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Curated category

American people of Scotch-Irish descent

  • Stephen KingStephen King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5 on the 19th of June 1999 when a minivan struck him and sent him into a depression in the…
  • Mark TwainMark Twain was born on the 30th of November 1835, shortly after Halley's Comet swept past the Earth, and he came to believe the two of them were bound…
  • William McKinleyWilliam McKinley stepped onto the front porch of his Canton, Ohio, home in the summer of 1896 and met the world. Delegations arrived by train, marching…
  • James StewartJames Stewart gave away his only competitive Academy Award. He won Best Actor for the 1940 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, then handed the statuette…
  • Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on the 27th of April 1822, in Ohio, and by the time he died on the 23rd of July 1885, he had commanded the…
  • Al GoreAl Gore won more votes than his opponent on Election Day 2000, yet still lost the presidency. That outcome, decided by a Supreme Court ruling of 5-4 in Bush…
  • Benjamin HarrisonBenjamin Harrison holds a peculiar distinction in American history: he is the only person to have served as president between two terms of the same opponent.
  • Andrew JacksonAndrew Jackson refused to polish a British officer's boots, and the officer slashed him with a sword. The blade left scars on his left hand and head.
  • John WayneMarion Robert Morrison weighed thirteen pounds when he was born at 224 South Second Street in Winterset, Iowa, on the 26th of May 1907.
  • Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson was three years old when he heard a man outside the Augusta parsonage announce in disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war…
  • Andrew JohnsonAndrew Johnson was acquitted in the United States Senate by a single vote. That vote, cast in May 1868, saved his presidency from becoming the first to end…
  • Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC on the 21st of July 1969, and said seven words that an estimated 530 million people heard…
  • Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman became the 33rd president of the United States not by winning an election, but by walking into a room where Eleanor Roosevelt told him her…
  • Bill GatesBill Gates was born on the 28th of October, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, and by age 31 he had become the world's youngest-ever billionaire.
  • JD VanceJames David Vance was born James Donald Bowman on the 2nd of August 1984, in Middletown, Ohio. He grew up in a home marked by poverty and abuse while his…
  • Carrie FisherCarrie Frances Fisher once wrote that no matter how she died, she wanted it reported that she had drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
  • Irvin McDowellIrvin McDowell's name is permanently attached to one of the most humiliating afternoons in American military history. On a summer day in 1861, the Union Army…
  • Maxwell AndersonMaxwell Anderson died on the 28th of February 1959, two days after a stroke, and was cremated. Half his ashes were scattered by the sea near his home in…
  • James M. BuchananJames McGill Buchanan Jr. was born on the 3rd of October 1919 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in a farmhouse with no indoor plumbing and no electricity.
  • Horace GreeleyHorace Greeley could not breathe for the first twenty minutes of his life. He was born on the 3rd of February 1811, on a small farm about five miles from…
  • James IrwinJames Benson Irwin told his mother, when he was about 12 years old, that he wanted to go to the Moon and might be the first person to do so.
  • Leonidas PolkLeonidas Polk was born on the 10th of April 1806 in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father William served as a Revolutionary War veteran and later became a…
  • Richard Taylor (Confederate general)Richard Taylor died on the 12th of April, 1879, exactly eighteen years to the day after the Battle of Fort Sumter opened the Civil War he had fought so…
  • George F. KennanGeorge Frost Kennan sent a telegram from Moscow on the 22nd of February, 1946, that would reshape American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth…
  • David FarragutDavid Glasgow Farragut was lashed to the mast of his flagship, hanging over a battle he could barely see through the smoke, when he gave the order that would…
  • Nathan Bedford ForrestNathan Bedford Forrest enlisted in the Confederate Army on the 14th of June 1861, as a private. He left it as a lieutenant general.