Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) was elected as Montana’s sole delegate to the House of Representatives in 1916.
After serving her term, she was not reelected until 1940.
A pacifist, she holds the distinction of being the only member of Congress to have voted against American participation in both World Wars.
Passengers used New York’s original Pennsylvania Station for 53 years, from its opening in 1910 to its demolition in 1963. Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the two-square-block structure was made of granite with a Doric colonnade. It was torn down to make way for the Madison Square Garden sports and office complex.
Founded in 1947, the CIA was born about the same time as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. An offshoot of World War Il’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the agency was established to gather foreign intelligence, carry out counterintelligence, and perform covert operations.
Geronimo (1829-1909), leader of the Chiricahua Apaches, born in what is now Arizona, repeatedly defied the U.S. Army’s attempts to restrict his movements to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. He finally surrendered to General Nelson Miles in Skeleton County, Arizona, on September 4,1886. He spent the rest of his life in captivity.
The English explorer Sir Francis Drake gave the name Nova Albion (Latin for “New England”) to California in 1579. The place near San Francisco where he anchored is still called Drake’s Bay.
The federal government founded the National Rail Passenger Corporation Amtrak in 1970 to prevent the imminent extinction of passenger railroads in the U.S. Unable to compete with airlines, the commercial railroads had been eliminating most of their passenger service and concentrating on freight. Railroad passenger-miles traveled in a single year had declined from a height…
Manhattan is 13.4 miles long, 2.3 miles across at its widest point, and 22.5 square miles in area.