The Hollywood screen goddess Marilyn Monroe (1926-62) was married three times: to aircraft plant worker James Dougherty, baseball hero Joe DiMaggio, and playwright Arthur Miller.
The marriage to Miller lasted the longest, nearly five years, from 1956 to 1961.
Her marriage as a teenager to Dougherty lasted four years, from 1942 to 1946.
The shortest of her marriages was to DiMaggio, nine months in 1954.
Cartoonist and illustrator Thomas Nast (1840-1902) popularized both symbols but invented only one of them. Democrat Andrew Jackson first used the donkey as a symbol for his party after his opponents in the 1828 presidential election called him a “jackass”; Nast’s cartoons later helped to make the symbol famous. Nast himself introduced the Republican elephant…
Instituted a century ago (in 1896) and named for businessmen Charles Dow and Edward Jones, the economic indicator the Dow Jones industrial average has set all three records within the last 25 years. It first closed higher than 1000 on Nov. 14, 1972. On January 8, 1987, it closed higher than 2000. Four years later,…
Europeans discovered Alaska in the 18th century. Vitus Bering, a Dane working for the Russians, and Alexei Chirikov discovered Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in 1741.
After a revolt on July 4, 1846, led by John C. Fremont against Mexico during the Mexican War, California was declared an independent country for a few days. During its brief independence, California flew the flag of a bear. The California grizzly bear is now the state animal.
The origins of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church lay in a controversy over segregation rules at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia in 1787. The white elders ordered black members of the congregation to sit in a separate gallery. Several African-Americans, including Richard Allen, an ex-slave and lay preacher, refused, founding their own Methodist…
Lincoln said, “I believe this government can not endure permanently half slave and half free” in a speech delivered on June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, accepting the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. In the same speech, Lincoln paraphrased the New Testament, saying, “A house divided against itself can not stand.”