Portal:United States

On 19 April 1989, an explosion occurred within the Number Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) during a fleet exercise in the Caribbean Sea near Puerto Rico. The explosion in the center gun room killed 47 of the turret's crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself. Two major investigations were undertaken into the cause of the explosion, one by the U.S. Navy and then one by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Sandia National Laboratories. The investigations produced conflicting conclusions.

The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator. (Full article...)

The Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar or Cincinnati Music Center half dollar is a commemorative 50-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1936. Produced with the stated purpose of commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Cincinnati, Ohio, as a center of music, it was conceived by Thomas G. Melish, a coin enthusiast who controlled the group which was allowed to buy the entire issue from the government, and who resold the pieces at high prices.

Congress approved legislation for the coin on March 31, 1936, authorizing 15,000 pieces to be struck at the three mints then in operation. Melish had hired sculptor Constance Ortmayer to design the coin, but the Commission of Fine Arts refused to recommend the designs. Members objected to the depiction of Stephen Foster on the obverse, finding no connection between Foster, who died in 1864, and the supposed anniversary. Nevertheless, the designs were approved by the Bureau of the Mint, and 5,000 sets from the three mints were issued and sold to Melish's group, the only authorized purchaser. (Full article...)

Die Hard is a 1988 American action film directed by John McTiernan, with a screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza. It is based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, and it stars Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, and Bonnie Bedelia. Die Hard follows New York City police detective John McClane (Willis) who is caught up in a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper while visiting his estranged wife. Reginald VelJohnson, William Atherton, Paul Gleason, and Hart Bochner feature in supporting roles.

Stuart was hired by 20th Century Fox to adapt Thorp's novel into a screenplay in 1987. His finished draft was greenlit immediately by Fox, which was eager for a summer blockbuster the following year. The role of McClane was turned down by a host of the decade's most popular actors, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Known mainly for work on television, Willis was paid $5 million for his involvement, placing him among Hollywood's highest-paid actors. The deal was seen as a poor investment by industry professionals and attracted significant controversy towards the film prior to its release. Filming took place between November 1987 and March 1988, on a $25 million–$35 million budget and almost entirely on location in and around Fox Plaza in Los Angeles. (Full article...)

The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse, part of which is sometimes called the Battle of the Gifu, took place from 15 December 1942 to 23 January 1943 and was primarily an engagement between United States and Imperial Japanese forces in the hills near the Matanikau River area on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The U.S. forces were under the overall command of Alexander Patch and the Japanese forces were under the overall command of Harukichi Hyakutake.

In the battle, U.S. soldiers and Marines, assisted by native Solomon Islanders, attacked Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) forces defending well-fortified and entrenched positions on several hills and ridges. The most prominent hills were called Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse by the Americans. The U.S. was attempting to destroy the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal and the Japanese were trying to hold their defensive positions until reinforcements could arrive. (Full article...)

"Favorite Son" is an episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager. First broadcast on UPN on March 19, 1997, it was the 20th episode of the third season. Lisa Klink wrote and Marvin V. Rush directed the episode. Set in the 24th century, the show follows the adventures of the crew of the starship USS Voyager after they are stranded in the Delta Quadrant, far from the rest of the Federation.

In the episode, Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) experiences déjà vu and develops a rash when the Voyager enters a new sector of the Delta Quadrant. Mostly female aliens known as Taresians tell him that he is not human but is a member of their species. On discovering this is a ruse by the female aliens to attract and kill their men during reproduction, the crew rescues Kim and restores him to his original state. Deborah May and Kristanna Loken play two of the Taresians, Patrick Fabian portrays a man tricked by them and Irene Tsu appears as Kim's mother. (Full article...)

The Saint-Gaudens double eagle is a twenty-dollar gold coin, or double eagle, produced by the United States Mint from 1907 to 1933. The coin is named after its designer, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who designed the obverse and reverse. It is considered by many to be the most beautiful of U.S. coins.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt sought to beautify American coinage, and proposed Saint-Gaudens as an artist capable of the task. Although the sculptor had poor experiences with the Mint and its chief engraver, Charles E. Barber, Saint-Gaudens accepted Roosevelt's call. The work was subject to considerable delays, due to Saint-Gaudens's declining health and difficulties because of the high relief of his design. Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, after designing the eagle and double eagle, but before the designs were finalized for production. (Full article...)

"On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" was among the best-selling songs of the 19th century, earning over $100,000 from sheet-music revenues. Written and composed by American songwriter Paul Dresser, it was published by the Tin Pan Alley firm of Howley, Haviland and Company in October 1897. The lyrics of the ballad reminisce about life near Dresser's childhood home by the Wabash River in Indiana, United States. The song remained popular for decades, and the Indiana General Assembly adopted it as the official state song on March 14, 1913. The song was the basis for a 1923 film of the same title. Its longtime popularity led to the emergence of several lyrical versions, including an 1898 anti-war song and a Swedish version that was a number-one hit.

The song was composed during a transitory time in musical history when songs first began to be recorded for the phonograph. It was among the earliest pieces of popular music to be recorded. Dresser's inability to control the distribution of phonograph cylinders led him and his company to join other composers to petition the United States Congress to expand federal copyright protections over the new technology. (Full article...)

The United States Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve), better known as the WAVES (for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), was the women's branch of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. It was established on July 21, 1942 by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 30. This authorized the U.S. Navy to accept women into the Naval Reserve as commissioned officers and at the enlisted level, effective for the duration of the war plus six months. The purpose of the law was to release officers and men for sea duty and replace them with women in shore establishments. Mildred H. McAfee, on leave as president of Wellesley College, became the first director of the WAVES. She was commissioned a lieutenant commander on August 3, 1942, and later promoted to commander and then to captain.

The notion of women serving in the Navy was not widely supported in the Congress or by the Navy, even though some of the lawmakers and naval personnel did support the need for uniformed women during World War II. Public Law 689, allowing women to serve in the Navy, was due in large measure to the efforts of the Navy's Women's Advisory Council, Margaret Chung, and Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States. (Full article...)

United Airlines Flight 93 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight that was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists on board as part of the September 11 attacks. The plane eventually crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania following an attempt by the passengers and crew to regain control of the plane from the hijackers. All 44 people on board were killed, including the hijackers. The aircraft, a Boeing 757-222, was flying United Airlines' daily scheduled morning flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to San Francisco International Airport in California.

The hijackers stormed the aircraft's cockpit 46 minutes after takeoff. The captain and first officer struggled with the hijackers, which was transmitted to Air Traffic Control. Ziad Jarrah, who had trained as a pilot, took control of the aircraft and diverted it back toward the east coast, in the direction of Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, considered principal instigators of the attacks, have claimed that the intended target was the U.S. Capitol Building. (Full article...)

Prince Romerson (c. 1840 – March 30, 1872) was a Union Army soldier of Native Hawaiian descent. One of the "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than 100 documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaii was still an independent nation.

Living in the American Northeast before the war, Romerson enlisted in the Union Navy in 1863 as part of the Blockading Squadrons responsible for maintaining the blockade of the ports of the Confederacy. After being discharged from naval service, he reenlisted in the Union Army under the 5th Regiment Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry, a United States Colored (USCT) regiment, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant on June 1, 1864. Romerson fought with the 5th USCC until the end of the war. Illness prevented him from continuing with his regiment's reassignment to Clarksville, Texas, and he was mustered out in 1865. After the war, like many former USCT veterans, he remained in the army on the frontier as one of the Buffalo Soldiers. He died in 1872. (Full article...)

Star Trek Generations is a 1994 American science fiction film and the seventh film in the Star Trek film series. Malcolm McDowell joins cast members from the 1960s television show Star Trek and the 1987 sequel series The Next Generation, including William Shatner and Patrick Stewart. In the film, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D joins forces with Captain James T. Kirk to stop the villain Tolian Soran from destroying a planetary system in his attempt to return to an extra-dimensional realm known as the Nexus.

Generations was conceived as a handoff from the original cast of the Star Trek films to the cast of The Next Generation. After developing several film ideas concurrently, the producers chose a script written by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga. Production began while the final season of the television series was being made. The director was David Carson, who previously directed episodes of the television series; photography was by franchise newcomer John A. Alonzo. Filming took place on the Paramount Studios lots, and on location in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, and Lone Pine, California. The film's climax was revised and reshot following poor reception from test audiences. The film uses a mix of traditional optical effects alongside computer-generated imagery, and was scored by regular Star Trek composer Dennis McCarthy. (Full article...)

Ed, Edd n Eddy is an American-Canadian animated comedy television series created by Danny Antonucci for Cartoon Network and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television. The series revolves around three preteen boys named Ed, Edd (called "Double D" to avoid confusion with Ed), and Eddy—collectively known as "the Eds"—who respectively are voiced by Matt Hill, Samuel Vincent, and Tony Sampson. They live in a suburban cul-de-sac in the fictional town of Peach Creek along with fellow neighborhood children Kevin, Nazz, Sarah, Jimmy, Rolf, Jonny, and the Eds' female adversaries, the Kanker Sisters, Lee, Marie, and May. Under the unofficial leadership of Eddy, the trio frequently invents schemes to make money from their peers to purchase their favourite confection, jawbreakers. Their plans usually fail, leaving them in various, often humiliating and painful, predicaments.

Adult cartoonist Antonucci was dared to create a children's cartoon; while designing a commercial, he conceived Ed, Edd n Eddy, designing it to resemble classic cartoons from the 1940s–1970s. He pitched the series to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, but the latter would not give him creative control, leading to a deal being made with the former and the series premiering on January 4, 1999. During the show's run, several specials and shorts were produced in addition to the regular television series. The series concluded with a television film, Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, on November 8, 2009. (Full article...)

Chad Harris-Crane is a fictional character on the American soap opera Passions, which aired on NBC from 1999 to 2007 and on DirecTV in 2007–08. Developed by the soap's creator and head writer James E. Reilly, Chad was portrayed by two actors over the course of the show: Donn Swaby (1999 to 2002) and Charles Divins (2002 to 2007). Swaby left the show to pursue roles outside daytime television and was replaced by Divins. The role was the first time that either actor had worked on a television series.

Chad is a member of the Crane family. The illegitimate son of the evil patriarch Alistair Crane, Chad is introduced as a music producer from Los Angeles who is searching for his biological family. Chad becomes involved in a love triangle with sisters Whitney and Simone Russell. His romance with Whitney is complicated by the possibility they may be engaging in an incestuous relationship as Chad is initially believed to be her half-brother, and later revealed to be her adoptive cousin. Chad's later storylines focus on his confusion over his sexual identity, and his sexual relationship with tabloid reporter Vincent Clarkson. Chad attempts to reconcile with Whitney, after his affair with Vincent is revealed, before being killed by his father Alistair while trying to protect his best friend, Ethan Winthrop. (Full article...)

William McSherry SJ (July 19, 1799 – December 18, 1839) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who became the president of Georgetown College and a Jesuit provincial superior. The son of Irish immigrants, McSherry was educated at Georgetown College, where he entered the Society of Jesus. As one of the first Americans to complete the traditional Jesuit course of training, he was sent to Rome to be educated for the priesthood. There, he made several discoveries of significant, forgotten holdings in the Jesuit archives, which improved historians' knowledge of the early European settling of Maryland and of the language of Indian tribes there.

McSherry became the first provincial superior of the Jesuits' Maryland Province from 1833 to 1837, and laid the groundwork for the sale of the province's slaves in 1838. He then briefly became the president of Georgetown College in 1837, and was simultaneously made provincial superior for a second time in 1839, despite suffering illness to which he would succumb several months later. (Full article...)

Benjamin Maximillian Mehl (November 5, 1884 – September 28, 1957), usually known as B. Max Mehl, was an American dealer in coins, selling them for over half a century. The most prominent dealer in the United States, through much of the first half of the 20th century, he is credited with helping to expand the appeal of coin collecting from a hobby for the wealthy to one enjoyed by many.

Mehl was born in Congress Poland, which was part of the Russian Empire. His family brought him to what is now Lithuania, and then to the United States, settling in Fort Worth, Texas, where he lived for almost all of his adult life. While still a teenager, he began to sell coins, which he had previously collected. Joining the American Numismatic Association (ANA) in 1903 at age 18, he quickly became a full-time coin dealer, and by 1910 was one of the most well-known in the country. (Full article...)

The Landing at Nadzab was an airborne landing on 5 September 1943 during the New Guinea campaign of World War II in conjunction with the landing at Lae. The Nadzab action began with a parachute drop at Lae Nadzab Airport, combined with an overland force.

The parachute drop was carried out by the US Army's 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment and elements of the Australian Army's 2/4th Field Regiment into Nadzab, New Guinea in the Markham Valley, observed by General Douglas MacArthur, circling overhead in a B-17. The Australian 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, 2/6th Field Company, and B Company, Papuan Infantry Battalion reached Nadzab after an overland and river trek that same day and began preparing the airfield. The first transport aircraft landed the next morning, but bad weather delayed the Allied build up. Over the next days, the 25th Infantry Brigade of the Australian 7th Division gradually arrived. An air crash at Jackson's Field ultimately caused half the Allied casualties of the battle. (Full article...)

The 2008 Humanitarian Bowl was a postseason college football bowl game between the Maryland Terrapins and the Nevada Wolf Pack on December 30, 2008. It was the two teams' first meeting. The game featured two conference tie-ins: the University of Maryland represented the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the University of Nevada represented the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). The game was played at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho and was the 12th edition of the Humanitarian Bowl. It was sponsored by the New Plymouth, Idaho-based company Roady's Truck Stops, which claims to be the largest chain of truck stops in the United States.

The featured match-up was between what was called a "wildly inconsistent" Maryland team and the third-best rushing defense and fifth-best total offense of Nevada. The result was an offensive shoot-out. The final score of 42–35 in favor of Maryland exceeded total-points predictions by as much as 17 and tied the all-time Humanitarian Bowl record. (Full article...)

The Academic Decathlon (also called AcDec, AcaDeca or AcaDec) is an annual high school academic competition organized by the non-profit United States Academic Decathlon (USAD). The competition consists of seven objective multiple choice tests, two subjective performance events, and an essay. Academic Decathlon was created by Robert Peterson in 1968 for local schools in Orange County, California and was expanded nationally in 1981 by Robert Peterson, William Patton, first President of the new USAD Board; and Phillip Bardos, Chairman of the new USAD Board. That year, 17 states and the District of Columbia participated, a number that has grown to include most of the United States and some international schools. Patton and Bardos served on the board in these two executive positions for the first 10 years of the USAD and not only personally contributed significantly both financially and in personal effort to the organization in those early day when there were no corporate sponsors they, along with Robert Peterson, were the major three factors in bringing corporate sponsors to the program during these challenging growth years eventually resulting in a financially self sustaining organization. In 2015 Academic Decathlon held its first ever International competition in Shanghai, China. Once known as United States Academic Decathlon, on March 1, 2013, it began operating as the Academic Decathlon.

Academic Decathlon is designed to include students from all achievement levels. Teams generally consist of nine members, who are divided into three divisions based on a custom calculated grade point average: Honors (3.75–4.00 GPA), Scholastic (3.00–3.74 GPA), and Varsity (0.00–2.99 GPA). Each team member competes in all ten events against other students in his or her division, and team scores are calculated using the top two overall individual scores from each team in all three divisions. Gold, silver, and bronze medals are awarded for individual events and for overall scores. To earn a spot at the national competition in April, teams must advance through local, regional, and state competitions, though some levels of competition may be bypassed for smaller states. Online competitions, separated into small, medium, and large categories, are also offered. USAD has expanded to include an International Academic Decathlon and has created an Academic Pentathlon for middle schools. (Full article...)

Operation Boomerang was a partially successful air raid by the United States Army Air Forces' (USAAF) XX Bomber Command against oil refining facilities in Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies during World War II. The attack took place on the night of 10/11 August 1944 and involved attempts to bomb an oil refinery at Palembang and lay mines to interdict the Musi River.

The raid formed part of a series of attacks on Japanese-occupied cities in South East Asia that XX Bomber Command conducted as an adjunct to its primary mission of bombing Japan. The command raided the Japanese city of Nagasaki on the same night as Operation Boomerang. (Full article...)

The Battle of Edson's Ridge, also known as the Battle of the Bloody Ridge, Battle of Raiders Ridge, and Battle of the Ridge, was a land battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II between Imperial Japanese Army and Allied (mainly United States Marine Corps) ground forces. It took place from 12–14 September 1942, on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, and was the second of three separate major Japanese ground offensives during the Guadalcanal campaign.

In the battle, U.S. Marines, under the overall command of U.S. Major General Alexander Vandegrift, repulsed an attack by the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade, under the command of Japanese Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi. The Marines were defending the Lunga perimeter that guarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which was captured from the Japanese by the Allies in landings on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942. Kawaguchi's unit was sent to Guadalcanal in response to the Allied landings with the mission of recapturing the airfield and driving the Allied forces from the island. (Full article...)

Planet of the Apes is an American science fiction media franchise consisting of films, books, television series, comics, and other media about a world in which humans and intelligent apes clash for control. The franchise is based on French author Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel La Planète des singes, translated into English as Planet of the Apes or Monkey Planet. Its 1968 film adaptation, Planet of the Apes, was a critical and commercial hit, initiating a series of sequels, tie-ins, and derivative works. Arthur P. Jacobs produced the first five Apes films through APJAC Productions for distributor 20th Century Fox; following his death in 1973, Fox controlled the franchise.

Four sequels followed the original film from 1970 to 1973: Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. They did not approach the critical acclaim of the original, but were commercially successful, spawning a live-action television series in 1974 and an animated series in 1975. Plans for a film remake stalled in "development hell" for over 10 years before Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes was released in 2001. A reboot film series commenced in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014 and War for the Planet of the Apes in 2017. In 2019, Disney acquired the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox including 20th Century Fox. That year, Disney announced further sequels to the 2011 reboot series are in production, with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes officially announced for a 2024 release date. The films have grossed a total of over US$2 billion worldwide, against a combined budget of $567.5 million. Franchise tie-ins include books, comics, video games and toys. (Full article...)

Chesapeake was a 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She was one of the original six frigates whose construction was authorized by the Naval Act of 1794. Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the young navy's capital ships. Chesapeake was originally designed as a 44-gun frigate, but construction delays, material shortages and budget problems caused builder Josiah Fox to alter his design to 38 guns. Launched at the Gosport Navy Yard on 2 December 1799, Chesapeake began her career during the Quasi-War with France and later saw service in the First Barbary War.

On 22 June 1807 she was fired upon by HMS Leopard of the Royal Navy for refusing to allow a search for deserters. The event, now known as the Chesapeake–Leopard affair, angered the American public and government and was a precipitating factor that led to the War of 1812. As a result of the affair, Chesapeake's commanding officer, James Barron, was court-martialed and the United States instituted the Embargo Act of 1807 against the United Kingdom. (Full article...)

Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler Sr. (July 14, 1898 – June 15, 1991) was an American politician from Kentucky. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate and served as its 44th and 49th governor. Aside from his political positions, he also served as the second Commissioner of Baseball from 1945 to 1951 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. His grandson, Ben Chandler, later served as congressman for Kentucky's Sixth District.

A multi-sport athlete during his college days at Transylvania College, Chandler briefly considered a career in professional baseball before deciding to pursue a law degree. After graduation, he entered politics and was elected as a Democrat to the Kentucky Senate in 1928. Two years later, he was elected lieutenant governor, serving under Governor Ruby Laffoon. Chandler and Laffoon disagreed on the issue of instituting a state sales tax and when Chandler, the presiding officer in the state senate, worked to block the legislation, Laffoon's allies in the General Assembly stripped him of many of his statutory powers. The tax then passed by a narrow margin. Knowing that Laffoon would try to select his own successor at the Democratic nominating convention, Chandler waited until Laffoon left the state—leaving Chandler as acting governor—and called the legislature into session to enact a mandatory primary election bill. The bill passed, and in the ensuing primary, Chandler defeated Laffoon's choice, Thomas Rhea. He then went on to defeat Republican King Swope by the largest margin of victory for a Kentucky gubernatorial race at that time. As governor, Chandler oversaw the repeal of the sales tax, replacing the lost revenue with new excise taxes and the state's first income tax. He also enacted a major reorganization of state government, realizing significant savings for the state. He used these savings to pay off the state debt and improve the state's education and transportation systems. (Full article...)

Stanford Memorial Church (also referred to informally as MemChu) is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was built during the American Renaissance by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her husband Leland. Designed by architect Charles A. Coolidge, a student of Henry Hobson Richardson, the church has been called "the University's architectural crown jewel".

Designs for the church were submitted to Jane Stanford and the university trustees in 1898, and it was dedicated in 1903. The building is Romanesque in form and Byzantine in its details, inspired by churches in the region of Venice, especially, Ravenna. Its stained glass windows and extensive mosaics are based on religious paintings the Stanfords admired in Europe. The church has five pipe organs, which allow musicians to produce many styles of organ music. Stanford Memorial Church has withstood two major earthquakes, in 1906 and 1989, and was extensively renovated after each. (Full article...)

Lawrence Sullivan "Sul" Ross (September 27, 1838 – January 3, 1898) was the 19th governor of Texas, a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War, and the seventh president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now called Texas A&M University.

Ross was raised in the Republic of Texas, which was later annexed to the United States. Much of his childhood was spent on the frontier, where his family founded the town of Waco. Ross attended Baylor University (then located in Independence, Texas) and Wesleyan University in Florence, Alabama. On one of his summer breaks, he suffered severe injuries while fighting Comanches. After graduation, Ross joined the Texas Rangers, and in 1860, led Texas Rangers in the Battle of Pease River, where federal troops recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been captured by the Comanches as a child in 1836. (Full article...)