Moment of Indiana History
podcasts Archive
June 11, 2007
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Unigov
Toward the end of the 1960s, a diminishing tax base and a deteriorating downtown prompted Indianapolis civic leaders to push for measures that would revive the city. In 1970, the Indiana state legislature provided for the consolidation of the governments of Indianapolis and Marion County.
June 4, 2007
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Extension Homemakers
As the days grow brisker and the leaves take on brilliant hues, many Americans of a certain generation are wont to characterize the season with an expression born in Indiana. “When the frost is on the punkin” is the opening phrase of a classic poem by James Whitcomb Riley.
June 4, 2007
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Hoosier Puzzlemaster II
Public radio listeners are most likely familiar with the name Will Shortz. The Puzzlemaster from NPR’s Weekend Edition on Sunday mornings has been on the air since that program started in 1987. The estimated sixty-four million Americans who work crosswords have probably also encountered the native Hoosier’s name at some point or another.
May 28, 2007
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Hoosier Puzzlemaster I
The publication of a Sudoku puzzle in the Indianapolis Star on January 22, 2006 represented a sort of homecoming for the number-based puzzle. Although the addictive brain-teaser based on the 18th-century concept of the Latin square first gained renown in Japan, its long-concealed roots are in Indiana. Debuting without a byline in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games in 1979 as “Number Place,” the puzzle showed up in a Japanese magazine in the mid-80s with an unwieldy title meaning “the digits must occur only once.”
May 21, 2007
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Billy Sunday
During the last century, a preacher named Billy emerged as a world-renowned evangelist. But it’s not the Billy one might imagine. As if predestined by his surname, Billy Sunday brought “old time religion” to an estimated 100 million people without the benefit of television or electric amplification. Sunday’s career was intertwined with that of Winona Lake, in Kosciusko County, a mecca of religious and cultural activity from the 1890s through the 1930s.
May 14, 2007
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Winona Lake
The turn-of-the-century phenomenon known as Chautauqua was uniquely American in its blend of religion and entertainment, politics and culture, and the bucolic enjoyment provided by the booming railroad industry. The Winona Lake Chautauqua was no exception.
May 7, 2007
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Letterman Scholarship
For the last twenty years, students with so-so grades have taken heart in a rumor involving Ball State University and a certain gap-toothed late-night talk show host. According to urban legend, Hoosier native David Letterman established a scholarship at his alma mater for students with nothing better, or worse, than a “C” average. The rumor has insinuated itself so thoroughly into reality that the apocryphal “C”- average scholarship has been listed on the Internet and discussed at college financial aid sessions.
April 23, 2007
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Island Park Assembly
President Theodore Roosevelt called it “the most American thing in America.” With its passing, it’s been said, “the American middle class in the interior lost something valuable.” The Chautauqua movement brought religion, politics, culture and entertainment to small towns and rural outposts across the United States from the 1870s through the 1920s.
April 16, 2007
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Rhoda Coffin
Though her likeness has never graced a coin, a Quaker woman who made significant advances for women’s rights spent much of her adult life in Indiana. An Orthodox Quaker belonging to Richmond, Indiana’s upper crust, Rhoda Coffin devoted herself to the improvement of less fortunate women’s lives. Born in Ohio in 1826, Rhoda came to Indiana at age 18 to attend the Whitewater Monthly Meeting School in Richmond, at that time the center of Quaker activity in the Midwest.
April 9, 2007
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Trail of Death
Many are acquainted with the Trail of Tears, the forced migration of 15,000 Cherokees from the Smoky Mountains to Oklahoma in 1838. But another deadly exodus of Native Americans began in Indiana that same year. Part of the Algonquian group of Indians, Potawatomi people were living in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana at the start of the nineteenth century.
