US History
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For Americans, the 4th of July is a great day of celebration; it is Independence Day. However, for three Presidents, it was not such a great day; it was the day they died. Two American Presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both died on July 4, 1826. This date was the 50th anniversary of the…
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Most of us will have heard the phrase, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” The phrase is supposed to have originated in England in the 17th century. City streets were filthy then, and heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals. Richard Brome’s The City Witt, 1652, has the line, ‘It shall rain dogs and polecats.’…
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The first television commercial aired in the United States on July 1, 1941. This 9-second spot was for Bulova watches and was broadcast on NBC’s WNBT station before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. The commercial featured a simple visual of a Bulova clock superimposed on a map of the…
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To be honest the ‘global’ in the title might be a slight exaggeration but it was a freaky weather event nonetheless in fact the freakiest weather event. Imagine bundling up to get the newspaper on an early morning at 7:30 a.m. with the temperature at a frigid -4 degrees.(−20°C). Just two minutes later as you…
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We sometimes forget that the White House is not only the residence of the President of the USA , but also the residence of the President’s family. In 1975 Susan Ford, daughter of President Gerald Ford, was in her final year at Holton-Arms School.Her classmates, petitioned headmaster James Lewis to ask Susan if she could arrange…
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Opinions polls are a useful toll to check the sentiments in the country, an indication of what people think. In the recent past some polls got it spectacularly wrong. But the key to a good opinion poll is how the question is worded. On April 28 1941 Gallup released the results of a poll,which they…
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The slogan America First was not first used by Donald J Trump but by President Woodrow Wilson, and also by Warren G. Harding during the 1920 US Presidential elections. On September 4th 1940 R. Douglas Stuart Jr., who was a student at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, founded the America First Committee. It would become…
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The one thing this is for certain in history, it always repeats itself. With all the talk about spies nowadays it is a good time to look at one of WWII spies.Takeo Yoshikawa. Because of his expertise on the U.S. Navy, Yoshikawa was sent to Hawaii under the cover of being a vice-consul named Tadashi…
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“On the wet windy evening of January 22, a youthful band of idealists went to a lonely cabin in the Maryland woods.” these are the first few lines of one of the more stranger stories of LIFE magazine. “On the damp, windy night of January 22, a group of idealistic youths ventured into a remote…
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The St. Valentine’s Day massacre—the most spectacular gangland slaying in mob history—was actually somewhat of a failure. Al Capone had arranged for Chicago mobster George “Bugs” Moran and most of his North Side Gang to be eliminated on February 14, 1929. The plan, probably devised by Capone’s henchman “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, was simple and…
