A boy named William, born in 1623 or 1624 in Jamestown, Virginia, was the first child of African parents born in England’s American colonies.
His parents, Antony and Isabel, were among the first Africans shipped in bondage to the English colonies in 1619.
Henry Lee, a fellow officer in the Revolutionary War and the father of Civil War general Robert E. Lee called George Washington “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”.
The highest tariff in U.S. history was the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, a 1930 protectionist bill that placed a duty of about 60 percent on imported goods. Aimed at alleviating the Depression, the tariff instead sparked a trade war and worsened economic conditions in the U.S. and Europe.
Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became the first European to reach the Mississippi River during a treasure-hunting expedition in 1539-42. Sailing from Havana, Cuba, De Soto landed at Tampa Bay, Florida, and traveled by a meandering route through what are now Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. After crossing the river and reaching what…
From left to right, the U.S. presidents are carved on Mount Rushmore are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
The Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional to require recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance not in the 1960s but in 1943, in the midst of World War II. In that year, the Supreme Court struck down a West Virginia law requiring recitation of the pledge.
Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676-1741), born in Scotland, was John Peter Zenger’s attorney during Zenger’s trial for seditious libel. He successfully defended the German-born editor’s right to print true accusations against the colonial governor of New York. The famous trial in 1735 was a landmark for freedom of the press.