1. Frederick Douglass: "The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!"

2. Ida B. Wells: "The race problem or negro question, as it has been called, has been omnipresent and all-pervading since long before the Afro-American was raised from the degradation of the slave to the dignity of the citizen. It has never been settled because the right methods have not been employed in the solution. It is the Banquo's ghost of politics, religion, and sociology which will not down at the bidding of those who are tormented with its ubiquitous appearance on every occasion. Times without number, since invested with citizenship, the race has been indicted for ignorance, immorality and general worthlessness--declared guilty and executed by its self-constituted judges. The operations of law do not dispose of negroes fast enough, and lynching bees have become the favorite pastime of the South."

3. Booker T. Washington: "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house."

4. Malcolm X: "If you don't take this kind of stand, your little children will grow up and look at you and think "shame." If you don't take an uncompromising stand--I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And that's the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

6. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "There are those who still feel that if the Negro is to rise out of poverty, if the Negro is to rise out of the slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the Negro must lift himself by his own bootstraps. They never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man's color a stigma. But beyond this they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery two hundred and forty-four years."

7. W. E. B. Du Bois: "A saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires, continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character. Exceptional it is to be sure, but this is its chiefest promise; it shows the capability of Negro blood, the promise of black men. Do Americans ever stop to reflect that there are in this land a million men of Negro blood, well-educated, owners of homes, against the honor of whose womanhood no breath was ever raised, whose men occupy positions of trust and usefulness, and who, judged by any standard, have reached the full measure of the best type of modern European culture? Is it fair, is it decent, is it Christian to ignore these facts of the Negro problem, to belittle such aspiration, to nullify such leadership and seek to crush these people back into the mass out of which by toil and travail, they and their fathers have raised themselves?"

7. Marcus Garvey: "Men and women of the white race, do you know what is going to happen if you do not think and act now? One of two things. You are either going to deceive and keep the Negro in your midst until you have perfectly completed your wonderful American civilization with its progress of art, science, industry and politics, and then, jealous of your own success and achievements in those directions, and with the greater jealousy of seeing your race pure and unmixed, cast him off to die in the whirlpool of economic starvation, thus, getting rid of another race that was not intelligent enough to live, or, you simply mean by the largeness of your hearts to assimilate fifteen million Negroes into the social fraternity of an American race that will neither be white nor black. Don't be alarmed! We must prevent both consequences. No real race loving white man wants to destroy the purity of his race, and no real Negro conscious of himself wants to die, hence there is room for an understanding and an adjustment, and that is just."

1. March 12, 1782: Benjamin Franklin, in France during the Revolutionary War to make mischief for the British, composes and prints up a page of an imaginary newspaper, the Boston Independent Chronicle. The newspaper carries a letter supposedly from Captain Gerrish of the New England Militia that describes in detail a package of more than 1,000 dried scalps captured from Seneca Indians paid by the British to terrorize men, women, and children among the American colonists. The package was to be shipped to England for the gratified amusement of King George. In a letter to a friend, Franklin says of his story: "The Form may perhaps not be genuine, but the Substance is truth."

Yes

2. August 21, 1835: The New York Sun begins a series of articles describing Royal Astronomer Sir John Herschel's discoveries of sentient beings living on the Moon through a giant telescope. The ladies of Springfield, Massachusetts subscribe to a fund "to send missionaries to the benighted luminary."

Yes

3. April 13, 1844: The New York Sun publishes Edgar Allan Poe's (spurious) account of a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. The demand for the paper is so great that crowds block the Sun office throughout the day waiting to buy copies, and Poe is unable to get a copy for himself.

Yes

4. September 1844: During James Polk's presidential campaign, the Whig-run Ithaca Chronicle publishes a letter, claiming to quote directly from a Baron von Roorback's Tour through the Western and Southern States in 1836, about a slave caravan. It includes a description of 40 slaves among the manacled purchased from Polk, whose initials had been branded into their shoulders. Thurlow Weed eagerly copies it into his Albany Evening Journal and it becomes a major issue in the campaign, until it is shown to be a hoax. The passage was created by doctoring a passage from Excursion Through the Slave States, written by George W. Featherstonhaugh and published in London in 1844.

Yes

5. October 4, 1862: Samuel Clemens, then a writer for the Virginia City, Nevada, Territorial Enterprise, publishes an article about the discovery of a sitting, petrified man in the mountains, of which "every limb and feature" was still perfect, except turned into stone. The story is widely believed and reprinted in other papers around the country.

Yes

6. March 2, 1864: Union cavalry officer Colonel Ulric Dahlgren leads a raid against Richmond, whose main purpose is to free prisoners of war being held by the Confederacy at Belle Isle. Dahlgren is shot and killed during the unsuccessful raid. Southern soldiers find documents on his body that outline other objectives of the raid, including orders for Dahlgren to burn and destroy the city and to kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, actions clearly outside the conventional rules of war. The Richmond Examiner publishes the text of the documents and says in an enraged editorial that the North has decided to begin conducting the war "under the Black Flag."

Yes

7. May 18, 1864: The New York World and the New York Journal of Commerce print what they believe to be an Associated Press story about a proclamation from President Lincoln ordering a huge new conscription of soldiers. This causes speculators to sell stocks and buy gold on fear that the Civil War will continue far longer than was expected. It is quickly revealed that Joseph Howard, the city editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, forged the story so that he could buy gold before the story came out and sell it at the end of the day.

Yes

8. April 1, 1874: New York Herald reporter Joseph Clarke and editor Thomas Connery panic New Yorkers by publishing an article they have concocted about a mass escape of animals from the Central Park Zoo. In the story, animals roamed the city looking for prey of the species homo sapiens, causing "terrible scenes of mutilation." Cartoonist Thomas Nast later references the hoax in a political cartoon he draws for Harper's Magazine, in which he depicts the Democrats as an ass and the Republicans as an elephant, creating the parties' political icons.

Yes

9. August 16, 1924: During Prohibition, New York Herald reporter Sanford Jarrell publishes a story about a "mysterious joy-boat of 15,000 tons which was lying about 15 miles off Fire Island, aboard which Long Island millionaires and pretty playthings of the idle rich were drinking intoxicating beverages and disporting themselves with the utmost abandon by night." The day after the article is published, the Coast Guard is assigned to hunt down the vessel. When the Herald editors discover the story is a hoax, they fire Jarrell.
Yes

10. November 20, 1967: U.S. News and World Report claims that it can confirm the authenticity of The Report from Iron Mountain, a book recently published by Dial Press. The book purported to be the text of a leaked report issued by a secret study group commissioned by the Johnson Administration. The group concluded that a lasting peace, if it were ever achieved, would not be in the best economic interests of society, and that the government should foster a war mentality by scaring people with exaggerated threats of terrestrial, and even extraterrestrial, foes and impending environmental disasters. It also recommended that the government heighten inter-ethnic tensions within the country and even re-institute slavery. Author Leonard Lewis confessed in 1972 that he wrote the book, but defended it as a useful stimulus to public debate on the Vietnam War. Lewis claimed that the 1971 leaked publication of the "Pentagon Papers," which were real, demonstrated that the government is capable of actions that are as outrageous as anything in his "satire."

Yes

1. Kites (perhaps 3000 years ago)
2. Roller skates (first popular in the 1870s)
3. Electric toy trains (1897)
4. Ping Pong (first offered with a celluloid ball in 1901)
5. Crayola crayons (1903)
6. Erector sets (1911)
7. Monopoly (early 1930s)
8. Frisbees (1955)
9. Barbie dolls (1959)
10. Video game consoles (1972)

1744 The first written record of ice cream in America (and the first use of the exact phrase "ice cream" rather than "iced cream" is made when a journal entry by William Black of Virginia notes that Maryland Colonial Governor Thomas Bladen notes servedice cream ("After which came a Dessert no less Curious; Among the Rarities of which it was Compos'd, was some fine Ice Cream which, with the Strawberries and Milk, eat most Deliciously…") to him and other dinner guests at the Governor's home in Annapolis:

not contested.

1774 Immigrant from London Philip Lenzi, a caterer, opens the nation's first ice cream parlor, on Dock Street in New York City. On May 12, 1777, Lenzi places the first advertisement for ice cream in America in The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, noting that he would make it available "almost every day.":

not contested.

1780s George and Martha Washington often serve ice cream to their guests. In one year alone, President Washington spends over $200 on ice cream, a huge amount at the time:

not contested.

1784 Thomas Jefferson records a French recipe for vanilla ice cream (custard based) in his recipe book. In 1802 at a White House state dinner, he serves small balls of vanilla ice cream encased in warm pastry:

not contested.

1806 Frederic Tudor begins cutting and shipping ice from Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to states south and around the world:

not contested.

1813 James and Dolley Madison serve strawberry ice cream at Madison's second inaugural ball. Mrs. Jeremiah ("Aunt Sallie") Shadd, a freed black slave, who has a catering business in Wilmington, Delaware, makes the ice cream from her own recipe. Also working at the White House as a chef is African-American cook and entrepreneur Augustus Jackson, who, after he leaves the White House and moves to Philadelphia, creates many new ice cream recipes and a sophisticated system of distributing it to retail merchants in large tin cans:

not contested.

1832 Massachusetts brass founder John Matthews invents the soda fountain:

contested. Some sources credit Pennsylvania physician Samuel Fahnstock with inventing it in 1819. And some credit Jacob Ebert of Cadiz, Ohio and George Dulty of Wheeling, Virginia with inventing it in 1833, and taking out a patent on it.

1843 Philadelphia housewife Nancy M. Johnson invents the hand-crank ice cream freezer, and receives a patent for it, the rights to which she sells for $200 to wholesaler William G. Young:

not contested.

1851 Quaker Jacob Fussell, using icehouses and a large version of Johnson's ice cream freezing machine, begins to produce ice cream from his Baltimore, Maryland factory (and then in Washington, DC, Boston, and New York), and selling it on the street from carts, helping to turn ice cream into a cheap, regular treat:

not contested.

1867 J. B. Sutherland of Detroit, Michigan patents the refrigerated railroad car:

not contested.

1874 The ice cream soda is created by soda concessionaire Robert M. Green for the semicentennial celebration of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. He had been making soda drinks of sweet cream, syrup, ice, and carbonated water, a drink already well-known and called, fancifully, "ice cream soda." When he runs out of cream, he substitutes ice cream (Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream, which means it was not custard based):

contested. Some sources say the ice cream soda was invented by two newsboys, John Robertson and Francis Tietz, at Kline's Confectionary Store in New York City in 1872, when they asked Mr. Kline to put a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a slice of pineapple into a glass of soda water.

1878 William Clewell, a confectioner in Reading, Pennsylvania, receives the first patent for an ice cream scoop. It is shaped like a candle snuffer:

not contested.

1881 The ice cream sundae is created, in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, by Ed C. Berners, who operates an ice cream shop at 1404 Fifteenth Street. A teen-aged customer, George Hallauer, asks Mr. Berner to put some chocolate sauce on his ice cream. Prior to this, chocolate sauce had been used only in ice cream sodas. Berners complies and charges Hallauer—and other customers afterwards—5 cents. He serves it only on Sunday:

contested. Some sources say the ice cream sundae was invented on Sunday afternoon, April 3, 1892, by Chester C. Platt, proprietor of the Platt & Colt Pharmacy in Ithaca, New York, when he improvised a bowl of vanilla ice cream, topped with cherry syrup and candied cherry, calling it a "Cherry Sunday," in honor of the day in which it is invented. Other sources say the phrase "ice cream sundae" was created in Evanston, Illinois, sometime in the late 1800s, when, in an effort to circumvent the religious ban against frivolously "sucking soda" on Sundays, Garwoods' Drugstore offered its customers what was essentially a concoction of everything in an ice cream soda, without the soda.

1894 Edson Clemant Baugham patents a spring-handle, one-handed ice cream scoop, which is manufactured by the Kingery Company of Cincinnati:

not contested.

1897 African-American inventor Alfred L. Cralle, while working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, patents the lever-operated, half-globed-shaped, hand ice cream scooper:

not contested.

1902 Mechanical refrigeration takes over from ice and salts in the ice cream industry:

not contested.

1904 The ice cream cone is introduced, at the St. Louis World's Fair, Louisiana Purchase Exposition. An ice cream vendor named Arnold Fornachou runs out of dishes and a Syrian vendor named Abe Doumar (or a Lebanese vendor named Ernest A. Hamwi) seizes the moment to roll a "zalabia"—a sugar waffle—into a cone and comes to his rescue:

contested. Some sources say the ice cream cone was invented by Italian immigrant Italo Marciony of New York, a pushcart ice cream vendor in New York, in 1896, who also, perhaps, invented the ice cream sandwich by putting a slice of ice cream between waffle squares cut from a sheet. Other sources say the ice cream cone has its origins in the mists of history, but was first described in Mrs. Marshall's Cookery Book, whose author, Agnes Marshall, published it in London in 1888. Still others discern a woman licking an ice cream cone in an 1807 picturing fashionable customers eating at the Frascati café in Paris, although this is uncertain because cone-shaped ice cream bowls were not unknown at the time.

1904 Soda jerk (and soon-to-be graduate of University of Pittsburgh's School of Pharmacy) David E. Strickler invents the banana split (and the elongated dish to serve it in) while working in a drug store in Latrobe, Pennsylvania:

contested. Some sources credit Ernest Hazard, owner of Hazard's Restaurant in Wilmington, Ohio, with inventing the banana split in 1907, and his cousin, Clifton Hazard, with inventing the name "banana split."

1905 Eleven-year-old Frank Epperson leaves his fruit-flavored drink (powdered flavor plus water) outside in cold weather, with a stirring stick in it, and "invents" the "Epsicle ice pop," which he patents eighteen years later, in 1924. His children rename it the "Popsicle.":

not contested.

1906 In C. C. (Clarence Clifton) Brown's Ice Cream Parlour at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, the first hot fudge sundae is served:

not contested.

1910 President William Howard Taft begins keeping a Holstein cow named "Pauline Wayne" on the White House lawn, replacing one named "Mooley Wooly," who had provided milk (and from it, ice cream) for the First Family for a year and a half:

not contested.

1911 General Electric offers an electric refrigerator for home use:

not contested.

1919 Prohibition becomes law, causing some beer manufacturers to become ice cream manufacturers and some saloons to become ice cream parlors:

not contested.

1919 Onawa, Iowa inventor and high school teacher Christian Nelson, who moonlights as a soda jerk, invents the first chocolate-covered ice cream bar He calls it the "Temptation I-Scream Bar," and writes the advertising jingle, "I scream, you scream, we all scream for the I-Scream Bar." After going into partnership with confectioner Russell Stover, Nelson changes its name and patents it as the "Eskimo Pie.":

not contested.

1920 Youngstown, Ohio candy maker Harry Burt invents the first ice cream on a stick, the Good Humor Bar:

not contested.

1921 The Commissioner of Ellis Island provides that a scoop of vanilla ice cream be included in a "Welcome to America" meal for immigrants arriving through the facility:

not contested.

1922 Chicago Walgreens employee Ivar "Pop" Coulson takes a malted milk drink (milk, chocolate syrup, and malt), adds two scoops of vanilla ice cream, mixes it up, and creates the milk shake:

not contested.

1923 H. P. Hood of Boston introduces the paper cup filled at the factory with ice cream at the National Ice Cream Convention in Cleveland. He calls it the "Hoodsie," but it is renamed the "Dixie Cup" in 1924:

not contested.

1923 A & P supermarkets introduce ice cream cabinets in their 1,200 stores nationwide:

not contested.

1926 The Hershey's Company expands its product offerings to include Hershey's Syrup:

not contested.

1931 Ernest Wiegand, horticulturalist at Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) in Corvallis, develops the modern method of firming and preserving maraschino cherries:

not contested.

1940 J. F. "Grandpa" and H. A. "Alex" McCullough, proprietors of the Homemade Ice Cream Company in Green River, Illinois, begin to market "soft serve" ice cream under the name of "Dairy Queen.":

not contested.

1984 President Ronald Reagan designates July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day:

not contested.