Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
On June 19, 1865 -- nearly two-and-a-half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation -- enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, at long last received official notification that they were free from bondage. That historic day is now called Juneteenth, a portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth.” The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to those states... Continue Reading →
April 25, 1885 Marcus Aurelius Hanna, the head keeper at Cape Elizabeth Light (also known as Two Lights) at the mouth of Casco Bay on Maine’s southern coast, received the prestigious Gold Lifesaving Medal. Daniel Manning, who was U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1885 to 1887, awarded this medal to Hanna for his heroic... Continue Reading →
Cipriano Andrade, whose U.S. Navy service spanned four decades, was born on September 1, 1840 in the port city of Tampico in northeastern Mexico. He eventually attended both public and private schools in Philadelphia. In addition, Andrade studied engineering at the Franklin Institute in that city. On July 1, 1861 -- less than three months... Continue Reading →
September 20, 1830 Point Lookout Light in southern Maryland was formally inaugurated. This structure, marking the mouth of the Potomac River, is located at the southernmost tip of the state’s western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. (The origins of the name “Point Lookout” can be traced to the War of 1812, when that area was... Continue Reading →
August 17, 1861 Just over four months after the start of the American Civil War, the Union Navy (the name for the U.S. Navy during that military conflict) acquired the steam tugboat Oliver M. Pettit in New York City as part of its fleet. This vessel was purchased on behalf of the Navy by commission... Continue Reading →
March 30, 1968 The last regularly scheduled passenger train service at a railroad station in northern Alabama’s city of Huntsville took place at a time in which that longtime facility was marked for permanent closure. The train making this final run at the Huntsville Depot was the Tennessean, which had been operated by Southern Railway... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 