Moment of Indiana History
podcasts Archive
August 4, 2008
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100 Year Flood
When purchasing home insurance one anticipates every contingency, including such events as a “100 Year Flood.” In June 2008, Hoosiers in south-central Indiana learned exactly how formidable that event could be. The state’s hydrologist officially termed the 2008 deluge a “100 Year Flood” when water levels broke records set during the Great Flood of 1913. […]
July 28, 2008
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Bill Peet
Frequently clashing with his boss during his 27 years at Disney, Bill Peet left in 1964 to pursue a career as a children’s book author, which he initiated with Hubert’s Hair Raising Adventure . He is considered by some to be part of a triumvirate that includes Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss.
July 21, 2008
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Garfield’s Human
“Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges,” Fairmount-born cartoonist Jim Davis once suggested. “Cats have the courage to live by them—that’s what Garfield is all about.” Davis must have been on to something—his comic strip about the fat orange tabby that debuted in 1978 is now the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world.
July 14, 2008
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West College Corner
From the Crispus Attacks Tigers to the Milan miracle, the annals of Indiana high school basketball provide an endless source of inspiration and emotion. One chapter in Hoosier hoops history has also been a source of whimsy, not to mention logistical and legal confusion.
July 7, 2008
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Lamp Light on the Wabash
Journalists could not come up with enough awestruck prose to describe a technological first occurring on the evening of March 31, 1880 in the north-central Indiana city of Wabash. Although a demonstration had been conducted in Cleveland the year before, Wabash may lay claim to the title of the first city to have been wholly lit by electric light.
June 30, 2008
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Squaring the Circle
Legislative antics in Indiana may have reached a comic peak in 1949, when one rural representative, claiming that Daylight Saving Time was disruptive for cows, reached up and forced the House clock back an hour, breaking it in the process.
June 23, 2008
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Wine Production
The following year, Dufour purchased a 2500-acre tract of land on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. Cultivation of such grapes as the native Alexander, and a hybrid variety known as the Cape proved successful at the Swiss Vineyards, also known as New Switzerland.
June 16, 2008
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Meg Cabot
The ranks of Indiana writers boast such venerable names as Kurt Vonnegut, Jessamyn West, James Whitcomb Riley and Theodore Dreiser. But one of the state’s best-selling authors to date bears little kinship with the traditions of satire, historical fiction, sentimental verse and gritty realism represented by those literary forbears.
June 9, 2008
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Breathalyzer
Before 1954, the matter of keeping drunk drivers off the road was fairly hit or miss. Diagnostic tools for evaluating a driver’s level of intoxication were subjective and empirical—a police officer who pulled over a weaving car would check for a driver’s bloodshot eyes or slurred speech.
June 2, 2008
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Bill Monroe
Every June, a tiny hamlet in the rolling hills in Southern Indiana attracts pickers and grinners from around the country. The Bill Monroe Memorial Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival is the genre’s premier event, and was recognized in 2001 as a Local Legacy, meriting a permanent exhibition in the Library of Congress.
