PastPerfect-Online Blog

April 2, 1917 - Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress, assumes office

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:16:30 -0400

April 2, 1917 - Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress, assumes...

January 3, 1993 - Buffalo Bills pull off one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:16:30 -0500

January 3, 1993 - Buffalo Bills pull off one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history“On...

October 1, 1890 - Yosemite National Park Established

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 09:16:29 -0400

October 1, 1890 - Yosemite National Park Established“On October 1, 1890, an act of Congress...

July 7, 1981 - Reagan announces Sandra Day O'Connor as pick for the Supreme Court

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:16:36 -0400

ALTJuly 7, 1981 - Reagan announces Sandra Day O'Connor as pick for the Supreme Court“On July...

April 2, 1805 - Hans Christian Andersen is born

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 09:16:21 -0400

April 2, 1805 - Hans Christian Andersen is born“Hans Christian Andersen, one of the world’s...

January 11, 1908: Theodore Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 09:16:30 -0500

January 11, 1908: Theodore Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument“On January 11,...

October 1, 1908: Ford Motor Company unveils the Model T

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 09:16:24 -0400

October 1, 1908: Ford Motor Company unveils the Model T“On October 1, 1908, the first...

July 10, 1850: Millard Fillmore sworn in as 13th U.S. president

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 09:30:30 -0400

July 10, 1850: Millard Fillmore sworn in as 13th U.S. president“On July 10, 1850, Vice...

April 3, 1860 - Pony Express debuts

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 09:16:32 -0400

April 3, 1860 - Pony Express debuts“On April 3, 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling...

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 09:16:22 -0500

January 3, 1959: Alaska admitted into Union“On January 3, 1959, President Eisenhower signs a...

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 09:16:26 -0400

ALTOctober 4, 1927: Work begins on Mount Rushmore“On October 4, 1927, sculpting begins on the...

June 30, 1859: Daredevil crosses Niagara Falls on tightropeJean...

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:16:34 -0400

June 30, 1859: Daredevil crosses Niagara Falls on tightrope

Jean Francois Gravelet, a Frenchman known professionally as Charles Blondin, becomes the first daredevil to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. The feat, which was performed 160 feet above the Niagara gorge just down river from the Falls, was witnessed by some 5,000 spectators. Wearing pink tights and a yellow tunic, Blondin crossed a cable about two inches in diameter and 1,100-feet long with only a balancing pole to protect him from plunging into the dangerous rapids below.

It was the first in a series of famous Niagara tightrope walks performed by “The Great Blondin” from 1859 to 1860. These “ascensions,” as he advertised them, always had different theatrical variations, including doing tightrope walks blindfolded, in a sack, with his manager on his back, sitting down midway to cook an omelet, and pushing a wheelbarrow across while dressed as an ape. In 1861, he performed at the Crystal Palace in London, turning somersaults on stilts on a rope stretched 170 feet above the ground. He died in 1897.

This souvenir card depicting Blondin crossing the Niagara River can be found in the online collection of the Niagara Falls Museums.

April 05, 1933– FDR creates Civilian Conservation...

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 09:16:28 -0400

April 05, 1933– FDR creates Civilian Conservation Corps

“On April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an innovative federally funded organization that put tens of thousands of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits.

In 1932, FDR took America’s political helm during the country’s worst economic crisis, declaring a “government worthy of its name must make a fitting response” to the suffering of the unemployed. He implemented the CCC a little over one month into his presidency as part of his administration’s “New Deal” plan for social and economic progress. The CCC reflected FDR’s deep commitment to environmental conservation. He waxed poetic when lobbying for the its passage, declaring “the forests are the lungs of our land [which] purify our air and give fresh strength to our people.”

The CCC, also known as “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” was open to unemployed, unmarried U.S. male citizens between the ages of 18 and 26. All recruits had to be healthy and were expected to perform hard physical labor. Blacks were placed in de-facto segregated camps, although administrators denied the practice of discrimination. Enlistment in the program was for a minimum of 6 months; many re-enlisted after their first term. Participants were paid $30 a month and often given supplemental basic and vocational education while they served. Under the guidance of the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, CCC employees fought forest fires, planted trees, cleared and maintained access roads, re-seeded grazing lands and implemented soil-erosion controls. They built wildlife refuges, fish-rearing facilities, water storage basins and animal shelters. To encourage citizens to get out and enjoy America’s natural resources, FDR authorized the CCC to build bridges and campground facilities. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC employed over 3 million men.

Of Roosevelt’s many New Deal policies, the CCC is considered by many to be one of the most enduring and successful. It provided the model for future state and federal conservation programs. In 1942, Congress discontinued appropriations for the CCC, diverting the desperately needed funds to the effort to win World War II.”

- History.com

This Civilian Conservation Corps Ring from 1940 can be found in the online collection of the National Museum of Forest Service History.

January 16, 1919: Prohibition is ratified by the...

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 09:16:20 -0500

January 16, 1919: Prohibition is ratified by the states

“The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” is ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919.

The movement for the prohibition of alcohol began in the early 19th century, when Americans concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming temperance societies. By the late 19th century, these groups had become a powerful political force, campaigning on the state level and calling for total national abstinence. In December 1917, the 18th Amendment, also known as the Prohibition Amendment, was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

Nine months after Prohibition’s ratification, Congress passed the Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of prohibition, including the creation of a special unit of the Treasury Department. One year and a day after its ratification, prohibition went into effect—on January 17, 1920—and the nation became officially dry.

Despite a vigorous effort by law-enforcement agencies, the Volstead Act failed to prevent the large-scale distribution of alcoholic beverages, and organized crime flourished in America. In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified, repealing prohibition.”

- History.com

This photograph of a captured liquor still can be found in the online collection of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.

October 31, 1950 - Earl Lloyd becomes first Black player in the...

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 09:16:31 -0400

October 31, 1950 - Earl Lloyd becomes first Black player in the NBA

“On October 31, 1950, 21-year-old Earl Lloyd becomes the first African American to play in an NBA game when he takes the court in the season opener for the Washington Capitols.

Lloyd grew up in Jim Crow Virginia and went to West Virginia State, where he was the star of the school’s championship basketball team. He didn’t know he’d been drafted by the NBA until he ran into a friend on campus who told him she’d heard a rumor that he’d be moving to Washington. It turned out that the Capitols had picked him in the ninth round of the draft. Two other Black players joined the NBA that season—the Celtics drafted Chuck Cooper in the second round and the New York Knicks got Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton from the Harlem Globetrotters—but the Knicks and the Celts didn’t start their seasons until November. As a result, Lloyd became a coincidental pioneer: the first Black player to make his debut in the NBA.

Joining an all-white team was intimidating, Lloyd remembered, but his teammates—most of whom had played on integrated college teams—were immediately welcoming. Some fans, however, were less kind. As the announcer read the Capitols’ lineup on that first night of the season, a white man in the front row used a racial slur.

After seven games with the Capitols, Lloyd was drafted into the military and sent to Korea for two years. When he returned to the United States, the Capitols had gone out of business, and so he went to play for the Syracuse Nationals (who later became the Philadelphia 76ers). He wrapped up his nine-season career in Detroit. After he retired from playing, he stayed in the Motor City, serving as a scout and then as an assistant coach for the Pistons. In 1970, he became the first full-time black head coach in the league. He coached the Detroit team for a year, and then went on to work for the city, in the police department and as a school administrator. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003. He died in 2015.”

- History.com

This Month in History:

October 1, 1890 - Yosemite National Park established
October 7, 1985 - Lynette Woodard becomes first female Harlem Globetrotter
October 24, 1901 - First barrel ride down Niagara Falls
October 28, 1904 - New York City subway opens

This biography of Earl Lloyd and other photographs can be found in the online collection of Historic Alexandria.

July 4, 1884 - France gives the Statue of Liberty to the United...

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 09:16:36 -0400

July 4, 1884 - France gives the Statue of Liberty to the United States

“In a ceremony held in Paris on July 4, 1884, the completed Statue of Liberty is formally presented to the U.S. ambassador as a commemoration of the friendship between France and the United States.

The idea for the statue was born in 1865, when the French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American democracy and the liberation of the nation’s slaves. By 1870, sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi had come up with sketches of a giant figure of a robed woman holding a torch—possibly based on a statue he had previously proposed for the opening of the Suez Canal.

Bartholdi traveled to the United States in the early 1870s to drum up enthusiasm and raise funds for a proposed Franco-American monument to be located on Bedloe’s Island, in New York’s harbor. Upon his return to France, he and Laboulaye created the Franco-American Union, which raised some 600,000 francs from the French people.

Work on the statue, formally called “Liberty Enlightening the World,” began in France in 1875. A year later, the completed torch and left forearm went on display in Philadelphia and New York to help with U.S. fundraising for the building of the statue’s giant pedestal.

Constructed of hammered copper sheets formed over a steel framework perfected by engineer Gustave Eiffel (who joined the project in 1879), the completed Statue of Liberty stood just over 151 feet high and weighed 225 tons when it was completed in 1884. After the July 4 presentation to Ambassador Levi Morton in Paris that year, the statue was disassembled and shipped to New York City, where it would be painstakingly reconstructed.

Meanwhile, publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World had stepped in to help raise funds for the pedestal’s construction, raising more than $100,000 in donations by mid-1885. In October 1886, the pedestal on Bedloe’s Island was completed, and the Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated in a ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.

Six years later, the inspection station on neighboring Ellis Island opened, welcoming more than 12 million immigrants to the United States between 1892 and 1954. Above them, the Statue of Liberty brandished her torch, embodying the most famous words from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem “The New Colossus,” written to raise funds for the pedestal and later inscribed on a plaque at its base: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…””

- History.com

This week in History:
July 3, 1890 - Idaho becomes 43rd state
July 4, 1997 - Pathfinder lands on Mars
July 5, 1865 - Salvation Army founded
July 6, 1942 - Anne Frank’s family takes refuge
July 7, 1917 - British Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps officially established
July 8, 1776 - Liberty Bell tolls to announce Declaration of Independence
July 9, 1877 - Wimbledon tournament begins

This 1890 albumen print of the Statue of Liberty can be found in the online collection of the Adirondack Experience.

April 6, 1917 - The United States officially enters World War I...

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:30:27 -0400

April 6, 1917 - The United States officially enters World War I

“Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.

On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. Four days later, his request was granted.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.“

- History.com

This Month in History:
April 3, 1860 - The Pony Express begins
April 9, 1959 - NASA introduces America’s first astronauts
April 12, 1963 - Martin Luther King, Jr. writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
April 20, 1902 - Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium
April 24, 1800 - Library of Congress established
April 30, 1803 - United States and France conclude the Louisiana Purchase

This Selective Service Poster from World War I can be found in the online collection of the McLeod County Historical Society & Museum.

January 05, 1933 - Golden Gate Bridge is born “On January...

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:16:25 -0500

January 05, 1933 - Golden Gate Bridge is born

“On January 5, 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.

Following the Gold Rush boom that began in 1849, speculators realized the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in value in direct proportion to its accessibility to the city. Soon, a plan was hatched to build a bridge that would span the Golden Gate, a narrow, 400-foot deep strait that serves as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula with the southern end of Marin County.

Although the idea went back as far as 1869, the proposal took root in 1916. A former engineering student, James Wilkins, working as a journalist with the San Francisco Bulletin, called for a suspension bridge with a center span of 3,000 feet, nearly twice the length of any in existence. Wilkins’ idea was estimated to cost an astounding $100 million. So, San Francisco’s city engineer, Michael M. O’Shaughnessy (he’s also credited with coming up with the name Golden Gate Bridge), began asking bridge engineers whether they could do it for less.

Engineer and poet Joseph Strauss, a 5-foot tall Cincinnati-born Chicagoan, said he could.

Eventually, O’Shaughnessy and Strauss concluded they could build a pure suspension bridge within a practical range of $25-30 million with a main span at least 4,000 feet. The construction plan still faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources. By the time most of the obstacles were cleared, the Great Depression of 1929 had begun, limiting financing options, so officials convinced voters to support $35 million in bonded indebtedness, citing the jobs that would be created for the project. However, the bonds couldn’t be sold until 1932, when San-Francisco based Bank of America agreed to buy the entire project in order to help the local economy.

The Golden Gate Bridge officially opened on May 27, 1937, the longest bridge span in the world at the time. The first public crossing had taken place the day before, when 200,000 people walked, ran and even roller skated over the new bridge.

With its tall towers and famous trademarked "international orange” paint job, the bridge quickly became a famous American landmark, and a symbol of San Francisco.“

- History.com

This month in History:
January 9, 1768 - First modern circus is staged
January 12, 1932 - Hattie Wyatt Caraway becomes first woman elected to U.S. Senate
January 19, 1809 - Edgar Allan Poe is born
January 27, 1945 - Auschwitz is liberated

This color postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge can be found in the online collection of the Marin History Museum.

November 3, 1948 - Newspaper mistakenly declares “Dewey...

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 09:16:20 -0400

https://kyhistory.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/0A535EF2-8F98-41A4-A5DA-098357583068

https://kyhistory.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/575E3BAC-C53A-4A5E-A207-332047063025

November 3, 1948 - Newspaper mistakenly declares “Dewey Defeats Truman”

“On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumps the gun and mistakenly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of his presidential race with incumbent Harry S. Truman in a front-page headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

Many of America’s major newspapers had predicted a Dewey victory early on in the campaign. A New York Times article editorialized that “if Truman is nominated, he will be forced to wage the loneliest campaign in recent history.” Perhaps not surprisingly then, Truman chose not to use the press as a vehicle for getting his message across. Instead, in July 1948, he embarked on an ambitious 22,000-mile “whistle stop” railroad and automobile campaign tour.

At every destination, Truman asked crowds to help him keep his job as president. His eventual success in the election of 1948 has been largely attributed to this direct interaction with the public and his appeal to the common voters as the political “underdog.” At the end of one of his campaign speeches, voices in the crowd could be heard yelling “Give ’em Hell, Harry!” It didn’t take long for the phrase to catch on and become Truman’s unofficial campaign slogan.

In a now famous photograph snapped in the early morning hours after the election, a beaming and bemused Truman is shown holding aloft the Chicago Tribune issue that had wrongly predicted his political downfall. Truman defeated Dewey by 114 electoral votes.”

- History.com

This week in History:
October 31, 1926 - Harry Houdini dies
November 1, 1800 - John Adams moves into White House
November 2, 1947 - Howard Hughes’s “Spruce Goose” flies
November 3, 1903 - Panama declares independence from Columbia
November 4, 1922 - Entrance to King Tut’s tomb discovered
November 5, 1940 - FDR re-elected for third term
November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln elected president

These two newspapers (the original “Dewey Defeats Truman” and the retraction printing the next day) can be found in the online collection of Kentucky Historical Society.

September 1, 1807 - Aaron Burr acquitted of Treason“Former...

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 09:15:04 -0400

September 1, 1807 - Aaron Burr acquitted of Treason

“Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He was acquitted on the grounds that, though he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of the law governing treason. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe.

Aaron Burr, born into a prestigious New Jersey family in 1756, graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at the age of 17. He joined the Continental Army in 1775 and distinguished himself during the Patriot attack on Quebec. A masterful politician, he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1783 and later served as state attorney. In 1790, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1796, Burr ran for the vice presidency on Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican ticket (the forerunner of the Democratic Party), but the Federalist John Adams won the presidency. Burr left the Senate and returned to the New York Assembly.

In 1800, Jefferson again chose Burr as his running mate. Under the electoral procedure then prevailing, president and vice president were not voted for distinctly; the candidate who received the most votes was elected president, and the second in line, vice president. Jefferson and Burr each won 73 votes, and the election was sent to the House of Representatives. What at first seemed but an electoral technicality–handing Jefferson victory over his running mate–developed into a major constitutional crisis when Federalists in the lame-duck Congress threw their support behind Burr. After a remarkable 35 tie votes, a small group of Federalists changed sides and voted in Jefferson’s favor.

Burr became vice president, but Jefferson grew apart from him, and he did not support Burr’s renomination to a second term in 1804. That year, a faction of New York Federalists, who had found their fortunes drastically diminished after the ascendance of Jefferson, sought to enlist the disgruntled Burr into their party and elect him governor. Burr’s old political antagonist Alexander Hamilton campaigned against him with great fervor, and he lost the Federalist nomination and then, running as an independent for governor, the election. In the campaign, Burr’s character was savagely attacked by Hamilton and others, and after the election he resolved to restore his reputation by challenging Hamilton to a duel, or an “affair of honor,” as they were known.

Affairs of honor were commonplace in America at the time, and the complex rules governing them usually led to a resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honor in his life, and he had resolved most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804, the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Hamilton’s “second”—his assistant and witness in the duel—Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air. Burr’s second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. What happened next is agreed upon: Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine. Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon.

Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder in New York and New Jersey, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.

In 1805, Burr, thoroughly discredited, concocted a plot with James Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army, to seize the Louisiana Territory and establish an independent empire, which Burr, presumably, would lead. He contacted the British government and unsuccessfully pleaded for assistance in the scheme. Later, when border trouble with Spanish Mexico heated up, Burr and Wilkinson conspired to seize territory in Spanish America for the same purpose.

In the fall of 1806, Burr led a group of well-armed colonists toward New Orleans, prompting an immediate U.S. investigation. General Wilkinson, in an effort to save himself, turned against Burr and sent dispatches to Washington accusing Burr of treason. In February 1807, Burr was arrested in Louisiana for treason and sent to Virginia to be tried in a U.S. court. On September 1, he was acquitted on a technicality. Nevertheless, the public condemned him as a traitor, and he went into exile to Europe. He later returned to private life in New York, the murder charges against him forgotten. He died in 1836.”

- History.com

This week in History:

August 29, 1876 - Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the electric self-starter, is born
August 30, 1983 - Guion S. Blueford becomes first African-American to travel to space
August 31, 1897 - Thomas Edison patents the Kinetograph
September 1, 1985 - Wreck of Titanic Found
September 2, 1945 - Japan surrenders, bringing an end to WWII
September 3, 1783 - Treaty of Paris signed
September 4, 1951 - President Truman makes first transcontinental television broadcast

This engraving of Aaron Burr can be found in the online collection of the Fraunces Tavern Museum.