Beginning in August 1990, baseball’s hits leader Pete Rose served a five-month term at the federal prison at Marion, Illinois, for income tax evasion.
In August 1989, baseball commissioner Ban Giamatti had banned Rose from baseball for alleged gambling on major league games.
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,…
The total American death count in World War I was 116,516, including 53,402 deaths in battle and 63,114 from other causes, mostly disease. An additional 204,002 soldiers received nonlethal wounds.
Seventy-five percent of the population of New Yorkers in 1930 consisted of foreigners and their children. Italians and Eastern European Jews were the largest groups.
At least 146 women, mainly young immigrants, died in the sweatshop fire in the Triangle Waist Company that occurred on April 20, 1911. The sprinkler system was inadequate, the 500 female workers stood back-to-back on the crowded work floors, and the fire doors were kept locked to prevent theft. The company owners were later acquitted…
Yes, the U.S. has attacked Canada. The U.S. attempted to conquer Canada, then a British colony, in 1813, during the War of 1812. American forces got as far as burning the city of York (now Toronto) before being turned back. In retribution, the British burned much of Washington, D.C., the following year.
Kozol said that as of 1984, 25 million Americans were functionally illiterate (reading not at all or at less than fifth grade level) and an additional 35 million were marginally illiterate (reading at less than ninth grade level). The total of 60 million represented more than a third of the adult population.