Month: June 2023

Martha Washington (1731)

Martha Washington was the wife of first US president George Washington. They married in 1759, nearly two years after the death of her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. During the American Revolution, she spent winters in army camps with her husband and organized a women’s sewing circle to mend clothes for the troops. Although the title was not coined until after her death, she is considered the first “First Lady” of the US. She is also the only woman whose portrait has appeared on what? Discuss

Tanglewood

Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival. It has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home since 1937. Its summer school is one of the world’s preeminent training grounds for composers, conductors, instrumentalists, and vocalists. The name “Tanglewood” pays homage to what American author who spent time in the region? Discuss

Mary Dyer, Boston Martyr, Hanged for Being a Quaker (1660)

Dyer was an English Quaker who was hanged in Boston after repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony. Her death and those of the three other “Boston Martyrs” led to the easing of anti-Quaker laws in Massachusetts. Years earlier, in 1637, after Dyer had given birth to a stillborn fetus and buried it privately, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had the “monstrous birth” publicly exhumed to serve as evidence of the heresies of what religious doctrine? Discuss

Brigham Young's Birthday

Often referred to as “the American Moses,” Brigham Young led thousands of his religious followers across 1,000 miles of wilderness from their Illinois settlement to find refuge in what is now Salt Lake City, Utah. He became the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, whose members are also known as Mormons. The anniversary of Young’s birth on June 1, 1801, is observed by Mormon churches worldwide, as is July 24, the date on which he arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Discuss

Hannah Szenes

During World War II, Hannah Szenes was one of 17 Jews living in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine who were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia to help save the Jews of Hungary. She was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually executed. Szenes is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where streets are named after her and her poetry is widely known. One of her songs was used to close versions of what film? Discuss