30 Interesting Facts To Raise Your Curiosity About History, As Shared On This IG Page

Over the years, Dale accumulated quite a few Social Security checks he never cashed. What Dale really wanted to do with the money was provide kids with an opportunity he never had — to go to college. What he thought to be several hundred thousand dollars turned out to be almost $3 million and was distributed it to people rather than institutions.

Frank Sinatra was a fervent anti-racist and an early activist during the civil rights movement.

He refused to stay at hotels and play at clubs that did not admit Black people. His band would also provide equal pay and treatment for Black musicians. It was through his relentless and tireless efforts that Las Vegas quickly became integrated.

In an interview in 2016, Frank Sinatra, Jr. had this to say about his father:

“In the days when Las Vegas began to become popular, the Black performers could play in showrooms, but they couldn't stay in the hotel. And it was Frank Sinatra who went to the board of directors, who had rather shady pasts, and he said, 'Are you guys going to come into the twentieth century, or aren't you?'... Somebody said 'Well, we have white people, we have Black people." Sinatra, the story goes, said to them, "The money is green. How about that?" And they began to look at each other and the wheels were turning, and because of Sammy [Davis], Las Vegas became integrated.”

Sinatra was also a big-time supporter of Martin Luther King and helped him raise money to support the Civil Rights Movement by headlining fundraisers. In 1958, he wrote in Ebony Magazine: “A friend to me has no race, no class and belongs to no minority. My friendships are formed out of affection, mutual respect and a feeling of having something in common. These are eternal values that cannot be classified.”

This is 6-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted by U.S. Marshals to school in 1960. She was the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.

For her first day, federal marshals with guns had to escort Bridges to and from school through a crowd of grown men and women shouting the n word, spitting on her, making death threats against her and her family and waving Confederate flags. They even carried a small coffin with a black baby doll inside, which caused Ruby to have nightmares at the time.

In her classroom, all her classmates were either withdrawn by white parents or abandoned the class refusing to sit with her. She refused to eat any food that wasn’t prepackaged for and sealed because they threatened to poison her.

Nearly all the teachers abandoned the school except for one, by the name of Barbara Henry. For a whole year, it was just Barbara teaching Ruby in an empty classroom. “I had never seen a white teacher before, but Mrs. Henry was the nicest teacher I ever had. She tried very hard to keep my mind off what was going on outside. But I couldn’t forget that there were no other kids,” said Ruby.

One of the saddest chapters in history.

George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person sentenced to death in the United States. He was only 14 when he was executed by electric chair in 1944.

During his trial, until the day of his execution, he always carried a Bible in his hands, claiming for innocence. He was accused of killing two white girls, Betty of 11-years-old and Mary of 7, the bodies were found near the house where the boy resided with his parents.

At that time, all the jurors were white. The trial lasted only 2 hours and the sentence was handed down 10 minutes later. The boy’s parents were not allowed in the court room, and was subsequently expelled from that city after the trial.

Before the execution, George spent 81 days in prison without being able to see his parents, he was held in solitary 80 miles from the city, he was held alone without anybody to talk to. He was heard alone without the presence of his parents or a lawyer.

He was electrocuted with 5,380 volts in the head.

70 years later, his innocence was finally proven by a judge in South Carolina. The beam with which the two girls were killed, weighed more than 19.07 kilograms. Therefore, it was impossible for Stinney to be able to lift it, let alone be able to hit hard enough to kill the two girls.

Stephen King was inspired by this case to write his book The Green Mile, which was taken to theaters in
1999. May his innocent soul rest in peace.

IN 1922, CHILDREN WERE INJECTED WITH INSULIN, ONE BY ONE, ALL OF THEM AWOKE FROM THEIR COMAS
In 1922, a group of scientists went to the #Toronto General Hospital where diabetic children were kept in wards, often 50 or more at a time. Most of them were comatose and dying from diabetic keto-acidosis. Others were being treated by being placed on an extremely strict diet, which inevitably led to starvation. These children were essentially in their death beds, awaiting what was at the time, certain death. The scientists moved swiftly and proceeded to inject the children with a new purified extract of insulin. As they began to inject the last comatose child, the first one to be injected began to wake up. Then one by one, all the children awoke from their diabetic comas. A room that was full of death and gloom, suddenly became a place of joy and hope. In the early #1920s, Fredrick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin under John Macleod at the University of Toronto. With the help of James Collip, insulin was purified, making it available to successfully treat diabetes. Both Banting and Macleod earned Nobel Prizes for their work in 1923. In the same year, Banting, Collip, and Best decided to sell the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for $1. Banting famously went on to say, “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.”