The first protest was at a segregated lunch counter begun by four black college students at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960.
In the next two weeks, sit-ins spread to 15 cities across the South.
At least 1,547 people were killed when the boiler of the side-wheeler Sultana exploded on April 27, 1865, on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee, making it the worst marine disaster in U.S. history. Many of those killed in the blaze were Union soldiers who had recently been freed from Confederate prison camps. The most…
Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Massachusetts, was the first person executed for witchcraft in America, on June 15, 1648. This was nearly five decades before the Salem witch trials of 1692– 93.
Only one president has served as speaker of the House of Representatives James K. Polk (president 1845-49). He was speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839.
Wendell Holmes never served as chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was an associate justice from 1902 to 1932, during the terms of four different chief justices.
The last veteran of the American Revolution died in 1867.
Invented by Samuel F. B. Morse and completed in 1844, the telegraph line ran from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. The first message, telegraphed on May 24, 1844, was, “What hath God wrought!”