Famed for its Italian flavors, the Ragti line of products was founded in Rochester, New York, in 1937 by two Italian immigrants, Giovanni and Assunta Contisano.
Ragii became the first nationally distributed brand of pasta sauce in the U.S. in 1989, after it was acquired by Chesebrough-Pond’s.
The four-stanza song was adopted as the national anthem by the U.S. Congress in 1931. Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics in 1814, taking the melody from an eighteenth-century drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven” by British composer John Stafford Smith. Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet [563-478 B.c.] associated with love and wine.
It was not Christopher Columbus or Leif Erikson who was the first known European to spot America. It was a Norseman named Biarni Heriulfson who first spotted North America around 985 A.D. Blown off course while sailing from Iceland to Greenland, he probably saw what is now Newfoundland, Canada.
The first three American states admitted to the union after the original 13 were: Vermont-1791, created from parts of New York and New Hampshire Kentucky-1792, created from Virginia Tennessee-1796, created from North Carolina
The title of the 1962 book by Michael Harrington refers to the huge number of Americans at the time who were living below the poverty level. According to Harrington, the poor totaled 20-25 percent of the U.S. population, or about 40-50 million people.
The first eight-hour day in America was instituted for federal employees in public work projects in 1868. Before the law was passed, an average workday could run 10 to 12 hours. In 1867, the Illinois state legislature had passed a law proclaiming the eight-hour day to be “the legal workday in the state.” But the…
The first “Negro History Week” was organized in the second week of February, 1926, by Carter G. Woodson. It was meant to include the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and the traditional birthday of Frederick Douglass. It was expanded in the 1960s to “Black History Month.”