Innholdsfortegnelse for American Icons i American Icons

The cold today was worse than it has ever been. The crowded wooden huts provide shelter from the biting wind, but the cold passes between the slats, through my threadbare shirt and nestles in my bones. My quest to procure a set of shoes continues to be unsuccessful. I thought that after marching through the snow in bare feet someone would take pity on me – but there are no supplies coming. The food too is running low. For the past week I have only eaten firecake – a sticky, bland abomination of water and flour that fills my stomach but leaves the soul ravenous. I shouldn’t complain – I am one of the lucky few untouched by the diseases that ravage the camp. So many men have been plagued…

12 February 1809 LINCOLN IS BORN Abraham Lincoln is born to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln on the 346-acre Sinking Spring Farm in Hodgenville, Kentucky, where he becomes the first president born west of the Appalachian Mountains 5 October 1818 LINCOLN’S MOTHER DIES Lincoln’s mother dies at 34 from milk sickness after drinking milk from a cow that has ingested the white snakeroot plant, containing the poison tremetol. His father remarries a year later April 1828 TRAVEL ON A FLAT BOAT Employed by store owner Denton Offutt, Lincoln takes goods down the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, witnessing the institution of slavery in action for the first time. 1 March 1837 PASSING THE BAR Lincoln passes the Illinois bar and is licensed to practice law. He moves…

Jackie Kennedy was a woman of intelligence, beauty and money; a true American socialite. She was born into one of the wealthiest Catholic families in America, and her father, John Vernou ‘Black Jack’ Bouvier, owned land and capital throughout the Northeast. She met Jack through her work as a photographer in Washington, DC, marrying him on 12 September 1953 after a whirlwind romance. In many ways she set the tone for future First Ladies. Like her husband she courted the media, but she also made the position her own, and was a force for change in the White House. She established the post of White House Curator, and created the White House Fine Arts Committee to protect its furniture, ornaments and pictures. She could also speak several languages, which she…

Firebrand abolitionist John Brown is well known for his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry on 16 October 1859. The raid was unsuccessful, and many of its participants were killed or captured by a company of US Marines under the command of future Confederate military legend General Robert E Lee, then a colonel in the US Army. Brown was taken prisoner, tried in Charles Town and hanged on 2 December. Prior to the famous raid, Brown met with Harriet Tubman, whom he had admired for some time. The meeting took place in Canada, and Tubman, with full awareness of the probability of violence, gave Brown information on the Underground Railroad network in the Eastern US. Brown invited both Tubman and vocal abolitionist Frederick Douglass to participate in the…

“I like scrapping with Orv,” said Wilbur, “he’s such a good scrapper.” Spirited disagreements drove the pair towards the solutions of the many engineering problems they faced The date is famous. 17 December 1903. On that Thursday, the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, made the first controlled powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine. In all, there were four flights that day, two for each brother. There were five people on hand to watch. Reports reached the press. And then… nothing. The news faded away. No one could really believe a couple of bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, a place as far from the beating heart of things then as it is today, had done what other better-known, better-educated and better-connected people had failed to do. But it was precisely the…

They were 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) above the Moon’s surface when the alarms started going off. The Lunar Module Eagle was descending far to the west of its designated landing site. Then, looking out of the window, Flight Commander Neil Armstrong saw that the Eagle’s computer system was aiming to land them on the steep slope of a crater made jagged with boulders. The mission to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth, always a tall order, was beginning to look more and more like it was going to fail. After returning to earth, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins spent 18 days in quarantine to ensure that they hadn’t brought any lunar germs back with them But that was when Armstrong took control…

Widely regarded as one of the foremost poets of 19th-century America, Emily Dickinson had a profound influence on modern poetry, especially in the US, her status made even more iconic by her total reclusion and her disinclination to publish her work. It was only upon her death, when her sister Lavinia discovered hundreds of poems locked away, that her talents were fully revealed. Her work is now celebrated for its innovative style, which was wholly experimental, employing unusual rhyme patterns, eschewing both standard versification and conventional grammar. And yet the poems were packed with metaphor and were deeply spiritual and intellectually dense. Her work is especially noted for its broad appeal, connecting with many readers unschooled in poetry, as well as with those possessing a literary education. She was born…

Sailing back from Europe aboard the ship Quaker City, a traveller showed Samuel Clemens a photograph of his sister, Olivia. Of course, Twain later said it was love at first sight, but nevertheless he accepted an invitation to visit the home of his shipboard companion and there met, in the flesh, Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family which was also ardently abolitionist: her father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, the network of routes and safe houses that helped slaves escape to freedom. Clemens soon fell in love with her, but Olivia turned down his proposal. A devout Christian, she would reform the hard-drinking and gambling man, and agreed to their corresponding. Clemens agreed, thinking that by doing so “she would unwittingly dig a matrimonial pit…

Considered by many as Hemingway’s greatest novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls was published in 1940, a year after the Spanish Civil War had come to its bitter conclusion. It takes its title from a line by John Donne, the culmination of a poem that starts with the immortal line, ‘No man is an island.’ It is set during the Spanish conflict and focuses on an American volunteer, Robert Jordan, who fights for the Republican cause against Franco’s Nationalists. He is charged with the destruction of a bridge and must track behind enemy lines, where he ends up meeting a guerrilla band that includes the girl Maria, with whom he falls in love. The story uses a variety of narrative techniques and reveals the author’s understanding of the Spanish people, and the…

A long association with organised crime figures, including Sam Giancana, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel, stained Frank Sinatra’s public image but also contributed to the fascination with his larger-than-life persona. Willie Moretti of the Genovese family was said to be Sinatra’s godfather, and mob pressure may have influenced the ease of his departure from Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra. Sinatra played golf with Giancana, reportedly attended a major Mafia conference in Havana, Cuba, in 1946, and was often seen in the company of underworld figures while frequenting nightspots in Las Vegas and New York. Sinatra owned 50 per cent of the Cal Neva Lodge & Casino, located on the border between Nevada and California, and when Giancana was seen at the venue in 1963, Sinatra’s gaming licence was revoked by the state…

With her famous curves, bleached blonde hair, red lips and high voice, the Marilyn Monroe that is remembered today is almost a caricature of the ‘ideal’ woman. This is the version of Marilyn that has become immortal – a life of scandals, glamour and tragedy. But she was so much more than that. She was a woman who adored life, who spent hundreds of dollars trying to save a storm-damaged tree, and who cared for animals in her yard. She was loud, gentle and joyous. But she was also self-absorbed, and crippled with doubt and stage fright so terrible that sometimes she couldn’t emerge from her trailer. She could be cutting, and say the sharpest words with the softest voice. She was bad at remembering lines, bad at arriving on…

Since her body was discovered the death of Marilyn Monroe has sparked complex and intriguing conspiracy theories. Because of Marilyn’s history of barbiturate abuse, suicide seemed the obvious cause, but some argue more sinister schemes surrounded the starlet’s death. It has been claimed that her death was part of a communist conspiracy, that her affair with President Kennedy resulted in him ordering her assassination to keep her quiet about his communist sympathies. The FBI and CIA have also been accused of murdering Marilyn to pressure the Kennedys. Her death has been linked to mob boss Sam Giancana, and it has even been discussed that it was due to an enema which went wrong. There have also been several arguments that it was an accidental overdose, as Marilyn was on the…

WHO WAS IN THE DRIVING SEAT The official findings of the investigation into the crash recorded that Grace was driving and Stéphanie was her passenger. Stéphanie and Grace had a fractious relationship and ever since the accident, Stéphanie has been forced to deny allegations that she was the real driver at the time of the crash. Although eyewitnesses all agree that they saw Grace driving in the hours leading up to the fatal accident, the whispers just won’t go away. THE FREEMASONS Just before the crash, the membership of the notorious P2 Masonic Lodge was made public and there, among the most illustrious names in Europe, was Prince Rainier. Some members were involved in extortion, fraud and criminal activity, though there is no suggestion that the prince was involved. Did…

January 1935, and America was in the murky, unending midst of the Great Depression. With an unemployment rate of 20.1 per cent it was only those lucky few who did not struggle. Gladys and Vernon Presley were no different. Barely scraping a living in a two-room shotgun house, the couple lived in East Tupelo, Mississippi, not unfairly labelled the “roughest town in north Mississippi”. Their lives were about to get much harder as on the 8 January Gladys gave birth to twin boys. One of the babies, Jesse Garon, was stillborn, but the other, Elvis, lived. It was a difficult and unlikely beginning for a child that would grow up to become a legend. Being poor was not unusual, but that did not mean it was easy. Luckily for the…

24 May 1941 BOB DYLAN BORN Robert Allen Zimmerman is born in St Mary’s Hospital, Duluth, Minnesota. His parents are Abram and Beatty, and the family moves to Hibbing when Bob is six to be nearer his maternal grandparents. June 1959 LEAVES HOME Dylan leaves Ebbing as soon as school finishes, not even attending his graduation ceremony. He moves first to university, but drops out after a year and heads for New York. March 1962 FIRST ALBUM Dylan signs to Columbia Records aged just 20, and records his first album. The self-titled Bob Dylan contains only one original song among the heritage folk covers. July 1965 DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC After a string of massively successful acoustic albums, Dylan angers crowds at the Newport festival by performing with an amplified band.…

On 3 June 1968, Warhol was nearly killed by writer Valerie Solanas at his studio. She shot at him three times, the first two missing before the third struck. The bullet pierced both the artist’s lungs, as well as passing through his spleen, stomach, liver and esophagus. Solanas also shot art critic Mario Amaya and attempted to shoot Warhol’s manager, Fred Hughes, before turning herself into the police. A fringe figure at The Factory, Solanas asked Warhol to produce her play Up Your Ass in 1966. She later accused him of losing her script and demanded financial compensation, so Warhol cast Solanas in his 1967 film I, a Man. That same year, Solana began self-publishing her defining work, the radical feminist SCUM Manifesto – short for Society for Cutting Up…

Fable and lore surround the baseball career of Babe Ruth, and his famous ‘called shot’ during game three of the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field in Chicago remains one of the best tales of his storied career. A heated rivalry existed between the Cubs and Yankees, and Chicago fans jeered the Bambino and his teammates as they filed off their train from New York. As the game got underway, some threw lemons at Ruth in a gesture of derision. He silenced the hostile crowd temporarily with a three-run homer off pitcher Charlie Root in the first inning, but the Cubs managed to tie the game 4-4. Ruth strode to home plate in the top of the fifth inning, and by that time even the Chicago players had begun shouting…

“Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it,” the 22-year-old champ said in 1964, days after his shocking defeat of Sonny Liston. “I am Muhammad Ali, a free name – it means beloved of God – and I insist people use it when people speak to me and of me.” In many ways, Muhammad Ali’s decision to join the Nation of Islam (NOI) and change his name was a direct result of his upset victory against Liston. Before the fight, the Prophet Elijah Muhammad had publicly decried boxing as a violent sport against the teachings of Islam, even though Malcolm X – the NOI’s spokesman – had been grooming the brash young fighter to join the controversial cause of black militancy. But after…

After two days of fierce fighting near the Little Bighorn River on the plains of eastern Montana in 1876, 600 men led by George Armstrong Custer were defeated by a confederation of 3,000 warriors from Native American tribes. Custer himself was killed, as were two of his brothers, a nephew and a brother-in-law. The total US casualty count was 268 dead and 55 injured. For Lakota chief and holy man Sitting Bull, this was a great victory in the violent and desperate struggle for the Sioux tribes’ survival on the North American Great Plains. It was also the realisation of a vision the medicine man had experienced at a ceremony not three months earlier. Throughout the 19th century, native Sioux tribes had been pushed further and further west as white…

1831 BORN TO THE LAKOTA TRIBE Sitting Bull or, in the Sioux language, Tatanka Yotanka, is born in the Grand River Valley in what is now South Dakota. His chieftain father, Jumping Bull, names him Slow as a child for his thoughtful and reserved nature. 1845 FIRST BATTLE Sitting Bull first goes into battle in a raid on another tribe, the Crow. After the battle he earns his now-famous adult name for his bravery. ‘Sitting Bull’ refers to a recalcitrant bull sitting on its haunches 1862 THE WHITE MAN Because the Lakota Sioux live and hunt north of the early routes of western travel, Sitting Bull has little contact with whites until the Santee Sioux uprising in Minnesota takes place. 1865 GAINING EXPERIENCE Beginning in the summer, columns of US…

22 November 1744 ABIGAIL ADAMS IS BORN Elizabeth Quincy Smith gives birth to her second child, Abigail, in Weymouth, Massachusetts. She is born into a prominent family, her father a Congregational minister and her maternal grandfather a longtime political figure. 25 October 1764 FIRST WEDDING DAY The wedding of Abigail Smith and John Adams takes place at her family home, and the couple rides in a carriage to their cabin near John’s birthplace in Braintree. 14 July 1765 NABBY IS BORN Nine months after their marriage, Abigail and John Adams welcome their first child, Abigail, known as ‘Nabby’. She dies in 1813 of breast cancer at the age of 48. 11 July 1767 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS IS BORN John Quincy Adams, future sixth President of the United States, is born…

1754 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR The French and Indian War was part of a much longer conflict between Great Britain and France, known as the Seven Years War. The war was fought in the north of North America between the colonies of the two powers, ending with France losing its territory in North America. However, funding the war created a huge national debt in Britain and gave France a good reason to support American independence. 1754-1763 STAMP ACT The resulting national debt of the Seven Years War in Britain had reached £130 million by 1764. Britain also needed a way to pay for its army in North America and decided the colonies should subsidise it. The Stamp Act forced citizens to pay taxes on documents and paper goods and was…

In the autumn of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln was invited to the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, where so many Americans had died in the pivotal battle of the Civil War that summer. He was asked to deliver a few “appropriate remarks.” The featured speaker was Senator Edward Everett of Massachusetts, and it was common for orations to extend two hours or more. At the dedication on 19 November, Everett did deliver a lengthy, well-received keynote address. Then the Baltimore Glee Club sang “Consecration Chant,” and the president rose to speak. His comments comprised a mere 272 words over ten sentences, lasting scarcely two minutes. When he finished to polite applause, Lincoln believed he had failed to strike a chord, commenting to a colleague, “That plough didn’t scour!”…

Joe Kennedy famously made the above claim about his sons. He was a man who expected a lot from his family – after all, they were Kennedys, and thus destined for greatness. Born in 1888, Joe grew up in a well-established Catholic family from Boston. He worked in Hollywood as a film producer and then entered politics as part of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. He later became ambassador to Britain, famously saying the country was “finished” in 1940. He was renowned for his political connections, using them to see his children established among the elite of American society after the war. It was also rumoured that he had unofficial connections with the Mafia, using them as he used everyone else: to get more power and influence. He was a domineering…

MARILYN MONROE The Marilyn Monroe affair was probably the most infamous of Kennedy’s relationships during his time in government. The two met through Peter Lawford on four separate occasions, one of which, it is claimed, resulted in sexual relations. Her raunchy rendition of Happy Birthday during Kennedy’s 45th birthday celebrations and the dress she was wearing at the time, described as “flesh with sequins sewed onto it,” left little to the imagination. JUDITH CAMPBELL Long the subject of repeated denials and cover-ups, until revelations in the Seventies revealed that Kennedy indeed had an on-off affair with Campbell, who was also linked with Mob bosses Sam Giancana and John Roselli. It was one of the most enduring affairs Kennedy had, and he was aware of the risks to his political career…

While in winter camp at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark hired French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau as an interpreter, his employment facilitated by his being married to Soshone woman Sacagawea. Sacagawea had been captured in a raid by the Hidatsa on the Soshone when she was 12. Charbonneau bought, or won Sacagawea through gambling, when she was about 16. Pregnant, Sacagawea gave birth to her first child, a son, on 11 February 1805. Little Jean Baptiste Charbonneau would become, by some margin, the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Having a woman and a baby on the journey considerably eased relations with the tribes the Corps met along the way, as war parties did not travel with women and children. Sacagawea’s knowledge helped the expedition considerably along the way,…

There wasn’t much about the boy to suggest that he would be the father to the 20th century. Thomas Alva Edison was the seventh child of his parents and the fourth to survive to adulthood. He developed hearing problems when young and, while not totally deaf as an adult, he was very hard of hearing. He wrote, “I have not heard a bird sing since I was 12 years old.” Given his many inventions, it’s surprising that Edison never invented a hearing aid, although he often said he was working on one. But growing up deaf, he realised, had helped him, allowing greater concentration on his work and tuning out the “babble of ordinary conversation”. Born on 11 February 1847 in Milan, Ohio, the young Edison had little schooling and…

The 15-year-old boy who smashed Wilbur Wright’s face and changed the history of aviation grew up to become one of Ohio’s most notorious serial killers. Oliver Crook Haugh was three years younger than Wilbur and was known as the neighbourhood bully. It’s not clear whether he meant to hit Wilbur, but the course of his later life suggests it was a premeditated strike. While a bully, Haugh was not a stereotypical oaf – he qualified as a doctor and began practising in Dayton, Ohio (presumably Wilbur was not among his patients). Obsessed with Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Haugh began experimenting on himself, seeking to prove that “two beings can exist in one body”. He also experimented with marriages – he had at least nine, many…

1879 LEAVES HOME Ford leaves his family farm and walks to Detroit where he picks up many of the engineering skills that will play such a prominent role in his later career. 1888 GETS MARRIED He marries after meeting Clara Bryant at a local New Year’s Eve dance and the couple settle in Detroit where he converts an outhouse into a machine shop. 1896 MAKES QUADRICYCLE Ford’s first car, built in his own workshop, takes to the road. It's a four-horsepower single-seater weighing 227kg and achieving a top speed of around 16km/h. 1901 FORMS HENRY FORD COMPANY Ford's second company concentrates on racing cars, breaking a number of speed records, but investors eventually force him out. The firm becomes the Cadillac Motor Company. 1903 FORMS THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY This…

GEORGE P PUTNAM A successful publisher and publicist, George was one of the organisers of Amelia’s first Atlantic flight with Wilmer Stultz and later promoted her campaigns. He proposed to Amelia six times until she eventually agreed, and they were married in 1931. She did not take his name. NETA SNOOK Neta was the first female pilot to run her own aviation business, and was the person who Amelia approached when she first decided she wanted flying lessons. Neta went on to become the first woman to enter a ‘men’s’ air race. She later wrote an autobiography called I Taught Amelia To Fly. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT As her fame grew, Amelia made friends with many people in high offices, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and the two shared a number of…

5 August 1930 NEIL ARMSTRONG BORN Armstrong is born to parents Stephen and Viola Armstrong near Wapakoneta, Ohio. They have two more children after Neil, a daughter, June and another son, Dean. 2 March 1950 FIRST LANDING ON AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER Training as a naval pilot, Armstrong made his first landing on an aircraft carrier, landing on the USS Cabot. 5 January 1951 FIRST JET FLIGHT Having excelled in training, Armstrong was assigned to Squadron VF-51 and on 5 January made his first flight in a jet, flying one of the squadron’s Grumman F9F Panthers. 3 September 1951 SURVIVES MAJOR PLANE DAMAGE Flying a low-altitude bombing run, Armstrong’s plane is hit and loses the end of a wing on a cable. With great skill, he brings his plane back into…

Upon discovering her sister’s prolific output in a box upon her death, Lavinia passed them on to Susan Gilbert, Dickinson’s close friend and sister-in-law, to prepare them for publication. When Susan failed to act with enough alacrity, Lavinia then turned to Mabel Loomis Todd – who happened to be having an affair with Susan’s husband – for assistance. Todd enlisted the aid of Thomas Wentworth Higginson in editing the work, and when Poems by Emily Dickinson appeared in 1890, it prompted widespread acclaim, though in editing her work, Todd and Higginson invented titles and standardised diction, grammar, metre and rhyme. Susan Gilbert was affronted by Lavinia’s decision to work with Todd, and was only too aware of her husband’s infidelity. A family feud ensued, which carried down through the daughters…

Well hello, Dolly! This is Louis, Dolly!” These words sung in an unmistakably gravelly voice brought renewed fame to Louis Armstrong, a jazz titan who transformed the art from ensemble performance to a vehicle for individual musical genius. Recorded in 1964 for release with the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!, the single reached number one on the pop charts, displacing the Beatles. Armstrong’s brilliance was recognised by an entire generation of young listeners, while he remained one of the world’s most popular live performers. He followed that success with the release of What a Wonderful World in 1967, topping the charts in the United Kingdom and introducing another audience to the beloved 'Satchmo'. The career of Louis Armstrong transcends time and generational boundaries. First as a cornet and trumpet virtuoso and…

12 December 1915 SINATRA IS BORN Frank Sinatra is born in a Hoboken, New Jersey, tenement, son of Antonino ‘Marty’ Sinatra, a tavern owner, boxer and firefighter, and Natalina Garaventa Sinatra, a Democratic Party organiser and midwife. 4 February 1939 FIRST WEDDING DAY Sinatra marries Nancy Barbato, and the couple have three children. He later leaves her for actress Ava Gardner and is also married to Mia Farrow and Barbara Marx. June 1939 SIGNING WITH HARRY JAMES Sinatra signs with bandleader Harry James for $75 a week and records his first commercial record, From The Bottom Of My Heart, the following month. Sales are disappointing at only 8,000 copies. November 1939 JOINING TOMMY DORSEY Sinatra becomes lead singer of Tommy Dorsey’s band, recording more than 40 songs in his first…

JAMES DOUGHERTY 1942 Dougherty rushed into an early marriage with Norma, but the couple drifted apart when she began her modelling career. After she became a success, Dougherty and Monroe both provided conflicting accounts of just how happy their marriage was. Dougherty even later claimed that he created her Monroe persona. JOE DIMAGGIO 1951 Despite Monroe fearing that he was a stereotypical jock, she agreed to go on a date with baseball player Joe DiMaggio and the couple were married in 1954. However, the relationship soon turned sour and Monroe filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty nine months later. Despite this, they remained friends. MARLON BRANDO 1955 In his autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando claimed that he met Monroe at a party where she played piano,…

Hollywood has told many fairy tales in its time and the dream factory has no shortage of make-believe happy endings. Yet for Grace Kelly, celebrated beauty and Oscar-winning star, truth proved more than a match for fiction. Grace is among an exclusive pantheon of stars whose name can transport us back to the golden age of cinema. She was, and remains, the embodiment of timeless beauty, elegance and tragedy. Once upon a time, it appeared as though she had finally found her own happily ever after. Grace’s story isn’t one of rags to riches as her beginnings were far from humble. Her father was an Olympic athlete turned politician who numbered the president of the USA among his confidantes, and her mother was an athletics coach who enjoyed a successful…

It is testimony to his talent, coupled with the atmosphere of the time he emerged, the nature of the films he made, and the manner in which he left this world, that the actor James Dean became an American icon after only three major movies. He was born James Byron Dean on 8 February 1931 in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Winton Dean and Mildred Marie Wilson, who relocated to California when he was five years old. He returned to Indiana after his mother’s death, when he was just nine years old, and he was raised by his aunt and uncle on their farm. Drawn back to the West, he went back to California once he had finished high school and studied theatre at UCLA for two years. In…

8 January 1935 BIRTH OF A LEGEND Elvis is born to Gladys and Vernon Presley in Tupelo, Mississippi, he will be their only child as his twin brother, Jesse, is stillborn. 1953 - 1954 FROM STAGE TO RECORD After moving to Memphis and graduating high school, Elvis records a demo tape of ‘My Happiness’ and ‘That’s when your heartaches begin’. He impresses Sam Phillips who teams him up with local musicians. 1956 HEARTBREAK HOTEL After being signed, Elvis records his first songs for his label including Heartbreak Hotel. It goes on to sell over 1 million copies. He also makes his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. 1958 SINGER TO SOLDIER Elvis is drafted into the US Army. He is given serial number 53 310 761 and his famous…

Bob Dylan’s lyrics are held in such esteem in some quarters that he found himself the surprise recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize For Literature in 2016. His nomination was not without controversy: the first songwriter ever to be judged fit to join a pantheon of prior winners including Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing and William Butler Yeats. Dylan said he’d never stopped to even consider whether his songs qualified as literature, and that had it even occurred to him, the notion that he might ever be a Nobel winner seemed about as likely as his visiting the moon. The Nobel Committee’s specific reason for honouring him was because of his creation of “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” With typical awkwardness, Dylan did…

For some people, music can be a sanctuary from life, for others a passport to success or a gateway to somewhere beyond words. For John Allen Hendrix, it was all of these. Jimi Hendrix was born on 27 November 1942 in Seattle. His family was mixed, and troubled. Both his father, Al Hendrix, and his mother, Lucille, had Cherokee Indian ancestry as well as African American, producing in their son a strain of exotic strangeness that he would utilise in his stage persona. Al Hendrix was drafted into the US Army shortly after his marriage to Lucille, and saw little of his son during his first three years. In 1946, Hendrix’s parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honour of his father’s late brother. Al and Lucille had…

Michael Jackson died at 2.26pm at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on 25 June 2009. Under the care of physician Conrad Murray, Jackson had been trying to sleep. Murray had given him several different medications for this, including sedatives lidocaine, diazepam, midazolam and the power propofol, which the star called his ‘milk’. Jackson’s heart stopped beating, and a 911 call was made just before 12.30pm. CPR was performed, and he arrived at the hospital about an hour later. Efforts to revive him continued to no avail. A memorial was held in the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles 12 days later, and 17,000 tickets were distributed to the public via lottery after a two-day registration period in which 1.6 million applied. Among the entertainers who performed during…

From defending a fellow black student to taking a stand on an Army bus, Jackie Robinson was conscious of the inequities in a racially divided America. Stepping into the harsh world of Major League Baseball was an expansion of his desire to see fair treatment. In 1949, at the height of his athletic fame, he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on the topic of racism. A board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for years, he chaired its Freedom Fund Drive in 1957, serving on the board for a decade. Robinson once told Henry Aaron, one of the black baseball greats for whom he had blazed a trail in the Majors: “The game of baseball is great, but the greatest thing is…

October 1954 FIRST WIN At 12 years old, Clay trains with Joe Martin, and earns $4 for his first amateur fight – and first win: a three-round split decision with another kid named Ronnie O’Keefe. 1959 NATIONAL CHAMP Still in high school, Clay takes two prestigious national titles: the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions and the national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) light-heavyweight title. 5 September 1960 OLYMPIC GOLD At only 18 years old, Clay achieves the greatest prize in amateur sport after beating Poland’s Zbigniew Pietrzkowski for the Olympic light-heavyweight gold. October 1960 GOING PRO Clay signs a contract with the Louisville Sponsoring Group (LSG), a group of white businessmen. He then moves to Florida to begin training with Angelo Dundee. 25 February 1964 WORLD CHAMPION Clay, the undisputed underdog,…

Indian reservations Toward the end of the 19th century, following decades of westward expansion, the US signed treaties with surrendering Native Americans or conquered those who resisted encroachment into their homelands. In exchange for large tracts of land and the valuable natural resources they contained, the government agreed to provide reservations, off-limits to new white settlers. The end of traditions Beside the moral problem of depriving a people of life on their historic land, many issues plagued the reservations. Nomadic tribes, now confined, lost their means of subsistence. Farmers found themselves with land unsuitable for agriculture and hostile tribes were often forced into the same areas. The results were disastrous. Driven to war After treaties were made with the Plains Indians in 1861, white miners were able to cross the…

She was the second First Lady, the first Second Lady, and the first First Lady to become the mother of an American president. Abigail Adams played a defining role in the development of a new nation and voiced her opinions on issues of the day. Her advice and counsel were invaluable to her husband, John Adams, a Founding Father and second President of the United States. If the measure of her influence in American political life is fairly assessed, Abigail is justly considered among the founders of the country in her own right. She was the wife of John Adams for 54 years, caring for their children while he was on extended leaves, and proving remarkably skilled, resourceful and resilient in numerous aspects of home life, business and politics. During…

No other woman has held the position of first lady of the United States for longer than Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who served from 1933 to 1945. The wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, himself the only president to win four presidential elections, she was first lady for 12 years, one month, one week and one day during a period of unprecedented turmoil, both at home and abroad. No other first lady, before or since, has used her position to pursue policy goals with such ambition and success – or with such controversy. A first lady lives in a paradoxical position. She enters the USA’s most famous house unelected, her title is unofficial and she receives no salary. She does not feature in the Constitution’s division of powers between the presidency, the…

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was an organisation born out of the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. Headed by Martin Luther King Jr, the group sought to capitalise on the victory in Alabama and advance the cause of civil rights in a nonviolent manner. Black communities in the South at this time were formed around the church, so having a minister as the figurehead was an obvious choice. King himself stated, “The SCLC is church orientated because of the very structure of the Negro community in the South.” Combining various smaller civil rights groups under one spiritual umbrella, the SCLC formed three main goals which would be the bedrock of the organisation. The first was to encourage white Southerners to join their cause. Although a staggering amount of…

Dr Martin Luther King Jr, died just over an hour after a single bullet fired from a Remington hunting rifle by assassin James Earl Ray shattered his jaw and lodged in his spine. Ray, an escaped convict, fled the country and was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London, while using the alias Ramon George Sneyd and attempting to reach Rhodesia, a white-dominated nation in Africa. He was extradited to Tennessee and convinced by his attorney to plead guilty to the charge of murder to avoid the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison but later recanted his confession. He claimed to be a scapegoat in a conspiracy and that a shadowy figure using the assumed name ‘Raoul’, who he had met in Montreal, Quebec, had been involved…

Martin Luther King Jr, was trying to rest in his room at the Lorraine Motel when the telephone rang. On the other end of the line, his friend Ralph David Abernathy said, “They came to hear you, not me.” King rose, dressed in a suit and tie, and tried to shake off fatigue and a bout of laryngitis. He made his way to the Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ and delivered an eerily poignant and prophetic message. He had come to support striking Memphis sanitation workers, but his words transcended the immediacy of that mission. He spoke from the heart, religious fervour ringing in his voice. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he intoned. “But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the…

19 May 1925 MALCOLM X BORN Born Malcolm Little at University Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, he is the fourth of seven children. His father, Earle Little, is a Baptist lay speaker, while his mother, Louise Norton Little, is a stay-at-home parent. 1938-1939 LOUISE LITTLE COMMITTED After dating a local man for a few months, Louise Little becomes pregnant. The man then vanishes once he learns of the pregnancy, causing her to have a nervous breakdown. She’s committed to State Mental Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 1943 AVOIDS MILITARY SERVICE At the age of 18, Malcolm moves to New York. He’s drafted to the US Army, but is deemed unsuitable for service. Rumours claim he feigned a mental condition to avoid being drafted into service during WWII. 1946 SERVING TIME After getting…

Stephen Brumwell is a freelance writer and independent historian living in Amsterdam. His book, George Washington: Gentleman Warrior, won the 2013 George Washington Book Prize. He had wooden teeth George Washington was plagued with dental problems from his twenties, and by 1789, had just one of his own teeth remaining. He owned several sets of false teeth, but none was crafted from wood. Instead, Washington’s dentures incorporated a variety of materials – bone, ‘sea-horse’, or hippopotamus ivory, and human teeth – fixed by lead, gold and metal wire. The belief that Washington’s false teeth were wooden probably originated in the brown-stained appearance of surviving examples – apparently owing to his fondness for port wine. He cut down a cherry tree and confessed to his father Perhaps the best known of…

When Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot on 14 April 1865, he and his wife Mary were attending a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin, starring the noted actress Laura Keene, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, accompanied the first couple. Halfway through the third act, scene two, during a moment of laughter, assassin John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and fired one shot from a .44-calibre single-shot Deringer pistol. The ball entered behind the president’s left ear, travelled through the brain, and lodged behind the right eye. Carried to a bed across the street, Lincoln was too tall to fit. He was laid diagonally. While the president breathed his last, the 26-year-old Booth, having leaped from the box to the…

Edison had invented the light bulb, but he needed to devise a system to distribute electricity to houses and businesses so that they could use his light bulbs. The system he developed used DC (direct current), a low voltage, high current system. George Westinghouse, using ideas developed by Nikola Tesla, came up with a competing system that used AC (alternating current), which used high voltages and low currents. The battle was on. Tesla had first worked for Edison, but Edison had dismissed his ideas as impractical. However, it soon became clear that the AC system was superior, particularly over longer distances, allowing electricity to be run to remote and rural districts. To fight back, Edison started a campaign highlighting the safety implications of a high-voltage system, going so far as…

16 April 1867 WILBUR WRIGHT’S BIRTH Wilbur was the third child of Milton and Susan Wright. His elder brothers were born in 1861 and 1862 respectively. Wilbur and Orville became doting uncles to their nephews and nieces, but neither man married. June 1884 DAYTON, OHIO The family, which had moved frequently before, moved to Dayton, Ohio, and settled down. Milton Wright often travelled, but now the rest of the family had a secure base. December 1892 THE WRIGHT CYCLE COMPANY The brothers started their bicycle repair company, expanding to manufacturing four years later. They remained in the bicycle business until 1907, the company providing the money to fund their research. October 1900 FIRST GLIDER FLIGHTS The brothers, having set up camp in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, began testing the glider…

By the mid 1920s, the American automobile industry was spending three-quarters of a billion dollars on rubber, a key component not only for tyres but also a clutch of other engine parts. The British held the monopoly with their vast rubber plantations in Sri Lanka and Malaya, and Ford resented the huge bills he was paying. He’d already taken control of every other raw material required for his business, from coal to steel, and he elected to add latex, the key component in vulcanised rubber, to the list. He bought five million acres of the Amazon from the Brazilian government and set about creating what he hoped would be a vast, self-sustaining rubber town, Fordlandia. And yet, despite millions of dollars of investment (an estimated US$1 billion in today’s money)…

On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the world, and in particular the United States, by launching Sputnik 1 into orbit. On 12 April 1961, the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin into space and brought him safely back to Earth. The Space Race had begun and the Soviet Union had a clear lead. In a time when the world was locked into a confrontation between the communist Soviet bloc and the West, the propaganda advantage in leading the race into space was immense. In response, on 25 May 1961 President John F Kennedy asked Congress to commit the nation to, “before this decade is out, […] landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”. Following Kennedy’s assassination, this pledge became sacrosanct. To catch up…

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most banned books in history. When the library of Concord, Massachusetts banned it, Twain wrote, “They have expelled Huck from their library as ‘trash and suitable only for the slums’. That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure” While travelling in Europe in the 1890s, Mark Twain posed a question to his diary. “Are you an American?” Being Twain, he answered it too. “No, I am not an American. I am the American.” Twain, like the country he personified, was self-made: a businessman and a showman before showbusiness had been invented. He even trademarked his name. Only, it wasn’t his real name. Mark Twain was born Samuel Longhorne Clemens on 30 November 1835 in Florida, Missouri. Samuel, the sixth of seven children,…

21 July 1899 ERNEST HEMINGWAY IS BORN Critics and biographers have noted that Oak Park seems an unlikely place of birth for such a hard-living individual. The suburb is quiet and peaceful and quite religious. October 1917 JOINS KANSAS CITY STAR The newspaper has a strong editorial team and they allowed Hemingway to hone a writing style that would be a heavy influence upon his later fiction writings. May 1918 JOINS THE RED CROSS The day after he arrives in Europe a munitions factory explodes and he has to carry mutilated bodies to the morgue. The experience of war would later permeate his writing. 1922 MEETS GREAT WRITERS In Paris he meets Gertrude Stein at her salon on Rue de Fleurus, which was a hotbed of artistic activity. He meets…

Critics sometimes claimed that Louis Armstrong did little to advance the cause of the Civil Rights Movement and that his congenial style harkened to an earlier, somewhat racially subservient era in American culture. Although he rarely commented on race relations or the effort to achieve racial equality, he did speak out forcefully in 1957 when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus vowed to prevent nine black students from enrolling and attending classes at Little Rock Central High School. Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to block their entry, and Armstrong responded by blasting President Dwight D Eisenhower for his perceived lack of leadership. In Armstrong’s opinion, Eisenhower was allowing Faubus to guide the nation’s perspective and willingness to comply with desegregation. He called the president “twofaced” and “gutless” during the crisis…

Sinatra’s debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, was released in 1946, when he was 31 years old The inscription on his grave marker reads, ‘THE BEST IS YET TO COME’, and there could be no more fitting epitaph for an entertainer, public figure and icon of American culture with the stature of Francis Albert Sinatra. The phrase was from one of his hit songs, and there were many during a career that lasted from 1935 into the 1990s. Frank Sinatra, a captivating entertainer whose voice was likened to that of a fine cello, never learned to read music. He came to keenly understand its subtleties, though, interpreting by ear. He was an acclaimed actor too, appearing in numerous films. He moved in majestic circles, the Hollywood elite and giants…

When the United States was plunged into World War II, Frank Sinatra was on the cusp of stardom. At age 26, however, he was primed for the Draft. In December 1943, a routine physical examination revealed a perforated eardrum, which he had suffered during birth, and apparently downplayed when asked by doctors if he had any physical infirmities. Sinatra weighed over five kilograms at birth and had to be delivered with the assistance of forceps, leaving facial scars and the ear damage. Sinatra was classified 4-F, unfit for service. Despite his physical shortcomings, Sinatra was also disqualified, according to an Army file, due to his psychiatric profile. Rumours that he had paid a large sum of money to avoid the Draft were determined later as baseless. Sinatra continued to build…

1 June 1926 BIRTH OF A LEGEND Marilyn is born at the Los Angeles County Hospital. Her birth name is Norma Jeane Mortenson, and the identity of her father is unknown. June 1942 THE FIRST MARRIAGE Marilyn gets married for the first time to James Doherty. She is only 16 years old. She drops out of high school to become a housewife. 1944 A STAR IS SPOTTED Marilyn is spotted by photographer David Conover. She quits her factory job the next year and agrees to model for him, signing with the Blue Book Model Agency. August 1946 START OF A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP Marilyn signs a contract with 20th Century Fox. She also first takes on the stage name of Marilyn Monroe, after her mother’s maiden name. October 1948 MARILYN SPEAKS…

Fourteen Hours (1951) Role: Louise Anne Fuller High Noon (1952) Role: Amy Fowler Kane Mogambo (1953) Role: Linda Nordley Dial M for Murder (1954) Role: Margot Mary Wendice Rear Window (1954) Role: Lisa Carol Fremont The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) Role: Nancy Brubaker The Country Girl (1954) Role: Georgie Elgin Green Fire (1954) Role: Catherine Knowland To Catch a Thief (1955) Role: Frances Stevens The Swan (1956) Role: Princess Alexandra High Society (1956) Role: Tracy Lord…

James Dean always had a need for speed. He rode motorcycles as a kid and owned a number of handsome bikes. His father bought him his first car, an old Chevy, though after the success of East of Eden he upgraded to a new 1955 Porsche 356 Super Speedster. In September 1955 he traded in his Porsche Speedster and bought a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder and asked Dean Jeffries to paint a race number, 130, on the bonnet and doors. He also had Jeffries personalise the Porsche by painting the words 'Little Bastard' on the rear. He entered his first professional racing event prior to going into production on Rebel Without a Cause, competing in the Palm Springs Road Races. He won the preliminary race and finished third in the…

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,” the artist once said, “just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” While Warhol was keen to portray himself as a vacuous figure, only interested in celebrity and making money, this was far from the truth. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Warhol was a leading figure in the pop art movement, which blurred the lines between fine art and mainstream aesthetics. Any biography of Warhol is a tricky task, as the artist loved inventing (often contradictory) stories about his childhood. But we do know that Andrew Warhola was born on 6 August 1928 to Ruthenian immigrant parents from what is now eastern Slovakia, and…

Hendrix famously played guitar left-handed – that is he fretted notes with his right hand and strummed the strings with his left hand. But left-handed guitars were few and expensive, so Hendrix took an ordinary right-handed Fender Stratocaster, flipped it upside down, so that the tuning pegs were on the bottom, and restrung it. Doing this changed the guitar's sound. A Fender Stratocaster has three pickups (electric microphones that produce the signal fed to the guitar’s amplifier), with the rear pickup set at an angle to the strings. Reversing the guitar meant this pickup took its signal from the higher strings further up the fretboard, producing a sweeter tone. By reversing the guitar, Hendrix also changed the relative distance of each string from its pickup, thus altering the mix of…

Perhaps the greatest baseball player in history, George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth Jr rose from a poor neighbourhood in Baltimore, Maryland, and reform school to dominate the sport like no individual before or since. Born on 6 February 1895 to George Herman Ruth Sr and Kate Schamberger Ruth, proprietors of grocery and tavern concerns, he was one of eight children. Only two, though, survived past infancy. During a major league career spanning 22 seasons, Ruth initially excelled as a left-handed pitcher, twice winning 23 games in a season and three world championships with the Boston Red Sox. He then transitioned to right field to play every day. Prodigious at the plate, he regularly hit home runs higher and longer than any other player of his era. After setting a single-season home…

Controversy still clouds the question as to whether Führer Adolf Hitler shook the hand of Olympic champion Jesse Owens after Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin games. Some accounts state plainly that Hitler had initially greeted German champions only, and Olympic officials asserted that he should shake the hand of every champion or none at all. In response, it is said, the Führer chose the latter option and often departed events prior to the awarding of medals. One observer swore Hitler shook Owens’ hand out of the view of cameras, while another said Owens did shake the Führer’s hand and that the champion once produced a photo of the moment. However, the existence of the photo has never been substantiated. In his landmark book Inside The Third Reich,…

Clay has his first contact with the Nation of Islam in Miami, where a local leader named Cap’n Sam introduces Clay to Malcolm X – already a controversial household name in 1960s America. Clay is eager to join the NOI, but the Prophet Elijah Muhammad bans boxers. After Clay’s high-profile victory over Liston though, he is welcomed into the fold. In a press conference a day after the fight, Clay announces his membership in the NOI and debuts his new name, Cassius X. Most of the American public, including Clay’s own father, are furious. A week later, the prophet declares that Cassius X is ready for his true Arabic name: Muhammad Ali.…

Lieutenant Colonel George Custer is remembered for his famous ‘last stand’ along the Little Bighorn River. Born in Ohio in 1839, Custer graduated at the bottom of his military academy class and was court-marshalled for not obeying his duties as an officer of the guard. With the Civil War raging, though, he was not punished. Custer proved himself a worthy officer in that brutal war and aged just 23 was the youngest officer ever to make the rank of general. However, after the war he was stripped of his commission. Having enlisted in the regular Army in 1866, Custer only strengthened his reputation for not following orders. In 1868, he led an attack on a band of Southern Cheyenne, even though the tribe had given in to the demands of…

The first occasion when a First Lady held a position in government occurred in 1775, with the 13 British colonies on the brink of rebellion against the Crown. Abigail Adams was appointed to the Massachusetts Colony General Court with the responsibility of judging whether accused women, through word or deed, had demonstrated loyalty to the king and therefore worked against the cause of the burgeoning revolution. Abigail was appointed along with Mercy Warren, a propagandist for the colonists before and during the war years, and Hannah Winthrop, the wife of John Winthrop, an intelligent professor of mathematics and natural sciences over at Harvard College. John Adams wrote to his wife, “You are now a politician and now elected into important office, that of judges of Tory ladies, which will give…

Eleanor was the niece of one president, Theodore Roosevelt, and the wife of another, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After his death in 1945, she was rumoured to be planning a run for office. In July 1946, however, she published a disclaimer in Look magazine listing several reasons for not running. She hoped that her work at the new United Nations might prevent future wars. She was elderly, and felt that young people deserved an opportunity. She enjoyed her newly recovered privacy, and “the freedom in being responsible only to yourself.” As an “onlooker” and a “help” in FDR’s career, she had seen “the worst and best of politics and statesmanship,” and had “absolutely no desire” to participate further. But “the plain truth,” she admitted, was simpler. “I am influenced by the…

15 January 1929 KING IS BORN The second child of Martin Luther King Sr, and Alberta Williams King is born in Atlanta, Georgia, into a relatively comfortable lifestyle, although racial discrimination is the routine in the South. 20 September 1944 OFF TO COLLEGE At the age of 15, Martin Luther King Jr, begins his freshman year at Morehouse College in Atlanta. His academic skills have allowed him to skip two grades of high school. 6 August 1946 LETTER TO THE EDITOR The Atlanta Constitution newspaper publishes 17-year-old King’s letter to the editor that reads in part that blacks are entitled to “the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens.” 14 September 1948 A SEMINARY STUDENT After graduating from Morehouse College, King enters Crozer Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, graduating with a…

In the years Malcolm X was forming his thoughts and beliefs on a pilgrimage to Mecca, his fellow African Americans back in the United States were on the precipice of a social and political revolution. Ever since Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, black Americans had earned their freedom but the lasting, enabling importance of basic civil rights still eluded them. The Civil Rights Movement, which ran from 1954 to 1968, would change the very fabric of American society forever. For almost 100 years, African Americans were technically free, but treated as second-class citizens, with segregation between blacks and whites so common it filtered everywhere from schools to restaurants and cafes. The frustrations of an entire people formed the fire of the Civil Rights Movement, a collective with the sole…