Today is the birthday of the first great African-American boxer. Live large today in his honor. Jack Johnson was born on March 31, 1878 in Galveston, Texas. His parents were former slaves. He was frail as a child, he would not stay that way. After only five years of schooling, Read more…
Maria Oktyabrskaya was one of ten children to a poor family. She married an officer in the Red Army in 1925. She joined the Military Wives Council and was trained to fire weapons and drive. When Germany invaded Russia, her husband was killed in fighting near Kiev in 1941. She Read more…
On March 29, 1885, Dr. John Pemberton brewed up the first batch of Coca-Kola in his backyard. In 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton was working on a non-alcoholic “nerve medicine” to sell in his drug store. He boiled a concoction of herbs, coca leaves, and kola nuts (caffeine) in his Read more…
During WWII, the city of Leningrad was besieged by the German army for 872 days. Before the siege began, the zoo employees moved 80 animals to another city. These included black panthers, tigers, polar bears, a tapir, and a rhino. The crocodile was released into the river and never Read more…
On March 27, 1915, Typhoid Mary was arrested and sent back to quarantine after being on the lam for five years. Mary Mallon immigrated to America from Ireland at age 15 in 1883. She started as a domestic servant and moved up to cook. She cooked for some of the Read more…
On March 26, 1997, the last of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed ritual suicide. In 1972, Marshall Applewhite met a nurse named Bonnie Nettles at a psychiatric hospital. Applewhite, the son of a Presbyterian minister, had been fired from his job as a music professor for Read more…
John Gutzon Borglum was born on March 25, 1871. Here are some interesting facts about his most famous achievement. The idea came from South Dakota historian Doane Robinson. He thought a carving of historical figures would be good for tourism. He wanted Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, Crazy Horse, Buffalo Bill Read more…
This is the anniversary of the death of a man who wrote one of the most famous poems about the Vietnam War. Capt. Michael O’Donnell was a helicopter pilot. On March 24, 1970 he was part of a mission to extract a long-range reconnaissance patrol from Cambodia. The unit was Read more…
Elisha Otis (a descendant of Revolutionary hero James Otis) was a master mechanic. He invented a safety lift for a warehouse, but the company went out of business. He was headed for California in 1852 to seek gold when a furniture maker commissioned two of his elevators. He used Read more…
On March 22, 1941, James Stewart became the first Hollywood star to join the Armed Forces when he was inducted as a private in the Army Air Force. Stewart’s grandfathers had fought in the Civil War and his father had served in the Spanish-American War and WWI. He was Read more…