Location: Spokane, Washington
Year: 1910
Father's Day was founded in 1910 by Sonora Smart, a native of Spokane, Washington. She had heard about Mother's Day and decided that fathers needed a similar day of recognition. Father's Day became a local Spokane holiday, and was acknowledged in various other locales, but was not recognized nationally. In the 1930s, however, Ms. Smart was able to promote the holiday in association with the Father's Day Council, founded by the New York Associated Men's Wear Retailers to consolidate and systematize the commercial promotion of the holiday. Although people were initially skeptical, Father's Day caught on throughout the United States, thanks to the efforts of the New Yorkers.
Location: New York City
Year: 1978
Pinball games were banned in New York City until 1978. The NYPD even held “Prohibition-style” busts.
Location: Lower Manhattan
Year: 1600
The first apple orchards in North America were started from seeds brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch.
Location: Midtown Manhattan
Year: 1881
Cleopatra's Needle is the popular name for each of three ancient Egyptian obelisks re-erected in London, Paris, and New York City during the nineteenth century.
The first Needle was erected in Paris, and is one of a set of two, the other remaining in Luxor. It was the earliest of the three to reach a world capital. Shortly after, British pride demanded a Needle in London, and an obelisk was acquired from the ancient site of Heliopolis.
Not long after the British made plans to re-erect the obelisk in London, there was an outcry in print in the United States for an obelisk. If Paris had one and London was to get one, why should not New York get one?
In response, the twin of the London obelisk was shipped to New York in 1881, and was erected in Central Park just west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was presented as a "gift" to America from Egypt, though in truth much political arm-twisting was involved and Egypt occasionally makes formal objections as to the status of the monuments.
Although all three needles are genuine, their shared nickname is a misnomer, as they have no connection with Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, and were already over a thousand years old in her lifetime. The London and New York "needles" were originally made during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III c. 1450 B.C.. The Paris "needle" dates to the reign of Ramses II. Both the London and New York Needles are made of red granite, stand about 69 feet high, weigh about 224 tons each and are inscribed with hieroglyphs.
Location: Sri Lanka
Year: 1875
Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907),
a New Jersey-born graduate of the City College of New York and of Columbia University,
was the chief investigator of the assassination of President Lincoln, and a
leading Theosophist. In 1875, Olcott traveled to Sri Lanka, and became the first American-born Buddhist while living in that country.
Olcott worked with the monk Anagarika Dharmapala to rejuvenate Buddhism in that country. He is honored in Sri Lanka for doing so. Upon returning to the U.S., Olcott wrote The Buddhist Catechism (1881) which reflected Theravada Buddhist teachings.
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Charles T. Strauss (1852-1937), a lace curtain salesman who lived and worked at 466 Broadway in Manhattan, became the first Western convert to Buddhism on American soil during his attendance at The World Conference on Religions held in Chicago in 1893. Strauss was Jewish by birth, but ecumenical in thought. At the Conference he became fascinated by Buddhism, and approached the Buddhist monks in attendance for more information.
Anagarika Dharmapala, who had worked with Olcott in Sri Lanka, administered a Sanskrit oath to Strauss, who ever after called himself a Buddhist. He never sought formal ordination but became an active member of Dharmapala and Olcott's Mahabodhi Society, and assisted Dharmapala in building the organization. He wrote one book, The Buddha and His Doctrine (1923), in which he emphasized the nonmystical, ethical nature of Buddhism.
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Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) is most famous as one of the poets of The Beat Generation. Like Olcott, he was born in New Jersey and attended Columbia University (from which he was expelled for writing graffiti on a steamy window with his finger). Like Strauss, he had been raised in the Jewish faith.
In 1948, he had his famous "Blake Vision" and not long after that met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Manhattan (the two shared a cab). Both spiritualists and hard drinkers, they remained lifelong friends. Ginsberg used his position as a famed poet to help promote Trungpa's Vajrayana Buddhist teachings, and Buddhist themes are reflected in some of Ginsberg's poetry.
Location: The Lower East Side
Year: 1856
Isaac M. Singer, born in Pittstown, New York and living in Otsego, New York invented the first workable sewing machine in 1856. Besides being an inventor and an entrepeneur, Singer was also a roue who fathered at least 24 children. Eventually he settled in England to dodge paying for his numerous American offspring.
There were numerous such machines and numerous inventors working on such machines at the time. Singer arranged for the world's first "patent pool," allowing each inventor to contribute their best idea to the machine ultimately designed. The first Singer factory was on Mott Street in lower Manhattan. In its first year, I.M. Singer Company produced 2,600 machines. In 1860, it produced 13,000.
Due to the Union's need for uniforms, and the Union Army's introduction of standard sizes, the need for machines mushroomed during the Civil War (and while the tailors of the Lower East Side were making Union uniforms from bolts of blue cloth, they were also making Confederate uniforms from bolts of gray cloth in the same rooms). I.M. Singer became the preeminent name in sewing machines, a distinction it still holds.
Location: Long Island
Year: 1834
The Long Island Rail Road was established in 1834. It is the oldest continually-operating railroad in the United States, still functioning under its original name and charter. It is unique among U.S. railroads in that it operates 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and 365 days per year. The LIRR has 124 stations, more than 700 miles of tracks, and gives an estimated 335,000 rides per weekday to commuters. Pennsylvania (Penn) Station is its western terminus in Manhattan. Expansion into Grand Central Station is planned for 2019. The Montauk Line train is historically known as "The Cannonball" and has operated continuously since 1899.
