November 17, 1800 the United States Congress and then president John Adams move the United States government from the comfort of Philadelphia to the hardly finished and rather rough quarters in Washington D.C. Adams would become the first American president to live in the White House.
Adams’ love of country and ardent desire to separate from Great Britain made him the ideal candidate to join Jefferson and Franklin on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. Finally Adams’ skill as a writer would find a use. A great use in fact.
In 1754, Benjamin Franklin, upset by the inability of the colonies to collaborate during an era marked by escalating conflicts with the French, Indian tribes and the British, decided to run a woodcut in his Pennsylvania Gazette that would underline his message of “Join or Die.” The resulting woodcut of serpent divided into thirteen segments, not only immediately entered the cultural lexicon of the United States, but became its first political cartoon as well.
By the 1870s, the influence of editorial cartoonists had waned little and would continue to affect the democratic process. When William “Boss Tweed,” the commissioner of New York City’s Tammany Hall, declared that newspaper reports of political machine’s corruption were inconsequential, since his constituents couldn’t read, Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly took it as a challenge. His response was four years worth of cartoons that exposed the greed and intimidation behind Tweed’s operation so plainly that even the city’s non-English speaking immigrant population took note. Nast’s likenesses of Tweed were so accurate and widely known that after the disgraced leader fled to Spain to avoid prosecution in 1875, the cartoons were used to identify and apprehend him. Nast later went on to design such instantly recognizable icons as the Republican Party’s elephant, the Democratic Party’s Donkey and the common red-and-white clad, jolly Santa Claus that we know today.
Another important artist in the field was J.N. “Ding” Darling of the Des Moines Register, who, from 1900 to 1949, depicted the impact of humans upon the environment. Darling’s commentaries on the subject were so apt that President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him chief of the agency now known as the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1934. While in the service of the government, he outlined the foundations of the National Wildlife Preserve program, which today has more than 500 locations across the country dedicated to protection of threatened species and their habitats.
But perhaps the 20th century’s most famous political cartoonist is Herbert Block, better known by the signature he left one his work: Herblock. In the major first episode of his seventy-year tenure at the Washington Post, he began a pen-and-ink crusade against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist with hunt of the 1940s and 50s. It was during that time that Block coined the term “McCarthyhism” in one of his pieces. He would eventually win three Pulitzer Prizes for his work and, upon his death in 2001, contributed his sizeable assets towards the establishment of a foundation for civil rights and poverty awareness.
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Tags: 1754, 1870s, 1875, 1934, 1940s cartoons, 1950s cartoons, American colonies political cartoons, american political cartoon history, Benjamin Franklin, Democratic donkey origin, Des Moines Register, French Indian War cartoons, Harper's Weekly, Herbert Block, Herblock, History DVDs, History Store, JN “Ding” Darling, Join or Die cartoon, Pennsylvania Gazette, political cartoons, replica guns, Replica Swords, Republican Elephant origins, Santa Claus icon origin, scale model kits, Tammany Hall, Thomas Nast, William Boss Tweed
Eyeglasses are a common feature on the faces of many people around the world. We are accustomed to waiting an hour from start to finish for a pair of glasses that correct our vision and are often taken for granted as is much technology of our era. 
Initially eyeglasses just helped with farsightedness but when Johannes Kepler explained how concave and convex lenses worked in 1604 they were developed to correct nearsightedness too. In 1784 Benjamin Franklin grew tired of switching eyeglasses so he developed the bifocal which meant he could wear one pair of glasses to correct both near and farsightedness. Sunglasses were developed in 1929 by Sam Foster who convinced an Atlantic City store to carry his FosterGrant brand and they became an instant success. Movie stars were often seen in his glasses and he is due credit for creating the first eye protection from ultraviolet rays.
The Americans at the outset of the Revolutionary War were outnumbered by the British in military capacity by 3 to 1, were poorly trained and had less arms power as well as financial resources at their disposition. The American advantage resided in that they were fighting on land they knew better than the British, familiar as they were with the wilderness of the terrain they themselves had populated and fought for against the Native Americans. The Americans also had excellent leadership for a young coalition of colonies: George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry were among the great political, military, and ideological minds behind the American push for independence.
The revolution began in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 18, 1775, when British General Thomas Gage sent 700 soldiers to destroy guns and ammunition stored by the colonists in the town of Concord near Boston, provoking response from the colonists. The British also attempted to arrest two key leaders of the patriot movement, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The colonists elected George Washington as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and under his guidance entered the subsequent battle with the British on Breed’s Hill on June 17, 1775, today remembered as the Battle of Bunker Hill. 
On December 25, 1776, after a stalemate on the battlefront of New York, George Washington and 2,500 of his soldiers crossed the Delaware River at night and attacked British and Hessian forces. Washington and his troops overpowered the opposition suffering only six wounded soldiers and cemented the path towards victory for the Revolutionary forces. By March 1777, Washington’s army had routed the British out of most of New York and New Jersey back towards New Brunswick. 
A decisive battle was fought and won by the Americans in Saratoga on October 7, 1777 when the American forces under General Horatio Gates and General Benedict Arnold defeated General Burgoyne’s army. On October 17, 1777, about 5,700 of General Burgoyne’s men surrendered to the Americans and were sent back to England. This was the point at which the French government recognized the independence of the United States of America. By July 1778, the French would also declare war on Britain and ally themselves with the American effort. The British would be further threatened and put at a disadvantage in their counter efforts against the Americans when the Spanish also declared war on the British, though establishing no alliance with the United States, and other European countries such as Holland and Poland gave their support to American initiatives. The British, in turn, fought back allying themselves with various Native American tribes.
With secret societies based around philosophy, politics, Freemasonry and Rosicrucian mysticism all the rage in the early 18th century England, two aristocrats, Philip Wharton, the first Duke of Wharton and George Lee, the Earl of Lichfield, decided to found one dedicated to their own, more sophomoric tastes. 
Needing a headquarters for his new operation, Dashwood leased a 12th century abbey on the Thames and began retrofitting it to his purposes. After tunneling a series of tunnels beneath the site, away from prying eyes, he installed idols of Venus and Dionysus next to murals celebrating pagan mythology and phallic carvings. The Hell Fire Club had been reborn, but needing suitable cover for his society, Dashwood publicly “christened” his order the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.
