On October 8, 1871 the worst recorded fire in American history swept through Northeastern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. It destroyed millions of dollars worth of property and took between 1,200 and 2,400 lives. It happened on the same day as the more famous Great Chicago, Illinois Fire but is much less widely known. On [more...]
Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri and was named after Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. Jefferson City was selected as the new capital in 1821. It was first called Lohman’s Landing. When the legislature decided to relocate there, they suggested the name “Missouriopolis” but later agreed on Jefferson [more...]
Jackson is the capital of Mississippi and the state’s largest city. Jackson was founded as Parkerville, later known as LeFleur’s Bluff. The city was later named Jackson after the seventh President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, in recognition for his victory in the Battle of New Orleans. In 1839, Jackson was the site of [more...]
Saint Paul is the capital of Minnesota and the state’s second largest city. We have already learned of one state capital city which began as a land scam, now we will learn of one that became capital because somebody deliberately hid the official paperwork that would have made another city the capital. The Minnesota Territory [more...]
Lansing is the capital of Michigan, and the state’s sixth largest city. Lansing is the only state capital to begin as a ‘land scam.’ The city was founded by two brothers from New York who plotted the area now known as REO Town just south of downtown Lansing and named it “Biddle City.” It [more...]
Boston is the capital and largest city in Massachusetts and was founded in 1630, by Puritan colonists from England. The town was later named after Boston, Lincolnshire, England (United Kingdom). During the Revolutionary War, The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the [more...]
Annapolis is the capital of Maryland and perhaps one of the more exciting of the small state capital cities. It is certainly not just another ‘big’ small town. And there is more to it than being the home of the United States Naval Academy. Annapolis was once even the Capital of the United States [more...]
Augusta is the capital of Maine and one of the smallest state capital cities, though rather large by Maine standards. It was first inhabited by English settlers from the Plymouth Colony in 1629 as a trading post on the Kennebec River and known by its Indian name Cushnoc. Later the name was changed to Augusta [more...]
Baton Rouge is the capital and second largest city in Louisiana. Baton Rouge dates from 1699, when French explorer Sieur d’Iberville leads an exploration party up the Mississippi River. Since then, Baton Rouge has been governed by France, England (UK), Spain, Louisiana, the Florida Republic, the Confederate States, and the United States. Baton Rouge became [more...]
This deadly bloom is one of the most common wildflowers in the late summer in U.S. Midwestern woods and is seldom noticed, since it is somewhat weedy. It is a notorious killer, and at one time ravaged whole communities with its poison. Small pioneer settlements were visited by a terrible affliction, which came to be [more...]
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the Pyramid of Zoser, is the oldest known free standing stone structure in the world and the first of the Egyptian Pyramids. King Zoser’ name was Netjerykhet. The name Zoser was given by New Kingdom visitors to the monument, thousands of years later. The original name of the Step Pyramid [more...]
Frankfort is the capital of Kentucky and the 5th smallest state capital city. In 1786, the area of Frankfort was first purchased and an effort was made to make it the national capital over Washington D.C. It was established as Frankfort, Virginia, and became the capital of the new state of Kentucky in 1792. This quote [more...]
Is the Pyramid of Kufu (the Great Pyramid of today) really one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World? Actually, no. It was the Pyramid of Khafre, the second largest pyramid at Giza which was the Great Pyramid of the Seven Wonders, even though smaller in both height and volume than the Great Pyramid of Kufu. [more...]
When the modern Olympic Movement began, in 1894, the newly-formed International Olympic Committee (IOC) considered ice skating as a possible sport for the first modern Olympic Games, in 1896. Needless to say, that didn’t happen but figure skating was on the program for the 1908 Olympic Games in London. In 1911, it was suggested that [more...]
Here we will have a fuzzy beginning. It is difficult to say who “invented” the first snowboard. People have always figured out how to slide down a snow covered hill on something, so it would be next to impossible to point out one specific person, who came up with “the first snowboard.” There are still [more...]
Topeka is the capital of Kansas, was chartered as a city in 1857 and served as a gateway west for pioneers traveling on the Oregon Trail. Topeka is home to the well known Kansas Museum of History where you’ll step back in time and learn all about the land that is Kansas and the American Midwest. [more...]
Des Moines is the capital and largest city in Iowa. It was incorporated in 1851, as Fort Des Moines later shortened to “Des Moines” in 1857 and became the capital the same year. Some Des Moines attractions are the State Capitol with its gilded roof, which is also one of the more popular capitol buildings in [more...]
Indianapolis is the capital and largest city in Indiana. It is the third largest city in the Midwest, after Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan, and the second most populous state capital after Phoenix, Arizona. Indianapolis was chosen as the site of the new state capital in 1820 and is the only state capital in the [more...]
In 1891, Dr. James Naismith, instructor at the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, looked for indoor games to keep his students occupied and at good levels of fitness during the long New England winters. He wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot elevated track. In [more...]
Springfield is the capital of Illinois. Founded in the late 1810s, its most famous resident was Abraham Lincoln, who lived in Springfield from 1837 until he went to the White House in 1861. Many tourist attractions are of historic sites connected with Lincoln. Springfield became the capital of Illinois in 1839. On February 10, 2007, [more...]