “Gerry” behind gerrymandering. In 1812, when Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, legislators from his party redrew district lines to favor their representatives. Their rivals, the Federalists, blamed Gerry for the redistricting (though he was actually opposed to it). A Federalist cartoonist portrayed…
Benjamin Harrison, Republican, in 1888, was the last president to be elected without winning the largest share of the popular vote. Fewer ballots were cast for him at the polling booth than for Democrat Grover Cleveland. But Harrison carried the day by winning 233 votes in the Electoral College to Cleveland’s 168.
Beginning in 1955, Boss Richard J. Daley was elected for five terms as mayor of Chicago. He was serving as mayor when he died in 1976. Since 1989, his son, Richard M. Daley, Jr., has served as mayor of Chicago.
Millard Fillmore (1850-53) was the last president from the Whig party. Three other presidents were Whigs: William Henry Harrison (1841), John Tyler (1841-45), and Zachary Taylor (1849-50).