The Panama Canal, which required ten years from start to finish, took two years longer to build than the Erie Canal.
Excavation on the 51-mile long Panama Canal began in 1904; the first ship entered the waterway in 1914.
The Erie Canal, linking Buffalo and Albany, New York, took from 1817 to 1825 to complete.
Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their original drive-in stand that would be known as McDonald’s in San Bernardino, California, in 1940. Beginning in 1948, they switched to a new streamlined system, with a limited menu, low prices, fast service, and disposable wrappings. In 1954, milkshake machine salesman Ray Kroc became the franchising agent for the…
The Molly Maguires were a secret militant organization of Irish miners working in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal mines in the 19th century. They organized in 1854 to fight the mine operators. In 1875, a Pinkerton spy working for the owners infiltrated the group. That led to the conviction and hanging of 20 Molly Maguires on…
The average time the 17th- and 18th-century peasants and laborers spent to pay off the debt incurred by their passage to America (about $100) was four years.
When the first minimum wage was instituted in 1938, it was 25 cents per hour.
Dixville Notch, New Hampshire is the first election district to vote and report its returns in presidential elections.
A veteran of Vietnam and Grenada and head of the U.S. Central Command, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf had been revising contingency plans for war in the Mideast when Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Having just completed a command-post exercise with Iraq as the mock enemy, Schwarzkopf was prepared to take charge of the…