On April 19, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur made a high-profile “farewell address” to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress. Eight days earlier, he’d been fired as the top…
Author: Robert Deis
Oh, the irony! Tax Day is also a legal anniversary of “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz…”
America’s federal income tax was first created by Congress in 1861, to help fund the Union Army during the Civil War. The original deadline set for paying the tax was…
Wayne LaPierre’s (in)famous “jack-booted government thugs” quote…
For many decades after the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871, a main focus of the group was on urging and teaching gun safety, to help reduce gun-related accidents.…
“A statesman is a politician who’s been dead ten or fifteen years.”
During Harry S Truman’s years as President of the United States, from 1945 to 1954, he was known as a feisty politician. It earned him the nickname “Give ‘em Hell…
“Life is unfair,” as President John F. Kennedy famously observed on this date…
Many people are familiar with the famous quotation by President John F. Kennedy, “Life is unfair.” But few people today remember or know the context of this quote. It was…
“No rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued it’s controversial decision on Scott v. Sandford — generally referred to as “the Dred Scott case.” The plaintiff, Dred Scott, was…
“A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing” for “the tree of liberty”…
In 1786, the new democratic government of the United States of America wasn’t quite working out like some Revolutionary War veterans had expected. Many had not been paid for their…
The origin of the slogan “Sisterhood is Powerful.”
In 1970, feminist leader and author Robin Morgan edited an anthology of articles about the growing woman’s liberation movement titled Sisterhood Is Powerful. The book quickly became a bestseller and…
“I have nothing to declare except my genius” – the famous Oscar Wilde quip that he probably didn’t say…
On January 3, 1882, the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde disembarked from the ship that brought him from England to New York. It was the beginning of what would…
“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”
On December 7, 1941 — which President Franklin D. Roosevelt would memorably name “a date which will live in infamy” on the following day — hundreds of Japanese warplanes made a…