Moment of Indiana History
shows Archive
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.
May 26, 2008
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Mother Theodore Guerin
Within the cultural mythology of Indiana, Hoosiers are traditionally considered good, wholesome folks…but not exactly saints ? The Hoosier demographic was broadened considerably, however, with the canonization of a French native who came to Indiana as a missionary.
May 19, 2008
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Bette Cadou
Now known as the voice that announces the start of the Indy 500, Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Mari Hulman George was barred from checking in on the pit crew servicing the race car she owned back in the 1960s.
May 12, 2008
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Jackson County Vigilance Committee
Long before their third attempted train robbery, the Reno Gang had fomented lawlessness across Jackson County. The brothers and their associates were seasoned bank robbers, cattle rustlers, bounty jumpers, arsonists and murderers by the time they first held up a train in 1866—thereby introducing a new brand of larceny to the lexicon of crime.
May 5, 2008
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Reno Gang
Frank, John, Simeon and William Reno were raised on a 400-acre farm in Jackson County along with a sister, Laura, and a relatively law-abiding brother, known later as “Honest Clint.” Sundays, the children were required to spend the day reading scripture.
