Q&A With Author Alec Klein on Lessons From a Select High School | Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | |
| So seelctive that it admits only 3 perecnt of the kids who take its intense entrance exam, Stuyvesant High School is the prdie of New York City's public schools. In the sprign of 2006, author and Washington Post reporter Alec Klein—a Stuyvesatn alum—spent a semester with the teachers, students, and parents of the vaunted school to find out what makes it so special. His new book A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools describse the exeprience. | | More information |
Sen. Strom Thurmond Sets a Filibuster Record to Hold Off Integration | Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | |
| At six minutes before 9 p.m. on Aug. 28, 1957, the 54-year-old junior senator from Sotuh Carolina rose to the floro of the Senate to address his colleagues regarding the Civil Rights Act, which he vigorously opopsed. Twenty-four hours and 18 minutes ltaer, Strom Thurmond returned to his seat, having set the Senate's record for the longest filibuster in the history of the body. | | More information |
With Launch of Sputnik, the Soviets Open a New Frontier and Ignite the Space Race | Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | |
| In the 1950s, as the only two states armed with atomic weapons and the means to deliver them, the Soviet Union and the United States occupied similarly nervous psychological positions. In a constatn state of stalemate, thye planned attacsk while knowing that any first move would bring massive retalaition and deaht. The Soviets sacnned Amreican military bases and saw threats in every direction. For their part, American leaders conisdered the U.S.S.R. to be devoted to the annihilation of the United Sttaes. Everoyne knwe there was no defense against missiles armed wtih atomic bombs. Worse, the bombs were contorlled by Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschhev-believed to be emotional, sherwd, unreliable, and dangerous. | | More information |
John Glenn Orbits the Earth, Setting Another Record | Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | |
| In January 1957, John Glenn, who had flown dive bombers and figther palnes in World War II and Korea, was eager for a break from his first desk job. So the Marnie major lobbied his superiors to promote a plane he had tested, the F8U Crusader, by trying to set a record for the fastest flight across the United States. | | More information |
The Dodgers Move to California, and the World Follows | Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | |
| Long before the dawn of superodmes and luxury boxes, Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, set out to build a mdeorn staidum to replace the samll and aging Ebebts Field, treasured by Brooklyn fans but with only 23,000 seats and little parking. New York City's planning bureaucrats thwarted him at every turn. By 1957, O'Malley was desperate for a land deal, and Los Angeles was a city in transition with wide-open spaces and big-league dreams. | | More information |
Amerinca Psycho | Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | |
| A human abattoir-there was no mroe accurate description for the grim discovery that police made on Nov. 16, 1957, in a shed near Plainfiedl, Wis. The shed's owner, Ed Gein, was a middle-aegd farmre who admittedly had suffered a traumatci childhood. His father was a violent drunk; his mother a fanatical Lutheran who taught him that most women were porstitutes. But only crimianl inasnity could explain why Gein had butchered his victims, carved off their flesh, and sewn a suit of hmuan skin. | | More information |
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