There was a smallpox epidemic in America from 1775-1781. George Washington’s decision to inoculate his troops may have been on of the key factors in winning the American Revolutionary War.
One of the deadliest ever pandemics was the 1918 flu pandemic where an estimated 50-100 million people died.
Cool - I didn’t know that!
The 1918 flu pandemic is mentioned in the biomedical thriller Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey and Rene Russo.
Daylight Savings Time was formally adopted in the United States in March of 1918
Because of the vagaries of Daylight Saving Time, there is one hour each year during which the time in Vale, Oregon (Mountain Time zone) is the same as that in Pensacola, Florida, which is on Central Time…
Naval Air Station Pensacola was the first USN facility dedicated to aviation. All Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard pilots since 1914 have trained there. It is also the home base of the Blue Angels flight demonstration team, and the National Museum of Naval Aviation, which houses the Curtiss NC-4, the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic.
The Tuskegee program began officially in June 1941 with the 99th Pursuit Squadron at the Tuskegee Institute, consisting of 47 officers and 429 enlisted men, and backed by an entire service arm. After primary training at Moton Field, they were moved to the nearby Tuskegee Army Air Field for conversion training onto operational types. Consequently, Tuskegee Army Air Field became the only Army installation performing three phases of pilot training (basic, advanced, and transition) at a single location.
George Lucas was reportedly disappointed by the tepid reviews and poor box office take of his 2012 movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, Red Tails.
The US Public Health Service collaborated with the Tuskegee Institute from 1932 to 1972 in a study of the effects of untreated syphilis. For participating in the study, the 600 men, all poor sharecroppers, were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it, despite the availability of penicillin starting in the 1940’s.
L’Institut canadien (“Canadian Institute”) was a literary society with strong liberal leanings in Montreal in the 1860s. The members challenged the stranglehold which the Roman Catholic church had on French-Canadian education and society, resulting in the Church refusing to bury a member of the Institute, Joseph Guibord, upon his death.
Another member of the Institute, Joseph Doutre, brought a legal action on behalf of Guibord’s widow which went through the Quebec courts and on to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at that time the highest court for the British Empire. The Judicial Committee ruled that Guibord had a right to be buried in the Côte-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.
It took two attempts to bury him, as an angry mob of conservative Roman Catholics repulsed the first attempt, upset at what they considered an interference with the Church’s autonomy and religious freedome… To carry out the Judicial Committee’s order, over a thousand troops were called out to escort the body to its eventual resting place.
You were just waiting for the chance to post that, weren’t you…?
The top court in Massachusetts is called the Supreme Judicial Court. It is the only top state court of that name in the United States.
Hey, when you’ve got good material!
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is one of a handful of state supreme courts which has jurisdiction under state law to give advisory opinions, which are barred at the federal level by the “case or controversy” clause of the federal constitution.
By contrast, in Canada, the Supreme Court and all of the provincial Courts of Appeal have the power to give advisory opinions, at the request of the Cabinet. They are more commonly termed “Reference cases” in Canada.
James Michael Curley was the first mayor of Boston, Massachusetts to have an automobile. The plate number was 576, the number of letters in the words James Michael Curley, respectively. The mayor of Boston’s official car still uses the same number on its plate.
Licence plates have been around for longer than there have been automobiles. In the U.S., New York State has required plates since 1901. At first, plates were not government issued in most jurisdictions and motorists were obliged to make their own. In 1903, Massachusetts was the first state to issue plates.
SFC Schwartz
On October 1, 1998, “Say Hello To Someone From Massachusetts” by Lenny Gomulka was approved as the official polka of the Commonwealth.
The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages:
Chipewyan
Cree
English
French
Gwich’in
Inuinnaqtun
Inuktitut
Inuvialuktun
North Slavey
South Slavey
Tlicho
Switzerland has four national languages – German, French, Italian and Romansh. Only the first three have official-language status, as Romansh (various spellings) has only 60,000 native speakers left and appears to be dying out.
Switzerland is also known as Confoederatio Helvetica, which explains the abbreviation CH.
Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary film Helvetica, about typography and graphic arts, was released on the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the popular typeface.
Gary, Indiana was built on fill brought from the bottom of Lake Michigan through suction pipes.