Swedish soprano Jenny Lind was called the “Swedish Nightingale”.
She was brought to the U.S. by showman P. T. Barnum for a concert tour that lasted from 1850 to 1852.
Her highly successful appearances helped to fix opera as a popular art in American culture.
The first public showing of a motion picture in the U.S. took place on April 23, 1896, at New York’s Koster & Bial Music Hall on 34th Street and Broadway. The 12 short-subject films, projected on Thomas Edison’s Vitascope, accompanied a vaudeville show. Previously, Edison’s films could only be viewed peep-show style on his Kinetoscope…
Born in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68) traveled north to receive his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University in 1955. He returned to the South to become pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he met Rosa Parks and was chosen to lead the bus boycott. An advocate of…
Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay, named for its former owner Sam Ellis, operated as an immigration center from 1892 to 1943. It was a detention place for deportees until 1954. In 1965 it became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Following restoration of its Registry Room, the point of entry for…
Vermont in 1777, was the first American colony to abolish slavery. The first of the original 13 Colonies to abolish slavery was Pennsylvania in 1780.
Not until the 23rd Amendment was ratified in 1961, were the residents of Washington, D.C., allowed to vote in presidential elections.
Tippecanoe is located in Indiana. In 1811, William Henry Harrison led a regiment to victory over Indians, led by Tecumseh. Harrison was elected president (with running mate John Tyler) in 1840, using the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”