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Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 315 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 U.S. History
All were prosecuted for libel under the Sedition Act during the John Adams administration.. It is hard to fathom that in the early days newspapermen were prosucuted and jailed for writing political commentary. Thankfully for freedom of speech, all who were still in jail were pardoned by Thomas Jefferson when he became President in 1801.
Bonus March. Quite sad that the last action the cavalry saw was against World War I veterans who were demonstrating for benefits in Washington in 1932.
Casting the deciding vote against the removal of Andrew Johnson from office.. John F. Kennedy immortalized Ross in his 1954 book 'Profiles in Courage'.
Horace Greeley. Greeley died after losing to Grant in the 1872 election. Eugene Roseboom comments about that election: 'Never in American history have two more unfit men been offered to the country for the highest office. The simple soldier, inexperienced in statecraft and oblivious to his own blundering, was pitted against the vain, erractic reforming editor whose goodness of heart could not make up for his sad lack of judgment. The man of no ideas was running against the man of too many.'
| After Abraham Lincoln took office, he asked his 7 Cabinet members for their advice on whether he should try to hold onto Fort Sumter. At the initial meeting, how many answered in the affirmative? | US: Interesting and Signficant Facts
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one. Only one in the affirmative at first, a bit more support later, but Lincoln never did obtain any strong support from his Cabinet. Nevertheless, he sent the reinforcements and the Civil War resulted.
Thomas Jefferson. When Aaron Burr was tried for treason in 1807, he subpoenaed certain document from President Jefferson which he felt were needed for his defense. Jefferson raised the executive privilege defense, but Chief Justice Marshall ruled that the President was subject to subpoena like anyone else, subject to certain national security protections. Nixon tried to rely on this precedent to withhold the Watergate tapes, but to no avail.
Teddy Roosevelt. After losing the 1912 Republican nomination to Taft because Taft's forces controlled convention machinery, Teddy ran as a Progressive Party candidate and polled 27 per cent of the vote, more than Taft but not enough to defeat Woodrow Wilson.
Direct election of Senators. Income taxes was the subject of the 16th Amendment, also ratified in 1913. Prohibition was the 18th Amendment, ratified in 1919. And finally, women's suffrage was the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920.
Poll taxes. Elimination of the poll tax was an important step to ensuring voting rights for all. D.C. voting rights was the 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961. Presidential disability and succession was the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967. And finally, the voting age was lowered to 18 by the 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971.
| Adding together the ages of President and Vice-President, who made up the youngest presidential ticket elected in the U.S. with a total of 90 years? | Interesting U.S. History Facts
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Bill Clinton and Al Gore. I'm really hoping that nobody picked Reagan and Bush...
| What word did a 1978 anti-sexist edict in Woonsocket, Rhode Island proclaim would be used to replace the word 'manhole'? | Interesting U.S. History Facts
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It was burned down. A competition for the plans for the original White House was held in 1791 (although it was not officially called the White House until 1902) The cornerstone was laid on Oct. 13, 1792, and President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, became the first occupants in 1800. The building was, however, burnt down by the British during an invasion in 1814 and was not rebuilt until 1817.
| How many legal executions took place in the United States between 1976 and October 2000? | An American Miscellany
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668. The Death Penalty has led to 668 executions across the United States since 1976. Of those 98 were carried out in 1999 and as of June 23, 50 have taken place this year.
An Italian sailor. The Italian sailor (or more precisely navigator) was Amerigo Vespucci, who, after making a voyage to South America in 1501-1502, became convinced that the discovered land was not a part of Asia, but a newly discovered land.
| Name the massacre that occurred in Vietnam on March 16, 1968 that added great impetus to the movement to end US involvement? | An American Miscellany
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My Lai Massacre . On March 16, 1968, the men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, under Lt. William Calley entered the village of My Lai deep in Viet Cong and massacred over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children and the elderly. According to eyewitness reports offered after the event, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped, and then killed. The American public, however, did not hear of the massacre until November 1969, two months after Calley was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
| During WWII, the United States rounded up virtually all Japanese-Americans and relocated them to internment camps. When did the internment of Japanese-Americans finally end? | An American Miscellany
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March 20, 1946. Although Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945, Japanese-Americans continued to be held within the internment camps that they had been sent to until March 20, 1946, when the remaining internment camp at Tule Lake was closed. Beginning in late 1941, virtually all persons of Japanese heritage were rounded up in the United States and sent to 'assembly centers' and then on to 'relocation centers', where they spent the rest of the war. Despite being interred, being forced to live in appalling conditions and losing all of their land, a number of Japanese-American men volunteered to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated all-Japanese-American combat unit, which fought during the Second World War. A largely inefficient attempt to compensate the Japanese-Americans was made in July, 1948 through the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, but realistic compensation and apologies were not extended until August, 1988, when Reagan signed HR442 into law. This was over seven years after the CWRIC held a public hearing in Washington D.C. as part of its investigation into the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
| What is the lowest estimated number of people killed outright or shortly after the Enola Gay dropped her payload onto Hiroshima? | An American Miscellany
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70,000. On Aug. 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first city in the world to be struck by an atomic bomb, which was dropped by a B-29 bomber of the U.S. Air Forces. Most of the city was destroyed, and estimates of the number killed outright or shortly after the blast have ranged upward from 70,000. Deaths from radiation injury have mounted through the years.
Canada. The War of 1812 between the United States of America and Great Britain (with its associated territory in Upper and Lower Canada) was actually the beginning of a war that continued until 1814, when a peace treaty was signed in Ghent. The seeds of the war lie in the seizure of American ships during the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the impressment of numerous American sailors into the British Navy and the feeling by Western American land-hungry frontiersmen that their troubles with the Indians were the result of British intrigue. The primary undertaking of the war would be the conquest of Canada, but by the end of 1812 the Americans had been repulsed, mostly due to the actions of Canadian militia and Native forces.
| What was the name of the movement that helped runaway Southern slaves escape to freedom in Canada? | An American Miscellany
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The Underground Railroad. Escaped slaves from the South were secretly helped by sympathetic Northerners, in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Acts, to reach places of safety in the North or in Canada. it was named The Underground Railroad because its activities had to be carried out in secret, using darkness or disguise, and because railway terms were used in reference to the conduct of the system. Various routes were lines, stopping places were called stations, those who aided along the way were conductors, and their charges were known as packages or freight. Estimates of the number of black people who reached freedom vary greatly, from 40,000 to 100,000.
Battle of Wounded Knee . More than 200 Sioux men, women, and children were massacred by U.S. troops in what has been called the Battle of Wounded Knee, an episode that concluded the conquest of the North American Indian. A few hundred Sioux left their reservation at Pine Ridge, seeking to hide in the Badlands. Technically classified as hostiles because they had left the reservation, the Indians gathered around Chief Big Foot (who was dying of pneumonia) but surrendered quietly to pursuing troops of the 7th Cavalry on the night of December 28. Following an overnight encampment near Wounded Knee Creek, the Indians were surrounded and were nearly disarmed when a scuffle broke out over a young brave's new rifle. A shot was fired from within the group of struggling men, and a trooper fell. From close range the soldiers, supported by machine guns, fired into the Indians, whose only arms were the clubs and knives that they had hidden in blankets. Fleeing Indians were pursued, and some were killed miles from the camp. Although the number of Indian dead is unknown (the Indians removed some of the dead later), 144 Indians, including 44 women and 16 children, were buried in a mass grave the following spring when the weather permitted the army to return. About 30 soldiers were killed during the hostilities.
| A number of U.S. Presidents have died while in office. What did the SECOND President to die during his term of office die from? | An American Miscellany
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Heat Sickness. Zachary Taylor spent July 4, 1850, eating cherries and milk at a ceremony at the Washington Monument. He got sick from the heat and died five days later, the second president to die in office.
| Which surname in the United States military forces suffered the highest number of casualties in the Vietnam War? | An American Miscellany
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Smith. The number of people to become Vietnam casualties with the surname Smith was 667, according to the Memorial Directory. Johnson was the second highest with 526, then Williams with 406 (yikes, my surname), and then Brown with 383. According to the figures collected just after the construction of the Vietnam War Memorial, a total of 58152 people in the United States military forces were killed during the Vietnam War.
| As of the most recent U.S. survey in 1990, what is the average percentage of the population by distribution across the entire United States that is Native-American? | An American Miscellany
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1. There are higher concentrations of native North Americans in certain parts of the U.S., most notably in South-West and Alaska, but across the entire country the average number of Native Americans in comparison with the rest of the population is 1 percent. The American anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber submitted a population total for the area north of Mexico at about 1,150,000 prior to the arrival of European colonists.
Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was the only president to be married in the White House to Frances Folsom in 1886--and the first to have a child born in the White House, in 1893. He was also the only President elected to two nonconsecutive terms.
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