The source of the term “hoosier” for Indiana residents is often said to be Samuel Hoosier, a contractor for the Ohio Falls Canal in Louisville, Ohio, in 1825.
Hoosier’s employees, recruited from Indiana, were known as the “Hoosier men” or simply “Hoosiers.”
By 1833, the term was being used in local periodicals, for example, in a poem in the Indianapolis Journal called “The Hoosier Nest.”
The poorest county in the United States is Shannon County, South Dakota, site of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is home to the Oglala branch of the Sioux Indians. In 1987, 63.1 percent of all 9,900 residents here lived in poverty, compared to a national poverty rate of 13.5 percent.
Oliver Hazard Perry said, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours” at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, during the War of 1812.
Yes. Within the span of a few days in April 1861, Lee was offered command of both the Union and Confederate forces. Although he opposed slavery and secession and believed the South could not win, his loyalty to his home state of Virginia led him to accept the Confederate command.
The worst earthquake east of the Mississippi River occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 31, 1886, and registered what would have been 6.6 on the Richter scale. Sixty people were killed.
Eighty men, aboard 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers, took part in Doolittle’s 1942 raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942. Launched from the carrier USS Hornet, the planes bombed five Japanese cities: Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Nagoya, and Osaka. The raid rattled the Japanese and boosted American morale at a time when Japan seemed invincible.
The title of the 1962 book by Michael Harrington refers to the huge number of Americans at the time who were living below the poverty level. According to Harrington, the poor totaled 20-25 percent of the U.S. population, or about 40-50 million people.