Category Archives: History

Visiting a weathered World I Memorial on Tillary and Jay Streets in Downtown Brooklyn.

Four Presidents — Hiram ULYSSES Grant, Stephen GROVER Cleveland, Thomas WOODROW Wilson, and John CALVIN Coolidge — effectively used their middle names as first names. In this article, I examine each of these interesting presidential name cases.

I consult original English sources to get to the bottom of the meaning and history of Japan’s ai ai gasa (“love umbrella”).

The Bush Clinton Playground is named for one failed presidential candidate, but that is not why the name is memorable.

“The toast is, “Freedom’s favorite son,
Health, peace, and joy to Washington!”

A detailed history of New York City’s Evacuation Day, a former holiday that landed on November 25 and was second only to Independence Day in NYC’s patriotic pantheon.

Examining Greanda’s annual October 25 Thanksgiving, which commemorates the beginning of the 1983 American-led intervention to restore order in the small Caribbean nation.

Former First Lady Grace Coolidge was a big baseball fan. She was not, however, a fan of intentional bases on balls.

Calvin Coolidge described seeing then-President Benjamin Harrison speak when Coolidge was in college. I decided to find the story of Harrison’s 1891 orations in Bennington, Vermont.

We begin with a patriotic bedtime story and conclude with Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts on the bald eagle vs the turkey.

Re-printing a British officer’s account of his 1827-28 visit to Benjamin Franklin’s modest grave site.

A long post with original accounts from the May 24, 1883 opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.