Today in History: September 2nd On this day in history, 1666, a fire that came to be known as the “Great Fire of London” was started. In the wee hours of the morning, what began as a small fire in a humble abode near London Bridge became an uncontrollable inferno that swept through the city for four days. The flames […]
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Today in History: August 30 On this day in history, 30 B.C., Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, the iconic seductress and lover of both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, commits suicide after her forces are crushed by Octavian, who shortly became the first emperor of the Rome. Cleopatra was born in 69 B.C., and was made queen of Egypt as Queen […]
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Today in History: August 29 This Day In History, 2005: Hurricane Katrina Pounds Gulf Coast Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating, and costliest, natural disaster to ever occur in the United States, though unbelievably it was only the third most powerful storm in the 2005 hurricane season. Over 1,800 people lost their lives during the storm and the subsequent flooding, […]
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Today in History, August 28 This Day In History, 1963: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 1963 was a year marked by racial tension and increasing civil rights demonstrations throughout the United States. The nation was outraged by television images of police officers in Birmingham, Alabama using attack dogs and fire hoses against protestors, many who were teenagers […]
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Today in History: August 27 This Day In History, 1883: Krakatau Erupts On a small, desolate island called Krakatau west of Sumatra in Indonesia, the most violent volcanic eruption in recorded history occurred, estimated to have produced an equivalent of a 200 megaton explosion, which is about 4 times that of the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba. […]
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Today in History: August 26, 1920 The 19th amendment to the United States Constitution, which was the result of about 70 years of hard work and lobbying from tireless suffragists who battled on both the state and national fronts, prohibits any US citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of their sex. The two portions of […]
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Today in History: August 23 This Day In History, 1305: William Wallace Executed for High Treason Thanks to Mel Gibson’s wildly popular 1995 movie “Braveheart” depicting the life of Scottish hero William Wallace, there has been a renewal of interest in the once rather obscure medieval freedom fighter. Artistic license was used liberally – but to great effect – to […]
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Today in History: August 22 This Day In History, 1485: The Battle of Bosworth Field The Battle of Bosworth Field was culmination of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war that engulfed England during the 15th century, which was basically a feud between two branches of the Plantagenet family – the Yorks and the Lancasters. Just two years before […]
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Today in History: August 21 1959: Hawaii is made the 50th state of the United States When President Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the Oval Office in 1953, he was president of 48 states; when he ended his stint in 1961 two more states had joined the Union, bringing the grand total up to fifty. The addition of Alaska and Hawaii […]
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Today in History: August 20 This Day In History, 1862: “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” by Horace Greeley was published. An editorial by New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley called “The Prayer of the Twenty Millions” challenged President Abraham Lincoln to declare emancipation for all slaves in territories officially held by the Union. Greeley’s impassioned words mirrored the sentiments of […]
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Sarah asks: Who invented the TV dinner? TV dinners weren’t officially created until the 1950s under that name, so before that time single guys, people that simply can’t or hate to cook, and harried moms had to find other ways to rustle up dinner in a hurry. It’s hard to imagine surviving in such primitive conditions, but our ancestors were […]
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Today in History: August 19, 1692 On this day in history, 1692, five people were executed in Salem, MA for witchcraft, as part of the Salem witch trials that occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. To the 17th century people of New England, as in Europe, Satan wasn’t an abstract concept used to personify evil in the world – […]
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Twister has been a sure fire way to break the ice at parties for decades now. Earlier centuries had waltzes and minuets as socially sanctioned ways to get physically closer to the opposite sex. In the 20th century, for a time this popularly switched to the game of Twister; a very different activity, but the same underlying concept. Before we […]
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On a relatively mild January day in 1919, Boston was the setting for one of the more bizarre disasters to ever happen on American soil. The incident was also the impetus behind the longest court battle in the city’s history. 21 people lost their lives that day, while another 150 were seriously injured. The price tag to address the damage […]
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Ben Franklin was a man of many and varied accomplishments- a Renaissance man in the grand tradition of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a writer, scientist, musician, inventor and innovator, despite only ever receiving 2 years of formal schooling. His ideas and principles helped shape his fledgling nation, and his diplomatic skills assured the newly born United States of America […]
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The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy in 1892. It was published in a popular children’s magazine of the time called The Youth’s Companion as part of the 400th anniversary celebration of Christopher Columbus arriving in the New World. The celebration itself was the brainchild of James B. Upham, a marketer for the […]
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Paul asks: Who made the first pizza? Pizza has become such a staple of the modern diet that certain people, often found in Computer Science labs at 2 a.m. the world over, practically consider it one of the basic food groups. For such a popular food, its origins are difficult to pinpoint, as it all depends on your definition of […]
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Kelly asks: When did women and men start shaving different parts of their body? Both sexes have a love-hate relationship with removing body hair. We’ve been pulling, plucking, burning, tweezing and ripping out undesirable hair since the dawn of time. It’s believed that as far back as 4,000 B.C., women were using dangerous substances like arsenic and quicklime to get […]
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