Stories of America’s Past

In the 1930’s and 1940’s, sunscreen was being developed independently but simultaneously by at least four different chemists in various parts of the world: The first-to-market was likely H.A. Milton in Australia. In the early 1930s, he discovered that a  wound-healing substance seemed to protect against the sun. Once he developed …

Curb cuts—the slight slope from a sidewalk to a roadway—are preferred by most people: walkers, bikers, and parents pushing children in strollers—yet they came about only because of a hard-fought battle by disability rights activists. Enjoy them, use them, just don’t ever take them for granted. The Issue With Curbs For most people, …

Ethel Waters was an enormously popular jazz and blues singer from the 1920s until her death in 1977. She broke barriers in many cultural areas and created a path for Blacks to star on Broadway. Her quieter more interpretive style of presenting a song brought blues out of the jazz …

The invention of the telephone in 1876 jump-started several new developments: The telephones themselves needed to be further refined. Telephone offices with operating equipment needed to be created so that telephone calls could be made within a community. (Very early telephones were sold in pairs and functioned as a home-to-office communication system, …

Louis Comfort Tiffany is perhaps the single most famous artist of all time in the field of decorative arts. During his era, his name was the only one associated with his firm’s design work. But recent information uncovered by a professor and a curator have led to a new understanding: …

Table of contentsNez ChildhoodMarine RecruiterThe MarinesIdea for CodeCreating the Navajo CodeCode Talker MethodologyTesting the CodeGuadalcanalMessages SentSecret Even on the BattlefieldNez Tour of Duty EndsThe G.I. BillFamily LifeCode Talkers Declassified Chester Nez, a Navajo, was recruited by the Marines in 1942. He was one of 29 Navajos who were brought into the …