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We have exciting news to share: You can now read Okay History in the new Substack app for iPhone.
OKAY!
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for our Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.
The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.
Happy last week of March, everyone. Thanks for your continued support of Okay History.
Welcome to the new platform for our site. Our goal is simple: to help you become an Okay Citizen. We do this by building a community, and we are confident this platform will help us achieve our goal.
We've been pondering why we enjoy reading, writing, and sometimes ranking all things U.S. history, and we keep coming back to the idea: better citizenship.
We hope that you find our lessons on presidents, states, and random questions you send us, help you better understand the basics of our past and therefore become a better citizen. Or one that is simply Okay.
To build a community, we need to be seen by as many people as possible. If you think others would enjoy two lessons a week on U.S. history topics, we encourage you to share this newsletter.
We are grateful for your readership and encouragement.
Okay, let's jump into our usual Monday highlights, which we are calling The Maundy Monday Newsletter.
Since we are coming to the end of Women's history month, we wanted to touch upon two women and their pioneering careers that have helped us as a country be more reflective of who we are and what we want to be.
Madeleine Albright died last Wednesday after a battle with cancer. She was the first woman to become Secretary of State when Bill Clinton nominated her in 1997.
She was a respected voice in foreign policy, especially in conflicts in Europe (Albright was born in Czechoslovakia). We can't think of anyone who said anything negative about her.
We were reminded of her interview this past June when was spoke of Russia and President Putin, and it was, how shall we say, diplomatic.
This week also saw the worst of our citizens during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson will become the first black woman to sit on the Court.
We won't get into how ridiculous a few white dudes looked when engaging in questions with her. We won't even talk about how complimentary one seemingly reasonable white senator was towards her, only to inform everyone that he couldn't vote for her because of something to do with not being original. Strange.
Judge Jackson is just impressive. And we will leave it at that.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. Here's what we got:
The United States took over the Virgin Islands on March 31, 1917. Since we won the Spanish American War, Spain handed over many islands in 1898. The treaty with Denmark to secure the rest happened on this day. We have never been there, but wish we were there, right now.
The U.S. Mint was created on April 2, 1792. Created by the Coinage Act of 1792, four active mint-producing plants remain - San Francisco, Denver, West Point, and the original, Philadelphia.
Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany on April 2, 1917. The 28th president reversed his isolationist stance, and the measure passed by 82-6. Charles Thomas, a senator from Colorado who voted against the resolution, used to be a Confederate soldier in the Civil War. Awesome.
If you have landed on this page and like what you have read, please consider subscribing. Another lesson is coming out on Friday, and it's not one to be missed.
Hope your brackets are okay after this weekend. Probably not, right?
Have a great week!
Okay,
Chris
Okay Citizen
In a future lesson, please rank Supreme Court confirmation hearings since 1900. I think that you will find Justice-Designate Jackson Brown's hearing to be a few points north of the worst. We may even detect some patterns in the behavior of the political parties during SC confirmation hearings.
That is the first time I have ever joined the waiting list for an app. Android must be way cooler than iOS because waiting lists only occur for cool things, right? Okay.