May 25 With George Washington presiding, the Constitutional Convention formally convenes on this day in 1787. The convention faced a daunting task: The peaceful overthrow of the new American government as it had been defined by the Articles of Confederation. – 1787. Thousands of unemployed WWI veterans arrive in Washington,
May 18 In what may have been baseball’s first labor strike, the Detroit Tigers refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended: He went into the stands and beat a fan who had been heckling him. Cobb was reinstated and the Tigers went back to work after the
May 11 Nationwide railway strike begins in Pullman, Ill. and 260,000 railroad workers ultimately joined the strike to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Palace Car Co.. – 1894. A massive storm sends millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States
The Geneva History Museum, 113 S. Third Street in Geneva, will explore the history of Geneva High School’s Viking mascot at noon Tuesday, May 9. Continuing the museum’s Brown Bag noontime series, “The History of Geneva Vikings” will be presented by museum educator Heidi Howlett. Admission is free. Reservations are
May 4 Haymarket massacre. A bomb is thrown when Chicago police start to break up a rally for strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. A riot erupts, and 11 police and strikers die, mostly from gunfire, and scores more are injured. – 1886. In Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen
April 27 After going three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island in the Philippines. Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades. – 1521. Afghanistan president Sardar Mohammed Daoud is
Through the centuries, Americans invested a tremendous amount of labor, materials, and money into making and maintaining their wardrobes. At 6:45 p.m. Thursday, April 27, the Little White School Museum will be host to a free program on “The Life Cycle of Clothing,” recounting how our 19th Century ancestors viewed
In 1905, King Flipper Cigars were manufactured in downtown Oswego, which the notation at the lower right of the inside of the cigar box testifies. It was one of the stops featured on the Little White School Museum’s “Oswego History Tour—Industrial Sector,” Saturday, April 15.
David Nordin displays a Viking-style cooking pan during a presentation on Viking food at the Geneva History Museum April 11.
April 20 The Fidel Castro regime announces that all Cubans seeking to emigrate to the U.S. are free to board boats at the port of Mariel, west of Havana and launched the Mariel Boatlift. The first of 125,000 Cuban refugees from Mariel reached Florida the next day. – 1980. Ludlow
April 13 Disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days earlier for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, but
April 6 The first slave revolt in the U.S. occurs at a slave market in New York City’s Wall Street area. Twenty-one blacks were executed for killing nine whites. The city responded by strengthening its slave codes. – 1712. The Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn
“We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.” — Abraham Lincoln, age 28 Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents in historic United States. Lincoln is often ranked in both popular
March 30 At the height of the Great Depression, 35,000 unemployed march in New York’s Union Square. Police beat many demonstrators and injure 100. – 1930. The federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act is enacted. – 1970. President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest and injured outside a
March 23 The initials “O.K.” are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll correct,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the every-day speech of Americans. – 1839. At 7:20 in the morning, an explosion
March 16 The United States Military Academy, the first military school in the United States, is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science. The site at West Point, N.Y., the U.S. Military Academy, often is simply known
The Aurora Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Military Museum is honoring the long legacy of women in the United States Armed Forces with the launch of its newest exhibit: Hidden Warriors – The History of Women in the Military. Hidden Warriors showcases the role of women in the U.S.
The Oswegoland Heritage Association and Oswego’s Little White School Museum, 72 Polk Street, at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 18 for “From War Plants to Prairie Plants: Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and the Joliet Arsenal” presented by Midewin Heritage Program Manager and Archaeologist Joe Wheeler. The program host is the heritage
More than 100 Aurora Historical Society members and guests turned out Friday, March 3 to preview an exhibit paying homage to famed Aurora artist Ruth Van Sickle Ford (1897-1995). “Aurora’s Own Ruth Ford,” an exhibit of approximately 35 Ford paintings loaned by local collectors, will run through May 13 at
March 9 U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan and drop 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. Almost 16 square miles in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in
