April Fool’s Day in the U.S.
April Fool’s Day has been a part of American life for a very long time. During the late 19th century food pranks were popular. Because our cooking and eating habits […]
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Entrepreneurs & Inventors
St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S.: Six Surprising Facts
. St. Patrick’s Day as a cultural holiday is an American invention — the first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in the United States on March 17, 1762. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through — where else? New York City.
2. The NYC parade became the “granddaddy” of what it is today in 1848 when several New York Irish Aid societies decided to unite their smaller parades to become one. Today the parade is the world’s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States.
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Myra Bradwell (1831-1894): Rejected by Bar Assoc. but Builds Legal Publishing Empire
• Refused admission to the bar and the practice of law by the Illinois Supreme Court because of her gender;
• Established the Chicago Legal News, which became a vital information service for attorneys;
• Helped Mary Lincoln fight an unjust commitment to an insane asylum;
• Assisted in securing the passage of a bill that gave women the right to retain their own wages and protected the rights of widows;
• Often cited as the first woman attorney in the United States; this is untrue. Arabella Mansfield in Iowa was the first woman in the country admitted to practice law (1869).
Myra Colby Bradwell was born in Manchester, Vermont in 1831. Her family left Vermont when Myra was quite young and they lived in western New York state for a time, eventually pushing on to Cook County, Illinois. When a sister married and moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin where there was a school Myra could attend, Myra moved to Wisconsin until moving back to Elgin, Illinois after a female seminary opened.
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Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908-1998): Photographer and Chronicler of African-American Life
Had a true photographer’s eye for capturing people doing everyday things; took more than 80,000 images during his career, mostly of daily life in Pittsburgh but also of presidents, celebrities,
Alice Coachman (1923-2014): First African American Woman to Win an Olympic Gold Medal
World-class athlete specializing in the high jump First African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal (1948 in London); paved the way for other young women to follow their
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Esther Howland (1828-1904), First in America to Mass Produce Valentines
Valentines need to be held to be appreciated. An e-valentine just isn’t the same. A woman in Massachusetts was the first to develop the concept of mass- producing valentines. She
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