Which became a state first, Alaska or Hawaii?
Alaska became the 49th U.S. state in 1958, Hawaii the 50th in 1959.
Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan’s first wife (married 1940, divorced 1948), is Maureen Reagan’s mother. Nancy Davis Reagan (married 1952) is her stepmother.
Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology developed the Richter scale in 1935 as a mathematical device to compare the sizes of earthquakes. Each whole number increase in the scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph, or an increase of about 31 times the energy…
The letters D or P on American coins are mint marks, indicating the city in which the coin is pressed. The letter D indicates that the coin was made in Denver; P denotes Philadelphia. Pennies no longer carry mint marks.
A black man from Haiti named Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable (1745-1818) founded the city of Chicago. In 1772, Du Sable founded a settlement called Eschikagou on the north bank of the Chicago River. However, he was not officially recognized as the city’s founder until 1968.
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.
More than 13,000 Union prisoners died at Andersonville, the largest Confederate military prison. Most died of neglect. The prison’s commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, was the only Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.