Lesser-Known Facts in US History, Part 2 Quiz

Answer: 19 months

Riders hired by the Pony Express were usually small, light-weight men-roughly the same size and weight as a modern-day horse racing jockey (although teenagers as young as 14 were occasionally hired). Permanent stations stocked with fresh horses were established along the route, which allowed for fast transfers to keep the mail pouch moving. During its 19 months of operation, the time for messages to travel coast to coast was reduced to about 10 days. The cost to send a ½ ounce letter was $5.00 at the beginning, but by the end the price had dropped to $1.00 (roughly equivalent to $27 in 2018 dollars).

Historical notes:
The Pony Express never turned a profit during its year and a half history. It was finally rendered obsolete on 24 October 1861, when Western Union completed a transcontinental telegraph system. The transcontinental railroad soon followed, with a golden spike (later retrieved) being driven in a 10 May 1869 ceremony in Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. Transcontinental railroad passenger train service began shortly thereafter, with ticket prices ranging from $136 for first class in a Pullman sleeping car to $65 for an immigrant-class bench (in 2018 dollars, those prices are roughly $2,390 and $1,142, respectively). Travel time for a transcontinental trip decreased from approximately four months to 3-1/2 days.

Answer: James Buchanan (15th US president)

The transoceanic cable was actually between Ireland and Newfoundland, Canada, with a combination of land and underwater lines then to the US. Queen Victoria's telegram to then US President Buchanan at his summer residence in the Bedford Springs Hotel in Pennsylvania occurred on 16 August 1858. In it she expressed hope that it [the cable] would prove "an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem." A new, more durable cable that was successful was finally laid in 1866. In 1867, Field received a gold medal from the US Congress and the grand prize at the International Exposition in Paris for his work.

Historical note:
James Buchanan had the unfortunate experience of being the US president just before the US Civil War broke out. Feelings throughout the country (and especially in Washington, DC) were running high, and Buchanan could do little without angering some group or faction. He decided he would not seek a second term in the election of 1860 (which Lincoln won). As the two men rode together to the Capitol in a carriage on Inauguration Day (the outgoing and incoming presidents), Buchanan reportedly said to Lincoln, "If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am leaving it, then you are a very happy man."

Answer: Jefferson

The area in question is mostly rural and conservative, and local residents felt they were ignored by their respective state legislatures (California and Oregon). The plan was to secede from their states and combine to form a new 49th state, with a provisional capital of Yreka, California. However, the death of a key leader and the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 took the steam out of the movement, since most people then directed their attention toward the war effort. In the 21st century, however, the movement was revived, this time with additional counties from both CA and OR. The effort now is to become the 51st state (since Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in the 1950s).

Historical notes:
Three other regions have been proposed as the State of Jefferson. The first was during 1859-61, and included land officially part of the Kansas Territory, Nebraska Territory, New Mexico Territory, Utah Territory, and Washington Territory. The second and third were both located in Texas before the US Civil War. At least three proposals for a State of Lincoln have been considered that would consist of the Panhandle of Idaho, eastern Washington state, and eastern Oregon state (in different versions). That name was also proposed after the US Civil War (1869) for a new state to be carved out of the territory of Texas from the area south and west of the state's Colorado River.

Answer: 1000

Public sentiment in the 1940s was that black pilots could not perform in military combat. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped turn public attitudes around when she went flying with a black pilot at the controls. After the first group of pilots were deemed ready for service, they saw action in Sicily, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Germany, usually escorting bomber groups. They painted the tails of their planes red and became known as "Red Tails" or "Red-Tail Angels." During the war, they earned numerous Distinguished Flying Crosses and Distinguished Unit Citations.

Historical note:
On 29 March 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were collectively awarded a Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in the US Capitol rotunda by President George W. Bush. The medal is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

Answer: Woodrow Wilson

The high-denomination US bills no longer being printed are: $500 (William McKinley), $1,000 (Grover Cleveland), $5,000 (James Madison), $10,000 (Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under Abraham Lincoln, never a US president) and $100,000 (Woodrow Wilson). The need for these large denominations decreased substantially once check writing and electronic fund transfers (EFTs) became commonplace. If you would like to see pictures of these bills, search for: Large denominations US currency. Suffragettes were active in many countries (notably Emmeline Pankhurst in Britain and Susan B. Anthony in the US). In the US, they turned around Woodrow Wilson's thinking on women's voting, and that eventually led to passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

Historical notes:
The $100,000 Gold Certificate was never issued for public circulation. They were used to settle large transactions between Federal Reserve Banks (this was before EFTs). Benny Binion, former owner of the Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, used to display 100 of the $10,000 bills behind thick glass (as an attraction for potential gamblers in his casino). In the late 1990s the Binion family ran into tax problems and auctioned off the display to private collectors, with values per bill of well over $100,000 each!

Answer: Traffic control lights

Although Guglielmo Marconi is often thought to have invented the radio, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that all of Marconi's radio patents violated Tesla's patents and awarded the patents for the radio to Tesla. A fascinating story of the Edison-Tesla marketing war for DC vs. AC involved power for the electric chair (just then being considered for capital punishment). Edison pushed for the electric chair to use AC so he could claim "AC kills people." Traffic control lights (without the yellow caution light, which came later) is usually credited to various inventors (but not Tesla).

Historical note:
When a new company was founded in 2003 to manufacture and market electric automobiles, the name chosen was Tesla Motors (now called Tesla, Inc.), in honor of Nikola Tesla's pioneering genius in the electricity field.

Answer: Miami Prison in Miami, FL

The camp commandant of Camp Sumter, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, was Henry Wirz (birth name Heinrich Hartmann Wirz), a Swiss-born immigrant. After the US Civil War ended, he was tried for war crimes for the horrific treatment of Union soldiers at the camp he supervised, was found guilty, and was hanged in 1865. But some historians think he was just overwhelmed by a grossly-overcrowded camp, with very-few supplies, in a very-poor location (the latrine overflowed into the drinking water supply).

Historical notes:
Contrary to common belief, Wirz was not the only Confederate executed for war crimes during the US Civil War. Perhaps most prominent of the others was guerrilla Champ Ferguson, who was convicted in 1865 for the execution of at least 53 captured Union soldiers. The novel "Andersonville" by MacKinlay Kantor (published 1955) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year (it was a novel loosely based on the facts).

Answer: Harry S. Truman

Over the years, notches and holes cut into the White House's wooden beams by plumbers, electricians and telephone installers had seriously compromised its safety. The final straw for Truman (33rd US president) was when a leg of his daughter's piano broke through the floor. (One of his bathrooms and bedrooms were already off limits at the time.) A subsequent engineering analysis ordered by Truman showed the building was in danger of collapsing, so he moved across the street to Blair House between 1949-1952 while the entire interior was gutted and rebuilt. If you would like to see photographs of this project (including some amazing ones showing the White House interior completely gutted from attic to basement earth while the exterior stone walls are still standing), search for: Truman Reconstruction

Historical notes:
Blair House is located across the street from the WH and is normally used as the official guest residence for visiting dignitaries. "The buck stops here," is a sign Harry Truman famously kept on his desk (it meant responsibility for the decisions of his administration ultimately rested with him). That sign is now displayed at the Harry S. Truman "The Little White House" museum in Key West, FL.

Answer: Faces of several "Old West" figures

SD historian Doane Robinson is credited with the idea of carving the likenesses of famous "Old West" people onto the granite face of the Needles in the Black Hills (the location was later switched to Mount Rushmore) to increase tourism to SD. Robinson initially wanted the memorial to feature American West heroes like Buffalo Bill Cody, Red Cloud and Lewis & Clark, but sculptor Gutzon Borglum decided the sculpture should have broader appeal and chose the four presidents. In 1929, US president Calvin Coolidge finally signed a bill to oversee the sculpting, ensuring the project would have federal funding. This was after he vacationed in SD's Black Hills in 1927 at the invitation of Borglum and SD Senator Peter Norbeck to do some fly fishing, Coolidge's passion.

Historical notes:
A fault in the granite mountaintop influenced where Jefferson's head is carved. He was originally supposed to be to Washington's right, but after his head was started, a weakness in the rock was discovered and he was carved instead on Washington's left (where he is now). The partially-completed Jefferson was then blasted off the mountain. From time to time, proposals are made to add a fifth face, but sculptor Gutzon Borglum felt not enough rock remained that was strong enough to be carved. Borglum died in March 1941, before the 14-year project was finished. His son Lincoln completed the memorial (it opened to the public October 1941).

Answer: Edward Everett (Governor of Massachusetts and famed orator )

Everett was deeply impressed by Lincoln's concise speech and wrote to him the next day noting, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

Historical note:
A 50th reunion of Battle of Gettysburg survivors was held in a five-day encampment in 1913, with over 50,000 former soldiers attending. You can see a video of this on YouTube. A touching scene was former Union and Confederate soldiers, many with canes, long beards and hearing aids with wires dangling down, reaching over a stone wall and shaking hands. A highlight (at least for me) was to hear over-age-65 Confederate soldiers attempt to give the famous "rebel yell"!