When were cost-of-living raises first worked into union contracts?
Cost-of-living raises, based on the U.S. cost-of-living index, were first negotiated into General Motors-United Auto Workers Union contracts in 1948.
The Hotel Pennsylvania was located at Seventh Avenue and Thirty-third Street in Manhattan. It was built in 1918. The phone number Pennsylvania 6-5000 was that of the hotel’s Club Rouge, where Miller and his band often appeared. The hotel is now the New York Penta Hotel.
The first Jews in the 13 Colonies settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (New York) in 1654. Descendants of Jews forced to leave Spain and Portugal during persecutions in the late 15th century, they had settled in the Dutch colony of Recife in Brazil. When that colony was conquered by the Portuguese, the…
The Irving Berlin song “God Bless America” (1918) appeared 24 years before “White Christmas” (1942). “God Bless America” was written for, but discarded from, the Broadway musical, Yip, Yip, Yaphank. “White Christmas” made its introduction in the 1942 film musical Holiday Inn, starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. Irving Berlin wrote the 1918 song “Oh,…
Coca-Cola is older than Pepsi-Cola, by ten years. It was introduced to the American public in 1886, Pepsi-Cola in 1896. For decades, Coca-Cola was sold in a six-and-one-half-ounce bottle. Depending on the bottler, Pepsi-Cola came in six, six and-one-half, and seven-ounce sizes. Starting in 1934, however, Pepsi was sold in 12-ounce bottles, but for the…
It was Brooklyn-born Shirley Chisholm (1924), who was the first black woman elected to Congress from that borough in 1969. In 1972, she ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president.
Jefferson Davis wearing women’s clothing when he was captured was the unsubstantiated rumor that spread among Union soldiers after the president of the Confederacy was captured near Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10, 1865. Supposedly Davis had donned his wife’s cloak and shawl to disguise himself from the enemy.