Cracked Egg Trivia

To understand this wild story fully it is important to note that the presidential election in 1800 happened before the 12th Amendment. This meant that there were no official tickets, and whoever had the most votes for them won the presidency and the vice president position went to whoever was in second place. Previous to the 1800 election John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had run against each other with Adams winning the match therefore making Jefferson his vice president. In 1800 it was time for the rematch with Adams on the Federalist side with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Jefferson on the Democratic-Republican side with Aaron Burr. When the votes from the Electoral College came in there were seventy-three votes for both Jefferson and Burr while Adams only had sixty-five. This put Jefferson and Burr in an obvious tie, the solution of which was to bring Congress into the matter. Alexander Hamilton despite disliking all the candidates decided to back Jefferson and try to persuade the ...

Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison was born on July 25, 1775, near Morristown, New Jersey. Her parents were John Cleves Symmes and Anna Tuthill, who died a year after she was born. Three years after her mother passed away her father decided to take Anne to her maternal grandparent's home on Long Island since he was a soldier in the Continental Army and didn't feel like he could properly take care of a little girl. The War for Independence was going on at that time so in order to get his daughter through New York, which was British-occupied at the time, he dressed up as a British soldier and traveled by horseback with his then four year old. She lived with her grandparents until 1794, and while there she received an excellent education. She went to school at Clinton Academy, and then moved on to live at the Boarding School of Isabella Marshal Graham until she was fifteen years old. Graham was ahead of her time and believed in women's rights to equal education. At the age of...

The Black Death is the name of the deadly spread of bubonic plague that killed an estimated 25 million Europeans in the 1300's, and was also a problem in Asia. We now think the plague was caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. It is spread through the bites or stings of infected fleas and animals, and attacks the lymphatic system first before moving into the blood or lungs. Most people think that the plague was spread for the most part by rats, but researchers say that it spread too fast for rats to be responsible. And furthermore the lack of dead rats found as archaeological evidence helps to prove the point. The plague arrived in Europe along with "death ships" in October 1347. The 12 ships from the Black Sea were docked at a Sicilian port, and people waiting for the ship were shocked to find that almost everyone was dead. Those that were alive were covered in large black boils that oozed pus and blood, a telltale sign of the plague although they didn't kno...

Childbirth is a dangerous business, but it used to be even more so before Ignaz Semmelweis came up with a precautionary measure that would save mothers from succumbing to puerperal fever ("childbed fever"). The Hungarian physician suggested that simply washing your hands before assisting with birth would cut down on mortality rates. So in 1847 he proposed that obstetrical clinics should have higher hand washing standards. Unfortunately, his theory wasn't accepted by the medical community until after his death. But thanks to his work many lives have been saved since. Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1818, in Buda, Hungary (which would later become Budapest). He was the fifth child in a family of ten, and his parents were wealthy grocers. He began to study law in the fall of 1837 at the University of Vienna, but he switched to medicine the next year. He received his doctorate in 1844. He was then became assistant at the obstetric clinic in Vienna. At the time most women ...

Hannah Hoes was born on March 8, 1783, to Johannes Dircksen Hoes and Maria Quakenbush in Kinderhook, New York. She was raised in a Dutch home like her future husband Martin Van Buren, and Dutch was her first language. She received her education at a local Kinderhook school, and was taught by master Vrouw Lange. Hannah married her childhood sweetheart Martin Van Buren on February 21, 1807, in Catskill, New York at her sister and brother-in-law's home. The couple had six children together, five boys including one that died at infancy and one stillborn daughter. Hannah died of tuberculosis at the age of 35 on February 5, 1819. Angelica Singleton was born on February 13, 1816, to Richard Singleton and Rebecca Travis Coles Singleton. Angelica was first educated from 1826 to 1830 at Columbia Female Academy in South Carolina before she received further learning at Madame Grelaud's Seminary for Young Ladies in Philadelphia, there she would have learned French and a lot abou...

 Rachel Donelson was born on on June 15, 1767, in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. Her father, Colonel John Donelson, was a co-founder of Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother was Rachel Stockley Donelson. At the age of 12 Rachel moved with her family to Tennessee when her father led about 600 people from Fort Patrick Henry to Fort Nashborough, her family were some of the first white settlers in Tennessee. Later the family moved to Kentucky after threats to the settlers from the Indians in the area. Rachel was married to Lewis Robards on March 1, 1785, in Kentucky. Their marriage was not a happy one, Andrew Jackson and Rachel later said that she had been abused, and they separated in 1790 although they were not officially divorced until later. The divorce and the drama surrounding it would ultimately cause Rachel to be labeled an adulterer. She met Andrew Jackson after she had separated with Robards, and the two became close and soon married, but there was a problem. According to the...

Louisa Catherine Johnson was born on February 12, 1775, in London. She was one of only two first ladies to be born anywhere but the United States. Her father, Joshua Johnson, and her mother, Catherine Newth, were not officially married until 1785 according to documentation, which would make Louisa the only first lady to be born out of wedlock. It is possible that documents from their first wedding were lost, and that the wedding documented was actually a second one performed for some reason. The truth is that nobody really knows, and it is unlikely we will ever find out. In 1778 Joshua moved his family to France. Louisa loved France, and considered herself to be more French than English. While she was in France she learned to play the harp and piano, and sing. She also learned to read and write French in addition to speaking it fluently, in fact when her family returned to England in 1783 she had to learn to speak English again. Back in England she continued her schooling at a boa...

Elizabeth Jane Kortright was born in New York City on June 30, 1768. Her father, Lawrence Kortright, was a wealthy merchant who was also one of the founders of the New York Chamber of Commerce. Her mother was Hannah Kortright, formerly Hannah Aspinwall. Hannah died on September 6 or 7, 1777, and a few days later her 13-month old baby also died. Elizabeth was only nine years old at the time. On August 3, 1778, her family home caught on fire, and was almost destroyed. The fire at their home was a result of a larger fire that caused damage and destruction to almost fifty homes. Fortunately, no one in the family was hurt. In 1785, when James Monroe was living in New York City and serving as a member of the Continental Congress, he met Elizabeth. They were married on February 16, 1786, at her father's home by Reverend Benjamin Moore. Monroe was twenty-six at the time, Elizabeth was seventeen. They honeymooned briefly on Long Island, before returning to New York to live with her fat...

1. We don't actually know if they ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Four men were sent on a "fowling" mission by William Bradford according to the journal of Edward Winlsow, who was a Pilgrim chronicler, but although there would have been a plentiful supply of wild turkey in the area we can't be sure that the men didn't bring home ducks, geese, or even swans. They ate all those birds on a regular basis. We do know that there was plenty of venison, the Wampanoag arrived with five deer to contribute to the festivities. 2. There was more than one Boston Tea Party. It happened in March of 1774, three months after the Boston Tea Party that we all know. Sixty men, in disguises, boarded a ship called Fortune, forced the crew below deck, and then dumped chests full of tea into the harbor. This incident isn't as famous as the original since only about 30 chests were dumped, compared to the 340 that were destroyed three months earlier. 3. The Declaration of ...

Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, in Guilford County, North Carolina. Her parents were John Payne and Mary Coles Payne. Both her parents were Quakers, her father becoming so three years after marrying her mother in 1761. Dolley had four brothers and was the first of four girls. She grew up at her parents plantation in rural eastern Virginia after they moved there in 1769, and became close to her mother's family while she was there until her father moved them to Philadelphia when she was 15. There he started a laundry starch-making business that failed by 1791. He died a year later, and her mother started a boardinghouse, but by the next year she moved to her daughter Lucy's house in western Virginia along with her two youngest children, Mary and John. Previously Dolley had married John Todd, who was a Quaker lawyer, in the January of 1790. They lived in a three-story brick house in Philadelphia, where they had two boys (John Payne and William Temple) over the course o...

Martha Skelton Jefferson was born Martha Wayles on October 30, 1748. Her father, John Wayles, worked for Farrell & Jones (who were Bristol-based merchants) as an attorney, slave trader, and business agent. He was also a prosperous planter. Her mother, Martha Eppes, was a daughter of Francis Eppes, and came from an early Virginia settlement along the James River, Bermuda Hundred. Martha Wayles became Martha Skelton at the age of 18 when she married Bathurst Skelton on November 20, 1766. They had a son named John who was born in the November of the next year. On September 30, 1768, Bathurst died after a sudden illness. And on June, 10, 1771, their son John died of a fever. Martha then married Thomas Jefferson on January 1, 1772. After their wedding they spent two weeks at Martha's father's plantation, The Forest. Then they set out for Jefferson's plantation, Monticello. They made the 100-mile journey in a two-horse carriage during one of the worst snowstorms to hit ...

The "first lady" doesn't have to be the president's wife, and throughout history there have been different kinds of first ladies. Daughters, nieces, and even daughter-in-laws have all taken on the role. This can happen for many reasons, in Buchanan's case he never married, in Thomas Jefferson's his wife died before he became president. That is where I ran into problems. Should I write about the president's wife or the woman who acted as the "first lady"? The obvious choice would be the first lady, but this series is called "Life Before the White House", and would it be right to ignore the women who played such important roles in our presidents lives before they were ever elected? I decided to honor both, and whenever there is a case like is mentioned earlier I will write about both women. The first ladies that served during the presidency, and the ones that served before.

Most of us have heard of Pocahontas, and some of us might have even watched the movie (it's one of my favorites). But I wanted to talk about the story behind the story, the truth about the woman behind the myth. Her real name was Amonute, although she went by Matoaka, and Pocahontas was her nickname. Pocahontas means "playful one" or "ill-behaved child". She was born sometime around 1595, and was the daughter of Powhatan. Powhatan was the ruler of over 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes who lived in the Tidewater region of Virginia, the area around the future site of Jamestown. In 1607, when Pocahontas was 11 or 12, John Smith was kidnapped by her brother and brought to meet Chief Powhatan. What happened after is the subject of an often heated debate. Smith claims that his head was placed on two stones and was about to be smashed when Pocahontas placed her head on top of his, saving his life. However some people think that he was lying since his stories about the...

Abigail Smith was born on November 11, 1744, in Weymouth Massachusetts to William Smith, a minister and farmer, and Elizabeth Smith, who was formally a Quincy. The Quincys were a well known political family in the Massachusetts colony. Abigail was often sick as a child, and this was one of the reasons she didn't attend school although later in life she stated that it was also because of the fact that girls at that time were rarely given the opportunity to receive a formal education. She was educated at home though by her mother who taught her and her sisters to write, read, and cipher. Abigail also liked to read, studying French and English literature through her families extensive collection of books, and studying works by people like William Shakespeare and John Milton. When Abigail was 11 years old, she and her sisters began being tutored by Richard Cranch, whom Abigail's older sister, Mary, later married. In 1762 Richard Cranch brought a friend by the name of John Adam...

WARNING: I do not suggest reading this if you're planning on eating anytime soon. Having said that, lets dive right in. In ancient times the methods people used to dispose of their waste varied. In Rome and Greece they sometimes used running water in their bath houses. Although chamber pots were also commonly used, they even brought them to meals and drinking sessions. The pots were then emptied into receptacles on the streets if you lived in large cities like Rome or Pompeii. One fun fact is that workers, called fullers, collected and used the urine from the receptacles to eliminate impurities from cloth. In ancient China during the Han dynasty they used pig toilets, which was an outhouse with either a chute or a hole that deposited the waste into a pigsty where the pigs then ate it. In the Middle Ages garderobes were used, mostly in upper class dwellings. Garderobes were basically slabs of wood or stone with one or more holes to sit on, connected to a chute or pipe tha...

Most people know Martha Washington as the "first lady", but her life was much more than that, and I wanted to talk about her life before the White House, including the time she spent without George Washington. She was born in Virginia on her father John Dandridge's plantation, Chestnut Grove, on June 2, 1731. Growing up she enjoyed riding horses, climbing trees, dancing, sewing, gardening, and playing the spinet. Although she still had to study, she was well trained in running a household, but she was also taught reading, writing, and mathematics. At the age of 18, she was married to a wealthy and handsome plantation owner, Daniel Parke Custis. They had a happy marriage, and Custis loved to spoil his new bride with gifts from England. They had four children, but sadly only two survived past infancy. Their names were Patsy and Jacky. Custis became ill in the summer of 1757, and died soon after, leaving Martha a widow with two small children and a 15,000 acre esta...