After serving in the Spanish-American War, New Jersey nurse Clara Maass volunteered in 1901 to take part in yellow fever experiments in Cuba. Dr. Walter Reed designed the experiments to see whether a mild case of the disease would render people immune. Maass allowed herself to be bitten twice by infected mosquitoes. She developed not…
Poet Henry Timrod (1828-67) of Charleston, South Carolina, author of “The Cotton Boll” and “Ethnogenesis” was given the title “Laureate of the Confederacy”.
With lyrics altered to reflect the country, “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” is called “Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean.” Written by Englishmen David T. Shaw and Thomas a Becket, the “Columbia” version (referring to an alternate name for the United States) was first published in 1843 under the name “Columbia, the Land of…
President John Tyler was known as “His Accidency”, because he moved up from the vice-presidency through the accident of President William Henry Harrison’s death from pneumonia in 1841.
Major league baseball is the most popular spectator sport in the U.S., with about 56.6 million fans in attendance in 1990. Thoroughbred racing is close behind, with attendance of about 56.2 million. Basketball and football are far behind, with only about 16 million fans attending games in 1990.
No, it was designed by Francis Hopkinson, a naval flag designer, who was never reimbursed for his services by the U.S. government. And there is no record of Betsy Ross’s commission to sew the flag.