Moment of Indiana History
shows Archive
December 10, 2007
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Too Many Santas
Many who bemoan the commercialism of Christmas consider the phenomenon to be a recent trend. In Indiana, however, corporate wrangling for holiday dollars goes back at least to the 1930s. A southern Indiana town has inspired entrepreneurs ever since town postmaster James Martin began promoting the Santa Claus, Indiana postmark in the 1920s.
December 3, 2007
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Holiday House Tours
On the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Oldfields – Lilly House and Gardens, is decorated in the style of Christmas in the 1930s, when the mansion was the new home of Indianapolis businessman and philanthropist Josiah Lilly.
November 26, 2007
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Tommy John Surgery
From Little Leaguers to professional baseball players, there’s hope after injuring an elbow. Increasingly and at a younger age, ball players are turning to a surgical procedure first performed in 1974. What physicians refer to as ulnar collateral ligament—or UCL—reconstruction is better known as Tommy John surgery.
November 19, 2007
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Colgate-Palmolive
In early 2006, Colgate-Palmolive announced that its toothpaste plant in Clarksville, Indiana would relocate to Morristown, Tennessee by 2008. Another indication of Indiana’s shift from a manufacturing-based economy, the news came as a blow to the plant’s 500 employees, along with economic forecasters in Southern Indiana.
November 12, 2007
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Orthopedics
In the last century and a half, Indiana has made been recognized worldwide for its leadership in a variety of industries—from limestone production to automobile manufacture. Advances in medical technology and the graying of the population have conspired to place a different Hoosier-based industry at today’s corporate vanguard.
November 5, 2007
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Edna Parker
In August 2007, a resident of Shelbyville earned global recognition for the central Indiana city. Upon the death of Japan’s Yone Minegawa that month, 114-year-old Hoosier Edna Scott Parker rose from the position of the nation’s oldest person to the world’s reigning supercentenarian.
October 29, 2007
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Central State Hospital
For Hoosier storytellers with a taste for the macabre, the Central State Hospital is a familiar theme. The defunct institution on the near-west side of Indianapolis treated and housed many of the state’s mentally ill for almost 150 years.
October 22, 2007
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Stepp Cemetary
While ghost-trackers in Evansville keep on the lookout for the Lady in Grey, an apparition in different attire haunts the imagination of paranormal investigators in central Indiana. A spectral Lady in Black is said to lurk in the Stepp Cemetery, located deep within the Morgan Monroe State Forest, south of Martinsville.
October 15, 2007
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Willard Library Ghost
Among the landmarks that figure prominently on an Indiana ghost-tracker’s map is the Willard Library. The stately brick edifice in downtown Evansville has such a reputation for paranormal activity that the library, in partnership with the Evansville Courier and Press, has installed surveillance cameras or “ghost cams” in the reportedly haunted rooms.
October 8, 2007
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Frost Is on the Punkin
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.
