Today's American Minute

Smallpox during the Revolution and Dr. Benjamin Rush - American Minute with Bill Federer

January 04, 2025 • "Smallpox is ten times more terrible!" -Diseases during the Revolution • Dr. Benjamin Rush - American Minute with Bill Federer

On December 15, 1775, Washington wrote to Joseph Reed: "... smallpox is in every part of Boston ... a surety against any attempt of ours to attack. If we escape the smallpox in this camp ... it will be miraculous. Every precaution that can be is taken to guard against this evil."

Carl Sandburg "I see America not in the setting sun ... (but) in the ... rising sun fresh from the ... creative hand of God" - American Minute with Bill Federer

December 30, 2024 • "When a nation goes down ... one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from" - Carl Sandburg • Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet

Carl Sandburg said, 'I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ... I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.'"

Robert Frost, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet "Two Roads Diverge in the Woods ..." - American Minute with Bill Federer

December 28, 2024 • "Two Roads Diverge in the Woods ..."- Robert Frost • Four Time Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet - American Minute with Bill Federer

In a 1956 interview on station WQED, Pittsburgh, Robert Frost stated: "Ultimately, this is what you go before God for: You've had bad luck and good luck and all you really want in the end is mercy."

Panama Canal built by America at the cost of 100 lives per mile of 50-mile-wide Isthmus - American Minute with Bill Federer

December 28, 2024 • Panama Canal - cost over 100 American lives per mile of 50 mile wide Isthmus

Mark Twain wrote August 17, 1868: "The Panama railroad was an American project ... We took the train at Panama, clattered for two or three hours through a tangled wilderness of tropical vegetation, and discharged ourselves in Aspinwall (Colón). It is only forty-five miles ... it was a hard road to build. The tropical fevers slaughtered the laborers by wholesale. It is a popular saying, that every railroad tie from Panama to Aspinwall rests upon a corpse."

Christmas Truce of 1914, Silent Night, Presidents' Christmas Greetings - American Minute with Bill Federer

December 20, 2024 • Christmas Truce of 1914 & selected Presidential Christmas Greetings - American Minute with Bill Federer

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1914, an estimated 100,000 British, French and German troops near Ypres in Belgium along the Western Front, ceased fighting.