Moment of Indiana History
shows Archive
March 5, 2007
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Colonel Sanders
Drivers pulling off the Interstate for a quick meal might be induced to make it KFC, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, in the hopes of savoring a home-style Southern dinner. Although its name might inspire nostalgia for the Bluegrass State, Kentucky Fried Chicken first opened its doors in South Salt Lake, Utah in 1952. That restaurant was a franchise sold by Harland Sanders, a 62-year-old native of Henryville, Indiana.
February 26, 2007
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Studebaker
The Studebaker Manufacturing Company may be considered the godfather of Indiana auto makers, a cadre that once included such names as Stutz, Cord, and Duesenberg. The company was started by a family of Pennsylvania Germans, who set up a blacksmithing shop at the corner of Michigan and Jefferson Streets in downtown South Bend in 1852. Soon, the company was producing the horse-drawn carriages that delivered a nation of pioneers to their new life out West.
February 19, 2007
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Jessamyn West
A Californian from the age of six, writer Jessamyn West answered to a Hoosier muse. Having left Vernon, Indiana with her family in 1908 to resettle in southern California, West is best remembered for her fictional accounts of pioneer life in Indiana.
February 12, 2007
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Charlestown Powder Plant
Even before the U.S. officially entered the second world war, Congress authorized increased spending for the manufacture of arms for sale to the allied forces. The passage of the first national defense appropriations act in June 1940 quickly resulted in the construction of the world’s largest smokeless powder plant near Charlestown, Indiana.
February 5, 2007
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Edward Eggleston: The Hoosier Schoolmaster
The eldest son of a prominent Virginian, Edward Eggleston was born in Vevay, Indiana on the Ohio River in 1837. Eggleston’s novel The Hoosier Schoolmaster is recognized as a flagship of the regionalist literature that flourished in the United States after the Civil War.
February 5, 2007
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Breaking Away
Bloomington, Indiana provided not only the setting for the film Breaking Away, but its subject matter as well.
January 29, 2007
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Crossroads of America
Although it’s certainly not the geographic center of the continental United States, the state of Indiana has nonetheless played the role of “The Crossroads of America”.
January 22, 2007
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Sam Bass
While John Dillinger might be considered Indiana’s most notorious gangster, and the Reno gang of Seymour credited with having invented the train robbery, a different Hoosier miscreant may have left the largest footprint on American folklore. Before astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom put Mitchell on the map, the small town’s best-known native son was undoubtedly Sam Bass.
January 15, 2007
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Martinsville and Diversity
The brutal murder of a young African-American woman during the civil rights era has long fueled one small Indiana town’s reputation as a hive of racist hatred.
January 8, 2007
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Women in the Indy 500
Women drivers had a slow on-ramp into the racing world of the Indy 500. Janet Guthrie blazed the trail in 1977, changing the traditional invitation, “Gentlemen, start your engines,” to something more inclusive.
