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Controversial vice presidential picks are nothing new in American politics, as even recent Indiana history reveals. When Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush announced his running mate in August 1988, Indiana Senator James Danforth Quayle faced relentless questioning from the press about his military service, personal life and leadership experience.
When T.C. Steele and colleagues returned to Indiana in the mid-1880’s after studying at Munich’s Royal Academy of Painting, their canvases evinced the tonal realism they’d absorbed there.
A feminist who eventually opposed the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, Mary Ritter Beard was nonetheless a pioneering scholar and proponent of women’s history. The texts she co-authored with her husband, not to mention fifteen titles of her own, made significant strides in incorporating cultural, social and economic trends into the popular interpretation of American history.
A group of black students committed to achieving racial justice through nonviolent means was already in existence at Indiana University Bloomington by the spring of 1968. But the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4 th in Memphis, Tennessee galvanized black activism on campus.
Although he’s not as famous as the Loch Ness Monster, Oscar of Churubusco has his very own summer festival. Since 1950, folks in Whitley County have paid tribute to their own version of “Nessie” during Churubusco Turtle Days.
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.
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.