September 19, 2022

Author: Bill Burton

Charles Lindbergh, Aviator

Bill Burton

Charles Lindbergh, Aviator

Early in life Charles A. Lindbergh exhibited an interest in mechanical things, particularly automobiles. In 1920, aged 18, he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin as a mechanical engineering student but early in 1922, when the aviation craze caught up with him, he dropped out

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Wee Kirk o’ the Heather – and the Ballad of Annie Laurie

Bill Burton

Wee Kirk o’ the Heather

and the Ballad of Annie Laurie

The Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, a part of metropolitan Los Angeles, was not the first cemetery in the area. That is probably the City Cemetery, a joint venture of several fraternal organizations including the IOOF (Independent

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Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?

Bill Burton

Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?

On March 10, 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln officially named Ulysses S. Grant to take charge of the entire Union Army against the Confederate military of Robert E. Lee, he had hopes that the choice would end the string of ineffective leaders of

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The World’s Champion Cotton-Picking Contest

Bill Burton

The World’s Champion
Cotton Picking Contest

Cotton was the most farmed crop in the southern and western parts of America well into the twentieth century. It was labor-intensive, needing large numbers of workers to plant, chop, and harvest. Cotton growing had expanded westward as far as Texas by

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The New Town Experiment at Greenbelt, Maryland

Bill Burton

The New Town Experiment
at Greenbelt, Maryland

The discovery of gold and silver in the American West led to tens of thousands of men arriving to seek their fortunes. Their living conditions were appalling — they camped in tents or worse, dumped their sewage into the same water

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Hires Root Beer – The First American Carbonated Drink

Bill Burton

Hires Root Beer

The First American Carbonated Drink

You can’t find Hires Root Beer anywhere, anymore, no matter how hard you look. The company that now owns the brand name has effectively retired it to push its A & W brand.

In its time, though, Hires Root Beer

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The Steamer President Warfield and the Exodus 1947

Bill Burton

The Steamer President Warfield
and
the Exodus 1947

Born from the competition for delivering freight and passengers between the City of Baltimore and points along the Virginia side of the Chesapeake Bay (Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Old Port Comfort), the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was created in 1840 from

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Coral-Lee – The First Lady of Postcard Publishing

Bill Burton

Coral-Lee
The First Lady of Postcard Publishing

In the November-December 1977 issue of American Postcard Journal, editor Roy Nuhn wrote a full-page article titled “Coral-Lee First Lady of Postcard Publishing.” The first two sentences sum up his admiration: “Out in California there is a wonderful energetic lady

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Peter Wolf Toth and His Trail of Whispering Giants

Bill Burton

Peter Wolf Toth

and His Trail of Whispering Giants

While Toth was born in Hungary in 1947, his family left there during the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956 and eventually settled in Akron, Ohio. In 1971 at age 24, Toth carved a statue of a native American (locally dubbed

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Ozzie and Harriet and David and RICKEE!

Bill Burton

Ozzie and Harriet and David
and RICKEE!

The Big Band era spanned roughly the time between the World Wars. Not that it didn’t have roots in the Jazz Age of the ’teens, and not that it didn’t linger into the 1940s, but big bands were a major form

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