It was a party with a purpose in Aurora Thursday night. The purpose was to celebrate iconic artist Andy Warhol while attracting residents and visitors to the downtown business district. Hundreds danced the night away at Aurora’s kick-off to its Color Me Warhol Summer Experience with a special Studio 54...
June 8 Some 35,000 members of the Machinists union begin what is to become a 43-day strike, the largest in airline history, against five carriers. The mechanics and other ground service workers wanted to share in the airlines’ substantial profits. – 1966. During the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo...
June 1 Approximately 12,500 longshoremen strike the Pacific Coast, from San Diego, Calif. to Bellingham, Wash.. – 1916. A Warsaw Poland underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland. – 1942. A coal...
“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” President A. Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19,...
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...
