Moment of Indiana History
podcasts Archive
November 28, 2005
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Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was a lifelong resident of Terre Haute. Having dropped out of school at an early age, Debs first worked on the railroad as a fireman. The bonds that he forged with his fellow workers shaped his lifelong philosophy, expressed in one of Debs’ famous court speeches — “While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
November 21, 2005
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Paul Dresser
Indiana 's official state song conveys the sense of nostalgia for a long-gone rural domesticity that characterized Paul Dresser's best-loved songs.
November 14, 2005
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Levi Coffin
Born in North Carolina in 1798, Levi Coffin observed first-hand the institution of slavery. His strong hatred for oppression and injustice was further bolstered when as a young man he saw a group of slaves chained together as he and his father chopped wood by the roadside.
November 7, 2005
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Booth Tarkington
Writer Booth Tarkington is identified with Indiana and the Midwest. Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Tarkington spent his first two years of college at Purdue before graduating from Princeton in 1893. His comical writing style epitomized the 1920s Lost Generation. His most known works were cheerful, realistic novels of life in small Midwestern towns.
October 31, 2005
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Indiana State Seal
The Indiana State Seal has a convoluted history. With the creation of the Northwest Territory in 1787, the seal depicted a coiled snake in the foreground, boats in the mid-ground, a rising sun, a tree being chopped into logs, and a fruit bearing apple tree.
October 24, 2005
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Windmill Museum
Early immigrants to America brought with them the windmill technology that was developed in England and Europe. Fueled by the wind, the machine converted the rotary motion of the wheels into common tasks like grinding grain into meal or flour.
October 17, 2005
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Gennett Records
From 1916 to 1934, Gennett Records in Richmond made thousands of acoustic and electric recordings, ranging from blues, jazz, and country music to ethnic, classical, spoken word, and any other marketable music. The first recordings of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings were made in Richmond in 1922, jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton mastered over twenty tracks there in 1923, and King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band featuring Louis Armstrong, Lil Hardin, and Honore Dutrey recorded for Gennett. Other notable artists included Hoagy Carmichael, who recorded the first version of “Stardust” there.
October 10, 2005
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George Winter
George Winter documented a vanishing culture as it fell to the expansion of the United States. Through his close association with the Miami and Potawatomi tribes, he sketched the likenesses of many great Native Americans and documented the tribes and their activities.
October 3, 2005
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Battle of Tippecanoe
Tippecanoe, was established in the eighteenth century. It was at the junction of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers, just seven miles north of Lafayette.
September 26, 2005
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West Baden Springs Hotel
Designed by Harrison Albright and built in 1902, the West Baden Springs Hotel is an architectural marvel located on 684 acres of woods, springs, and formal gardens in Southern Indiana ‘s Orange County . The Hotel’s nearly 700 rooms form around a central dome that is 200 feet in diameter and 100 feet high. It is believed that this dome was the world’s largest clear-span dome until the Astrodome was built in 1963.
