Tag Archives: meet the american who

The name of the first professional football player seems too perfect to be true. Pudge Heffelfinger sounds like a mythical Midwestern gridiron god more than a living, breathing human being. Heffelfinger’s fable is actually nonfiction fare. He was as real as the broken ribs he brutally delivered to a poor college kid while scrimmaging for kicks and giggles with the …

This fall, tip your basket to William Blaxton when you pluck a plump apple from a tree, bob for apples on Halloween or cherish your grandmother’s amazing apple pie on Thanksgiving. Reverend Blaxton, among other claims to fame, planted the first seeds that would fuel a pioneering nation and give apples an image of all-American wholesomeness. A bookish and eccentric …

Mary Anderson cleared glass windshields and broke glass ceilings. The southern belle, born in Alabama in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, gave the world one of its most widely used safety devices. Anderson patented windshield wipers. She was, in many ways, a real-life Scarlett O’Hara of “Gone with the Wind” movie fame. MEET THE AMERICAN WHO COOKED UP …

Americans can proudly paint patriotic cookouts with the color of ketchup all summer long. The tomato-based condiment has been a national obsession for 200 years and comes with all-American bona fides of flavor. Credit Philadelphia native Dr. James Mease, a scientist, author, horticulturalist, civic activist, Pennsylvania polymath — a really smart guy — and wartime military surgeon. He also really …

Otto Rohwedder gave the world an innovation by which all others are compared. Rohwedder, a native of Davenport, Iowa, invented sliced bread. It’s the greatest thing since … Well, it’s the greatest thing, according to popular acclaim. “Sliced bread is the standard of all innovation, past, present and future,” said Ed Douglas, a businessman, local historian and county commissioner from …

Walter Diemer made it more fun to be a kid. Business owners and ballplayers smiled with profit and pleasure, too, after chewing on his contribution to global consumer culture. Diemer invented bubble gum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928. It was an unexpected moment of inspiration for the high-school graduate gum-company accountant with a side hustle as a home-kitchen chemist. MEET …

The Kentucky Derby is a global sports spectacle and, in the eyes of many, America’s definitive sporting tradition. The event was forged, remarkably, by two of the great epic events in United States history: the triumph of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the tragedy of the Civil War. The bluegrass seeds of the world’s most famous horse race were …

A small-town American farmboy gave the fight against food insecurity real traction. His name was John Froelich. And he helped feed the world in ways that Bob Geldof, Boy George and a galaxy of other celebrities connected to the holiday hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” — including global community efforts to feed the world much, much later in the …

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote near the end of the turbulent, fear-filled year of 1776. It was the soul of a woman, however, that defiantly withstood the weight of the trial — the miraculous fight for American independence — with five children at her hip. Abigail Adams never flinched, never wavered. Neither the crown …

Tragedy can inspire those who live in its shadows to pave a path to progress and compassion. Deborah Adler, born into a family of Holocaust refugees and herself an eyewitness to the 9/11 terror attacks, found a way to build a better bottle. An artist and graphic designer with an entrepreneurial spirit, Adler created the ClearRx prescription system while a …