Portal:Philadelphia/Did you know? archive/2010
2010[edit]
- December
… that The Gross Clinic, painted in 1875 by Thomas Eakins and bought for $200 in 1876 by Jefferson Medical College, was to be sold in 2006 for $68 million, until area residents raised a fund to cover the sale price to keep the work in Philadelphia?
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- November
- … that the "Bicentennial Moon Tree" in Washington Square is a sycamore grown from seeds that had been carried to the moon by astronaut Stuart Roosa during the Apollo XIV mission?
- October
… that Philadelphia's first National Football League team, the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets, led by Hall-of-Fame player-coach Guy Chamberlin, won the NFL championship in 1926?
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- September
… that the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, founded in 1774, certainly the oldest mounted military unit and quite possibly the oldest military unit of any kind that has been in continuous service to the United States, fought in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Germantown and often served as the personal bodyguard of General George Washington?
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- August
… that the present building of Old Trinity Church, also known as Trinity Church, Oxford, a historic Episcopal church founded in Oxford Township, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia), was erected in 1711 of red and black brick believed to have been brought from England?
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- July
… that Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to the present, graduated from Cheltenham High School in suburban Cheltenham, Pennsylvania?
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- June
…that the success of Andrew Hamilton, a Scottish-American lawyer of colonial Philadelphia, in defending newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger is said to have given rise to the expression "Philadelphia lawyer", in the sense of a particularly adept and clever attorney, as in "It would take a Philadelphia lawyer to get him off"?
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- May
… that the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first world's fair in the United States, attracted about 10 million visitors, equivalent to about 20% of the nation's population at the time?
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- April
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...that the 556-ft-long Falls Bridge spanning the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, built in 1895, was originally designed as a double-decker bridge, but the upper deck was never built?
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- March
...that the Walnut Street Theatre, opened in 1809, is the oldest continuously operating theatre in the English-speaking world?
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- February
...that Rebecca Gratz, the first Jewish female college student in the United States, is said to have been the model of Rebecca, the heroine of the novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott?
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- January
...that Timmy Brown, three-time Pro-Bowler for the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1960s, appeared in both the film MASH and the TV series of the same name?
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