Many thousands of years ago, Memphis and its area was settled by indigenous peoples. By the 17th Century, the Chickasaw Indians migrated to the Memphis area. The European-American city was founded in 1819 and incorporated in 1826. Cotton was king and large plantations developed on the work of enslaved Africans.
November 28 After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America, that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships to become the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic. – 1520. Frank Duryea wins the first motor-car race in
It was November 22, 1963. The world as Americans knew it was about to change. It began as a Sun-filled Autumn day in Dallas, Texas. The crowds were enthusiastic in welcoming president John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy. The motorcade proceeded slowly through the Dallas streets. No one could imagine
November 21 The American inventor Thomas A. Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. – 1877. A Senate committee issues a report charging that U.S. government officials were behind assassination plots against two foreign leaders and were heavily involved in at least
November 14 In Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, the religious leader Sheikh-ul-Islam declares an Islamic holy war on behalf of the Ottoman government and urges his Muslim followers to take up arms against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, and Montenegro in World War I. – 1914. The Depression-era Public Works
Part two of the Stolp Avenue profile: The first part is available at thevoice.us/history-recalled-of-buildings-on-stolp-avenue-in-aurora This essay looks at Island Avenue in Aurora before it was amalgamated with Stolp Avenue in 1964. It must be noted that not only was this street the center of Aurora geographically, it was Aurora’s heart
November 7 U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains the only president to have served more than two terms. – 1944. November 8 U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt announces plans for the Civil Works Administration to create four million additional jobs
Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born at St. John’s Hospital New York, August 3, 1926. His father John was seriously ill at the time of his birth and within a year, his father was unable to work. His father died when Tony was 10 years old. “I grew up in poverty,”
There is something special in October’s air, and I don’t mean the snow flurries that have threatened and are on their way this week. There is something in the cool October breeze that speaks to a deep, ancient, part of us as humans. It was celebrated in the ancient Celtic
October 31 The priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation. In his theses, Luther condemned the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic
“I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.” — Khalil Gibran Sometimes extreme poverty and human loss at a young age can transform the soul which survives
October 24A 63-year-old schoolteacher, Annie Edson Taylor, becomes the first known person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel. – 1901. The first U.S. federal minimum wage, 25¢ an hour, takes effect, thanks to enactment of the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA). The law required an
More chickens have come home to roost. In a previous essay, I stated that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which ended World War I, had unintentional consequences and that those consequences were the massive conflicts currently embroiling all of Southwest Asia. Among other things, the Treaty called for the
October 17Gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000 to signal the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s. – 1931. Paris police kill more than 200 Algerians who were marching in the city in support
By John W. Whitehead “You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.” —John Lennon (1969) John Lennon, was born 79 years ago October 9, 1940,
By Lyle R. Rolfe When I walked down my driveway to get the daily newspaper, Wall Street Journal, I thought back to my grade school days when I delivered newspapers prior to school each morning. At that time, if memory serves me, it was The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun
October 10 A former U.S. postal worker kills his former supervisor with a three-foot samurai sword, shoots the supervisor’s fiance, and shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, N.J.. His violent outburst was one of several high-profile attacks by postal workers that resulted in the
October 3 Expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln announces that the Nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday November 26. – 1863. With the admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Britain terminates its mandate over the Arab nation which makes
September 26For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic Party senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, meet in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S.
