On June 2, 1835, P. T. Barnum and a troupe of performers began their first tour in the United States, though this initial stint was a far cry from the grand, coordinated spectacles os today’s circus shows. Below, in his P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man, A. H. Saxon describes Barnum’s start in showmanship with the discovery of a purportedly 161-year-old woman named Joice Heth.
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrian traffic on May 27, 1937. It was immediately praised for being the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its completion, but more importantly, the bridge came to be regarded as the definitive symbol of the nation’s western frontier. Below, in a piece for Architect, Dan Halpern examines the origins and national significance of the Golden Gate Bridge.
More than 100 years after the first World’s Fair in 1851, the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair opened on April 22, 1964. Like its predecessors, the fair, masterminded by planner Robert Moses, showed off the latest technological innovations. And appropriately for its time, the fair boosted for world peace and cross-cultural acceptance, debuting none other than Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” attraction. But the fair’s ambitions may have been too high. Below, John Steele Gordon explains how the event turned into something of a disaster.
On April 15, 1955, Ray Kroc opened a burger joint in Des Plaines, Illinois, that would later become one of the world’s largest corporations: McDonald’s. But the restaurant chain that has expanded its operation to 119 countries and served over 100 billion hamburgers over the past half-century did not originate with a former milkshake machine man in Illinois. Instead, Kroc was inspired by the radical new idea of fast food that the McDonald brothers had established in San Bernardino county years earlier. Below, in McDonald’s: Behind The Arches
Born April 7, 1860, Will Keith Kellogg was responsible for radically changing the way Americans eat breakfast. With his older brother Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, he invented the first breakfast cereal, an early version of today’s Corn Flakes, which sold more than one million cases in its first three years and earned his hometown of Battle Creek, Michigan, the title of “cereal city.” In The Original Has This Signature: W.K. Kellogg
Mohamed's Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland
