On January 3, 1959, George A. Kasem takes office in the U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 25th District, making history as the first Arab American Congressperson.
Kasem, who is of Lebanese descent, was born in Oklahoma and raised in Los Angeles. He ran as a Democrat, flipping the seat previously held by Republican Congressman Patrick J. Hillings, who retired to run for Attorney General of California. Kasem won by a razor-thin margin—50.1% of the vote over Republican candidate Prescott O. Lieberg’s 49.9%—and was part of a national shift during the 1958 midterms, during which Republicans lost 48 seats to Democrats during President Eisenhower’s second term.
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Inc., which revolutionized the computer, music and mobile communications industries with such devices as the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad, dies at age 56 […]
An Israeli-owned bulldozer kills 23-year-old American woman Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2003, as she protests a demolition campaign that destroyed over a thousand homes in the Gaza Strip. Following the death of their daughter, Corrie’s […]
Henry Ossian Flipper, born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York on June 14, 1877. The […]
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