The Washington Monument was built in honor of Americas
revolutionary hero and first president George Washington
and was dedicated in Washington, D.C. on February 21,
1885.

The 555-foot-high marble obelisk was first proposed in
1783, and Pierre L’Enfant left room for it in his designs
for the new U.S. capital.
 

After George Washington’s death in 1799, plans for a
memorial for the “father of the country” were discussed,
but none were adopted until 1832, the centennial
of Washington’s birth. 

On February 21, 1948, the National Association for Stock Car
Racing—or NASCAR, as it came to be widely known—was
officially incorporated. NASCAR racing went on to become
one of America’s most popular spectator sports, as well as
a multi-billion-dollar industry.

The driving force behind the establishment of NASCAR was
William “Bill” France Sr. (1909-1992), a mechanic and auto-
repair shop owner from Washington, D.C., who in the mid-
1930s moved to Daytona Beach, Florida to escape the Great
Depression .

Bill France as a racer.

After a short racing career, Bill France realized that
organizing races is business for him.

Bill France on the construction site of the Daytona
International Speedway.

Lt. Edward O’Hare takes off from the aircraft carrier Lexington
in a raid against the Japanese position at Rabaul—and minutes
later became America’s first WWII flying ace, shooting down five
enemy bombers.       
      
      
      
      
      
      
     
USS Lexington
     

Edward "Butch" O’Hare waves during a parade
held in his honor in his hometown of St. Louis,
Missouri. Flanking him are his mother Selma
O’Hare, left, and his wife Rita.

World War II fighter pilot Lt. Cmdr. Edward "Butch" O’Hare,
right, is congratulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
as O’Hare’s wife Rita places the Medal of Honor around his
neck on April 21, 1942, during a White House ceremony in Washington, D.C.

CARLATA BRADLEY

On February 19, 1847, the first rescuers reach surviving members
of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound emigrants stranded
by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In the summer of 1846, in the midst of a Western-bound fever
sweeping the United States, 89 people—including 31 members
of the Donner and Reed families—set out in a wagon train from Springfield, Illinois.

After arriving at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, the emigrants decided to
avoid the usual route and try a new trail recently blazed by
California promoter Lansford Hastings, the so-called “Hastings
Cutoff.” 

After electing George Donner as their captain, the party departed
Fort Bridger in mid-July. 

The shortcut was nothing of the sort: It set the Donner Party back
nearly three weeks and cost them much-needed supplies. After
suffering great hardships in the Wasatch Mountains, the Great Salt
Lake Desert and along the Humboldt River, they finally reached the
Sierra Nevada Mountains in early October.

Donner Party Monument at Donner Memorial State Park
Truckee, California.