On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died in the Petersen family’s boarding house in Washington, DC, at 7:22 a.m. The night before, John Wilkes Booth shot him during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre, and soldiers carried Lincoln across Tenth Street so that he could pass his last moments peacefully and not risk a bumpy carriage ride back to the White House. After More
Today is the start of Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year. The holiday was Thailand’s official New Year until 1888 when it was switched to a fixed date of April 1. In 1940, the date of the New Year was changed again to January 1, and Songkran was transformed into a three-day national holiday. Thai More
For National Beer Day, we hope you enjoy a cold one—if you’re of age, that is. The day is observed on April 7 because on that day in 1933, the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect, amending the National Prohibition Act and allowing the manufacture and sale of beer and wine with a 3.2% alcohol content or less. During the nineteenth century, beer making in Chicago was transformed from a small-scale, seasonal activity More
It’s National Deep Dish Pizza Day! Where will you be ordering from tonight? Modern pizza is reputed to have started in Naples in 1889 when Raffaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita,” with tomato, mozzarella, and basil replicating the colors of the Italian flag, for King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Italy. From there, pizza spread across the More
Happy Easter! In this image, a crowd stands around the Fourth Presbyterian Church for an Easter parade along North Michigan Avenue, just south of Delaware Place, in 1927. The church recently celebrated its sesquicentennial. On February 12, 1871, Fourth Presbyterian Church was formed with the merging of the North Presbyterian Church (founded in 1848) and Westminster Presbyterian Church (founded in 1855 as a mission church of the First More